Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Gundry, and welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Well, you know, February is Heart Health Month, and as a heart surgeon and cardiologist for 40 plus years, this is the topic near and dear to me. Today’s topics include best supplements for heart health, some strange daily habits that support your heart health, and maybe I’ll examine all the confusing advice out there on what to eat for heart health. So, it’s gonna be fun. Stay tuned. I’ll be right back. Well, as a heart surgeon and a cardiologist, everybody always wants to know what are the best supplements for heart health. Let me give you a fun example. So, uh, years ago, a friend and TV producer would every now and then come to see me because he is of generous proportions. He’s obese, and he’s insulin resistant, and he has metabolic syndrome, and he knows it, and he’s a friend, but he doesn’t follow what I ask him to do.

(01:17):
And I, every time I saw him, I said, “Man, this guy has a heart attack waiting to happen.” And years go by, and he walks into the office, he says, “Hey, you’re not gonna believe this. I just had to have an angiogram of my heart.” And I’m going, “Oh yeah, I believe it. ” Uh, I said, “What’d they find?” And he said, “Absolutely nothing. My coronary arteries, you know, are smooth as a baby’s butt,” as he described it. And I’m going, “Well, that’s really interesting.” He says, “Well, yeah, I’ve been sw- swallowing two clothes of garlic every day for my entire life, and I’ll bet ya that did it. ” And I actually had to agree with him. The Allison group family of vegetables like garlic, like onions, like leeks, Allison is actually one of the best compounds to keep the lining of your blood vessels, which is called the glycocalyx.

(02:28):
I wrote, wrote about it in most recent books. The glycocalyx is this basically sugar compound that coats your blood vessels, and it’s the breakdown of the glycocalyx that is actually the cause of cholesterol deposits, the cause of inflammation. And as long as that glycocalyx is intact, not much is going to happen. And garlic is a great way of keeping the glycocalyx intact. So he taught me something. I should have realized it because I am a big fan of garlic. So you wanna … When you’re buying garlic, you want usually fermented garlic or there’s a number of good brands out there. Kalic is one just as an example, but, or high allicin garlic compounds. You can get them that don’t smell like garlic that don’t make your breath stink. Add garlic to your regimen. I’m a huge fan of garlic. I take high allicin garlic every day, literally for the last 30 years.

(03:41):
Now, speaking of the glycocalyx, there are a number of companies that, based on very good research, will sell you seaweed-based compounds that have been shown to modify the glycocalyx in a good way. One of them is one of my favorites called fuquoidin. Now, fuquoidint is a component of brown seaweed. Kelp, by the way, is brown seaweed. There are a number of different brown seaweeds. Bladderwack is another brown seaweed. Fuquoidin has some incredible benefits. Number one, it is really good at repairing the wall of your gut. It’s really good at making the tight junctions work well. Number two, it’s really good at improving the glycocalyx, making it work better. And there’s even evidence that it’s really good at repairing the blood brain barrier. So I’ve been a big fan of fuquoidin for many, many years, and it’s available as an extract now. Usual dose is about 500 milligrams.

(05:00):
There are numerous extracted seaweed extracts that are bioavailable, or guess what? You can eat fermented seaweed. Now, we know that cultures like Japan and Korea are high seaweed eaters. We’ve also known for a number of years that many of us lack the bacteria that is able to break down the walls of the cell wall of seaweed, because we’re not exposed to those bacteria. People who eat a lot of sushi or raw fish, interestingly enough, get bacteria from the fish that populate their gut microbiome that allows them to eat this seaweed and get the benefits and to digest it. I’ve always been fascinated, particularly in Italy and the south of France, about how popular raw seafood is, crudo, and how popular raw shrimp is. It’s on almost every menu and every, every place I go to. And so here we are in the Mediterranean eating raw sushi, if you will, shashimi, without realizing that maybe the benefit wasn’t so much the seafood itself, but that we were actually swallowing the bacteria that allow you to digest seaweed and get its benefits.

(06:39):
So that’s another great way of, uh, getting a heart healthy supplement into you. Now, two other of my favorite are grape seed extract and French maritime tree bark, which was patented years ago as picnaginal. It was determined that tree bark from trees growing on the coast of France had some very interesting polyphenols that were remarkable in reducing the stickiness of blood vessels. Now, years ago, I was the consultant to the company that developed the blood test to measure how sticky or smooth the lining of your blood vessels were, the glycocalyx. And this test, you can easily obtain from your physician. It’s either called the plaque test, P-L-A-C, or the LPPLA-2 test. It’s the same test. And it gives you an idea of whether your blood vessels are lined with Teflon, which you want, or whether they’re lined with fly paper, which you don’t want. Early in my career, I did, wrote a number of papers where I could measure the stickiness in people’s blood vessels, and many people had it, and I put them on grape seed extract and picnogenol, which way back then, both used to be available at Trader Joe’s and Costco, and they were really quite reasonable.

(08:24):
And lo and behold, the combination of grape seed extract, French maritime tree bark, picnogenal, and fish oil across the board made their sticky vessels slippery. And I even wrote a fascinating paper that many of my patients, after we made their blood vessels slippery, stopped taking the grape seed extract and picnogenol because they were fine. And lo and behold, when, because we draw blood every three months, once they stopped these two supplements, their blood vessels got sticky again. What did we do? We put them back on grape seed extract and French maritime tree bark, and low and behold, their sticky blood vessels got slippery, and I published this data. So these are two useful, quite reasonably priced supplements that are very good at making the blood vessels slippery, and that’s what you want. I mentioned that these studies, we also combined fish oil, and fish oil is useful for several reasons.

(09:38):
Number one, fish oil is one of the few fats oils that actually improve repair of the wall of the gut. Fish oil is one of the few fats that lowers the amount of LPSs getting into your bloodstream, and that’s a good thing. But fish oil really needs to be activated, and the omega-3 fats in fish oil, which is what you’re looking for, do not have any anti-inflammatory effects by themselves, but they have to be activated by a small amount of salicylic acid. Now you go, salicylic acid, I think I’ve heard that word before. Believe it or not, aspirin is salicylic acid. Now, fun fact, salicylic acid is present in seaweed. And so when salicylic acid interacts with fish oil, it’s turned into compounds that are called resolvens, and they were called resolvens because they resolve inflammation. And you may see studies that show giving fish oil to people has no effect on inflammation, and that’s true.

(11:11):
But giving people fish oil with a tiny amount of salicylic acid, what’s a tiny amount? Well, an enteric coated 81 milligram aspirin a couple times a week is all the salicylic acid you need to turn your fish oil into the active compound resolving. When that’s done, lo and behold, fish oil has an amazing anti-inflammatory effect. And what’s so interesting is, guess what? Way back when, people were getting their fish oil by eating fish, and they were also getting their salicylic acid by having some seaweed with it. It’s amazing how all of these practices come together to show why people who do certain odd habits do so well in the long run. So those are my five favorite tricks for heart health, but most importantly, for repairing the glycocalyx, the real lining of your blood vessel that makes things good or bad, depending on how you treat it.

(12:22):
So here’s my top five supplements for heart health and vessel health. Uh, number one, garlic. Number two, seaweed compounds like fuquoidin. Number three, grape seed extract. Number four, French maritime tree bark. And number five, fish oil with a little touch of salicylic acid.

(12:54):
Bizarre daily habits that may support heart health. You know, despite modern advancement, heart disease remains the number one most common disease among Americans, and it’s the case of one in every five deaths. So what’s the big problem? Well, 42% of Americans are officially obese. As I say, fat in your gut, you’re out of luck. So belly fat contributes directly to heart health, as I explain in all of my books, and I’m gonna spend even more time in the upcoming book, but it releases bacteria and bacterial particles into your bloodstream, and that sets up inflammation. Heart disease is not a problem of cholesterol. Heart disease is a problem of inflammation in blood vessels. Most people don’t realize that statin drugs don’t work by lowering your cholesterol. Statin drugs work by lowering the inflammation in your blood vessels, but there’s lots of other easy ways to do it.

(13:57):
So let’s start with number one, eat walnuts. First of all, fat does not make you fat. Not only does fat not make you fat, but fats in the form of walnuts or an olive oil actually benefit heart health. Walnuts are also a great source of a funny chemical called polyamines. I’ve written extensively about polyamines have been shown to increase your overall health, your health span, and longevity. Now, one of the miracle fats in walnuts is actually a short chain, omega-3 fat called alpha-linolenic acid, abbreviated ALA. And I promise there won’t be a test. ALA has been shown in numerous studies, including this one, but also in the Leon Heart Diet study to dramatically lessen the incidence of coronary artery disease in people who have coronary artery disease. ALA is present in walnuts, it’s present in flaxseeds, it’s present in organic canola oil, but it’s present in my favorite oil for ALA, perilla oil.

(15:17):
So any way you can get ALA into your diet, including walnuts, that’s what to do. Now, alpha-linolenic acid is an essential fatty acid. What does that mean? It means we don’t manufacture it, but we have to have it to properly function cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes. So get yourself some more alpha linolenic acid, ALA, and one of the easiest ways to get it is have a handful of walnuts every day. All right, number two, take a shot of extra virgin olive oil. Now, there are multiple studies showing the benefit of extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil is a great way of getting polyphenols into your system. Polyphenols actually interact extremely well with blood vessels. And in fact, I’ve written several papers showing the benefit of polyphenols on arterial health, on stickiness of blood vessels, and in allowing blood vessel flexibility. There’s a saying in longevity that you are only as young as your blood vessels are flexible, and so polyphenols, particularly in olive oil, are one of the great ways to do it.

(16:39):
Multiple areas of the blue zones, for instance, in Crete, Italy, in Sardinia, and even in Achiaoli, south of Naples, all use about a liter of olive oil per week. Now, they even have olive oil soup in crete. There’s some fantastic polyphenols in olive oil. One of the best is hydroxytyrosol. It’s a powerful polyphenol that can have huge beneficial heart health benefits. I actually performed a science experiment showing this right here on my YouTube channel. Check it out. It’s incredibly eye-opening. And once again, fat is not your enemy. So I recommend everyone should, can try to consume about a liter of olive oil per week like they do in crete, but to make it easy, have a shot of olive oil every day. Bring olive oil to the table. Pour it on your meats, your chicken, your fish, pour it on your vegetables, pour it on your ice cream.

(17:39):
Number three, now this one sounds like almost a non-starter, but bear with me. Swallow a whole clove of garlic. Now, there’s a compound in raw garlic called Allicin. Chronic oral administration of Allicin lowered blood pressure in hypertensive rats. If you cook garlic, it’s inactivated. Sorry about that. So swallow it whole. Or used aged garlic extracts. Now, garlic is actually well known as being great for your immune health. Now, since you’re swallowing garlic whole, you won’t get that potent garlic breath. So it’s a win-win. So how do you do it? Just peel the clovo garlic. I personally like to roll it in olive oil, pop it in your mouth and swallow it. The olive oil makes it slippery and it goes right on down. Number four, your microbiome, your gut begins at your mouth, and your oral microbiome and your oral health is really just as important as your gut microbiome in terms of heart health.

(18:56):
Heart disease begins in the mouth and gums. Bacteria get through your mouth, through your gums, into your bloodstream, and actually begin to affect the blood vessels in your heart. In fact, people with gum disease have two to three times the risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or other serious cardiovascular event. Believe it or not, when I’m doing surgery and we’ve actually looked at the plaque that we take out of people when we do bypass surgery, these plaques have been shown to contain oral bacteria and how they get in there, it came from your mouth. So the benefits of brushing and flossing go way beyond fresh breath. Also, speaking of fresh breath, most commercial mouthwashes destroy your oral microbiome and actually raise your blood pressure exactly what you don’t wanna do. So instead of mouthwash, use oil pulling and you’ll get great results. In fact, I actually talk about this on episode 221 with Dr. Punit Nanda, a.

(20:08):
K.a. Dr. Fresch. It’s great watching and it’s very entertaining to hear his story. Last but not least, cheese, please. Now, recently, big news was made with a study out of Norway, looking at people with stable angina. Stable angina means that these people had coronary artery disease, and if they did too much activity, if they walked too fast, if they exercised too fast, they got chest pain, angina. When they stopped doing that, the chest pain went away, and it was predictable. This is called stable angina. Now, what they did was they looked at the effect of dairy consumption, butter consumption, and cheese consumption on what happened to these people’s stable angina. Now, what made the news was that dairy and butter dramatically worsened stable angina. In other words, they went on to have heart attacks or needed stents. But was not mentioned was the fact that the more cheese people ate, the better their angina got.

(21:17):
It went away. Huh? Well, I’ve written extensively about this in unlocking the keto code, and I’m going into it even more in the upcoming book. But cheese has fascinating products that improve heart health in multiple areas. Interestingly enough, four out of the five blue zones actually are blue zones because they eat goat and sheep cheeses. The fermentation process of making cheese produces very important compounds that actually protect against heart disease, having nothing to do with cholesterol. Now, no, you can’t eat nachos and cheese sauce or other highly processed cheeses. If you’re going to have cheeses, look for the fact that they’re made out of casine A2. These are most cheeses in France, most cheeses in Italy. All goat and sheep cheeses and water buffalo cheeses are quesine a two. So enjoy your cheeses the right cheeses, please. Finally, exercise snacking. Now, everyone knows that regular exercise is absolutely essential for heart health, but that doesn’t mean you have to spend hours in the gym every week.

(22:36):
Instead, try exercise snacking. It’s super easy, fun, and great for even the busiest of people like me. So what do you do? Wall sit. Wall sit for up to two minutes several times a day. Now, this is hard to do. This is how I get ready for ski season. So don’t give up. Just sit against the wall for as long as you can before your quadriceps are screaming, and then try to push it a little bit longer every day. Get to two minutes and you’ll be shocked at the benefit of wall sitting. Couch planks. Get off the couch in a commercial and just do a plank against the couch. It’s really easy. It’s effortless. My personal favorite, do deep knee bends when you’re brushing your teeth. Come on, folks. You’re not doing anything else twice a day. Just do deep knee bends while brushing your teeth.

(23:28):
Kind of time you’re brushing with your deep knee bending. Walk and talk. Instead of taking a call at your desk, get up, carry the phone with you, and walk around the office, walk down the hall, instead of just sitting there talking. It’s also incredible for your overall health, including your heart. It’s really the most underestimated form of exercise. Go out and walk every single day and you’ll notice better health, more energy, and a slimmer waistline. And that’s what I tell all my patients. Please get a dog. A dog will demand a walk twice a day, and it’ll get you out as well.

(24:09):
Recently, I came across an article that got my attention because the headline was, “A heart surgeon just shared what he eats in a day, and his morning routine might shock you. ” Well, since I’m a heart surgeon, and I happen to have morning routines, I read on, and you’re right. It actually shocked me, but not in the way you’d think. So this addressed a, uh, young heart surgeon. He’s, I think, in his 50s, and he goes through his entire daily diet. Now, I just wanna read some of the things that he does, and then see if you get shocked. So for breakfast, he starts his breakfast with an apple and a banana. And get this, once he gets hungrier, he then eats two pancakes made with egg whites, oats, and bananas. They’re topped with coconut yogurt mixed with protein powder, as well as a sprinkle of blueberries.

(25:07):
Now, this is bound to keep the surgeon satisfied and energized until lunchtime, says the article. For lunch, he keeps it simple after a workout targeting his shoulder muscles. Now, usually when I was a heart surgeon, I did three cases a day, and I can tell you that there’s no way I had time to work out my shoulder muscles before each case. His main plate is chicken with sweet potato rice bowl. And for a fiber boost, he makes a small salad with bell peppers, avocado, and tomatoes. To satisfy his sweet tooth, he has another serving of French fresh fruit. So so far we, we’re up to three fruits a day. Usually grapes, cantaloupe, pineapple, and strawberries. Dinner is not so typical, says the dietician. We’ve got a burger with an egg and avocado and gluten-free pad Thai noodles. So are you shocked? Well, there’s a lot of things here that shock me, but here’s the real shocker.

(26:08):
What this article doesn’t say is that this year, this heart surgeon eating this healthy meal had a heart attack and needed a stent. That should shock you that a physician who had a heart attack who needed a stent would post their healthy meal. Why shouldn’t that shock you? Because first of all, the idea that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease needs to be laid to rest. The cholesterol theory of heart disease is a theory, just like there are other theories of what causes heart disease, like the inflammation theory, like the autoimmune theory. These theories are equally more important than cholesterol. So let me give you an example. We get letters, comments from people who try the Plant Paradox program, and they’re feeling better, everything’s looking better, but their doctor tells them that their cholesterol is up and wants to put them on a statin.

(27:18):
Now, here’s the problem. Two factors have to happen to produce coronary artery disease. One, your blood vessels have to be sticky. They have to be lined with fly paper. And thankfully, we can measure whether your blood vessels are slippery, like they’re lined with Teflon or they’re lined with fly paper. I was the consultant to the company that invented the LPPLA2 measurement that literally looks at how sticky your blood vessels are. And we also know that many people have sticky blood vessels, and we also know that your blood vessels become unsticky on my program. That’s one of the reasons we started this. The other thing we now know is that cholesterol is not bad for anyone unless it’s oxidized, unless it’s rusty or rancid. And thankfully, there are modern methods to measure the oxidation of cholesterol. So I literally have patients who have total cholesterols of over 500, who have LDLs above 400, who have APOBs of 200 or more, but who have absolutely no coronary plaque by CT coronary angiograms, the clearly scanned.

(28:42):
What gives? When we look at their blood vessels and we look at their cholesterol, the blood vessels are slippery and the cholesterol is not activated. So I am not a proponent of the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Neither was Dr. Michael DeBakey, one of the great fathers of heart surgery. DeBakey said cholesterol is an innocent bystander to damage that’s going on in the blood vessel. And cholesterol is merely a spackling compound that’s trying to patch the damage. My point, if you don’t damage your blood vessels, you don’t have to worry about cholesterol trying to patch the damage. That’s the cholesterol myths. In fact, I’ll give you an example from just two weeks ago. I have a patient who was found to have three blockages in his coronary arteries, and he carries a mischievous type of cholesterol that I’ve written extensively about called lipoprotein little A, Lp little A.

(29:54):
You make it because of a gene that you inherit from your parents, and it’s a mischievous cholesterol. Yeah. This gentleman, on the advice of well-meaning physicians, even though he was not having chest pain, even though he was not having a heart attack, was talked into getting three stents for these blockages. Now, as an aside, there are multiple studies that have shown no benefit of getting a stent for blockages in coronary arteries versus diet and lifestyle modification, unless you’re having an acute heart attack. The only benefit of a stent has been shown in people with an acute heart attack, and I completely agree with that. But study after study shows that just putting stents in to treat narrowing gives no early benefit, no late benefit from just lifestyle and diet modifications. Imagine that. So this patient got himself some stents, and he was put on very high dose statin drugs, another drug which lowers cholesterol in a different mechanism.

(31:09):
It’s an injectable drug. And lo and behold, his cholesterol plummeted. Plummeted. It went from, uh, his LDL cholesterol went from about 130 to 40. Yay. Major win. Unfortunately, when we look at whether his cholesterol, even at those numbers, is activated, is rusty or rancid, he went from absolutely no rusty cholesterol when it was 130, to now red warning levels that his cholesterol is now activated. And sadly, I see this all the time. So just lowering a number doesn’t tell us what’s happening at the level of the blood vessel. And thankfully, we have very good tests now to tell us exactly what’s happening at the blood vessel level. So I don’t think I would take advice from a heart surgeon who’s recently had a stent. So looking back, any problems here? Well, he’s having three fruit a day, including a banana and apple, which has some of the highest sugar content.

(32:22):
He’s having oats and bananas. He’s having a rice bowl. He’s having bell peppers and tomatoes for lunch. He’s having grapes. He’s having pineapples. He’s having strawberries, all of which have huge amounts of sugar. And then he’s having a burger with noodles. So this guy, I would be willing to bet, had incredibly high triglycerides, which are the first form of fat made from sugars and starches. And he’s eating a wonderful lectin rich diet. So I can just imagine what was going on on the surface of his blood vessels. And to me, this looks like a recipe for disaster. And that’s exactly what happened to that heart surgeon eating a healthy routine. So if, if this guy was, was my patient, here’s how I would go forward from now on. First of all, he’s eating at least three pieces of fruit a day. And fructose is a mitochondrial toxin.

(33:34):
And fructose is converted in our liver into triglycerides. And triglycerides are actually what drives cholesterol production. So the first thing I would do is kindly tell him to give fruit the boot. It’s not a healthy eating choice. Number two, I’d absolutely tell him to skip breakfast altogether. And certainly his breakfast of banana and oat pancakes are some of the most inflammatory foods he could possibly eat. Secondly, he’s having a rice bowl for lunch. If you’ll notice, he’s eating a very heavily carbohydrate-based diet. And carbohydrates are converted to triglycerides and triglycerides drive cholesterol up. So if he likes the cholesterol theory of heart disease and bless his heart, then that’s the last thing he wants to do to keep his cholesterol under control. Bell peppers, tomatoes are part of the nightshade family. They’re incredibly inflammatory causing leaky gut. And remember, inflammation in blood vessels comes from inflammation in the gut.

(34:45):
It’s a response to leaky gut, so we gotta seal his leaky gut. His burger, unfortunately, is Nu5GC laden. And even if it’s grass-fed grass finished, it still contains these molecules that cause leaky gut and cause inflammation on blood vessels. So that’s the last thing I want him to eat. And I see patients with stents constantly. I started doing this because I was tired of having people repeatedly get more and more heart disease even after I bypass them. And now, 30 years in, I know this system works. So good for him for eating healthy, but his healthy eating, I submit, got him into this problem in the first place. So for all you people on Facebook and Instagram who are freaking out, uh, that they’re doing great on my program, but their doctor is freaking out because of their cholesterol numbers going up. Here’s a few things I’d ask you to do.

(35:47):
First of all, ask your physician to order an oxidized LDL, OXLDL. Preferably, there’s an even better test. It’s called oxidized phospholipid apoB. Now, in contracted form, it’s OX, capital P, capital L, dash, apo, capital B. This literally tells you whether any of your balls of cholesterol are activated and likely to stick to your blood vessels. And you’ll be amazed that most people following my program have absolutely beautiful oxidized phospholipid apoB or oxidized LDL. Number two, ask your physician to order a plaque blood test, PLAC, or a LPPLA2 test. They’re actually the same thing. It measures the stickiness of blood vessels. And like I said, it takes two to tango if you like the cholesterol theory of heart disease. You gotta have sticky blood vessels and you gotta have oxidized or sticky cholesterol. If you don’t have either, it doesn’t matter what your cholesterol is. And this is a way of teaching your well-meaning physician how to look at how cholesterol is acting in you.

(37:21):
Now it’s time for the question of the week. Question from Sam Q99 on Instagram asked, a recent study caught my attention saying men are at risk for getting heart disease in mid- 30s, much earlier than female risk. And I asked myself, “What exactly is driving this and how early do we need to start protecting our hearts?” Well, Sam, Q99, that’s a great question and something sadly I see all the time, both as a heart surgeon, cardiologist, and someone seeing patients every day. I can tell you that I’m convinced that what’s driving this is an epidemic of leaky gut and gut dysbiosis, the abnormalities in our microbiome. And the longer I practice, the more I’m convinced that Apocrates, the father of medicine 2,500 years ago said all disease begins in the gut. And what he really meant to say was all disease begins in a leaky gut.

(38:21):
And that’s what’s driving this problem. And that’s what I do every day is help people finding out if they have leaky gut and more importantly, how to fix it. That’s how you start protecting your heart. Now it’s time for the review of the week. The review of the week comes from @Veransden4095 over on YouTube on my episode, Challenging Health Advice from AI. They said this podcast illustrates how individual and nuanced health advice needs to be. Dr. Gundry, I am grateful for you every day as my experience, my best health in years at age 67. Well, thank you very much. You’re right. Health advice has to be nuanced. You have to understand how individual factors influence you. And thanks to the fact that I see patients six days a week, every week, and learn what works and what doesn’t work, I’m happy to report on what I find to you.

(39:25):
And so thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. If you did, please share this with family and friends. You never know how one of these health tips can completely transform someone’s life when you take the time to share it with them. There’s also the Dr. Gundry Podcast YouTube channel, where we have tens of thousands of free health insights that can help you and your loved ones live a long, vital life. Let’s do this together.