Paleo Cardiology with Dr. Jack Wolfson: Rational Wellness Podcast 310
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Dr. Jack Wolfson discusses his Paleolithic approach to Cardiology with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
2:13 Conventional cardiology tells us that consuming saturated fats, such as found in red meat and butter, raises LDL cholesterol levels, which leads to cholesterol plaques forming in our arteries, which leads to heart attacks and strokes. Dr. Wolfson believes that this view is completely wrong, since it is based on flawed studies that supposedly show that cardiovascular disease is caused by saturated that it can be cured with pills and procedures.
4:09 Advanced lab testing. To diagnose cardiovascular disease, there are better tests than just the standard lipid profile. Dr. Wolfson believes that HsCRP (High sensitivity C-Reactive Protein) is the most important marker to assess overall health, since it is the best marker for inflammation. But if it is elevated, you have to ask why are you inflamed and what can you do about it? The reason that the body lays down cholesterol in the arteries as plaque is to protect the artery walls against inflammation, like putting spackle on the wall to make the wall smooth if there is a hole or irregularity. If we correct the reason for the inflammation, that is how we will end heart disease.
8:27 Dr. Wolfson does not recommend the coronary artery calcium scan, because he does not like exposure to radiation. He does like to look at advanced lipid analysis, lipoprotein (a), homocysteine, and uric acid. He also likes to test for intracellular vitamins and minerals and omega-3s, including intracellular vitamin K2.
10:02 Dr. Wolfson currently prefers using Vibrant America lab and some of the panels that he likes include the Leaky Gut Panel, which includes looking for gluten sensitivity, that includes the anti-actin antibody, which just shows that your immune system is attacking the actin protein found in all muscular tissue. And all cells that divide contain actin protein, including the smooth muscle of the arteries. Dr. Wolfson also likes running the toxic testing (Total Tox Burden) that includes heavy metals, environmental toxins like pesticides, phalates, parabens, VOCs, and plastics, and mold mycotoxins.
15:13 Dr. Wolfson does not like coronary calcium scans and he also does not recommend CT angiograms or nuclear stress tests because he is against radiation. He also feels like these scans get patients in the door and then when they find blockages, they are sent for a stress test and then they end up needing a stent or bypass surgery, even though they may have no symptoms and these procedures do not prevent heart attacks or save lives. The conventional thinking is that you have a 30, 50, 70% blockage that was discovered by testing and you do an angioplasty and stent and you are saving them from a heart attack. But you actually take an unstable plaque and may be making it unstable. And then you find yourself on a bunch of pharmaceuticals that you were not on before and you have not done anything to address the cause of the problem. Stents do help reduce cardiovascular symptoms like chest pain and shortness of breath. Dr. Wolfson’s advice to people is to eat well, live well, think well. Part of living well is avoiding electromagnetic fields and manmade radiation exposure. Radiation causes heart disease, cancer, and dementia.
20:17 Diet. While there is much disagreement about which diet is best, we should all agree to eat organic food so we can get the chemicals out of our food. Dr. Wolfson believes that wild seafood is healthy and will provide good levels of the omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA. He also recommends nose to tail, grass-fed, grass-finished, pasture raised animals, including the organs, liver, heart, et cetera. Dr. Wolfson also recommends avoiding gluten and he also recommends avoiding most grains, including oatmeal. Dr. Wolfson said that oatmeal is propaganda and that he gets blowback from those who claim that oatmeal is a good source of fiber and they also add walnuts and fruit and feel that it is a heart healthy meal. Dr. Wolfson says that if you want to get the fiber from oatmeal, you should just eat the box. Hunter-gatherers did not have oatmeal to eat.
Dr. Jack Wolfson is a board-certified cardiologist who’s office is Natural Heart Doctor in Scottsdale, Arizona. Dr. Wolfson uses nutrition, lifestyle, and nutritional supplements, as well as his Cardiology Coffee, to prevent and treat heart disease. He has taught more than 10,000 physicians his natural heart health best practices and his book, The Paleo Cardiologist: The Natural Way to Heart Health, was an Amazon #1 best seller. His website is DrJackWolfson.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111. Dr. Weitz is also available for video or phone consultations
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates, and to learn more check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast.
Welcome Rational Wellness Podcasters. Our topic for today is Paleo Cardiology with Dr. Jack Wolfson. Dr. Wolfson is a board certified cardiologist whose office is Natural Heart Doctor in Scottsdale, Arizona. Dr. Wolfson uses nutrition, lifestyle, and nutritional supplements, as well as his cardiology coffee, to prevent and treat heart disease. He’s taught more than 10,000 physicians his natural heart health best practices, and his book, The Paleo Cardiologist: The Natural Way to Heart Health, was an Amazon number one bestseller. This book does contain a warning that the opinions in this book are not in agreement with the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, or any other organization with financial ties to big pharma and corporate America. Dr. Wolfson, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Wolfson: Thank you so much, Dr. Ben, absolute pleasure. And I love the, I haven’t heard about the warning label in a while, so yeah, it’s totally true, because anything I’m going to say, it’s totally against the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. I’m sure you feel this way at times too, Dr. Ben, that it seems like we’re always in opposition to what the mainstream is doing, and after a while it just becomes very cumbersome on all of us who are doing that, where it just seems like you’re fighting against everything that’s coming at you. But that’s the world that we live in, and again, it’s a pleasure to be on your program to share my truth.
Dr. Weitz: Good, good. So let’s start with what conventional cardiology tells us. So the conventional wisdom in cardiology today when it comes to coronary artery disease is that consuming saturated fats, such as found in red meat and butter, raises LDL cholesterol levels, which leads to cholesterol plaques forming in our arteries, which leads to heart attacks and strokes.
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, that is the company line as established by big food and big pharma and big government, and nothing can be further from the truth. When it comes to all the different cardiology things, the conventional cardiologist, everything that they reach for is a pill or a procedure. It’s just the way that it is, it’s just the way that they’re trained. It’s not that they’re unintelligent people, they’re very intelligent people, but they think pharma and surgeries first, second, and third. And it’s kind of like, listen, if I went to France, and I’m trying to get around town and everybody speaks French, I’m going to look like an idiot, and people are going to say, “This guy’s an idiot.” But I’m not an idiot, I just never learned French. The medical doctors, whether they’re at Harvard, Yale, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, they only know what they’ve been trained, and they’ve been trained on pills and procedures. They’re briefly, not even trained on nutrition, it’s just, saturated fat’s bad. Okay, well, if American Heart Association said sat fat’s bad, it’s bad. Or flawed studies say that it’s bad, okay, then it’s bad. But really, I think when we look at health and wellness through the lens of common sense, it becomes crystal clear on the way to avoid cardiovascular disease and it’s not with pills.
Dr. Weitz: Okay, so let’s start off with looking into diagnosing cardiovascular disease, and maybe we can start by explaining, what is LDL? What are the best ways to test for heart disease? What test markers do we want to look at that give us the best risk?
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, well I think that most people talk about cholesterol, and we’ll talk about that in a second, but to me the most important marker, if you can get one marker that would assess your overall health and wellness, it is the inflammation marker high sensitivity CRP. If you are inflamed you’re going to have a problem, and you better figure out why. The answer, of course, is not anti-inflammatories, and the answer, of course, is not aspirin or statin drugs, or any kind of procedure, it’s a matter of cause, why are you inflamed? When I first met my wife, who is a doctor of chiropractic, and she opened up my eyes to all things health and wellness, she said, “Jack, you need to become a DC.” And I said, “Wait a second, I just spent 10 years becoming a cardiologist, and now you want me to become a DC doctor of chiropractic?” She said, “No, not DC doctor of Chiropractic, DC Doctor of Cause. You have to find out why people are sick.” So when we see inflammation, which is the most important marker, now we need to figure out why people are inflamed. As it relates to lipids, lipids are just trying-
Dr. Weitz: And I think there was a study not long ago stating exactly that, that CRP was a better measure than LDL for heart disease risk.
Dr. Wolfson: Oh no, and really, not only for heart disease risk, but for anything, whether it’s dementia, stroke, even cancer risk, when you have a lot of inflammation. So it’s a very important marker to have.
Dr. Weitz: By the way, what do you consider high HSCRP? Is it over one? Is it?
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, I mean, certainly the higher the number is the higher the risk, and there is some linear nature to that. But normal should be less than one, and depending on the testing company and the different parameters that are used, there’s multiple different markers of inflammation and oxidative stress, again, that I think are infinitely more important than these lipid markers that we’re all trained to assess, because once we look at those lipids, then now it’s an easy sell regarding pharmaceuticals to lower the numbers down. Chapter one in my book, The Paleo Cardiologist: The Natural Way to Heart Health, it’s about nutrition, it’s about lifestyle and everything else, but chapter one was all about cholesterol, and I talk about why cholesterol is so important. When people say LDL cholesterol, it’s not even a thing. LDL is a particle that carries many passengers, one of which is cholesterol that’s on there, there’s a lot of other things. So LDLs have a role, HDLs have a role, and a lot of their role is actually in the management of inflammation and oxidative stress. So when lipids are considered to be abnormal, we have to think about, well, why are they abnormal? It’s not because of a statin drug deficiency, it’s not because of any other pharmaceutical deficiency. If inflammation is there, if lipids are abnormal, we got to break down the why, and when you fix the why, that is how we end the number one killer in the world.
Dr. Weitz: So essentially what you’re saying, I think, is that the reason why the body is laying down cholesterol in those artery walls is to protect the arteries against inflammation or oxidation?
Dr. Wolfson: Yes, most certainly. So it’s like that, if you knock a hole in the wall and you put the spackle on there, someone else would come in who doesn’t know any better and think the spackle is damaging the wall. Well, the spackle is not damaging the wall, the spackle is there to protect the wall. The body’s not making mistakes, the body is doing things for a reason. And again, coronary artery disease is happening for a reason, and when you remove those reasons, now you’re not going to get coronary artery blockages, and certainly you’re not going to get erosion instability, plaque rupture, that will lead someone to suffer a cardiac event or dying.
Dr. Weitz: Are there other markers that you like to look at to assess cardiovascular risk? I’m thinking of lipoprotein (a), homocysteine, LDL particle size, number, things like that?
Dr. Wolfson: I think all of those are fantastic measurements, and I guess I’ll use this opportunity to say unlike many other even holistic doctors, I do not recommend doing coronary artery calcification scans. I’m anti-radiation, so I never used that test, I’ve never ordered that test. And I think what the markers do, when you talk about, like you just said, markers of inflammation, advanced lipid analysis, including lipoprotein (a) as you mentioned, homocysteine, uric acid as markers. We look at other things, I love testing for intracellular vitamins and minerals and nutrients and omega-3s, intracellular vitamin K2 I think is a wonderful, wonderful assessment, if we’re driving K2 intracellular, now we’re going to get it into the vessels and actually lead to plaque reversal with that kind of methodology. So I think that we have enough markers we can use and test before and afterwards, and then by using those markers, that’s what we need, we don’t need coronary artery scans to tell us we’ve got coronary artery calcification. So I think you named some really good ones that we would use to follow to make sure that we’re on track.
Dr. Weitz: What is currently your favorite lab that you like to use?
Dr. Wolfson: I use most of my stuff from Vibrant, Vibrant America, Vibrant wellness. I love their panels, not only for intracellular nutrients, as we mentioned, which I think is critical, and a lot of people are taking vitamins and minerals, and they’re eating these foods and doing these various things. Well, that’s where, our methodology at Natural Heart Doctor is eat well, live well, think well, and then test don’t guess. And when you do the testing process, now you see where things are at. But I also love the Leaky Gut Panel looking for gluten sensitivity, but also the components of leaky gut, which is a very interesting eye opening epiphany moment for me when my wife mentioned leaky gut and I laughed and I’m like, “Where’d you get this bogus diagnosis from?” And she said, “Well, why don’t you go learn about it, smart guy.” I went to go read about it, there’s not much in the literature. Over the last 15 years you and I both know the literature has exploded on the concept of leaky gut, and then now we’ve got the ability to test for it.
So I love testing for it, it’s very cool and one of my favorite tests. Dr. Ben, inside of that analysis is the anti-actin antibody, which just shows that your immune system is attacking the actin protein found in all muscular tissue, and all cells that divide contain actin protein. So if your immune system is attacking the actin protein found in the muscle of your gut, propelling foods from your mouth to your rear, and your skeletal muscles, your biceps and triceps and quads and glutes, and it’s also found in the heart muscle, and it’s found in the smooth muscle of the arteries themselves. So if your immune system is attacking the muscular tissue, we’ve got a serious problem. And there is literature in this “science,” in that science has become a weird part of our lexicon these days because I believe that science has been totally co-opted by big pharma, et cetera.
So in any case, I also love doing the toxin testing. So we look for toxic metals, we look for environmental toxins, like pesticides and phalates and parabens and VOCs and plastics. But the number one thing I think people need to look for from a toxicity standpoint is mold, and mold mycotoxins. I believe that mold is a, it’s been a scourge to mankind, as is written in the Bible in the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, it is a 21st century crisis, to mold from water damaged buildings, what it does to the human is something that we need to bring out to the public much more so.
Dr. Weitz: I’m assuming you put patients on detox protocols if you find mold or other environmental toxins?
Dr. Wolfson: Well, the first thing is to work on getting out of the mold, or remediating the mold, depending on how sick someone is. So mold can cause any symptom and any disease, and I can make the case for it very easily from the literature.
Dr. Weitz: Sure.
Dr. Wolfson: So depending on how sick someone is, or how inspired someone is to get out of the mold situation, that’s going to be critical. But there are ways, certainly air purifiers, and things like that, that can help mitigate, and there are detox strategies, including binding strategies to bind up the mold mycotoxins so you excrete them more safely and effectively. And a lot of that literature really comes from the animal industry, where animals, your stereotypical grain-fed, corn-fed, soy-fed Nebraska cow is fed contaminated grains, contaminated with mold, and then they’re not going to all of a sudden turn them on grass, turn them on pasture and do the right thing, they’re going to try and bind up those toxins, and that’s where data on bentonite clay activated charcoal comes in, from the mold mycotoxin category. But it’s something where, again, where tests don’t guess. Don’t tell me you’re not living in mold, you got to prove it. If you want to be healthy, you got to prove it. And it’s one of those things where we talked about causation, why people have inflammation. If you are living in mold, then you are likely to show that in an inflammatory mechanism. And ultimately, again, test yourself and your urine from mold mycotoxins, there are home test kits that you can buy that can actually help you test your home, and it’s very unfortunate. I know you know this, it’s very easy to tell someone, “Hey, eat this food, get more sleep, get more physically active, do breath work, do meditation, get chiropractic care.” That’s all super simple, but wrapping your head around the toxicity of mold and doing something about it is extraordinarily difficult, but there’s really nothing more important.
Dr. Weitz: So you don’t like the coronary calcium scans, are there any other cardiology testing that you are a fan of?
Dr. Wolfson: Well, I’m definitely anti-radiation, so I do not like coronary artery calcium scans, I do not like CT angiograms, I do not like nuclear stress tests.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Wolfson: They are pure money makers, the whole business of CT, and coronary artery calcification scan is just to get people in the door. Insurance companies do not approve that scan, so therefore hospitals offer it for a cash price, and a very discounted cash price because it’s a loss leader. They may even give away the scan for free and say they’re doing you a benefit. But what happens is, is that now they get into the sausage mill, if you will. All of us, all people are considered meat, and the hospital medical system is the sausage factory. So what happens is that they identify coronary artery calcification, and that would lead to a stress test, often a nuclear stress test, which now will get insurance reimbursements. And now they have, it’s a case of a little bit of abnormalities, well now the stress test is a little bit abnormal, now we need to do an angiogram. Oh, the angiogram showed blockage, and now we got to do a stent or bypass surgery, and people go through that, even though they had no symptoms. And it was all a money play, and the patients are the victim because that whole process did nothing to prevent heart attacks, did nothing to save people’s lives, it’s just-
Dr. Weitz: Now the conventional thought is they had this blockage, it was discovered by the testing, now they remove the blockage so therefore the blood can flow freely and they’re not going to end up having a complete blockage,
Dr. Wolfson: Zero data that that is beneficial. And in fact, when you take the person who is either asymptomatic, or who has stable coronary artery disease, and you intervene on them, you actually increase the risk that they’re going to have a heart attack because you’ve taken a stable situation, angioplasty stent, you blew up a balloon, you’ve made the situation unstable, and now they’re on a bunch of pharmaceuticals that they weren’t on before. Unfortunately it’s just counterintuitive because you would think, well, wait a second, if I have a 30, 50, 70 or 90% blockage and you fix it, or you bypass it, I therefore am better. The reality is that you’re not, and ultimately you’ve never done anything to address the cause, and therein lies multiple, multiple problems. But again, that’s in the main literature, but it’s just standard of care often in cardiology, up to this point, is all about, hey, let’s do as much as we can, insurance will pay for it, and it’s a money driven business, and I was part of it for 16 years, so I think I know.
Dr. Weitz: So what exactly happens when a stent is placed in?
Dr. Wolfson: So stents and bypass surgery are for symptoms. If you are having symptoms, whether urgently, like I just woke up this morning and I’m having chest discomfort because I’m having a heart attack and therefore I need a stent, or every time I walk up three flights of stairs, by the third flight I got a pressure in my chest, or I feel short of breath, or my left arm hurts. Stents and procedures like that are for symptoms, they don’t prevent heart attacks and they don’t save lives. And that is part of studies we’ve known since the late 1990s, to 2007, and then most recently in 2020, the data is there in mainstream journals, but this is the way cardiologists and hospitals make money, so it’s still incentivized, it’s still being done. But as long as people understand stents are for symptoms, if you don’t have any symptoms, you 99.99% do not need any kind of intervention. The rare situation would be somebody maybe with left main coronary artery disease that is spuriously diagnosed. It’s not common, it’s not common, and it’s not something that even is routinely picked up on CT scans. So my advice to people is eat well, live well, think well. Part of living well is avoiding electromagnetic fields and manmade radiation exposure. Radiation causes heart disease, cancer, and dementia, so even though it will be sold to us as a small amount of radiation, hey, no, radiation at that level is good, let’s avoid it.
Dr. Weitz: Okay, let’s talk about diet. What’s the best diet to prevent heart disease? I know from reading your book that you’re a big fan of the paleo diet, why the paleo diet? Other people propose different diets, the vegetarian diet. Some people feel that each person maybe needs a different diet.
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, and I don’t think I’ll be able to solve the riddle for all your listeners, and stuff like that, because I know you get a whole smattering of people on here. I will say this, hopefully everyone in the health space can agree to eat organic food. To eat organic food, and as much unprocessed food as possible, everybody would be in that same space. Now some people would pay lip service to it, they’ll say it but they don’t do it. So Dr. Jack Wolfson, when you mentioned my cardiology coffee, or whatever, we only eat organic. We only eat food, and it doesn’t have to be certified organic, if we know the farmers and they’re not spraying, or we grow, I mean, my own food that we grow in our backyard is not certified organic. I know it’s organic, I know how we grew it, I knew the seeds where it came from, and how we watered it and fertilized it, and all that stuff.
So hopefully we can all agree just to get the chemicals out of our food, and that will be monumental for so many people. After that, listen, I’m a huge proponent of eating wild seafood. People, the literature is very clear, the people with the highest levels of omega-3 as measured, DHA, EPA, they live the longest, they live the best, they have the least risk of everything. You can only get EPA and DHA from eating seafood, so that’s why we need to eat the seafood. We recommend nose to tail, grass-fed, grass-finished, animals, pasture raised animals, including the organs, liver, heart, et cetera. And then I also am an anti-gluten person, so I don’t really ascribe to eating gluten containing grains.
Dr. Weitz: Just did a podcast a couple of weeks ago with Jeffrey Smith and we focused on genetically modified foods and glyphosate.
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, and it’s one of the beauties too of doing the Vibrant testing is you see people’s glyphosate levels, and understanding that glyphosate, just as most of these environmental toxins were not present on planet earth up until the 20th century, the human body was never exposed to these. And what’s funny about the lab testing companies, and I know, Dr. Ben, you check this as well, where the lab testing companies have an in range in the green, oh, you’re in the green zone for glyphosate. The normal level of glyphosate is 0.00, it’s a manmade poison.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Wolfson: But to that end, we don’t need to eat the grain. Oatmeal, to me, is pure propaganda, and when I say that I get such blow back from so many people who love their oatmeal, and it’s their source of fiber, and they put their raisins in there and their walnuts in there and they had some raw honey to it, and they add some other fruits to it, and all the things you do to break it up.
Dr. Weitz: Well, they gave up their Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.
Dr. Wolfson: I tell people that, and people are talking about the fiber, and I say, “If you want the fiber from oatmeal, just eat the box and you’ll get plenty of fiber, just eat the container that it came in.” To me, it’s all garbage.
Dr. Weitz: But you need this special soluble fiber that’s going to bind to the cholesterol and remove it.
Dr. Wolfson: Well, again, our body wants to reabsorb cholesterol because it is a vital thing that the body goes through a lot of trouble to make, and that’s why it wants to reabsorb it. So as far as fiber and all these, at the end of the day I guess I would say common sense approach tells me we are hunter-gatherers. We know that from the paleontology anthropology literature, we know it through three plus million years of human evolutionary biology, it’s just what we did. If you watch TV shows Alone, Naked and Afraid, Survivor, they are hunter-gatherers, hunter first, they’re hunter-gatherers, and if they don’t, they quickly tap off and they go off the show. So my buddy Joel Khan, who’s a vegan cardiologist, if he tried to live in Paleo world, he dies. He doesn’t live, because there is no oatmeal for him, there are no bags of walnuts for him. There are no, again, bags of seeds, and all these things. And fruit is not always in season, so he doesn’t always have access to berries and whatnot. So those people, they quickly either change to hunter-gatherers, who are vegan who go on the show, or they quit the show. And it is a perfect example of why I recommend the foods that we eat and the lifestyle that we lead.
But again, I’m not going to pretend to solve all these arguments on here, just go organic. But I think also that stems into our philosophy at Natural Heart Doctor, which is eat well, live well, think well, and all of them are just as important. So the live well component, we’re talking about sunshine, we’re talking about sleep, we’re talking about movement and physical activity, chiropractic care, holistic dentistry, avoiding the environmental toxins and pollutants that we just discussed. That’s just as important as the food story, and the think well is just as important as the live well and the eat well part of the story as well. Whenever I talk to people who have had heart attacks and I get the history, what happened before the heart attack, every single time stress was involved, every single time. And there’s nothing we can do about the past, and it’s not about trying to reexamine, but it’s about showing people, if you are under stress, if you are unhappy and living in fear, and have anxiety and anger and depression, if your relationships are lousy, if you don’t have a good community and you feel socially isolated, you’re in trouble. You’re in trouble not only from cardiovascular disease, but also from cancer. So we need to really get people to follow all these things of eat well, live well, think well, and we need to move on from the eat well debate, I think, and into these other categories if we’re really going to make a difference.
Dr. Weitz: As far as treatments go, I know you’re not a big fan of statins. Are there any of the conventional cardiology medications that you do use? I’ve talked to some integrative cardiologists who say they rarely use statin, or they use a very low dose and they add Zetia, or they try to use bempedoic acid and Zetia as an alternative to statins.
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, I’m pretty anti-pharmaceutical except for emergency situations.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Wolfson: I learn a lot of this stuff from my wife, who is a doctor of chiropractic, and other people in chiropractic, and this goes along with a lot of this chiropractic philosophy, give the body what it needs, take away what it doesn’t. The body is not deficient in Zetia or statin drugs, and the body’s not deficient in aspirin. We are built perfectly, and this is another thing that I really love to discuss, is about genes, where the doctors say, “Well, it’s all in your genetics.” You know what, Dr. Ben? Our genetics are perfect. Our genetics are perfect.
Dr. Weitz: Well, we do have different genetics, right?
Dr. Wolfson: We have different genetics, but manmade poisons are what trigger our genes to do things we may describe as dysfunctional or being abnormal. So our genetics are perfect, but when you lay manmade toxins in certain families, that may mean an increased risk of breast cancer or colon cancer. Other families may have a higher risk of Parkinson’s, others may have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease or atrial fibrillation. But we can’t blame the genes, we have to blame it on the manmade poisons and toxins. But ultimately there are-
Dr. Weitz: Well, what about the patients that come in with these sky-high lipids and they’re typically diagnosed as having familial hypercholesterolemia?
Dr. Wolfson: So people with the familial hyperlipidemias, yes. And again, I don’t believe that those people are genetically designed to have heart attacks. I don’t think that’s the way that we’re built as humans, other things have to come into that model. And even though we may not be able to fix their lipids, which is often not the goal, the lipids are not the problem, the problem would be if you set up the situation where there is endothelial dysfunction, and now the lipids are called into the area to repair. Or you have a lot of oxidative stress which leads to oxidized lipids. The lipids are antioxidants. So why do we have oxidized LDLs? It’s because they are trying to limit the amount of oxidative stress.
And now that we have these oxidized particles, well, that’s where the immune system comes in to try and deal with those, and that’s where they start to get incorporated into monocytes become macrophages and foam cells, and then those cells die, and then plaque rupture, and the whole process. But pharmaceuticals are not going to be the answer, and even the pharmaceutical data on that population is very, very weak. A lot of people ask about Repatha and the PCSK9 inhibitors, these injectables. The data on Repatha released in 2017 lowered numbers down tremendously, lowered it down to LDLs of 30, and you know what? More people died in the Repatha Group, 18 more people died in the Repatha group than the group that didn’t get Repatha. And there are plenty of people with these LDLs of 35 where they’re driving them down to non-sustainable for life levels, and people are still having heart attacks and dying. We are not [inaudible 00:31:12].
Dr. Weitz: I heard a very popular podcaster, I won’t name his name, but he basically said we can eliminate heart disease completely, we just got to get AOB below 40, or LDL below 30, or something. We just use whatever we need to use, use the PCSK9 inhibitors. If we just did that with everybody starting at an early age, there would be no more heart disease.
Dr. Wolfson: So what I would say to that is that first of all that is factually untrue in the sense that we have the data that shows when you drive LDL down to 30, many people still have heart attacks. And in fact, in that study, 3.5% of the population who had those low levels, they had heart attacks within two years. Now that’s probably better than where it used to be, but it’s still, it’s not root cause medicine. You know, Dr. Ben, I got the best solution where we can prevent heart attacks in everyone. I swear, Dr. Ben, this is the solution of how we prevent heart attacks in everyone.
Dr. Weitz: We closed McDonald’s. No.
Dr. Wolfson: Let’s remove everyone’s hearts and give everybody artificial heart. Let’s do it, guaranteed, guaranteed no one will ever have a heart attack again if everybody gets an artificial heart. When you say something so stupid, or you say something so stupid that we have to use massive amounts of pharmaceuticals to drive down the numbers, and oh, by the way, more people died in the aggressive group. When you show the data from SPARCL, high dose Lipitor study, more people died in the statin group versus placebo. When you show the original data app caps, text caps, the original statin trial where more people died in the statin group. When you show the ALLHAT data, ALLHAT LLC, where people over 65 who were randomized to statin versus placebo, 18% more people died in the statin group, if you were older than 75, 34% more people died. So what if, yes, we are reducing the risk of dying of heart disease, as you would in someone with an artificial heart, but you’re increasing the risk of death from everything else.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Wolfson: And it’s likely going to be cancer, it’s likely going to be dementia. But fundamentally, and let’s go conspiracy here, the studies are ran and owned by pharmaceutical companies. Can you even believe them? Do you want to believe the science? Lipitor is the number one selling drug of all time, and the actual evidence-based benefits of Lipitor is this, it’s minuscule, it’s a joke, and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on that. And ultimately, I think, again, you give the body what it needs, take away what it doesn’t, eat well, live well, think well, test don’t guess, evidence-based supplements when needed, biohacking strategies, that’s the only way we’re going to win the game, we’re not going to win it with big pharma, you’re never going to be better than nature, you’re not, you’re not going to. And when we push people into the drug world without telling them the truth we’re doing them a disservice, because if they’re not sick from heart disease, they’re going to be sick from something else.
Dr. Weitz: What’s your approach to treating hypertension?
Dr. Wolfson: It’s just root cause medicine, and pharmaceuticals are really good at lowering numbers down. We can lower numbers down with lipids, very little benefit and outcomes, if any. In some cases, like I said, actually increase mortality. Same thing with blood pressure drugs, they can lower numbers down, but because they don’t address the root cause, there is very little benefit. You don’t get any awards, patients don’t get awards for having low blood pressure on pharmaceuticals. We want to know, does the pharmaceutical lower my risk of heart attack, stroke, and dying? And the answer is, in some studies, yes, by tiny amounts. But because, take three people, one person with high blood pressure, one person with normal blood pressure on pharma, and another person with normal blood pressure, they’re not the same. The person with normal blood pressure naturally is at much, much lower risk. So we go after it the same way, eat well, live well, think well, test don’t guess, evidence-based supplements, biohacking strategies.
Chiropractic care in studies is proven to lower blood pressure by 17 over 10. That’s as good, or better, than any pharmaceutical ever invented for blood pressure control. Everybody with blood pressure has to be under chiropractic care. Everybody who has abnormal lipids, the problem with lipids oftentimes is not that we’re making too much, it’s that we don’t clear the lipids, and it’s a liver issue. So we need to decongest the liver. Does the chiropractic adjustment that influences the autonomic nervous system that controls hepatic function, if we adjust people, can we improve their lipids? Yes, we can. So ultimately, when it comes to high blood pressure, there are many holistic strategies. I’m not saying people never need pharmaceuticals for blood pressure, but it should be for emergencies, and it should be at the end of the game.
Dr. Weitz: What are the best natural supplements you find for helping with blood pressure?
Dr. Wolfson: Really, strategies to increase nitric oxide are always good. So we have a product called Heartbeat, which is our organic beetroot powder. Amino acids, L-arginine, citrulline, taurine, increased nitric oxide by plugging into nitric oxide synthase. Lot of conversation about magnesium, totally true. Potassium is another fantastic supplement for blood pressure as well. Lots of good literature on potassium supplementation. We need to be careful in people with kidney disease, mostly people with kidney failure and people who are on ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, that may be more prone to retaining potassium, but that’s just something simple to test on people to make sure we’re in the right direction.
I love intracellular potassium testing, doesn’t matter what’s in the blood. Potassium exists inside the cells, you got to test intracellular, and that’s how you get your information there. CoQ10 has data on blood pressure reduction, there’s a lot of herbal remedies. Hawthorn or Arjuna, Rauvolfia serpentina is often found in a lot of these plant-based strategies, and then actually of course it became one of the first pharmaceuticals, which was Reserpine, which was a 1950s, 60s, 70s pharmaceutical. And because of its side effects, fortunately it’s out of the game, but you can find that in herbal processes as well. Garlic is a fantastic product. Big fan of a supplement called Arterosil as well.
Dr. Weitz: That brings up the endothelium. In terms of testing, have you gotten into any of the testing for the endothelial function?
Dr. Wolfson: Well, our mutual friend, Dr. Mark Houston, he’s a fan of the EndoPAT, and EndoPAT for vascular reactivity, it’s a great device, but it’s not practical. It’s a $30,000 device, you’re not going to find too many clinics offering that. So what I actually like are the nitric oxide test strips from Berkeley, check people’s salivary nitric oxide levels, get a very good determination from that to make sure that they’re on course with that.
Dr. Weitz: I just saw this new device, I think the guy who developed arterial cell, I think he left the company and now developed a different product, and if you go to that website, I can’t think of what it’s called, he’s got some new device for measuring the endothelium that you just put in the mouth. It looks pretty cool.
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, the company and the product I think is called Endocalyx. I think that’s what the supplement’s called.
Dr. Weitz: I think that’s it.
Dr. Wolfson: And then as far as, yeah, what that device is where you actually can look at that, but I’m not overly familiar with it. I guess I would say I’m a little bit confused as to how it would necessarily work to visualize the glycocalyx because it is a electron microscope level of attention of details, I’m not sure how something put into the mouth would be able to assess that. But listen, any kind of diagnostic tech that is non-radiation based, I’m fine. If you want to have carotid intima media thickness by ultrasound, fantastic. You want have an echocardiogram, great. You want to do a routine treadmill stress test with just you versus the treadmill, great. You want to do heart monitors, such as the Zio patch and others, you want do a WatchPAT for sleep apnea, these things are all great, just get the radiation out of the equation.
Dr. Weitz: Right. For patients who do have established plaque in their arteries, do you have some recommendations for plaque reversal? And I’m thinking especially in terms of supplements.
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, first of all, again, I just want to reiterate this for the 20th time, that it’s based on eat well, live well, sleep well, and also I think inside the eat well component is intermittent fasting. And not intermittent fasting like most people would say, well, I eat in a certain window. Well that’s time restricted feeding. Intermittent fasting to me would be more of this longer duration, 24, 36, 72 hour fast. And when do a 72-hour fast, your body is looking for food, and it’s not coming in through your mouth, so your body starts to break down components that it does not think are necessary. Well, obviously fat cells are the first things to start releasing their contents, triglycerides, to be utilized as fuel.
But I think that what happens is, is that the body senses that coronary artery disease is just useless scar tissue, so why not start to mobilize some of that protein structure of what the coronary artery plaque is and use some of the proteins, use some of the fats, use some of those materials as energy. And I can’t say I’ve got a lot of data to support it, I think it’s theoretical. I do have case studies though of people who, against my wishes, they did a repeat CT scan and were seeing coronary artery calcification reversal.
I do want to say this though at this time, for everyone who’s listening right now, whatever your coronary artery calcification level is at this moment, you can live with that level for the next 175,000 years, maybe even longer. Our goal is to prevent the plaque that’s there ideally from getting worse, to become symptomatic, but we want to prevent plaque erosion and rupture. And how are we going to do that? Mainstream cardiology would say statin drugs, aspirin, other things that they’re inventing, a PCSK9 inhibitors, and others in the holistic space, we’re going to say we’re going to use the natural strategies to avoid the causes of plaque erosion and instability, and that’s going to be the ultimate strategy to prevent it. And incidentally, statin drugs, in multiple studies, are shown to increase the rate of coronary artery calcification. So if you think you’re going to take a calcium scan, start a statin drug and then check it a year or two later, you are more likely to have more advanced disease. So if that’s your strategy then, again, you shouldn’t plan on anything different than what I just said.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. I know we were speaking off-air before we started, I know Dr. Sinatra was a big fan of higher dosages of vitamin K. I know Dr. Houston is also a fan of that, as well as other things, like you mentioned arterial cell, some other products that a lot of people would incorporate, attempt to try to reverse plaque.
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, and one of my favorites is Berberine, B-E-R-B-E-R-I-N-E, wonderful plant-based supplement. It’s been studied in thousands of studies from multiple indications. I think a lot of times integrative cardiologists, so they consider themselves, they like metformin. I’m not a metformin guy, I think it causes vitamin and nutrient deficiency, and then there’s other things inside of that little metformin capsule that can be problematic, like berberine as a biohacking supplement strategy. And I think that ultimately there are certain supplements that can help our antioxidant system perform, and really not even supplements, minerals. So what about copper? What about copper, zinc, selenium? And making sure all those things are balanced very well.
A lot of people are taking megadoses of zinc and therefore become copper deficient, and copper is a metal that is involved in the main antioxidant in the body, the enzyme superoxide dismutase. So if we don’t give people and make sure they’ve got adequate copper status, and again, they would be deficient for a whole variety of reasons, then they will have suboptimal function of that antioxidant enzyme SOD, superoxide dismutase, and that leads to issues. And let me say this, my favorite supplement, if you will, is just an organ complex. So people are eating bison heart, liver, kidney, inside of a capsule. They should be eating the food, a lot of people won’t eat the food, so go ahead and swallow one of those capsules. I mean, that is nature’s multivitamin, the animal liver is nature’s multivitamin to give to man.
Dr. Weitz: Cool. So I think I’m about done, that was a great discussion. How can listeners, viewers find out more about you, get ahold of you if they want to seek you out?
Dr. Wolfson: Well, thank you for having me on, mate, and I appreciate the very intellectual conversation and I respect your depth of knowledge on the subject, so congrats to you.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you.
Dr. Wolfson: For opening up your eyes to holistic health and wellness and interviewing me. If anybody wants a copy of my book they can get it for free, just pay the shipping, freeheartbook.com, freeheartbook.com. Great place to find me, I’m all over social media trying to get the message out there. We got a lot of battles against pharma, against big pharma, big food, big hospitals, big insurance, but I think that especially after a pandemic-
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I’m sure you must be on some lists.
Dr. Wolfson: Especially after a pandemic I think people are waking up right now and just saying, hey, you know what? This whole medical paradigm, it ain’t working. It didn’t work for my parents, and it didn’t work for my grandparents, and it’s not working for me, and they’re looking for people like us to really guide them and support them. So again, I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show, and again, thank you so much, Dr. Ben.
Dr. Weitz: And then what’s your website?
Dr. Wolfson: Yeah, you can find me at Natural Heart Doctor. We do see patients in Scottsdale and virtually, my company is Natural Heart Doctor, and that’s another place, Natural Heart Doctor all spelled out. But if you want to find me, if you want holistic health, you’ll find me. I’m out there, I’m not hiding.
Dr. Weitz: Great. Thank you, Dr. Wolfson.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would certainly appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five star ratings and review. That way more people will discover the Rational Wellness Podcast. And I wanted to let everybody know that I do have some openings for new patients, so I can see you for a functional medicine consultation for specific health issues like gut problems, autoimmune diseases, cardiometabolic conditions, or for an executive health screen and to help you promote longevity and take a deeper dive into some of those factors that can lead to chronic diseases along the way. That usually means we’re going to do some more detailed lab work, stool testing, sometimes urine testing, and we’re going to look at a lot more details to get a better picture of your overall health from a preventative functional medicine perspective. If you’re interested, please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at (310) 395-3111, and we can set you up for a new consultation for functional medicine. I’ll talk to everybody next week.
