Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Heart Disease Kills. Here’s How You Can Get Ahead with Dr. Dennis Bruemmer

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Today’s episode is sponsored by the Cleveland Clinic. Today’s episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, I chat with Dr. Dennis Bruemmer of the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Bruemmer and I discuss in detail how stress and lack of sleep can affect your risk of heart disease (spoiler: it’s often through less nutritious choices). We also talk about different female life stages and risk of heart disease like gestational diabetes and menopause. And I talk about the three major dietary strategies of heart health (Mediterranean, DASH and Plant-Based) and the core tenants they all have in common. Thank you so much to the Cleveland Clinic for sponsoring Bite Back. Check in with today’s amazing guest: Dr Dennis Bruemmer of the Cleveland Clinic in OhioListen to my episode on the Hunger Crushing Combo.References:https://www.cdc.gov/heart-disease/data-research/facts-stats/index.html?utm_source=chatgpt.comhttps://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/32/12/2297/25981/Are-Metabolically-Normal-but-Obese-Individuals-athttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1312230/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK395573/#:~:text=There%20are%20currently%20seven%20HMG,levels%20in%20patients%20with%20hypertriglyceridemia.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6122104/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28620111/https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/article/24/7/735/5926697?utm_source=chatgpt.com&login=falsehttps://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1378?utm_source=chatgpt.comhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36657917/https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2007123?utm_source=chatgpt.com Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. 🥤 Check out my 2-in-1 Plant Based Probiotic Protein Powder, neue theory at www.neuetheory.com or @neuetheory and use my promo code BITEBACK20 to get 20% off your order! Don’t forget to Please subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review! It really helps us out. ✉️ SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTERS ⤵️Neue Theory newsletterAbbey's Kitchen newsletter 🥞 FREE HUNGER CRUSHING COMBO™ E-BOOK! 💪🏼 FREE PROTEIN 101 E-BOOK! 📱 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchenTikTok: @abbeyskitchenYouTube: @AbbeysKitchen My blog, Abbey’s Kitchen www.abbeyskitchen.comMy book, The Mindful Glow Cookbook affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3NoHtvf If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review with your thoughts and let me know who you want me to discuss next!

People with chronic stress have 40 to 50% higher risk of heart disease. Getting less than 6 hours of sleep per night increases the risk 20 to 50%. It's quite harrowing. Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today's episode on heart health is in partnership with the Cleveland Clinic, and it really hits home for me personally as two of my grandparents died relatively young of heart

disease. And unfortunately, I know I'm not a minority. Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death, representing one of every five deaths across America. Every 40 seconds, someone has a heart attack. And every 33 seconds, someone dies from cardiovascular disease. I don't know about you, but hearing those numbers

totally rocked me. Despite the overwhelming magnitude of these statistics, most Americans have not been given adequate education or counseling on their personal risk factors for heart disease, or more importantly, what they can do to help reduce those risks. And a lot of these gaps were uncovered in a recent study conducted by the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. So joining me today to discuss some of those findings and a ton more is the director of the Center of Cardiometabolic Health at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Dr. Dennis Bumer. Dr. Bumer and I will be diving into the role of stress and poor sleep on heart disease,

how different stages in the female life cycle like pregnancy and menopause can affect your heart disease risk, the interplay of abdominal obesity, insulin resistance and heart disease, and the best dietary strategies for keeping your heart healthy long term. This is a juicy and absolutely necessary episode that you will not want to miss. Just our general reminder that the information on this episode is for education and entertainment purposes only and is certainly not a replacement for one-on-one health care. I also will be briefly discussing weight and its role in heart disease, so if that is not supportive in your journey, please feel free to skip that section. And if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, I would love if you would just

like ring that bell so you don't miss out. And also please leave me a five star review and a little comment. It really does make my day and it really does help me fight back against problematic health pseudoscience long term. Alright folks, let's dive in. Okay, hi, Dr. Brumer. It is so nice to speak with you. Abhi, thank you so much for this opportunity and for inviting me to your podcast.

It's wonderful. Thank you for allowing me to be here. Of course. So the Cleveland Clinic recently conducted a survey as part of their annual Love Your Heart campaign. And I think one of the interesting things that this survey pointed out was that there was just a real dearth of understanding

of what plays a role when it comes to heart disease risk. To set the stage here, can you kind of speak to some of the major risk factors for heart disease? Yes, of course. So with the February month being the Heart Awareness Month, we conduct a survey and it's sort of meant as an education for the community to discuss risk for heart disease because we feel that the prevention is a very critical aspect. If we look at what numbers in terms of putting a number to it, how much heart disease is actually preventable by those things that we do in life,

it's actually estimated to be 90% of heart disease may be preventable by using appropriate treatment approaches. So we think that's very important. The key factors that we really deal with are of course the modifiable risk factors, the behavioral risk factors, physical activity, nutrition, smoking, exercise, those are the main ones. And then of course we have other risk factors which lead to cholesterol abnormalities, predisposition to develop diabetes and blood pressure problems. So those center around this survey. Yeah. And talk to me about stress for a second because we live in a society where hustle culture is basically celebrated and rewarded. We are certainly not getting less stressed.

And in your survey, you found that about three-quarters of Americans understood that stress was bad for their heart health, but only 40% had any clue that sleep could also be a problem. Can you kind of speak to how stress and sleep affect our risk of heart disease? Yeah, I think, you know, if we talk about stress, it's sort of to begin with this kind of a little bit of a nebulous word, because what do we actually mean by stress? What we think in a physiological context, stress,

that is, you know, if we for a moment separate this in short-term stress and long-term stress, because I think there are key differences. Short-term, that is the fight or flight response where we have this hormonal surge of stress hormones that allows us to provide more energy to the body to either run away or to fight. That's how this has evolved.

Now, in a more chronic setting, when we're constantly exposed to stimuli that cause mood changes, that can cause being anxious, that can cause our blood pressure to rise and often sleeplessness. And then in addition to those factors, what chronic stress has been associated with are also of course unhealthy lifestyles, lack of activity, poor nutrition, other lifestyle choices, smoking for example, and weight gain, sedentary lifestyle. And all those are actually, they are actually associated

with increased risk for heart disease. So short-term stress, this response that has evolved is really only associated with heart disease if it occurs under an acute event where someone already has, for example, pre-existing blockages in their arteries. But in a more chronic fashion, that's what we consider our daytime stress. As you said, that we all deal with and that becomes more and more and overwhelming for a lot of people, really leads more downstream to unhealthy behaviors and of course lack of sleep and disruption in our rhythms and poor quick meal choices.

And then, as I said, other behavioral aspects that then ultimately downstream lead to more heart problems. Yeah, when we look at the numbers, it's quite harrowing. We see that people with chronic stress have like 40 to 50% higher risk of heart disease. Getting less than six hours of sleep per night increases the risk 20 to 50%. Sleep apnea, folks with sleep apnea are two to four times more likely to develop heart failure. And like you said, there's all of these factors at play. When we're not sleeping, for example, we get a surge in our hunger hormones, which just makes, you know, we get a surge in our cortisol in the morning, our blood sugars increase, we're hungrier for, you know, higher sugar, higher fat, less nutritious

foods. If we're not getting that deep sleep, you know, we are increasing our blood pressure because deep sleep reduces our blood, our blood pressure over time. So there's, like you said, it's so complicated. And it's so hard just to say, don't be stressed. And, you know, but I do think that prioritizing, you know, mental health is physical health. And we're really failing as a society by, you know, downplaying the importance of managing stress, you know, getting in good sleep, even something as simple as powering down, getting off social media in the evening. Because I feel like that would kill two birds with one stone where you're really going to get to bed earlier

and you're likely reducing your exposure to stressful content, things like that. So mental health, managing that, is so critical to reducing your risk of basically all chronic disease. Yes, exactly. And as you said, I think it's difficult, particularly because of the lot of risk factors. They're so intertwined. If we sleep less, it increases hunger. If we're more active with physical activity,

decreases actually food intake. So there's less weight problems. With weight problems, then comes a sleep apnea, blood pressure, other risk factors. And I think it's very difficult in our daily lives to really make changes and break through. Yeah, now you did kind of mention that intersection between type two diabetes, abdominal obesity,

chronic disease. Folks who maybe are listening have heard of something we call metabolic syndrome, which is essentially a cluster of five key risk factors that increases your risk of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. And part of that criteria is a high waist circumference because we know that excess visceral fat or that intra-abdominal fat can increase insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. And type 2 diabetes can increase our blood sugars, our cholesterol, our blood pressure,

which then puts us at risk of heart failure and stroke. But there's also this snowball effect because we know that insulin resistance can increase fat gain. So it just kind of perpetuates the cycle because it's a bi-directional relationship. So for just kind of perpetuates the cycle because it's a bidirectional relationship. So for your patients who meet the criteria for metabolic syndrome, who are ultimately looking to improve their heart health long term, what are you finding where you're getting the best bang for your buck with kind of intercepting that complicated cycle, that interweb of kind of all those different factors that are at play. Is it diet? Is it exercise? GLP-1? Statin? A combo? Where do you start?

I think it's obviously an important question because with the weight gain, the visceral adiposity, the body mass index, once you even come out of the overweight into the body mass index above 30, it doubles the heart risk, 35 triples the heart risk. And when we have patients coming to our clinic, people who want to improve their health, we of course start always by lifestyle recommendations. Nutrition is key, decreased caloric intake for weight loss, physical activity recommendations. That's usually where we start, but oftentimes we need additional, particularly if the heart risk is higher because of the coexistence of further risk factors, we may need to add medications to lower cholesterol to treat the blood pressure. Yeah, absolutely.

And speaking of alternative solutions, we know that medication is arguably one of the most impactful tools in the heart health toolbox. And you know, one survey finding that really saddened me was that nearly 70% of Americans said that taking a life-saving medication like a statin would be an absolute last resort. On my channel here, I've spoken a lot about pill shaming on a previous episode I did with Dr. Stea, where we were discussing the anti-psychiatry movement. This has also come up a lot in discussions around weight loss medications like Ozempic, like GLP-1s. But wellness culture just perpetuates this toxic idea

that if you take medications or rely on medications to support your health, then you must be lazy, or you lack willpower. You're just taking the easy way out. But like you said, for a lot of folks, lifestyle modifications just might not be enough to get them to that healthy place. How is this kind of anti-medication wellness culture harming your patients and kind of getting in the way

of them seeing real noticeable improvements in their heart health? Yes, as you saw in this survey, we have about 92% of Americans take some sort of heart health supplement that proclaims benefit. And a lot of the discussion particularly around statin therapy is coming from what people, as you said, don't want to take a

medication. If one would have a similar benefit through a non-pharmacological approach, a supplement that would usually be preferred, but the risk for heart really and for cholesterol elevation in a lot of cases is kind of genetically determined whether someone has an increased cholesterol is oftentimes inherited and comes with what we receive from our parents. So in those cases, really lifestyle is important, but we may have to go beyond that and lower the cholesterol with a medication. So I think it's important to tell people, yes, it's a medication, but it is a medication that lowers the risk very effectively. I think if we look over the past five decades

of research in heart disease, there has been no comparable way to reduce heart disease than cholesterol lowering. But I think it's very important to talk to people about the the overwhelming evidence for benefit for heart health. Yeah, yeah, I you know, obviously I'm a dietitian so I appreciate that of course we would all love to be able to kind of fix everything with a healthy lifestyle but like you said depending on genetics, depending on other risk factors, that just might not be enough. And when we do look at the with a healthy lifestyle. But like you said, depending on genetics, depending on other

risk factors, that just might not be enough. And when we do look at the data, like you said, it's quite overwhelming that statins can lower LDL cholesterol by 60 to 65% versus most research shows lifestyle factors, we're looking at five to 15% just depending on the individual. So there's a huge difference there in terms of efficacy. Obviously ideal if we can combine those things, but again, for some folks, you know, medication may be necessary and we shouldn't be feeling feel shame about that. But I want to kind of go back to chronic disease and insulin resistance because we were talking about that a moment ago, particularly gestational diabetes, because your survey revealed that about 40% of women had never been told anything

about the relationship between gestational diabetes in pregnancy and then heart disease later on in life. So just to kind of give people some numbers, folks who have had gestational diabetes are about twice as likely to develop heart disease, hypertension and stroke. Can you kind of explain why we see this this correlation this increased risk? Yeah, it's an important question.

It's actually quite common gestational diabetes, about 10% of women becoming pregnant in the United States, 20% overall worldwide. And if you develop gestational diabetes, you have probably about a tenfold increase in risk actually developing diabetes down the road after delivery and later in life over many years. And this is because we think that one of the causes of gestational diabetes is sort of an inherent insulin resistance syndrome that your pancreas then makes more insulin and ultimately is unable to catch up and then the blood sugars rise. And the risk for diabetes kind of depends also on how is the gestational diabetes is a diet control?

Do we already need medications or do we even need to treat insulin with insulin, for example, if blood sugars rise too high? And this is again, as we discussed earlier, this is due comes sort of the risk, as you mentioned, two times increased risk for heart problems down the road. But interestingly, even if the blood sugars are not that high, there's still about a 30% increased risk,

even if the blood sugars are controlled later on in life. So there are other factors that we may not completely understand, but it again again it has to do with the effects of the insulin resistance probably not just only on blood sugars but also on lipid metabolism, cholesterol, the response of the endothelium, the vascular wall to buffer responses and blood pressure and stress and to maybe a state of inflammation that also plays an important role.

So all of these factors that we know contribute to heart disease kind of emerge in this state of gestational diabetes. So it is very important to to recognize and that's why this is usually always screened for doing pregnancy. It's very important. And for women who are listening now, perhaps who did have gestational diabetes in pregnancy, and just to put it out there, I want to make it absolutely clear that if you had gestational diabetes, you did nothing wrong. You know, gestational diabetes is awfully highly associated with

specific genes and family history, ethnicity, age, etc. So I really want to make it clear. I don't want women to beat themselves up over this thinking, oh, not only did I, you know, have this condition during pregnancy, but now I've like ruined the rest of my health for life. What should these women be doing right now to mitigate their now increased risk of heart disease? I think as we centered a lot during this discussions, the first step is lifestyle. No, I mean, this is, if we look at what is the risk

for progression from a state of being at risk for diabetes, such as gestational diabetes or be pre-diabetes, it's lifestyle is a very powerful tool to reduce the risk for transitioning into overt type two diabetes, once you have any type of really insulin resistance syndrome. So it's diet, lifestyle, exercise, healthy nutrition. And I think it's important to not get kind of lost

and follow up when people had a diagnosis of gestational diabetes during their time of pregnancy. The woman is very tightly monitored, has many frequent interactions with their doctors, but then maybe two years later may not be seeing a doctor at all when everything is busy with the kids. And so I think it's important to keep in touch and keep following up to monitor, make sure blood sugar stays stable, make sure you get, for example, a hemoglobin A1c test, make sure you are not moving into the ultimate pre-diabetes risk for diabetes range,

make sure your blood pressure gets monitored and make sure your cholesterol gets monitored as well. So looking at the overall risk constellation, now you encouraged your listeners that you did nothing wrong, which I think is really wonderful. Maybe even for those listeners who already have a diagnosis of diabetes,

when these risk factors, it was a very large analysis published in an outstanding journal that looked over 200,000 people with diabetes and matched those to 1.3 million healthy people. And if all the risk factors are very well controlled for blood pressure, cholesterol, not smoking, making sure your kidney is okay, then actually the life expectancy for diabetes is exactly the same as the general population, which I think is always very important to convey that this can be very effectively treated,

particularly with all the tools and all the knowledge that we have today. Yeah, that is so helpful. What a great reminder. I also want to talk about menopause and heart disease because again, as per your survey, a third of folks had no idea that menopause could increase the risk of heart disease. And, you know, we just actually did an episode all about menopause where we talked about this in a lot more detail. But just very quickly, can you kind of explain what's going on here? Why does menopause just suddenly increase our risk? risk. So when we talk about risk and differences between women and men, it is always assumed that the men are the ones who get the heart disease and the women are protected. Certainly the risk for heart disease in women is less at a younger age, but ultimately there's kind of a crossover

where women catch up later in life. And in fact, to a certain extent, because women tend to get older, so they have more time to develop heart problems. But over a lifetime, the risk for heart problems is actually fairly comparable, but there's kind of a shift earlier, protection and later in life catch up.

So the shift there is a hormonal change is associated with menopause and we know that estrogen has a number of cardioprotective effects on for example, lipoproteins, on LDL cholesterol lowering, on HDL so the good cholesterol goes up and in addition even beyond that has a beneficial effect on the artery of the wall, may lower inflammation and may decrease the resistance of the arteries. So has a number of beneficial effects, but that doesn't necessarily mean

when we give replacement of estrogen. This has been a very difficult area in preventive cardiology and understanding this because the two large studies which have looked at what can we do to protect the later rise in life for women and heart disease? Can we maybe give estrogen back, estrogen progesterone to lower the risk for heart problems?

And in those two large trials, this wasn't really the case. So this has in these primary trials not been shown to reduce the risk for heart problems. In fact, may even raise the risk for heart problems and blood clotting and stroke. So it's not currently recommended as a treatment to protect from heart problems which occur more later life in the women.

It's only currently recommended as short as possible for the so-called vasomotor symptoms, the heart flashes and only in younger women who are at a lower risk for heart problems. Now, there's still a little bit of a controversial aspect about hormone replacement because in these studies, the women were actually started fairly late in life. So there's this time hypothesis, maybe if we start earlier, we would see a benefit.

But again, it's currently not recommended. And I think there's more evolving analysis to understand how could we even possibly intervene with the rise in risk that women experience after menopause and later in life for heart problems. That's so, so important. And just to kind of close off here, you know, I know a lot of people feel very anxious kind of going to the doctors, getting this blood work back, being told that they have high cholesterol, they have high blood pressure, perhaps they're overweight or obese. Do you have any kind of like words of wisdom to help people through that first step of, okay, this is how I'm going to address this

so that it doesn't feel so overwhelming to them that they need to do all these things at once, which as we both know, probably often results in burnout and then just kind of like going back to their business as usual. When you decide to go and see someone in healthcare to address how can I protect myself, that in itself is a key step with recognizing this,

you're already doing something important. And as a provider, we're really here to help and to provide guidance. We would in no way ever expect you come and come back in four weeks and every problem is taken care of in your life. So that's not how we think. We want to help. We usually start with assessing where we are and the lifestyle is important, but you know, it's, it's, we recognize that this is difficult. Some people may need medication for cholesterol, blood pressure, as we discussed, but it is so important to recognize the risk because as I mentioned, this is the downstream problems

that may occur are preventable. And as I mentioned, when we started talking, 90% of heart risk is preventable. Estimates suggest that. So getting assessed, yeah, we're all anxious to go to the doctor, be it the heart doctor, the primary or the dentist, you know, you name it. So, but it is an important step to do this for yourself. And we try to empower our people,

our patients who come to us to take care of themselves and I think that's very important and I think it's an important step that people who go to the doctors do for themselves. Great, amazing. Well this was very helpful and interesting. I'm sure this will be incredibly useful to all of my listeners right now. So thank you so much Dr. Brumer for joining me. Thank you, thank you so, for having me today. It's been a real pleasure. Okay, this was such an important conversation that has really nicely set the stage for me to come in with my expertise on diet as it pertains to the heart.

We do know that heart disease risk may be up to 60% genetic, but due to the tight interplay between insulin resistance, abdominal obesity and heart disease, diet can play an integral role at modifying that risk. And while some may argue that just keeping below your daily calorie allowance and your MyFitnessPal to minimize fat gain is all you need to do to save your heart.

I actually think that you get far greater bang for your buck, focusing less on calories and focusing more on the types of foods that you add to your diet. And by the end of this, you'll understand why. When we look at the data on the best diets to reduce your risk of heart disease, we see overwhelming evidence for the following big three.

So the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fish and whole grains, legumes, fruits, veggies, mono and polyunsaturated fats, and low in red meat and added sugar. The DASH diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, which is very similar to the Mediterranean style diet but with less of a focus on healthy fats and a greater emphasis on lowering sodium intake to less than 2,300 mg per day, and the plant-based or vegan diet, which again prioritizes whole food plant-based protein over meat. Following a Mediterranean, dash or vegan diet will likely help to improve heart health by helping to lower cholesterol, blood pressure

and blood sugar levels, may help to reduce visceral fat and may help to increase anti-inflammatory micronutrients and fiber in the diet, which taken together means lower risk of chronic disease. That said, I generally don't recommend rigidly subscribing to a diet identity or claiming to be quote-unquote on any specific diet because the moment that you break the quote-unquote rules you feel that you have failed and you just like throw the baby out with the bathwater. Health outcomes depend on cumulative long-term diet patterns, not what happens for those

two weeks that you do a sugar-free vegan challenge. So let's go over some of the major beneficial and overlapping tenets of the dietary patterns that we know are most likely to support your heart. 1. Prioritize Healthy Fats are most likely to support your heart. Number one, prioritize healthy fats. Despite the controversy and confusion around whether or not saturated fats directly increase the risk of heart disease, we do more confidently know that replacing saturated and trans fats with unsaturated fats, most notably monounsaturated fats that are found in olives, avocado, nuts, and seeds, and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats like those found in fatty fish, walnuts, flax,

and hemp hearts can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease by about 30%. Fats can also be uniquely satiating. So if we're trying to balance the food quality with food quantity to help to maintain a healthy weight, I recommend focusing on what I call dual citizen fats. So those are basically whole foods that offer healthy fats plus one of the other two hunger crushing compounds, fiber or protein. So for example, salmon would give you protein

and healthy fats, whereas avocado would give you fiber and healthy fats. And speaking of dual citizens, tip two is to focus on lean plant-based proteins and fish most often. Plant proteins like beans, lentils, whole grains, nuts and seeds are often dual-citizen fiber sources, which as we just discussed, directly helps to lower LDL cholesterol and

our blood sugars. They also offer unique polyphenols that help to prevent oxidative damage that can contribute to heart disease over time. So for example, a large meta-analysis found that the consumption of soy isoflavones found in things like edamame, tofu, and tempeh were associated with an 18 and 17% reduced risk of stroke and coronary heart disease, respectively. Likewise, a large review study found that those with the highest blood levels of omega-3s from marine and plant sources

had up to a 24% lower risk of fatal heart disease. And again, prioritizing lean plant and marine protein gets you your best satiety bang for your caloric buck and helps to displace less heart-healthy saturated fats from animal products. And three, load up your plate with colorful fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes to get your fiber fix. Plant-based whole foods offer loads of heart protective phytonutrients and antioxidants, plus they are naturally high in potassium, which helps to promote sodium excretion and reduce blood pressure, particularly in folks with higher sodium intakes. One study found that folks with higher potassium intakes had a 24% lower risk of stroke than

those with lower intakes. Plants are also our only source of soluble fiber, including a unique fiber, beta-glucan, which has been shown to help slow sugar and cholesterol absorption and bind and excrete bile acids, which forces the liver to pull LDL cholesterol out of the blood and lower overall cholesterol levels. Some prebiotic fibers like inulin and resistant starch also create fermentation byproducts called short-chain fatty acids when they get fermented by our gut bacteria, which also helps to regulate cholesterol production in the liver.

So the recommendation is to aim for at least 25 to 38 grams of fiber every day with a special focus on sources of beta-glucan from things like oats, barley, wheat bran, and mushrooms. Fruits and veggies also offer some of the best nutrient and volume bang for your caloric buck, so they help to keep you satiated while maintaining your healthiest, happiest weight. And as with our focus on plant-based proteins, choosing higher-fiber carbs does help to edge

out some of the less satiating, higher-sugar, quote-unquote, naked carbs, which research has associated with higher risk of heart disease. Protecting your heart doesn't have to mean succumbing to diet culture and cutting out foods that you love. When we focus on what we can add to our diet, namely healthy unsaturated fats, plant-based and marine proteins, whole grains, fruits and veg, we load up on heart protective nutrients while naturally edging out some that may increase our risk. This is just another

example of how you can use my hunger crush and combo to meet your goals without restriction. And if you want more details on that I highly recommend listening to my full hunger crush and combo episode that I'll link in the show notes below. And that's all that I got for you guys today. A big thank you to the Cleveland Clinic for partnering with me on this episode and connecting me with Dr. Broomer to help me bite back against misinformation. Signing off with Science and Sass, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for watching!