Change Your Brain Every Day - The Vital Role of Your Heart, Blood Vessels, and Fat to Your Brain Health with Dr. Mark Houston

Episode Date: March 22, 2017

Today's podcast is the first of our four-part series with Dr. Mark Houston. Dr. Houston is selected as one of the top physicians in hypertension in the United States; selected as one of the most influential doctors in the U.S. in both hypertension and lipidemia and the author of over 250 medical articles, scientific abstracts, and seven best-selling books, including one of my favorite books. It's What Your Doctor May Not Tell You about Heart Disease. He is an internist, a cardiologist, he's an associate clinical professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University.

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amon.

So welcome, everybody. Tana and I are so excited today to have one of our friends, Dr. Mark Houston. And if I read everything about him, we would take up the whole podcast. He's an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University. He's also a clinical instructor at George Washington University. Tan and I met him at A4M, where he is in charge of the cardiovascular modules, which is a place that both Tan and I have taught. He's selected as one of the top physicians in hypertension in the United States, selected as one of the most influential doctors in the US in both hypertension and lipidemia.

I mean, it could go on and on. He's the author of over 250 medical articles, scientific abstracts, and seven best-selling books, including one of my favorite books. It's what your doctor may not tell you about heart disease. So Mark, we are grateful and honored to have you with us. We really are. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. Yeah. And I just want to say one thing really quickly to just on a personal note about Dr. Houston was we did meet you at the American

Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. I think I actually got to meet you first because I was attending one of your classes, one of your modules. And I love your modules because you have this very no-nonsense approach, which you might imagine I like very much. So it was really interesting. And I just think you have some great information. I'm really excited to have you share with our people because there's a lot of myths out there. So we're excited to have you share that. So this is the first of four podcasts, and we're going to talk about how critical your heart and blood vessels and fat are to the health of your brain. So, Mark, let's get right to it. And when we talk about the heart-brain connection, what are the things you think our listeners should know? I think the most important thing is to realize that there's an immediate direct connection

that's bidirectional between the heart and the brain. And you really cannot dissociate these two organs in any way. They're interrelated intimately in virtually every process related to brain health or heart health. And there's two big mechanisms by which that occurs. One, which is obvious, which is the neural connections. Everybody understands that one, you know, related to heart rate and heart rate variability and heart rate recovery time and all that. The one that people don't really know about or think about is this new concept of the immunological directions between the brain and the heart. And we can get into this more detail, but just to set the stage for, I think, your audience,

there is actually direct neural connections on T cells. There are direct receptors on T cells and indirectly on B cells that determine an instantaneous response to whatever is going on in the brain to the immunological system and therefore sets off an autoimmune reaction, literally, both in the heart, in the vascular system, but also backwards, perhaps in the brain, which is tied into this whole concept of inflammation, which I'm sure we're going to talk about. Right. We're going to talk about that next because it is one of the major risk factors of Alzheimer's disease and depression. Yeah. So interesting. So when I was a nurse, I worked in a trauma neurosurgical ICU unit. So I had the pleasure of working with both cardiothoracic surgeons and neurosurgeons. And

there was always this sort of, you know, I want to call it in fun, but it wasn't always in fun. This little turf war over what was more important, the pump or the computer, right? They're connected, right? We can't disconnect them. And I think that, I don't know if that's been your experience, but I think we could do a better job of working together and really paying attention to the fact that we're one system and not disconnecting that. And now we know that, you know, I mean, we have to really be looking at both aspects. Yeah, you make a great point. And the new catch word for that, of course, is systems biology.

And we realize this is even more than spokes in a wheel. The new catch word for that, of course, is systems biology. And we realize this is even more than spokes in a wheel. The interconnections are enormous in relationships, not between every organ, just the heart and the brain we're talking about today, but they are very important. And luckily, most of the people that you and I associate with have got that connection down there. We don't have the turf horses. Right. So for a long time, I've talked about whatever is good for your heart is good for your brain. And whatever's bad for your heart is bad for your brain because your brain uses 20% of the blood flow in your body.

And then I read this study from Boston University and I went, oh my goodness, whatever's good for your heart is good for your brain is good for your genitals because it's about blood flow. And whatever's bad for your heart is bad for your brain is bad for your genitals. And you have to wonder why is Cialis commercials and Viagra commercials on TV so much? And the study said 40% of 40-year-olds had erectile dysfunction and 70 percent of 70-year-olds have erectile dysfunction. And what that made me think is probably 40 percent of 40-year-olds have heart dysfunction or vascular dysfunction and brain dysfunction. So to get people really interested about what we're talking about is it can affect your sexual function, your overall well-being, your heart, because if it's not right, nothing's right, and how you think and the decisions that you make, which is your brain. So if I just heard you correctly,

you think you're going to get people more interested by talking about their sexual function? Absolutely. Okay. Well, I think everybody will be up for this story. But you make a great point. And that is, I mean, it's related to blood flow, which is more or less endothelial function, which ties into nitric oxide by availability. So one of the parameters that we use in the hypertension institute in Nashville is ED equal ED. That is endothelial dysfunction is erectile dysfunction. If you ask a man, does he have erectile dysfunction? It's almost 100%

correlation with endothelial dysfunction, because the nitric oxide levels in the penile arteries are very low. Erections are very improbable or they don't happen at all. And it's tied directly to testing that you can do for nitric oxide in our office. So interesting. And so important. I learned about the heart-brain connection in a very sad way. So I'm named after my grandfather. He was my best friend growing up, but he was a candy maker. And so he was overweight and he had his first heart attack at 49. But when he got his second one, he got depressed. And that's when I was in medical school and I learned about the connection between heart attacks and depression. Can you talk about that connection and what you've seen over your career? Absolutely. Most traumatic events, whether it's a heart attack or someone that goes on bypass graft or even a stent, part of it's just the stress of the event. Part of it is if you have surgery, this is no surprise. It's the anesthesia that just

absolutely destroys your brain for a long, long time. But if you just talk about the heart attack issue, there's a lot of different cytokines. These are chemicals that would cause inflammation all over the body. And when you have that much heart damage, you are inflamed for a long period of time. So what that does, it sets off instantaneous inflammation in the brain, which then sets off this depressive mood affecting your neurotransmitters. And the other part of it is just the inability to perform your normal activities. So people get depressed because they have to change their diet, they have to change their activity level, they have to stay at home more. They're depressed because of other things that they can't do, the normal activity.

So it's a complex issue, but depression is almost universal after myocardial infarction, and it can last for a long time. I've had people still depressed a year after their heart attack unless they get some help. Oh, interesting. So if I'm hearing you, just to recap this for our listeners, because this is a question we get a lot, people don't understand. So anesthesia from almost any surgery, bypass surgery, definitely we see that a lot. Also increases the risk of dementia. Right. And heart attacks increase your risk of depression, but you can get help. You should get help if you're going through that. Well, and what I really like is the connection with inflammation. And so if you can be on an anti-inflammatory diet, that can be

really helpful. What about omega-3 fatty acids? And people, we often measure someone's omega-3 index here, a test developed by my friend Bill Harris. And they're usually terrible. Oh, I did 50 consecutive patients who came to Amen Clinics that were not on fish oil supplements. 49 of them were suboptimal. I mean, it's shocking to me how much it was. And it's sort of a simple fix. Well, the omega-3s are essential for brain and heart health. There's an amazing study, it's a meta-analysis, just published about two weeks ago from Mayo Clinic Proceedings, reviewed like 600,000 patients that were on high omega-3 diets or omega-3 supplements. And there was no question at all that depending on the dose,

depending on a lot of other factors, there's a huge reduction in both primary and secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and myocardial infarction. So that's one of the top supplements that I use. And you're right, here in Nashville, if you're not taking a supplement, people that are eating their normal SAD diet are the ones who have very low omega-3 indexes. And like your population, I don't see normal omega-3 indexes unless I've already put them on an omega-3 supplement and they come back for checks. So do you tend to use a higher, like, what would you consider to be a normal dose that you put people on? I start with a range depending on the clinical problem I'm trying to address. So if it's a prevention and a healthy person, you can get by with about maybe one to two grams of DHA and EPA

per day. But if you've got a patient who's had a myocardial infarction, bypass graft, PCTA with a stent, known coronary heart disease, angina, or some other cardiovascular problem like hypertension or dyslipidemia, or maybe even diabetes, they're going to go up to high doses of about five grams a day of a DHA and EPA. And I usually put it in with GLA, which prevents a depletion on the two sides of the chain, and also a gamma delta tocopherol, which prevents the oxidation of the omega-3s in the cell membrane, which is absolutely crucial. So that's like a type of E, right?

They would find that like over with E vitamins? Yeah, there's eight forms of vitamin E, and this is the gamma delta tocopherol, which is the one that's actually used most commonly by humans. We don't actually have that much of the alpha tocopherol in which is the one that's actually used most commonly by humans. We don't actually have that much of the alpha tocopherol in our diet, but that's when all the studies have been done with. That's why we get mixed results. So it was when I listened to your lecture that I really changed my intake of my fish oil and added those other two, the GLA and the gamma delta tocopherol. So I just want people to hear that. So what this brings up to me is a really important point. And that is, if someone

has heart disease, they are often also on a blood thinner. And common wisdom among physicians is if you're on a blood thinner, don't take omega-3. Which I have been told. How would you respond to that? I have been asked that question many times. I've actually looked in the literature for an answer, and I had the answer. It does not significantly increase the risk of any major bleeding event. And you can be on aspirin.

You can be on Plavix. You can be on Berlenta or Eloquus or any of these new factor 10 inhibitors. And yeah, you may bruise a little bit more, but as far as GI bleeding or hemorrhagic strokes or any other typical major bleed, there is no significant increase in risk. And in fact, if you put people on omega-3 fatty acids, either after a heart attack or after a bypass graft or after a stent, you reduce the secondary heart attack significantly. You decrease stent restenosis and you decrease bypass graft restenosis. We actually have a program that we use as a combination of omega-3s with high-dose curcumin before, during, and after surgery. Sometimes I can't tell the

cardiothoracic surgeon that I have them on either of those two supplements because they get all bent out of shape about whether they're going to bleed. But we've been able to show dramatic results using those two together. So curcumin is another one we love for the brain. Let me just recap that one thing for people. So what I heard you say is they might have bruising for superficial type treatments or whatever, but they're not going to cause bleeding, like significant, any type of blood thinning. That's correct. Got it. So important. Stay with us. We're going to come back with Dr. Mark Houston. We're going to talk about inflammation. Pick up his book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Heart Disease. And also, Mark, tell them your website that people can learn more about your work.

Yeah, it's a pretty simple one. Hypertensioninstitute.com. Hypertensioninstitute.com. Excellent. Stay with us here at The Brain Warrior's Way. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen Clinics.

I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.