Shaun Newman Podcast - #1027 - Aseem Malhotra

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Aseem Malhotra is a British consultant cardiologist, award-winning NHS-trained expert in preventive cardiology, and bestselling author who strongly advocates for evidence-based medicine, lifestyle interventions, and reducing ultra-processed foods and excess sugar to combat obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. He co-founded Action on Sugar, promoted low-carb real-food approaches, and has been a vocal critic of over-reliance on statins and pharmaceutical industry influence in medical guidelines. He has served as Chief Medical Adviser to the Make America Healthy Again initiative and continues private practice at HUM2N Clinic in London.Watch the Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crow and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. How's everybody doing today? Happy Thursday. I, uh, well, if you miss the Cornerstone Forum this week, all right? I've been saying it every episode. But the entirety of it is up on Substack for Paid members. And, uh, I don't know, I've been getting.

lots of great feedback. I would love to hear yours. Maybe you've got time to watch it. Maybe you haven't yet. But head on over to Substack to check out the full Cornerstone Forum. You can pay attention to everything that went on there. And then of course, as we progress through the year, we'll start releasing all the episodes again on there. And, you know, some behind the scenes and everything else. I had some big news at the end of the Cornerstone Forum. I'll leave that teaser here this week. And I'm sure we'll talk about it next week. But it If you go to the end, the very end of the Cornerstone Forum, you'll hear it, and you'll know what's coming later this year.

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and maybe you bumped into Shane. He was at the Cornerstone Forum in Calgary walking around. And yeah, he's one of the best. Now, I missed a couple of companies earlier this week on Tuesday when I talked about the Cornerstone Forum. So I want to go back over them. RecTech Al was there for 20 years. He was at the Cornerstone Forum.

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Help support what I do on this end and keep me independent. Appreciate it, folks. Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is a British cardiologist, bestselling author, and has served as chief medical advisor to the Make America Healthy Again initiative. I'm talking about Asim Malhotra. So buckle up.

Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Asim Malhotra. Sir, thanks for hopping on. Thanks for having me, Sean. It's been a long time coming. Well, I tell you what, I was looking at our notes. I'm like, this is bit on the old cue.

Catherine's going to be like, you guys are finally doing it. It's taking a year. regardless, it's great to have you here and appreciate you giving me some time this morning. Now, before we get too far into things, I guess just a bit of your backstory. Tell the story who you are, I know a lot of people on this channel know exactly who you are, but in case they don't. So I'm a consultant cardiologist. I have been a qualified doctor now for 25 years almost.

I have been a public health advocate for 10 to 15 years on issues of obesity. greater transparency in medicine. And I've had various roles in the UK in terms of health policy, quite senior positions, being an ambassador for the medical or colleges for about seven to eight years. I completed a full term as a trustee of the King's Fund that advises government on health policy. And I've also been labelled controversial because I published in academic journals, usually taking on or busting myths around heart disease or exposing flaws in our current medical model. Yeah, well, controversy seems to follow truth tellers these days.

So that doesn't seem to bother us on this side of the pond. Talking about, you know, like, where you landed in my world was in the middle of COVID, towards, I believe the end of COVID, but forgive me and seem, you know, it's been a few years. Your father had passed away. Could you maybe just walk the audience through a bit of that? I think it'd be, I've heard you talk lots about this, and I don't mean to pull up maybe painful memories,

just that I think the audience would be on the Western Canada here would be interested to hear it. Sure, thanks, Sean. Yeah. So a bit of context relevant to what happened with my father is that, Prior, you know, certainly going back to 2012, 2013, I was certainly one of the most vocal advocates speaking out publicly through mainstream media and print media and radio about the excesses and manipulations of Big Pharma to the extent where I was probably one of the leading voices in the world on this and obviously had a big target on my back. But when the pandemic occurred, I didn't have any major concerns about the rollout of this novel vaccine, partly because in my clinical experience as a cardiologist, you know, vaccine injury is not something I've ever come across.

It's not even something I've heard of, to be perfectly honest with you, even it's being amongst colleagues. So my perception of traditional vaccines, which still is largely the same, is that they are one of the safest, if, not the safest of all the medical interventions we do. And again, context here, Sean, is that prior to the pandemic, and this is something I was trying to shout from the rooftops to try and expose the problems of the system, is that prescribed drugs were estimated to be the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer because of side effects. And it wasn't being dealt with the root cause of the issue. And the reason I say that is that I did not put vaccines, and I still don't put traditional vaccines in that category.

And for that reason, not because I was high risk, I was actually advising the, you know, I asked to advise a health secretary in 2020 because I was a first doctor in the UK to make the link publicly between metabolic health and obesity and COVID. But I also knew that my risk was very low. You know, we know now, Sean, with hindsight

is a wonderful thing. It should have really been dealt with at the time, but we know now that certainly COVID's risk, in effect for people under 70 was the same. as having the flu. It was infinitely worse in people over 70, certainly in the early strains. It was pretty devastating for a lot of people. So I'm not undermining the effect COVID had on high risk people. But I knew my risk was low. And because my father, who was the vice president of the BMA, a very wise man, someone I cared about deeply, I had a lot of respect for. He was one of the most

respected doctors in the country. I think because of his age and because he swallowed pretty much whole heartedly the traditional media narrative. He had an exaggerated fear of COVID, but more than that, because I was the only surviving member of his immediate family, we lost my mother a few years earlier, I lost my brother when I was young. He thought that I was going to get COVID and died. And, you know, there was a back and forth where, you know, ultimately a form of emotional blackmail, if you like, he, you know, made me have the COVID vaccines. Having said that, Sean, I didn't think there was going to be a major issue with it. I just didn't think he. it was going to be particularly efficacious, and I didn't need it. So I had two doses. I went on

Good Morning Britain in February 2021 to support its use for people who are high risk, specifically. And then six months, well, a few months later in July 2021, my dad, who was very fit and well, had suffered an unexpected cardiac arrest and died. And when his post-mortem was carried out, the finding shocked me. And I say this from the perspective of a cardiologist who's been at the forefront of changing the paradigm on the understanding of a heart disease develops, how it progresses, how it can be reversed. That's what I do. That's what I do with my patients. That's what makes me sort of unique as well on a clinical level. And I couldn't explain the findings of his post-mortem, which showed severe coronary artery disease in two of his arteries, especially because a few years earlier he'd had scans done,

which didn't show anything of major significance. And if anything, his lifestyle, had improved since then, so it should have been stable or even better. And then, long story short, several months later, lots of bits of different bits of data emerge independently, which basically suggested that the COVID-Morini vaccines were possibly, and now I believe more than likely, accelerating coronary disease. That's one of the mechanisms of harm. And then I decided that I was going to do my own independent research, which I've done throughout my career when I've looked at a topic and I've gone deeply into it and then I've challenged myself

to make sure that I understand this as best as I can by getting it published in a peer review journal, whatever that means. But it's certainly the best thing we have ideally when it's free from commercial conflicts of interest to give us information that we can accept as being the greater truth in that present time. I then published a paper essentially concluding that, you know, the COVID-Morone vaccine, certainly mandates were. should never have been introduced. They certainly shouldn't have been given to people under 70. And I think now it's fair to say it probably should not have been given to a single human being in the first place. Sean, why? Not from some theory or some, you know, speculation, because a reanalysis

of the original trials by some of the most eminent scientists in the world revealed you were two to four times more likely to suffer serious harm from taking the COVID vaccine than you were to be hospitalized with COVID. And that really summarizes my journey from a scientific point of view in the last few years. When you're trying to talk to people who still believe COVID was more dangerous than, well, I mean the vaccine, and they still hold on to that. You know, when you've been outspoken since 2012, you've been trying to raise the alarm on a lot of different things. Have you had any success? of like breaking through not only the echo chambers, but just the glaze over when you,

when you mention these things to people a scene? So it's a difficult conversation, Sean, but the answer to your question is absolutely yes. It takes time and people, people come to their conclusions that overturned their original, I would say beliefs on the code vaccines at different stages. you know, I have tried to articulate my U-turn, if you like, in terms of my understanding of the code vaccine,

which I think puts me in a unique position where people are more open-minded to listening because I went on TV and I supported its use for high-risk people. So I'm not your typical skeptic from the beginning who said, we knew there was a problem and you should never have taken it, etc., because I think, although I do think a lot of those people are heroes, to be honest, for standing their ground, not having it. And I've said that publicly. But I don't think it's, I think it's more challenging for those people to penetrate through

the minds of people who are completely indoctrinated on the other side. So the answer is yes, but the way I would describe the issue, and that's my learning as well, Sean, in this process. and one thing I've learned in the last few years is that barriers to the truth are primarily psychological. They are not intellectual. And what do I mean by that? I mean that when you're in a state of fear,

it inhibits your ability to engage in critical thinking. That's what happened during the pandemic. I think the people who were the most fearful of COVID were probably the people who are most taken in by the solution and the potential solution, which was a COVID vaccine. And also the other concept that we have psychological barrier, which I talk about, is willful blindness, which is when human beings turn a blind eye to the truth

in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety, and protect prestige and fragile egos. And the concept has been most vocalized by Margaret Hefferman, who wrote a book called Willful Blindness. And examples conceptually of willful blindness historically, of, in terms of institutions, include Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood, Jimmy Saville and the BBC, the Catholic Church and Child Molestation, and even to a large degree, it can be explained by what happened, you know, during Nazi Germany, amongst a German population and, you know, a Nazi ideology.

So understanding the barriers of psychological, not intellectual, means you start discussing the psychology first. And that's the way to get through to people in my view. Yeah, it's interesting because you see that, that, that barrier, that psychological barrier or that willful blindness, if you would, on lots of different subjects. It obviously became apparent in COVID, but since then there's been lots of things where you see people choosing narrative or team or whatever word you want to associate to it over facts. And I just go back the time in COVID where you could present all the facts you wanted. They didn't care. It was very strange. It was just very strange to watch. But you're like, look at what all the

government data saying. And I can pull it up from almost anywhere in the world because we have this thing called the internet and they're all publishing it. But nobody would listen. And that has been, I think, a lot of people trying to wrestle with how you break through the barrier as you point out is psychological. Like to me, it's very apparent. And you know, the willful blindness. comment as well, reminds me of, and I'm forgetting his name, he wrote a book on it, or wrote a book on it. And he was from over in Europe. And once again, he was prominent in COVID time talking about mass formation. Yes, actually a very good friend of mine, Professor Matthias Desmet. Thank you. Yes. And his book is brilliant. If you want to, you're absolutely right. If you want

to understand this on a psychological level, I don't think there's any been any better published account of it than Matthias's book, the psychology of totalitarianism. Now, I want to go back. You mentioned there's when you were, when you were first back in 2012, I think you said, three things. And I hope I wrote them down right. Cancer, heart disease, and the third was prescribed drugs. Did I get that right? Correct.

If you fast forward today, you've been a medical advisor to the Maha Action, correct? Yes, I was actually appointed that was the first chief medical advisor to Maha Action, yes. So when we look at the future, right? Like we're trying to be hopeful here. Maha, I think for a lot of people looked at it and like make America healthy again. It's like, yeah, let's start talking about obesity and the diet and everything else. When you go back and you see cancer, heart disease and then prescribe drugs, I'm like, okay, that all makes sense to me. What have you guys been doing or what is, I don't know, giving you hope here in the future when you're looking at some of the problems we currently face?

I think that the one person who I think deserves more credit than anyone else who has led this shift in the conversation at the very least and now starting to see some policy changes is Robert Kennedy Jr. You know, I don't think we should underestimate the impact of this man. In my view, President Trump was able to win that election by clear margin because of Bobby Kennedy Jr. He galvanized the public in the United States around this issue of corruption of medicine, too much pharmaceutical industry influence, and also talking about the fact that we've got this horrific child obesity problem in the United States. And I remember there was a line he used. He said, in terms of trying to bring people together,

you've got to ask yourselves, do we hate each other more than we love our children? I think that really captured people's attention. So for me, he is the person who is the shining light here. Listen, he's not perfect, none of us are, and he's in a very difficult place because you are taking on a whole system, really, that has been ingrained through decades of what I would call crony capitalism. You know, I've got nothing against people making money or the free market, but, you know, the free market, you know, succeeds or thrives on perfect. yet we have very big large companies, multinational corporations, big farmer, big food, who basically profit from fraud, Sean. Let's just call it out for what it is, deliberate deception or to make money. So of course that's going to, you know, it doesn't take

a rocket scientist to figure out that at some point that's going to be a public health disaster. And that's now what we're trying to sort out. My personal interaction with Bobby going back to 2022 when he first called me after I published my paper has, been, you know, very, you know, it was very inspiring for me. He interviewed me for his podcast. I'm constantly in touch with him. I know Jay Batachari very well. There were an initial team from the NIH contacted me when they were trying to formulate policies in terms of what I would recommend, and I spent several months giving my recommendations to them. And I've seen progress already. You know, I think the inversion of the food pyramid, I think, is a big deal. I think, you know,

know, certainly making sure that refined carbohydrates are one of the primary demons in the diet, I think is really powerful because, in my view, that's been one of the, if not the, if not the main drivers for this chronic disease problem from diet. I think that the recommendation to try and match the childhood vaccine schedule with that of Europe, which is something I also told Bobby to do several months ago, I think that's a really good plan, good idea, because it's difficult to attack them to say that you are anti-vaccers or you're not evidence-based if the European model has been very successful in that regard and certainly then reduces the overuse of childhood vaccines. So I think there's, you know, there's a lot of work still

to be done and it's work in progress, but I have been very encouraged by it. I think that Bobby Kennedy, you know, stopping the $500 million investments into MRNA technology. was absolutely the right thing to do, especially as there's so much uncertainty about these side effects of this particular type of technology, certainly for vaccines. But yes, the ideal scenario, which has still not happened yet, but it's only a matter of time, Sean, and we have to make sure we can remain assertive and strong in our advocacy on this, is that there should be a global moratorium on these COVID-MRNA vaccines. I think the harm they have done is absolutely catastrophic, absolutely catastrophic. On the best available evidence, we're talking about millions of people globally who have been seriously harmed or killed by these products that should never likely been given to a single human being, Sean. If this doesn't expose the shortcomings of the system, then there is no hope. There is no hope.

The global moratorium, the only place I can think of, but I'm sure you know of more or of different areas that are pushing on it really hard, but I think of Florida. Florida's been one of those places that has, you know, been a leader of pushing back against a whole bunch of different things. including the COVID vaccine, the MNRNA shots. Do you know of other places? Like when you say global moratorium, I'm like, I sit in Canada, I haven't seen it.

I haven't seen any hope here on the, we're going to have a moratorium on this. The best we've got, I think, is that you get to choose whether you get it, but not this is awful for you. We're just taking it completely off the shelf. From your eyes, Assam, have you seen different places in the world that are leaders in this that give you the possibility of a global moratorium?

Well, first of all, I must wholeheartedly agree with you, Sean, about Florida. And I must mention another person who I think stands out, who's been very brave as a medical leader in this space globally, has been Joseph Latterpah, the certain general of Florida. So I think that, you know, he must be praised for this stance he's taken. And I think it's a right stance. The positives, Sean, is that, I don't know how it is in Canada, but certainly in the UK, and most European countries,

and I suspect as well in America, is the overwhelming majority of people are not having any more COVID boosters. In fact, the data, if I understand correctly, that I received from the former, I know ASIP, the advisory committee on vaccines, the CDC's advisory committee of vaccines at the moment has been disbanded. But when it was in session, the chair of it, who I know very well, Brett Sive Lev, he explained to me that there was data in the US that suggested that, and this is going back now several months, this is at least six months ago, maybe a year ago, 87% of healthcare workers, Sean, 87% of healthcare workers in the United States were refusing to have any more COVID vaccines, despite it being recommended by their hospitals. So that tells you a lot.

And that's a problem, though, because that shows a massive amount of distrust between the medical, or the grassroots doctors and the medical establishment. We know that 57% of the American public on one survey linked the thought that the excess death rates in the US were linked to the COVID vaccine. And certainly in the UK, I'm not aware of anybody. I hear the odd story of a person having another COVID booster. So that's a good thing in a way

because I think that the wisdom of the masses is now coming through. But there hasn't been accountability, as you say, there hasn't been a moratorium, to understand why this happened, how this happened, and what we can do stop occurring again. And of course, when I wrote my paper, I gave those solutions, which essentially is that the clinical trial data from drug companies on all drugs that they sponsor is never independently evaluated because the regulators take most of their money from industry, which is a big problem. It's a huge conflict of interest. And that's why we

are where we are. And you mentioned earlier about this mass formation or people being willfully blind, I think what's really interesting to have some humility here for all of us, is that many people who, and certainly this is anecdotal from my experience, who were right to question and not be taken in by the narrative of the COVID vaccine, or certainly to, you know, wait and see what would happen, have become indoctrinated with these weight loss injections. I know one lady that didn't take the COVID vaccine and then was hospitalized, followed the narrative, that these weight loss,

which, by the way, in my view, are another public health disaster, right? They are, they're not, I don't think they are, I think they have very detrimental, detrimental effects on the body. You can lose weights in lots of different ways, including cancer can make you lose weight. So losing weight should not be the outcome. It should be health. And it's all coming out now. The lawsuits, you know, from people who have been seriously harmed by these weight loss injections.

So this problem is only going to get worse, Sean. It's not going to get better. We can't sweep under the carpet. As a cardiologist, I've seen a uptake, or certainly in a narrative that people should be lowering their cholesterol more to prevent heart disease. My own independent analysis revealed that there is no clear association with lowering LDL, so-called bad cholesterol and preventing heart attacks.

Yet this is exactly what I predicted would happen. If we allow these psychopathic corporations, that's a diagnosis, it's not being inflammatory. That comes from Joel Buchan Law Professor. in fact, Canadian American law professor who wrote the book, The Corporation, and also the, you know, was behind the documentary, the new corporation and the book as well, that when it comes to making money, these institutions as, you know, not as individuals within them, I'm sure there are, but the actual system itself, the legal entity that is the corporation

is psychopathic when it comes to making money, which means callous, you know, unconcerned for the safety of others, incapacity to experience guilt, repeated lying and conning others for profit. This is what they do. Until the whole world knows that, until every person know that, until the barista in the coffee shop knows this, you know, at the forefront of their consciousness,

the Uber driver, you know, until everybody knows this, then we're not going to make significant progress. And that's what we need to keep doing. You need to keep telling people this is what the system is. And ultimately then it will, you know, it will collapse and we can rebuild it. Speaking of the weight loss drugs, because, you know, Maha gains attention and then what comes in right after it, well, you can lose weight and it's super easy.

You just take these pills. I was thinking of, I think it's OZempic. I think I literally just had my annual event, Assam. And one of the things was the Premier of Alberta was there. And she spoke, and she even brought up OZempic. And I remember sitting on stage with her and going, that's a strange thing. especially to talk to this crowd about. I'm like, because this crowd is about,

you want to get healthy, it's going to take some work, and the work's going to be fun. And there's no silver bullet, because silver bullets always come with side effects and problems. And I don't know, but sticking on just in general, the weight loss, take this pill, everything's going to be great again, seems extremely odd to me. and probably comes with a whole bunch of risk side effects when you start taking things like that.

Absolutely. Stomachitis, pancreatitis, you know, we now have evidence showing that the weight regain is happening with people as well. So you lose muscle mass as well as fat. I mean, this is not a healthy way to lose weight. No. Go on. Everybody should understand that. Now, is there a role at all for these?

never say never probably for an extremely small minority of morbidly obese people who've tried everything else and the overall benefit of the harms might be there i'm saying might be there for it but that's it i've i've heard and this tells you that the indoctrination the the the success of the big farmer narrative um you know we need people need to just wake up they need to wake up I've heard from a reliable source in the states, in the hospitals, that people, one of the things they're seeing now is seeing is people coming in with stomach issues from taking the weight loss drugs. Yeah. And when the nurses are telling them, you probably should stop taking it. They're like, well, no, but I've lost a ton of weight.

And I come back to the psychological thing again. I'm like, I can't imagine sitting in the hospital with problems. And the medical staff is literally saying, like, it's probably directly from your weight loss structure taking. And then being like, well, no, I still want to take it, though, because I'm losing weight. Like, when we get back to it all, this whole psychological problem, I'm like, we are in a really messed up state. We are. Yeah. We are.

And I think that, Sean, the issue is, there are two issues that come to mind. I'm sure there are many more that people can comment on. but the two of the issues that come to mind. One is the institutions and authorities and establishment that are there to uphold ethical principles and be transparent have lost all of that, right? But many people still trust what their doctor tells them, they trust what the chief medical officer of the country tells them.

and they themselves are probably not deliberately out there to harm people. I think that there's a lack of knowledge of how the system works. You know, I say medical knowledge is under commercial control, and most doctors don't know that. So I think it's understanding how the system works in terms of where is this narrative really coming from? And do we know the true benefits of harms of any drug? And unfortunately, we could do a lot better, I think, with most drugs. And I think the other side is there is an exploitation, I think, of an increasingly individualistic and narcissistic society.

That, you know, we have, people are so obsessed with their appearance that that also drives this behavior that makes them willfully blind to the potential harms and thus they will keep taking this injection, even if they are told, it could cause you significant harm. You know, and so they were dealing with that as well simultaneously. So part of the solution as well is understanding, what does it actually mean to be human? What does it mean to have good psychological health?

And of course, that's linked to physical health. And being a, you know, devoting your time and your thoughts to image status and power is definitely not the way to get there. Yeah. You're talking about reevaluating your values, right? Like what is the core thing you're basing yourself around? And if that is how you look, Once again

We see it on Instagram and social media, right? I think it's particularly a bigger issue for girls than it is for boys. But, you know, I've lost count of the amount of people who are either acquaintances or people like me or friends who do not look anything like their Instagram picture in real life. And they're willfully blind to that. It's like, and the thing is, unless you are being authentic in yourself, Sean, you can therefore not perceive other people as being authentic. So that then contributes to distrust amongst each other, which again is also detrimental to mental health and communities

and sort of thriving populations on a mental level. So it's all of that. It's all interlinked, Sean. Yeah, the social media thing is absolutely bang on. I got three kids to see him. And my son was asking me a question, this is a few months ago. And I was telling them, if you figure out who you are, you get the world by the tail, because the world is going to try and tell you who you are. And if you allow that, you're in for a world to hurt because you're going to be a slave to whatever Instagram shows you or X or on and on, this world we've created of social media. And the image it's trying to portray you as, or you're trying to portray it to the world, is very strange

and very few people have been able to decouple themselves from that. I hope that it's more. But you listen to the stories of people using, you know, weight loss drugs now after we just went through all the COVID stuff. We're like,

are we serious right now? Like, you know? Yeah, absolutely. These are engineered addictions designed to manipulate the masses for commercial gain, whether it's through adulteration of our food supply or whether it's through Instagram or social media. This is exactly what's going on.

And addiction is the opposite of free will. Therefore, it needs some greater authority or power to intervene and to help us break that addiction, if you like. Before I get on to how people, if they want to work with you directly, because we talked before about telehealth and of that nature, I do want to ask if people are struggling with specifically, I don't know, they're on prescribed drugs, right? I'm just looking at the three that you mentioned, cancer, heart disease, prescribed drugs, right? Maybe they've got some health issues started. What would be your advice to them? I think the first thing, Sean, is that it's never too late to change one's lifestyle

and notice the benefits of it quickly. one of the ideas that really captured my attention in my journey as a cardiologist, you know, initially starting off doing intervention and putting in, you know, essentially keyhole heart surgery, putting in stents for people having heart attacks, was that there was good evidence and then I started practicing it myself to see whether that was, you know, whether it was true. The dietary changes alone rapidly and improve your risk factors for heart disease. But I think the thing that was missing from the narrative is how much better people feel.

You know, I've worked as an honorary council member at the University of Stanford metabolic psychiatry unit. And the research that's being done there, led by a psychiatrist called Shabani Sethi, is really quite remarkable showing that people in severe mental health problems, depression, which obviously is much more common, that within weeks of us going on a keto diet, for example, a ketogenic diet, that there, mental health significantly improves. So I think that one of the things that helps encourage people is that they're not just going to look better, they're going to feel better as well. And then that

kind of helps them break the addiction. It's not easy. Some people find it easier than others. But what I do with my patients is I give them a plan. I explain how it's going to work, why it's going to work. I want them to become the experts themselves. I'm not into, you know, top down, I just don't think that's as effective when you just dictate to people. I know that the whole model of doctor knows best, I think, is slowly disappearing. So it has to be kind of a shared decision-making thing. But also at the same time, I explain to them the pills and the fact that most of the pills that people take, certainly for chronic disease, are not going to benefit them.

You know, if you give one example, a statin, cluster-lowering drug, one of those lucrative drugs in the history of medicine, estimated to be prescribed to between 200 million and 1 billion people globally. Sean, most of those people taking statins are what we call not, haven't had a heart attack, so they are low risk or what we call high risk primary prevention to prevent them having a heart attack. What they are not told is that the actual individual benefit for them taking the statin based upon drug company sponsored studies that have never been independently evaluated. So this is the likely best case scenario in a selected group of people that were able to tolerate the drug, is a 1% benefit over a five-year period.

period in preventing a heart attack or stroke without prolonging your life. And when you give patients information in that way, which by the way is considered the highest standard, ethical standard of informed consent. So I'm not just making this up. It's not just my opinion. This is what the goal standard of informed consent tells us. If that information is there, you should convey that to the patient, is I'm sure you're not surprised to learn this. Most patients, when giving their information, do not want to take the drug. So, you know, that's part of how we, improve patient understanding, empowerment, and ultimately outcomes is through this process. So I combine the best available evidence on lifestyle interventions, whether it's stress reduction,

whether it's exercise, whether it's diet, with also helping them understand whether or not those pills are something that are in keeping with their values and preferences. Yeah, 1%. I don't think anyone's going, 1%. Oh, that sounds great. That sounds awful. Yeah. Well, this is, the thing is, you know, why people, why are most people not aware of it? Well, we know from other research, when patients are fully informed, they choose less treatments, Sean. And that isn't good news for the profits of these psychopathic corporations to therefore better suppress that information. If people, if people wanted to, like, Seam, if people wanted to work with, like, is there a way that they can get in touch with you? Sure.

They have issues. I do international consults as well so people can just go to my website, Dr.osim.com, and they'll find an email address so they can inquire about consultations, whether 30 minutes, an hour, et cetera, and I can help them. So, yeah, thank you for mentioning that. But yes, I do all over the world. I get people from Canada, America, Europe, India, Australia, you know. Is there anything specific that, like, you know, if people are sitting here listening, right,

they could run to you with everything for my sprain, my toe. They're not going to do that, but regardless, to I have stage four cancer. Is there something that's in your wheelhouse? Yeah, it's usually everything related to the heart. So it can be, and risk factors for heart disease, so type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease itself, and they'll want to understand what their risk is, where they should take a statin. Their cholesterol, a lot of people come to me because they've been told by their doctor,

their cholesterol is high, and they've been, you know, advised strongly to, to go on a staten and they're not kind of like sure about it, those are the most common reasons people come to see me. So I can at least explain it to them, give them a formal letter that they can then, you know, feel comfortable with and hopefully not be hassled anymore by their primary care position if, for example, you know, they decide through informed consent they do not want to take a statin. And then I guess finally, like when you look at the days, weeks, months, years ahead, is there anything you're paying attention to that you think people should be paying attention to?

I think it's stuff that's already pretty much out there, Sean. I think that a lot more, I'm increasingly concerned about the amount of screen time, kids in particular, but even adults are spending, especially on, you know, Instagram, for example, Facebook, maybe not as much. But the amount of time

we are not connecting with each other in a human, humanly resonant way. And the reason I say that is I know that chronic, you know, I talk about chronic stress with my patients and chronic stress, you know, at a reasonably high level, which is most of us experience, I think, now. In terms of heart disease is the equivalent of smoking 20 cigarette sedation. And one of the ways of us mitigating or reducing stress is actually our social connections, is spending more time in person physically with friends and family. I think that is something we need to shift back to. I can always say, oh, yeah, when I was a kid, etc., etc.

I used to hate people saying that when I was younger, you know, older people. But, you know, I didn't get a mobile phone, Sean, until I was a junior doctor. And I was reflecting back thinking, you know, and people may say this anyway, but my university days in Edinburgh in Scotland were probably the happiest of my life. And we were very, we functioned pretty well with a landline phone where we'd get messages and we'd meet up with friends

and we'd hang out in people's apartments and we'd play guitar and we'd cook food and we'd go to the movies and we go out to bars and restaurants. I mean, yeah, we had a lot more. I think that's my biggest concern is our disconnection from each other. I think that's going to be one of the keys

to solving the problems that we have also around conflict as one society. You have to say that again. What is like smoking 20 cigarettes in a day? Chronic stress. So I ask people usually, you know, subjectively people know of their stress and I say to them, in the last, certainly with the heart patients,

I asked them the last few years if I was to ask you on a scale of zero to 10 what your level of stress is. Zero being no stress at all. Imagine a Buddhist monk happily meditating in the Himalayas, right? and then being very high level of stress, where are you on that scale? And certainly with my cardiac patients or people who'd be diagnosed with heart disease or high blood pressure, almost all of them say at least to seven or eight. And they don't realize that that is having a significant negative impact on their mind and their body.

But there is something you can do about it. And, you know, I prescribe breath work. I link them to practitioners who can teach them that. But it also a lot of it comes, you know, the two biggest cause of stress, Sean, on the published literature for people are work and relationship stress. So either their job, you know, they may be in a job they don't like, they may have a bullying boss, who knows, or it's to do with relationships at home. So if you look also at what is the single biggest determinant of longevity and happiness,

it's actually relationships, good quality relationships. So everything comes back to that, you know. And when you look at what gives most meaning, in people's lives, it's what we give to the other. Right? It's not about narcissistic, self-interested behavior. It's what we give back to other people. That's what we get meaning in our lives.

So that's what I think it's a reset. It's kind of like a psychological reset to go back to the basics. What does it mean to be human? We've got a wealth of ancient wisdom and modern psychological research that gives us other answers. And if you want to read books on it, if people are interested, I certainly recommend you get books from Jordan Peterson. I recommend you read a book called The Compassionate Mind by a brilliant psychologist called Paul Gilbert. I think those two books alone is a good place to start

if you want to try and reset where your values are for the purposes of being happier, ultimately, having a more sustainable, authentic sense of well-being, reaching a highest state of being, and also feeling that your life, you can give back to society in a meaningful way. And everybody has a role to play there, Sean. Everybody has a role to play there. Jordan Peterson is a fellow Albertan. So I certainly have read his books. And that's, you know, probably don't share this story enough. But one of the reasons I started the podcast back in 2019. So it's, he's had a large impact on the world. And that I continue to run into that. So the fact you're bringing it up, it's just another person that has ran into Jordan Peterson's work.

And there's a ton of people that have read his, especially his 12 rules to life, right? Like I think that was the, I mean, he's had more books before and after, but certainly that there. Regardless, the same, appreciate you doing this and hopping on the podcast, a year and waiting. It hasn't been a disappointment. Thank you again for giving me some time today. Thank you, Sean.