The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Discovering Heart Health: Pascal Xavier’s Journey and New Book

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Discovering Heart Health: Pascal Xavier's Journey and New Book Pascalxavier.com About the Guest(s): Pascal Xavier is an engineer and an author focused on providing insights into health and wellness, particularly in the context of cardiovascular health. He is known for his personal journey battling heart disease and for exploring alternative health methods. Pascal Xavier resides in Australia and spends his time sharing knowledge gained from his experiences and extensive research on heart disease, statins, and the role of nutrition and natural remedies in maintaining cardiovascular health. Episode Summary: In this compelling episode of "The Chris Voss Show," host Chris Voss interviews Pascal Xavier, whose personal journey through cardiovascular challenges offers invaluable insights into heart health and wellness. Xavier discusses his upcoming book, which draws from his experiences and seeks to educate readers on the dangers of cardiovascular disease and how lifestyle changes can mitigate these risks. Xavier delves into his past struggles with medication side effects and how this prompted him to investigate alternative remedies. Xavier elaborates on how his life was transformed after a surprise diagnosis led to bypass surgery. Throughout the episode, he provides an in-depth look at how lifestyle habits, particularly diet, impact heart health. Xavier shares insights from experts and books like "The Great Cholesterol Myth," highlighting the potential downsides of statins and suggesting that factors such as sugar and oxidative stress play significant roles in heart disease. The discussion is rich with keywords relating to heart health, nutrition, alternative medicine, and the controversial treatment debates surrounding statins. Key Takeaways: Pascal Xavier's upcoming book is rooted in evidence-based research and personal experience, aiming to deliver credible alternatives to traditional heart disease treatments. Xavier highlights the dangers of heavily relying on statins and presses for more awareness around sugar and oxidative stress as major causes of heart disease. The benefits of a balanced lifestyle, free from sugar and junk food, are emphasized as crucial in maintaining cardiovascular health. More natural approaches like probiotics are recommended by Xavier, who claims they significantly supported his recovery without antibiotics during a pneumonia bout. Xavier's narrative challenges commonly held beliefs, urging listeners to seek data from reliable, vetted medical journals and experts. Notable Quotes: "It's not cholesterol that's the main culprit… it's sugar and oxidative stress." "I decided to try something out of the usual, rather than take antibiotics." "There are other avenues available, and I'm quoting other doctors, cardiologists…" "My book is going to be one of the few written from the standpoint of a bypass survivor." "Always question the data, question the information, research it…"

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Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, it's Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. The Chris Voss Show. Ladies and gentlemen, the art ladies, since that makes it official, welcome to the big show. As always, we have the most amazing guests that share their stories and journeys of their life Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,

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and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and and gentlemen, ladies? Yes, it is. There you go. I knew you checked that before the show, but I figured we'd just wing it this time because I figured I had it. Xavier, give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? They can find me on my domain name pascalxavier.com. And pascal.com, you got that. That's pretty cool. pascalAV.com. Oh, XAV.com. Do you have a new book that's coming out soon? Good. Yeah. I have, I have a book that will be coming out later in the year. Uh, it's, it's on my journey. It's on, on the,

all about my quadruple bypass heart surgery, how I got there and what you can do to avoid getting there. And if you can move close to the mic, give me a little bit more audio, please. Thank you. Does it have a title yet? Yes, it is. It is basically about a blueprint. It is about, you know, the risk of cardiovascular heart disease and a blueprint to avoid cardiovascular heart disease. Okay. Tell us about your journey through life and what this space is booked on, book is based on, you know, your journey through life and what you're up to and doing.

Tell us about your journey and take your time. Yeah, sure. So about 35 years ago as a university student, you know, I struggled with medication. I used to take, I have nasolaryngitis as one of the other medical problems. And I also prescribed, you know one of the other medical problems. I also prescribe antihistamines, corticosteroids for my sinuses and for my lungs because I have asthma as well. All these medications cause serious side effects. I mean, dry tongue. I sat exams in college on these drugs and they were horrible.

I mean, and I thought to myself, when I graduated and went into post grad school, I said to myself, I'm going to kick all these drugs. I'm going to make it my objective to find out what I can take to avoid these drugs. And so I went through a journey. I went through a journey of reading up a lot on these drugs. And so I went through a journey. I went through a journey of reading up a lot on these books. One of these books that I highly recommend and perhaps some of you as listeners know about, is a book by two physicians, James and Phyllis Bach. It's called The Prescription for Nutritional Healing. And I bought this from Amazon a long time back and I read up all about

vitamins, minerals, supplements, herbs and what they could do to alleviate symptoms that drugs normally do. So into high doses of vitamin C, I tried nasia and a few other things. And what helped me is that some of my experience from these herbs and these vitamins and minerals. I lived in the US for about three years. I was a Penn Stater for three years. I was a postdoc there. I would visit the local health food store

and I would try a couple of things. And I remember my first winter in the U S and this is Pennsylvania State College coming from Singapore. That's where I'm from. I've used, I was from, and I'm obviously living in Australia for the last 20 years. I came down with pneumonia and so I had pretty bad pneumonia. I had the blood in my sputum and figured out. And you know, as you know, in the US, medical insurance is pretty expensive.

Yeah, definitely. And as a postdoc at Penn State, I was able to get some minimal cover, seeing the medical center at Penn State. But what I did was I decided to try something out of the, rather than antibiotics, you know over prescribed these days I think. I went on a search for probiotics, the kind of you know strains that help with immune system. And so I went on a multiple strain probiotic formula throughout that bout of pneumonia and

that was okay within four to five days. I recovered no antibiotics. Wow, that's pretty good. That was really an eye opener. I really loved the power of natural remedies. And so I tell you on that way and fast forward 13, 20 years to 2006, now I'm getting to where years, 2006. Now I'm getting to where I had what led to my bypass. Now I must admit I've not been pretty good with my nutrition. I eat junk food, I eat a lot of fast food, and the stuff, various things. And sugar as well. And I used to delude myself because my wife is a medical, she's a physician, she's a doctor, and I used to, to say to her, look, my, my vessels are all perfectly clean, my plumbing is all, you know, a okay, I've been drinking lots

of red wine, clean up. Yeah. That'll fix everything. But that's what I thought. But then I won one evening while watching Netflix on Friday evening, my wife was resting against my chest and she said, that sounds like a heart murmur. You know, why did you get that checked? And I said, well, you know, I didn't think much about it, but I went to the

GP and the GP did a check on me. I listened to my heart and my lungs and said, that's nothing wrong with you. But you know what, I'll just, just in case, I'll send you to a cardiologist for a second opinion. Went to the cardiologist, the cardiologist did a battery of tests on me, did an echo, which is pretty much like an ultrasound. And then the cardiologist did a stress echo, which is running on a treadmill with the ultrasound. And the cardiologist, I look at your ultrasound, the blood flow looks symmetric, seems to, your heart seems to be pumping all right, but nothing seems to be wrong with you.

But because you mentioned you have a medical history of heart disease in the family, a family history, and my mom and my father both had a bypass. My father at the age of 48, my mom at the age of 70. And because they've had a bypass, I'm going to send you for a scan. They said I die into your bloodstream and then they see there any blockages. Now, he said to me, if I don't call you in the next day or two, then you know what, just come and see me next year. Otherwise, there'll be another conversation. And true enough, I got a call the next day and my heart was pumping. I said, what is this now? Why is he calling me? And he said, look, Pascal, can you come and see me at my clinic? I need

to see you pretty quickly. And so I went to see him and he said, look, when I went to see him, he said, it looks like there's multiple blockages from what we can see in the scan. And it's hard to say exactly the extent of the blockages. Look, you know what, give you the best scenario. The best scenario, you may have a stent or two

and then you go back to work in a few days. Right? And he left it as that. I thought, okay, but it's probably that. What's gonna be is gonna be some state. So I told my team at work, look, I'm gonna be away for a couple of days. I'm just gonna get a small minor procedure. And I'll be back.

And then what happened? Now he sent me for what happened at the angiogram is that the angiogram the intervention is kind of was about two minutes and then he kind of went to me and said to me, look, I can't really help you, you know, you've got all along, you need a quarter, you need a bypass. And that hit me like a ton of bricks because I didn't, I wasn't expecting that. I really want to hear that. You know, I was on multiple blood thinners and I had six hours on bed to think about it. My wife came in and said, so what do you want to do? You know? And I said, look, what do you do? It's not much of a choice.

So I did go for the bypass in December, 2016. I was 14 days in hospital. I was five days in ICU. They, they took grafted two veins from my legs. They took one from the memory and the fourth vessel, they cut out. They caught it. I mean, obviously they stopped my heart cut my breast bone to get to my heart and then they

reattached the fourth vessel I found myself in ICU it was a long recovery I was in it was three months in medical on medical leave and it was not a very nice time because you have to keep your blood thinners and you've got to be within a certain range. Also warfarin, you know, all that. And then, you know, the emotional pain because you're in a car, you have a real fear of, you know, this road rage.

I can't protect myself. I can't protect my family. I have to cut my breastbone. So it was a horrible time. So that got me really thinking, look, what have I done? How did I get to this? Right. And obviously the family history, I delivered myself about red wine. Obviously that didn't work.

Yeah. And yeah, so that's how it happened, Chris. And the thing is that I carried, for myself because of my journey and that's why I spoke to you earlier about my journey of nasolrinitis and all the supplements and the books that I've read. I said to myself, okay, I was on statins. Now you might have heard statins. Now it's a very controversial area, statins.

In the US, you probably heard about it. I've got a book written by a cardiologist and a pharmacist. His name is, in fact I've got the book here, his name is Joni Biden, Joni Borden and Steven Sinatra. It's called The Great Cholesterol Myth and this book talks about all the causes of heart disease and what he says is that really it's not cholesterol that's the main culprit you know it's not even saturated fat it is too main if i can summarize for you it's two main causes of heart disease and that's sugar and oxidative stress it's from bad oils that oxidize from bad oils and oxidize. Oh, wow.

And, and I think about my time in the US and look, I'm not saying that the US is the only country that consumes a lot of sugar, but I think you probably out there with the highest consumer. Yeah, we definitely are. Cause I mean, at my time in Penn State, everything, you know, uh, in glazed donuts and I remember many years I came watching the cop movies, there's always donuts, you know. So really I think that's what it is. And I'm still trying to wean myself of statins. I'm on stat, Libertor, which is important status, your listeners might know. And then I was on Crestor and then I won Prevert Cross, right for status and they have side effects. And let me tell you a bit about side effects.

You, I mean, Junior wasn't working. You know what I mean? I mean, you get impotence, right? I mean, Junior wasn't working. You know what I mean? I mean, you get impotence, right? You know, and I was doing my honeymoon and I couldn't get the guy out. It was really bad. I was a little drunk, you know. Bad for you or your wife? For both.

And all the other statins have really, it's honey effects, you know, joint pains. For me, both high, joint pains. For me, what was high, you know, I mean, muscle pains, loss of memory, and there is other things, you know, fortunately, these side effects are reversible. So if you stop a statin, if you want a statin, the side effects are fully reversible, and you stop a statin, if you want a statin, the side effects are fully reversible and I've stopped statin a few times. My most recent experiment was taking the blood in us, stopping the statins for about two months, seeing what

the effects would do. So I've got medical blood test results from 20 years in Australia, all 20 years and every year and I've got the levels of my cholesterol, total cholesterol, the HDL, you know, the ratios and so on and the thing is that when I was office that in obviously the cholesterol went up. in. Obviously the cholesterol went up. I recently got in touch with an American nutritional company called WebMD. They have a product which has Red East rice eggs. Now what they did is, just to give you an example Chris, I baseline the levels are about 8.5 to 9, super high right? And it has been like that since I was 35-40 years of age, it's been pretty high. Now this natural supplementation, I was able to bring this down to about 4.1. So that's pretty darn good for a supplement.

Here's what the problem is. The problem is that cardiologists are not satisfied with the level of 4.0. They want less than 3. They want less than 3. It's hard to get to less than three, right? It's hard to get to less than three without taking a step in, unfortunately. That's what it is. Yeah. And so you go on this journey and what do you hope to do with this book?

I mean, are you hoping to educate people on what options they have, etc., etc.? Did you hear me? and what options they have, et cetera, et cetera. Did you hear me? Yeah, it looks, I mean, the various options, but the thing is that, yeah, I can hear you, there are various options. One thing is that if you, if you take, if you take statins, they're going to continue to cause these troubles, these problems, right? I mean, and I, and I'm not retired. I'm still working.

I need my brain to think. I can't afford a short-term memory. So I can't stop this. It's a matter of maybe doing a high doses of radius extract perhaps, you know? And maybe taking the statins for three days in a week and then not having to take the statins and taking the other herbal medications

maybe four times a week. So what I would, I mean, I would urge your listeners and your viewers, obviously whatever you do, do it under the supervision of a physician or doctor because I wouldn't recommend doing of your own bat because it's dangerous. But you know and I've been perfectly honest with my GP. I've spoke to him about my experiments. So he knows they are short-term experiments, you know it with my GP. I've spoke to him about my experiments. So he knows they are short term experiments, you know, it's been all right. But I think the main thing is that the statins cause a lot of damage, Chris. And there are other issues that are available and I'm not quoting myself. I'm an engineer. I'm not a medical doctor, but I am quoting other doctors,

cardiologists like this one who wrote this book and there are multiple books out there by GPs who don't believe that cholesterol is a main culprit. That sugar and oxidative stress. So with your book, when is it coming out? With your book, when is it coming out? I'm going to publish a book on Amazon, Kindle publishing, KDP, that I'm planning to get it out in October this year. Interesting. That should be good then, right?

In the meantime, I've got my website, I put some information on my website. Yeah, I've got my website running at the moment, so that will be the place to go for information. There's also, I've got feedback, you know, I can get feedback if people want to send me an email at pascal at pascalzavier.com. They can reach me there if they have concerns and they have a similar journey or they are on statins and you know, know the side effects. You know, I can certainly refer them to and textbooks. So I mean that that's how I believe I can help.

And the reason I'm doing this is because I think you know, the food industry kind of got us who'd win, you know, if you look at the supermarket shelves, they're full of sugar, you know, you look at breakfast needles in the morning the care logs the general mills I mean, it's fruit loops and you know cocoa pops It's a lot of sugar now Yes, children can get motion because they are active in the run about it stuff like that But adults you can't take that kind of sugar, you know? And that sugar is going to cause damage.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, definitely it's going to affect your age. You know, this is how those things roll, really. Yeah. What else do we need to know about your forthcoming book? How can people get on? Do you have a...

Yeah, that's right. I think, yeah. Do you have a list on your website that people can get on your book and find out more? Like they can get a list so they know what it issues? Yes, I mean the web. Yep, yep, there are sections on my website that indicate now I'll probably keep them posted on when the book will come out. In the meantime, I'm trying to engage people just through my website, putting information out there, writing blogs because I got one blog out there.

I just recently launched a website. I got a blog out there that talks about the heart disease, the killer. So I guess that's where they can get the information in the meantime. And the reason I'm not rushing the book out is because there are two reasons. One I'm a full-time job and it's tough trying to find the time after work to progress my book. The other reason really is that my book is going to be evidence-based so it's going to be based on journals, on papers, research papers. It's not going to just be based on you search, you know. Not that there is not reliable information out there, but if you want reliable information, then the journals are where to go.

Oh yeah. Research journals, I've got to distill the information and summarize it by readers so that they don't have to do the research. I've done the work for them, know most definitely most definitely anything more we need to know for people to hear or get signed up so they're aware when your book launches Jimmy on that anything anything more we need to know about the book before your book launches? I think all we need to know is that it's going to be based on my experience, my experiment

I've done. It's written about patients, you know, the books written out there by cardiologists and GPs, you know, there's ample number of books out there written by them. But I mean, this one is going to be one of the few for bypass. That's how it's going to be different. It's also going to be different in the sense that it's going to be very evidence-based, it's going to be based on research. What information I put out there is not going to be my opinions, although I may have a few. It's going to be based on what the journals say, what the researchers say. There's a lot of evidence out there that some of the misleading, you know, they could say, oh this causes 40% reduction in heart disease and 30% reduction.

and heart disease and 30% reduction. It doctors talk about it. They play with statistics, many people take the numbers, make it appear that they are more effective than not. If you're not a mathematician or a statistician, then you wanna be reading a book or getting a comment from someone who is or has a good grounding in mathematics because it is possible to manipulate the data.

Are you going to do consulting on this and things of that nature? So, Chris? Yeah. You're breaking up really bad. Are you going to do consulting or coaching in any of this? Yes. Yes, I am. So the plan is that off the back of the book, what I plan to do is to do some professional speaking, so to get some engagements. I actually currently while I'm, and that's why I'm also extra busy, while I'm actually writing this book, I'm actually enrolled cause I did a boot camp on public speaking with Speakers Institute.

It's kind of like I think what you have in the US is Speakers Lab or something similar. what you have in the US is Speaker's Lab or something similar. And Speaker's Institute is an Australian based company. It's off the back of someone who lost his arm in a car accident and had to do something to, you know, to get back and share his experience. So this organization, Speaker's Institute, is about people who have life experiences and want to share that with the world and try to make a difference in the world. That's what it's about. I'm currently on a one-year product J program which pretty much is a one-year cause with intensives and you know science and how to market and how to and then that's partly

all getting ideas as to how I can effectively get my not only my message out there but to market it and to reach audiences, but to summarize to you know to write it in a way that will be all the way until about October this year. I started October last year after the bootcamp, the one year program. So I've got there on the, you know, happiness. Okay. And so I am very keen to get this out. Tell people as we go out, uh, your final pitch to them, tell them where they can onboard with you or, you know, sign up for newsletter or find out when the book's going to come out, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. or find out when the books gonna come out etc etc yeah so my final pitch would be you know don't take

you know information out there as gospel because you know the one side to the coin always question the data question the information, research it. There are many people out there with websites and with books. You want to question it and I think the best way to get reliable data is to get data from that has been refereed, journals that publish books that are based on journals that have been refereed and then you know the reliable data you know and then make your own decision do whatever you need to do do it under the supervision of a you know a medical professional obviously because I wouldn't advise

this you know doing it yourself especially if you've had a you know have a serious medical condition but you know just just just distill the information. That's what I'll say. Thank you very much for coming to the show. It's very insightful and hopefully people will learn from your book on how to navigate this health issue. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me on your show.

Thank you. And give us your.com is one last time as we go out. So the, the, my, my website is pascalesxsavier.com. That's my website. And I can be reached at pascal at pascalzsavier.com. All right. Thank you very much, Pascal, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

Thanks, Ron, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Forchess, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Forchess, Chris Voss, Chris Voss, one of the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have a...