THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Transcend Flawed Healthcare Systems w/ Dr. Amy Doneen

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

This week we’re going to go straight to the HEART of the matter.LITERALLY.I have been searching for answers about HEART HEALTH for a long time now.  Those of you who follow me on a regular basis know I have some heart issues.  So not only is this going to be a great download about heart health for you, but it’s also an especially personal episode for me as well.That’s because this week’s guest saved my life.Let me repeat that…SHE SAVED MY LIFE!Just as important, since HEART DISEASE is a leading cause of death worldwide, what you hear this week will impact you and many people you know.And what you’ll learn could SAVE YOUR LIFE too.My guest, DR. AMY DONEEN, is an internationally recognized leader in the prevention of HEART ATTACKS, STROKES, AND DIABETES and is the owner and medical director of The Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Center (HASPC) in Spokane, Washington.  Dr. Doneen is also the co-founder and a principal instructor in the BaleDoneen Method, a genetically guided, precision-medicine approach to preventing, detecting, and treating cardiovascular disease.  And she has written a must-read book, HEALTHY HEART, HEALTHY BRAIN.I GUARANTEE you’ll think differently about your heart health after listening to this week’s episode.Dr. Doneen wastes no time in giving you practical information about life-threatening symptoms you should watch for.  We spend time talking about……the RED FLAGS for a heart attack…why the right BLOOD PRESSURE is critical for long-term health…the role of CHOLESTEROL and LIPOPROTEINS in your body…what FAT DEPOSITS in the eyes mean…and the connection between ORAL and ARTERIAL HEALTHYou’re going to get an important BIOLOGY LESSON on how all your vital organs and body systems work in concert with each other.  Dr. Doneen is going to teach you about your ARTERIAL HIGHWAY SYSTEM, how PSYCHOSOCIAL HEALTH AND BRAIN HEALTH are linked, and why it's important for those systems to function well so that you can improve your heart health.Is there a DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE this week?ABSOLUTELY!And her message is simple…If you want to LIVE LONGER, learn about your heart, and take care of it like your life depends on it.Because…it does.

This is the end my let's show. All right, welcome back to the show everybody. I am so excited to share this hour with you and my guest today. My guest today is a very special person to me. She didn't just change my life, she saved my life. And I consider her to be the smartest person that I've ever met in my life. Met saying a whole lot. She is the best in the world at what she does. And for many of you today, your life is going to be extended and improved because of her presence here today.

She's the author of the book, Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain, the personalized path to protect your memory, prevent heart attacks and strokes, and avoid chronic illness. Dr. Amy Donine, thank you for being here today. Oh, I'm so grateful to be here, Ed, and I'm so humbled by your all-too-kind comments. So thank you so much for that. You know it's true, and you guys, Amy, is my doctor. And what we're going to talk about today

is your overall wellness and health, no matter what age you are, your circulatory, your artery health, your brain, the vital organs in your body, the vessels that transmit the blood to those vessels, and obviously your heart as well. So she's the best in the world, guys, and this is going to be information you've never heard before, most of it.

So let's start out, Amy, about, let's just start basic. Let's get kind of get them above everything per second. Let's look at our overall medical health care system. How do you feel about that and where maybe some of the flaws and holes are in it and where we should be moving in terms of treating people's health and wellness? Yeah, excellent question or statement. So 20 years ago when we started this and we, I mean, Dr. Bradley Bale and myself, come to the Bale Donning Met that we've worked together for about 20 years.

And when we wrote our first book, which was published in 2014, it was all about what we learned about protecting the brain from a stroke and the heart from a heart attack. And what we've learned since then is that the same information that we had been advocating for learning about and delivering in the clinical setting was the biggest value. Ed is really about long term health and wellness, and that is the avoidance of chronic disease like dementia kidney disease peripheral vascular disease, erectile dysfunction, vision. And so when you look at the current healthcare system, you think, well, that'll protect

me from those. I mean, it must, right? But sadly, our current healthcare system, which hasn't changed in 20 years, which I'm embarrassed to say, but it's true, is still a sick care model, meaning if we have a problem, it picks us up after the fact. And if we have a heart attack, we'll get treated. If we have a stroke, we get treated by the time we're older and we get something like dementia.

Well, it's considered sort of inevitable. And there's these diseases of aging that are somehow sadly accepted in this medical system, but they don't have to be. And that's really what this book, Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain, and I'm so grateful to you. I truly am for allowing me the honor to talk to your audience because my dream is that those of us in our 50s, our 40s, our 30s really have the opportunity to realize there's things we can do right now to protect ourselves when we're 70, 80, 90. And we must an ever judge a book by its cover, you know, the idea that we may look healthy

doesn't always mean our arteries are not inflamed. And so there are tools that are cost-effective, reliable, good, strong data behind them to say we can have a different path. Yeah, I so it's the most important thing to begin with everybody is that even in my case, when I tell people, hey, you know, I've had some issues with, you know, arterial sclerosis and circulatory and inflammation in my body and they're like, you know, away. And, you know, I met Amy really, maybe it was, I guess, my late 30s, early 40s, and I wish I would have known these things in my 20s that I could have been doing to improve or prevent some of these things that happened with me that you basically,

you know, and most of my case, and, you know, honestly, it's been sort of stopped, it's been stalled, it's some cases it's even been reversed. And so let's just dive in, there's so much, I'm gonna have a gut health, brain health, you know, markers, all these other things, but first off, Amy, let's go something kind of interesting because I just think it's sort of fascinating. Little things people wouldn't know, just because I think it's a fascinating way to start on red flags for heart of track or stroke that no one in the world knows about other than you since you wrote this book.

Now, everybody can know, but like what are some of these things that no one would even ever think matter that can actually be tell-tale signs that you could have an issue now or in the future in your life. Absolutely. So red flags are things that are, they don't have a cause and effect, and I think that's important to realize.

So if you have a red flag and it's fixed, it doesn't mean the long-term risk is gonna go away. Nor do we have a clear understanding of why that red flag gives us risks down the line? So in example, there's some visual things like just looking at ourselves in the mirror. And we all have optimistic bias. So I encourage everyone to look in the mirror. And there's this interesting thing, it's called Frank's sign because the gentleman who

published it was Dr. Frank. And it was in the 70s. And basically, if you have a diagonal earlobe crease that literally is diagonal on the ear and as we get older it becomes more pronounced. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, it can be on one ear and not the other or bold. But if you have this diagonal earlobe crease, you have a 78% increase risk in your lifetime of having multi vascular disease. And it's a great, it's a great party trick, right? So I can't watch, I can't watch a television show

or a new show. It happened to me the other day, I was watching something on a baseball and the one guy came off to be a little like, oh my gosh, he has Frank signs so significantly and how am I gonna tell him that? That he needs to get assessed? So Frank sign is one. That crazy everybody, think about what you just heard right now.

With no minutes and no, Frank. And the only reason I'm laughing about it and not laughing in a weird way, but like it's so obvious. And so when you have Frank sign, then you think, well, what do I do about that? Or some others might be male pattern baldness, which men and women can have.

So frontal pridele baldness, or baldness towards the cap of the head. Those all show increased risk. So do things like kidney stones, history of gallstones, migraine headaches, for women, and pregnancy is a stress test on the human body. So pregnancy opens this wonderful opportunity to give us clues on what we might have the opportunity

to prevent down the line. So women that deal with things like preeclampsia during pregnancy, gestational diabetes, women as we move in through our life cycle of menopause and perimenopause are good cholesterol starts to fall and our bad cholesterol starts to rise and we have all these opportunities throughout our lifetime to say, hey, what about what about my health? And still sadly the healthcare system doesn't really pick us up throughout our life journey. So anyway so red flags are a wonderful tool to just

say wow I think I better go get checked out. I mean it's no one's fault if you have an earlobe creation and do that you can't go stand on your head and eat cabbage for the rest of your life and make it go away. Nor can you have plastic surgery and say well now I don't have that, so it's better. I know. It just says, I'm gonna get checked out. And so, you know, what about deposits on your eyes?

What about that? Yes, absolutely. So those are called zanthomas. So you can get little fat deposits on the areas where the skin is thin, like on the eyes, sometimes on the tendons, and they're called zanthomas, and they give us a clue that that individual may have a very dramatic lipid abnormality, even something so genetic, we call it familial hyperclestralemia.

And we advocate with our dental colleagues to look at this because if it happens at a young age and you see someone with this asking a simple question of, have you ever had your cholesterol check? And a lot of times, until someone has a problem, that's not even checked until work 50. Right, and you guys, so we're already this quick into it, you're like, oh my gosh, you're going to be sharing this with everybody. I'm telling you because not only are we going to go through some of the markers and things that you should be

monitoring at every single age, for protection of your brain, your heart, all your vital organs. Also, frankly, guys, my energy level change when I got all of these things, not all of them fixed, but when I got some of them dealt with. So we're going to cover all of that. The cool thing about Amy, guys, because you do have the best in the world here, is that you're also going to get solutions midway through and towards the end as well. So it's not just like here's markers, here's things.

There'll be things that you can do. You're going to want to show us people older than you and younger than you. So let's talk about, let's go to some stuff that I know you always check with me. It seemed to be really important to you, and I want to understand why. So let's we're going to move all over the place today. But why does blood pressure matter so much? Why are you so obsessed with my blood pressure? Number one. And what is good blood pressure? Because you go to a normal doctor, like, you're 135 over 80, you're pretty much fine or whatever it is, right? I've always been shocked by the number you want to see from me. And when I go to get a generic medical check, they're like, yeah, you're fine. And so why's blood pressure matter?

What is good? What is bad? And what can we do about it? Yeah, so great question. So I do care about your blood pressure very much. And the normal blood pressure considered normal in most circumstances is under 140 over 80. And that top number is called systolic. And the bottom number is called the diastolic. So that idea of what is normal has been challenged. And it's actually changed. There was a really well done trial called the Sprint trial, and they took people. Let's just talk about the top number per minute, who had a pressure of 140. And they pushed half the group under 120, and they followed them for five years. The trial was stopped six months early, because the data was so significant that if we can

keep our blood pressure under 120 versus under 140, we drop heart attack and stroke rates by 33 percent. And we drop all over death, like death hit by a tree struck by lightning, dying of a heart attack or struck by 25 percent. So therein lies the new normal and the sad thing is over 50% 54.5% of people over age or under age 50 rather have high blood pressure and have no clue, no clue. And so the other thing that you said on blood pressure that I think is so important for us to realize for those of us in our I'm 52, gonna be 53 soon, for those individuals who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s,

and 60s, is that at age 53, if our blood pressure is over 120 over 80, we have a significant increase risk by the time we're 70 of having lower brain volumes, and also increase risk of dementia. So part of, I believe knowledge, like knowledge is the best weapon we have. So getting educated and understanding how important it is

to check our blood pressure. And one of the things that I advocate for is how the blood pressure come in your house. I don't care if the kids ruin it, they're cheap, go buy a new one. You wanna remove the fear of checking your blood pressure because the idea of people saying, well, I have white coat hypertension, I get nervous when I come to see you and that's why I have high blood pressure. The reality is if you have it in an office, you're going

to have it at that stop light, you're going to have it at other situations in life. So, knowing what your morning blood pressure is and keep a track on that is so important. So huge. You know, everybody, when I was in my 20s, I want everyone, I want to catch every demo here. When I was in my 20s, I was so transfixed on how I felt, only how I felt, and also what I looked like. You know, did I have a six pack?

How big were my arms? What was my body felt? Was my body weight? How strong was I? And I thought that equated to my overall health and wellness. And there may be a correlation, but it's not completely connected because in me, I had some issues with insulin resistance, right? That's another thing that you're always monitoring. Kind of like the connection between insulin resistance, I think, and inflammation. And so let's talk a little about insulin resistance. What is that?

How can that be checked if I'm someone in my 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s? Why is it matter, et cetera? Absolutely. So what we're talking about with blood pressure, insulin resistance, cholesterol, gut health, psychosocial health, genetics, sleep, vitamin D deficiency. All of these things we call root causes.

Root causes actually do have a cause and effect, meaning if we identify the problem and we fix the problem, the inflammation, the arteries is gonna go down and the disease is gonna stabilize. And add 70% of people who've had a heart attack or who have significant bascular disease are insulin resistant. The challenge becomes insulin resistance is usually not discovered until someone has type two diabetes, which is the end result of the syndrome of insulin resistance, which goes on 20 years before the beta cells and

the pancreas that make insulin, they get tired. They die off. And then we have a sugar problem. But along those 20 years, the arteries are being beaten up. Why? Because the cholesterol abnormalities we have are what we call dyslipidemia. We don't have enough of the good cholesterol to help us. We have too much of the small dense LDL particle profile. That can be wrapped into something called APOB. We have high resting heart rates. We have things like hypertension because of decreased nitric oxide to the artery wall.

We have all of these things that lead to vascular disease, and ultimately by the time someone's discovered to be diabetic, what's addressed as their sugar problem, which really should be addressed as the inflammation that's gone on inside their highway system for 30 years. We have 30,000 miles of arteries in our body, 30,000. You can believe that. So those arteries feed nutrients to our brain, our eyes, our heart, our kidneys all the way

down to our toes. And so our method really is a scientific method aimed to protect the highways. I am a glorified highway worker and no one else had claimed that strategy. So it's not to compete with cardiology, neurology, nephrology, because we're very siloed in the medical system, but to be able to claim the highway system and the health of the arteries is critical. So whether the arteries are no bigger than a human hair

or some are large, like the aorta is about three centimeters in diameter. So understanding that those highways are what we need to protect and remember we can't feel the inflammation in our arteries. We have to look for it and we have to deal with it. And so anyway that's what's so interesting. Yeah. Those highways by the way, guys,

so you're like, why should we work on my highways? Well, brain health, heart health, energy, sexual performance, memory, vision. These are all things that matter, by protecting these. And this is modern day cutting edge health and wellness medical treatment, guys. Not, we're not, we're not covering,

they get your HDL and LDL checked. Guys, that's 1983, right? And so let's talk a little bit about markers. Okay, does cholesterol matter? Most people when they get a lab done at any age, I got HDL of 52 and my LDL is 130 and the ratio is good. I'm kind of cool. What would you say? What would you tell us about the role,

the good in the bad role, cholesterol plays in our body? And is it that big of a telling marker for any eventual brain deterioration or heart disease in somebody, which should be measuring and does it really matter? Yeah, great question. So one thing to lead into the answer to that question is absolutely plus

throw matters, but it's gotten way too much attention over the years. Matter of fact, it has claimed ownership of heart health. And while it's important, it's one of many things that are important. So back in 1948, there was something called the Framingham Risk Profile that was developed and literally they took the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, isn't very diverse, by the way, and said, hey, who in this town's having a heart attack? And they develop a screening profile that I'm here to tell you has not changed since 1948. And here it is.

We take our age, our gender, our smoking status, our total cholesterol, good cholesterol, systolic blood pressure. We throw that in a fancy equation, and then I'm to tell you, Ed, you have less than whatever percentage of risk over the next 10 years of having an event. So here's the problem. 60% of people who have a heart attack have normal cholesterol, normal cholesterol. And while it matters, yes, it's not LDL that gets all the attention. Yes, we want LDL in control,

but the profile of our lipids, like the ratio of the triglyceride to HDL. If that's over 3.5, that individual's insulin resistant, I don't care if they're an Olympic athlete, how old they are, how young they are, they're an Olympic athlete how old they are how young they are how wide They are how narrow they are doesn't matter. They are on the path Towards diabetes and those arteries are being beaten up things like triglyceride to HDL That is actually the most predictive and we need that ratio to stay under 3.5 if it jumps up of our 3.5

We aim the risk of oxidation of those lipids within the artery wall. You know, 99% of plaque grows in the artery wall. That's why we don't feel it. We only feel it when it starts to misbehave, and that's through other inflammatory cascades. So if plaque decides to rupture through the artery wall, it's like a think about like a garden hose. And a garden hose, you know, you've got water flowing through the garden hose. And if the hose integrity itself is compromised, you don't feel it until it has a problem, right? You don't feel that until it has a problem. And traditional medicine it has a problem, right? You don't feel that until it has a problem. And traditional medicine looks here.

So you go take a stress test because perhaps you have a family history. Do you know that a stress test is only abnormal? If you have a 70% blocked artery, however, 86% of heart attacks occur in vessels that are 70% included. So we now have the tools to actually look at the arteries noninvasively safely to say, hey, what's going on in there? And give us insight into the health of the hoset's cephal. And if the hose is starting to show fatty streaks or signs of inflammation, then what do we do? We say, well, why? Like, what is it? Is it your lipid profile? Is it blood pressure? Is it sleep? Is it psychosocial vitamin D? Pariodontal? And why is it? Because if we don't deal with the why and treat the why and see the inflammation go down, those highways are going to be compromised.

And the little ones happen right under our noses. So when you think about something as common as erectile dysfunction, which is inability to get or maintain an erection, that has to do with fast-fueler flow. That's why these treatments that are out there by Agri LaVitra, Seattle is, which actually are base of dilators work. But the reality is these individuals that are dealing with it

need to appreciate the fact that it's, that's the symptom of an underlying compromised highway system. Gosh. See, women. Oh, sorry. No, I want you. I was going to ask you about women.

You're reading each other's minds because we work together. So please go to women. Well, I was just going to say women, there's a bias here, because sadly, one of the first, so if a male is dealing with erectile dysfunction, and there's a lot of complexity with libido relationships and all of that related to sexual satisfaction and sexual health, but true inability

to get or maintain a wretched is a vast killer flow issue, period. Women, unfortunately, don't, we don't have an organ in the middle of our body that stops working if we have micro vascular complications or, you know, criness of that. So what are our first signs? Memory loss, vision changes, kidney disease, peripheral vascular disease. It's, it is not fair. And so, that's why I get so fired up every February when it's women's heart month because I want everyone to stand up and take notice that there are these clums throughout our lifetime through prior to pregnancy, pregnancy, parimenopause and menopause that we can say,

gosh, I'm not sleepy and I'm not feeling well or I've got these other red flags or perhaps some new causes and did it dealt with now so it doesn't lead into problems down the line. That's why I wanted to ask you because about that. Yeah, I know. And I want all the women listening to this is like, you know what, ladies, you're always the last to care for yourself at every age. And you maybe listen, go and listen, I'm 31 years old, I go to the gym, I'm 38 years old, I feel great. Wouldn't it be a shame

to almost become what I was, which is that I worked all my life on eating pretty well, lifting weights, working out, working on my mind, doing all the work that I know so many of you do because you're so much like me. I built the dream, so you have this dream. I built the dream life. I had the house and the family and the contribution, I had all that stuff.

And by the time I arrived there, I was a ticking time bomb to even have any time to enjoy it. And so there I wish at 31 when I was going to the gym, that I started to do these things that we're describing today and these markers and gave myself the self-care. Most of you dudes aren't doing it either,

but ladies, you're always last. It's always taking care of your spouse. It's always then your children. It's always work. It's always everyone else. And then there's nothing left for you. And so, these things really matter to everyone, but particularly the ladies that are listening to this, the causes of the amount

of women passing from heart disease is a staggering number. And so let's go to you step period on a disease a little bit. So there's things when I met Amy. She's like, let me look at your ears. Let me look at your eyes. I'm going to I don't just measure your cholesterol. I'm going to measure your small particle, your big particle, which is what most people never do. Guys, just look, we're probably not going to have time to cover a lot of that today. It's not just generic cholesterol. There's different particles that Amy measures.

But then there was this issue with my gums and the correlation there that I was also not in good shape with. I had pretty teeth and I think pretty good breath and all of that stuff and I went to a dentist pretty somewhat regularly. Actually, probably not regularly enough, but I had never really had these tests done that can be indicative of underlying issues in your artery health. So can you talk to that a little bit? Oh, I absolutely will. I'm going to circle back to women really quick and then I'll go to a period on all. So what you said at is so important when you talked about women because when there was a study by a woman named Dr. McSweeney and she took women women who were in the hospital with a heart attack and she said, what do you feel like now and what did you feel like a month

ago? The symptoms a month ago were things that we all deal with, like fatigue, anxiety, not sleeping well. Symptoms at the time of the heart attack were GI upset, unexplained anxiety. All these things that we can justify and actually prevent the entry into the ER later. So oftentimes women end up in the ER later in the process and are at risk for more damage

because they just present later, you know, later because their symptoms aren't classic. With that being said, unfortunately, when you think about stroke, and in our book, I talk about these women, Nikki, Camille, Julie, who all in their 30s had strokes and heart attacks, and the recidivism, which means they have another one, is extremely high, matter of fact, young women.

Under the age of 44, have the highest rate of recidivistic stroke. Why? Yeah, because what happens is these women have these weird symptoms or let's say a stroke symptom or a heart attack and they don't have any obvious risk factors so they leave with the diagnosis of what's called cryptogenic stroke and that's a

fancy way to say we don't know. You don't have a hole in your heart, you don't have a fit, you have no blockages. We really know. So if this happens again, come back sooner. An example of that, I'll just be quick on this, but it's so powerful. We spoke about her in the first book and brought her up again in the second. Her name is Camille, who at 42 years old had gone into her doctor. Okay.

So she went in for a physical and she talks about this very, very articulately. She says, he had a fancy coat. I sat down and I told him I had some shortness of breath and I was kind of anxious. And so I even said, based on my family history, I hope I'm not, you know, at risk for heart attack. And so she said, he sat there on a fancy iPad

and made a calculation and he said, I've got great news for you. You have less than 1% chance of having a heart attack. And she said, oh my gosh, that's great. And being most of us, she says, well, that means I have a 99% chance of not having a heart attack. Awesome. I'm out of here, right? So he did say to her, you need to lose weight

and she thought to herself, I've been trying my whole life, like I've been trying my whole life, like thank you for telling me the obvious. And so, so she leaves and she goes to work. And now the now the shortness of breath and anxiety is leading to chest discomfort and she literally says to herself, I just left the doctor's office. I can't be having a heart attack. Like this is weird. And so finally, finally, she gets to the ER. They leave her in the ER for like way too long. And then she, they measure what they do, enzymes, the micigin, they say, oh my gosh, you're having a heart attack. To the cath lab, she goes, she wakes up and they say, Camille, next time this happens, you better get here sooner. Oh my god. That was the advice. And that's when I met Camille when she was 42. Now it's

been over a decade since she's had her heart attack and she's great. And there's other people in the book, Nikki, Julie, who had two heart attacks at the age of 37 and was told she had pneumonia and she didn't even have, she didn't even have a, anyway my point is women are under recognized and the recidivism rates are terrible. So then going to the other root causes that you mentioned periodontal disease, absolutely, you know in 2012 the American Heart Association and the American Associ Association and the American Association of Periodontology, which is the focus of the gum health, said what goes on here is associated with here, but they fail to state causality.

And if you don't state causality, it gives you permission for apathy, right, in the medical world. So, why was that true? Because the diagnostics of peridonal disease don't include the pathogens. So they include things like bleeding guns or pocket depths of a certain millimeter, et cetera, et cetera. But what we did in 2017 is published a paper to say, well, we're seeing it clinically like what is this?

And so with the help of colleagues like Dr. Tom Neighbors and others, Dr. Bradley Bale and I published a paper that looked at the bacteria that cause periodontal disease. And ultimately it's the bacteria that have, there's five of them, AAPG, TFTD and F and those bacteria have an effect on the health of our gums, but more importantly, they actually can cause oxidative stress and trapping of cholesterol in the artery wall and vascular inflammation. So identifying the bacteria, even before someone has gum laws, and dealing with the bacteria to prevent things like even dementia, now they've identified PG, a bacteria that lives

in the gum line associated with amyloid beta plaquing in the brain. So imagine if you're a child, and you've got this bacteria because you've got it from your parents, and it's a household contractile bacterial infection. And a child is dealing with that their whole life. And then you bring on life like COVID for kids who have had more screen time than ever before obesity rates going up

type 2 diabetes, rocketing in a younger generation. And something as simple as periodonal disease, which is a family disease, is also going on. You add all these things together and you realize that these young individuals of really just based on their genetics and their environment are set up for vascular disease and they're not going to be picked up until they have an event. Every single person in our book that's had an event, they were, as I said earlier, they're shocked and they were missed. And that's the one thing on children. So guys, in about three minutes, we're going to transition a little bit into some solution

and supplements and some different things. But I want to stay on the kid part of it for a second. This bacteria that is in your gums, you should go get checked for everybody, but it can start when someone is a child. So, so people, we have any of should go get checked for everybody, but it can start when someone is a child. So, so should people, we have any of their kids get checked for this bacteria? And then secondly, you've had me with my kids. There's now genetic testing that can be done as well. That can, this is for your children, everybody, and yourself, but this is nothing. Most people are not aware of that they should be aware of. So let's talk a little bit about should the kids get tested for this bacteria and genetic testing that may be really important to know about yourself,

but maybe even more important for your children. Yeah, I'm a fan, yes. I think that the best prevention starts at a younger age, right? In Chinese philosophy and medicine, there's a saying that says, the best medical provider, the best medical provider, prevents the disease. The mediocre medical provider prevents the progression of disease

and the optimal, or the provider who treats end-stage disease is actually the less aggressive in a sense. So our system is flipped on that, obviously. So the younger age we can find things, and you know it's recommended now that kids at age six get their cholesterol checked. So if there's a family history of anything, insulin resistance, diabetes, heart disease, periodontal disease, any of this, the younger we find out, the more time we have to kick someone

off that path, because most people don't want to be on medicine and I respect that. But when someone has vascular disease, the horse is out of the barn and we need to make sure that vascular disease is halted. And so we can catch people at a young age before they develop vascular disease. How awesome is that? Yeah, right. What about the genetic testing? Should should people have that done for their children? Well, I think we should start with ourselves first. Absolutely. And there's genes, genes do a number of things. One, genes tell us our lifetime risk. Like the heart attack gene, we name something on 9K21,

50% of us have it. And if you have it, it was significant increase risk of developing heart disease, regardless, increase risk of developing aneurysm risk, regardless of cholesterol, right? So something like that helps us. There's other information with genes like pharmacogenetics that can help us be more precise in our treatment selection.

So we can look at, there's an enzyme system in our liver called the cytochrome P450. And it basically, it's a guidebook to say, you know, if you're a slow metabolizer through a certain pathway, why would we use a med when to say, you know, if you're a slow metabolizer through a certain pathway, why would we use a med when there's lots of other options that you would tolerate better? So, pharmacogenetics is one, and then the other is even on lifestyle. So, like, you go to the bookstore and you say, oh my gosh, I have heart disease in my family. I need to be healthy. And you open one book and it says, you should do keto. You open another book and it says, nope, you should do, eat nothing with the face or

a mother, right? Or another book, you know, you go through these things. And when you read them in isolation, they all have value. They absolutely do. But based on our genetics, like the apoe gene and haptic lobe, and we can appreciate how our body processes things like fats, carbohydrates, alcohol, how we respond to exercise, does gluten provide an inflammatory source of something called zonulin, has nothing to do with an allergy. So, so when I, when someone says to me, what diet should I do? I say, I don't know. Let's check your genes because I want to be very specific

in what I'm going to recommend. From an inflammatory standpoint, and you've had Dr. Ian Smith on the show before, and the idea of a narrowed food window, I believe very strongly is critical from an inflammatory standpoint. It even reduces systolic, diastolic blood pressure, reduces some of the inflammatory markers I measure, like HSCRP. It reduces the family of inter-bookins. So from an inflammatory standpoint, I think we were wrong for a long time. I really do. I think we were wrong when we said wake up, break your fasting, small frequent regular meals all the time.

Now with Jason Fung's work and others in the field of intermittent fasting from an inflammatory standpoint, I'm a tremendous fan. See, that's so fast. You and I were talking about this this morning as well when we were going through some of my stuff. And that is sort of the consensus guys on my show. So whether it was Dr. Ian Smith or David Sinclair, who's the anti-aging sort of guru out of Harvard,

and now the person that I trust the most on the planet, shorter feeding windows, if you wanna call it intermittent fasting, or reduced feeding windows seem to have almost a consensus now, at least as it regards inflammation. And so that was my question was about intermittent fasting. My next question, solution-wise, is what are some of the best and worst supplements that people can or are taking for artery health? Yeah, good question. So the lowest hanging fruit, I would say one that actually is a root cause is vitamin D deficiency.

So vitamin D is very, deficiency is very common. And when you look at that, and I'm a skeptic in heart, so when I first started measuring vitamin D, I was like, everyone is low, like this is, who's pushing this data, right? But the guidelines for the FDA were originally designed to prevent rickets. So we'll pass that now in this day and age. So when we look at vitamin D deficiency, why does it matter? It matters because low vitamin D levels, really when they start to chunk down under 35, 30, what we see is an increase in something called asymmetrical dimethylarginine or and it reduces nitric oxide to the artery wall and can actually create

oxidation and cholesterol trapping within the artery wall itself. So it gets my attention. Low vitamin D also increases HSC or P. So as far as what the perfect level is, I'm not really sure. I'm a little more conservative. When people are treated for something like seasonal effective disorder, I know my psychology colleagues are pushing them to 80 and 90. For me personally, if I can get my patients to around 50 to 60, there's a real posity of data that by the time you're there, it's probably not associated with cardiovascular implications. So with the bias, I usually like to see people around 50 to 60 just because the data wanes at that point to say that it's a risk factor.

What do you like about the soil, things like that? Yeah, so fish oil, depending on someone's Able wheat genotype, depending on their lipoprofile, I'm a huge fan of Omega 3, which is a combination of EPA and DHA. So, I do measure Omega 3 levels, and if someone is low, I want to get them at a therapeutic level, absolutely, because we know Omega 3 has anti-inflammatory qualities. There's been a couple studies that have challenged that hypothesis, but they're now looking at them. Actually, it was published about two days ago

that showed that it might have been the placebo arm or the treatment arm that actually allowed some skewing of the data, which is always something intuitively that you think, really, this doesn't match. But anyway, yes, I'm a huge fan of omega-3. And if someone's in api-4 that doesn't process fat very well, I keep them at lower doses, like at one gram. If someone has a high triglyceride level, we use it at higher levels. So vitamin D,

omega-3, antioxidants, like vitamin C is extremely powerful. Things like vitamin K2 from an insulin-resistant standpoint, burbering is a great anti-diabetic agent and weight loss agent. So there are lots of supplements that I use proactively and some that I shy away from because they really, while it sounds great on paper, may not have the cardiovascular impact or may interact with other things that I'm using.

So I really just like to know what someone's on and look at the data. Okay, so that's great. So what about this? Is there anything someone's doing lifestyle wise that you definitively know is pushing them further towards the lack of brain health, the lack of heart health, any artery issues. Is there something definitive? Lifestyle was, if you're doing this, you're doing something you shouldn't be doing. Yeah, good question. So, when we use the word lifestyle, often think we think diet and

exercise, that's it, end of story. But one that's not talked about enough is psychosocial health. So, if we use, and I know in in your work Ed, you've been so proactive on this, and I'm so respectful of the work you do on this, positivity and optimism, but if we use in my world the definition of to be in an environment for which we perceive a lack of control, that sense of lack of control is unifying because everybody is different.

If you told someone, unlike you, to get on a stage in front of thousands of individuals, it may cause an anxiety for you, you feel incomplete control, right? So it's very different for each individual, but if we feel that sense of lack of control, things happen in the human body. These little amygdala that are almond-shaped centers in the brain start firing and they're telling you to get out of there because we are made to run from tigers and lions and bears, right? So, but if you can't get out of there, what happens? So when the amygdala fire, things from an inflammatory standpoint start to happen. The brain tells the bone marrow to produce inflammatory monocytes, monocytes, then can trap cholesterol and get it into the artery wall.

And we're kind of off to the races. So then we say, well, if that's true, if I feel, and I can't change it, let's say, let's say you're in a job that absolutely causes you a sense of feeling about a control. You have a bad boss or coworker that just makes you feel you don't have control of your environment. Do you leave?

Well, that all sounds good in theory, but it's not always possible. So how do we deal with it? The only way that I think from a non medical standpoint would be to change our perception of control. So how do we per change our perception, right? It's about using things like mindfulness, which you talk about so well. And in your new book that really talked about just

make one small step, just jump over these broad blocks like like like gain a perception of control in your life, right? And when you and and this is the other thing, the perception could be wrong. But if you feel it's correct, those are made look calm down, right? And then we get less inflammation within the artery wall things like optimism Do you know optimism reduces cardiovascular risk long-term? They even looked at there was a made analysis of 15 studies and they followed these people for 14 years And do you know that individuals that practice mindfulness and really dealt with their psychosocial health? Cardiovascular events were reduced 35 percent. Stappens reduced cardiovascular risk 35 percent. So I really, to me, mental health is absolutely

as important as cholesterol, blood pressure, sleep, insulin resistance, everything else we've talked about. So I'm a huge fan of appreciating our reality. So what I'm hearing is you need to read healthy heart, healthy brain, and then you need to read the power of one more and you're really good to go. So that's what I like. Yeah, I like that. So a couple of things on, it's just like hidden stuff. I always want to give people that they don't realize.

So like pro protein little a, let's talk about that for a second. Oh, good one. Yeah. So when I had Bob Harper on my show, who is one of the fittest guys in the world was the host of what was the show called biggest loser, wonderful man. And I asked him, I said, just curious, did you have your lipoprotein little A test? He goes, well, not before, but afterwards, holy smokes, right? And I said, well, kind of me a little bit too. This is just so even when I say that term, 99 out of 100 people have no idea what I'm talking

about. But when you address that a little bit, and is there a correlation between that and artery issues, so to speak? Yes, absolutely. So thanks for bringing that up. So we've known about life approaching day for 20 years. It's a genetically inherited lipid abnormality. People don't cause it by eating wrong or not exercising enough. It is genetic. It's found on chromosome number six and about 23 to 24% of people with heart disease have it. Sadly, it's not part of the guidelines. So people don't get checked for it, but it's becoming part of the guidelines. Matter of fact, in November of 2021, finally, the American Heart Association made a formal statement that said, hey, we should probably check for this. And Bob Harper has been with huge respect of his

story, very vocal, and actually has dealt with the American Heart and Diabetic. So this thing is 2009 was the president of the MHLBI National Health Lung and Blood Institute, which oversees American Heart and American Diabetic. So this thing is causal. We need to start measuring it fast forward to 2022 and still people don't know about it, but why is it so bad? Like a protein A, basically in an oversimplified form is an abnormal protein code that fits around the bad cholesterol, causing it to get into the artery wall and oxidize on a dime.

So it can get that fatty streak development going at a very, very young age. That's one thing. The other thing is the body recognizes it as something it needs to attack. So it places people in a pro thrombotic state. So if someone was to get a plaque rupture or that garden hose integrity was impacted, they are very, very good about forming a clot, and if that clot wants to go and block an artery in the heart, we'll call it a heart attack.

It wants to block and the brain will call it a stroke. The third thing that we know about lipoprochinate is it can also cause bowel problems in the heart. So I think everybody should get checked for lipoproachingate, everybody. And if you have it, there are treatments available right now, things like vitamin B3, which has been around forever, is effective. There's new drugs in the pipeline in stage three clinical trials, anti-sense meds that are designed to particularly lower it. So, science is finally catching up,

but I appreciate you bringing that up because if you don't have it, you're not going to catch it. So, just check for it. And it's a $25 test. It's not expensive. So, by the way, everyone, I just want to say on it, you're welcome so far because I promised you in the beginning, you would be hearing things that you've never heard before. And somewhere throughout this interview,

the entire conversation or definitely parts of it is new information for you that, by the way, can I just ask everyone please share this, share this with young people, share this with people that are middle age, share this with old people because there's stuff in here that can save lives and change lives both. And so I know for you, speaking of lives, that when

I met you, your passion level for this work, I like to work with the best. I want to find people that have the most passion for their mission in their life. And when I met you, I went, oh, I've met this prodigy. I've met this, I've met the best. I literally, by the way, she was introduced to me this way too. I've met the best. And then when I got to know him, my gosh, she loves her work. But then to add on to that, I want to talk about your dad a little bit because this hits home for you as it relates to sort of brain health and memory loss and why this matters so much. So talk a little bit about your dad.

And then also what he did or didn't do that potentially put him unfortunately in the situation that he found himself in later in his life if you don't mind. Yeah, thanks for bringing him up. He was an amazing man. I described him the book and him in the book as a gentle giant. So unlike my five foot three frame, he was six point6 foot five, lived life big and was big and and gave the best hugs ever. So I dearly missed my father. But the irony of the situation at is that while we were writing this book, I was losing him and I was losing him via memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer's. And I think his father, my grandfather also had

dementia and Alzheimer's. They actually died, both died at age of 79, which is way too young. So then when you think, what did he do or what could he have done differently to protect him and what can I do and what can my brother do to make sure it's not an inevitable end point. So I think the biggest thing is education. What we know now, our parents didn't know. They didn't know that periodontal disease was a problem. They didn't know about sleep apnea. They didn't know about the huge effects. My dad

smoked for 40 years. He did quit, but he smoked for 40 years. It was cool when he did it, right? It was a different time of life. So all of these things, and there's medicine that protects the brain, that he didn't have access to, that we have access to. So as I told and I tell my dear, dear brother Brian who's a spitting image of my dad, they're both giants. It's not going to happen to you because we know more now than we did then. And yeah, what's that medication? I mean, I know everyone's saying they're ask her what that medication is. What is that? Yeah. So the same meds that stabilize plaque in the artery wall protect our brain from micro vascular disease. Because remember, as I said earlier, all arteries are built the same. All of them. They have a lumen. They have a thin wall called the endothelium,

right? Which if I took all the endothelial cells out of your body and lay them out flat, add you to about 5, 10, or so to the surface area. So there's meds that help those cells seal, so we don't get penetration. And then also we can stop the trapping of dangerous inflammatory apobie in the artery wall. So things like statins when used appropriately reduced dementia risk by 36 percent, ACE inhibitors, and nitric oxide delivery mechanisms reduce brain memory loss. Things as simple as baby aspirin also show data to protect the brain. Things that also really protect the brain are appropriate sleep patterns, right? If we think about sleep for a minute when we think about brain health,

and this was a huge one for my father, huge. He refused much to me, I pushing to get even a sleep study. And then when he did have a sleep study, he didn't really want to believe it. And I'm not blaming him. It's just the reality of it. But think about this, we can live about a month without food. We can live about three days without water. We can only live about two minutes without air. And when you think about that and you think when we do a sleep study on somebody, we're looking for hypoxic time frames. And if someone just doesn't breathe at least five times an hour, the risk of having a heart attack or stroke or dying from one and getting dementia and brain deficiency is too full to hire than the next. And that's at the most mild form of sleep apnea. Most people, when they get checked, they're tired during the day. They have headaches, they aren't sleeping well. They may have hypoxic episodes 30, 40 times an hour, and they've dealt with this through

a lifetime. So the arteries, the hypoxia, over the year just beats us up. So when I think about protecting the brain, it's about eating right, it's about sleeping, it's about our emotional health, it's about getting proper oxygen called air. Narrow food window has data. Getting treatment if you have arterial disease to keep it in the artery wall where it belongs and don't let it misbehave. And sometimes medicines are necessary for that wing use appropriately.

Thank you for honoring your dad and using that story to help so many other people. I know a lot of the people listen this are familiar with me and just so you know the kind of the final frontier for me is sleep and Amy's been on me for a long time to get my sleep study done and I've used my busyness and my book and my podcast and my TV show and all the other things as an excuse and just about 20 minutes before we went on air, I made a comment during this month, I'm going to do my sleep study because even hearing you say it now is a little bit different for me. I hear it now like as a listener to my show as opposed to my doctor saying it to me and it's made an even bigger impact on me. So thank you for that. I promised you all that today would be incredible and I'm going to have one last question here, but I want to do first of all, I want to thank you for saving my life. And I want to thank you for loving what you do so much that you keep growing. You keep researching. You you do what everybody

who's the best in the world that's the go to what they do does, which is that you're never satisfied. You keep wanting to grow. You keep her. You when you're as brilliant as aiming, it would be very easy not to be a curious person. And she's curious, she wants to learn, even when I bring her ideas, I'm like, I just read this article, we read it, she's never like, oh, I, sure, I'll read it at it. Maybe I can learn something from that.

And so there's a lesson in greatness from Amy also, everybody, which is that, no matter how good you get at what you do, that you should still remain and have a high level of curiosity and humility about yourself so that you can continue to be great at what you do that you should still remain and have a high level of curiosity and humility about yourself so that you can continue to be great at what you do. And you do that. Thank God. And I love you and I'm so grateful for you. I can only say one person has saved my life, like saved my life and you're listening to her today, guys. So I probably didn't ask you

something today I should have. And so I want wanna leave the last question sort of open to you. What did I not ask you about brain health, wellness, heart health, anything I miss today that someone listening this goes, man, I wish you would have asked that. Or there's this other thing left in this huge brain of hers. And by the way, we've tapped the surface, get the book number one.

And then, you know, we've only gone about 1% into this magnificent brain that she has. But what should I have asked you that I did, and what would you want to share that we missed today? Gosh, I think I'll say, I'll end kind of with this one. The more we know, the more we don't know. And so it's a constant quest of understanding and understanding the mechanisms of the gut brain access

and gut health and gut dyspiosis and inflammation. I feel we're just starting to tap the surface of that. There's so many things we're learning. Even air pollution now, we put on what we call the root cause element where we can prove that these small air particulates have an effect on what we call the pathogenic triads. So as we learn more and as brilliant scientists produce the data that we learn from, we can bring it to clinical practice. And you know, when I ask people, everyone I have the honor to meet clinically, I say, what do you, what is your definition of optimal

health? Like what is it? Some people say I'm going to climb Mount Everest. That means I'm healthy. Some people say, well, I'm healthy if I'm never on a medication. I hear that a lot. Some people say, and the majority people say what I would say, and that is I want to be independent my whole life. I want to drive my own car.

I want to open my own door. I want to think with my own brain. I want to see. I want to drive my own car. I want to open my own door. I want to think with my own brain. I want to see I want to hear and and with that appreciation that that's ultimately the majority of people that I have the honor to see what we're talking about now. Optimism using genetics to guide our diet, getting a sleep assessment, sleeping well, taking care of our mouth, watching our cholesterol, being attentive of our blood pressure. All of those things can allow us to do that long-term and we all have optimistic bias. We all do. It's called, it's called being human. So, if you look in the mirror tonight, you see those little earlobe preces, say, wow, I would have gone get checked out. So get educated and start there and start the process. So that would be kind of maybe we should,

that would be I want people to understand that it's a treatable condition. You just need to identify it. Thank God for you. And by the way, everything from the gum disease that we talked about, I'm glad you added gut health there at the end as well because that probably was the missing piece of the different things we didn't cover today, so gut health matters as well.

You guys need to go get healthy, heart healthy brain by Dr. Amy Doni. That's what you need to go do. And then after you're doing that, go buy the power of one more and other time and share it with somebody. Then my book, and I have to tell you all that I know today, I'm so grateful that we did this today. And then we did it in this time. And I'm so glad that millions and millions of people get to get exposed to your work and that I actually had a tiny part in doing it because I believe so deeply in what today's topic was you guys. This is why I do the show is to bring you people and information that you probably otherwise might not get access to in a way that can really change your life or the change the life of people that you love your parents, your children, and anybody that you care about. So please share

today's show Amy, thank you for today. It was remarked. Thank you. Thank you. I'm honored to be here. Thanks, Ed. I knew it was going to be great, but then you did it again. You did even more of it. I knew you were capable of doing. So it's going to be great, but then you did it again. You did even more than I knew you were capable of doing. So it's going to be awesome, guys. Share this with everybody. I want to tell you to God bless you and to continue to max out your life and do one more. Take care. This is The End My Let's Show.

You