First off, doctors don't know shit when it comes to chronic disease. They are slaves to standards of care that don't work. In terms of the heart they will focus on LDL which has a very insignificant correlation with heart disease.
Heart disease is actually a metabolic condition generally brought about by a diet high in grains, sugar and vegetable oils that leads to insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia, which is a disease state. Every chronic disease (cancer, CVD, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's/dementia, etc.) is highly correlated with high insulin levels. Few doctors will ever test your fasting insulin levels because there's no money in putting someone on a proper diet so it's never become a standard of care.
There's an easy test for insulin resistance and that's the triglyceride/HDL ratio. Anything under 2 and you're doing okay. Under 1.0 would be much better. Check your last lipid profile and I'll bet yours is high. The solution is adopting a low carb or even better, a Carnivore diet. You want to stop eating foods that either wreak metabolic havoc (vegetable oils) or raise blood sugar and produce an insulin response - carbs, grains and sugar. Your cells need to regain their insulin sensitivity and they do that by not eating foods crap. It's like an alcoholic that acquires a tolerance for alcohol, it takes ever increasing amounts of alcohol to get a high because his cells have become resistant to alcohol. He can't recover unless he goes cold turkey... low carb with and intermittent fasting program is a great way to achieve this. Don't worry about saturated fat or cholesterol, they're red herrings.
Also you get your ferritin levels checked. High levels of iron in the blood are hugely correlated with the same diseases as insulin resistance. Ferritin over 200 is concerning. Mine was 600 when I first found out about that. A person with ferritin that high had a median age of death of 55 according to a Scandinavian study. Two years of frequent blood donation got it under 100, where the median age of death was well into the 80s.
At the risk of repeating myself, be very suspicious of a doctor's advice. If heart disease was caused by LDL we'd have heart disease licked because we have several drugs that are very good at lowering LDL yet heart disease remains the number one killer of Americans. It's not LDL. I recommend reading about heart disease at Dr. Malcolm Kendrick's blog and reading his 60-some odd posts on "What Causes Heart Disease". He documents quite well the failings of medicine today for heart disease and a number of other topics. I highly recommend it.
You covered everything I wanted to say. I'm a carnivore aged 70 and never felt better. Blood pressure great, trig/HDL ratio great. My doctor, who was adamantly opposed to this has to admit I'm at least a decade younger and more active than I was 18 months ago. Med school teaches doctors to treat symptoms, not address root causes. I am hopeful that MAHA will turn things around for most Americans.
Thank you for saying that; I attempted to tell that to my mom’s doctor who looked at me like I was crazy. They have her on Warfarin and I test her INR weekly at home. Unfortunately she trusts them so we stick with the doctor’s recommendations. It is infuriating to me. BTW, she doesn’t have and never did have high blood pressure. She is 87 and both of us have blood pressure about 115/65 and always have been that low.
My dad had every chronic condition in the book, it was hard to see. He wouldn't take my advice because he trusted his doctor and am notable in that I tend to distrust conventional wisdom. So I was talking to Mom one day and she said at Dad's last checkup his doctor was really pleased because his LDL was "great". Said he was going to live quite a few more years. Dad was dead in 2 weeks from a heart attack.
I blame myself a bit because I couldn't figure out a way to get my knowledge across without getting pushback. He didn't want to hear it so I stopped pushing even though I've seen all the data. It's really frustrating.
I am so sorry; it is very difficult especially when our parents have spent their entire lives trusting doctors. I have never trusted them and it is a constant struggle for me.
Don't beat yourself up Bob, since equine were mentioned you know the saying, you can't make them drink. I'm sorry for your loss but the information you share may help someone else.
My doctor is parroting my high LDL count and keeps whipping out the Academy of Heart Health calculator to prove his point I’m going to die within 15 years
Mr Muse: I am not a physician or physical advisor of any kind. My sincere advice to you is to walk, walk, then walk some more. Ask your doctor how much is possible. Walking is one of the finest low intensity cardio workouts known to man. If you can walk a 1000 steps each day for a week, try 1500 steps each day the next week. If you can get to about 5000 steps at least five days a week, I believe some of your symptoms will recede. Please consult your physician before starting and stop if you feel any pain.
If i am going to follow your progress i need to know 1 thing you dont mention that matters a great deal in heart health: did you take 1 or more jabs?? I know you may choose to not answer. But if you do ill know you are being completely honest. Thanks. BTW, we are in Lake Highlands.
First of all, praise God you're still with us, Alex! My own journey of accountability involves my weight. Four years ago I underwent gastric sleeve surgery, and have lost a whopping 125 lbs. I've probably regained only about 10, I suspect because of my cold brew with 2 shots of mocha and cold foam. Still, for me it has been amazing! My other health issues have always been endocrine. I have a rare, chronic illness: Addison's disease. JFK had it. There's a big story there in self advocating. I'm alive today because I research and I push.
I'm not very wearable health tech savvy. RFK Jr. has mentioned wearables. I appreciate your being open about this to share knowledge. That being said, how's the best way to make use of wearable health tech while protecting privacy? Could you write a Substack article about that?
Thanks for sharing. You were fortunate to get the wake-up call in a place where you could act on it. Take care of yourself, dammit, we need your voice.
I am a retired physician, an anesthesiologist with multiple years in the open heart room. What I learned in medical school turned out to be frequently wrong, senseless and useless. As an example we measure blood pressure as a proxy for perfusion. When blood pressure is high, a pill is occasionally the answer but the real problem to solve is why the blood pressure is high? In your case, a clot blocking blood from exiting your left ventricle. The body attempts to keep perfusing the brain with arterial constriction elsewhere in the body, measured on your arm. Make sense? What isn't being perfused is often the answer, or occasionally an endocrine problem or similar pipe problems. I can wholeheartedly recommend a physician who also writes on Substack. She goes by the nom de guerre of The Midwestern Doctor and her "blog" is called "The Forgotten Side of Medicine". A tremendous resource. Use it. best of luck to you. You're a tremendous resource on your own. be well
I also live in North Dallas and have followed you for awhile. I am so sorry about this and will pray for you. I, too, had a health scare at Thanksgiving. Fought a persistent bladder infection for over a year. Antibiotic resistant bugger. Underwent a bladder cauterization. In the healing process went to ER with severe back pain. A CTscan revealed a mass in my kidney. After testing diagnosed with ccRCC, clear cell Renal Cell carcinoma. Never found cause of pain but did find cancer. Long story short, I had a radical nephrectomy 2 weeks ago and am recovering. At this point nothing more is needed except monitoring. I am 69 and have always taken my health for granted. Come from an athletic family, long lived, no genetic illnesses, and still very active in tennis. Still struggling to absorb cancer and as yet to absorb no kidney. Firmly believe God poked His finger in my back and sent me to ER. Early detection may have saved my life. Now on to paying attention to what I put in my body and what God wants for me. Health is priority for me. I pray your journey puts you back to excellent health so you can continue your good work. God bless.
If there's a fountain of youth, it's losing significant weight (I'll define that as north of 50 lb) as a, uh, seasoned person. But you got yourself in deeper stuff than I managed; all the best. Don't want to be a downer, but the first 20 lb is the easiest. Be forewarned.
Whether it is attributed to Churchill or Reagan, the old saying “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man” is true!
Wishing you a complete recovery and recapture of your heart health. Your children need you and the rest of us need your thinking and writing to continue. Wishing you the very best, Mark Mauriello
My husband’s job means he sits in an office all day every day and a bad diet due to Doordash, and so a year ago he had a heart attack and two bypasses. He was sent home with 23 prescriptions for his heart and type 2 diabetes. We looked at all the side effects and immediately tossed about 20 of them. He kept the baby aspirin, nitro, and oxycontin. He only took 3 or 4 of the oxy for pain and then it was tossed. Eventually he gave up the aspirin in favor of a supplement called pycnogenol. The nitro is on hand, just in case. In the meantime I checked every alternative medicine I could find. He’s been taking berberine for glucose control, nattokinase, lumbtokinase, along with a handful of other supplements. He takes vitamins, exercises regularly, and eats a ketogenic diet that limits him to around 25 grams of carbs per day. Here are the people we recommend: A Midwestern Doctor (Substack), Dr. Ken Berry, Dr. Ralph LaGuardia (on Substack), Dr. Pierre Kory (Substack), authors Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz, Dr. Joe Mercola, and Sayer Ji. On a related note, last week I completely eliminated a nasty case of diverticulitis using only DMSO and chlorine hydroxide. Pierre Kory has just published a new book on Chlorine Hydroxide as a universal antidote. The doctor had prescribed two antibiotics. One was so toxic it that two of its side effects listed a burst aorta and torn tendons that could happen years after taking it. Altogether, the list of side effects was on a 4 page insert.
Here's my $.02 on heart disease.
First off, doctors don't know shit when it comes to chronic disease. They are slaves to standards of care that don't work. In terms of the heart they will focus on LDL which has a very insignificant correlation with heart disease.
Heart disease is actually a metabolic condition generally brought about by a diet high in grains, sugar and vegetable oils that leads to insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia, which is a disease state. Every chronic disease (cancer, CVD, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's/dementia, etc.) is highly correlated with high insulin levels. Few doctors will ever test your fasting insulin levels because there's no money in putting someone on a proper diet so it's never become a standard of care.
There's an easy test for insulin resistance and that's the triglyceride/HDL ratio. Anything under 2 and you're doing okay. Under 1.0 would be much better. Check your last lipid profile and I'll bet yours is high. The solution is adopting a low carb or even better, a Carnivore diet. You want to stop eating foods that either wreak metabolic havoc (vegetable oils) or raise blood sugar and produce an insulin response - carbs, grains and sugar. Your cells need to regain their insulin sensitivity and they do that by not eating foods crap. It's like an alcoholic that acquires a tolerance for alcohol, it takes ever increasing amounts of alcohol to get a high because his cells have become resistant to alcohol. He can't recover unless he goes cold turkey... low carb with and intermittent fasting program is a great way to achieve this. Don't worry about saturated fat or cholesterol, they're red herrings.
Also you get your ferritin levels checked. High levels of iron in the blood are hugely correlated with the same diseases as insulin resistance. Ferritin over 200 is concerning. Mine was 600 when I first found out about that. A person with ferritin that high had a median age of death of 55 according to a Scandinavian study. Two years of frequent blood donation got it under 100, where the median age of death was well into the 80s.
At the risk of repeating myself, be very suspicious of a doctor's advice. If heart disease was caused by LDL we'd have heart disease licked because we have several drugs that are very good at lowering LDL yet heart disease remains the number one killer of Americans. It's not LDL. I recommend reading about heart disease at Dr. Malcolm Kendrick's blog and reading his 60-some odd posts on "What Causes Heart Disease". He documents quite well the failings of medicine today for heart disease and a number of other topics. I highly recommend it.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/
You covered everything I wanted to say. I'm a carnivore aged 70 and never felt better. Blood pressure great, trig/HDL ratio great. My doctor, who was adamantly opposed to this has to admit I'm at least a decade younger and more active than I was 18 months ago. Med school teaches doctors to treat symptoms, not address root causes. I am hopeful that MAHA will turn things around for most Americans.
Thank you for saying that; I attempted to tell that to my mom’s doctor who looked at me like I was crazy. They have her on Warfarin and I test her INR weekly at home. Unfortunately she trusts them so we stick with the doctor’s recommendations. It is infuriating to me. BTW, she doesn’t have and never did have high blood pressure. She is 87 and both of us have blood pressure about 115/65 and always have been that low.
My dad had every chronic condition in the book, it was hard to see. He wouldn't take my advice because he trusted his doctor and am notable in that I tend to distrust conventional wisdom. So I was talking to Mom one day and she said at Dad's last checkup his doctor was really pleased because his LDL was "great". Said he was going to live quite a few more years. Dad was dead in 2 weeks from a heart attack.
I blame myself a bit because I couldn't figure out a way to get my knowledge across without getting pushback. He didn't want to hear it so I stopped pushing even though I've seen all the data. It's really frustrating.
I am so sorry; it is very difficult especially when our parents have spent their entire lives trusting doctors. I have never trusted them and it is a constant struggle for me.
Don't beat yourself up Bob, since equine were mentioned you know the saying, you can't make them drink. I'm sorry for your loss but the information you share may help someone else.
My doctor is parroting my high LDL count and keeps whipping out the Academy of Heart Health calculator to prove his point I’m going to die within 15 years
It's all they know to do.
Remember, doctors practice medicine. Lawyers practice law. It seems more and more mechanics practice car repair.
Personally I've found only Jesus Christ is the real deal.
Amen to every word you wrote.
Mr Muse: I am not a physician or physical advisor of any kind. My sincere advice to you is to walk, walk, then walk some more. Ask your doctor how much is possible. Walking is one of the finest low intensity cardio workouts known to man. If you can walk a 1000 steps each day for a week, try 1500 steps each day the next week. If you can get to about 5000 steps at least five days a week, I believe some of your symptoms will recede. Please consult your physician before starting and stop if you feel any pain.
👍👍👍
Excellent advice
If i am going to follow your progress i need to know 1 thing you dont mention that matters a great deal in heart health: did you take 1 or more jabs?? I know you may choose to not answer. But if you do ill know you are being completely honest. Thanks. BTW, we are in Lake Highlands.
First of all, praise God you're still with us, Alex! My own journey of accountability involves my weight. Four years ago I underwent gastric sleeve surgery, and have lost a whopping 125 lbs. I've probably regained only about 10, I suspect because of my cold brew with 2 shots of mocha and cold foam. Still, for me it has been amazing! My other health issues have always been endocrine. I have a rare, chronic illness: Addison's disease. JFK had it. There's a big story there in self advocating. I'm alive today because I research and I push.
Good luck, get well!
Side advice, look up a Midwestern doctor.
I posted a link to an article which might be helpful.
Good luck!
You may want to consider taking Vitamin K2 along with the Vitamin D.
"Vitamin K2 works synergistically with vitamin D by helping direct calcium into bones and teeth rather than soft tissues or arteries."
https://www.verywellhealth.com/supplements-to-take-with-vitamin-d-11836090
I'm not very wearable health tech savvy. RFK Jr. has mentioned wearables. I appreciate your being open about this to share knowledge. That being said, how's the best way to make use of wearable health tech while protecting privacy? Could you write a Substack article about that?
Thanks for sharing. You were fortunate to get the wake-up call in a place where you could act on it. Take care of yourself, dammit, we need your voice.
I am a retired physician, an anesthesiologist with multiple years in the open heart room. What I learned in medical school turned out to be frequently wrong, senseless and useless. As an example we measure blood pressure as a proxy for perfusion. When blood pressure is high, a pill is occasionally the answer but the real problem to solve is why the blood pressure is high? In your case, a clot blocking blood from exiting your left ventricle. The body attempts to keep perfusing the brain with arterial constriction elsewhere in the body, measured on your arm. Make sense? What isn't being perfused is often the answer, or occasionally an endocrine problem or similar pipe problems. I can wholeheartedly recommend a physician who also writes on Substack. She goes by the nom de guerre of The Midwestern Doctor and her "blog" is called "The Forgotten Side of Medicine". A tremendous resource. Use it. best of luck to you. You're a tremendous resource on your own. be well
I also live in North Dallas and have followed you for awhile. I am so sorry about this and will pray for you. I, too, had a health scare at Thanksgiving. Fought a persistent bladder infection for over a year. Antibiotic resistant bugger. Underwent a bladder cauterization. In the healing process went to ER with severe back pain. A CTscan revealed a mass in my kidney. After testing diagnosed with ccRCC, clear cell Renal Cell carcinoma. Never found cause of pain but did find cancer. Long story short, I had a radical nephrectomy 2 weeks ago and am recovering. At this point nothing more is needed except monitoring. I am 69 and have always taken my health for granted. Come from an athletic family, long lived, no genetic illnesses, and still very active in tennis. Still struggling to absorb cancer and as yet to absorb no kidney. Firmly believe God poked His finger in my back and sent me to ER. Early detection may have saved my life. Now on to paying attention to what I put in my body and what God wants for me. Health is priority for me. I pray your journey puts you back to excellent health so you can continue your good work. God bless.
There's nothing as effective as a good scare. One of the best sentences in the article: "Private resolve is easy to abandon."
If there's a fountain of youth, it's losing significant weight (I'll define that as north of 50 lb) as a, uh, seasoned person. But you got yourself in deeper stuff than I managed; all the best. Don't want to be a downer, but the first 20 lb is the easiest. Be forewarned.
Good on you! Funny looking clot, were you covid vaxxed?
Whether it is attributed to Churchill or Reagan, the old saying “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man” is true!
Wishing you a complete recovery and recapture of your heart health. Your children need you and the rest of us need your thinking and writing to continue. Wishing you the very best, Mark Mauriello
My husband’s job means he sits in an office all day every day and a bad diet due to Doordash, and so a year ago he had a heart attack and two bypasses. He was sent home with 23 prescriptions for his heart and type 2 diabetes. We looked at all the side effects and immediately tossed about 20 of them. He kept the baby aspirin, nitro, and oxycontin. He only took 3 or 4 of the oxy for pain and then it was tossed. Eventually he gave up the aspirin in favor of a supplement called pycnogenol. The nitro is on hand, just in case. In the meantime I checked every alternative medicine I could find. He’s been taking berberine for glucose control, nattokinase, lumbtokinase, along with a handful of other supplements. He takes vitamins, exercises regularly, and eats a ketogenic diet that limits him to around 25 grams of carbs per day. Here are the people we recommend: A Midwestern Doctor (Substack), Dr. Ken Berry, Dr. Ralph LaGuardia (on Substack), Dr. Pierre Kory (Substack), authors Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz, Dr. Joe Mercola, and Sayer Ji. On a related note, last week I completely eliminated a nasty case of diverticulitis using only DMSO and chlorine hydroxide. Pierre Kory has just published a new book on Chlorine Hydroxide as a universal antidote. The doctor had prescribed two antibiotics. One was so toxic it that two of its side effects listed a burst aorta and torn tendons that could happen years after taking it. Altogether, the list of side effects was on a 4 page insert.
Btw, when his cardiologist learned my husband was refusing pharmaceuticals, he fired him. 🤣
I will pray for your success. The world needs your voice. Good luck in your MAHA journey.]
You are what you eat. Abandon the SAD diet.