Dr. Stephen Hussey - Understanding the Heart
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
heart, artery, people, cells, glucose, water, cholesterol, body, create, talking, energy, tissue, hussey, called, lining, fatty acids, burn, book, blood, stress response
SPEAKERS
Jack Heald, Dr. Stephen Hussey, Dr. Philip Ovadia
Jack Heald
Welcome back, everybody. It's the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm your co-host, Jack Heald, and we have with us today somebody that I have been reading about for the last hour and lost track of the time. Dr. Stephen Hussey, a functional medicine doctor, welcome to the show, Steven.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Jack Heald
Phil, why did you invite Dr. Hussey on the on the show?
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah. So you know, we certainly have been developing a theme here about thinking outside the system and going outside the typical medical system. And you know, over the past few weeks, we've had a couple of traditionally trained allopathic doctors who then kind of discovered some of the flaws in the system, and they're now finding ways to get outside the system. Steven's background is different. He didn't train within the allopathic medical system. And his background is in chiropractic. And I will fully admit that back when I started my career, I had been taught and I believe that chiropractors were quacks, and that they did all this crazy stuff. But I've learned both through my personal experience and dealing with many, very smart chiropractics. That that is not the case. I came across Stephen A few years ago, I think I heard him on a podcast originally and started interacting on social media. And what, intrigued me was his thoughts about the cardiovascular system and how the heart works, and what it does and doesn't do, and again conflicted with a lot of the information I had learned. But I'm already interested. Yeah, as I looked into it I found myself again, saying here, I am a heart surgeon, and I'm learning about the heart from a chiropractic physician. And so his new book came out in April. It's called Understanding the heart. And I'm excited to dig into it with them. So with that, welcome, Steve. And please fill in a little bit about your background, how you got involved in chiropractic and how you got interested in the heart specifically?
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah. Well just like most people in this space, like the health space, that kind of leaders in the space, it all was started by my own health journey. And so when I was a kid, I had a lot of inflammatory conditions, I had chronic hives just used to break out all over my body, I had terrible allergies, I had IBS, had asthma, all kinds of stuff, and ultimately ended up with autoimmune type one diabetes, from that inflammation. So my body attacked part of my pancreas. And now some, the cells that make insulin in my pancreas don't make insulin anymore. So I'm type one diabetic. And I learned as my parents and I were thrown into the world of Western medicine to relied on that for managing these conditions. I learned that first of all, what I didn't learn was that why I had these conditions and how I could potentially correct them. But what I also learned is that being type one, which is kind of collateral damage, that I won't be able to correct now, heavily predisposes me to heart disease. And so two to four times increased risk. And so I learned that due to damage to micro vessels that I was I was predisposed for these types of things. And so throughout my various forms of education, I my ears always perked up when something about the heart came up with a vascular system or heart disease. And so I just tried to soak in as much as I could. And when it came time graduating from college to decide what I was going to do. I had been really at a really good relationship with my pediatric endocrinologist growing up. And it kind of inspired me to be a doctor. But I had learned some things in college that made me kind of think that I didn't want to be a medical doctor, I wanted a different philosophy. And so I chose chiropractic. Not necessarily because I think it's better than anything else. I just, I was just, I had been to chiropractors my whole life. And I was like, Well, that sounds good. You know, let's, let's go be a chiropractic physician, get some kind of medical professional degree. And so that's what I did. And people like to have some other inspiring story besides that, but that was pretty much the decision. That's how that came about. And but my whole life, even after chiropractic school for the last 1015 years, I've just really been searching for the causes of, of heart disease. You know, and I found a lot of interesting things. You know, aside from you know, the theory that cholesterol causes heart disease and how that's not necessarily true, but also just that we've misunderstood the function of the heart itself. Interesting things like why the heart so resistant to cancer Sir, lots of different things that eventually, I started sharing on social media and people tend to like it. So I ended up reading a book and, and then here we are.
Jack Heald
Okay, so that's a, that's a fine kettle of fish you dropped us in. We've misunderstood the heart. Yeah. Gotta expand on that.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah. Well, I think we've misunderstood the function of the heart, I think and why it's there and what it does. So, to preface this, this idea, we have to talk about fourth phase water. This is something that is recently well, it's been studied for a long time by guys like Gilbert Lange and Albert's and Georgie, and but more recently by Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington. And he's written books called the fourth phase of water and cells, gels and the engines of life. But in essence, water has the ability to hold energy. And we humans are we're anywhere from 7080 85%, water, so to speak. And so when water holds sufficient energy is this very unique liquid that can do that there's radiant energy that can come from various sources. When it does that, and it gets next to a hydrophilic surface, which is a water loving surface, it will actually structure itself into what's called a fourth state or fourth phase of water, the solid liquid gas, this is more like a gel, think jello. And it's got different names. It's called structured water, it's called exclusion zone water because of different properties that it has. And it turns out that this happens in lots of places in nature. And it also happens in the arteries of living things, including humans. And they've actually shown this that it does form and arteries of chick embryos in their lab. And so what happens, so
Jack Heald
the blood, the water in the blood, in the arteries, when it contacts the surface, the interior surface of the artery flips over into this fourth phase of the sport the state of water.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Right, so the blood is, is a little bit a little bit less than half water. And so that water, if it's that water in the blood, if has sufficiently energized, holding energy, when it gets next to the lining of the artery, which is a hydrophilic surface, as long as it's healthy artery, then it will structure itself into this fourth phase water. And so this, this forms this kind of gel like substance around the lining of the artery.
Jack Heald
And I want to I want to emphasize this gel is water. Yes. So it's not something else. It's just water in a different state. It's Yeah, well, it's not a gas, it's not a liquid. It's right for the state.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah. And I guess I could, if I can nitpick a little bit, like, maybe it's not truly water, his water is h2o, right. And so this, the way that it forms, it actually cleaves off one of the hydrogens. So you're left with an O and H and those other O and H has teamed up with other explanations that have been cleaved off, and they form this lattice like structure that lines up planarly against the lining of the artery. So I guess you could technically say that it's components of water. That is a different molecular structure slightly.
Jack Heald
From each 302. Yeah. What's Tetra hydro dioxide or something?
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so it's but it's formed from water, it water has to be energized to form this, this structure. Now it can, it can go right back to water as well, by being broken down, and then a hydrogen added back to it, it can easily go back and forth. Now, there are certain properties. So because of the way I just described that it formed. So when you cleave off a hydrogen like that, it makes sense the oxygen is a bigger molecule, and we have these an even amount of oxygen and hydrogen is now that that that fourth phase water that's there is very electronegative space, it's very natural electronegative component to it. And then the hydrogen ions in the middle with other things and also in the blood creates a very positive space, and that creates an energy gradient that propels blood flow. And they've shown this over and over again and Dr. Pollux lab, when you put an energized water and you put a hydrophilic tube in the water flow starts to happen with no pump, no need for anything else. And it will continue to flow as long as energy radiant energy is put to into the system.
Jack Heald
And radiant energy is light,
Dr. Stephen Hussey
a light it could be light, it could be electromagnetic energy from the earth, or from other humans. There's lots of different types of radio energy but the most absorbed by water is in For red light at the 3000 nanometer wavelength, but there are various types of different lights you could use that could energize the water in your body, the sun is 40% infrared. That's the original source of this kind of stuff.
Jack Heald
This is so exciting. I can hardly stand it. Oh, yeah. So now we've got the, we've got the concept of this fourth phase four state of water, propelling blood through the arteries. Carry on. Yeah, so understand the heart.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Right. So. So largely, especially in the smaller arterioles, and capillaries and things like that there's, when you look at the heart, and the physics of it, there's no way a heart the size of the one, we have Could, could effectively pump blood throughout the entire arterial system or the vascular system. There's just no way it could, it could create enough force. And it makes sense to because, like, if I was going to, like, if I had water, my feet, and I wanted to pump that water from my feet back up to my heart, or backup to my head or something like that, I wouldn't put the pump at the top of the hill, pump it down, then back up that's just it creates a, I guess, in the in engineering or physics where that creates a lot of issues, that would be really hard to do. And there are there's as much as a contraction that helps but move. And there's, there's one way valves in the veins that prevent backflow, and things like that. But for the for the most part, the blood is moving more or less on its own, especially when it gets out to the periphery, like the real periphery, it's moving on its own through these mechanisms of fourth phase water, that are structuring the water to the lining of the arteries that propels this blood flow. And they've shown this to like, there's these old experiments in the 40s. And they repeated them in the 60s where they used to nice, the dog and the blood continue to flow after the heart stop beating for two, three hours. And then they've shown it again and Dr. Pollock's lab recently,
Jack Heald
three hours without the heart pumping
Dr. Stephen Hussey
yet without the heart.
Jack Heald
So, it's flowing through the heart without the heart contracting?
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah. And there's actually research that shows that in, in endurance athletes, when they're when their heart rate gets up to above a certain level, I think it's I think it's above 180. In those athletes, that the heart really stops contracting so much at all, the bloods just moving through it unimpeded. Because you know, what's driving the blood flow is tissue demand. So, so then, so there's two reasons, there's two things one, that the fourth phase water that forms onto the lining of the artery, it propels the blood flow, which makes it so that the heart doesn't have to worry, I mean, the heart does do a little bit of pumping, but it's not really no more plumbing than enough to get the blood through the heart itself, and maybe through some of the bigger arteries. But the rest of it is this mechanism, a fourth phase water, so it's, it's repelling blood flow. But the other thing is, is that this fourth phase water is called also called exclusion zone water, because when it forms, it excludes pretty much anything. That's not it. So the only thing that can really get through are some small hydrated ions, that that can squeeze through it, because of the way that it lines up in the way that it stacks on itself. So it's also this protective layer, this protective barrier for the arterial lining, that can help protect us against damage that could eventually lead to atherosclerosis and things like that. But that's a different conversation. And we're talking about like, one of the heart is and why it's there. So if we've got the blood largely moving on its own, and the heart doesn't necessarily need to be forcefully pumping, the fluid, the blood. And the why is it there? Well, there's this guy, there's this guy in Spain, this researcher named Francisco torrent clasp. And he found, or I guess, he, I guess he kind of, he unraveled the fact that the heart is this one big band of muscle that's wrapped up on itself. And even in even in the very like, inner lining of the ventricles, and of the atria, like the heart muscle is oriented in a way that it spirals so when it can tracks it, it rotates. And so there's a reason for that. It's because it when the blood moves through the heart, it vortexes it or swirls it in a way. So one of the other ways that Dr. Pollack has found that you can energize water is vortexing or swirling it swishing it in the presence of oxygen. And we see this in mountain streams. Like when they're going over the rapids, the water turns kind of white or when it goes past the rock and it kind of swirls around the rock a little bit. And since the blood always has oxygen present, even in the venous blood, there's still oxygen present. When it moves through the heart, the heart is actually vortexing it so when it flows through different valves, it kind of swirls or Eddie's on either side of that. Also, when the ventricles contract, it spirals it and so the heart is this vortexing machine. It's kind of It operates more like a hydraulic ram, which is flow dependent.
Jack Heald
Yeah. And okay, so what that implies is that the function of the heart is not a pump, but to electrically potentiate the blood. Is that correct?
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Right. So, so technically, I guess you could say, the heart is responsible for the movement of the blood, just not in the way that we thought, but not as a pump. Okay. And, and I would, I would argue that there's no way that the heart itself could energize the blood enough to create those mechanisms in the periphery that get the get the blood flowing. That's why we need to be in the right environment, which is in contact with the
Jack Heald
million different questions here.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah. Yeah. The
Jack Heald
first one is still cardiac surgeon works on hearts. How does this strike you? I mean, this was the first time you were this, this must have set off all kinds of alarm bells. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
You know, the, when I first started hearing of these concepts it certainly did set off the alarm bells. And this can't be right. But then as I started to think about it, and I matched it up with what I actually see in the operating room, it does make sense when you look at how the heart contracts it's exactly this sort of spiral pattern around the it's not a kind of side to side, squeezing in, it is a spiral type motion. And the heart actually you can see it rotating, basically, in the chest as its contracting. So that, that certainly matches up with this. And we can go back to some of the earliest anatomical sort of descriptions Gauthier, certainly I think, brought these ideas together. But when you go back to some of, I want to say, they were like Da Vinci's anatomical drawings he depicts the heart as this sort of spiral wrap of muscle that kind of goes along with that. So, the other thing that gets real interesting is when you start to think about heart failure in this context, congestive heart failure is one of the most common conditions that people suffer from and end up dying from, and again, it, it starts, there are a lot of things about this concept that start to make sense. And you know, how heart failure may not necessarily be primarily the actual muscle of the heart weakening, but this sort of drainage of energy will say, are inefficient energy within the system that's ultimately leading to these problems. But it also answered some questions that always sort of troubled me, as to you know, exactly what Stephen was talking about the blood goes down to your feet and has to get back. And there's you, the force in the arterial side of the equation can be measured we have blood pressure, and we see that force, but you there was very little pressure in the venous system. So how is it all get kind of returned to the heart. So this sort of flow that's going along with the energy flow starts to make more sense.
Jack Heald
So is this is this, this problem, that there's just not sufficient pressure in the venous system? Is that something that that the whole realm of cardiology and blood flow and in allopathic medicine, is it a question, they just don't ask? Is it just like, oh, yeah, everybody knows, there's not enough pressure to make it all work, but it works? Is it one of those things that you don’t bring it up at cocktail parties, because it's just considered rude to do so?
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah, most doctors probably just choose not to think about it, because it's sort of an unanswered question about the whole, the whole concept, the whole design.
Jack Heald
We're 90 minutes in and my mind is thoroughly blown.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah. So you know, one of the things I think this leads into us discussing is this concept of having the exclusion zone along the lining of the blood vessels, and that in order for things like cholesterol to make it into the blood vessel wall from the blood supply, you would meet you need to have disruptions of this system, and of the exclusion of the exclusion zone because cholesterol won't, can't cross that. Exclusion Zone. Cholesterol is a larger molecule and wouldn't Cross that exclusion zone. And so this brings us back to the concept that the things that lead to heart disease end up not being the cholesterol itself, but there needs to be something that happens first, that would then allow the cholesterol to cross into the blood vessel walls.
Jack Heald
Okay, so Dr. Hussey, do you have a theory about this? Do we know? We don't want to explain it?
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah, definitely. So and, and so the focus is on cholesterol, because we see it at the, at the end of the, at the end of the process but really, the body was just responding to something else, using the only thing that really could to patch up some damage so that it didn't create worse damage or rupture of it, which would be way worse. But, but yeah, so we have to create this damage, first, we have to first break down this exclusion zone water, then we have to kind of damaged the artery to where we get proliferation of endothelial cells, and then the body starts to say, oh, we need to do something about this. And if the endothelial cells can't repair themselves, because we're insulin resistant, which is very common type two diabetes type thing, then yeah, the body will take cholesterol, minerals, different things, to kind of, quote unquote, repair, that that arterial lining. But it all starts with what happens first, what damages the endothelial what damages the fourth phase water, the exclusion zone, and that is a high states of what's called oxidative stress or inflammation. And there's lots of different things that could cause this is why markers of inflammation, like C reactive protein are so indicative of you know, atherosclerosis and heart disease. And why insulin resistance is also indicative and risk factor for heart disease. But well, yeah, so there's, there's lots of different things that could cause this. And, and so I talked about, like, it's everything from psychological stress to toxin exposure, external toxin exposure, poor diet, being insulin resistant, or eating fatty acids that are easily oxidized. But the important thing is, is that people want to say there's such this focus on lipids and cholesterol, and we want to break them down into not just taking a lipid panel, but we want to take the oxidized LDL and the LP little a and the particle size and all this stuff, and, and all those things give us a better idea, I guess, if someone's at risk, but it's not those things creating the risk. It's not the small things particles or the oxidized LDL, creating a risk, it's the things that cause oxidized LDL and the things that cause small dense particles that are creating the risk. And those are the things that cause oxidative stress. And so like I said, those could be high psychological stress, they could be toxin exposure, from literally from the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the cosmetics we put on our body, the cleaning products, we use all those different things can cause damage, but then just a poor metabolism in general. So being reliant on glucose based metabolism has been shown to create more oxidative stress and more damage, more free radical production, I guess.
Jack Heald
You’ve got to remember, this is not necessarily a medical audience. I think I'm sticking with you. But I've also been being educated by Dr. Ovadia an hour a week for the last year. And for folks who are new to this, back up and kind of put some of that this oxidative causes of oxidative stress. You said a glucose dependent diet I think or something like that. Put that in layman's terms.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
So like when I mean oxidate, I mean, free radicals. So when we're free radicals, a molecule with an unpaired electron, and it really wants to be paired. It doesn't like to not have that paired electron. I compare it to the Looney Tunes Tasmanian devil, it's going around like crazy, trying to find something to be paired with an analog stealer from anything, including something that would damage the tissue to get that another electron. So remember, just a note, remember when I talked about the fourth phase water and how electronegative it is, it's got electrons that can be stolen. So if there's a high amount of these free radicals in the bloodstream then or things that can act like free radicals in the bloodstream, they can damage the fourth phase water now, just like just like your car, burns fuel and it has an exhaust it has waste products, right? So anytime we burn fuel, we also make exhaust we make waste products. When we make byproducts. I would say some of them byproducts, some of them waste products, you could probably consider them all byproducts, but to water is one carbon dioxide is one and you know we breathe out the carbon dioxide water everybody can use for lots of different things. But a free radical is also one of those things now, they're not completely harmful, they do act as signaling molecules to tell your body different things. But if we get too many of them, they can create an issue because then they're running around looking for a pair of electron or an electron they get paired with, and they start damaging tissue to start damaging mitochondria that could damage the cell, they can get into the bloodstream and damage the lining of the artery. And so we don't want high amounts of this oxidative stress. Now a glucose based metabolism, metabolism, especially a processed carbohydrate diet, and fueling your body and fueling yourselves with only those to the point where you've lost metabolic flexibility or the ability to burn fat as well. When you burn glucose, you get less energy from that you get energy, but you get less from it. So you have to keep burning more and more glucose, in order to keep up with the energy production. And that's going to make more free radicals. When you burn a fatty acid, you get more energy. So you have to go through that process less of times, and you get less free radicals. At the end,
Jack Heald
I want to stop you're there because you said something I hadn't heard before. When you have a glucose dependent metabolism, you lose the ability to what I think you call it metabolic flexibility, you lose metabolic flexibility. Explain what that means.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah, so metabolic flexibility is just the ability to readily go back and forth from burning different fuel sources in your within your cells. So maybe that's glucose and fatty acids. And you can add ketones to that if your body is in a state where it's making ketones. And so now there's this thing called oxidative priority your body or lots of the cells in your body, which the heart seems to be unique and that it doesn't quite do this. But oxidative already means that if you have certain substrates certain fuel sources available, it's going to burn them in a certain order. So alcohol is first, it's always going to bring alcohol first. And if it's present, and then glucose is next. And then there's protein in there, kind of but really, that's only us and time to starvation. And then at the end of that is fatty acids. So if you're, if you're eating a lot of processed carbohydrates, which you're eating the standard American diet, and you're eating a lot of processed carbohydrates, then your body's always going to choose to burn those carbohydrates first, and if you give them enough, then it's just always gonna burn carbohydrates. And it's going to down regulate mechanisms that it would use to make and use fatty acids. Which is why in the in the Keto crowd, when you go low carb, there's this keto adaptation phase or this keto flu or whatever, because your body is having to learn how to burn fatty acids again, and you feel kind of crappy for a while, because you your fuel sources, not quite there, right. So you so you're not very metabolically flexible, because you've trained your body to just burn glucose. Okay, and that that burning of glucose, like I said, makes less than a G for you. So you have to keep burning it, which is why when you eat high carbohydrate meals, usually hungry two hours later, because you burn right through it. And you got it. We've talked about that. Yeah. But, but also it creates more free radicals, more exhaust in the cells. And so that's going to lead to more oxidative stress, which then damages lots of different tissues in the body. But specifically, what we're talking about is maybe the lining of the endothelial or the fourth phase, water breaks it down,
Jack Heald
what's really I'm sorry, the cells that line the artery, the cells that line the artery. Okay, thank you. And this
Dr. Philip Ovadia
leads into another interesting discussion about the hearts preferred fuel source. And again, all of the organs in our body have this ability to they have the backup plan the dual fuel, so our source that can be used either glucose, or ketones, which come from burning fat and producing fatty acids. But we see that the heart in particular, and the brain to a lesser degree, seem to have a preference for ketones for burning fatty acids and for using ketones for fuel over glucose. And that's something that's unique about the heart. And we can, there's a whole system set up to make sure that the heart gets priority sort of delivery of the fats that we eat in our food and the fatty acids that result from the breakdown there.
Jack Heald
Okay, I just, I got it. I gotta, I gotta ask Phil. So if the hearts preferred fuel sources, essential fatty acids, and we're starving ourselves of essential fatty acids. What's it doing to the heart?
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah, that's a good question. And again, when we get back to the heart failure model, one of the things that we see is, you know that the ketogenic diet for instance, has shown some efficacy in improving heart function. And it's not something that's really talked about or used enough in, in allopathic medicine. But it's, it's an interesting concept. And again, if we are thinking that heart failure is really resulting from lack of energy in the system, then replenishing that with ketones and with ketogenic diets becomes an attractive treatment modality.
Jack Heald
Okay, Dr. House, he more, I'm just, I'm just unraveling a lot of questions, but I want to hear from you
Dr. Philip Ovadia
the more part that I'd really like to get into one of the other interesting parts of the things that Steven has talked about is the angle on heart cancer, and why heart cancer is so rare. And to give you a sense I've done over 3000 heart surgeries at this point, and I've done less than 10, for a true heart cancer we do see some benign tumors of the heart more commonly, but true heart cancer is exceedingly rare. And you can look at the busiest heart centers in the world places like the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic and they'll, every once in a while published their experience with heart cancer, and you know, over a 10 year period, they'll have 100 cases, maybe 200 cases. And you know, these are the places where all the cases are getting sent to, so it gives you a sense of how incredibly rare heart cancer is. And again, it's not something that I really thought that much about, until kind of hearing some of Stephens work. And you know, in the book about why that might be. And I'll let Stephen, take it from there, please.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah, so this was the interesting thing that I never really thought about either. But like, maybe four years ago, or something, somebody asked me, and I was just like, oh, yeah you never really hear about heart cancer. And so, but I kind of had an idea in my head based on what I knew about the hearts specific metabolism. But you know, just to kind of, to give away the answer in the beginning, so people have that context. It's largely due to the fact that the heart cells don't divide. So if you think about what cancer is, it's this rapidly dividing, undifferentiated anaerobic cells, that that something in the cell triggers that to happen. Well, what happens in a cell where that situation happens, but those cells have lost the ability to divide, because somewhere during development, at some point during development, the heart cells stop dividing and becoming new cells, which is why a heart attack such a big deal, because if you damage those cells, those are the cells you have. They don't they don't divide and make new cells and replenish the tissue, we have to try and heal the cells that are there. And so, so what happens because of this, the hearts unique metabolism, I think that it, I think that's one reason why the heart has a unique metabolism. Because if you've heard of like the metabolic theory of cancer, where we get metabolic shifts in the cell. So this goes back to the work of Otto Warburg way back in the 1920s. Where when a cell cell has mitochondria. And mitochondria are the structures in our cells that allow the cell to use oxygen, which is what we're breathing in all the time to take to use oxygen to make energy from glucose or fatty acids, or whatever it's called oxidative phosphorylation. And so if we get a situation where those mitochondria become damaged, and the cell can't use oxygen anymore, to make energy that converts over to something called fermentation, it starts fermenting things to make energy because it's the ability to use oxygen is gone. And so that's what we see, we see this fermentation, which becomes very acidic, which is why we see why cancer cells are acidic. And so in that situation, the cell can't survive very long. And so it does this kind of survival mechanism thing, which is become this rapidly divided things like we're either going to die, or we're going to divide, and you know, hope for a better outcome in the near future. Right? So it's like the short term survival thing, long term, not so great, short term, maybe we'll stay alive, right? But that's what happens in the tissue. That can have cellular division. Now if that happens in a tissue where we don't get cellular division, then then cancer well won't form, right? We'll get tissue damage before we get cancer. So we'll die rather than divide, right? Yeah. And in my book, I talk about a situation where I think that can happen. And it has to do with having an intense stress signal to the heart. And then proper metabolism, because there's all this talk about cholesterol and nutrition and everything with heart disease. But I think that what's largely overlooked is this component of psychological stress and the balance in the autonomic nervous system, because our heart is incredibly tuned in to that autonomic nervous system, it's actually sending more signals to the brain than the brain is sending to it. And so when we get this imbalance and stress response, that can create a surge in stressful activity in the heart, which can force it to burn more glucose than it would like to. Because it likes to burn the fatty acids, it's always burning some of each but and so in that situation, like you'd imagine like, if you went for a run, that's a stress signal to your leg muscles, right. And if you do it long enough, you'll start to get this buildup of lactic acid and hydrogen ions that will create this burn this muscle burn, right? Because it's building up and in the heart has these mechanisms are kind of protected against that. However, if there's a situation where we get a huge decimal signal to the heart tissue, for various reasons, which we can talk about, if you'd like, then, then that signals that to burn more glucose and wants to we get a buildup of lactic acid, which I think is a cause maybe not the only cause a cause of angina, chest pain, because that's lactic acid burning in your chest, right. And that can, that can create a situation where we get tissue death with no blockage whatsoever, because of that buildup of lactic acid. And, again, that would like in a normal tissue and other tissues in the body, that may cause cancer to form. If it converts to glucose, we get to fermentation, it's just, it's just too much and the cell starts dividing, but in the heart cell that can't divide, because it's lost that ability. It just dies, the tissue dies.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah to sort of continue that analogy. You know, again, an interesting thing we see is that that distant that runner who keeps running and he's basically run out of fuel, and he's produced all this lactic acid in his muscles. You know, basically, the leg muscles will just stop working this is what bonking you know, for people who are runners, the term bonking basically means that the muscle just stops, now, the heart doesn't have that option. And so it certainly has these protective mechanisms, but it makes we know that lactic acid builds up with heart attacks, and it locally in the tissues. You know, that's something that's been well demonstrated. But we always have had these curious sort of phenomena where every and I say every once in a while, but it's probably more common than we recognize that people will have heart attacks, without an obvious blockage or without a blockage that is really that significant. And that's always been a conundrum. And again, kind of goes against the whole cholesterol and plaque buildup theory as the only reason that we get heart attacks certainly some heart attacks occur because of gradual build ups, but oftentimes they don't. And we see people with really no evidence of heart disease that all of a sudden will show up with a heart attack a few months later, I actually just had one of my patients that we he had had that situation in the past he literally had a heart scan that showed basically no disease. And then, a few months later, stressful situation, and all of a sudden, he has a heart attack. So it's again, these, these, these things have never been fully explained, I think, by our traditional model of our traditional thinking around heart disease, and the concepts that Stephen has brought out do a I think do a better job of explaining some of these situations.
Jack Heald
Well, that's what I wanted to. I've got a bunch of questions I want to ask, but one of them is this model seems to turn the, the dominant thinking on its head. I'm assuming this model is a better explanation for what you observe in the clinic. What? And I want this question, both of you addressed this question. What does that imply about how we take care of our health in regard to trying to prevent a heart attack? I mean, maybe it's the same answer we've been given for a year. But this is a different model. This is.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah, I mean, for me, in my book, I kind of take this three pronged approach, I always go back to these three different imbalances that that can happen in the body that I think we should be focusing on. And that is, we want to be metabolically flexible. Another way of saying that we want to be insulin sensitive, we want to be able to burn fatty acids and be making ketones and just be metabolically healthy. That's one of the big ones. We also want to reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, which we've talked about kind of what that is, and where that can come from. But the third one is the biggest one for me, like in talking about this, this kind of idea that heart attacks can happen without a blockage, and that is, is maintaining balance in the autonomic nervous system. So the autonomic nervous system is the system of our body, that's perceiving our environment through our senses, and basically telling us if we're in a safe or threatening environment, so that our body can react accordingly for in a threatening environment, we got to get away from it, we either fight it off or run away from it or whatever. But if we're in a safe environment, we can focus on things like sleeping, or eating, or, or whatever. And so, if we get an imbalance in the system, because we are in a world that's giving us all of these unnatural stressors that we're having to deal with, and that it's that combined with the fact that humans have this very big brain, and we're literally the only species that can think our way into a stress response. You know, we could have, we could see something happening halfway across the world, not anywhere close to us, and be super stressed out about it, because we feel for the people who are who are experiencing that stress. And you know, we could, we could be stuck and stuck in traffic or be cut off in traffic and just be really angry about that, instead of just having that anger response, and then shutting it down. And going on with that a bit, we can be angry about it all day we can be angry at it for a week we could stay in that state. And that can create this imbalance in the stress response. And when that happens, we can get I mean, you can think about if you're constantly but incorrectly thinking you're in a in a threatening environment or threatening state, your body is not thinking about digestion, it's not thinking about it's not thinking about detoxification is not thinking about sleeping on any of those things, we can get all these kinds of dysfunctions that happen in the body, insomnia, digestive issues, all kinds of stuff, but the heart and the gut seem to be incredibly in tune with our emotional state, our stress response state, they're more innervated by the vagus nerve, which is the nerve that communicates these signals. And especially the heart with our emotional state, there's a reason we say things like, I love you with all my heart and not I love you with all my kidney or something like that. Because the heart is like it's kind of like the organ that senses our emotional state and tells our brain how we're feeling. And if you look at it, it's incredibly fascinating. There’re nerves, intricately woven between the heart and the muscles of facial expression. So how your heart is feeling is how your face is expressing itself.
Jack Heald
Okay. We convey our emotions on our face, most people do that a lot. A few people are able to have a poker face, but it takes conscious effort to do so. And what I hear you saying is that the emotional state that is triggering what is happening with the muscles of our face also is connected to the physical heart, the heart, it's the physical heart, and there's a nerve pathway between the two. I'm sorry, that just strikes me as exceptionally odd. utterly, utterly, not obvious kind of counterintuitive kind of thing. Am I getting that right?
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean.
Jack Heald
It sounds really simple but really weird.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah, we have like these five senses that we talk about all the time. But I think that there are different senses in the body to like, our gut is a sensory organ. That's telling our brain a little bit about the external environment of our body because the gut is literally this external environment sealed off inside the body, and the heart is this. This organ I think that's perceiving our emotions and conveying that to the body. How are we feeling right now? And the nervous nerve pathways kind of confirm that,
Jack Heald
Now when you say the emotions, you're not talking about the neuro chemical, whatever neuro chemical is dominant in our bloodstream at the time, you're literally talking about this ephemeral thing that we call emotion that also is accompanied by these neuro chemicals. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, the body connection kind of thing here.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yeah, potentially. I mean, there's a reason we say I have a heart ache and, and things like that, like we're, we just like, or there's a reason we say, like, we gave it all our heart that's a very emotional thing to say. We don't say we gave it all our brain. You know, we gave it all our heart. And we tried really hard at something we gave it everything we had. We gave all our emotion to it. Right? There's, there's, there's just something there. And I don't know that we have it all fleshed out. But it makes complete sense that when we look at these potential clinical heart attacks that can happen, like they're incredibly tied to our emotional state. And there's a reason that we see things like I mean I
Jack Heald
guess for those who are listening, Phil's nodding his head, yes, yeah,
Dr. Stephen Hussey
I mean, I guess there's situations where like, stress can constricted coronary artery, and that can cause a break off of a soft plaque or something, and that can cause a clot to. But there's also situations that I'm talking about here where it can change, it can force shifts in metabolism that can lead to tissue death as well. And but either way, it's due to this imbalance in the stress response. And the key here, the big key here is that in the heart tissue in the heart cells, there's you know, there's a, there's a stress response and a non-stress response that's communicated via the autonomic nervous system. And in heart tissue, the stress response signal goes right into the heart cells. And the non-stress response signals require nitric oxide to get into the heart cells. Nitric oxide is the chemical made in the lining of the endothelial that helps it dilate and increases blood flow. And so a healthy lining of the artery is essential for making nitric oxide, which is where those that's where nitric oxide is made is in the lining of the sales line and artery. So if we have atherosclerosis, or inflammation of the artery and things like that, we're not making as much as much nitric oxide, then that nonstress signal that's supposed to balance everything out of the of our stress response to the heart is not getting there, as well as it could be. So that's a connection between things like metabolic health and oxidative stress, and this imbalance in our stress response to how it all weaves together and creates this situation kind of like this perfect storm, that can create a lot of issues for people.
Jack Heald
When you're talking about something over which we have control, oh, I'm feeling stressed, I need to read the Medicaid meditate, you're talking about an autonomic response.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yeah, this is kind of basic, instinctual responses within our body. You know, one other thing that kind of, again, goes along with this is there's a very well described condition. It's called takotsubo cardiomyopathy or stress cardiomyopathy, where people after a very stressful event, something like death of a spouse or child will develop poor heart function. And you can do cardiac catheterizations on these people. And you see, they have no blockages in their arteries nothing that would really explain why their heart isn't functioning well. And yet their heart isn't functioning well. And they come in presenting, like they have a heart attack or heart failure after a stressful event. So this is very well described. And it goes along with what Stephen is saying. Another sort of piece of information that I'll bring into this that will really probably blow Jack Jack's mind is, there have been studies done on people who receive heart transplants, and they start to take up the characteristics of the person that they got the heart from character, they'll start to act like them, they'll start to adopt some of their emotional states. And again, there have been studies done on this and just very fascinating work to think about why that might be. And these connections, these neurologic pathways between the heart and the brain, and you know, yeah, are very, are very interesting stuff.
Jack Heald
Wow.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Yes. So, but every
Jack Heald
week I think my mind can't get any more blown than it already has been. To your God. This is just I'm over the edge. Yeah, help us out here. Where do we go? To get?
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Well, I think to start to sort of wrap it up what we in Stephens book as he goes through kind of his recommendations. And we see how they end up mirroring a lot of the recommendations I made in my book regarding heart health. And so what I start to see now is a bunch of people who are coming at this problem from all different angles, and even different theories as to why some of these things occur. But we ended up back at the same place paying attention to the foods you eat, minimizing the toxins that you're exposed to dealing with your stress levels, and getting out in the sun and getting good levels of activity and these are the things that are going to ultimately lead to good heart health.
Jack Heald
Wow. Okay. I've got so many more questions, if I even start, god knows how long this will go on. I really do my best to try to keep this show in about an hour. Okay, I guess I'm going to just make a command decision here. I'm thinking the best thing is for people to get your book. I trust you go into more detail in the book, obviously, I'm going to read it now. Tell us, how do people take the next step?
Dr. Stephen Hussey
My, my website is resource your health.com. And my blog is on there and I that's where I do my I do my online health coaching there. But my books are on there as well. People can find the book on Amazon, just understanding the heart. And it's also like Barnes and Noble and on the publishers website, Chelsea green, so people want to go different places in Amazon. And then I'm on social media, somewhat reluctantly, but I'm on social media, on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, just Dr. Steven St. Dr. Steven Hussey people can reach out to me there. And I'm posting you know, more current findings stuff that didn't make it to the book because it's coming out more recently, I posted that kind of stuff there too.
Jack Heald
But we will post his contact information on the show notes, folks don't wreck your car trying to write this down. Show Notes.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
And I think Steven definitely goes on our list of people to have as returned guests,
Jack Heald
even goes on my list of people I want to sit down and have a long evening with and ask all these other questions that are whirling in my head that also come back. Yeah, I can talk about this stuff all day long. So I love it.
Jack Heald
I did a little bit of research when Phil told me last week that we were having you on. And he mentioned that he's into this thing called structured water, which was a phrase I'd never heard before. I have an appetite for the weird of the unusual. So I immediately went down the rabbit hole and I started binge watching Dr. Gerald Pollack and reading everything I could get. get my hands on. I'm currently working with a scientist who has a device that uses pulsed electromagnetic frequency therapy to treat a number of different conditions. And I'm hearing echoes of something that's all related in all of this, especially with the fact that structured water carries an electrical charge and can function as a battery when it's charged by light by, by electromagnetic rays, the most effective of which is ultraviolet. I'm just I'm I was just listening to Dr. Joe Dispenza. Today who talked about getting your mind straight. And that takes us back to this oxidative stress that you're talking about and how it oh my god.
Dr. Stephen Hussey
Yep. It's all interwoven together. Yeah.
Jack Heald
All right. So we've got your website, we've got your book. Anything else before we wrap it up for the day?
Dr. Stephen Hussey
I think I think we're good. Let's reopen another rabbit hole. I
Jack Heald
think we're down a rabbit I really want to chase but it's gonna take way too long. Phil, thank you, man. I just feel so blessed that I get to participate in this kind of stuff. It's fantastic. All right. Anything you want to add before we finish up
Dr. Philip Ovadia
No. Another great episode and like I said, we'll Definitely Stephen back again.
Jack Heald
All right, for Dr. Steven Hussey for Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm Jack Heald. This is the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast. You can follow Dr. Ovadia at I fix hearts on Twitter. You can go to Ifixhearts.co and take his metabolic health quiz. Find out where you stand and what you need to work on. And I think that'll do it other than get this guy back on the show Phil. Can't wait to talk more. We'll talk to y'all next time.