The Doctor Who Got a Stranger's Heart: What She Now Knows About Surviving Anything

Dr. Dawn Mussallem, is Global Chief Medical Officer of Fountain Life, stage 4 cancer survivor, and heart transplant recipient carrying a stranger's heart inside her chest. She spent 25 years at Mayo Clinic, lost her husband to the very disease she now fights to detect early, and emerged from her own mortality with a singular mission: to change the way humanity approaches health.

In this conversation, Dr. Dawn shares what 88% of otherwise healthy people do not know about their hearts, why type 2 diabetes is 100% preventable, and how a 17-million-person study quietly rewrote the rules of nutrition.

 She also opens up about the 14 months she spent on the heart transplant waiting list, the moment she learned whose heart she received, and how that gift transformed not just her body but her entire relationship with being human.

0:00 The Doctor Redefining What Prevention Really Means
1:27 Why Conventional Medicine Is Failing Us
2:03 The Scan That Finds Heart Disease Before You Feel It
3:10 She Lost Her Husband to the Disease She Now Fights
4:06 Brain Age Testing and the Fear Nobody Talks About
8:18 Type 2 Diabetes Is 100% Preventable
13:20 The Fiber Study With 17 Million People That Changes Everything
16:20 Stage 4 Cancer in Med School and a Heart Transplant at 50
19:45 14 Months on the Waiting List and a Stranger's Gift
23:01 The Future of Medicine and What Still Matters Most

**This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any health or lifestyle changes.**

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The number one reason men and women die is heart disease. But as a physician, I know firsthand that prevention is key. We find that 88% of those individuals that come in to see us have findings of heart disease. 26% of those individuals are able to reverse that heart disease, or at least halt it where it's at, without it progressing. We are moving at such a rapid pace, it's not going to surprise me that disease of today is going to be something of yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Hi Dawn, welcome to the Humanware Project. This is great. Excited to be here with you here at Abundant360 for us to inspire some wellness. Kyle, tell us what Fountain Life is doing and what is Fountain Life all about.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah, this is a huge shout out to our co-founders, Peter Diamandis, Tony Robbins, and Dr. Bill Capp. I'm so proud to be the new chief medical officer at Fountain Life, where we really pride ourselves in early detection, multimodal diagnostics, helping define disease early when it's much easier to treat, prevent disease, restore, and optimize.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Wow, that that sounds like a very different approach to the traditional medical care. And can you tell us what are the typical tests you run through and why it matters for us nowadays? It really matters.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

You know, I was a physician at Mayo Clinic for 25 years where I got to be a part of the best medical institution in the world. But it's very reactive care. You know, it's the best we have, it's the best we knew about, it's what insurance reimburses. But as a physician, I know firsthand that prevention is key. So at Fountain Life, we do multimodal testing. What that means is that we do full-body MRI, we do a CAT scan of the heart and the coronaries, and then we have AI technology that overlays that and gives us us interpretation. This is a really special test, actually, and I would like to just spend a minute on this because the number one reason men and women die is heart disease. You know, and so how do we find heart disease? What we find in these otherwise healthy individuals that come into Fountain Life and they have this screening, we find that 88% of those individuals that come in to see us have findings of heart disease. 88%. But they're not sick here. They're not aware. 23% of those individuals, we never would have found that in conventional imaging. If you think of the blood vessels as like having cholesterol, and we find the calcium, a lot of people do calcium scores on their heart. That's like the hard rocks on the bottom of a stream. They're not gonna float away. But if you think of the sludge, that sludge is the soft plaque, and that's what we're finding on this quantitative CT angiography of the heart. And this is that 23% that never would have been found. This is really, this hits really close to home and why I was so empowered to join Fountain Life in this mission to find disease early and prevent it. Because my husband actually died of sudden cardiac death. My daughter was very young. Thank you so much. It was many years ago. But you know, when you lose a loved one, you become so empowered to want to advocate for how healthcare really should be. So people don't have to struggle with this. The other thing is when people are told that they have these conditions, they have their why. They have a reason why they need to show up for this help. Eat healthier, exercise more, work on their body composition. These things are very important. We find that 26% of those individuals are able to reverse that heart disease, or at least halt it where it's at without it progressing. Now, my goal at Fountain Life is to make that number much bigger and really continue to use these different wearable devices, lifestyle maneuvers to help people even optimize these numbers more. But it goes further. We do more things. We look at brain age. Oh, that's important. Mailen, you're right. And so when we interviewed all of our members, and you would say the same exact thing, what is the number one thing we're scared of? It's losing our mind. It's no longer recognizing those that are most important to us, forgetting their names, forgetting their faces. So we know with the advanced brain age, 46% of those individuals. It's a huge number, again, just with these lifestyle maneuvers, having them sleep better. This is profound. It's so exciting. And ultimately, they're feeling better. We do body composition, bone density, we do this massive panel of blood work, gut microbiome testing. So it's this whole day of testing. My background before medical school was in exercise physiology and nutrition. So we do VO2 testing, exercise prescription. Every patient has a nutritionist to help them bioindividualize their nutrition approach to care. We do sleep testing to help folks have more restorative sleep, make sure there's no sleep apnea. We have something really cool that's basically functional aesthetics for our skin to help our skin stay younger.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So it's a whole body approach, not only from the health perspective. If I'm someone don't have a medical background and I don't know enough about medicine, about my health, if I come to Fountain Life, will I be able to understand everything that you guys are offering? This is perfect question.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

This is why we're unique. Many folks will hear of these different, you know, mail order. They can go do labs or they can do an MRI in a strip mall, but the difference with Fountain Life is you have a physician. So you have a physician that's going to work right alongside you to discuss these findings and to help you on board with the various lifestyle aspects, perhaps nutraceuticals, restorative therapies, so that you can optimize your health. We also have this amazing technology with AI analytics. So we have this large AI cloud that is for clinicians and for research for us to continue to learn. This is how we're going to democratize wellness. And that same AI platform is also, it's basically designed and tailored, specific for every single individual member, so they can use the Zori part of this AI to help communicate directly to the member every single day. It integrates with their wearables, they can ask it questions, they can take pictures of their food, they can go to the health food store and take a picture of a multivitamin and say, hey, Zori, is this multivitamin right for me? Zori, what should my exercise look like? Zori, I'm struggling with sleep. Give me a guided meditation tonight. So that part is so fun to have this tool that people can really interact with. We have a lot of members here at the Abundance 360 event, and they're all coming up sharing with me. Zori had a member recently that wasn't feeling very good, had a little pneumonia, had to go to the urgent care center. It asked Zori, give me a medical record of all my recent testing that I had at Fountain Life, and it gave it this beautiful overview of all the tests they had.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yeah, that actually I'll use in Zori as well. What I find quite interesting is keep all my records from the year before. I, you know, sometimes I don't even keep those myself, but because it's all in the system of Fountain Life, I thought, oh, this is neat. Like uh, you know, I think the problem is not the people don't go do the health check. I think the problems really come to we don't do anything after we check with our doctor, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

That's exactly right. And you know, I would say the other thing that really excites me is the restorative therapies. Coming from a background at Mayo Clinic where there was this, you know, really invested interest in research to bring that research shield over to Fountain Life and to advance some of these restorative therapies. Things like stem cells and exosomes, having IRB studies so we can do it right and try to work to get FDA regulation for some of these things that some states aren't able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

So it's a very exciting time. If you put our health into fundamentals, what are the things are important for us to in order to live a very, very healthy lifespan?

SPEAKER_02 8:14

We know seven out of the ten leading causes of death are otherwise preventable if found early. We know heart disease, 90% is completely avoidable with living healthier. It's a big number. This is gonna just shock you too. So we find that about 50% of individuals coming in have pre-diabetes, metabolic concerns. About 93% of Americans have metabolic abnormalities. This is their waste is a little too big, their cholesterol is not as optimized, their insulin levels are higher. So metabolic abnormalities are nothing uncommon to the average American. And we see that at fountain life as well. And we know with diabetes, the type 2 diabetes, it's more lifestyle related. Yeah. Would you believe that 100% is preventable? 100% preventable. 100% how type 2 diabetes. How? Exactly. I mean, so basically, diabetes is a problem with how we manage our blood sugar. We're not using our muscles. The problem is that blood sugar doesn't have a way to effectively get into the muscles because we either don't have the muscle or we're not sensing the insulin the way it should be. So insulin is basically a hormone that's released from the pancreas. It's released, and it keeps them trying to shuttle that blood sugar into the muscle, into the muscle, and it becomes ineffective over time. And now you have two problems. You have increased insulin as well as increased blood sugar, and neither of those things are good for the body. And as a result, we start to see this prediabetic pattern and this diabetic pattern, and truly, it's that blood sugar control that is really one of those drivers of the heart disease, one of the biggest drivers of the heart disease. So optimizing that metabolic health is so important. I'm a big believer of wearables. Have you ever worn a continuous glucose monitor? I do. It's so important, and the body is so interconnected because sometimes we're eating perfectly healthy, and all of a sudden that thing starts beeping, and you know, it could be because you're sleek. Just because something has in the label that it's plant-based or vegan or high-end protein, we really need to look at the labels and we need to look at the macros, and we especially need to look at the fiber. You know, so I always encourage people to look at how much fiber is in it. We know that fiber can slow down that blood sugar response. We know protein can slow down the blood sugar response, healthy fats, but it's important to look at that ingredient list and make sure those ingredients are things that you can recognize because sometimes they hide ingredients like brown rice syrup. I'm a big advocate for food as medicine, and fiber is so important. Yes, you know, and there was a beautiful study that was published in 2025 on the importance of fiber along many pathways. We should talk about it. Do we is it okay if we talk about it?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah, but before we go there, can we actually kinda ask you though? Can you give me a very simple form? Like if people are worried about the type 2 diabetes, like when you said it's 100% preventable, what are the things we can do as an ordinary human to have a very good habit and make sure we don't have diabetes in our life? So, number one, we've got to move our body.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

We have to restore the amount of muscles we need to exercise, both cardiovascular with walking or jogging or bicycling, swimming, whatever you enjoy. It's not a one-size-fits-all. Just move your body, do some resistance training, give those muscles a reason to be strong. Nutrition. We know that nutrition is so important to get rid of those fake foods, get rid of the ultra-processed foods, get rid of added sugar in the diet, get rid of refined carbohydrates, and eat more fiber-rich vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, lean protein. So important. And healthy fats. Think of things like nuts. Walnuts are my favorite, super rich in omega-3 fatty acids. We know that a lot of Americans are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids. That has powerful anti-inflammatory properties, and the omega-3s are so good for the brain health, as we were talking about earlier as well. So that would be my recommendation is eating a balanced diet. Again, getting rid of the fake foods, getting enough fiber, getting enough protein, and throw some healthy fats in there. Whether it's nuts, seeds, you can use olive oil, all of that counts. And fatty fish is very good for you too. Also very rich in that omega-3 fatty acid.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

That's really good. The food as a medicine, as you as you said. Um, that's narrow uh back to the things you want to share earlier. Like I believe it's a good topic our audience also want to know.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

The fiber is such a cool one, you know, and it's not to minimize the importance of protein, but I think that message is loud and clear for everyone. I feel most Americans who are really health conscious, they're paying attention to their protein intake. But some of them still fall a little bit short of the fiber. We know that about 91% of women are fiber deficient and 95% of men. It's that's substantial, and these statistics will blow your mind. So in 2025, there were three separate studies that were big ones, and I have three things I always recommend to people because it's really confusing on social media. You'll get on social media and you hear a claim, and it's like, wow, that's really confusing. Because I think two things above just told me something totally different. Everyone's contradicting each other.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

That's true. I actually can't I did on one point. I recently talked to I believe it's Dr. Mona from Fontaine. Yes. Uh I never know coconut oil is actually not good for me. Because when you look at social media, they all tell you those are super food. And personally, I really love coconut. So I was actually thinking I should eat more, but then because of certain biomarkers in my body, it shows up actually those oil is actually not so good for me.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

You're exactly right. And you know, coconut is plant-derived, so having a little bit isn't gonna hurt anyone, but if you overeat it, it's very rich in saturated fat. And not everyone responds to that favorably, and the cholesterol levels start to go up. And I should be careful with that word cholesterol. I I use that as like a lump term. It's the APO B that we pay attention to. That is basic basically going to be a blood test that signifies the atherogenic or the portion of cholesterol that creates that plaque, that's a problem. And so if we see someone's APO B is going up, up, up, that's a problem. Lipoprotein little A, another lab, usually we get from mom and dad. You know, so if we have that lipoprotein A that's high, we know that we're gonna kind of be stuck having to be a little bit more strict with our diet. And sometimes it also means that there's certain medications we have to consider or nutraceuticals. But on the topic of cardiovascular health, this is one of those studies. And what I share with people is always asked was a study done in humans, how many people were in the study, and what were they comparing it to? And so this amazing study had 17 million people. 17 million? That's a large scale. It's the largest study I've ever seen. And what they found is that those people that had more fiber, that had adequate amounts of fiber, had class one evidence showing a 28% reduced risk of coronary artery disease, heart disease. That same study showed it reduced the risk of pancreas cancer, reduced the risk of diverticular disease. Another study last year showed that fiber was linked to weight loss in people who were struggling with weight loss, and it improved cholesterol and markers of diabetes like insulin. And then the last study, as a cancer specialist, showed that fiber reduced the risk of cancer by 22% and dying from cancer by 17%. Listen, I don't think people want to hear numbers, but when you hear numbers that are that compelling, it makes us just think. So this is what I tell people with food, and I get so excited with food is get rid of the fake foods and always make half your meal come from vegetable or fruit. That's simple. If you can just try to do that, you can you can't mess up anything else. I have a unique personal story as well. I'm a stage four cancer survivor when I was in medical school and I had a heart transplant five years ago. So I am so in love with life. I'm so in love with you with humans, with people, and I want to just elevate humanity so that they too can understand the importance of their value and showing up for themselves. And this doesn't have to be perfect. It's really just about a progress of doing a little bit better each day. Just a little bit, that's all.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

You have a heart transplant five years ago. I do.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

I have a stranger's heart. It's the gift of life.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Because you look so radiant, I wouldn't, you know, picture you ever being sick ever. Is that a difficult time when it happened? Uh, how you mentally, you know, go through it. You know, mindset, and that's what we're here discussing is mindset.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

The mind is so powerful, so strong. And I really was just in the mindset of knowing I was gonna be okay. I looked for lessons. I describe it almost as becoming very masterful at looking at lessons and meaning behind why I was going through what I was going through. Not victim mentality, because my gosh, now I am at such an elevated point in my existence. It's just true bliss. Like I it's just I'm in such love with life that every moment of adversity for me was truly a gift. Now, in the trenches, it was hard. There were many hard days, but I just trusted. I have deep faith in God, you know, having spirituality, belief in something bigger than ourself, you just trust.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

And for our audience who might go through the hardship in their health, is there any voice or any words you can give it to DOMs?

SPEAKER_02 17:52

You know, it's so important to hire the medical team that is going to acknowledge your voice and validate you and put you at the center of that decision making. Have the medical team meet you where you're at. So important. But conventional medicine certainly is why I'm alive today. But if you can march that conventional medicine along with healthy living, number one, that being love. You know, love of self and acceptance and showing up to just nourish your body in the way that it desires and that it deserves, and loving others too, and extending that out. And then that mindset of just gratitude, just finding something you're grateful for. We we all have something that you can find that you're grateful for. I think that's so very important. And then, of course, everything else we talked about. All those things matter, but it's hard to get started with those other aspects of living healthy if you don't love yourself enough to show up for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

So we matter, and you know, AI, I know there's a lot of people that are very cynical of AI, but AI has such potential to allow, at least for me, my mind to rest a little so I could be more creative and innovative. And I use it as a springboard to accelerate all that I want to do. So I've loved AI. During my time at Mayo Clinic, I did some really exciting studies with AI showing that it was ultimately more compassionate than us. And when we would read some of the AI, you know, descriptions of patients and what they were going through, it would be like, oh, it would soften the heart, it would reconnect you to that mission. So when used properly, AI can be such a powerful tool, and we should use that and continue to work on being more creative so we can continue to serve humanity.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

As I heard when people have uh, you know, other part from another person, do you also get their memories? I think I did.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

I really do, and it's powerful. So I was on the heart transplant list for 14 months and I was becoming very sick. They had to admit me to the hospital for Ivy support to actually pump the heart, and they were going to have to transition me to full life support, and then they found a matching heart. It was very hard. There's a lot of things that go into finding an adequate match for you. When they found my matching heart, it turned out she was an IV drug user with hepatitis C. And initially, my first response was judgment. I was thinking, whoa, and I was scared because I had heard you develop traits of the donor. And then shortly after they told me this, I just had this knowing that this was meant for me. And it has been a dance of life with my donor heart. And I don't know what her circumstances were. I never was given the opportunity to meet the family. You write a letter many months after transplant, and unfortunately, they did not opt to connect. And I I'm okay with that. When the time is right, if they desire, I share my story so widely, and I'm just one voice out of many transplant patients whose lives have been saved by organ donation. But I do feel a difference. Maybe it's just because I have the transplant and this new lease on life, and I feel so incredible. But I think part of it's her.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

It's just like this childlike energy. But do you feel like your personality has a changed before and after? I do. I feel like I'm less guarded.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

I'm more open, and I have always appreciated people, but I just love humanity in a way that I just feel like this innate connection with every human I touch. And it's just been so special.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Thank you for sharing those stories because I feel many people again, maybe they go through different hard issues, but I really feel with the advancement of technology, we can definitely live longer and you know everything around it. I agree. This is very special.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my total passion around healthy living and about the importance of early detection and what we're doing at Fountain Life. Because, you know, both my husband who passed away and my unique story with disease that was found at a very late stage. If it was found early, none of this would have happened.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Um, however, I do. I do notice the price range of Fountain Life is quite high. For what can people do right now if they can't go to Fountain Life?

SPEAKER_02 22:07

That's exactly right. And my portion at Fountain Life being chief medical officer is really to be this active voice to help inspire humanity. So I'll be doing a lot of talks to be able to support people across the world in that space. But for people that are unable to be members at Fountain Life, perhaps they don't live in close proximity, or because of the cost. That's plan there is to get these research numbers to be able to draw the information so we can change policy so that insurance understands the importance of early detection. But until that day comes, work closely with your primary care doctor about getting all the screening tests that are available to you. Show it for yourself, live that healthy lifestyle, and pay attention to your body. Be your advocate. If you're not feeling good, if something doesn't seem quite right, ask your doctor again to check the appropriate tests to validate your concern.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

What can people do today, like in the most frontier of the technology, to be healthy?

SPEAKER_02 23:06

You know, in terms of being on the frontier, we are moving at such a rapid pace. It's not going to surprise me if we have a cure for every one of these diseases we've been worried about via what we're unveiling from the genome, Dr. David Sinclair's research and beyond. That disease of today is going to be something of yesterday. And that's why this longevity movement is very exciting, because if we're able to get rid of diseases and we can truly embark upon this opportunity to be at this peak existence, that's going to be super fun, I feel.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

I just said, you know, I would love those information to get delivered to the people who truly need it a lot. That is going to take time, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

You know, and so we have to do our due diligence. Everyone in this space of multimodal testing really needs to work hard at using these AI tools to continue to review those data points, look at the power of disease detection when it's early, and the power of disease reversal with lifestyle, and also trying to identify what laboratory studies, things that are easier to check across the world, are the ones that are the most diagnostic of these health concerns we're finding. And so we're doing a lot of investigation to try to unveil that at found life. So that's the part that excites me uh immensely, I would say. Yeah, because you know that's a good question. When you think of just diagnostic tests, that's just the tests. The multimodal component is when we bring the AI analytics in, when we bring the physician in. And it's a whole team of reviewing this data and then applying it to the member, applying it to the patient. And that's what's so important in terms of this very holistic scope of practice.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

I love that. When you see the future 10 years of the healthcare and the longevity, what kind of future you see? I think it's so incredibly promising.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

We are finding so much about what genes are potentially more harmful, how to individualize what we're finding there, direct with lifestyle, and what I call it is bio-individualizing our medical prescriptions. Everything from how we live to the therapeutics we're delivering to enable.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

And the one last question, though, like if you can only give one of the voice for people really acting on today or tomorrow at this month, what will be that other voice? That's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

And I think the most important thing right now is to really not lose sight of the importance of connection. We've got to connect, especially in this rapid-pace, advancing AI technology world, if we don't pause to connect with humanity and one another and to establish meaning in our life. What's special to us, also through that lens of how can we make the world a better place. That to me is something we need to all continue to embark upon as we continue to advance the sciences and technology of everything else. Thank you for your time today, Dr. Dong.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Thank you. This is probably this is a lot of fun. Thank you for watching this new episode of Humanware Project. So that we can bring out more amazing content like this one to you. Please like and subscribe. Your support means the world to us.