Resolve IBS and IBD Naturally
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Resolve IBS and IBD Naturally
Episode 58: Your Leaky Gut Could Be Causing Your High Blood Pressure, with Dr. James Kneller
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Dr. James Kneller, cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist, unveils the overlooked connection between gut health and cardiovascular disease, challenging conventional approaches to high cholesterol and blood pressure. Despite decades of pharmaceutical interventions, deaths from hypertensive heart disease have increased 450% since the 1970s, pointing to fundamental flaws in our current treatment paradigm.
• Cholesterol functions as a repair molecule, rising in response to inflammation rather than simply being a harmful substance
• Up to 70% of inflammation originates in the gut, creating a direct pathway for damage to the cardiovascular system
• Statin drugs can reduce plaque by approximately 6% but have not been shown to increase longevity
• Common statin side effects include muscle pain/weakness (affecting up to 20% of users) and cognitive impairment
• Genetically modified wheat with increased gluten content triggers inflammation and intestinal permeability
• Advanced testing reveals connections between intestinal permeability, gluten sensitivity, and cardiovascular conditions
• Quality sea salt provides necessary electrolytes and excessive restriction may deplete intracellular minerals
• Regular cardiovascular exercise can reduce systolic blood pressure by up to 20mmHg without medication
• Natural plant compounds can influence the same biological pathways as medications but in a more balanced way
• Toxic burden from chemicals, heavy metals and mold is an underrecognized contributor to cardiovascular disease
Visit naturalcardiologyinstitute.com to learn about natural approaches to cardiovascular health and to schedule a consultation with Dr. Kneller.
Follow him @JamesKnellerMD on facebook, instagram, and X.
To schedule time with Dr. Kneller directly to review your medical history, and for personalized natural therapies, please use: https://drjames-kneller007.clientsecure.me/
Link to a free 30 minute Gut Check Call
Disclaimer: None of the content discussed is meant to be taken as medical advice. All information presented is for educational purposes only and listeners and viewers assume all responsibility around implementing any changes to their health and medical regimen.
Introduction to Cardiovascular Health
Speaker 1Welcome to Resolve IBS and IBD. Naturally, I'm Courtney Cowie, a nutrition therapy and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. If you are struggling with the symptoms of IBS or IBD and want to get to the root cause of your symptoms so you can take back your health through a whole person approach, this podcast is for you. Just a disclaimer that the information I'm presenting in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice. You should always consult a qualified practitioner before making any changes to your health or medical regimen. That being said, let's get on with the show.
Speaker 1Well, Dr James Canneller, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to have you on today. We're going to talk about a topic that we have not yet touched upon on the podcast. That I think is going to impact a lot of people, whether it's a secondary issue they're struggling with outside of the IBS, IBD symptomology that they've got going on, or even if they're listening to have other chronic inflammatory conditions. This is just such a biggie that can go hand in hand, which is issues like high cholesterol and high blood pressure. So welcome to the podcast. Tell me just a little bit about your background and how you got into the field of getting really interested in working with those issues.
Speaker 2Yeah, thanks, courtney, this is great, we appreciate being here. So I'm a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist and over 10 years of full-time clinical practice, so I'm also an MD PhD, and my original research interest was in complex arrhythmia mechanisms, or how your heart can support complex rhythms. Having been in conventional cardiology for a long time, you start to recognize that, although the tools that we have are very powerful, they're also limited in many respects and there's gaps in the conventional medical model and what patients start to recognize that, although the tools that we have are very powerful, they're also limited in many respects and there's gaps in the conventional medical model and what patients needs actually are. And so I'm always looking for real solutions to the problem, and that has taken me into natural cardiology and looking at what other factors could be contributing to our patients' heart disease and their responses to our therapies. And what that has led me to through advanced testing are two major areas of focus, and one is toxin burden.
Speaker 2Americans are chock-a-block full of toxins, whether it's chemicals or heavy metals or mold particles. And two, the prevalence of leaky gut is um is vast and entirely underappreciated, and we know there's a gut heart axis, that majority of our inflammation comes through the gut and inflammation is, of course, very important to um, coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis, fibrosis forming in the heart, which destabilizes the heart electrically and is responsible for abnormal rhythms, and then also high blood pressure. And this factor and connection is completely overlooked in clinical medicine. Clinical medicine and clinical cardiology is so dumbed down right now that we are not doing any of the necessary root cause workup that the recent data and these findings are pointing to. So then it really becomes beholden on the patient to seek out individual help you know whether it's you or a natural cardiology approach where we end up looking at the same things in certain regards and gut health is definitely one of those and unfortunately, the burdens on the patient, because the medical system, cardiologists in particular, will never steer a patient in that direction.
Speaker 2They just don't know to.
Speaker 1Oh for sure, Absolutely. And I know just kind of from reading a little bit about you that you're a fan of Bobby Kennedy's work and some of the stuff he's put out there, just on kind of the push of big pharma and the way that the entire conventional medical system has basically been embedded in that system right when there really isn't a lot of incentive to get to the root cause because it's not profitable to actually help somebody heal and get healthy.
Speaker 2Right, and how did we arrive there? You know where we're only paying for other things. But yeah, I mean Robert Kennedy and his work. I mean he's the only person I've ever heard say the kinds of things that he says on on television and from a political platform, and I think it's very exciting that he is now Secretary Kennedy and I'm very optimistic for for what he can accomplish. You know, I know his major focus seems to be the vaccines right now and that that, of course, is very. But I'm hoping, when he kind of gets a handle on that, that he starts to that, that that focus broadens and includes and includes heart health in important ways and probably gut health as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely, I'm in agreement. It's such a big nut to crack and I think prior to him getting that appointment, we really didn't have anyone in there that was getting into the real information and to your point, I'm in such agreement with your statement about toxic burden.
Speaker 1I see that all the time in my. But I believe Bobby actually started his career as an environmental lawyer, right. So he kind of looked into just a lot of the things going on where there was you know animal to try to tackle in one shot that. I'm sure he's trying to piecemeal it right Like bit by bit here. So, yeah, well, james, let's talk a little bit about the cholesterol side of things, because I think this is kind of a widely misunderstood and even controversial topic.
Speaker 1A widely misunderstood and even controversial topic in even the functional health space, or if we want to call it, the progressive health space. And I might even go so far as to say that, like recently this was within the last couple of years I was doing some training in Chicago with a naturopath down there who was basically throwing Peter Atiyah's take on cholesterol under the bus because, by the way, he sort of thought was that, you know, he was still pitching it as inherently a genetic driven disease. Right, that really doesn't have any specific roots outside of just the inflammation of the vascular system versus, like looking at deeper issues like the gut, like endotoxin leaking from the gut and cholesterol, as a actual self-healing mechanism of the body to bind that up, take it back to the liver and process it.
Speaker 1So I'd love to hear you kind of talk about that a little bit, because I think this is something that even my health forward clients still don't completely understand.
Speaker 2Yeah, no, that's interesting. So high cholesterol. You know someone walks in with high cholesterol and we think of that as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. You know atherosclerosis in the heart and the brain or anywhere else in your, in your extremities. Or then people with who present with coronary disease. We assume that their cholesterol needs lowered, whether it's high or not. You know so you can get people with advanced cardiovascular disease that their cholesterol needs lowered, whether it's high or not. You know. So you can get people with advanced cardiovascular disease. Their cholesterol levels are normal. But the guidelines are still saying high intensity statin therapy to beat this down absolutely as low as possible in the setting of established disease.
Speaker 2And you start to think that this paradigm is it doesn't always seem to make sense. You know the high cholesterol levels don't predict who has coronary disease. Low cholesterol levels can be present individuals with coronary disease. So what really is the relationship between cholesterol and the cardiovascular system? And for individuals who have high cholesterol, why is it high? You know diet is one factor, but what are the other factors?
Speaker 2And I kind of think of cholesterol as a repair molecule in the body. It's like if there's damage, um, the body would produce cholesterol and maybe then pave over areas of damage and use it as kind of a, as a, as a putty or sealant for, um, things that are problematic. So if there's inflammation in the cardiovascular system, I think cholesterol levels can become elevated, sort of as a repair mechanism, but then it's very hard to assess whether that inflammatory damage is in fact going on. And then, of course, we need cholesterol for our hormones and for our cell membranes, and maybe somebody who's healthy and actually very vivacious and has a lot of life in them and a lot of hormonal activity and a lot of cellular activity, because they're such a robust individual, may have high cholesterol levels just to support their levels of activity and the level of function that they've attained, and so that number might fluctuate through their life, um, depending on the kind of function that they maintain.
Speaker 2Um, that's not the whole story either. So there's um. There was a study, interestingly, um out of Harvard and um you know from the Framingham data, which is so famous in cardiology, where they looked at stool samples of individuals with different levels of cholesterol and tried to correlate it with the composition of gut bacteria, and interestingly, they found that that ocelobacter was people who had significant levels of ocelobacter, as one of their gut bacteria had lower levels of cholesterol. Their gut bacteria had lower levels of cholesterol, so somehow the ocelobacter seemed to be digesting the cholesterol and disposing of it. You know, in a way, that those individuals had low levels. So that again points back to the gut and the composition of the gut microbiome as playing a significant role in the cholesterol levels that you'll measure in somebody's blood.
The Truth About Cholesterol
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely, and yeah, I'm familiar with that Framingham study too, and it might be interesting just to have you talk a little bit about the historical lean towards bringing more and more statins into play, if you can, just because I think what happened at some point in time was taking some of that data and twisting it to say like, oh, the lower your cholesterol, the more we're increasing your risk of you know or not, your risk, but your ability to like avoid heart events and have, like, more longevity. But from what I remember, it was actually showing that, like, higher cholesterol was correlated with greater longevity and greater lifespan versus, like you know, lowering it too low can really be an issue, right?
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, and the guy, thank you. Thank you, that's a great point and the guidelines right now are very aggressive for lipid lowering and it doesn't make a lot of sense to a lot of us. But now we want LDL levels less than 55 in people who have, you know, demonstrated atherosclerosis. And the latest studies do show that high intensity statin therapy, maybe with a PCSK9 inhibitor, can shrink an atherosclerotic plaque by perhaps 6%. So you would think, if someone has plaque, that if you could shrink that, that you're doing disease reversal.
Speaker 2But those latest studies were smart enough not to include a mortality analysis because their predecessors have shown that people are not living longer because of statin therapy. You know you might have, you might achieve a 1% reduction in future heart attack and stroke by being on a statin drug, but you are not living any longer and that may be a consequence of the multiple complications that statin drugs can can introduce. You know they're now associated with cancer and and um. You know dementia and there's all these other problems that can come with statins and um that could be detracting from any longevity benefit that that drugs should impart, just because just by their impact on your, on your coronary arteries, you know.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up, because I think one of the biggest problems we have right now, like in the conventional system, is when people go in and they're getting diagnosed with these things.
Speaker 1They're often prescribed a drug, but they're not educated well on what. They're often prescribed a drug but they're not educated well on what the side effects might be or the trade-off might be Right, and so they'll typically and I mean not to say it's a bad thing to trust your doctor, but if you start to understand how the system has really changed over time and not in a good way, not in a patient centric way.
Speaker 1Really, like you said, you have to be your own best advocate and your own best educator in that system, trying to navigate it. And so, like you said, it can, it can lead to all these risks. I know just from the gut standpoint. Sometimes I'll tell people that, like, if you're on a statin and it's lowering your cholesterol, realize that it gets too low. It could be hard then to build certain digestive fluids, like bile, adequately and properly and, like you said, that'll make it harder than to break your fat down.
Speaker 1You won't have as much cholesterol available to build hormones, which all hormones are built from right, and then that could lead to secondary GI issues, which is so common with a number of drugs. Things like omeprazole can do that right, which is an acid lowering medication. So people don't often think that sometimes if you back the train up and go all the way back in time and you think about maybe the course of things you've been prescribed, some of that could have potentially set the stage for GI issues that came down the track. You know what I mean, whether they realize it or not. And so just in terms of the statins, whether they realize it or not, and so, just in terms of the statins, what are like maybe the top two to three biggest trade-offs or or sort of impacts you feel people have to be aware of if they're going to take?
Speaker 2them. Well, if, if so, if you're, you're recommended to be on a statin drug, I think the most common and significant side effect is going to be muscle pain and weakness, and significant side effect is going to be muscle pain and weakness. Okay, people, just people, are just like, ah, they can't, they, they, they, their muscles are either sore, you know, often, often with a finger squeeze they can't do it, clenching their hands, and they just are having harder times getting out of bed, climbing the stairs, things like that, because of Frank weakness, getting out of bed, climbing the stairs, things like that, because of frank weakness. And that's something that the honest data says. You could see up to 20 percent of users, you know, people who noticeably are, are weaker or have muscle pain, and I would say the 20 percent number is, um, pretty much what I see in our practice, you know, know. So I tend to believe that data and I think, I think that's going to be the most most common and debilitating short-term complaint.
Speaker 2The longer term complaints are the or what I? What scares me is the possible impact on cognitive impairment and cognitive decline. You know, and maybe Frank, frankly, you know frankly, a progression to dementia. You know, and there's studies that are published there on the NIH database, pubmed, where individuals took statins, their cognitive function declined and then they came off the statins and their cognitive function rebounded, you know so. So who's the fool? For? For taking those things? You know, the the cardiology perspective seems to be damn the torpedoes as long as you don't die from heart disease.
Speaker 2We've done our job, you know well, so anything else but heart disease and that you could almost swallow that if the impact on heart disease was appreciable, you know. But the studies honestly just show that they are not saving you from events in a significant way and they're not prolonging your life. I don't know how we got here, you know, except by by, you know, pharma marketing campaigns and how these things have become infiltrated into the guidelines. But it seems like every doctor, from the family doctor to the cardiologist, is like we.
Speaker 2Everyone should kind of be on a stat and you should just have a statin on board. You know they're good for all sorts of things and you should have something. And you know you never know disease, stroke, you know. Just just try to put some space between you and that with the stat and just take it. You know, and that's in everyone's mindset and it's, it's shocking, but the data doesn't support it and these things do cause suffering. They're not giving people much protection. So you do get a false sense of security. And here we are, you know, but congratulations to marketers because they've gotten us here and it's entrenched and they're killing it. You know.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. And is it still true that cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of mortality in the? U? I think I'd heard that stat a while back.
Statins: Benefits vs. Serious Risks
Speaker 2Yes, it is. So it is. It has been that way since the 1970s. Interestingly, the American heart disease just just published an update cardiovascular disease trend from 1970 to 2022. And so acute heart attacks are down. But what that has been, what has gone up by 450%, are deaths due to hypertensive heart disease.
Speaker 1Okay, very, very interesting.
Speaker 2Yeah, blood pressure related to high to high blood pressure has gone up 450 450 deaths due to chronic ischemic heart disease. So the the long-term effects of cholesterol and atherosclerotic plaques in your arteries, even though they're not causing you acute heart attacks, um deaths overall are up by almost 200 and that's close to 300% in men and about 150% in women. So it comes out in the wash is about 200, 250% increase since the 1970s. So the death profile has changed, but heart disease is clearly still the number one killer in the United States.
Speaker 1Yeah, and that's probably why, james, the medical system has really honed in on that. And then using statins as the quote unquote solution because it's a cash cow right Like there's so many people potentially worried about it, you know, if it runs in their families, the common thinking is well, it's in my family, it's genetic. I would certainly argue that I'm more of an epigenetic proponent than a genetic determinist right. But, I sort of wonder if a lot of this even just is because of the pure statistics around it. It becomes this huge opportunity, right?
Speaker 2Yes, it certainly was a huge opportunity. The statin drugs are now off patent, but the PCSK9 inhibitors are still on patent and very expensive, and the push now is for this additional therapy, in addition to statins, to bring cholesterol down to very, very low levels, so that people are now compelled to prescribe some of those drugs that still have the bigger bite in terms of marketing and profitability.
Speaker 1Yeah, and one thing I just wanted to circle back to and ask you about, because I think this is so fascinating.
Speaker 1I guess I wasn't necessarily as aware of the connection between dementia and statin drugs and it makes me think, is it that because it's lowering cholesterol and, as we kind of alluded to in the beginning of our conversation, it has a protective benefit? Right, like, looking at the body from a functional perspective, we sort of come at it from the thinking that it's never making mistakes. Whatever it's doing is doing in the in the aim of homeostasis and trying to balance out or like correct its own you know physiology best it can, right, and so it kind of makes me wonder if you know, type two or dementia, alzheimer's is being kind of dubbed the type three diabetes. Now, right, where we could talk about even the brain gut connection, the heart gut connection, all these different axes in the body, and then taking cholesterol kind of out of the, out of the mix, is a potential buffer for some of the toxicity that drives those conditions like Alzheimer's, right, like, do you think that's possibly what's going on with some of those connections there?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And, um, you know, maybe it might be too simplistic to say that the brain's made of a lot of fat and fat materials and cholesterol and it needs that. And if you're, if you're forcing your liver not to put out any of this, because the statin drugs are, are very, can be very, very powerful, um, in, in, in, um, in lowering those lipid levels that that's just degrading on your brain because it doesn't have the fat products that it needs to support itself. Yeah, that might be a little simplistic, but it's kind of that's, I guess, kind of what I default to.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I think it's an easy way for the average person to kind of think about it and understand it, which is which is awesome. So, since you started to talk about the high blood pressure connection, maybe we go there next and just kind of discuss that and talk a little bit about the connection, because I know I see it commonly where if I have a client come to me, they've got that high cholesterol diagnosis 50% of the time they're also diagnosed with high blood pressure too. So what's going on there, done?
Speaker 2at the time they're also diagnosed with high blood pressure too. So what's going on there? Yeah, what is going on there? So high blood pressure. You know why is the blood pressure high?
Speaker 2I think I think it's it's partly the quality of the arteries. You know, your arteries will get stiff, especially in the microvasculature and where the, where the art arteries start to break down with the arterioles and it's really getting to the level of of perfusing the individual tissues and cells. Resistance at that level is what drives blood pressure and I think that's where atherosclerosis, being hardening of the arteries, often starts. So you'll get the endothelial dysfunction in the arteries. So the lining of the arteries are compromised, they're not producing nitric oxide in the way that they should. Those vessels might start to become rigid because they've developed fibrosis and by losing their elasticity the blood pressure will, um, will escalate, yeah, and those being big drivers, you know, kidney function of course the kidneys regulate blood pressure. A lot, a lot of our drugs to lower blood pressure target the kidneys, um, but I think of it being really the quality of the blood vessels as being, as being the most important, the most important um determinant of high blood pressure in a way that's meaningful for cardiovascular risk.
Speaker 2I think the quality of our blood vessels is degrading and that is a consequence largely of chronic inflammation and, you know, inflammation that we're not recognizing and a lot of that having its origin again in the gut. You know, providing 70% of our sources of inflammation are probably coming to us through a compromised gut. The reality, the reality goes up there, even goes even higher, you know. So, individuals with high blood pressure we should absolutely be looking at gut function, but absolutely nobody is doing that. I would, it would overwhelm the system. You know why we have this system, who knows? But it would, it would overwhelm it. We're not prepared to do that. You know, we can't seem to. We couldn't do that.
High Blood Pressure: Root Causes
Speaker 2Testing for every Medicare patient out there who comes in with blood pressure, that's above the targets that the guidelines have proposed to us, which is 130 over 80. You know, everybody should be 130 over 80. And on drug therapy, if they're consistently over that number, you know, a lot of us feel that those numbers are are too tight and that they're getting us into trouble. Um, but the blood pressure paradigm clearly has to change. You know, in my, in the time of my practice, more and more drugs to lower blood pressure have come on the market and we had plenty to begin with, when I started medicine or studying medicine, you know.
Speaker 2But since 1970 up until now, despite our all these pharmaceuticals coming out, deaths deaths due to hypertensive heart disease are up by 450%. Oh my gosh, you know I mean people are dying. I, if you told me that we hadn't moved the dial on on hypertensive deaths, I'd be like, wow, that sucks. We're not good at this. You know we're missing something. You know like that would like, that would be bad enough, right. But when you say it's up, you know four fold like clearly, clearly, we're not getting this right.
Speaker 1I couldn't even go for a walk without planning my bathroom breaks. If you have IBSD or IBD and feel trapped by your gut, you're not alone. I used to plan my life around bathroom breaks until I found a three-step solution that finally worked To get my free guide IBSD and IBD Relief a three-step solution to end bowel urgency and loose stool. Click the link in the show notes below. Yeah, no, absolutely, and it makes me kind of think about just the way that conventional approaches look at these things as band-aided.
Speaker 1Band-aided let's try to put this thing on there that's going to artificially manipulate the mechanism of the body, and I have a lot more experience working with people with autoimmune disease and a lot of times they start with one disease diagnosis, one type of immunosuppressive.
Speaker 1And over time, amazingly, they'll develop a second one or a third one, because the body's really smart. It's like oh, you're going to shut me down here, I'm going to go over here now and create a problem, right, and it's just kind of that. It kind of pulls at you, like what you're saying is so true. It's like this isn't where the fire is. Like you got to look deeper and kind of go to that root and try to figure out, like why? Go to that root and try to figure out like why is the inflammation?
Speaker 2in the vascular system to begin with, right, and that's the question you're saying nobody's really looking at or trying to answer right, yes, or, or, or. The system, just the system, will not acknowledge. You know, there there's great basic science studies and you know even clinically oriented studies that do look at some of those things, and so we have that data in front of us. Um, but you know even clinically oriented studies that do look at some of those things, and so we have that data in front of us. But you know, doctors will never change their practice until it's guideline driven and they wouldn't have the tools to change their practice, honestly, until it was guideline driven or until insurers were willing to pay for certain types of workup or therapy. So they're stuck. So we're not going to change what we do until the whole ship corrects itself and basically the problem becomes recognized enough that insurers are compelled to pay for that workup or those types of therapies.
Speaker 2So we're stuck in this medical paradigm which is clearly failing everyone. You know, if deaths are just shooting up and out of control, the way that the American Heart Association is telling us that they have since 1970. So we need a different paradigm and for the informed patient, they need to read it, they need to study and they need to gain, engage with holistic practitioners who are going to work with them individually at root cause analysis and individualized therapies and disease reversal to then lower blood pressure naturally and in a way that's going to be helpful for them and impactful for them, you know. So it's going to be that individual concierge style medicine with natural health practitioners um, that's going to get the motivated individual with sufficient means over the finish line. You know, and unfortunately, that, unfortunately, that's that's where we're at.
Speaker 1Yeah, I would agree with that 100%. And, um, while we're on the topic of high blood pressure, one thing I wanted just to touch on, cause I'm I'm sure you have thoughts on this as well as a lot of people will come in with the, the myth or the thought that they have to be so salt avoidant.
Speaker 1Salt is the you know the bane of their, you know their, their problem, and I love that. I'm hearing you say that it's really back to vascular inflammation, not so much the kidney level, control of blood pressure, and, based on what I've seen, I think a lot of people actually are lacking high quality salt. Yes, we don't want to be eating the processed refined Morton style, you know white table salt.
Speaker 1There isn't a lot of real mineral content in there that's going to serve your body, but the truth of it is like high quality sea salt is needed by the body to help absorb water, to help regulate the sodium potassium pump in the cells. Like I don't think that's something people need to be afraid of, so I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about that too, james.
Speaker 2Yes, I agree with you, we need electrolytes and the hypertensive medicines that act at the level of kidney. Um, you know, lower our blood pressure at the expense of electrolyte levels and and I'm concerned that we're robbing our intracellular milieu of important electrolytes in the name of lowering blood pressure and in the long run, that that is not good for our health. You know, obviously. I mean we know that if somebody with heart failure, for example, if they go binge eating and they have a bunch of chips over the weekend, you know that acute sodium load can provoke them into a, into a heart failure episode. Um, but that's a very vulnerable individual who overdid it. Um, I think for the average person who's like, their blood pressure is a little bit high. So their family doctor has them on hydrochlorothiazide. You know to tell them that they need to salt restrict, um, um, is probably not the right message entirely. You know, aggressive salt restriction.
Speaker 1Right, right.
Speaker 2You know you might want to limit your, your table salt and your binge eating on salty foods. You know, and unfortunately a lot of canned foods, for example, have tremendous amounts of sodium in them because they salt them so heavily, because you actually lose the saltiness in in a, in a canned soup, for example, so they had to put so much salt in there just to get it to taste a little bit salty by the time you get it to your to your table. That can be sources of negative sodium overload. So I think we're vulnerable, especially with processed foods and canned foods, to have way too much sodium introduced to us and that can contribute to high blood pressure. But for the person who's not eating those things, then to tell them also to just aggressively restrict high quality salts from their diet is not exactly the right message either.
Speaker 1And.
Speaker 2I think, because you, you, you will lose electrolytes, you know, and the sodium and the chloride. Having those levels be adequate is going to then affect the intracellular potassium and magnesium and all these other electrolytes um that are required for cellular homeostasis. They're all related to each other at the level of the cell membrane. So, for the vulnerable individual, obviously, be careful of your salt and your processed foods. For the majority of people, who hopefully aren't eating those processed foods, encouraging the healthy use of salt, I think, is an important message and an important contributor to to long-term health.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely, I'm in complete agreement. It's like real foods, cook them at home, get them whole, whole right, like try to avoid the package process stuff. That's kind of like the rule of thumb for health, right.
Speaker 2Yeah, and partly because of the sodium load that can be in there, absolutely Along with all the preservatives. And yeah, and partly because of the sodium load that can be in there.
Speaker 1Absolutely Along with all the preservatives and artificial ingredients, and I mean, there's so many things we could talk on when it comes to diet right.
Speaker 2Oh for sure, yeah right, oh, totally.
The Gut-Heart Connection
Speaker 1Which kind of leads me and this is more of a question of curiosity, because we're on the topic of diet, because I think this is a thought a lot of people have, and you know I've been a lifelong athlete, you know, grown up with a lot of active people in my life and I want to ask you, when it comes to high blood pressure, how much does activity level and exercise impact that versus, say, the role of diet or the role of toxins? Do you have kind of ideas around what's most impactful there?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think the data shows in our experience echoes that that cardiovascular exercise can can really have a very positive effect on on blood pressure, like 20 millimeters of mercury off your systolic pressure. If you're taking walks and doing some calisthenics and you know, getting out there and and and and exercising on a regular basis it can really be impactful for blood pressure. So it's one of those healthy things that we can do and we don't have to overdo it. You know you don't have to be in CrossFit to get your blood pressure down, but but getting out there and walking, swinging your arms, breathing deeply, yeah, it brings the pressures down and it's really good for your blood vessels.
Speaker 1So that's a simple thing people could start with.
Speaker 2Right, that's a simple thing that people can start with. Yeah, so let's not forget the basics. And having a reasonable exercise program you know we're not, not killing ourselves, but we're out there, we're out there moving and you know, 30 minutes a day, kind of thing is is just fantastic.
Speaker 1Yeah, I love that. Yeah, and that's that's something I always thought to. Just being a very active person, that like, okay, one thing that definitely is going to help with cardiovascular health is to just move your body.
Speaker 1Move your body, right, I mean not so, like you said, but just getting out there, getting your heart rate up a little bit, get the blood pumping, good good thing. I want to kind of talk about the role of leaky gut and also wheat in the diet, because that's that's definitely an area where we're both, I'm sure, very impassioned about. There's a lot of overlap between, obviously, the gut realm and cardiovascular there, and I don't think I've ever heard someone who specializes in cardiology talk about that. So I'd love to hear you talk about that, james, and connect that back to both high cholesterol as well as high blood pressure.
Speaker 2Yeah, so you know, at the, at you know, on my concierge service, natural Cardiology Institute, we do advanced laboratory testing for our patients. You know, advanced hormone profiles, advanced cholesterol panels, and what that testing can include is multiple markers for gluten sensitivity. So we screen very heavily for gluten sensitivity. And then these labs, being from vibrant America, also include an intestinal permeability panel which includes, like zonulin, anti-zonulin, igg, iga, anti-actin IgG, iga and then anti-LPS, lipopolysaccharide, iga, and then IgG and IgM, polysaccharide, iga, and then IgG and IgM, yeah and um, those kind of being the markers that that that vibrant America has chosen, for example, to represent intestinal permeability. And probably the most significant of those is if you have permeability that's related to the lipopolysaccharides, because that's going to be related to some prior gram negative infection that's still compromising you. You know much after the infection you think is resolved, but you still have these antibodies floating around that are ripping up your gut. You know that's some of the negative impacts of having had a significant bacterial illness in your history is that those processes could be going on. So working with these types of things and looking at these lab panels again and again and again, it has just been shocking to see how many folks come back with these messed up guts.
Speaker 2You know intestinal permeability up the wazoo. You know three of seven markers, four of seven markers in the red and um, you know. And then and then often the gluten sensitivity that um can accompany that, although that's not not the only cause. And so you're like, wow, you have heart disease, you have atrial fibrillation, you have congestive heart failure. What are all the things that we can reverse for you to make you better? And you're like, wow, you have leaky gut and significantly leaky gut, and you know, interestingly, the appropriate therapies for that can turn it around and people do start to feel better. You know, but we would never have known if we didn't look. And again, you need that motivated individual to pay for the testing because it isn't cheap, and then the immunoglobulin therapy to help reverse it. But boy oh boy, have I ever seen it turn around? And and it's really been impactful on on heart health at the individual level.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. The wheat zoomer I love that test myself. I love it and it's so great. Yeah, it's so great that you can even use it for really health. Forward people who might even come in the door saying, well, I'm already doing wheat free, gluten free, and it's like, really, should we just check anyhow? And a question I'll sometimes ask my clients is is your whole household wheat-free? Because if the answer to that is no, chances are really good.
Speaker 1You're getting accidental exposure ongoing, so that's such an amazing test because it'll give us very clear black and white data as to where that person's at. Is it that they just got, maybe an accidental acute exposure around the time they took the test? Can we see that picture of? Do they have this ongoing chronic exposure going on? And that can really help us guide them in the direction of like where do we need to start and what do we need to look at?
Speaker 1Whether that's starting in the kitchen, starting with, maybe, the food pattern for you If you're eating out three times a week, we might have to look at that factor right, like so I'm so glad you run that test, james, because I love that test and I think it's just so valuable in terms of the leaky gut panel, as well as just the peptide level sensitivity to wheat that we'll see on that right.
Speaker 2Right, right, yeah, the wheat zoomer is exactly what is exactly what, what they call it and what an eye opener to measure those things, because it's just not available on a, on a standard laboratory panel. You know that we can, that we can order in in our clinics or in the hospital, and you know all of us in internal medicine. You know we just never had access to these, to these labs, and then when you start to see it you're like wow, was that ever an eye-opener?
Speaker 1Absolutely.
Speaker 2And maybe it's, maybe it's changed as the, as the genetically modified wheats come along. You know the the the biggest problem, I think, is that the gluten content is just multiplied in the genetically modified grains, you know. So historically, probably, eating whole grains was a good idea. But now, when we have these genetically modified grains, where the gluten content is off the charts, um, for the purposes of productivity, um, and profitability for the, for the, for the grain farmers, all of a sudden we're inundated with all this gluten and the gluten sensitivity and gluten allergies are are spiking, because our bodies have never seen so much, you know. But for the poor human, just reaching for the cracker or the bread, that 30, 40 years ago was probably just fine, you know. And now they're. And now they're just piling on the pounds by doing the same thing and, you know, and developing these sensitivities. They don't know where it's coming from. It's just not a level playing field, you know.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. And back to your point about just the toxic burden. I mean then you add to that all the glyphosate spraying and the fact that mass produced grains are stored in these like dark, moldy silos, right? And I mean now you're adding chemical toxins, mycotoxins, to that food supply and I mean no wonder the immune system gets stimulated and starts to like mount an attack against these food particles and then eventually we'll start to cross correlate that to other tissues in the body, right, which is why thyroid dysfunction is so common with wheat sensitivity. And I'm willing to bet in your patient population you see a lot of people with thyroid issues alongside the cardiovascular disease.
Speaker 2Right, right, yeah, interesting those are. Those are related to, you know, and the Europeans don't have this problem because the European governments seem to have the interest of their populations at heart in a way that our politicians do not. So these genetically modified grains, I mean, you can go to France, you can eat bread up, you know, significantly, and you actually lose weight on your trip. You know, um, come over here, eat that same bread and you're piling on the pounds and you have to go on some kind of diet plan to just normalize yourself again. They and and the number of chemicals and pesticides that we allow compared to what they allow, is outrageous. America's been sold out, you know, by, by our political establishment has sold, sold us out, sold out to the regulators, lowered standards for the purposes of corporate profit at the expense of the american people, and that has not been replicated in our biological counterparts in europe, and it's it's really a travesty to see what's happened on this side of the Atlantic compared to that side of the Atlantic.
Quality Salt and Exercise Benefits
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely, and just the whole big egg pharma. All of that is kind of all co-mingled and there's a lot of lobbying that goes on to kind of forward the agenda in the big food industry to try to, you know, keep that profit margin going Right and like the two most heavily subsidized crops in the US are corn and soy, and also two of the most highly genetically modified and sprayed and you look at all of the processed components of soy and corn that go into a lot of processed foods.
Speaker 1I've even heard in the prison system they use like substantially more processed soy because it's so cheap to source. James.
Speaker 2Oh, is that right.
Speaker 1Yeah, I've heard that in the prisons because they want to keep food costs low and you know, think about just the degree of mental health and physical health issues that that population has that are driving probably some of the behavioral issues they've had over their life that got them there, and so it's just this like terrible chicken and egg process and I mean.
Speaker 1I can even remember back when my firstborn was like a toddler and I had him in daycare and he he was dairy sensitive and was getting all these ear infections and I had to really push hard at the daycare to get them to allow me to bring in a dairy alternative milk. The only one they said met the USDA guidelines was soy milk and I'm like I'm not giving my child soy milk. It was such a pushback and just so profound how you look at that and you're like, wow, this is like written right into the subsidization model we have in the US. Like, if all you're allowing is dairy and soy, what does that go right back to? Right, like those are the two biggest industries that are, you know, profiting right now. That's crazy to me, so it's sad. It's really sad.
Speaker 2That is sad, I see it. I see a couple of patients every week from the prison system for cardiology and all. Now I'll be thinking about the quality of the grains. You poor guys, you know they come in in their orange jumpsuits and they're all shackled and they're super polite, but yeah anyway yeah, it's just yeah.
Speaker 1Go ahead, james, yeah no, I was excited.
Speaker 1I didn't appreciate that well, yeah, and it's it's. You know you hate to say that there's sectors of society that are truly underserved in a sense, but I mean think about it like the prisons have to operate on a tight budget too, and so if they can cut corners and reduce costs in that way, I mean those guys may be in there for life. Like what does it matter if they give them a super healthy, nutrient, dense diet or they give them one that's made up of 40% processed soy, you know, and a lot of soy can be then made to taste like things too. I mean, this is how messed up the food system has gotten. I mean, look at things like the Impossible Burger.
Speaker 1I would have touched that with a 10-foot pole. You know. There's like, I think, some sort of steroid additive to that that's never been put in human food before and of course people don't know any of this right. It's just touted as oh plant-based, plant-based, it's so good for you, it's plant-based. It's like that's just a label that's now been turned into this kind of faddish thing and people don't realize like it does. It might be plant-based, but it's not real food, and there's certainly nothing wrong with animal foods If they're high quality. We have a lot of nutrients in those foods. The body needs to function well, so it's just crazy, so crazy.
Speaker 2Yeah, so. So our, our goal at, you know, in my practice and our natural cardiology institute, is to provide individuals with natural supplements, natural products, at appropriate doses and in good combinations that can address cardiovascular disease naturally. You know, try to try to. There's, you know there's hundreds of studies on the NIH website about natural products and their benefit for lowering blood pressure, for reversing heart disease. They don't make it into guidelines because those studies aren't considered large enough or randomized enough, but we can still take those data and those products and package them for people and provide them to people in, you know, meaningful amounts and in combinations to hopefully impact cardiovascular disease naturally.
Speaker 2So that's been our mission and our product line that we're coming out cholesterol-free to lower cholesterol, you know, medicinal bone broth with two gummy products, two capsule products to give you up to 50 natural ingredients that can really improve the health of your arteries and then protect your cholesterol from inflammation, bring your cholesterol down to appropriate levels. And then, for high blood pressure, we have a just beat it product line, which is just beat it being a play on beets and nitric oxide, so that being the number one ingredient that we start with to lower blood pressure you know, with levels that are five times more than super beets, which is what's selling out in Costco, you know, and tricking people into thinking that they're getting enough beats to meaningfully impact their health, you know got deep training and education.
Speaker 1The quality of that product is going to be so much higher because, whether it's you, you know I don't make my own product line per se.
Speaker 1But all of the products that I would work with as well. They're coming from companies that have a lot of third party testing, quality standards, research teams backing them, and so it's an entirely different thing than, say, going to Costco and getting a beet based product or Walmart or Walgreens, and so I really want to hit that point home for you too, james is like what you're talking about is this is like high level stuff that has you know effectiveness backing to it. Right. Like this is stuff that people are going to have like a quality guarantee around when they you know they they work with you.
Natural Alternatives to Medications
Speaker 2So yeah, thanks for that. You know the supplement industry is unregulated so you can say any supplement you buy at Walgreens could be full of sawdust for all you know and some studies have shown that. But there are individuals like yourself who are very knowledgeable about what products are legit and good and can advise individuals on on what to get you know. So you can't. You can go natural and you can go high quality natural with a little bit of guidance. You know not everything on Amazon you should buy and not everything at Walgreens is going to be what you think it is. But you can work with individuals and you know, without too much investment individuals and you know, without too much investment, get what you need and figure out what you need and really turn your health around.
Speaker 1Yeah, and just just to kind of clarify, so the, the products you've developed kind of go at the lowering of cholesterol and the supporting of blood pressure by reducing inflammation first and foremost, not so much the way classic statin drugs go in and just shut down cholesterol production at the level, at the level of the liver right.
Speaker 2Yes, exactly. But then also, you know, many of these plant substances are very sophisticated and they have natural statin activity, like they will partially inhibit the HMG-CoA reductase enzyme or they will have partial PCSK9 activity and that they're changing the expression of LDL receptors on the level of the liver. But they're plants that do it and they're kind of self-limiting in the extent that they do it. So it's probably safer, you know. So these pharmaceuticals, they've hijacked a lot of plant-based mechanisms. You know they'll figure out that certain plants that lower cholesterol inhibit the HMG-CoA reductase enzyme and then the pharmaceutical drug will find a way to do that in a hyperbolic way which is probably too powerful and overwhelms the system, you know. But the smart natural substances will influence those, those, those things already.
Speaker 2Um, so you can. You can substitute herbal products for statins that will work through similar mechanisms but probably in a way that's going to be more balanced and not overwhelm your cells. You know you may not get the dramatic reduction in LDL cholesterol that the statins can achieve for you, but you probably don't want that. And if the other herbal products that you're also incorporating are lowering inflammation and improving the quality of the endothelium and the blood vessel integrity as a whole, you're going to come out so much better because your cholesterol will be appropriate. Hopefully, you won't have oxidized cholesterol, you won't have the small dense LDL particles, and then your arteries, your endothelium, will be so much healthier that the interaction between the two will have you way ahead in terms of cardiovascular health, compared to these pharmaceutical strategies that the data is showing us are just failing, you know and and I I noticed from talking to you today that you also are looking at other root causes, which is the other big piece.
Speaker 1here, too, is assuming someone's going to work on their diet, work on their lifestyle, Like that's all going to trend in the right direction to help them balance out their cholesterol and blood pressure. So that's.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's gut and toxins. I'll tell you what those are the two elephants, the two elephants in the room that nobody's talking about. I mean, we get, you know, we get young women who can't get pregnant and they're full of heavy metals or industrial environmental chemicals and it's like how on earth did you get so plugged up with this stuff? You know so. Fortunately there's ways to detox. But, my goodness, if you never checked, you just wouldn't know. And the ship sails on and those people are going to age early and check out sooner than everyone else. You know, and God, we just got to look under the hood, you know.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, I agree wholeheartedly. Well, let's find out where people can connect with you and find you before we wrap up the episode today, cause I'm sure people are really interested in some of these supplements that you mentioned.
Speaker 2Yeah, so we have them on our website, which is wwwnaturalcardiologyinstitutecom all one word and there's links there. If you want to book concierge time with me, you can schedule concierge time with me and I'll talk to you about your individual health and we can arrange for advanced testing and really tailored natural therapies for your specific issue.
Speaker 1I love that Perfect. Well, good, I will link that in the show notes so that people can find that it's clickable and this has been such a pleasure. James, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about high blood pressure, high cholesterol so underrated and so misunderstood, and so this has been such a great conversation just to bring some deeper understanding to that topic.
Speaker 2Cool yeah, thank you, courtney. Amazing, amazing. Love your fund of knowledge, too, and your commitment to to gut health. It's. You're exactly where you need to be.
Speaker 1Did you find this episode informative and helpful? I'd love to have you leave me a five-star rating. Do you have questions about holistic approaches to optimizing gut health that you'd like to ask? Please leave your question or comment below and I will be sure to address it personally or cover it in a future episode. Be sure to check the show notes for any resources mentioned in today's episode. See you next time.