How Mold, Microplastics, And Stress Damage Your Heart With Dr. Jack Wolfson

What’s the best way to strengthen our hearts to avoid heart attacks, atrial fibrillation, bypass surgery, and heart disease? Dr. Jack Wolfson, a self-described “natural cardiologist”, offers unconventional advice today about what to do for all of the above. (Hint: it doesn’t include statin drugs or avoiding cholesterol or animal fats.) Jack also points out very unusual threats to heart health—from microplastics to mold! He also points out the benefits of fermented foods which can negate the effect of plastics in our food!

Check out Jack’s website: Natural Heart Doctor

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Dr. Jack Wolfson.

How can we avoid angina, clogged arteries, and the need for bypass surgery? You would expect a cardiologist to tell you to avoid fatty foods or to take cholesterol lowering drugs. Not now. This is Episode 516 and our guest is Dr. Jack Wolfson, a self-described natural cardiologist. Jack offers us his unconventional advice for a healthy heart. His advice includes identifying the role of mold on your heart, reducing the effect of microplastics in your food, and lowering chronic stress instead of the usual things we would expect like cholesterol lowering medications.

Jack challenges us to build a healthy gut, improve our diet, get plenty of sunshine, movement, and sleep. He also shares some surprising information about the power of fermented foods for reducing the effect of plastics in your food. Before we get into the conversation, I want to invite you to become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Did you know that all of our initiatives are member supported? We are a member supported organization. In honor of our 25th year, if you become a member in 2025, you will be entered into a drawing to win a prize from some of our favorite Wise Traditions friendly companies. Join now. Go to Weston A. Price Foundation and click on the join now button and become a member. Use the Code POD10 and you get $10 off. It’s only $30 a year, and you are joining hands with us in our efforts for education, research, and activism. Thank you so much once again for becoming a member of the family.

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Welcome, Jack.

Thank you so much, Hilda. Pleasure to be on. I’m a big fan of Weston A. Price and Sally Fallon and the whole group. My pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Preventing Heart Disease: Root Cause Medicine

You are our cardiologist because I have heard you say, “Pharma should not be the first option. It should be the last.”

There’s a time and a place for modern medicine, emergencies, and traumas. When it comes to the prevention, treatment reversal of chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and everything else, the medical community doesn’t have anything. The pharmaceuticals are not the answer there. The answer is root cause medicine and that’s what I talk about all the time.

It’s interesting that you mention prevention because I don’t know if you know this, but I was born with a birth defect, a ventricular septal defect, a hole in my heart between the lower two ventricles, and I had open heart surgery when I was nine. I still don’t know to this day exactly what caused it, but I wonder if there’s something my parents could have done to prevent that.

There is. Everything has a cause. We are not born to have ventricular septal defects. We are not born to have any illness. We are born perfectly. I believe we are created perfectly by God. Our genetics are perfect until something in the environment screws it up. I view everything through deficiencies in excess. Deficiencies of the good stuff, which is everything Weston A. Price talked about, and the deficiency or the excesses of the bad stuff, and this is where environmental toxins and pollutants can come in, of which there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of millions of environmental chemicals, manmade poisons. I’m blaming the men on this one. The men are typically the ones who created all the poison. You are correct.

We are not blaming anybody. We are not blaming mom or dad or anybody else. It’s all about how we can teach people moving forward. If you are pregnant out there, or thinking about getting pregnant, or you are the mother or father of a person in that category, then we want to again share this message. We don’t have a child with a ventricular septal defect, or autism, or skin disorders, gut disorders, pulmonary disorders, or childhood cancers. Everybody is sick and modern medicine is not the answer. We got to find out why people are getting sick and that’s the strategy.

The Importance Of Vitamin A And Avoiding Toxins

I’ve had conversations with Sally about my birth defect and she said, “Your mother’s vitamin A stores were probably low.” Can you tell us some good sources of vitamin A and what else we can do to have more of that good stuff in our bodies if we do want to have healthy kids without birth defects?

Before a woman gets pregnant and while she gets pregnant again, we want to focus on the deficiencies and the excesses. Get rid of the excesses of the poison, and that could be anything from plastics, phthalates, parabens, PVCs, and pesticides. Those are the things that begin with the letter P. There’s an infinite number of toxins. Minimizing those as much as possible, and nourishing your body with the things it needs, including things like vitamin A.

The best source of vitamin A like the best source of everything is animal products. I don’t make the rules. It’s just mother nature. To that end, I would tell women specifically, I would eat a lot of seafood. I’m a huge fan of seafood. Seafood is the healthiest food on the planet, and organs. It would be organs like bison.

For example, bison liver or bison heart. If I want a child with a strong heart, why wouldn’t I eat a bison heart? Both of those, the seafood category, the animal category, and I’m always talking about ethically raised free range pasture, regenerative animals. I never eat anything else except for those. The seafood, organs, meats, and then pasture raised eggs, raw and dairy are always going to be your ultimate strategies. Not only for vitamin A, but every other vitamin, mineral, protein, and fat.

A lot of our readers are familiar with what you are saying because they love the work of Weston Price, so it’s exciting to hear you reinforce it as a cardiologist. In terms of avoiding the toxins, phthalates, and pesticides, how can we get those out of our lives?

It’s a process. Everything’s a process. Let me say this, too, in 2005 when I met the woman who would become my wife, she opened up my eyes to natural health and wellness and pulled me out of the medical matrix. One of the first books that I read that put me on this journey was Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.

I read that thing cover to cover and I was blown away because in medical school we never learned any of that stuff. We never learned anything about nutrition, let alone the right stuff. It is such a brilliant piece that something that every medical student should be forced to read, undoubtedly. What we want to do is focus on those foods and lifestyles that’s going to lead to the ultimate in health and wellness for all of us.

I agree, like going back to a more natural lifestyle. Some of the things that we are talking about are things that have come into the modern lifestyle. We are like, “Let’s make farming easier. Let’s spray everything with pesticides,” and then those toxins, that residue ends up on the food that we ingest. If it kills the bugs, what’s it doing to us? We are thinking, “We like this nice foamy shampoo,” but it has chemicals in it that are seeping into our epidermis and into our bloodstream and are negatively impacting us. If we went back to that lifestyle of those indigenous people groups that Dr. Price studied, we’d be much better off.

To avoid all those things, it is a process, but it’s doable. One thing, starting with organic food, so getting the pesticides, the artificial flavors, artificial colors, and artificial sweeteners, getting that out of our food supply. There’s a lot of debate in the food world, should we go vegan, vegetarian, paleo, or keto carnivore? All those different things, but we all agree that we should go organic, so get the poison out of our food.

We should avoid the bad stuff, undoubtedly, but let’s focus more on eating the good stuff, the fermented foods that Dr. Price, Sally, and Wise Traditions all talk about. All those things are all critical. You talk about the pesticides, how they destroy the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome is the window to the health world, undoubtedly.

The gut microbiome is really the window to the health world.

When you consume these pesticides, kill and damage our gut microbiome from the pesticides, and I’m not talking about antibiotics in the food or they swallow. All these things damage the gut microbiome, mold mycotoxins, or antibiotics that destroy the gut microbiome. All these things destroy the gut microbiome. They lead to intestinal hyperpermeability, often known as leaky gut, then they lead to inflammation, oxidative stress, and ultimately the disease.

Mold Mycotoxins: The Hidden Danger In Our Homes And Food

If we can focus on the good stuff that we want more of in our lives, then we will crowd out the bad stuff, possibly and be protecting ourselves even by making that one switch.

I’m not a fan of the 80/20 where we should do the right things 80%, but 20% digress. I don’t think that’s a good strategy or good for the environment or good for us personally. Let’s not do that. Can we have raw honey as a sweetener more often than we’d like and indulge in fruit and some of these other things? Healthy diet and healthy lifestyle. I think we can.

The more we avoid these environmental toxins that damage the gut microbiome leading to leaky guts, this is all in the medical literature, the better off our health is going to be. I will take this opportunity to mention mold mycotoxins. People live in water damaged buildings, the shower sink, toilet, attic, humidity, HVAC systems, leaky roof or whatever it may be. This can lead to the production of mold mycotoxins, bacterial damage, and all these damages. The gut microbiome would be one way that they impact disease. We can combat that with the foods that we all know already, but even still, we have to get out of those toxic environments. They are highly problematic.

My friend had a seven-year-old boy who was having issue after issue. They couldn’t figure out what was going on with him, and it turns out they had a tremendous mold problem in their attic. Once they were able to remediate that, they moved altogether. His symptoms cleared up. He was struggling with asthma and other issues. It’s damaging on a lot of levels, but I need to know about the mycotoxins found in our food, too.

Mycotoxins are, and, in general. The people that we are talking to, follow Weston A. Price, Sally, and Wise Traditions, you read the blog, and all these things. You are fermenting your sourdough bread and you are doing all these different things. That’s all great because if you weren’t doing that, you’d be sick, or ultimately worse than sick. You’d be dead.

If we look at how the mold impacts our health, if you look at what it does, not only from the environment, which is the much more sinister one, but also mold in the food. That could be moldy grain, dried fruits or anything that has been preserved. There can be some problems with that. I’m not overly concerned about mold overtly in food. Although, the animal data shows that if you feed animals mold contaminated grain, they are going to get sick. We are going to follow that same line of thinking.

To your point about that other person who you knew, I hear thousands of stories. I have been a medical expert in cases of mold in homes. This mold that grows on the building materials is very detrimental, and it’s in the Bible. It’s in the Hebrew Bible. It’s written by Moses in the book of Leviticus so many years ago. He’s talking about what to do if your home has mold, how to cleanse it, and how to purify it. If you can’t, as you said, you tear down the home or you move out.

It is even more of a problem because now you’ve got the mold plus all the other environmental toxins. Take for example mold plus all the electromagnetic field energy, the manmade that we are exposed to, cell phone radiation, WiFi routers, cell phone towers, satellites in space, radio waves, TV waves, on and on and on. It creates the perfect storm and helps to explain why so many people are sick.

The 100-Year Heart Method: Eat Well, Live Well, Think Well

I want to talk to you now about a couple of cases of some friends of mine who are both women in their 40s, who both have had quadruple bypasses. They seem to eat a good diet. What the heck is happening? What would you attribute that cardiac issue to?

Whenever someone tells me about any situation, whether it’s somebody with a VSD like yourself, or it’s somebody who had coronary disease requiring bypass surgery in their 40s, or maybe it’s something like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or cancer. These thousands of diagnoses in the medical textbooks that I graduated from, I always view it through what I call the lens of the 1000-year heart method. The 100-year heart method is about eat well, live well, and think well. Tests don’t guess, evidence-based supplements, and biohacking strategies.

When I hear about, for example, the women with coronary artery disease and bypass surgery, let’s look at the eat well. We talked about that. Everybody on this channel knows about the eat well side of the story and that is the ultimate way to eat. There should be no debate at all about what’s going on. Weston A. Price saw what the ancestors did. How about if you take a look at these TV shows such as Alone, Naked and Afraid, and Survivor. They are hunter-gatherers and we have to be hunter-gatherers. We can take some of the principles and have these fermented foods and have these nourishing traditions of that food. I believe that all to be the answer. There’s debate, but let’s not debate organic.

Aside from the food, what about these other things that undoubtedly Weston A. Price saw? These people were going to sleep with the sun down. When it got dark, they were going to bed. They weren’t staying up until 11:30 at night watching television and on their phone. They weren’t doing that. They go to sleep as soon as that got dark. They woke up before the sunrise, watched the sunrise, and sunset. They spent the day in the sun with their solar panel exposed. Weston A. Price saw that.

It’s in the TV shows of what’s going on. When you tell me about your 40-year-old friends with disease, I would say, “Are they doing that?” They got the food part, but what about the lifestyle? Sleep, sunshine, physical activity and movement, holistic dentistry, taking care of their teeth, being under the care of a chiropractor to get adjusted, which is paramount. Inside of that lifestyle, you got this mega category of toxins. Let me tell you one study. They looked at people who underwent a procedure called a Carotid Endarterectomy. They looked at the plaque that they removed from people’s necks in their carotid arteries when they went for surgery. They broke it down into two groups.

One group had evidence of microplastics. Plastic under a microscope that they could physically see. One-third of the people did not have plastic. Surprisingly in this society, they were able to find 1/3 of the people did not have plastic, but here’s the kicker. The group with the plastic had tripled the risk of heart attack, stroke, and dying over a three-year period. That makes plastic a bigger risk factor than smoking, drinking, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity combined. This toxin category is huge, and it stands to show why these younger people are having. Our genetics haven’t changed. A disease like this was unknown in 40-year-old men and women many years ago.

It was unknown at the time of Weston A. Price, but it’s here now not because of genetic changes obviously, but it’s changes in that lifestyle. Let me say one more thing here, as far as our eat well, live well and think well, chronic stress is more prevalent now than ever. The rat race that everybody is in, and not only that. The stress that is fed to us by the media including over the last few years about fear, worry, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and childhood emotional traumas, these are things that have to be addressed. Your friends were not deficient in statin drugs or any other pharmaceuticals and they weren’t deficient in bypass surgeries. They were deficient in the eat well, live well, and think well.

The Impact Of Stress On Heart Health

One of the women in particular has a challenging marriage or a challenging relationship. That might have contributed to that chronic stress you are talking about. It’s not always something that we see on the news or a worry in our head. It could be a relationship that is out of alignment. As a cardiologist, would you say that constant stress affects our heart health?

Not only would I say that, but I say that because it’s in the medical literature. If people are in bad relationships, that is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, dying, and cancer and whatnot. I always tell people, quite simply, find your happy. It is going to be the key, and now that could be through getting rid of extracting yourself from bad relationships. If you can’t fix the relationship, get rid of it.

Finding your happy is going to be the key.

It sounds easier said than done, but I don’t make the rules. It is the way that it is. If you are not happy with your job, if you are not happy where you live, heck, I was a very successful cardiologist in the biggest group in the state of Arizona, but I wasn’t happy because I wasn’t doing the right thing so I quit and started my own practice with Natural Heart Doctor. Sometimes, I don’t have to tell you, “You’ve been around for a few years.”

Sometimes, you grow apart from people, and this could be in a marriage. Clearly, if I had found this newfound religion of health and wellness like I did when I was 25, and I was in a relationship with someone who didn’t believe in that and they weren’t changing. I don’t know how I could exist with that person, but you got to find your happy. It’s very important to your survival. It is.

I feel like you have an understanding that I have seldom heard Jack from specialists. You are a cardiologist, but you get that it’s not a heart patient that you are seeing. You are seeing a whole person and you want to take in their whole situation because you know that it matters.

Let’s take you for example, or your friends with the bypass surgery. Medicine can fix your ventricular septal defect. Surgery can, and it bypass those arteries, but if we don’t go after the root cause, something else is going to happen. Another example, a common condition that I see is the irregular heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation. A cardiologist can burn holes in the heart and do what’s a procedure called an ablation, but people with atrial fibrillation also have an increased risk of cancer and an increased risk of dementia.

It’s not that AFib causes cancer or dementia. It’s whatever causes AFib also causes dementia and also causes cancer. You can burn out the AFib. You can even replace the heart and get an artificial heart, but you still have the cancer risk. If you don’t go after the root cause, you are going to be sick from something. This band-Aid approach is not a long-term survival strategy. Men live until their mid-70s in the United States. Women live until their late 70s. That’s not good enough.

I’m in my 50s. I want to be around for a long time. My father died at the age of 63 as a cardiologist, and a Parkinson’s-like illness. The Mayo Clinic has no idea why my father is sick and dying. They have no treatment, and simultaneously and serendipitously, God put this woman in front of me, who was a 29-year-old chiropractor at the time, and she tells me exactly why my father is sick and dying.

I listened and I would marry her and have four children and the whole thing, but most medical doctors aren’t going to listen to that. We are so brainwashed into the medical matrix and it’s sad and unfortunate. By me sharing this message as often as possible, hopefully, we can continue with the change and ultimately have the freedom to speak our truth, and also to question everything. These things are critical in this 21st century world.

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Coming up, Jack tells us exactly what that young chiropractor said and what they were convinced caused his father’s health issues.

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I have to ask you, Jack. What did she say to you about why your father was sick and dying?

It was very quick in our relationship. It was almost like the first date, and she says it quite simply, “Your profession is worthless and it’s killing people. Your profession is not saving anybody and not going after the root cause. The pharmaceuticals and the surgeries kill people.” As I look back on that, I would say, “That’s mostly true.” She’s making a big generalization.

I do believe the procedure for your VSD was helpful and if your friends need to bypass surgery, it’s helpful. The point being is that she said, “Your father eats crap. Your father lives crap. Meaning he doesn’t get sleep and sunshine and lives in the toxins. If you don’t change, Jack, you are going to be sick.” I’m following exactly in his footsteps as a cardiologist.

I go to the Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Clinic’s like, “We don’t know. It’s not genetic related. We don’t have any family history that links to that.” The 29-year-old chiropractor who has the chiropractic philosophy of like, “Let’s talk about food, lifestyle, and chiropractic to improve the neurologic status of the body.” That’s what chiropractic is. It’s not bone on nerve type pain that people think that it is. It’s about using the chiropractic adjustment as a method to increase neuroplasticity that cause of these neurologic changes that could have helped my father and could help anybody in that situation.

The Dangers Of Microplastics And The Powers Of Nature

Going back to what you were saying about getting more of the good stuff in and less of the bad stuff. I want to address what you were saying about how having plastic in the carotid artery was a marker for a stroke or other illnesses or a death in a few years. How were those people getting those plastics in because we want to avoid those?

Plastic getting in, it’s ubiquitous in society. The air we breathe is going to contain things like bisphenol A and phthalates. Those are things you can test yourself for. They are testable in your urine so you can determine what your burden is. The plastic water bottles would be a big offender. Plastic water containers and personal care products that earn plastic. Plastic and water lines are big, and other plastic clothing.

I was doing an interview and the host was wearing an Under Armour workout shirt. All that stuff that nylon and polyester. That’s all going right in through your skin. It’s going to be impossible to excommunicate plastic from our lives, but the more so we do the better. This is also where can we give our body the nutrients to protect us the best that it can. Can we give our body the nutrients from the sleep and the sunshine, and the physical activity that we talked about? Can we give our body food-based nutrients?

When we are eating these animal products, including the organs and we are eating the seafood, that’s going to be a protective strategy. When we eat fermented foods that are living foods, including raw dairy. That’s going to have these living bacteria in there. Those living bacteria nourish our gut microbiome to help to metabolize and break down bisphenol A and other components.

We are learning more about this and maybe about what individual probiotics from a supplement standpoint could help in that arena. I think we are going to have a hard time outsmarting Mother Nature if we use these fermented foods and use the raw dairy products, the kefirs, the yogurts, the raw milk, the raw cheeses that are living foods. That’s going to help our gut microbiome to metabolize all these things.

Self-Care: Putting On Your Own Oxygen Mask First

The tools are delicious and right in front of us, the sunshine you mentioned and movement. We were made to move. It’s such a simple reality, but in our stressful day-to-day lives, we sometimes put our self-care on the back burner and then we pay the price with poor health.

You need to take care of yourself more than ever. You need to focus on these things. We are so time spent, whether it’s work or other activities that consume our time. You have to be focusing on your health first. It’s like when the oxygen mask, in theory, drops in, when you are on a plane. The instructions are always like, “Take care of yourself first. Put the mask on yourself first before your children and worry about others.”

If we don’t maintain self-care, or take care of ourselves, or if I don’t take care of myself, Jack Wolfson. How can I help my wife, my children, animals, and people around the world like this? You do have to practice that self-care. Weston A. Price, in that timeframe, when you go out into the wilderness like he did, those people didn’t have to do that because they lived it. They lived it 24/7 and so did everyone in their community, but in a 21st century world, we need to practice these things.

I know you understand this because you’ve been in practice for a while and your own life is busy, but what would you say to the person who’s like, “It’s great for him to say that. I do eat well, but I don’t have time to exercise. I’m working practically 24/7 and then when I get home, there are demands in the family. How can I work out or even get adequate sleep when I’m being stretched so thin?”

It’s not easy. The world is against us. A few years ago, with my oldest son, he was playing on a soccer team and the game started at 8:15 on a Saturday night. It was in Arizona, so the temperature was warm and it’s dark out. It starts at 8:15. I let my son play, but I let it be known like this is not right. The children should not be doing that. Nobody else cares. That went on deaf ears, but we need to get people to make small changes and try and focus on doing the best that you can.

There are so many different things that we can look at regarding how to make more time and be better with our time. Either make time for being healthy now what, or you better make time for sickness later and you will be sick later if you don’t follow the wisdom of God or Mother Nature. There’s no other way around it.

Sarcoidosis And Mold: A Case Study

Can you tell us a story of a patient or a client that you’ve worked with that you saw wasn’t eating well, living well, or thinking well? How does some of these shifts help them recover their health?

I have seen tens of thousands of patients in my career and of course spoke with hundreds of thousands online, if not millions overall over time. I will tell you a cardiac example, and this is another example of this strange diagnosis. A guy comes in and he’s got this diagnosis of sarcoidosis, which is an inflammatory condition. It’s more common in the medical world, but again, the Mayo Clinic says, “We have got no reason for this.”

He’s under the care of the doctors at Mayo and UCLA. He’s got cardiac issues, he’s got sarcoidosis. I ran all my testing on him and found out he had high levels of mold mycotoxins. Now I go onto the internet and I find a reference from 2011 that showed mold mycotoxins at home contributing to sarcoidosis. This is something again that now we work on remediating the home, which he was able to do, getting him on the eat well, live well, and think well, test don’t guess, and evidence-based supplements. The guy’s heart function is normal. We reduced him from seven pharmaceuticals to two. The guy feels great and the heart function improved.

I can go on and on with cases like this. I have been around a long time and I have seen a lot of people, but when you give the body what it needs and take away what it doesn’t, it’s going to heal. There is a breaking point. There is some point of no return maybe from people with severe sickness like stage four cancers and things like that, but they should always be given a trial. Mxedicine should be the last thing, which is true.

If someone has a stage four cancer diagnosis or an autoimmune diagnosis, let’s do something about this. It does require all those things of the eat well, live well, and think well. As you look at what time you go to bed, if you go to sleep at 11:30, you try to make it a little bit earlier. If you are outside a little bit, try and make it outside a lot more. Remember back in the day, people would take smoke breaks from work. Instead of a smoke break, you take a sunshine break. You go out in the natural light, walk around, put on your warm clothes or your winter hat. Whatever you need to do at that time of year and do it that way. That’s going to be a great survival strategy.

I do understand it’s not easy. Sometimes your spouse is against you. Your kids have these things going on. All we can do is try our best. You are a mother with children and maybe God willing, be a grandmother someday and I will be a grandfather someday. This is where you are the matriarch or the patriarch of the family and you are leading by example. You are talking the talk, but you are walking the walk as well. With that approach, sometimes, you can try and hammer people over the head with this information, but sometimes you live it to lead it and lead by example.

I always say more is caught than taught. You can tell people all the things you want, but they sometimes need to see it, especially the people closest to you. Which makes me think about when you first had that conversation with your wife and she was waking you up to the fact that your profession wasn’t doing what it needed to do. What were some of the first changes you made as you tried to adopt this eat well, live well, and think well lifestyle?

The first thing I did. As I said, there were so many books that were influential, but none more than Dr. Price. It started with food at that point, for me. It’s understanding the importance of organic eating, the seafood, and the free-range grass-fed meats. I grew up in Chicago, deep dish pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, and hot dogs. I talk about this in my book where I was drinking probably 2 liters of diet Mountain Dew on a daily basis.

I would get pages from the nurses, the hospital, and they are like, “Dr. Wolfson, you left your diet Mountain Dew bottle down there.” I’ll be like, “I will come down and get it.” Getting rid of all the artificial crap, the aspartame, acesulfame, and artificial colors made a huge difference. A lot of times, though, people ask me, “Do you feel better now that you live this way?” A lot of people feel much better when they change the way they eat, the way they live, and the way they think.

Personally, I felt good at 33 and I feel good at 53. For me, it was about prevention. It was about, “I don’t want to die like my father did.” I have children. I want to be around for a long time. You said it, where you’ve got these people that have heart disease in their 40s, cancer in their 40s, brain disorders, movement disorders, Parkinson’s, PSP like my father, and autoimmune conditions, and they are young.

We saw Facebook post from a woman who I’m friends with who is in the health industry and her child has struggled with Crohn’s disease. An inflammatory bowel condition over the last couple years. You are like, “This is a person who likely teaches her children and the children eat fairly well and live fairly well, but what’s missing here?” What’s missing is taking it next level. Eating all the right foods, doing all the right lifestyle things, and ultimately, is this child living in mold that suppresses the immune system that damages the gut microbiome? Undoubtedly, children are not born to develop Crohn’s disease. It’s another manmade affliction.

The Importance Of Spirituality And Community

You’ve given us a good handle on what it looks like to eat well and to live well. The balance of the exercise, sleep, and sunshine and all this. I’m not sure I have wrapped my head around yet the think well. What advice do you have for applying that to our lives?

Whenever I speak to someone who’s had a heart attack or had a stroke, I always try and get into the conversation of what was happening right before this. Was there some sudden stressful event? There’s two medical diagnoses that the women should know about. One is called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, that’s broken heart syndrome. That is typically in the 40 to 60-year-old woman who has a stressful event at work, at home, and has a massive heart attack and subsequent congestive heart failure.

There’s another one called SCAD, Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, where the blood vessel essentially separates and shears leading to a potentially massive heart attack. We want to get people to understand that stress is a problem. How do we deal with that? I use different things here. Spirituality is going to be a big factor. Finding, whether it’s religion or again, some greater purpose or entity is very important certainly. Whether that be Christianity, Judaism, or any other religious aspect or believing in the innate and some creator of it all.

The other would be community. That’s what great about the community you have developed, like finding your tribe. Many people are socially isolated. When people who identify as socially isolated is a death sentence. It’s a bad thing. In the last few years, a lot of people feel socially isolated. Finding your tribe or community is very important. Self-acceptance, for who we are, what we have done and past is our past, the future is the future, having a better future, and accepting us for what we have done. That sense of gratitude, being grateful for what we are, where we are at in this state of time is important.

Safety and security. A lot of people don’t feel safe in their home. They don’t feel safe in their workspace and that leads to a problem. You need to find safety in your home and in your workspace. That’s very important as well. Those are some of the tips and strategies in that think well category. Thinking well can include meditation, breathing exercises, and breath work. There are some biohacks, brain tap and other technologies that can be useful there, but we want to open up people’s understanding of that.

Also, unpacking childhood trauma. There are experts in that field of childhood trauma. I’m not an expert in treating childhood trauma, but I am an expert in understanding that childhood trauma is problematic. Whatever modality people use to work through those issues will be beneficial, and then PTSD. How about health challenges that are traumatic in and of itself? If I’m a 35-year-old guy who had a massive heart attack and I’m alive. That’s got to play on the brain. That’s got to cause some major underlying stress and things like that.

Get Outside More Often

These are great. I wish we could keep going, but we have to wrap up now. I want to ask you here at the end, Jack. If the reader could do one thing to take a step in the right direction for improved health, what would you recommend that they do?

That’s a tough one. I get asked that pretty often. Everyone here knows about the food, so I’m going to say get outside more often. The more time you spend outside, the longer you will live.

Get outside more often. The more time you spend outside, the longer you will live.

A powerful statement to end on. It has been a pleasure, Jack. On behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation, thank you.

Thank you.

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Our guest was Dr. Jack Wolfson. Check out his website Natural Heart Doctor to learn more. I am Hilda Labrada Gore, the host and producer of this show on behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation. You can find me Holistic Hilda. For a review from Apple Podcasts. Maurica James said, “Sally Fallon Morrell helped me get my period back. Years ago, I tried being vegan and plant-based. I was eating less and less meat. Luckily, I never fully stopped because my husband refused, but nevertheless, we were eating meat less than once a week and no dairy or butter.”

“My period started coming later and later and I couldn’t figure out why. I would take multiple pregnancy tests and they were all negative. Once it was so crazy and erratic that I bled twice, two weeks apart and I freaked out and even went to urgent care. In 2018, I found the Wise Traditions and I read an episode where Sally talked about the importance of animal and butter fat for reproductive health.”

“I also found out that we needed lots of iodine as well. That same day I went to the store and got grass-fed butter and wild caught fish and ate them. After eating fish, meat, eggs, and butter every day for every meal. My period normalized within two months. I will forever be thankful to the Weston A. Price Foundation. As I am writing this, I am eating a traditional Turkish soup made from tripe and cow’s stomach.” Maurica, this is a wonderful story.

I’m so glad that the show and the foundation has made a big difference for you. It has a tendency to do that. Thank you so much for your review. If you’ve had an experience like hers or you want to tell your own story, please go to Apple Podcasts. Click on ratings and reviews, give us a bunch of stars, and tell the world why they should read or tell them how the Weston A. Price Foundation has changed your life. Thank you so much for reading. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

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The content on the show is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for the advice provided by your doctor or other Healthcare professional. It is not intended to be. Nor does it constitute Healthcare or medical advice.

About Dr. Jack Wolfson

Dr. Jack Wolfson is a board-certified cardiologist, best-selling author, husband and father, and the Nation’s #1 Natural Heart Doctor. For over two decades, more than a million people have experienced the transformational power of his care and strategies on Natural Heart Health originating from his Scottsdale, AZ practice. He is named one of America’s Top Functional Medicine Doctors and is a five-time winner of the Natural Choice Awards as a holistic M.D. His book, The Paleo Cardiologist: The Natural Way to Heart Health, is an Amazon #1 best seller.