What Is The REAL Cause of Heart Disease | Dr Stephen Hussey | Ep 93

with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnival bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products that will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 uh hello everyone it's Dr Anthony chafee with another episode of the plant free MD and have a very special guest today Dr Steven Hussey thank you so much for joining the show how are you sir doing well thanks for having me great so um for people don't know you uh can you tell us a bit about yourself and and what you do and and you know what you just wrote wrote a book recently and uh it just tell us a bit about that and um and uh and more about the book yeah for sure um yeah so uh my background is I'm a chiropractor and functional medicine practitioner um and uh but you know my health journey is a kind of what kind of spawned this book that that recently came out um because as a kid I had a lot of inflammatory conditions um everything from edible bowel syndrome to just I used to break out and chronic eyes off my body just swell up everywhere um I had allergies and Asthma and all kinds of stuff and so that ultimately ended up with me being diagnosed with autoimmune type 1 diabetes when I was nine and so that heavily predisposed me to heart disease as I would find out later on uh when I asked you know the doctors um why that was they said oh because it damages your arteries you know higher blood sugars over time what will damage your arteries and make you more prone to atherosclerosis and things like that and so you know my family and I were kind of thrown into the world of Western medicine to manage these conditions um and uh and so we did that for a while and then it wasn't until College until I found out that um you know the way I live my life had a direct impact on how I could manage these conditions and I'm happy to say that all those conditions are gone aside from the type 1 diabetes that's kind of collateral damage from from that inflammation um but uh but yeah so I started you know experimenting with lifestyle and things like that and found it curious that no doctor ever told me that this was an option for me um and that uh and so then I went to get a medical education and and I thought I was going to learn everything there was to know about being healthy and I didn't uh and so it's just been this ever never-ending Journey for me this quest to figure out what actually creates Health but it was always you know every time I heard about heart disease and things I was like oh yeah I'm pretty disposed to that I'll figure out about that and so I had like no filter I didn't care where the information came from I just want it all I wanted everything about the hard disease and health in general and you know I started to figure out that a lot of what I was learning and there's a lot of information and science out there that did not match up with you know the convention of wisdom or what you know Western medicine or even my chiropractic degree told me cause these diseases and so um you know with eventually I had this huge accumulation of information I just decided to start sharing it on social media and people liked it and and I kind of came became known for this hard information and eventually put it down to a book and and that came out in April so here we are awesome well that's um well and that's the thing too you know we have um a lot a lot of us can get into the health care professions and want to learn about this because like you say like I want to learn about how to be healthy and how to get better all these sorts of things unfortunately that really isn't what we learn um you know we're part of we're sort of cogs in a wheel or a cogs in the in the machine of um you know the of whatever system that you're in and that's then that's hopefully you know there to well it's obviously it is there to support People's Health and it does in so many different ways but it's not necessarily uh you know as as efficient or as good as it could be and um you know we sort of focus on our little bit like in neurosurgery we just just focus on this we fix the problems that show up with that instead of you know sort of treating the person holistically and saying like how do we how do we prevent from getting these problems in the first place you know because a lot of things that we do in this especially in the Specialties you know we're just it's just Hazmat damage control you know the problem's already there and we just need to fix it and that's fine you know there is a role for that and we need to have that but that's uh we shouldn't you know it we shouldn't be in a position that we're creating more problems and um and I think that it's you know the the spirit is there of actually finding out what what it means to be healthy um as a person and how to how to pass that on to our patients and so like like yourself and myself and others that come around saying like ah this isn't really meeting that criteria it's great about you know damage control that's fine but you know what about preventative health preventative medicine you know just be healthy in the first place and I think that that attitude is still there and so that that it's good to see that more people are coming around like okay how do I actually do this I in fact that was my goal going into Medical Practice um but I'm going to have to self-educate you know yeah it was it was definitely you know definitely awesome you know Baseline education and Physiology and and anatomy and all this kind of stuff you know that you learned about the body but it has nothing to do with it was really focused on you know identify symptoms diagnose treat whatever that treatment may be you know based on you know your your discipline or whatever um but it was not like what's the actual cause of this you know there was there was like whenever they thought they knew the actual cause you'd hear about that when you talked about a certain disease but it was it was very um identify you know rather than identify the symptoms rather than what's causing them you know why do we get sick why are we so sick as a population in general there was no questions like that um and and wondering that kind of stuff because you know I guess in the end the answer is because it's not profitable to think like that in in the in a Western Medical system that we have um but uh but at the end of the day like that's that's the that's the the meat of it you know so to speak we we have to know that um and unless or else we're just going to keep getting sicker and sicker and have no solution because clearly this pharmaceutical based um you know method of Health Care is not working because you know the disease numbers are growing and growing so we actually are asking ourselves why do we get sick and and how do we we create an environment that you know that allows the body to not be safe because the body doesn't want to be sick it's not like you have these genes that are programmed to oh you're gonna stick one day because your genes tell you to it's it's a Gene's interaction with the environment so how do we change the environment rather than try and force it to do something that we want to with with medication or procedure or something it's like how do we how do we change the environment so the body doesn't need that procedures that medications doing what it needs to because it's it's just trying to do the best it can in the environment that it's in yeah and and your body's really robust I mean we can handle a lot of crap and I think that's that's probably a problem you know like you know like big cats or small cats felines in general they they you know we call them obligate carnivores you know I think we're obligate carnivores too because we are obligated to eat meat we don't actually need to eat the other things and those other things can cause harm but to to cats and felines uh and to a lesser extent canines like just basically any plant will kill them you know like they get really harm so they have to stay in that narrow window and they want to anyway it's just a natural thing they you know they want to eat meat they don't want to eat this other other stuff and so you know I think we're obviously you get a survival Advantage by being able to be a bit more lenient at certain times when you have to be but we're when we're in a situation as we are now when food's eminently available uh in in the Western countries um you're you're kind of it actually is a disadvantage because you can get a away with it for a while you don't see how bad of a problem it is whereas like a cat will eat the stuff that will just get very very sick and poisoned right away it's like okay can't do that you know and um you know so we're you know we're sort of a victim of of our own uh robust nature but you're right your body doesn't want to be sick you know it wants it wants to work properly and and you you throw poison into it and it's just trying to work around that poison as much as it can but you know it does cause problems and heart disease being one of them and that's something that you know you talk about that's not necessarily how we've come to think of it you know it's not really you know necessarily cholesterol driven um or um you know and the cause of atherosclerosis aren't necessarily what we've been told it is which is you know fat cholesterol so what can you tell us a bit more about that yeah so um this is you know one of the favorite topics that people want me to talk about or whatever you know because because I didn't come at it from a Western Medical perspective I didn't have this um I wasn't trained in that way you know so I didn't have that in my head so when I'm looking at this I'm looking at this fairly objectively you know um I didn't have any idea what caused atherosclerosis when I looked into it I you know been told by doctors that is there's cholesterol but um that idea just doesn't make sense when you look at the evidence um when you so first of all the whole backstory of how cholesterol was blamed um doesn't make sense you know the whole answer keys thing um and I'm sure you know followers may be familiar with that and how you know before the theory was even tested it already taken off and there was a lot of money behind it as far as the Grain and sugar Industries and things like that and it was poor quality signs to begin with but if you look at the actual like you know mechanisms of what atherosclerosis is um it's it's clotting it's not this buildup of you know like cholesterol gets high in the blood and it slowly infiltrates the lining of the artery and slowly builds up like that just doesn't really happen it happens when a clot forms um just like if you get a cut on your skin and in order not to keep bleeding your body has to clot it to prevent it from bleeding and so the same sort of thing similar thing happens in the lining of an artery when it gets damaged or insulted or or cut so to speak and they don't really get cut um then the body if it can't repair it you know if it's it has poor insulin signaling or it has you know poor endothelial progenitor cells or things like that then it can't repair the lining and the body has to do something uh or else it's you're gonna you're gonna rupture and bleed out you know and then artery and so it clots and that's exactly what we see when we look at studies that you know have analyzed what atherosclerosis actually is there are small amounts of LDL in it and you know that's that's because there's LP little a in there preventing clot breakdown and but most of it is fibrotic tissue it's vibrant if I brings it and it's just it's just this massive amount of it like over 90 of it is is clotting tissue and when they go in when someone has this you know complete blockage of minority for a heart attack they don't go in there and they um administer cholesterol busting things and they do clot busting things those enzymes are the things that break it down so it makes no sense that this accumulation of cholesterol is what's doing this and further um cholesterol has been shown to you know and saturated fat and lipoproteins whatever whatever form you want to you want to talk about has been shown to be very beneficial for humans um you know cholesterol LDL and cholesterol itself um do very many beneficial things and that was the backbone of most of our hormones it makes vitamin D LDL combats infection it helps cells communicate with each other it's it's uh you know a large part of our brain is made up of this so it makes no sense that this one molecule is is causing all these issues but it also does all these beneficial things which is why I also feel like the same about animal foods like if you have carnitine and animal food you look at all the cardiac benefits to carnitine and that that's the highest amount in in you know pork and and beef it makes no sense that this food would also be killing us uh absolutely no sense whatsoever and then yeah but then there's even question for me whether or not that stenosis or the the Athletics questions that does build up actually causes heart attacks or restricts blood flow um you know and I talk about that in the book but uh but yeah we could start with that like the that the whole idea doesn't make sense for all those different reasons and there's a lot of science behind it too yeah well and that's true too I mean you don't just get like you know clogged or even in the in the conventional Paradigm you know it's like it doesn't just just claw up and then close off there has to be damage first of all there has to be damage for there to be an imagination of these uh foam cells and macrophages that suck up all the damage to LDL uh and then you know go in there to try to repair this uh damage um and then uh and that would and that's thought to be what's what's the buildup of atherosclerosis traditionally and then but either way you get this narrowing and then there's another set of an insult and damage to that lining that then makes this claw and you're right you know it there's something going on there that you get a sort of an overreaction get like a big clot you know because things you do get these little tears every now and then your body generally makes like a normal platelet plug and and then fibrinogen uh cap over that that that sort of seals that off whereas in these sort of strokes and clots and and other things that we're getting you know all of a sudden you just use the thing fills up the entire vessel and and you can you can get that without atherosclerosis you have you have um you know vertical artery dissections through trauma sometimes those can just clod off you know but generally they don't clock completely off they're they're clotting and they can throw off enveline things like that you can have problems but um what we're seeing in these these sort of pathological issues is the Consciousness it fills up the entire uh you know vessel and then cuts off complete blood flow yeah which means it had to be significant enough damage to the artery for the for the body to have that significant amount of a reaction you know um yeah because I've looked at a lot of papers that show that that lots of lots of classes that form don't result in symptoms nobody just kind of you know heals it right there but what what happens when we get a stenosis and narrowing of an artery is that clot on top of clot on top of clot forms and over time it's not like that now sometimes you know one of those clots could form and it could get broken off or something and that could flow down to a smaller area and that could be stroke or heart attack or things like that um but from what I've seen this slow narrowing of an artery um even if it gets to 80 90 100 blocked if it's a slow development of that people don't get symptoms um and there's lots of case studies that show that you know marathon runners have either been evaluated before they run or after they run and they have like complete blockages of arteries that they ran marathons it's like how are they doing that um you know with no blood to certain areas of the heart and the answer to me is collateral arteries and I've been told by you know different cardiologists that some people are fortunate enough to have collateral some people aren't but I looked at the work of this one scientist named Giorgio baraldi who did these plastic cast studies everyone is like those body World exhibits where they yeah fill in the arterial system with like a plastic thing in the dissolved tissue way and you have this really cool yeah he did that with hearts first like most of his career and he found that and it's I I emphasize the word any 70 or more stenosis of an artery in a coronary artery was always compensated fully by collaterals um so I like the the you know the body finds a way around that which is why also when we look at the studies that show the efficacy of you know bypass surgeries or elective stint placement not emergency stint placements but elective stint placements They Don't Really prevent heart disease and heart attacks down the road because the body's already you know it's already got those collateral it's already composite it so compensating more opening up more is not really going to help especially if you're not addressing the main causes which are you know the metabolic syndrome and the inflammation and oxidative stress that's causing it you're just you're just doing something the body's already done in most cases at least what we're already found in his work yeah and then that was actually you know my understanding of it as well was that you know everyone has these collaterals you just don't necessarily use them the way it was described to me in medical school was um you know you have the freeway everyone takes the freeway right but if there's like a traffic jam or an accident or something like that everyone peels off and takes the arterials you know so you're going on on Surface trees to get around that blockage and then you come back on the freeway and go on after that and but everyone has these collaterals that was that was the point that they were making they were all there it's just that they they take a certain pressure threshold to to be utilized and so if you have this blockage there then these things open up uh but they're they're they're already there I think there was a thought for a while that um you know through uh sort of angiogenesis you you'd make new ones um but I certainly had a professor that was of the opinion that everyone has these they're all there and that you know once you start slowing these things down then they just start opening up and developing and developing more and uh and and you're right and that uh if you have this slow progression that you actually don't have a problem the problem would come like if someone was like 20 and that didn't have like a or 35 or something like that and didn't have any sort of history of this then all of a sudden you know through a clot and it had a major blockage and they hadn't developed their collaterals yet and those are the ones that have more devastating uh infarcts where they have a larger body of the heart would be damaged that's that is that your understanding as well yeah definitely um and and that's actually a good point too it's why we when we see um that's why we're seeing more and more young people with with heart attacks and things like that because they haven't had you know the pressure that their body would react to to develop collaterals but um but yeah and even then um you know that one Professor you said said they're already there and that's interesting I've never heard anybody say that they're always or they've always been there and they've developed more when they get pressure too but I do um know a few studies one in um dogs and one in uh I think rats um where they artificially created a stenosis over a few days and they found within as little as four days of creating a complete stenosis that the arteries were able to build around um or grow around so it happens pretty quick yeah at least in these animal studies um but uh but yeah so it can happen pretty quick which which makes sense you know and and to be clear too like these most of these studies were in coronary arteries so I guess we really only know that you know that can happen in coronary arteries but I know that it happens other places too I just don't know if it would happen as quick as four days or whatever um and baraldi's work was all in the heart and coronary arteries so um there may be some differences there but but yeah a pretty pretty fascinating stuff yeah yeah very interesting so what's your what's your overall take on on cholesterol yeah I certainly have you know made videos and talk about that but you know what What's um obviously I think cholesterol is very very good for you um so what what is what if it's not cholesterol what's what's causing atherosclerosis yeah so it so when we talk about when I'm talking about you know it's initiating clotting when when it's uh uh when the buy is initiating clot inside an artery uh just like when you get a cut so it's the question is what cuts an artery or what damages an artery what insults it to so to speak and there are lots of different things that could do that um and so I guess um we could say that it's oxidative stress which is you know these little molecules I call them the I tell my patients the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil they go around like crazy trying to find a pair of electron and they'll damage anything they can to get it but there are lots of things in the body that can cause or it can act like an ox or a free radical uh cause oxidative stress um but you know some of the Heavy Hitters are like heavy metals or or Plastics or just toxins in general um but also oxidized fats can do that so there's it's no mistake that we see association between oxidized LDL and and atherosclerosis and that I would I wouldn't I'm not eyes that that Association is there because the things that are oxidizing and damaging LDL are also damaging the lining of the artery so that's why we see them at the same time not that one's so causative than the other even though oxidized LDL doesn't help but the the big one that I like to talk about especially in relation to the heart and the health of the heart is is psychological stress that is a huge um proponent of initiating clotting so there's I talk about studies I just did a presentation last Thursday at Roanoke College where I'm talking about this this process is happening and I focus in on stress a lot because when you look at what happens during acute stresses the amount of clotting factors that go up is just insane and that's supposed to happen because your body's probably prepping itself for an attack of some sort that would be the evolutionary way of thinking it so it's like okay if we get scratcher we get cut we need to clot pretty fast but the name of the paper is really interesting it's when when physiology becomes harmful because this day and age you know we are we are a species that can literally think our way into a stress response we're the only species that can do that we can overthink things because something happen across the world nowhere near us and stress out about our fear is going to happen to us and we can get stuck in this this uh this chronically elevated stressed state where we have this imbalance in our autonomic nervous system and we look at the evidence for how that stimulates clotting and how after this ghost is just heavily associated with that um it's pretty it's pretty fascinating um but um so there's that stuff and then um you know just just the I guess the the key um piece here is that all that stuff can be the salting the line in the artery and causing clotting things to form but normal wear and tear is just that it's normal and we're supposed to be able to heal from it you know our the lining of the artery is supposed to be able to repair itself to an extent and but that's but that's dependent on a few certain certain things one is uh whether or not we're insulin sensitive or not because the growth and repair the triggered by insulin um especially in the endothelial cells the cells that line the artery uh is incredibly important because if we're getting damaged and it's not getting the signal to repair that damage perpetuates and then we get we get the clotting signal because otherwise the artery is going to you know bleed out or whatever but also uh endothelial progenitive cells are the specific cells made in our bone marrow that go and heal the lying of the artery and if we have low some people have genetically low amounts of those but also diabetes has been shown to have less amounts of those or people who are insulin resistant or even type 1 diabetics like myself have been shown to have lower amounts of those so that impairs the ability to repair that artery which can lead to issues um you know that's when that's when the real issues happen so it's like it's the combination of the things that cause the damage and then the things that um you know inhibit the repair of the damage that are they become the problem and that's you know unfortunately a lot of what's going on in society today yeah yeah and I think that's that's the thing that people are missing is that you know this is this is a very very large and complex inflammatory disease process you know and just breaking it down is this reductionist sort of view is just like you know uh cholesterol goes up heart disease goes up first of all that's false that is just false there's there's no uh you know uh high quality evidence to even suggest that and in fact you'll answer keys and even you know the other um studies the Framingham study all these sorts of things all these all the actual results were misrepresented and and they naturally never found an association between higher LDL cholesterol or total cholesterol and um and heart disease they just never did in fact they found uh inverse relationships in a lot of it in a lot of areas um and certainly those were the large meta-analyzes in in the last two years have shown as well um but but like you're saying you know your body should be able to heal itself you know and that's and that's actually what we are seeing you know we we uh you know uh Dr uh Seema Ultra cardiologist uh in in the UK you know he wrote a book called A Statin free life you know he talks about and he's actually one of the authors in one of those large meta-analyzes uh looking at saturated fat and cholesterol and um he uh you know he talks about how it's really is this is an inflammatory process you know mediated by things like you say like like uh type 2 diabetes and that when you reverse that or sorry when you you will eliminate the inflammation and you sort of reverse these disease processes and these inflammatory processes you can actually reverse the this damage that you get as well and we're actually seeing you know uh coronary calcium scores go down once you eliminate these things out now you can do that with with it with a keto diet with low seed oils or with a carnivore diet or whatever you do uh you can you can reduce this inflammation and your body will start repairing it so and and that is what you would expect to see you know just understanding how the body works right yeah well evolutionarily that would make the most sense you know if we want to survive as long as possible we should be able to heal ourselves uh which those mechanisms are there we just have to activate them um and huge huge parts of that are our animal Foods in my opinion like vitamin K you that's what takes the costume where it needs to go once it becomes mobilized out of those arteries and you put it back in the bone in the teeth and not in other tissue so um I mean that's a huge part of it and it it fascinates me that there's you know people out there that can deny that that evidence you know and and like again I'll talk about carnitine again but also creatine and carnosine like all these different nutrients in in animal Foods or higher in animal foods and more absorbent animal Foods those are the ones that um when you look at the evidence that it helps your helps your body be more efficient because you know carnitine's taking the fatty acids putting them into the mitochondria which is the heart especially prefers fatty acids for fuels which is really interesting because even in the presence of glucose it will choose fatty acids and ketones which is interesting because like in muscle glucose will be burned first but in heart muscle it seems to be different um but carnitines must allow us to do that so carnitine has been shown to you know um improve insulin resistance or or prevent it which is that final little piece of that atherosclerosis that we don't want we don't want Dental resistance because then the body can't heal itself yeah of brain too and brain prefers ketones that's one of the funny things yeah like you know what I I mean I've learned that in Biochemistry 20 years ago you know the brain always runs on ketones and what your once your Ketone level goes up to a certain point regardless of your your glucose levels your brain will just switch will just like shut off you know shut out the the glucose and exclusively run on ketones but it will always have run on some ketones you know even when you're in a low Ketone High uh BSL State and so I I don't I don't you know think that the the argument that glucose is our brain's primary energy source really holds water when you look at it in no way so yeah and then exactly these different tissues that that preferentially go for ketones which is uh yeah it is interesting um and um as far as as far as um animal foods go are you do you do a full carnivore diet yourself you do keto or just you just eat like want to promote meat um and but you're okay with other things as well uh I I was on a full carnivore diet for about two years and I will say that uh that that was the two years that I that I fixed my gut finally um you know because I'd always had got to use that as inflammatory issues and you know it was way better with the diet changes that I made but I still had some gut symptoms and when I went carnivore that's the first time I didn't have any gut symptoms whatsoever and since I've added some plants back in I mean I'm probably you know 80 85 animal Foods since I've had like the gut symptoms are gone still so it's like almost like that was the only thing that allowed my gut to heal um the only thing that I've ever tried and I've tried a lot of things um but yeah so you know I'm I'm generally a fan of of eat a diet that's going to create metabolic Health that gets you all the nutrients you need and in my opinion the best way to do that is is a is a diet very high in animal Foods um that's what humans have been eating for millions of years um well I guess pre-humans and humans for millions of years and uh and that's what uh that's what serves us the best in my opinion but just like evolutionarily like you were talking about like it was advantageous for us to be able to digest some other Foods um but doesn't mean that that that was our our first choice I I often say like you know if if an animal you know the the I guess nine or ten months out of the year had to survive off-putting and that was that was its main that was its best fuel source right or this best food source was pudding for that animal but two months out of the year it had to eat rocks to survive it better retained The evolutionary you know characteristics and Physiology to digest rocks even even if that's not its best food food source right because you need to survive for that two months when the pudding is not available [Laughter] [Music] yeah good and um all right so and and you've seen before like there there's some Are there specific foods that are good for the heart as well or is it just just meat in general or anything specific I mean uh I mean if you want to like I mean eating the heart itself like heart organ organ Meats uh that that's uh definitely helpful um as far as like the Nature's especially the CoQ10 um which is gonna basically be you know this um this super metabolizer for efficiency in mitochondria um that's really really important but then like I mentioned like the carnitine especially I remember carnitine specifically because I had a biochem professor that was like this is going to be a question on national boards I guarantee it what does carnitine do it takes fatty acids into the cell and lo and behold there was a question on board so yeah um that's what it was and um and yeah like I said it's just no mistake that we find that in higher amounts but also the saturated fat uh when we burn that it's more efficient but it also creates more satiety um which is gonna you know help you not eat as often and and uh and cause these issues with with um oxidative stress from eating too frequently um but uh let's see what else animal Foods I'm in the K2 I mentioned as well like we we pretty much only get that from animal Foods beside fermented soy but who wants to eat that and um yeah I mean and I mean all the B vitamins uh especially um uh all in higher Mass especially in the liver things like that but yeah it's like these are the foods but these are the foods that are also our our physiology has has kind of adapted to absorb uh direct absorption uh that's what we're we're more in line with like you know wolves and things like that so um I'm not going to sit here and say that everyone should be a carnivore or or needs to be to be healthy but toast foods make the most sense for our physiology for sure yeah make sure they make it easier you know I've I've yeah you know I mean I've I've played you know a lot of sports throughout my life um most of that was done eating you know sort of a standard diet not a lot of sugar not all that much carb but you know just just a normal diet but I always liked meat so I prioritize that you can get in good shape you can get ripped you can get low body fat you can you can perform at a very high level it takes a lot more work to do it um when you're eating different things when I'm on a pure carnivore diet it is so much easier maintain my physique I don't work out at all you know I feel like it's been months and like I'm in Hampton uh you know really much of anything but you know I I still maintain my my my body mask and and lean uh physique it's it's so much easier and when I when I do get back in and I'm doing sports I'm doing Athletics and working out I get back I certainly I don't lose nearly as much and I get back so much quicker and so it's um it's much much much much easier and that just makes sense physiologically that this is really what is good for us because it just makes Better Health easier yeah I experienced something similar because I uh I I used to lift weights a lot and I do again now but like there was a time like that first year I was on Carnivore I was doing more soccer I was playing a lot more soccer and I wasn't lifting weights um sometimes I think there was one point it was like three months where I hadn't lifted but I didn't lose muscle mass um when I was eating all animal Foods um I was getting enough protein to maintain that muscle mass even though it wasn't you know stimulating the muscle that's what I what I used to I mean my legs obviously playing soccer I was a little bit but not the heavier weight that I was I used to do so um I thought that was interesting but but uh yeah yeah definitely and you mentioned something interesting as well that about just the purpose of the heart as well you don't think it's just to do with with pumping blood can you can you explain that yeah there's actually a lot of evidence out there that I talk about in my book and there's actually a whole um kind of research books written about that the heart is not the main mover of the blood that's not the purpose of it um that it's uh it's there for a reason and but the blood more or less moves on its own and and this is this has to this is why efficiency of the fuel source of the heart is really really important um because it's more it doesn't act like this pressure propulsion pump that it forcefully sucks in fluid from somewhere and then forcefully pumps it out somewhere else it does do a little bit of pumping but no more than is enough to kind of move the blood through the ventricles in the Atria um and then maybe into the aorta but um but other than that if you look at the size of the heart and the amount of you know force that it can create there's no way it could pump the blood forcefully throughout the entire body and if you look at the if you kind of like the the logic of it too like if I was going to put a pump um if I was going to pump water or a fluid up a hill where would I put the pump I'd put it at the bottom of the hill yet the heart is kind of in the middle of us and so it's it's pumping down to the feet and it's supposed to be able to pump all the way back up to the heart and the physics of it doesn't really make sense um and there's lots of a lot of evidence there like you know if we look at um you know in a fetus before the hearts even form the blood is moving um and you know there is contraction of muscle and there is one way valves in the veins and things like that but the mechanism by which the blood moves which kind of takes us back to atherosclerosis and why it's so important that the lining of the artery is so healthy is because water so this all comes from the lab of Dr Joe Pollock at the University of Washington he's shown that water has the ability to hold energy and when it does it actually structures itself into what's called this uh fourth phase water State and it's got different names it's got structured water or exclusion Zone water and when it does this because you know the blood is about half water when it does this in an artery it actually forms this energy gradient that actually propels blood flow and they've shown this they've done this experimentally when they stop the the heart from beating in dogs like a long time ago and the blood continue to move for hours but they've done it in Dr Paula's lab in chick embryos where they stop the heart and the blood continues to move and as long as they put radiant energy uh in into the system it continues to move because the radiant energy like infrared light is one way that water actually can hold energy or absorbs energy and so one reason that the heart is there is because another way that that water gets the ability to hold energy is that it's a swirled around the presence of oxygen and oxygen is always there in the blood and the heart if you look at the orientation of the heart muscle it's this it's this spiral like nature so when it contracts and spirals the vortexes swishes around the blood so that it energizes the water so when it gets into the lining of the artery it can structure itself and perform these mechanisms that Propel blood flow and that may be a lot for people to kind of grasp or wrap their head around but I I detail it all in the book and how the heart is actually more like a hydraulic ram which operates when fluid is already flowing into it there's no forceful sucking or pushing out it's it's the water that flows into it that activates it and so it's actually two hydraulic Rams that are kind of put together and then the other purpose of the heart so so the one purpose is that it vortexes the blood as it moves through but the other purpose is actually to stop blood flow in times when we're using our bodies very vigorously it's like doing Athletics and there's actually lots of studies that show that the reason that an endurance athlete's heart grows and the muscle gets bigger and stronger it's not because it's it's more forcefully pumping it's because it's more aggressively stopping the flow of blood as it's flowing in very forcefully because if we were to go for a run um or do anything athletic and like the tissue would demand the blood and that would increase the flow to the arterial side to the tissues and the venous side would pretty much collapse because if the heart wasn't there but since the heart is there and it stops this it kind of maintains the pressure between the two systems so they can be equalized so that doesn't collapse and we don't die during exertion and they've done these studies in soccer players mostly um but uh really interesting because because if we if we step back and realize what's the point of knowing all that why is that important is because if we don't understand the true function of the heart and it's really hard to understand what like heart failure is you know so the thing that drives all this home for me is that infrared light is one of the main ways that the water in our blood absorbs energy and when you look at the studies on people with heart failure the people who think we think they're heart is failing when in reality is these mechanisms that Propel blood flow in the periphery that are failing and if we if we look at the studies on those people with infrared sauna use it's phenomenal these people have complete turnarounds in their in their their their disease like their ejection fractions um you know increase tremendously the swelling goes down the heart size goes down uh everything um it's it's I don't understand why there's not infrared Zone on every cardiac we have Center everywhere right but um it's pretty fascinating um to look at it think of it like that and but it's really important to understand as well well yeah it's very interesting I mean obviously the heart has obviously a function you know and uh you're saying that it's I mean even just just to pump right because you know if we have we have an arrest you know we need to you know perform CPR and things like that you know someone will expire otherwise um is there is there still like a bit of blood flow or like or it just has to like just kick start the system and just sort of get things sort of moving or or what's that mechanism um what do you mean like for CPR for CPR yeah so if it if you know when the heart arrests you know and things you know do stop and you stop perfusing your your organs in your brain um you know presumably I mean so that that's obviously why people think that this is a pump mechanism because this is going right but but it sounds more like a like a priming event to sort of get get the ball rolling and then everything else sort of just takes off after that is that right yeah so if a heart stops Contracting the valve Stop opening and closing so that would prevent flow um right there so that's what the compressions are for opening and closing valves so that blood can continue to flow um but more or less in the periphery the blood is Flowing on its own um and and like I said the heart does do a little bit of pumping but it's no more than enough to get the blood through the art or through the um chambers of the heart um it has to do that and also if like I said the the heart is uh is kind of a Vortex and it's it spirals pushes around the blood and that energizes it so if we don't have that mechanism happening either then that will delay or that will interfere with the flow of blood in the periphery so that's why the compression of the chest helps is because it starts it's forcibly opens and closes the valves so that the blood doesn't just get backed up right but if we look at this if we look at the heart as this thing that forcefully pumps the blood throughout the entire body there's no way that could happen the physics of it just it just can't based on you know there's scientists that say that we need the heart the size of a whale to do that so there's there's other mechanisms about which blood flows and it's really important to understand those those other mechanisms yeah to to achieve Health really Optimal Health yeah and so and like I said the efficiency of the heart is really really important because or like the energy source that it runs off is really important because that Contracting needs to be as sufficient as possible especially people with heart failure which is why heart failure hearts in Failure prefer ketones there's plenty of data on that okay interesting and then so and so that that flow through place that is that that laminar flow where it's like you know you have sort of the different um like explain that where like the blood's going through the vessels and there's some sort of characteristic of that that's actually helps Propel it uh yeah so it's so you know when we look at water it's H2O right so once when water structures itself next to a hydrophilic surface which the lining of an artery is a hydrophilic surface and this happens in nature too so people need to ask themselves how does water get from the roots of trees up to the leaves like the same mechanism happens and so when it does that it Cleaves off one of the hydrogens so we're left with just an oxygen and a hydrogen and those oxygen hydrogens team up with other oxygens and hydrogens and they make this like this lattice like planar like structure that lines up next to the hydrophilic surface and what that does that becomes a very electronegative space because the oxygen is a bigger molecule and the hydrogens that are left in the Lumen of the artery make it a very electropositive space and that creates an energy gradient that propels flow and they do this over and over again they put a they put a hydrophilic tube inside water into into a water uh energized water and the water just starts to flow through the tube with nothing else going on it just starts to happen and as long as it's going in One Direction and energy is placed to it it will never stop it just it just keeps going and um so that's that's flow of water with no pump necessary yeah and so that's what we find happening in arteries and plant roots and various things throughout nature um and so yeah that's the kind of direct mechanism but the other thing is that's really interesting is that that it's called exclusion Zone water for a reason because it excludes anything that's not it and the only thing that can really penetrate it are small hydrated ions of minerals um but um but even like the small protein albumin can't get through it so it performs it acts as protective layer as well so you got this layer of water you got the glycocalyx you got the endothelia you know all these different layers of things and that one if we keep it intact protects the lining of the artery as well awesome and so just uh um obviously a bigger question but uh hopefully not too big um heart so what is heart failure then if not just the failure of this pump to move to move fluid throughout our body what's going on there so it's the failure of these mechanisms in the periphery so so the the blood is not moving on its own um and uh and and then and it could also be um I guess contributed to by poor energy use of the heart so glucose based metabolism rather than ketones but it's the failures of those and then the heart is having to pump more Force within this design to or evolve to because the blood's not flowing on its own then when it gets to the heart the heart is having to contract more and push more and that creates this dilation it also creates swelling in the in the limbs which is what we see in heart failure um and then congestion in the lungs and things like that because all because these mechanisms are not moving I mean the lymphatic system doesn't have a pump but the blood or the water moves through that the CSF doesn't have a pump you know the the spine kind of moves around and moves a little bit but this is how this is how water moves throughout the body or fluid moves throughout the body is there's these mechanisms um and so uh so we have to cultivate an environment that helps do that to take pressure off the organs so they're not doing that they're having they're forced to do that themselves okay and so what are some of those things you know what what are we doing that's going wrong uh that's causing precipitating heart heart failure and how do we how do we prevent that yeah so the big one is is poor metabolism uh glucose metabolism it's over this and things like that but then that's all perpetuated by um lack of blood flow so if we want to energize the water in our blood the sun is the original source of that which is why it makes sense evolutionarily because 40 of the sun's rays are infrared which are the most absorbed by white water but also grounding putting your feet directly on the earth um that electromagnetic field from the earth energizes the water in your body um other living things which is why human touch is so healing um it does that as well like um the right type of light or like the wrong type of light you know the you know the fluorescent lights the the filter blue light or it can impede with um repeat the inner energizing of water um but then yeah so just nature exposure um you know being in touch with other living things like that and then eating the freshest food possible because that the water is not just structured in line any of the artery is structured in all the cells of of living things and so the fresher our food the better it is you know the the more energized it is when we're consuming it which is why I like animal Foods because um we're eating the cells of animals that are that are have to be pretty fresh we're not going to ship those around the world or at least we don't I get it locally from a farm you know and I can do that pretty much anywhere um you know a cow can grow so so those types of things will energize the water but it's really a light environment that's the best okay cool um I was just going to say too you know for people that you know we actually do see these these mechanisms sometimes you say that like this stuff's flowing on its own that's interesting we don't necessarily know um uh why that is all that much but the you know something was explained to me um when I was taking uh molecular biology was um this thing called Brownian motion which is just a normal motion of these molecules right and they're just bouncing around and flying around and just just moving constantly you know and temperature obviously has you know speeds up that that's what temperature is these molecules are going around faster and that's why that increases reaction rate because you increase the temperature and you increase the speed and so you're going to create more interactions between these these chemicals and you have more chemical reactions um but that that Brownian motion is just this this natural motion of the molecules in in water in the air in in our cells actually produces enough energy to account for all of our kinetic movements just just that energy in the cell just molecules moving around as we believe and this is why people you know some people thinking like are we even in control of ourselves or is this just a pure chemical reaction you know to sort of get into that that sort of that that self-determinism versus uh you know um uh uh you know everything's scripted is just like we're just we're just you know um you know this is this is just all happening no matter what but but that that is something that we we see you know and obviously I think very much we have free will and when this isn't this isn't random um you know I've chosen to do that but there but there is enough energy in Brownian motion in the cells to account for all of this for everything that happens there's enough energy just going around from just the banging around molecules so there's a lot of there's a lot going on that uh is is going to take a long time to figure out so that's pretty interesting about the the flow yeah I mean and we always hear things like you know I'm 75 water 80 water like our bodies are made up of that it's just like well if we're made up of so much water um it would make sense that our physiology would be extremely impacted by that water and as far as Dr Pollock and others before him Dr Lang and Dr Albertson Georgia they found out that water has these very unique properties that we haven't even really tapped into yet um and so that's what he's exploring in his work and his books and so it's pretty fascinating when we apply it to human physiology very good all right um well Dr Rossi it's been an absolute pleasure speaking I'm sure we could could go into way more depth in this but it's very very interesting um uh where can people find you and find your book what's it you know name your book and uh and just yeah just tell us where we can get more of your stuff yeah so my website is resourcerhealth.com my books are on there my blog's on there I do online coaching so people can find me there my book is understanding the heart uh surprising insights of The evolutionary origins of heart disease and why it matters uh that's on Amazon and Barnes Noble and things like that I can buy from the publisher website and then I'm on social media uh just Dr Stephen Hussey Stephen with the pH uh people can reach out to me their Twitter Facebook Instagram things like that perfect and we'll put all those up in the in the show notes as well all right Stephen uh absolute pleasure thank you for coming on it's been it's been great talking to you yeah thanks for having me no problem foreign