Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
The Greatness of Green Tea!!! Dr. Claire Arcidiacono, ND Green tea is everywhere these days! Green tea is found in everything from tea bags to lattes and even ice cream! But as we all know these forms are chock full of sugar and additives …
HORMONES: HOW THEY IMPACT MEN’S HEALTH By: Allie Might, FMC, INHC, ATT When it comes to men’s health, it’s best to start at the beginning….HORMONES. While there are a long list of hormones, lets focus on a three of the most commonly talked about….Testosterone, …
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro Music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that Invite Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started. † [00:00:34]
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Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:41] Over the years, many people have approached me interested in instituting a nutritional protocol. They want to set up a regimen, but they don’t quite really have it nailed down what they should include, how they should go about it. So, I’d like to cover that today, a good approach to planning a sensible supplement regimen, a general one. So, we’re not discussing specific health conditions today like insomnia. We’re not discussing diseases today such as diabetes. We have specific podcast episodes that address those situations. So, there are certain life necessities that nutrition will not replace. Nutrition can help them, but it doesn’t replace them, yet nutrition could be, we’re talking about supplements as nutrition here. Of course, food is nutrition. There are certain situations where supplements are amazingly helpful, but in general, they’re very protective and beneficial and they can help your day-to-day energy and your, you know, how effective your brain works at your occupation, etc… In any event, so welcome to our episode, my name is Jerry Hickey, I’m a nutritional pharmacist. I’m also the senior scientific officer over here at Invite Health. You can find all of the Invite podcast for free wherever you listen to a podcast or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find Invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health, and all of the information on today’s episode will be under the description, it’ll be listed there. So, let’s get going. So these life necessities that nutrition cannot replace, of course, sleep. Sleep is a necessity. You can enhance sleep with nutrition, with a nutritional supplement like L-theanine. L-theanine is an alpha amino acid that to express out of tea leaves. And if you get enough L-theanine like 100 milligrams, 200 milligrams, it’s very soothing without being dangerous. And I’ve had instances where I’ve used it, where I’ve had deadlines the next day for the radio, etc. and I’d wake up at two or three in the morning and immediately my brain would shunt into overdrive and I knew I couldn’t get back to sleep, it would be impossible. Yet I needed to rest because I had so much to accomplish the next day. So, I’d go into my bathroom, and I’d take two l-theanine 100 milligrams, sometimes three, depending on how I felt, and within about 15 minutes I’d have a nice easy sleep and it was no problem waking up in the morning. There’s no after effect from it, you don’t feel dull in the morning. So, L-theanine can enhance sleep if you need it. And of course, if you lack sleep for a couple of nights, you can help make up for it by taking the alpha amino acid called L-Tyrosine. The amino acid L-Tyrosine, that’ll help make up for it for a couple of days. It’ll help you with paying attention and focus and mental energy, alertness, etc. But over time you cannot make up for it with nutrition. So, sleep is a necessity, a life necessity that you cannot replace with nutrition. You can help it with nutrition but not replace it. And by the way, some people can’t sleep because they just don’t get enough exercise, which brings us to our second topic. I mean, if you exercise, you’re going to sleep at night. It’s almost pretty much that simple, for most people, not all. † [00:04:10]
[00:04:10] Exercise is a must; nutrition does not replace exercise. There’s no supplement that replaces exercise. There are supplements that can enhance exercise. For instance, if you take a form of Coenzyme Q10 such as Ubiquinol, it can help with your endurance and your stamina and your energy. If you take creatine monohydrate, that can help with your power, and there are things that enhance the benefits, they improve the benefits of the exercise. So, believe it or not, green tea is one of those things, or beta hydroxy beta methylbutyrate, beta hydroxy beta methylbutyrate will help you gain muscle and other things that will improve your performance once again Ubiquinol, but also beet juice. They can improve your performance, your physical performance, but they don’t replace exercise. You have to exercise the best thing to assuage the effects to fight the effects of aging, is exercise, that’s the number one thing. † [00:05:17]
[00:05:18] Now, the next life necessity that you cannot replace with nutrition is a great diet. You can help a poor diet, but you’re not creating a great diet. You have to have a good diet. So, there was recent research. Several studies I’ve always questioned. Do you have to have simply a great diet? I mean, can you cheat? Elon Musk recently famously said, I have a donut every morning and I’m still alive. Well, yes, but we don’t know how he eats the rest of the day. If you have 80 to 90% of your total caloric intake and food intake from high quality foods, you’re probably okay. So, if you’re going to have a piece of blueberry pie, but otherwise you’re eating great food, you should be fine, you really should be. I’m a little more careful than that, and listen, of course, a good food should entail fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, good fresh nuts, seeds, legumes like lentils and peas and beans, whole grains. And I would add a lot of herbs and spices to culinary herbs and culinary spices, you know, like rosemary. I would add green tea. I would add a great culinary spice, like turmeric, I would make sure that’s in my food frequently. Lots of dark berries and apples. I mean, these are good fruits, these are good fruits, but you can enhance your diet with supplements. And this is where we’re going to go with today’s conversation. It’s very hard to ensure you’re getting every nutrient and adequate amount from your food. And if you lack any nutrient, well, that’s an issue. That’s a real issue because the things in a vitamin and mineral complex, their rate limiting factors, rate limiting factors means if you lacked them, things slow down a great deal or they don’t even go forward at all. And that’s true when vitamins and minerals, they’re vital. So, lacking any particular vitamin or any particular mineral over time can have a terrible impact on your health, a terrible impact. I’ll give you some for instances, you eat food for energy. A great deal of the reason you’re eating food is for energy. Your food is converted through a series of chemical reactions into energy for your body so your body can create more of itself and so your body can kind of function as that wonderful engine that we all so you can power up the engine of your body. This is fats, proteins and carbohydrates are converted into energy, in something called the Krebs Cycle, which is also known as the citric acid cycle. If you take biochemistry, you’ll spend many months studying the Krebs, citric acid cycle. You require B vitamins to create this energy, if you lack certain B vitamins, you are not creating energy out of your food. And if you lack other B vitamins, you can’t use the energy efficiently anyway, and you require the mineral calcium to help regulate this process. Calcium is used in a number of ways to regulate the citric acid cycle when you’re making energy out of your food. I mean, I don’t think most people realize that, you know, you know, calcium for your muscles and bones and your teeth. But calcium is also essential for energy. † [00:09:03]
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[00:09:05] Magnesium is another one. All the energy you’re creating and in that citric acid cycle would burn itself out immediately if you didn’t have magnesium, the mineral magnesium to help regulate it. And here’s another example of why you need vitamins and minerals. The minerals, selenium, iodine and zinc and also the mineral iron is required by your thyroid gland and the ability to create thyroid hormones and release them, but also to convert them into their active form. And your thyroid gland controls your metabolism. It has an effect on your, on everything, on every cell in your body, your cholesterol, your energy, your brain function, your heart rate, your digestion, your muscle function. So, lacking any single vitamin or mineral is, on a day-to-day basis detrimental to maximal function. But over time, it’s dangerous to your health, it’s very dangerous to your health. For instance, if you lack vitamin B3, not only can you not create energy out of your food, you’re going to age at accelerated rate, you’re not going to detoxify chemicals and you really can’t prevent cancer without vitamin B3. So, insurance against lacking these nutrients is taking a very high-quality multivitamin. Now, let me give you a caveat with that, if you’re older, make sure to form a folate in there as methyltetrahydrafolate, I think it’s very essential. Folate is named after foliage. You know it in many, you see it in fortified foods like breads or cereals as folic acid. The problem is not everybody can convert folic acid into its active form, methyltetrahydrafolate is the active form. You need methyltetrahydrafolate to lower the risk of cancer. It helps prevent the first two steps of the process of the cancer formation, which are called initiation and promotion to simplify it, you need to help prevent heart disease, you need it to create energy out of your food, you need as an antioxidant, but you also need it as you grow older to protect yourself from Alzheimer’s. There is a chemical process that takes place when you eat protein and a byproduct of that is called homocysteine and low levels of homocysteine are fine. We don’t know of homocysteine does anything in a positive way, just because they haven’t found out a positive function for it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a positive function. But so far it just seems to be negative, if it’s too high, it becomes a solvent. And in certain studies, it’s been shown to chip away at your bone and joint health, at your heart health at your eyeball health. But many studies are showing it’s dangerous in the brain, if homocysteine is elevated in the brain. It really is an inflammatory component in the brain, and it’s been shown to be part and parcel of developing Alzheimer’s disease. So, you need the active version of folic acid, methyltetrahydrafolate to lower homocysteine levels. So, if you’re older, you want to make sure that your multivitamin has that form of folate called Methyltetrahydrafolate. Sometimes it’s abbreviated, MHTHF, so that’s the first thing. I think pretty much everybody in America get some benefit from taking a multivitamin. There’s a number of studies in older men and older women where their brain functions better. There are studies in children where they tend to do better academically if they’re on a multivitamin. There are studies in middle aged and younger adults that they do better with brain function when they have adequate levels of all these B vitamins, like there was a study out of England, I don’t have it in front of me. I read it years ago, but I tend to remember studies, and these were like healthy people who led a good lifestyle and well-educated people. And they found that when they gave them the B vitamins versus a placebo, they performed better, their brain performed better. They would do better at work, they were more alert, their brain had a little more energy. So even these super healthy people that are eating a diet and exercising and are well-informed, well-educated, etc., if you gave them B vitamins, there was a slight improvement in their mind function, their brain function. So that tells you something. So that becomes of course, more of an issue in people who don’t have a good diet, who don’t exercise, who don’t lead a good life, who are not well-educated. And because education matters and you can always educate yourself, you know, you just go on YouTube and you can watch videos on science and and on geography and history, etc., read a book, whatever. The thing is that it matters, and I think it becomes more of an issue when people who don’t eat well and people who are aging and people with disease states. † [00:13:54]
[00:13:56] Now, so I think everybody should have a multivitamin. If you’re lacking any particular vitamin or mineral, it’s not a good thing. So, it’s just insurance that you’re filling in the holes in your food, you know, because although certain foods have been measured, have measures that they should have a certain amount of nutrients in them, it’s not always the case that’s going to vary from vegetable. Now extra vitamin D, vitamin D is a hormone, but don’t let that word scare you. It’s not a hormone like estrogen or testosterone or a corticosteroid hormone. A hormone simply is something that’s released from one part of the body, and it works somewhere else. That’s the definition of a hormone. So, hormones typically are released from glands like the thyroid gland releases thyroid hormones. So, the hormones are typically released from glands, and they go all around the body, and they knock on the door of, in small amounts by the way, they’re released in tiny amounts because they’re so effective and they go around the whole body and they’re broadcasters, they broadcast around the whole body. They knock on every cell like knock on its front door. And if the cell requires them, it lets them in. So, there’s vitamin D receptors all over the body. We know that vitamin D has a strong impact on the immune system. It’s involved with brain function, it’s just active all over the body. So especially in the winter, it’s hard to get enough vitamin D and they’ve seen even in some sunny locations. Like Hawaii and Arizona, people with darker skin, don’t have enough vitamin D because the best sunscreen is having darker skin. So, vitamin D becomes really important as a supplement and it’s safe. I mean, I think most people, 2000 to 3000 units a day, it really varies from person to person, how much they need. Some people, especially in the summer, don’t need any. They don’t need any supplementation. Other people still need a great deal of supplementation. It seems that if you use sunscreen, yeah, of course, if you use sunscreen, if you wear a lot of clothing, if you avoid the sun, and if you have older skin or darker skin, all of these things reduce your ability to create vitamin D out of sun. So, 2000 to 3000 units a day. You take it with food, vitamin D3, which is called cholecalciferol all seems to work better than vitamin D2, which is ergocalciferol. By the way, you need magnesium, the mineral to activate your vitamin D, so when vitamin D is released from the kidneys, when vitamin D is activated by the kidneys, I should say it requires magnesium for that function. Magnesium is a really important mineral. † [00:16:42]
[00:16:44] Now, certain people need to take a probiotic. You have trillions of bacteria in your intestines, all over your skin, apparently in the urinary tract, apparently everywhere. Vaginal tissue and breast and breast milk lobes. So, in the ducts, I should say, in the ducts of the breast, there’s bacteria. See what the good bacteria, cause the bad bacteria are bad because they can inflame you and some of them take advantage of certain situations and can actually infect you. So, you need enough good bacteria. So normally you can get enough good bacteria by eating a wholesome diet, a well-rounded, healthy diet, but there are some issues that affect that ability. For instance, if you’re obese, obese people have been found to have a predominance or there’s so many inflammatory causing bacteria, pro-inflammatory bacteria, that they need more healthy bacteria, they need more of the good bacteria. So, people who are obese, people who have diabetes and prediabetes tend to have a poor mix of bacteria, they tend to have more of the pro-inflammatory bacteria, people who smoke, people who drink alcohol. Apparently, people who use a lot of aerosols, it kills, it gets into you, and it kills your good bacteria, people on a poor diet because the bacteria require fiber to live. So, if you’re not eating a good diet, you’re not getting the fiber, the bacteria, the good bacteria don’t survive. And if you’re in a city with a lot of pollution, the pollution seems to kill off your good bacteria. And, of course, certain drugs, a lot of drugs, apparently, but especially antibiotics kill off your good bacteria. So, these people really should have a probiotic. The healthy bacteria in your gut are really essential for your immune system, they’re essential for good brain function. They’re essential for helping to prevent diabetes and obesity because they help control your appetite. They’re essential for helping to prevent colon cancer. They’re essential for regularity, so you don’t have diarrhea and constipation, etc… They even seem to help defend you from developing allergies and perhaps can even help you get rid of your existing allergies or mitigate them at least. So, a lot of people oh, by the way, the aging process, I’ve seen studies that included millions of people whereas you grow older, you tend to lose off your good bacteria. It’s some kind of biochemical thing, they don’t exactly know why. So, if you’re older, you need a probiotic. Now, generally a mixture of Lactobacilli and Bifidobacterium is a good way to go, that’s the way I go. Initially, I took the probiotic daily for about six months and then I started taking it every two or three days just to really have these bacteria grow in number in my intestines, that’s called colonizing, it’s called colonizing. So, I gave them six months to really get a head start and really, really, really, really get set, and then every two or three days, I take a probiotic just as a booster just to make sure I’m okay. There’s also prebiotics, which are food for the bacteria. † [00:20:07]
[00:20:07] I used to have a friend named Dr. Allan Pressman, who I miss immensely. Many of you know of him, he was very popular, very well known, big author, big time on radio, big in education. And any event he often he used to say, hey, you wouldn’t buy goldfish or goldfish food. Why would you buy probiotic bacteria without probiotic bacteria food? So, a prebiotic, usually it’s from chicory root. That’s a relative of Belgian Endive, it has a fiber called fructose oligosaccharides that is a good source of food, this fiber is good source of food for these bacteria. And it’s not offensive, in fact, it’s rather healthy, FOS. So, so far, I said a probiotic for many people, extra vitamin D for most people, and a good multivitamin & mineral. And if you’re older, make sure you get an methyltetrahydrafolate as the form of folic acid in that multi. Now, is there anything else required in the day-to-day basis? Well, you know, diseases change this, so make sure you speak to our nutritionists. If you’re if you have some kind of disease state like diabetes, because if you’re diabetic, you want to get extra Zinc and extra magnesium along with the vitamin D to help control your blood sugar. All three are required. So, if you have some kind of condition that really needs attention, speak to one of our nutritionists to get some advice on your protocol. But let’s get back to the things we really need, fish. Fish Oil is really important. There’s something called the omega three index, the omega three index, pardon me. The omega three index quantifies the amount of fish oils on the, it’s on the membrane of our cell, the outside of our cell, the housing of our cell. So, on a cellular membrane is all these fats, you know, maybe there’s some butter, maybe there’s some margarine, olive oil. So, they look at the types of fats, the saturated fat, the monounsaturated fat, the polyunsaturated fat, and then they look at the fish oils and they compared them. And there has to be a certain percentage of fish oils for you to really stay healthy. I mean, your brain is made out of fats and has a large component of fish oils and that, so you need a good amount of fish oils for the brain to function. And that’s, that’s clearly a requirement for the human body. The brain requires fish oils, the omega three fatty acids, generally EPA and DHA. But there’s also DPA. And these get into the membrane of your brain cell, and they help it to function properly, and they help prevent depression, and they literally help prevent different forms of mental senility like Alzheimer’s disease. So, fish oils are very important. And there’s enough data to show that fish oils lower the risk of sudden cardiac death, Sudden cardiac death. About 350,000 Americans each year suffer from cardiac arrest, in general, 350,000 Americans a year suffer from cardiac arrest, sometimes it’s 300,000, sometimes 400,000, in general, 350,000. Now, if the heart doesn’t start beating again, then it’s called sudden cardiac death. And it happens very rapidly, I mean, there’s really not much chance that you’re going to make it into an ambulance or get to a hospital. So about 10%, maybe 8% of these people survive out of 350,000. So that’s like 35,000 out of 350,000. So, there’s plenty of evidence from many, many studies for many, many meta-analyses. A meta-analysis is what a group study is like, like type studies. It gives you more people, it gives you more academic research institutions. And when you have this greater population, it’s a more accurate measure of something works or not. And many meta-analyses showed that fish oils really have a strong ability to lower the risk of sudden cardiac death. So, because fish oils are so essential for the brain and because fish oils are so essential for lowering the risk of sudden cardiac death, I would recommend that everybody’s on fish oils. It becomes more important if you’re on a statin because statins lowered a level fish oils in your body, according to Japanese research. And it becomes more important as you grow older because for some reason, I’m older. As you grow older, it seems to be harder to utilize the fish oils, so you need a little bit extra. So, an older person on a statin drug like Rosuvastatin, they really need fish oils, it’s really important. † [00:24:42]
[00:24:44] Fish oils also have an impact on the eyes, on your bones, on your skin, on your muscles, not just the heart and the brain, but also on women’s breasts. So, they’re really important, on the colon they have an impact, on the immune system they have an impact. So, fish oils are important. So far, a probiotic, & fish oils, a multivitamin and additional Vitamin D for most people. And that right there covers a lot of the needs when it comes to taking a nutritional supplement. Now, for older people, they must have some form of coenzyme Q10, so I would add that, I think that’s essential for older people. Our ability to convert Coenzyme Q10 into its active form, the active form is called Ubiquinol, really declines with age, really declines in your fifties and sixties and seventies. So not only do I think older people need CoQ10. They need a specific form of CoQ10 called Ubiquinol. Now, Ubiquinol and younger adults has been shown to improve physical performance in sports, but us older people, it’s been shown to help really keep our heart functioning at a proper rate and help prevent fatigue and assuage fatigue. So that’s really important. Ubiquinol, the Ubiquinol to get is by Kaneka, they make it down in Texas. That’s the one, that’s the only one that’s made in the United States, that’s the one to go with. Now, additionally for older people, you want Lutein. Lutein is a pigment in vegetables and fruits. There’s a little bit in the yolk of eggs and lutein is essential for memory and vision and it gets harder to absorb lutein from food with age. So, Lutein is a must for older people as part of their day-to-day regimen. A little bit of extra Zinc. Zinc becomes harder to absorb with age, and Zinc is responsible for protecting the brain, protecting the eyes and helps the thyroid function. And, you know, your thyroid controls metabolism. It helps to control your blood sugar. You need it for digesting your food, you need it for healing, you need to keep the arteries in your heart clean. You need it for your immune system. There’s many and to protect you from your immune system. So, Zinc, a little extra zinc is important for older people and collagen. We make collagen when we’re growing, we make it in abundance. You eat any protein, it could be an egg, it could be soybeans, it could be anything grains, and you convert the protein in these things into collagen. So, because collagen makes you, it’s the second most common ingredient in human body after water. Your skin is about 70% collagen. The cartilage in your knee joint is about 67% collagen, your bone is about 36% collagen, so collagen’s really, really important, it makes up your spinal tissue. It makes the menisci in your joint under your knees that supports these tissues. So, collagen, is really important, older people do not make enough. They should get a real high quality collagen supplement. There’s a company, an Italian French company that makes one called Peptan. Like I use Peptan B 5000 every day or most days, because you need to remake yourself, you need to keep yourself functioning. In fact, even collagen content in your brain and in your blood vessel walls and, in the valves, in your heart, valves in your kidneys, etc. So, it helps prevent wear and tear in the body. The ones you rise is water and collagen and it’s 1% collagen. So, collagen is really essential to the human body, so that’s another thing. Older people can also think of adding a powerful brain antioxidant like either resveratrol, you have to get a resveratrol that’s protected from light and oxygen, otherwise, it’s not working. It’s been deactivated or a well absorbed turmeric like bio-curcumin or the curcumin that comes with the black pepper constituent, because these are really good. I’m not giving you all the supplements that are good, I’m giving you what I think is a really smart protocol. So, if you have any questions on that, you can contact our nutritionist, just go to invitehealth.com, they’ll give you all the info, what stores or what phone numbers or whatever, live chat, etc. if you have any questions on anything I said. So, all of the information on today’s program is listed where we discuss the program episode and you can listen to this episode, any of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find Invite on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Invite Health. And I want to thank you for listening in. This is Jerry Hickey, signing off, hope to see you next time on the next episode of Invite Health. † [00:24:44]
*Exit Music*
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. TAKE THESE SUPPLEMENTS FOR YOUR MEMORY- PART 2. INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 631 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where …
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. TAKE THESE SUPPLEMENTS FOR YOUR MEMORY- PART 1. INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 630 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the Invite Health podcast, where our …
Subscribe Today!
Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro Music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro:[00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InVite Health has to offer at, www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started.† [00:00:34]
*Intro Music*
Jerry Hickey, Ph.: [00:00:40] The name of this episode, this being part two, is lowering the risk of cardiac arrest. Now, what caused me, what spurred me on to do this episode is the Buffalo Bills, Damar Hamlin had an incident during a game recently. They had to stop the game, of course, and fortunately he’s progressing. He’s coming back towards good health and you would think so, I mean, he’s a powerful young guy, extremely fit. But it struck again, cardiac arrest struck again. Lisa Marie Presley, she was only 54 and she died on January 12th, that was Elvis Presley’s daughter, hi, my name is Jerry Hickey, welcome to my episode, part two, lowering the Risk of Cardiac arrest. You can find all invited episodes for free wherever you listen to podcast or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find invite on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at Invite Health. And all of the information on this episode will be listed in any description.† [00:01:47]
[00:01:50] Now, cardiac arrest is an electrical problem. The heart stops beating and sadly, in the lion’s share of cases that occur outside of a hospital, it’s not survivable. It progresses of a sudden cardiac death, meaning the heart doesn’t start to beat again, it does not restart. So it’s a very atrocious number and it’s different from a heart attack. A heart attack is generally a blockage problem, but of course, it can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death. These are horrible names. Now, the most common cause is an issue with the heart like heart failure or having had heart attacks, etc. So you can listen to part one of this episode for the statistics and for the risk factors, and I believe I laid down good evidence for fish oils protecting your heart in part one, lowering your risk of a heart attack, lowering your risk of cardiac arrest, and especially lowering your risk of sudden cardiac death. So let’s keep on going and I’m going to broaden the conversation. Are there other supplements that may have some ability to lower your risk of cardiac arrest? So here’s from the Mayo Clinic proceedings, January 2017. It’s the Epidstat institute in Ann Arbor, Maine, along with other institutions and, of course, a VA hospital in Illinois because you need the patients. But they looked at a whole bunch of studies. They looked at 18 randomized controlled trials and randomized controlled trials in patients with elevated triglycerides or elevated LDL cholesterol, and of course, many of them were on statins. Fish oils were protective from coronary heart disease risk. That’s very important because coronary heart disease is what leads to heart failure and strokes and sudden cardiac death and cardiac arrest and all these other horrible things. In a cohort study, so there were 16 prospective cohort studies and 18 randomized controlled trials looking at fish oils and the risk of a heart attack and the risk of sudden cardiac death and risk of coronary death dying from anything with the heart, the risk of angina, you know, poor blood flow to the heart, which is a killer and a cohort studies fish oils, significant decrease for the risk of any coronary heart disease event, any coronary heart disease event. Now, that could be anything from an arrhythmia to a heart attack, to cardiac arrest, to heart failure to sudden cardiac death. So Fish oils really are important. And let me just tell you something, if you’re on a statin, you need more fish oils than normal because statins deplete your fish oils, there’s less fish oils in the blood when you’re on a statin, you actually need more fish oil if you are on a statin, to make up for the part that’s dumped out by the statins, that’s depleted by the statins. It has to do with the carriers, there’s different forms of cholesterol that carry fish oils around the body, and when those levels go down, the fish oils naturally will decline also because there’s nothing left to carry them. So if you’re on a statin, you actually need additional fish oils, so that’s a really important point. Not to mention that fish oil absorption declines with age in the first place. You always want to know fish oils.† [00:05:29]
[00:05:31] So here is a pretty darn good verdict on cardiac arrest that’s published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, December 28, 2022. Looking at a huge, comprehensive, absolutely unbelievable, massive review on supplements and the heart. So this is a good verdict on any supplement which supplements have good evidence that they are important for the heart. They looked at 884 randomized controlled human clinical trials. Now, if this doesn’t tell you what’s important, nothing will. It was a combined total of 883,000 people, so we’re going towards a million people. That’s more people than in most cities, even major cities. So who performed this massive collation of data and and really sifting through the data and analyzing it and putting, you know, what’s real up on the board? Well, Brown University, now that’s Ivy League, Brown University’s Ivy League and Mt. Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, which is a great institution, Mount Sinai in New York City, and from what I understand, they now have a mount Sinai satellite down in West Palm Beach, right near to the bridge that goes over to Palm Beach, it’s a great place. It really is, there’s great, there’s great researchers there. There’s great doctors there. It’s very, extremely well-organized, it’s one of those New York City, incredibly organized medical centers. So it’s Brown University in Mount Sinai. And they are looking at all these different supplements and huge number of studies, a huge number of people, fish oils, folate and Ubiquinol are extremely important. So I’m going to spend a little time explaining these things. They found fish oils reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, mortality, dying from cardiovascular disease. They reduce the risk of a heart attack. Now, they did give you figures, you know these figures, they’re not rock solid, reducing the risk of cardiovascular mortality by 7%. But you have to understand these people are already on a lot of drugs. These people are on drugs for high blood pressure, for arrhythmias, for diabetes. So they’re already on the best medicine, many of these people. Adding the fish oils furthers reducing the risk of dying from some kind of heart related disease by 7%, heart attacks by 15%. Now, that’s unbelievable. What’s more scarier than a heart attack, coronary heart disease events by 14%. This is real. I mean, this is real benefit, coronary heart disease, that’s blockages of blood vessels, so you’re reducing the risk of a stroke, heart attack, sudden cardiac death, cardiac arrest, all these different things, arrhythmias. Now, this meta analysis is conclusive, it really is conclusive.† [00:08:37]
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[00:08:38] Now, let’s look at folate. I want to explain folate, we’ve done podcast episodes on folate. Folate is named after foliage because it’s a vitamin that’s ubiquitous in plants. Problem is, that doesn’t mean you can convert it into the active form, so that’s one consideration. Plus, it’s not the easiest thing to get out of the plants, there are things that get in the way with the absorption of folate. Now, a lot of companies in their multivitamins, they use a synthetic form called folic acid, which I am not a fan of, because even myself and my wife, we don’t fully convert folic acid to the active form, the active form is methyltetrahydrafolate. So you really want if you get a supplement, you want to get the MTHF form of folate or folic acid, you want to get the MTHF form, which is methyltetrahydrafolate, because for one thing it lowers homocysteine. Homocysteine in the brain is strongly connected with Alzheimer’s disease risk and homocysteine in the heart, not by itself, it needs other risks, but in the heart, along with other risks like elevated uric acid or super high blood pressure, high blood sugar, etc. is dangerous for the heart and it causes other problems too. So you want to get the methyltetrahydrafolate form of folate because that’s already active. So you know what’s going to protect you.† [00:10:00]
[00:10:02] And Ubiquinol, raising Ubiquinol in the blood lowered the risk of all cause mortality by 32%. Now, this is incredible, once again, this is based on 883,000 people from 884 randomized controlled human clinical trials. So what is so called all cause mortality, it’s very important to understand what this means. All cause mortality is dying from anything getting run over by a bus, drowning, committing suicide. But most, commonly a stroke or heart attack, Alzheimer’s disease, heart failure, infections, things of this nature. So a 32% drop in all cause mortality. But of course, if you look at the data that’s going towards all cause mortality, mostly related to the heart. So Ubiquinol is the active form of coenzyme Q10. Coenzyme Q10 is Ubiquinone, and when you swallow Ubiquinone, A, it has to be absorbed, it’s very poorly absorbed, but B, it has to be converted to Ubiquinol or Ubiquinol, depending on who you speak to, you can pronounce it either way apparently. You don’t fully convert it many times, like older people have trouble converting regular CoQ10 to Ubiquinol. Diabetics have trouble converting CoQ10 to Ubiquinol. People with chronic progressive neuromuscular conditions have trouble converting CoQ10 to Ubiquinol. So I think in a lot of people, especially diabetics and the elderly, you’re much better off opting for Ubiquinol. Ubiquinol is involved with dealing with fatigue because Ubiquinol is at the core of converting sugar into energy. So as Ubiquinol levels naturally decline with age because they will wear after a decline severely and suddenly because of diabetes you become fatigued. You have less strength, less endurance, less stamina. Research shows this, by the way, that’s another one. Besides fish oils, Ubiquinol levels are also lowered by some statins. I don’t know if all statins do it, but many statins will do it.† [00:12:14]
[00:12:16] Now, also reducing the risk of cardiovascular issues. So they found that other things reduce your risk of cardiovascular issues, some of these are found in a multivitamin. I’ll go through each one, let’s do the common ones first. Omega six fatty acids, which are vegetable oils, basically in a supplement that could be evening primrose oil, that would be omega six. A little bit of omega six is needed to balance out the omega three, the omega three is fish oils and krill oil and eating fish and eating certain seafood, omega six are more vegetable oils, but there’s a balance. You need both for your immune system, you need both for natural balance in the body of everything that goes on biologically in your body, that there should be a natural rhythm to everything, a natural balanced everything. So you need the omega three, the omega six. Problem is, most Americans get too much omega six, and that makes them violently inflamed, and this contributes to diseases such as heart disease and cancer, etc. Not that the omega six is bad, but you need the balance of omega three. So, N-6, well, that’s an abbreviation for omega six fatty acids has been shown in natural quantities, not super high quality to lower your risk of cardiovascular issues. So has a vitamin D? Well, that makes sense. I mean, vitamin D is important for regulating many things, including inflammation, and inflammation is causative of heart disease problems, cardiovascular problems. So vitamin D, Zinc? Well, yes. First of all, Zinc works with vitamin D to control your blood sugar through your pancreas. The hormones release from the pancreas to control your blood sugar so it’s not too high or too low. But Zinc is also needed to control the immune system. And without enough Zinc you become inflamed, just like lacking vitamin D, become inflamed.† [00:14:13]
[00:14:14] Magnesium. Magnesium’s amazing. Most Americans do not get enough magnesium. Magnesium, first of all, activates vitamin D, So if you’re lacking magnesium, your body doesn’t work and you become inflamed and inflammation leads to heart disease and other diseases. And I’m not talking about major inflammation like, like having a lupus or an infection of the lungs. I’m talking about low grade, chronic long term inflammation from a poor diet, lack of exercise, etc.. So if you lack magnesium, you become inflamed because you can’t activate vitamin D, and without vitamin D, you can’t control the immune system and it just goes to inflammation. But magnesium to so many other things, it also activates melatonin. Melatonin is needed for memory, melatonin is needed for the immune system. Melatonin is needed for good healthy digestive system. Melatonin is needed for your bones, melatonin is needed for you, for so many things. So that’s vitamin D, Zinc and Magnesium that you would get in a good vitamin and omega six fatty acids that you get in your food, like, you know, like sesame seeds and things like that would have omega six fatty acids.† [00:15:24]
[00:15:24] L -Citrulline, well, L- Citrulline is an amino acid and it’s very important, citrulline is an alpha amino acid. Amino acids make proteins and enzymes and hormones. Amino acids make you and make you function. Citrulline is important because one, it makes something that’s important for your muscles and strength and energy called beta hydroxy beta methyl butyrate. But Citrulline is also important for breakdown products of your muscles, Ammonia products, the body getting rid of them into urea cycle so citrulline support and so citrulline helps lower your risk of heart disease events and developing heart disease itself. Along with that is L-arginine. Now that’s interesting, L-arginine is also an alpha amino acid. L-Arginine is conditionally essential, L-Arginine helps just like Citrulline and helps build muscle, L-Arginine actually creates some Citrulline as a byproduct. L-Arginine normally creates nitric oxide and nitric oxide keeps blood flowing in the body, and nitric oxide helps fight viruses and it does a whole bunch of other things. But the major activity of nitric oxide is blood flow. It pushes up in your blood vessels. So when your heart pumps blood, the blood reach your muscles and your organs and your feet and your brain, etc. The blood vessels have to pop open, it’s the gas nitric oxide that pushes it open and arginine triggers nitric oxide synthase to create nitric oxide so you can function. So arginine has an ability to lower the risk of cardiovascular issues. Citrulline, two amino acids.† [00:17:15]
[00:17:15] Quercetin. Quercetin is very interesting. First of all, Quercetin is a Flavonoid. It’s very common in food, but even the best diet doesn’t give you a lot of it. Quercetin is something I supplement every day and I’ll tell you why in just a minute. Quercetin in foods is found in the best foods green tea, broccoli, garlic, onions, things of this nature, very healthy foods, berries, citrus fruits and quercetin in different studies is helpful with allergies, it helps you breathe. It’s helpful with blood pressure if you get enough. But you have to take a lot like 500 milligrams three times a day to help with circulation. Blood pressure stabilizes, blood vessel walls, so they function more realistically, more naturally, and as a kind of younger, healthier version of blood flow it leads to. Quercetin has some ability to reduce inflammation in the urinary tract and the prostate. I love Quercetin because it’s senolytic, there’s not many senolytics that we know of. Oh, one of them is Rapamycin, an investigational drug. It’s from Rapanui, you know, Easter Island and of a fungus, I believe and it a small amount of of rapamycin slows down the aging process and so does quercetin,so does Quercetin and it functions as a senolytic, that’s how it does that. With age, kind of we can see now cells are not getting removed the way we used to remove them. We used to have these little tweezers that remove these unhealthy cells, otherwise, they become toxic to the surrounding healthy cells. See that removing as many dead cells, etc. There are certain things like this that occur with aging. Quercetin restores the ability of an aging body to remove these kind of zombie cells to slow down the aging process. So they’re very interesting. But quercetin in and of itself lowers your risk of cardiovascular issues like like heart disease and stroke and heart attack, etc. But it always works better in conjunction with vitamin C. Melatonin has been shown to lower the risk of cardiovascular issues. Well, it does help regulate your immune system. Many immune cells actually have receptor sites for melatonin, meaning that they can’t do their job unless you express some melatonin, you release some melatonin and they come in contact with that. So melatonin very important for the immune system in a number of ways on a number of levels. And as a byproduct of that, it helps control inflammation.† [00:19:53]
[00:19:55] Curcumin, now who couldn’t guess this? There’s a plant, the curry plant, called turmeric. It gives curry, its characteristic, odor and color and flavor, etc. I happen to love curry, but I take a well absorbed turmeric every day. I take something called bio curcumin every day. For one thing, it’s great for the brain that’s been shown to really be, I’ve done one or two podcast episodes on turmeric. You know, it has curcumin, because curcumin is the most well known constituent from it. The actual name of the plant is Curcuma Longa, but the most commonly known constituent is curcumin. But bare in mind, curcumin is only one of about 167 different ingredients that you find in this plant, it’s just one of them. There’s other really important ones like aromatic turmerone, and bismuthoxycurcumin, etc. You really want to get the entire plant, but you need to get a well absorbed one, there’s not many on the market. Like sometimes they get black pepper extract called bioperine to it to improve the absorption of it. So Benson makes that that we have it under our Dr. Pressman line. And then there’s the bio-curcumin, it has a massive, a massive number of studies. Curcumin is an anti-inflammatory. That’s as simple as that. As you grow older, you become increasingly more inflamed. You know, this low grade, everyday kind of inflammation that leads to disease, that breaks your body down, slowly but surely. You see that in diabetics, You see it in people who smoke, you see it in people who are obese. You see the people who drink a lot of alcohol, you see it in people with all kinds of different diseases. Curcumin, you see the inflammation, the low grade inflammation going on. Curcumin snuffs out that low grade inflammation. So not only is it great for your brain, it’s great for aches and pains, there’s so many studies where it’s good for backache and muscle pain and nerve pain and especially joint pain. It’s an anti-inflammatory, and that’s why I take it every day. I take two of them every morning with my breakfast.† [00:21:48]
[00:21:50] Alpha lipoic acid lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease risk factors, the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, all these things. Alpha Lipoic acid is very interesting. It’s a form of lipoic acid that has some additional activities above and beyond lipoic acid. It’s commonly used in places like Germany for nerve pain, for neuropathy. There’s some good studies on that, by the way, and there’s studies, of course, they throw these natural things by the wayside. There’s of of natural things that help slow down Alzheimer’s disease or protect the brain. They’ve thrown it all out because there’s a billions of dollars are making the drug. So alpha lipoic acid is one of those supplements that has been shown to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. And also, if you had Alzheimer’s disease, you’re take enough alpha lipoic acid because it’s so good for the nervous system. It slows down the progression of the Alzheimer’s disease according to some really good studies. But once again, they don’t talk about that because anybody can make alpha lipoic acid. There’s another one called ALCAR, acetyl L carnitine, it has, they work well together, by the way. They’re really good together. They have a synergism, they work much better than using each one alone. They’re fantastic for the brain. But the ALA, what does it do in the body? It’s involved with creating energy that’s involved creating acetyl coenzyme A, which is basically what your sugar, etc. is converted into, that you burn for energy inside your cells. Inside the power plants of your cells called mitochondria and but ALA is also a fantastic antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent because it’s, it goes up to the fat soluble compartments of the body and it goes into the water soluble compartments of the body. And so it works all over the body. Most antioxidants work either like inside the cell or outside the cell or just in particular places, ALA, alpha lipoic acid works everywhere in the body and it has an ability to reduce free radicals four times, so it’s always getting rejuvenated and it can rejuvenate other antioxidants like Glutathione, the mother of all antioxidants or Vitamin C or Vitamin E, etc.. And ALA is fantastic. It helps control blood sugar a little bit, but it’s fantastic for the health of the liver. But in this in this huge review, ALA reduces your risk of developing cardiovascular issues.† [00:24:05]
[00:24:07] And the last thing is catechins. Well, it’s not the last thing, there’s also flavanols. Catechins are a type of flavanol. We spoke about Quercetin before and you also you often see Quercetin where there’s catechins, so catechins can be things like Epigallocatechin Gallate, EGCG, you find amazing amounts of this in green tea, but you find catechins in apples and pears and cocoa, in sweet potatoes. In purple potatoes, always go with the darker potatoes. They’re much healthier than a light potato, the lighter color potatoes. So the purple and the black potatoes and the red potatoes and the sweet potatoes are much healthier than regular potatoes because they have these catechins. Catechins will help protect the vascular system. There’s a huge amount of research on this, so yeah, I drink green tea every day. I eat an apple every day. I do have a piece of dark chocolate every day.† [00:25:01]
[00:25:03] And the last thing is flavanols. And once again you find flavanols where you find catechins. So green tea, apples, cocoa, berries like blueberries and blackberries, onions, kale, broccoli, lettuce. So you know, you can eat your way to good health and lower your risk of heart disease by consuming these foods. But also make sure you get a good multivitamin. Plus you want the active folate, methyltetrahydrafolate, you want the vitamin D, you want the Zinc, you want some magnesium. Don’t depend on your food to get enough Zinc and Magnesium. It probably is not happening. Same with vitamin D. And, you know, you might want to think about taking Quercetin like I do and Turmeric, you know, a well absorbed turmeric that supplies curcumin and all those other ingredients. These are ways to lower the risk of diseases. I mean, it’s it’s pretty solid evidence out there. There’s a great deal of evidence. And anyway, thanks for listening to my episode. You can find all of our episodes at InVite Health for free from Invite Health for free, wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to Invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find Invite at Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at Invite Health. I want to thank you for listening today and I hope to see you next time on the next episode of InViteⓇ Health Podcast. Jerry Hickey signing off. Have a great day. Really have a great one.† [00:25:03]
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