Transcript #475 How to Reach Your 100 Year Heart with Dr. Jack Wolfson

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1. Find out what’s in store for this Myers Detox Podcast with Jack Wolfson who joins the show to talk about how you can reach your 100 year heart. With heart disease as the number 1 killer of men and woman worldwide, it is essential to pay attention and address your heart health head on. Jack covers so many great topics, from the dangers of statins on heart health, the nuances of cholesterol levels, how mold can be an underlying root cause of heart disease, and so much more. Jack also goes over some amazing tips on how woman can address heart disease, the diet Jack recommends for optimal heart health, and his incredible new summit Your Path to the 100-Year Heart. Make sure to reduce your risk of cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and so many other chronic diseases by addressing your heart health now!
2. Learn about the problems with taking statins, how it affects your heart health, and what Jack recommends using instead.
3. Learn about the importance of cholesterol for heart health.
4. Find out why red yeast rice is not a healthy alternative to statins.
5. Learn about some of the best ways woman should address heart health.
6. Learn about some of the nuances when it comes to healthy cholesterol levels.
7. Find out how mold is an underlying root cause of heart disease.
8. Learn about mycotoxins, how they affect the body, and how they’re being used in pharmaceuticals.
9. Find out why Jack is such an advocate for eating a paleo diet, and some of the downfalls of other diets.
10. Learn more about Jack’s amazing summit Your Path to the 100-Year Heart.
11. Find out where you can learn more Jack and his summit.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Hello, everyone. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. We have a great show for today. Dr. Jack Wolfson is going to be talking about how to reach a 100-year heart. And I know this is something that is really important for everyone listening to hear because so many people are touched by heart disease or have a family member with heart disease or have passed from heart disease. And heart disease is the number one killer of men and women worldwide. And so this is something to pay attention to because the things you can do to improve your heart health also reduce your risk of cancer and hypertension and diabetes and the other main killers in people worldwide.

  So Dr. Wolfson’s going to be talking about some surprising things, how mold causes heart disease. We talk about the problems with cholesterol-lowering medications statins, and what they actually do to your health, how they destroy your brain, lead to dementia, Parkinson’s, muscle atrophy, and numerous other nutrient deficiencies, and how so harmful it is and why he never recommends them and also doesn’t recommend the natural alternative many people take, which is red yeast rice, because it works in the same way. Lots of really, really good insights. And also Dr. Wolfson’s opinion on what kind of diet you should eat for heart health and why you may not need to worry about limiting your steak. And we also talk about why veganism is not good for your heart in the long term. And we talk about the kind of testing you want to do to actually indicate, actually measure, and give an indication if you have a healthy heart and why the total cholesterol is a joke, and that no recommendations or medication should be taken based on just a total cholesterol number. And lots of really, really good insights on the show today. I love Dr. Jack Wolfson.

  And I know you guys who listened to this show are concerned about your heavy metal load, your body’s burden of toxins. So I created a quiz called heavymetalsquiz.com. Just takes a couple minutes to take it. And it will give you, based on your answers to these lifestyle questions, your relative body burden of toxins and what to do about it. You get a free video series after you take a quiz at heavymetalsquiz.com.

  Our guest today, Dr. Jack Wolfson, is a board-certified cardiologist who uses nutrition, lifestyle, and supplements to prevent and treat heart disease. And he completed a four-year medical degree, a three-year internal medicine residency, and a three-year cardiology fellowship. He served as the chief fellow of his cardiology program, managing all the other cardiology trainees. Dr. Wolfson also then joined the largest cardiology group in the state of Arizona and spent 10 years as a hospital-based cardiologist performing angiograms, pacemakers, and other cardiac procedures. And he is the chairman of medicine, director of cardiology, and he was director of cardiac rehabilitation.

  He was selected by his peers as one of the top doctors in Arizona in 2011. And in 2012, Dr. Wolfson founded Natural Heart Doctor to offer patients the ultimate in holistic healthcare. And people worldwide consult with Dr. Wolfson, traveling to Arizona for or virtually, for natural heart care. And Dr. Wolfson has appeared on every major news station and major newspaper, along with hundreds of appearances at live events, podcasts, and online interviews. And he’s also taught medical doctors and practitioners from all over the world. Dr. Wolfson is also recognized as one of the top 50 holistic medical practitioners, and he’s also known as the paleo cardiologist. And his book, The Paleo Cardiologist: The Natural Way to Heart Health, is the first book by Dr. Wolfson and is an Amazon bestseller. And you can learn more about Dr. Wolfson and his work at naturalheartdoctor.com. Dr. Wolfson, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast.

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Wendy, it’s always a pleasure to speak to you. And again, I appreciate so much the work that you’re doing to open up so many people’s eyes to the truth in health and wellness, and again, just the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people that you’re touching with your information. So thank you again for having me on.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yes, thank you for that. And I also really admire your work as well, because your advice and your work are totally counter to what the American Medical Association and so many conventional medical doctors are recommending to their patients for their heart health. And so this is especially important for me because I believe my father, he was on statins for 10 years, and then he developed diabetes and then cancer. And he got to the point that the statins cause muscle wasting, where he couldn’t even go to the bathroom on his own, so he had to go to a nursing home. And I really credit his demise with statin medications and all the inherent problems in them. And so can you tell us a little bit about, let’s talk about statins first. What are the problems with statins? And what do you recommend instead?

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Well, there are so many problems with the statins that we could just talk for hours and hours about this. And let me preface this to say, well, why doesn’t your doctor, why doesn’t the conventional doctor talk about the problems of statins? Because that’s really the only bullet they have in their gun. It’s the only tool they have in their toolbox. It’s all that they’ve been trained to do. And that’s how exactly I was trained as a conventional cardiologist. From day one, it’s all about the use of statin drugs and aspirin, and blood pressure pharmaceuticals.

So when that’s all that the traditional cardiologist knows, no matter how brilliant they are, when it’s all that they’ve been taught and trained, that’s what they’re going to prescribe. And now, when you’re a holistic practitioner now, or a holistic cardiologist after 10 years in the hospitals like I was as a hospital-based cardiologist and starting now again 10 years ago as a natural cardiologist, and now you step out of that, there are other people who are like me who are doing this, but again, the vast majority of cardiologists are statin-pushers. It’s all that they know. And then, of course, they demonize the people like us who are talking about natural health, natural wellness, and natural cures. And so, I think that’s the construct of what we’re up against.

Now, the other problem I would have with statins fundamentally is a false sense of security. People believe that they can eat whatever they want, live however they want, do whatever they want, and the station will save them. And of course, that can be nothing further from the truth because, as you mentioned, the side effects or other effects of statin drugs, and we can talk about those, the actual benefits in the medical literature are very small. And some studies actually show that more people die when they take statins versus placebo in some of these trials. Three actually come to mind right now. One is the ALLHAT-LLT trial, which was conducted by JAMA Internal Medicine 2017. Another was in 2006 called the Sparkle trial, which showed people with high-dose atorvastatin, Lipitor, the number one selling drug of all time by revenue, number one, all time is Lipitor, and how that actually increased mortality. And then, of course, in the original statin trial, which is AFCAPS-TexCAPS, which was done in the 1980s for primary prevention, more people died in the statin group there.

So I mean, again, we’re trying to open up people’s eyes and understand again that, yes, statin drugs lower numbers down, but they have a very little benefit over and above that. And then, of course, the side effects that you mentioned. And I, too, believe that in my father, who died at 63 of a rare Parkinson’s-like illness, one of the contributing factors was the fact that he was also on statin drugs; one of the other factors. So again, I believe that there are many, but one of those contributing ones. And again, we can break that down biochemically and show exactly how that happens. But yeah, there’s definitely a better way than statin drugs.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, I mean, considering your brain is made of 20% and 25% cholesterol, turning off the mechanism to produce cholesterol sounds like a big problem. And my father also is a brilliant, brilliant man. And he was a vegetable after 10 years or more of being on statins. It just was really sad to watch. And I didn’t consider any form of dementia at that time, but he was a shadow of his former self and his intellect.

Dr. Jack Wolfson: And, of course, the medical doctors, the doctors who you and your family took your father to, they were absolutely clueless about anything to do. Certainly, I’ll speak about my case with my father, who we took to the Mayo Clinic, widely considered my best hospital in the world; Mayo Clinic has no clue what to do. And they have no clue as to what caused this in my father. And my story, of course, starts at that time in 2005 when I met the woman who would open my eyes to health and wellness and pull me out of the medical matrix if you will. And she is a doctor of chiropractic, D.C., or D.C., Doctor of Cause. And she said quite simply, again, “These are all the reasons why your father is sick.” So Mayo Clinic has no reason, and the 29-year-old chiropractor, she’s got all the reasons, but it really just highlights the fact that, again, the statin drugs and how they interfere with the production of cholesterol, as you mentioned.

And cholesterol is important obviously for every single cell in the body. The cell membrane is made up of cholesterol. The brain itself, of course, is highly fatty and highly made up of cholesterol. All of our hormones essentially have some tie-in with cholesterol, directly or indirectly. The digestive process, the bile acids, biosalts, and all cholesterol. Vitamin D everybody knows how important vitamin D is. You’re down there in the sunshine where you live and appreciating that sunshine and the creation of vitamin D. That all happens because the sun hits the skin, hits the cholesterol coursing through the skin in the blood vessels, and turns it into vitamin D. So, so many other things.

Now again, when you take a statin drug, not only does it inhibit cholesterol, but it also is well known to inhibit the production of CoQ10, which you need for mitochondrial function; it inhibits something called heme A, which is an iron-based protein inside of the mitochondria in the electron transport chain in cytochrome c oxidase, the fourth part of that. So again, if you don’t have adequate heme A because you’re blocking it with a statin, you will have poor energy production in your heart, hence low ATP and all the other downstream effects of that. Statins inhibit the production of something called dolichol, which is another fatty cholesterol-light molecule.

And Wendy, the number one place where that sits in the body is in the brain, in the substantia nigra. And that is where Parkinson’s and Parkinson’s-like illnesses, the destruction of those neurons is particularly heavy or dense in that area. So now again, you take a statin drug, it decreases dolichol levels, and dolichol is no longer available in the part of the brain that leads to Parkinson’s. And it’s sad because, obviously, millions of people suffer. And that’s the purpose of you and I talking, is to bring awareness to all these different issues.

Dr. Wendy Myers: And many people that want to avoid statins or cholesterol-lowering medications opt for natural means and supplements. What are your thoughts on red yeast rice, which so many people are substituting, thinking it’s a healthy, natural substitution for this medication?

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Well, I think you and I, certainly, and many others like us, practice the same way. And again, I never prescribe statins, ever. So if you’re listening to this and you again are wondering if there’s a time and a place, not in my mind is there ever a time and a place. And I’m not a big fan of red yeast rice either because, again, it is so similar to statins, although not as strong. But the original statin, lovastatin, came from red yeast rice; the mycotoxin in red yeast rice is called citrinin. So I’m not a fan of red yeast rice utilization either.

What I’m a fan of and what you’re a fan of as well, from all the things I’ve listened to you teach about, is about when you eat the right foods and you live the right lifestyle, meaning you’re getting the sleep and the sunshine and the physical activity, and you’re avoiding all these environmental toxins and pollutants to the best of your ability, and you’re thinking the right thoughts, and you’re taking evidence-based supplements to support the detoxification of many of these environmental poisons, then you’re going to have the perfect lipid level or cholesterol level for you. That’s what matters.

And it’s not a matter of, “Hey, I want to get my cholesterol as low as possible.” I want to know what my God-given cholesterol is. If I was walking around on this Earth 5,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago, whatever it may be, and whatever you believe in, maybe we can call this the cave. I used to say caveman cholesterol, but now I’ve gotten a little more politically correct. So I’ll say the cave person cholesterol, whatever the perfect level is for each individual person, and again, if we eat well and live well and think well, we’ll dial in the perfect number from us.

There are some supplements that I use to further improve on that. And most of the supplements that I use have to do with actually increasing the amount of LDL receptors or the catcher’s mitts on the liver to remove old LDL particles out of circulation. Now, there are supplements that directly do that, and there are pharmaceuticals that, of course, exist now that also directly do that, which are called PCSK9 inhibitors. But if we can have a person have a healthy liver, if we can detox the liver, will that allow the liver now to do its job and make those LDL receptors pull the poisons out of circulation? And I think that’s ultimately what our strategy is. And it works.

Dr. Wendy Myers: And can you talk a little bit about women’s heart health? Because a lot of the studies have been done on men. And can you talk a little bit about women’s health and maybe what their lab numbers should look like? And I know it’s ridiculous to think about trying to get into a certain lab range with different medications or things like that, but that’s what people are doing when they go to their doctor; they’re looking at the lab range to see how they compare. Can you talk a little about that?

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Yeah, I think that, again, there has been a lot of publicity surrounding how women are different. And yes, women are different. I’m not here to say women are the same as men on a multitude of levels. But again, I think it also starts sometimes from the publicity of this to try and get more awareness of women and heart disease really stems from the fact that a lot of times women are not listened to. The man comes into the emergency room, and he’s clutching his chest; everybody knows what’s going on. But sometimes, the woman comes in, and she says, “I just don’t feel well,” or again, something is off. Maybe she’ll describe, again, being a little bit short of breath, maybe she’ll be a little bit more tired. Again, it just tends to be a little bit different symptomatology between the complaints of men and women as it relates to cardiovascular disease. But ultimately, listen, the same issues with the eat well, live well, think well paradigm affects men; it affects women.

And again, to women and their issues and men and their issues, I think we should stop focusing on cholesterol numbers and never really start to focus on the markers of inflammation. And if you’re inflamed, you’ve got high hs-CRP, you’ve got high myeloperoxidase, inflammation, and oxidative stress, if you’re demonstrating those things by lab tests that everyone should have, well, now we know you’re at risk. And the answer, of course, is not to give people anti-inflammatories or give people antioxidants for their oxidative stress. It’s about finding out what’s causing inflammation and what’s causing oxidative stress and helping to reverse that. And a lot of times, really trying to support the body’s inherent antioxidant capabilities as opposed to swallowing a lot of external supplements and vitamins, in that scenario. There’s definitely a place for those products. But again, trying to upgrade the body’s own systems by doing that is very important.

But again, listen, women, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer worldwide, above cancer, above stroke. It affects just as many women on a percentage basis as it does men. And yeah, we need to continue to guide men and women on how we can improve. There are other factors too, I mean, other lab values that I love checking, so do you, right, homocysteine, intracellular vitamins and minerals, vitamin D status, omega-3 status. We check the toxin panels on people, and we’re looking for metals and mold mycotoxins, and environmental toxins.

And that’s, again, the beauty of what we do compared to conventional medicine is that they check nothing, and we check everything. They check the 1970s lab testing values, “Oh, what’s your total cholesterol?” I mean, again, that means nothing. The MRFIT trial in the 1970s told us that total cholesterol is between 260 and 360; that’s the sweet spot, between 160 and 260. Above 260, you have a higher risk of dying; below 160, you have a higher risk of dying. So again, it’s not a good number; it’s not something I even care about whatsoever. It’s really all about, again, some of the advanced lipid markers, markers of inflammation, and the other things that we discussed.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, It really is laughable that doctors are looking at the total cholesterol and, based on that number, recommending a statin across the board. My mother she’s 76, in perfect health, and on no medications. The pressure is intense to get her on statin medications. So her cholesterol is at 260, but she’s perfectly healthy otherwise. Her total cholesterol is 260. And it’s just sad. And most people cave because they want to do the right thing. They have some fear instilled in them, and then they get on these medications they don’t need.

Dr. Jack Wolfson: The medical doctors, I mean, they’re salespeople, right? I mean, they’re salespeople. And they’re selling their knowledge, they’re selling the confidence, they’re selling the pharmaceuticals, they’re selling the tests, they’re selling their entire paradigm. And unfortunately, again, for your mother’s physicians, that’s all that they know. But again, I would challenge them to look at the ALLHAT-LLT trial from 2017, again, in the journal of the American Medical Association, which showed that men and women who are older than 65 who take a statin drug versus placebo in that trial, they had an 18% higher risk of dying.

So again, it lowers the numbers, that’s for sure. But do we really care about low numbers, or do we care about, will this save my life? And actually, in that study, there was an 18% higher risk of dying. And in your mother’s case, the group that was looked at that was 75 and older, and the risk of dying was 34% higher in the statin group, which you and I would say, “Wait for a second. If a doc knows that data and the doctor is recommending a drug, isn’t that malpractice if they recommend that drug? How is this even a possibility?” But again, it’s a possibility, and it’s a reality. And so many people suffer.

I mean, listen, as far as checking total cholesterol levels, there are many cardiologists, and I used to be one of them who thought that statin drugs belong in the drinking water. So why would I even care what your total cholesterol is? I don’t care if your total cholesterol is 160, 260, or 360; it doesn’t matter if it’s in the drinking water. We’re all getting it. And even more, sadly enough, Wendy is the fact that reports continue to come out over time that the average cholesterol levels amongst people in the United States are dropping. Well, why is that? A, they’re on statin drugs. Tens of millions of people take statin drugs every day. And then, the rest of the people are exposed through the water system because as people swallow a capsule and urinate out the metabolites down the toilet, it gets into the water table. And now it’s kind of like everybody has some degree of exposure. I would guarantee every single one of us, again, if you’re able to test for actual, say, atorvastatin in someone’s blood, you will see that there are micro-contaminants likely in all of us, which is obviously horribly sad.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, I talk about that a lot on the show, about how the water is contaminated with so many medications, hormones and birth control pills, and statins. I hadn’t really thought about that one, but yeah, it has to be there. So let’s talk about some little-known underlying root causes of heart disease. And so I came on your podcast to talk about heavy metals that can promote that, like cadmium. But let’s talk about mold. We talked before the show about mold, and I thought that was really interesting. I hadn’t heard that before.

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Well, again, I guess my interest in mold started in a couple ways. Number one, my wife was not feeling well about four or five years ago. In the home we were living in, we found out we had mold, and we immediately evacuated. And over the years, we had talked to people about mold, but we never had really certainly experienced it ourselves. Over the last five years, there have been laboratory tests that are able to look for urine mycotoxins and be able to prove that they’re coming into people, and then we’re excreting them and certainly storing them as well. They’re coming into our body and whatnot, and some degree of excretion in the urine from that. And then, along with that, again, there’s better testing that’s available for environmental molds. And then, of course, there are better products to allow for mold mycotoxins detoxification.

Now, the number more thing you need to do is to either leave the environment or remediate the environment, or a combination thereof. So it’s a very complex issue, but I think when we think about people’s health issues overall, and I know, Wendy, obviously you’ve consulted on so many thousands of people, and so have I. And we look back on those people. Most of them got better. Most of them at least certainly got better, if not 100% improvement. But a lot of them, again, we still didn’t totally fix them to where they wanted to be. There were still some issues. And then I think, again, the mold story of how water damage in a home or in an office or in a car leads to the propagation and growth of mold. And that mold releases these toxins called mycotoxins in order for it to survive. And those mycotoxins damage things in their way. And one of those things is humans.

And then let me say this too, a lot of people have the diagnosis of chronic Lyme and Epstein-Barr and West Nile and all these different viruses or bacteria or parasites. But certainly, in the case of chronic Lyme, and I mean no disrespect to a lot of people who are listening who have been labeled with chronic Lyme, it always bothered me that chronic Lyme was a primary problem and somebody would need antibiotics, for example, for two years to deal with chronic Lyme. So what if the scenario was this? You live in mold; you are exposed to the mold mycotoxins that you don’t see. You may be able to smell some of the aspects of mold. Again, if your house is musty, that musty smell is the VOCs, the volatile organic compounds released from the mold that gets out into the environment. Those cause a set of damage. The mycotoxins, again, that are released in order to go after other molds or bacteria and help them survive can also affect us as well.

All that stuff affects us in many ways, one of which, though, is to suppress the immune system. So are you suffering from Lyme because you had a tick bite 30 years ago, or are your symptoms related to current mold mycotoxins leading to immune dysfunction, and therefore that’s causing all your symptoms, or it’s not allowing you to clear the Lyme spirochete or the Epstein-Barr or the West Nile or whatever kind of thing we want to put at people?

So I think that’s the general scope of mold, mycotoxicity. I guess, in short, I would encourage anyone and everyone to look into a mold in their environment, understand whatever you’re suffering from, it could be mold, and then again work to find it and remediate it, and then all of our natural detox strategies, Wendy, that you and I talk about all the time in order to support people through that. But it’s the 21st-century crisis. Mold is mentioned in the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament. And again, it was a problem thousands of years ago. It’s a problem for humans now. And the more we get people to recognize that, the more impact we’ll make.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Can you talk about some of the specifics you mentioned before when we talked before the podcast? I thought that it was really, really interesting when you talked about penicillin as essentially a mycotoxin that kills bacteria in our body. And can you talk a little about that concept?

Dr. Jack Wolfson: No, thank you. And again, I’m trying to give a little break in the action, so thanks for circling back to that. I don’t want to be one of these guys who just comes on and just starts ranting for about 20 minutes on the stream of consciousness. So thank you for bringing me back into that. No, I mean, again, I love that. Again, how do we grasp what these mycotoxins are? Again, if you’re not a medical doctor or pathologist or haven’t studied this for a while, for the average person, what does that mean, mycotoxin? So “myco,” from mold, and of course “toxin,” is just something that’s a poison, not to the mold, but to everything else that the mold sends that out against. And it’s not personal; it’s the mold wanting to survive, again, by killing off other molds and other bacteria.

And it could be insects, it could be birds, and ultimately it could be humans. Now, the mold is, as far as I know, not consciously saying, “I want to kill off a human,” but again, it’s a survival mechanism. And it doesn’t have jaws and teeth and nails and can’t run and punch or whatever humans and other animals do. It has to send off these toxins. Again, it’s a fungal toxin. Now, the most famous of those, of course, would be the mold mycotoxin released from the penicillium fungus. And that particular toxin was found by Alexander Fleming in a lab to kill off a certain bacteria. And then, of course, that was then encapsulated and put in IVs. And everybody may know that as penicillin. So penicillin is a mold mycotoxin that comes from the penicillin mold species. So that is one.

Another, of course, is something called CellCept. It’s a pharmaceutical that’s been around for 30 years. CellCept is mycophenolate acid. And mycophenolate acid, as CellCept as a pharmaceutical, is used as an immunosuppressant. It is so strong of an immunosuppressant that it is used to prevent organ transplant rejection. So if somebody gets a new liver, well, the person who gets the new liver, their immune system is primed to attack the new liver. So CellCept prevents the attack on the new liver. So if CellCept mycophenolate acid is so powerful to suppress the immune system against an organ transplant, what do you think it does to your immune system as your immune system’s trying to prevent the flu virus or any other virus, including the most famous recent one, or HIV, or again, West Nile, or bacterial infections or other fungal infections or parasites? The answer is it can’t. You’re destroying your immune system.

Now again, we destroy our immune system in many different ways. And, of course, you talk about this all the time. The toxic metals that destroy the immune system, the environmental toxins, the pesticides, the phthalates, the parabens, the VOCs, the plastics, the EMF, all of these things work too. They work to destroy our immune system, and they do so. But in this case, again, this is just another very ravaging thing that they’re able to do . Again, the pharmaceutical companies know this, and they put it in a capsule. Cyclosporine is another immunosuppressant. And these are, again, used by millions of people in the United States alone, let alone worldwide.

So hopefully, that gives everybody a little bit of insight as to how powerful these are. And it’s just not conjecture of us saying, “Oh, well, the latest thing we’re going to talk about is mold.” Again, pharmaceutical companies realize this. In fact, they realized the immunosuppressive capabilities of mold mycotoxins really in the late 1800s and then again, starting 1930s and ’40s, and now they’re building pharmaceuticals based on this. It’s a problem. And again, all cardiovascular disease is immunomodulatory, all gastrointestinal, all brain, it’s all regarding immune dysfunction. I mean, what is cancer? Well, we’re all developing these mutant cells and mutant strains that happen. And then, if the immune system of the body recognizes now this foreign cell that doesn’t belong because of its mutation, then the immune system will target it to kill it and get rid of it.

But if your immune system is compromised, well, then again, you can’t fight off cancer, and your immune system attacks your brain, and your immune system allows for an attack on the heart and the organs. And right now, we’re talking about type 1 diabetes, and we’re talking about Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and we’re talking about Crohn’s. And again, the mold umbrella, Wendy, I think you’d agree; it really helps to explain a lot, which I think is, again, good and bad because, again, it can be a difficult and expensive process to go through.

And finally, with them, let me say this too. I do want to get to this point. When it comes to mold toxicity and symptoms, it’s women who are affected four out of five times versus men. And I don’t know this. We can always say, “Oh, well, it’s hormonal,” and blah, blah, blah. And again, that may all be true. But the women, they’re suffering from brain fog. They’re suffering from fatigue, they’re suffering from weight gain or weight loss. They’re suffering from gastrointestinal issues, skin issues, they’re suffering with hair loss, they’re suffering low libido. And that’s pretty overt.

And again, a lot of times, the women can smell the mold. The musty smell bothers them. They’re affected around other people who have mold on their clothes and stuff like that, in a home and stuff like that. They’re overtly sick from it. Allergies, I mean, asthma, whatever it may be. Now, the man who’s in the room, right, because we’re talking to the couple here, and we’re talking to the woman about all these issues, and the man’s sitting next to her, and he’s perfectly fine. He’s like, “There’s no such thing as mold. I mean, my wife is crazy, if you ask me. She’s having all these symptoms. I feel fine.”

Now, this is the 55-year-old man or the 62-year-old man. He’s already suffered a heart attack. He’s on five blood pressure drugs and cholesterol drugs, and he’s got erectile dysfunction. He’s got no libido; he’s already had a heart attack. He’s already developing an essential tremor, but he’s fine. The mold’s not bothering him. So it is really just trying to get the understanding into people like, “Oh no, we’re all getting sick from this.” Some people have symptoms, and some people don’t. It’s kind of like we would go back to people with issues and eating gluten, and someone’s like, “I don’t have a problem eating gluten.”

And it’s like, “You’ve had a heart attack. Maybe it was from the gluten.”

“Oh.” Now again, you’ve had X, Y, Z. Maybe it’s from mold.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah. I mean, mold, it’s really difficult to escape mold. I mean, I live in Mexico. It’s very humid here. My house has been closed up for two days, and it reeks of mold. But it doesn’t seem to bother me. But I’m very, very, very healthy. I think some people, if they have a robust immune system and their gut is intact, maybe they’re not going to be as susceptible to someone who has a complex chronic illness, compromised immunity, leaky gut, et cetera.

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Well, I mean, there definitely is a genetic predisposition to mold detoxification issues. And it appears to affect about 25% of the population. But again, Wendy, to my point again, just because we feel good again, we would need further definitive proof. If someone said, “Okay, listen, I may be living in a moldy environment, but I feel good, and my numbers say that I’m still on track,” then I guess I would be okay with that. Now, some people, of course, when you tell them, “Hey, you have brain fog, you have all these different issues that we already said, it’s potentially from the mold,” a lot of them are willing to say, “Okay, no further convincing. I’m out. I feel so bad I can’t do it” I mean, some of these women, they can’t even think. They cannot even think. And again, to get them to escape that situation is a pretty easy proposition.

But I think, again, is mold ubiquitous in our environment? Yes. Is it worse in some places than others? Again, as we’re in a higher humidity area, we are more likely to be exposed to outdoor molds and indoor molds. But that being said, higher levels of water damage that lead to large amounts of certain molds, again, could be absolutely catastrophic. But again, to the point of what that means to evacuate the home or to leave home or to remediate a home, certainly, you and I would both run into this all the time; we’re telling people, “Hey, you gotta eat all these foods, and you got to get sleep and get sunshine, and you got to get away from all the toxins, and you got to do yoga and meditation and physical activity. And you have to do all these tests and swallow these supplements, and that’ll help your blood pressure.”

And someone’s like, “Wait for a second. My other doctor just said I need a $ 10-a-month prescription of lisinopril or a diuretic. I’m going to do that.” And that’s what we’re up against. But let me say one more thing, Wendy, if I may, about this, as long as I’m thinking about it. I recently did some videos about people with atrial fibrillation, irregular heart rhythm, and atrial fibrillation. They have a much higher risk of developing cancer in the future. Now, ultimately, why is that? It’s because the same things that lead to AFib lead to cancer. So if you’re somebody with atrial fibrillation and you go for ablation to burn out the AFib, or you take a pharmaceutical for the AFib, what does that do to your cancer risk? You may burn out your whole heart, and the electrophysiologist or cardiologist may burn all those areas of AFib out of your heart to really simplify.

They may do that, and they may be successful, but because you didn’t get rid of the cause of what led to the AFib, again, violations of eat well, live well, and think well, if you don’t fix those things, then you’re going to develop cancer or brain disease or have a heart attack, or whatever it may be. So anyways, again, even as someone’s like, “Oh, well, my blood pressure is good on 20 milligrams of this,” okay, I’m glad you are happy, but you’re still going to get sick and die because you never address the cause. And your number is better, your blood pressure number or your cholesterol number is better, or your cancer marker is better, for example. But you never address the cause, and you’re not going to live very long. And I’m sorry, that’s the truth. But also, we want to help people.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, there are no shortcuts. There are no shortcuts. You have to enjoy taking care of yourself and get into it and learn about it. And so, what is your take on red meat? So can you read as much red meat as you want? Because I know you’ve called the paleo cardiologist. And sometimes I still wonder about that. I eat a lot of red meat. And the American Heart Association’s like, “No red meat, because it has cholesterol.” Oh my God. What is your take on that?

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Yeah, again, I guess quite simply, I am the paleo cardiologist, as referred to me. First of all, I was the caveman cardiologist, but paleo became a little bit more nouveau. I like the ring of the caveman cardiologist better. But paleo essentially is hunter-gatherer. Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. All humans and all societies in the history of the earth were hunter-gatherers. Why are we trying to come up with anything different than that? Why are we talking about veganism and vegetarianism, and why are we talking about the Mediterranean and keto and carnivore? Again, when you read the paleontology literature and the anthropology literature, you will see that for three and a half million years, our ancestors have been eating animal products and seafood, and they’ve been gatherers of fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and eggs and avocados and coconuts and olives.

So I guess to answer your question as far as how much red meat is too much, the answer is I really don’t know. Again, how much is too much? I could definitely say there’s such as too little, but for the too much part, and again, all this stuff could be objectively measured. How do you feel? And how do your most advanced lab tests in the world look? And if they look that good, if your inflammation low and your oxidative stress is low, again, all these different things that we’re doing, your homocysteine is under control, and your vitamin D’s high and your omega-3’s high, we know very clearly that those are linked to longevity.

And I know, obviously, you profess all your people, we’re talking about 100% free-range, grass-fed, grass-finished, ethically raised animal products. I do believe that seafood is the healthiest food on the planet. And again, we can talk about, well, are there metals in there? Are there other plastics in there? Again, when you eat the right food of those, the wild salmon and the sardines, the anchovies, clams, oysters, shrimp, lobster, crab, and again, those give you the built-in detox mechanisms to be able to get rid of any of the bad, because of the good that you’re getting from it.

But again, people with the highest levels of omega-3 have the lowest risk of everything. So we don’t get that from a supplement or a capsule. We get that from eating the seafood and, then again, the organs. So a lot of the conversation, whether it’s Liver King or others, Sean Baker in that space who talks about carnivores and eating the organs, I’m a big fan of eating the organs. It delivers the most nutrient-dense thing in the world. My heart is kind of right after that. So we love eating liver, love eating heart, love eating red meat, ethically raised. But I feel there’s a good balance of that with the vegetables, with the fruit. Our ancestors, again, as they came from the equator, and they would come out, and there would be a date tree, or there would be a fig tree, or there would be different vegetables, and again, other fruits that are growing in the wild, we would consume those. So again, hunter-gatherer, I hope that answered your question.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, it makes sense. It only makes sense that you want to eat the diet our bodies have been evolving to eat over millions of years. It makes perfect sense.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. I’m very much against some of the doctors that are saying, “Oh, cure heart disease with a vegan diet.” And it’s just really bad information.

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Well, I know, listen, obviously out of the thousands and tens of thousands and so on and so forth who you’ve touched, we’ve seen so many people who’ve tried the vegan lifestyle, and again, they crashed. They may crash in a month, or it may be a year, maybe five years, or 10 years. Some people, again, purport to have longevity. And again, I think it’s a testament to the human body and how the human body can survive so much of what we survive. You and I talk about toxins all the time. And the fact that we’re able to survive the onslaught is really a miracle in and of itself and a testament to how amazing we are.

I think a lot of the vegans who achieved some longevity, I think a lot of it really comes down to the things they were given by their parents, for example, their mother in utero. So if the mother and the grandmother were eating certain foods, then this vegan now is sustaining itself based on these things that it was kind of born with and those nutrients that the infant was born with, and therefore survives. But again, I think, listen, right? It’s just common sense. And if you watch shows like Survivor, Naked and Afraid, and Alone, and these people are let into the wilderness to survive, the vegans quickly tap out of the show, or they quickly start eating meat and seafood because they will die because back in the day, there was no trough of oatmeal and there was no bag of walnuts. You had to be a hunter-gatherer.

We know this from the explorer Captain Cook Magellan. We know this, of course, from the famous dentist Weston A. Price, in the 1920s, who traveled all around the world with his wife by boat, and they’re looking at all these native populations. And they’re all hunter-gatherers. And he finds extraordinarily good health in those people who are eating their native foods. I know you get this, Wendy, as much as I do, again, “Well, I thought, again, the caveman, paleo man, they died when they’re 30.” Why would they die when they’re 30? They’re not dying of diabetes, cancer, or brain disease.

They would die when they’re 30 or on average because, again, there was maybe, again, childbirth trauma or childhood trauma, or they fell off a cliff, or they broke a bone, and there was no orthopedic surgeon to fix the bone or fix the trauma, and therefore people died. But there is plenty of literature, again, that talks about the longevity of these people. And then maybe to refer back to . I’m not a biblical scholar, but if you read the book of Genesis, everybody was living until their 700s and 800s. And I think it was Noah from Noah’s ark fame who had his first son, he was 500 years of age. So I don’t know. Go figure, go figure.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Well, you’re doing a summit now on how to live to 100 years old with a healthy heart. Tell us about that and what we can learn at that summit.

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Yes. Well, thank you again for participating and being one of the experts at the summit. And again, the summit’s called Your Path to the 100-Year Heart. And we’ve interviewed about 35 different experts as it relates to cardiovascular health. And I’ll be honest with you, when I initially conceived the idea of the summit, it was like, “Okay, how can I really find a lot of cardiologists? Again, if we’re going to do a heart summit, let’s go to the ultimate authorities.” But as time went on, as I was conceiving this, I realized that there were no healthy examples of cardiologists to the number of 35, for example, if I want to interview all these people. Sure, I can interview cardiologists and say, “Hey, let’s talk about the best surgical techniques, or let’s talk about what the best stent is currently, or let’s talk about new ablation technology.”

I don’t want to talk to people about that. People don’t want to hear that from me. They want to know, okay, what are the natural strategies to live a long time? So what do we do? We gather experts like Wendy Myers and David Jockers, and we interview several chiropractors to talk about how important chiropractic is for this event. And again, we talk to a lot of MDs and DOs, and we do talk to cardiologists as well. Barbara Roberts wrote a book called The Truth About Statins. She’s a famous female cardiologist on the East Coast. We talk to William Davis, William Davis, who wrote the book Wheat Belly, a runaway bestseller book exposing the problems with wheat. And now, of course, he’s got a new book called Super Gut. And Super Gut is all about the gut microbiome as it relates to overall health. Anyways, Bill Davis is a retired cardiologist, Thomas Levy, another cardiologist, Mark Houston, who is the director of vascular medicine at Vanderbilt University widely acclaimed published author.

So again, we’ve got a fantastic mix of people in there. And I think, again, we’re going to provide so much information and value like that subtitles are reduced or eliminate pharmaceuticals to really give people some actionable steps to be able to do so. And it’s exciting. So again, I appreciate you being at the summit. And everyone who’s listening, again for signing up, totally free, totally free to get on there, listen to all these interviews. And hopefully, we’re going to save millions of people’s lives. And again, listen, there’s a time and a place for modern medicine. There are trauma surgeons, and there are emergency room doctors, and there’s a time and a place when people need open Heart cardiac surgery. And I thank those people who do that on a daily basis.

But the reality is, when it comes to prevention, medical doctors have nothing. And you and I, Wendy, have everything to be able to offer people, which is really something spectacular. And This is why I went into medicine in the first place, which was to help people. And when I realized I wasn’t helping people, I was just using a Band-Aid approach, and the hospital is a revolving door; someone comes in with a heart attack, we do an angiogram, angioplasty, stent, send them out the door, and a handful of pharmaceuticals. A few months later, they come in with side effects of pharmaceuticals, or they have another cardiac event. Heart disease is the number one killer worldwide, despite the fact that we are spending $4 trillion on cardiovascular care. Obviously, we’ve missed the mark tremendously on this one.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. So what’s the website people go to sign up and register for your free event?

Dr. Jack Wolfson: And again, we’ll have all this stuff available to your listeners to put in your show notes, but The 100 Year Heart Summit is where they can find that. But certainly, if they come over to naturalheartdoctor.com and they’re on our email list or follow us, if you will. Friend us on social media so we can all be friends on this. They’ll be able to find it there. And again, sharing this with the people in your community, because yeah, I mean, again, everybody’s touched by heart disease. So it’s not only going to be people who have heart disease who listen to this, people who want to prevent it, or people taking care of loved ones with cardiovascular issues. And I think ultimately too, right, as we talk about these foundational things that lead to heart health, well again, these foundational things lead to the 100-year brain and a healthy and vibrant lifestyle, not only for your heart but for everything else.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s such important information because, as I said, my father died from statins, and my grandmother died of a heart attack. And so, any one of you guys listening, all of us have been touched in some way by ourselves or our family having heart-related health issues. So it’s a really, really important summit that you’re doing to give people alternatives because they go to their doctor, they just don’t get anything. They don’t get anything about nutrition, health, natural health, or just being given just very, very shortsighted solutions, temporary solutions to their problems. So yeah, I want to get to the underlying root cause. So check out Dr. Wolfson’s summit. So thanks so much for coming on, Jack. I really appreciate your time coming on the show.

Dr. Jack Wolfson: Thank you so much, Wendy. Thank you.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, and everyone, thanks so much for tuning into the Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers, and it’s such a pleasure and an honor every week for you to be joining me and tune in, taking your precious time. But it’s really a pleasure to bring you experts from around the world to help you give you that one little piece of the puzzle that can help you upgrade your health. So thanks for tuning in.