Dr. Hotze and Dr. Stephen Sinatra on Inflammation and Heart Disease

August 18, 2021

Dr. Steven Hotze and Dr. Stephen Sinatra discuss the true cause of heart disease.

Podcast Highlights:

6:06: There was an article that came out of India which demonstrated that statin drugs that lower cholesterol also lower CoQ10 in the body because the metabolic arm of cholesterol shares the same CoQ10 pathway.

8:08: So LP(a) (Lipoprotein(a)) is a very, very small cholesterol particle, and I had a strong belief and the literature backs me up, and my clinical experience backs me up that this particle is involved in the genesis of heart disease, because remember, heart disease is an inflammatory disorder.

8:52: High cholesterol is a small part, it’s a small part of the genesis of inflammation, especially if it’s oxidized, but there’s many more other more common aspects that we have to discuss in the genesis of arthrosclerosis.

10:23: I found multiple people with heart disease, with cholesterol of 160, 170. I said, “Wait a minute. If cholesterol causes heart disease, why am I seeing people with low cholesterol get heart disease?”

10:34: And then I was doing cardiac counseling of people with cholesterol of 200, 250 and even higher, and they were normal.

10:54: People with cholesterol of 400, 500, 600, 700, yes, they did have early coronary artery disease. But these are people with genetic anomalies. And yes, in other words, those people do respond to aggressive cholesterol lowering, and a lot of those people had heart attacks in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. So I saw that population, but that population was a very, very small segment of the population.

11:19: So in other words, do pharmaceutical drugs help people? Yes. Some people, but not the 98% that the drug companies would like us to believe they help.

13:43: …you need cholesterol for your memory. You need cholesterol for cerebration, for thinking. And I had older men who had memory disorders…and they had pre-Alzheimer’s on statin drugs. So I immediately got them off.

20:54: If you’re not making enough collagen to heal your arteries because you’re not getting enough vitamin C, you have to…your body’s going to lay down cholesterol like a band-aid, a lipoprotein, cholesterol protein molecules are going to lay down to patch the artery, and they’re going to absorb calcium. And that hardens the arteries.

21:31: So heart disease is caused by inflammation in your arteries.

22:37: the number one factor that causes inflammation in our bodies is sugar, there’s no doubt about it.

23:10: …a fasting blood sugar less than 70 is considered ideal, from 70 to 90 is perhaps suitable, over 90 is really inflammatory.

23:53: We have almost a 100,000,000, either insulin dependent diabetes, or type two diabetics, or whatever. And the problem with that is that diabetes sets up the stage of endothelial cell dysfunction, it’s an inflammatory disorder.

24:39: So basically, what has occurred in our society? Well, we became sugar oriented, we eat tons and tons of sugar.

25:37: So when it comes to diet, I’m all in on higher protein, higher fat, less carbohydrate.

28:05: There are more 100-year old plus people living in the world in the Mediterranean basin. And there’s something that is native to that basin. And I think the secret sauce of the Mediterranean basin is extra virgin olive oil.

28:57: But what olive oil does, it takes pro-inflammatory genes and it turns them back to a non-inflammatory state. Now, that’s awesome. When I read that article in genomics, about 10 years ago, I had this epiphany that really penetrated my brain stating that, you know? What we need to take in more olive oil.

29:16: And then the PREDIMED study came out, and Dr. Gonzalez and others from Spain realized that if you took four tablespoons of olive oil a day, not only did you reduce diabetes and heart disease, and neurodegenerative disease, you had a reduction in Alzheimer’s and cancer as well.

Podcast Transcription:

Stacey Bandfield: Welcome to Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. I’m Stacey Bandfield here with Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. And we are so excited, back by popular demand, Dr. Sinatra is on the program today to discuss heart health, specifically inflammation. Whenever Dr. Sinatra comes on, it’s just one of the most widely listened to and viewed podcasts. So we were so happy to have him back on the program, he’s absolutely fascinating. So enjoy the show. Dr. Hotze?

Dr. Hotze: Thank you, Stacey, and thank each one of you for joining me today on Wellness Revolution. I do believe that you and everybody needs to have a physician and a staff of professionals who can coach you on a path of health and wellness naturally, so as you mature, you have energy, vitality, and you’re enthusiastic about life.

I’m so excited today to have a good friend of mine and a wonderful cardiologist, wonderful physician who has influenced the lives of literally hundreds of thousands and millions of people, and thousands of practitioners in his approach to treatment of heart disease and other health problems. It’s Dr. Stephen Sinatra.

Now, Dr. Sinatra practiced medicine in Connecticut for decades, and he is the founder of the New England Heart Center. He has been known as one of the top integrative cardiologists in the country because he combined conventional medical treatment with complimentary nutritional, anti-aging and psychological therapies.

He was the Chief of Cardiology, Director of Medical Education, Director of Echocardiography, of Cardiac Rehabilitation, and Director of the Weight Reduction Program at Manchester Memorial Hospital in Connecticut.

He’s a fellow of the American College of Cardiology. He’s also a member of the American College of Nutrition. He’s an author, and has written numerous books. One book I think is a must book for you to read is Reversing Heart Disease Now. He also wrote a book entitled The Great Cholesterol Myth, The Coenzyme Q10 Phenomenon, the Sinatra Solution: Metabolic Cardiology, and numerous other books.

You can find these on Amazon and every one is well worth reading and will help educate you on how you can keep your cardiovascular system, your heart healthy and well, so you can live a full, productive life, so you’re full of energy and vitality and enthusiasm. And so you obtain to maintain and wellness naturally, that’s the goal. My experience…and I know Dr. Sinatra would agree with this, my experience is that people who are healthy and well live a whole lot more enjoyable life than people that are sick and tired. Isn’t that right Steve?

Dr. Sinatra: That’s absolutely right. As physicians, we know it’s all about quality of life that makes a difference. Everybody needs the best quality of life going forward.

Dr. Hotze: Well, so Dr. Sinatra, tell us first, you graduated from med school, went on and did a residency in cardiology, and went to work there in Connecticut. I guess you grew up in Connecticut area, did you?

Dr. Sinatra: Well, I actually grew up on Long Island, and I went to medical school in Albany, in New York. So I stayed in New York for a while, then I did an internship at Albany, and then I did a medical residency in Hartford, Connecticut, and then a cardiovascular fellowship in Hartford, Connecticut.

So I stayed in Connecticut forever, and it’s been really good to me. And I live in Florida half the time so I travel back and forth, which is really sweet.

Dr. Hotze: Well, tell us, obviously, when any physician goes through medical school here in the United States and through any residency program, he’s going to be trained conventionally in the orthodoxy of the day, and you were, and when you came out, you’ve shared with me in the past that you at one time were a spokesman for the pharmaceutical companies. You were a spokesman for doctor’s meetings and dinners where you spoke on behalf of the statin drugs that lower cholesterol. Tell us about that, how that happened, what caused you to become a speaker for them? Were you approached by them? Did you approach them? And then why did you quit being a speaker for the pharmaceutical industry?

Dr. Sinatra: Well, that’s a good question. When I was Chief of Cardiology, the pharmaceutical people from Merck and Pfizer, they approached me because I was a cardiologist and I was speaking for not only other drug companies, but I was speaking independently because I was also Director of Medical Education. So I was the Director of Medical Education at my institution for 19 years, and I sat on a Connecticut State Board of Medical Education. So I was really deeply interested in medical education.

So as fate would have it, when the pharmaceutical companies approached me about lecturing on statin drugs, I went forward because I actually believed back then when I was a young cardiologist that cholesterol was an integral factor and a genesis of heart disease.

Now, at the same time, Steve, I was a big CoQ10 user because I actually rubbed elbows with the person that not only discovered CoQ10, but also worked at Merck Pharmaceuticals. He was the one that devised the formula, and then that was sold to the Japanese. But I actually was working with a lot of CoQ10 pioneers. Now, here’s a catch 22. There was an article that came out of India which demonstrated that statin drugs that lower cholesterol also lower CoQ10 in the body because the metabolic arm of cholesterol shares the same CoQ10 pathway.

Dr. Hotze: Right.

Dr. Sinatra: Now, as a heart specialist that believes strongly in CoQ10, I had this incredible question mark in my mind. I’m saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. What are we doing here? We’ve given statin drugs that lower cholesterol, but they also are CoQ10 killers.”

And when this article came out of the Indian literature, I had this incredible pause and I started to think about it. And I said, “Whoa, wait.” And then one of the journals asked me to comment on…because I was a reviewer at the same time, I was a reviewer for about a dozen journals. And one of the journals asked me to review this article about statin drugs and cholesterol. And I said, “You know what? The article is good, but it wasn’t balanced. In other words, it needed the opposing point of view. So ask somebody to write an editorial.” And they came back and they said, “Well, why don’t you write it?”

So then I spend another 100 hours researching the downside of statin drugs again and all of a sudden, Steve, I had this epiphany, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I’m doing the wrong thing.” In other words, I literally did my own research. I painstakingly wrote articles, and I became sort of the devil’s advocate for cholesterol and cholesterol lowering drugs.

Now, I will tell you this, I will tell you this, does cholesterol play…does it play a role in the genesis of heart disease? It does, but not as much as the pharmaceutical companies would like us to believe that it does. There is a small particle cholesterol called LP(a) that actually, statin drugs don’t really ameliorate. In other words, they don’t have a negative impact on it. And in fact, they can actually raise LP(a).

So LP(a) (Lipoprotein(a)) is a very, very small cholesterol particle, and I had a strong belief and the literature backs me up, and my clinical experience backs me up that this particle is involved in the genesis of heart disease, because remember, heart disease is an inflammatory disorder. In other words, whenever you set the stage of inflammation, which sets the stage for what we call endothelial cell dysfunction, whether it’s too much sugar in the blood or high LP(a), or can small particle inflammatory oxidized LDL be a factor? Yes, they can.

But the drug companies want you to believe its cholesterol. It’s a lot more complicated than that. High cholesterol is a small part, it’s a small part of the genesis of inflammation, especially if it’s oxidized, but there’s many more other more common aspects that we have to discuss in the genesis of arthrosclerosis.

Dr. Hotze: Right. Now, when you decided that you were no longer going to be a proponent or a paid pharmaceutical representative, basically, a physician representative or endorser of statin drugs, tell me what was the response of one, the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, and what drug were they pushing? Was that Lipitor back then, Lipitor?

Dr. Sinatra: Oh, yes. In other words, it’s kind of interesting, not only was I speaking for the drug companies, but I did a lot of clinical research. I was involved in a lot of the double blind placebo controlled research with some of the pharmaceutical companies on statin drugs.

So I was blinded as an investigator, but basically I had people on placebo in my practice, people on cholesterol lowering drugs. But the thing that really gave me the epiphany, Steve, was this, I was a cardiac cath doctor. In other words, I did fountains of coronary angiograms.

Dr. Hotze: Right.

Dr. Sinatra: I spent years in the cardiac cath lab and I had this sense of security thinking, “Oh, if I did an angiogram on somebody with a low cholesterol, let’s say between 150 and 200, I wouldn’t find heart disease.” And guess what happened? I found multiple people with heart disease, with cholesterol of 160, 170. I said, “Wait a minute. If cholesterol causes heart disease, why am I seeing people with low cholesterol get heart disease?”

And then I was doing cardiac counseling of people with cholesterol of 200, 250 and even higher, and they were normal. And, and so I had this question because I was literally doing the angiograms, I was lighting up the coronary arteries. Now I will tell you this, people who have familial hypercholesterolemia, these are people who have genetic variants…

Dr. Hotze: Right.

Dr. Sinatra: People with cholesterol of 400, 500, 600, 700, yes, they did have early coronary artery disease. But these are people with genetic anomalies. And yes, in other words, those people do respond to aggressive cholesterol lowering, and a lot of those people had heart attacks in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. So I saw that population, but that population was a very, very small segment of the population.

So in other words, do pharmaceutical drugs help people? Yes. Some people, but not the 98% that the drug companies would like us to believe they help.

Dr. Hotze: Well, so what did they say? What did your colleagues, when you began to…when you’ve removed yourself from your endorsement, or your complete endorsement of the statin drugs across the board, and you tailored it to only a small percent of your population of your patients would you give it to, and you no longer spoke favorably about the statin drugs? How did your fellow colleagues and the pharmaceutical companies handle it, and what was their response?

Dr. Sinatra: Well, my colleagues sort of trusted me because of all my credentials and all my board certifications, and my Director of Medical Education. And basically, when I was teaching as a Medical Education Director, because I gave a lot of conferences at my institution, was that I didn’t throw the statin drugs completely under the bus, I just said, “You’ve got to use lower doses and not every day.”

In other words, for example, if I had a male under the age of 75, and I always considered that to be a young male, by the way, if I am a male under the age of 75, with proven coronary artery disease, by cardiac cath, previous myocardial infarction, coronary calcium score, whatever it was, would I use a low dose statin? Yes. I felt like five or 10 milligrams of a low dose statin, four to five times a week. I thought that, that would have an advantage. And over my clinical history, I was proven right. In other words, young men on a low dose statin, and I also gave at least a couple 100 milligrams of CoQ10, they did very well. I never gave statins to children like our English colleagues did across the ocean.

Dr. Hotze: Right.

Dr. Sinatra: They were treating kids as young as 10 and 15 years old with high cholesterol. I never did that. I found that women had more side effects than men, so I stopped treating women unless they had rapidly progressive coronary artery disease, and they had no place to turn. Sometimes I gave them low dose statins and I didn’t treat elderly men. Now, an elderly male, I felt was over the age of 75 because I was always worried about the cerebral vascular impact.

Dr. Hotze: Right.

Dr. Sinatra: In other words, you need cholesterol for your memory. You need cholesterol for cerebration, for thinking. And I had older men who had memory disorders…

Dr. Hotze: Right.

Dr. Sinatra: And they had pre-Alzheimer’s on statin drugs. So I immediately got them off. And then Dr. Graveline and I had had a discussion when he was alive. I don’t know if you know him, but he was a cardiologist and also a NASA astronaut.

Dr. Hotze: Yes.

Dr. Sinatra: And he took statin drugs and lost his memory completely, and he and I had several discussions over the phone. And basically he was anti-static, but again, a good doctor will take the good, the bad, and the ugly, and then form their own opinions.

What makes a really good physician, Steve? And I’m sure you’re privy to this, is that you learn from your patients, you learn what works, you learn what doesn’t work. You realize that one size doesn’t fit all. In other words, every person that you see in your office is different and you have to tailor-make the therapy to fit that individual person. So I was blessed that early in my career, I realized that statins had the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I was able to choose which populations was served best by them.

Dr. Hotze: That’s very interesting and a very insightful way to approach your patients. And you did very well because most doctors, as our listening audience knows, they’ve got one protocol for everybody. “Boom, this is what you’re going to take. You’ve got high blood pressure. You’re on this, you’re on a beta blocker. You’re on an ACE inhibitor, or you’re going to be on some other drug.”

And if you have cholesterol slightly elevated, or maybe we don’t want you to get elevated cholesterol, they’re going to put them on a statin drug and they have a protocol, and it’s one size fits all rather than listening to the patient. And when the patient tells you, “When I take these statin drugs doc, I can’t remember who I am or who my wife is. I think I’m losing my mind.” Instead they say, “I think you may be depressed and puts them on an antidepressant.”

The first thing you ought to do, take them off the statin drug, see if they get well. If they come back and say, ‘I can think clearly again,” you know exactly what was causing the problem. And, and you know as well as I do doctor, and our guests know that all pharmaceutical drugs, all pharmaceutical drugs are toxic.

They all have an LD50, that’s a lethal dose at which 50% of the individuals who take that dose will die. It’s called an LD50, and every pharmaceutical drug has that. Every pharmaceutical drug has to be detoxified by the liver, detoxified, the root word is toxin. Toxin by definition in Webster’s dictionary means poison.

So literally all drugs can poison you and some poison you. And when you take enough of them, as they say, as Sherry Rogers says, you get sicker quicker. That poisons the mitochondria and you don’t produce good energy and you have a host of health problems.

So that’s why it’s important to go to a physician like Dr. Sinatra who listens to the patient, and when the patients…and he has enough experience to know one shoe doesn’t fit everybody here. Some people may be able to take this drug for a particular reason for a short period of time in small doses.

Some people may need more, some people don’t need it at all. There are other ways that we can help you maintain good health, good cardiovascular health, and that’s what I want to get to. And you mentioned that in your experience you came to the conclusion that although a certain form of cholesterol, lipoprotein(a), which is a lipid, which is the cholesterol protein molecule, may play a role in cardiovascular disease. The major problem and the cause of cardiovascular disease is inflammation.

Dr. Sinatra: Correct.

Dr. Hotze: So let’s talk about that. Do you know Derek, Dr. De Silva, by any chance?

Dr. Sinatra: Oh, of course, yes.

Dr. Hotze: Okay. He’s coming in town. He’ll be in town day after tomorrow, he’s coming in, and we’re having a big seminar here in my office. And we’re going to talk about the glycocalyx. Have you heard his lectures on that?

Dr. Sinatra: Yes. Well, I’ve heard him mention it in the past, yes.

Dr. Hotze: Well, anyway, that’s fascinating. I heard in a forum meeting in Las Vegas, about two or three years ago, he gave a talk on the glycocalyx. Doc, I’d never heard of the glycocalyx before in my entire career. And I don’t know how many other…they didn’t teach me that in med school, and I had never read about it. And when I heard his talk, it made complete sense to me, and I started doing research on it. Am I wrong to think that most doctors don’t know about the glycocalyx and the importance that is to cardiovascular health, and that’s where inflammation takes place?

Dr. Sinatra: Well, see, that’s the important thing. A lot of doctors, even doctors who go on to private practice, they need to educate themselves continuously. Once you become a doctor, you have the raw materials to go forward, but your patients, like I said before, are your best teachers. And you have to update yourself all the time and go to conferences. You must go to conferences because when you go to a conference, you’re getting cutting edge, leading edge information.

If you read it in a journal, it might be six months to a year old. If you read it in the textbook, like right now, I’m editing a textbook of cardiology, it’s going come out in 2022, but the references, all are going to be 2020, 2021. So a textbook is about a year or two years behind the time.

So in this computer age we live in, you must keep up to date, and that’s the most important thing about a physician, especially if they’re treating patients on a day-to-day basis, is you must keep up with the contemporary literature, and really the zyghost of the time is about what works, what doesn’t work, and stuff like that.

Dr. Hotze: Well, so in conclusion, let’s talk about the inflammation. What causes the inflammation in the coronary arteries that leads to the laying down of the so-called bandage of cholesterol, the lipoprotein that’s laid down to patch and bandage the arteries to heal them? Which of course, leads to the absorption of calcium, which hardens the arteries, which gives us atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries, or as that means in Greek, the hardening of the porridge.

And so as we lay down that cholesterol, if you think about it, I’m talking to the listening audience, obviously, doc, you understand this, what happens is when you get this inflammation, your body doesn’t want inflammation. Your arteries are deteriorating. Well, if they deteriorate enough, you’re going to blow an artery and you’re going to die. So the body can’t tolerate that. It has a backup mechanism.

If you’re not making enough collagen to heal your arteries because you’re not getting enough vitamin C, you have to…your body’s going to lay down cholesterol like a band-aid, a lipoprotein, cholesterol protein molecules are going to lay down to patch the artery, and they’re going to absorb calcium. And that hardens the arteries.

If you think about it, it makes sense because you don’t want your arteries to deteriorate, so the body’s making them rigid. The problem is the more inflammation, the more rigidity, and the narrower the tube, and you flick off a plaque and boom, you got a heart attack because you block the downstream flow of the blood, and there’s your problem.

So heart disease is caused by inflammation in your arteries. And it settles in the coronary arteries primarily because your heart is beating 70 times a minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all your entire life. And that’s putting a lot of pressure, stretching and crushing of these arteries. And if they’re inflamed, then they’re going to deteriorate and the body’s going to want to heal them up. And you end up developing the hardening of the arteries, trying to maintain stability in the arteries, which ultimately leads to problems with poor circulation in the heart. And ultimately, you can develop heart attack when you flick off a plaque upstream and it goes downstream to a narrowing, and it plugs.

So what causes the inflammation? What do people need to do to prevent inflammation in their body that leads to coronary artery inflammation and disease?

Dr. Sinatra: Well, that was really well said, Steve. You did a great job in describing inflammation, and really, the number one factor that causes inflammation in our bodies is sugar, there’s no doubt about it. When you and I were in medical school, we were taught that the average blood sugar, fasting blood sugar was a 100 milligrams % so to speak. So if our patients had a fasting blood sugar of 95 and 98, we said, “Oh, that’s great.”

Now, about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the societies lowered it to 90 milligrams %. And then in the last few years, now it’s been lowered to 70 milligrams %. In other words, a fasting blood sugar less than 70 is considered ideal, from 70 to 90 is perhaps suitable, over 90 is really inflammatory.

Now, this country, in the USA, has over a 100,000,000 diabetics. In other words, when I talk about diabetes, and by the way, I came from a family of diabetics. My grandmother and my mother both became blind from diabetes, and it runs in my family. A lot of it is genetically inherited as you know, but basically, in our country today, we have 3,400,000 people. And basically about one in every 3.4 people is diabetic.

We have almost a 100,000,000, either insulin dependent diabetes, or type two diabetics, or whatever. And the problem with that is that diabetes sets up the stage of endothelial cell dysfunction, it’s an inflammatory disorder. I remember when I was in medical school, our professors used to tell us that a typical diabetic may not live to a ripe old age. And a lot of diabetics may lose 10 to 15 years in their lifespan because of the problem.

And the problem we have today is we have so many pre-diabetics and insulin dependent diabetics, and type two diabetics, and overweight people in our society that I worry about the younger generation outliving the older generation. So basically, what has occurred in our society? Well, we became sugar oriented, we eat tons and tons of sugar.

Many of us put white table sugar in our coffee and tea. We eat a lot of carbohydrates. We eat a lot of breads. We eat a lot of regular semolina pastas. We eat sweets and doughnuts and candies, and the list goes on and on, and on. So the secret is instead of having a high carbohydrate diet, that a lot of doctors used to preach, even 10, 15, 20 years ago, these high carbohydrate diets which are really evil in disguise, what people need to do is eat a higher protein diet and a higher fat diet.

So I’ve always preached that less carbohydrates produce less blood sugar. Less blood sugar, you get less of an insulin response because we know that insulin is a pro-inflammatory hormone. So the less insulin you secrete, the better your body is adapted to the aging response.

So when it comes to diet, I’m all in on higher protein, higher fat, less carbohydrate. And now look, if a person wants to have a little ice-cream, that’s fine. If they want a little dark chocolate, greater than 70% dark, that’s fine with me. In other words, people need to have a little sweets once in a while, but you cannot base most of your diet on carbohydrates because over time, I strongly believe that will make you sick.

Dr. Hotze: Well, and it’s been shown that it’s amazing how the diabetic society still has the food pyramid completely upside down.

Dr. Sinatra: Exactly.

Dr. Hotze: “Eat a lot of grains!” Remember folks, sugar molecules are what make up starch. Starches are what you find in all grain products, wheat, corn, and in your potatoes and rice, these are starches. Starches are sugar molecules that are hitched together. You put them in your mouth, immediately your enzymes in your mouth, amylase enzymes and all the way down into your stomach, begin to dissolve, and the sugar molecules are broken free.

So if you eat a high, simple carbohydrate diet, you’re literally feeding yourself sugar all day long. And that is a…it’s inflammatory and it’s inflammatory because it’s…the body to secrete insulin, which drives the sugar into the cells and the insulin is pro-inflammatory, it causes inflammation. It causes inflammation in your coronary arteries.

So Dr. Sinatra recommends eat a lot of protein, eat a higher fat diet, and we’re not talking about bad fats and all. We’re talking about…fish oil is good, whole butter is good, olive oil is good, and with a name like Sinatra, I’m sure you use a lot of olive oil.

Dr. Sinatra: Yes, sir.

Dr. Hotze: And we always use a…what is it? A triple a…it’s always a triple virgin olive oil. I don’t know how…

Dr. Sinatra: Extra virgin.

Dr. Hotze: You’re either a virgin or not. Can you imagine someone going, “I’m an extra virgin?”

Dr. Sinatra: One thing about EVOO, extra virgin olive oil, EVOO. If you look at the Mediterranean basin and whether you’re coming from Spain or Italy, or Greece or Israel, or Libya, Turkey, it doesn’t matter. There are more 100-year old plus people living in the world in the Mediterranean basin. And there’s something that is native to that basin. And I think the secret sauce of the Mediterranean basin is extra virgin olive oil.

Dr. Hotze: Right.

Dr. Sinatra: Because what does olive oil do? It does everything right. It changes the cholesterol relationships. It has an impact on small particle LDL. It makes fluffier HDL. It reduces triglycerides. It’s non-inflammatory. In fact, the essence of olive oil is incredible. They did this study in Spain, about 10 years ago, it was reported in a genetic literature, but olive oil takes pro-inflammatory genes that we all possess.

When we’re all born, we have non-inflammatory genes, pro-inflammatory genes, et cetera, et cetera. But what olive oil does, it takes pro-inflammatory genes and it turns them back to a non-inflammatory state. Now, that’s awesome. When I read that article in genomics, about 10 years ago, I had this epiphany that really penetrated my brain stating that, you know? What we need to take in more olive oil.

And then the PREDIMED study came out, and Dr. Gonzalez and others from Spain realized that if you took four tablespoons of olive oil a day, not only did you reduce diabetes and heart disease, and neurodegenerative disease, you had a reduction in Alzheimer’s and cancer as well.

So there’s something special about the anti-aging characteristics of olive oil, and I think this is one type of substance that all Americans should strongly consider by putting into their diet on a daily basis.

Dr. Hotze: Absolutely. Well said, and it’s true. And it’s interesting, I talked to you earlier, before we were on the program about Dr. Grundy, the Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgeon and his health center that he has. I think it’s out in…he has one in Phoenix and one in California somewhere, but he said that when he had 50, he was overweight. He felt terrible, and he looked terrible.

And he came up, he started doing something. He started taking olive oil every day, two or three tablespoons a day. And that in itself began to give him good health, and he felt better and was able to lose weight. So I’m a big proponent of olive oil. Every day, I have a salad.

Look, folks, I believe in eating a keto friendly eating program. And so what that really means is that we eat healthy oils and fats, and that would include olive oil. So I have a good salad every day. I have a chop salad, it’s the same every day, day in and day out, chopped spinach, chopped broccoli, chopped pecans, throw a couple of raspberries on top of it, and then pour olive on it, and balsamic vinegar. I eat that every day, day in and day out.

As a matter of fact, my green drink in the morning is made with spinach, that’s what I have. So anyway, and then a little bit of beef, I can’t hardly hold more than four ounces. That’s about all I can hold, and I need to do better with staying off desserts.

I do like to get a couple of three bites out of a dessert. I don’t need a whole platter full, but I do have a sweet tooth. But eat that way and you cut out your carbs. You don’t eat cereal for breakfast every morning, and you don’t have pancakes, and you don’t have waffles. You don’t eat half a loaf of bread at dinner.

All those things are going to convert to sugar. Sugar inevitably converts to adipose tissue, better known as fat, and you’re going to gain weight. And then when you’re overweight like that, you got insulin resistance and you got a high insulin level, you get all the pro-inflammatory situation set up in your body. So now you’re getting coronary artery disease and inflammatory cardiovascular disease in your carotid arteries, in your neck and in your brain, and all over your body, in the kidneys. And one thing leads to another, it will deteriorate your health.

So the most important thing you can do, long-term for your health, which you can take away from this, the most important thing for good health is have a good, healthy eating program. It all starts with what you put in your mouth. “Let food be your medicine, let medicine be your food.” That’s what Hippocrates said, he was the father of medicine. It’s the same today. And that’s what you need to do, is eat a healthy eating program, and most Americans don’t.

The other thing too, doctor, and we’ll have to bring it up in the next session, we may talk about the relationship of thyroid in metabolism, in the governing your metabolism, and to the relationship with fluoride and how it adversely affects deiodination of T4 to T3 in the cells, which adversely affects metabolic rates, which can lead to a slower metabolism and an increased weight in people. So we may talk about that at a future time.

I want to thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Sinatra. This has been a very, very instructive, insightful, educational program. For me, it’s always good to hear and focus on the basics. So your takeaway from this folks is, one, heart disease is not primarily caused by cholesterol, contrary to what every pharmaceutical ad you see on TV, or read in a newspaper or in a magazine.

It’s first and foremost caused by inflammation. Inflammation is caused first and foremost by your eating habits. So if you want to cut down on heart disease, it’s not the genes you inherited from your parents that are giving you your heart disease in most people. It’s the eating habits that you inherited from your parents, that are causing you your problems.

So if you got up and your mom and dad are bringing you donuts every morning for breakfast, and you do that as you grow up and you give that to your kids, you farm some bad habits because those convert to sugar and sugar, of course, leads to inflammatory response, which leads to the coronary artery disease. So eat healthy, first and foremost.

The second thing you want to make sure you do is take good supplementation, vitamin and mineral supplementation. And we can talk more about that in a later program, but one thing, key takeaway on this is you want to be sure to take Coenzyme Q10 is very, very important. L-carnitine is very important, D-Ribose is very important, magnesium is very important, and we’ll talk about that, what supplements you’d recommend doctor in our next program.

Thank you for joining us today on the Wellness Revolution with Dr. Stephen Sinatra.

Dr. Sinatra: It’s great to be here Steve, thanks so much.

Dr. Hotze: Thank you, sir. God bless you.

Categories: Blog, Blog English, Heart Health

Tags: Dr. Sinatra on inflammation and heart disease, inflammation causes heart disease, sugar and heart disease

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