#1104 Dr. Philip Ovadia - Heart Surgeon Explains What To Eat To Save Your Life

Dr. Philip Ovadia is a Heart Surgeon with over 3,000 operations, and is the author of the book "Stay Off My Operating Table". Philip's mission is to teach people how to live a healthier life in order to avoid becoming a heart surgery patient. In this conversation, we discuss how Philip lost 100lbs, how metabolic health affects mental health, and choosing quality food at the grocery store. We also get into supplements, various diets such as Keto, building muscle, glucose monitoring, bloodwork and more. ======================= Amberdata provides the critical data infrastructure enabling financial institutions to participate in the digital asset class. We deliver comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets, and decentralized finance. Download our Digital Asset Data Guide at https://www.amberdata.io/pomp ======================= Bullish is a powerful new exchange for digital assets that offers deep liquidity, automated market making, and industry-leading security. Combining the innovations of DeFi with the regulated environment of traditional finance, Bullish empowers users to trade with certainty and earn passively at scale across variable market conditions, in an environment backed by multibillion-dollar liquidity contributions from the Bullish Treasury. Visit bullish.com/pomp today to learn more. Note: Bullish is licensed by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. Virtual assets and related products are high risk. Consult your investment advisor and trade responsibly. Bullish is available in select locations only and not to U. S persons. Visit bullish.com/legal for important information and risk warnings. ======================= If you’re trying to grow and preserve your crypto-wealth, optimizing your taxes is just as lucrative as trying to find the next hidden gem. Alto IRA can help you invest in crypto in tax-advantaged ways to help you preserve your hard earned money. So, ready to take your investments to the next level? Diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches. Open an Alto CryptoIRA to invest in crypto tax-free. Just go to https://altoira.com/pomp ======================= Arculus is the next generation crypto & NFT cold storage wallet that combines one of the world’s strongest security protocols with the easiest to use form factor and app. Arculus requires 3-Factor Authentication to ensure only you have access to your digital assets – something you know – a PIN, something you have – the Arculus Key Card, and biometrics. Learn more and buy it now on getarculus.com. Use promo code POMP to save 15%. Remember, with Arculus, it’s your keys, your crypto. ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Even better? Eight Sleep recently launched the next generation of the Pod. The new Pod 3 enables more accurate sleep and health tracking with double the amount of sensors, delivering you the best sleep experience on Earth. Go to eightsleep.com/pomp =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Dr. Philip Ovadia is a heart surgeon with over 3,000 different heart surgeries. He also wrote a book called Stay Off My Operating Table. And that's exactly what he's trying to do. He's going around the country and he's teaching people what you can do so that you can live a healthier and happier life. In this conversation, we talk about how he personally lost over 100 pounds, what the quality of food tells you about your lifestyle, why metabolic health may have an impact on mental health, and then we dig into a ton of individual questions like the importance of building muscle, protein shakes, keto diet, continued glucose monitoring, supplements,

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  blood work basics, and much, much more. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Once you listen all the way to the end, make sure you let us know on Twitter what you agreed with, what you disagreed with, where you want to learn more. All right, let's get into this episode with Dr. Ovadia. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Your website can do more with Base44. Describe what you want in plain language and build a site where people can book with you or buy from you. Payments, data, security, and hosting are built in. Go to base44.com.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  You could try to find the perfect coffee to water ratio. Or you could press a button. With Keurig, each K-Cup pod is precision measured for a perfectly delicious cup. No effort, no grind, no math required.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:36Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Dr. Ovadia here with me. I thought a great place to start a conversation was, there's a lot of people on Twitter. They share all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories or medical advice or whatever. They're usually not a doctor. So, one, you got to go for it. You are a doctor. You've done over 3,000 heart surgeries. But also, what I find fascinating is you are somebody who has taken the things that you're talking about on the internet and put into practice in your own life. You lost over 100 pounds yourself. And so, there's two unique aspects. You're a doctor. You actually have seen some of this stuff in practice yourself. Why talk about it on the internet? Like, what's got you so excited and so amped up about kind of sharing this stuff with the audience that you've built on the internet?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it really comes down to, you know, I, my purpose as a doctor is to help people. And that should be any way that I could help them. So, you know, for the first part of my career, the way I helped people was by doing heart surgery. And I still continue to do that. But what I've come to realize through my personal journey, through losing 100 pounds, through addressing how unhealthy I was as a doctor, was that I can help even more people now by not needing a heart surgery, by educating them, teaching them how to be healthy, how they can go down the same path I went down.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  And, you know, that's sort of the higher purpose, I think. That's the calling now. So, I continue to be a heart surgeon. I continue to help people who need that.

• 4:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  But I would much rather people not need the heart surgery. I'd much rather they stay off my operating table ultimately.

• 4:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So, I've seen you talk about your successful profession. But you were unsuccessful from a personal health standpoint. Let's talk first about the professional career of a heart surgeon. How long does a heart surgery take? And like, what exactly happens? Because the patient gets knocked out, right? Most people haven't been in the room. Like, when you say heart surgery, talk us through kind of at a high level. Like, what is that process like?

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Sure thing. So, you know, the most common type of heart surgery we do, it's called coronary artery bypass grafting, cabbage, as it's known. And that is for people who have developed blockages in the arteries of their heart. And we need to basically reroute the blood. We need to get better blood flow going. So that surgery typically is going to take anywhere from about four to six hours. From the patient's standpoint. A lot of that is kind of prepping and ending, you know. So my actual time in there, you know, when I'm really in there with my hands in someone's chest is in the three to four hour range typically. Sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on what we're doing.

• 5:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you are rerouting it, I'm going to be the educated idiot here for sure. When I think of a blockage in an artery, it's literally something has built up and is blocking the clean flow of the blood. Are you simply trying to remove the blockage so that then they can continue to use the same artery? Or are you almost building like an artificial artery around the blockage? Like, how does that work?

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, so what I do is lay new pipe, essentially. You can think of it. In some situations, we can open up the pipe. That's what stents are. So one of the kind of misconceptions, you know, everything gets lumped into heart surgery. But stents are typically put in, in what's called a catheterization lab by a cardiologist. And in situations where that's not applicable, the heart surgeon then does bypass surgery. And this is really, as we said, laying new pipe. So we don't typically unblock the blockages that are there. We give a new route for the blood to go around the blockage.

• 6:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so this is what I Would consider the kind of defensive mechanism. If you're an unhealthy person and you've like screwed up for a long time, right? I'm assuming they get to you and you're like, okay, get on the operating table and I will like cut open your chest and literally fix the problem. But what I find fascinating is that when you were talking about being an unsuccessful, healthy person, you actually spent a lot of your time being like, never get to me. Like, there's a way to play offense. And as I kind of went down this rabbit hole, understanding kind of your journey and what you had done, it really just comes down to the food you eat. It seems like, like that was a huge piece. I didn't really see you talk about a lot of the other kind of more exotic things.

• 7:08Anthony Pompliano?

  It was just like eat in a different way and that will do a very big percentage of the work to keep you off of the operating table. Is that like a fair way to evaluate kind of the conclusion you've come to there?

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it really is. And it's not only applicable to, you know, what I do, heart surgery. Really, when you look at all of our problems around health these days, most of them come from us making ourselves unhealthy. We have gotten into a situation where, first of all, we've normalized being unhealthy. You know, some of the statistics are just truly frightening. The one that probably I cite most often is that 88%, so almost nine out of 10 adults in the United States today are not healthy. When we look at, you know, the definition, what we call metabolic health,

• 8:03Speaker 04

  five basic criteria of health and nine out of 10 adults cannot meet that. We look at other statistics like 60% of the adults over 50 years of age in the US are not only on one medication, they're on multiple prescription medications. So, poor health has actually become the normal all around us. And it's one of those things where you become blind to it. We don't even really expect to be healthy anymore. And we spend all of our efforts, all of our energy. Trying to manage our illness instead of trying to remain healthy in the first place. And that's where I think we need to refocus our efforts, you know, talking about doctors,

• 8:47Speaker 04

  talking about the healthcare system in particular. And that's where each individual, everyone, has to realize they have the power within themselves to keep themselves healthy and to not need me as a heart surgeon or not need the healthcare system in general.

• 9:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What's fascinating about what you're talking about here is there is one aspect, which like I'll put into like the culture wars. This is people on Twitter going nuts when they see the fat mannequin at the store and they're like, oh my God, we're normalizing unhealthy kind of standards. There is what you're specifically talking about, which is more of like the pharmaceutical approach of like, it probably hasn't always been the way that people lived where hit 50, here's six pills and like, there you go, right? Obviously some of these pills didn't even exist prior, now they do. And so are we simply using the pharmaceuticals as a Band-Aid on other problems?

• 9:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And then also there's just like, is there a rise in the worsening of the way people feel, whether that's like depression and some of the mental health stuff? Is it just literally their blood pressure's going up and maybe they're not even actually taking medicine and so they end up just having kind of shorter life horizon? Like, it feels all of this is the same thing, right? It's different ways to kind of break down the conversation or frankly, argue on the internet, but really what we're getting back at is like, Americans don't live a very healthy lifestyle in general. And I think you're really highlighting, a lot of it has to do with the food that we eat.

• 10:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's a great way to think about it. You know, if we start to think about this sort of information environment around health and we start to see that so much of this can be tracked back to the food that we eat. We see the clear shifts over time that as more and more processed food gets introduced into the environment. People become more unhealthy, populations become more unhealthy. And yet, we, for many reasons, won't address the food part of it. We say, "Well, we can take care of that with something else, whether it be pharmaceuticals, whether it be surgeries."

• 11:03Speaker 04

  You know, the sort of view of the healthcare system is that, okay, we're going to deal with the problem, we're going to manage the problem, but we're not really going to address why the problem occurred in the first place.

• 11:17Anthony Pompliano?

  When you see the rise in processed foods, what is driving that? Is that capitalism? Is that the need and want to have better preservation of food? Is that some altruistic view of like, "Let's feed the hungry"? What is driving such a rise in processed food?

• 11:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's interesting. You know, it probably started, hunger, starvation, you know, was a problem historically. For much of our existence as human beings, when you go back through the ancestral record, it was a struggle to get enough food. So, you could say that it probably started from that sort of altruistic standpoint. And obviously, as the population grew and we got into, you know, we got out of the nomadic life, it necessitated being able to have food available, being able to store food, and then, you know, being able to move food from place to place.

• 12:21Speaker 04

  All of these things became necessary. But at some point, and I think this is fairly recently, we reached this sort of tipping point where now, the problem wasn't starvation anymore. Food was abundant, food was available.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  And now we've got the opposite problem where we're in an excess environment and our bodies haven't caught up with that on the evolutionary standpoint. And, you know, so I think the original intent of sort of processed food was altruistic, was noble. We got to save people, you know, we got to be able to keep people alive. But we've now clearly reached a problem where the processed food is problematic, is causing health problems, is having the opposite effects, and it's shortening people's lives. But now we're so entrenched in that way of thinking and that system that, you know, it's hard to get out of it.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  Like most big institutions, you know, big food is an institution. And it's an institution that has powerful effects, you know, across all aspects of society. And now we got to figure out how to undo this problem that we've created.

• 13:38Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a rural town in North Carolina, my wife and I were driving through at one point, and it's kind of one of these streets where there's three, four, or five stoplights, but it's a one-way or a kind of straight shot that you can look down. And for whatever reason, I said to her, oh, my God, look at all the signs. And it was Wendy's, McDonald's, Bojangles, Chick-fil-- it was just like all of it, right?

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 14:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And it was almost like a shot you would see on the internet, right, that kind of goes viral, and we were like, wow, America is like so stupid. And as we looked, what I think shocked me was in that small town, I don't know if you could have an average salary and eat healthy, right? Because everything that was thrown in your face was cheap and unhealthy. And so how much of the like obesity epidemic or kind of the rise in the unhealthy American is a socioeconomic and like a poverty problem or a money problem versus, no, people have

• 14:45Anthony Pompliano?

  the money to go and eat healthy, it's just they aren't educated or they're lazy and they don't want to do the work to actually do that.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I, I do think that both play into it.

• 14:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  When you look at, you know, why is processed food so inexpensive? You start to look at government incentives around, you know, the crops that get subsidized. Versus, you know, why aren't those subsidies going to the, the ranchers who are raising, you know, cattle? So you have to ask, why is that food the inexpensive food? I mean, the reality is it doesn't need to be that way. We could very easily shift what becomes the inexpensive food for people. And then there certainly is the educational piece of it. And quite frankly, we start to get into the miseducational piece of this because, you

• 15:40Speaker 04

  know, the predominant messaging around healthy food here in the United States for the past 50 years has been the food pyramid. That, you know, grains, whole grains are the healthiest thing you should be eating. And, uh, you know, cereals and wheat and all of this.

• 15:57Anthony Pompliano?

  That's insane.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  It is insane.

• 15:59Anthony Pompliano?

  That is literally insane.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  We have more than enough evidence at this point to know that that shouldn't be the case. You know, the food pyramid should essentially be flipped upside down. So then you start asking those questions because it's like, okay, not only have we gotten this wrong, but we got it so wrong that it almost has to be intentional. Like, you know, you can't, you can't mess things up this badly without there being some intentionality to it.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so this highlights, uh, something that I've seen a number of my friends talk about, which, um, put me, they put me down a rabbit hole and say, oh man, now I'm, now I'm really messed up. So I've had a bunch of friends who have gone to Europe over the last couple of years. And they're like, I went to Europe. I ate all the bread. I ate tons of pasta. I ate all of the gelato and, you know, whatever else that they could eat. And they felt like they were eating disgustingly unhealthy. And they came back and they had lost weight.

• 16:58Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 16:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And of course, the question comes like, well, were they walking more than normal? Like all that type of stuff. And the people that I've seen talking about this and kind of been the most confused by it is like, they're like, no, I walk a lot at home and I looked at my, you know, data or whatever. Steps are pretty much the same. It has to be the food. And so you're talking about just a food pyramid where grains are seen as like the most acceptable kind of food group. But actually, it seems even the grains in America are different than maybe the grains that you would eat in Europe or elsewhere. It's like, maybe let's start there of just like, before we flip the food pyramid, like, what is the difference? Or at least your understanding of the difference between the types of grains or pastas or whatever that people are eating?

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, and I've had the same experience myself, you know, going to France and eating the croissants and the baguettes and all of that. And yeah, you know, I, first of all, I didn't feel lousy like I do when I eat bread here. And second of all, I, you know, didn't gain any weight. And same thing, yeah, I'm pretty active here. I was pretty active there. It's interesting because we go back to the whole, what led us to the food pyramid? And what led us to the food pyramid was basically, you know, in the 1950s, we had this rising epidemic of heart disease here in the United States. A sitting president had a heart attack while in office and this set off the alarm bells. And so we started asking what causes heart disease?

• 18:25Speaker 04

  And there were two prevailing theories at the time. The one theory was that it was sugar, essentially, processed carbohydrates that was leading to heart disease. And the other theory was that it was saturated fat in the diet. And the saturated fat diet, the saturated fat theory won out. And we can get into all of that, but it won out. It became the prevailing theory.

• 18:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Was it a fair game? Did it win on merit? Or did it win because people were lobbying and playing kind of bullshit games?

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, in retrospect, I would say that it was not a fair game. So, one of the prominent scientists who promoted the theory of saturated fat causing heart disease, Ansel Keys, we now know.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Basically made up a lot of his data.

• 19:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  So the seminal, I shouldn't say made up, manipulated is probably a better word. So the seminal study that he put forward early on was called the Six Countries Study. And what he did in that study, what he published in that study was looking at six countries and looking at their consumption of saturated fat and looking at their incidence of heart disease, and it makes a nice straight line, looks like a perfectly linear relationship. And so that got published and then everyone said, okay, it's obviously saturated fat. What we now know is that Ansel Keys actually studied 22 countries and he handpicked the six countries that had this relationship. And, you know, this was known in a lot of ways.

• 19:59Speaker 04

  You know, when you go back through the 1970s and the 1980s, for instance, people talk about the French paradox when it comes to heart disease. Cause we knew that the French consumed more saturated fat than just about any other westernized country, you know? Think Julia Child, think about the butter and everything. And yet they had the lowest incidence of heart disease of any of the westernized countries. So there was always thought about, well, the French must be, you know, they must exercise a lot, or they, you know, whatever it is in their lifestyle that negates this effect of saturated fat. But the reality is, is that there never was an effect of saturated fat to start with. And the real problem with the saturated fat theory of heart disease, dietary saturated

• 20:42Speaker 04

  fat causing heart disease, is what it then led to. Because then we got down this whole pathway of, okay, we gotta take all the saturated fat of our, out of our food supply. And if you're gonna do that, that means you have to be processing the food and you have to be putting something else in. And what got put in? Sugar, processed carbohydrates. And that, you know, we, in the 80s, it became all about the snack wells and everything was labeled low fat, low fat, low fat. And if it's labeled low fat, it means it's been processed, it means sugar has been added to it in some form. And here we are 40, 50 years later, and we can see the devastating effects that this has had.

• 21:23Anthony Pompliano?

  So, I'm not a genius by any means, but you just told me that there was two theories. One was saturated fat, one was processed sugar. And...

• 21:34Anthony Pompliano?

  What I see you getting at here is that the saturated fat theory that was the prevailing theory, and that's why we went and made all these changes, we actually decreased saturated fat, but we increased processed sugar. And if I can read between the lines, maybe it was the opposite, that it was the processed sugars that was creating all the heart disease. We actually made the problem worse rather than better.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that's exactly what we see now. You know, as I said, here we are 50 years later, heart disease is still the number one killer in the United States and worldwide. So we haven't solved that problem. And even worse, what we see is obesity up, diabetes up, all of these other problems that come along with it. Because it turns out that, you know, processed food doesn't just cause heart disease. If it makes you metabolically unhealthy, which it does, and we can get into what exactly that means, it's not only going to increase your risk of heart disease, it's going to increase your risk of many types of cancer. It's going to increase Alzheimer's disease. It's going to increase

• 22:42Speaker 04

  many of the chronic diseases that are now plaguing our society. We can go down the list of the top 10 causes of death every year in the United States, and seven out of the 10 of them are directly attributable to the poor metabolic health that results from eating this processed food.

• 23:00Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you look at processed food, people will say it tastes great, right? Like that's the theory. And I always use the one fact of the McDonald's french fry is like scientifically engineered to make you want to eat more of them. And when people start to eat, like, what do you mean? It's like, well, it doesn't mean that they literally are in a lab, you know, with running experiments and all this stuff, although there is evidence that suggests maybe they were doing that, right? But what it does mean is that they are trying to make it taste so good that every time you're, I'm hungry, you think, hey, I want to go get McDonald's. But they also want to do it in a way where they can produce it for next to nothing, and there's profit margins and kind of all this. Now,

• 23:45Anthony Pompliano?

  as you said, they actually are in the lab testing a lot of this stuff. And what I saw when you were talking about having lost 100 pounds was your previous diet was eat what I want, when I want, which I think most Americans are like, that's what I do. You still today eat what you want, when you want. It's just that you changed what you eat. And so I think the first kind of big like aha for a lot of people is just like, you don't have to suffer in order to actually lose weight, right? You can eat whenever you want, as much as you want, like all the stuff. You just have to eat the right types of food, which I think is a unique message because what people are used to doing is getting bombarded with this fad diet or that fad diet,

• 24:29Anthony Pompliano?

  or take this pill, or do this thing, or you know, the seven day water fast, or you know, whatever it is. That's not what you're saying at all. You're just saying like, hey, if you just eat healthy food rather than unhealthy food, like you're probably going to get much farther along than you would otherwise.

• 24:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, certainly true. And this was an aha moment for me, you know? So I wouldn't even really say, you know, that I was eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, you know? I had what most people would consider a healthy diet. You know, I grew up in a household that we followed the food pyramid. My older brother is a type one diabetic. We had no sugar in the house. We drank our skim milk on our Wheaties and our Cheerios. And, uh, you know, I would say we had a healthier diet than most. I was also very active, you know? That's the other thing that people say, oh, well, people get fat because they're not active enough. I played sports year round.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  I rode my bike everywhere. I walked, you know, I grew up in a very suburban environment. And despite this, I became more and more unhealthy. And you know, then I got to college and then I got to medical school. And so now I learned all the nutritional science, you know, all the stuff. And you know, one of the unfortunate things about going through medical school is we don't cover a lot about nutrition, uh, but what we do cover, um, I followed, you know? And then I tried all of those miserable things that people do to lose weight, you know? I counted my calories. I did the, the points and the shakes and the, all of that stuff. And like most people, I had the experience that it would work for a little bit of time. I could stick with it. I had enough willpower.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  I'd lose some weight and then you just can't stick with it anymore. And you end up gaining back the weight and more. So the big aha moment for me, the big change for me, was exactly that. I heard a talk at a medical conference by a journalist by the name of Gary Taubes. And Gary, at the time, had just written his book, The Case Against Sugar. Prior to that, he had written Good Calories, Bad Calories, and Why We Get Fat. And Gary came at this problem as an investigative journalist. He started investigating the food, the diet industry. And, you know, he went back through a lot of the science. He has a science background, as well as his journalism background.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  And he saw that it's not about the amount of food that we eat. It's not calories in, calories out, as we had all heard our whole life. But the types of food that you eat have a unique influence on your metabolism and on how hungry you are. So it turns out, when you eat good food, when you eat whole, real food, I always explain it as the things that grow in the ground, and the things that eat the things that grow in the ground. And when you stick to eating these foods, your body can tell you, you've gotten enough. You're not hungry. You don't need to be hungry all the time. And so, as you said, I now eat what I want, when I want.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  But what I want is good, nutritious, whole, real food. And when I want it is a lot less often, because I'm not hungry all the time. Because I don't have these processed foods that are hijacking my hunger mechanisms. So to get back to what you were saying, you know, are there people in the labs, sitting there, trying to figure out what makes me, what makes me more hungry, what makes you more hungry? Yes, there are. There are food scientists who have been hired by the food industry to specifically figure out, how do we get people to buy more food? Because ultimately, that's the goal of the food industry. They're a business, like any other business, and they want you as hungry as possible.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  They want you buying their food that has the big profit margin in it. And this is now the environment we're in. If you think about, you know, you walk into your standard supermarket these days, 90% of what's in there is processed food. And it is specifically engineered to make you more hungry.

• 28:45Speaker 04

  The unfortunate side effect is that it also makes us less healthy. And so we're now in this situation where as you know, where we're kind of stuck in this environment where almost everything around us, yes, we have lots of food around us, but it's not supporting our health and it's keeping us more hungry and making us more unhealthy when we eat it.

• 29:11Anthony Pompliano?

  It's wild to think that the brands and the companies that we've entrusted with ensuring that we're not hungry are actually helping to make us more unhealthy and ultimately kill us, right? And I had Texas Slim, a Texas cattle rancher on the show and we were talking and one of the things he said is when you go into the grocery store, stay against the walls, right? Don't go in the middle. He's like, that's cartoon land. It's just there's bright colors and they got all the characters and like, the more that you see that stuff, the more they're trying to get you to buy something and distract you from the fact that it's probably not nutrient dense. And so when you go to the grocery store, like, what do you do? How do you go through the grocery store? Like, what do you buy for you and your family to eat on a daily or weekly basis?

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's mostly that. And you know, Slim and I are friends and we talk and you know, we share those ideas. So my trips to the grocery store are around the outside of the store. You know, you walk in, you have your produce section, you have your meat section, your seafood, your dairy, and you're out. It's a quick trip. It really is a lot less stressful. One of the things that I try to explain to people these days, and they look at me so strangely, it's such a strange concept, that I think a lot less about food these days. I don't spend all my time, you know, what am I going to be eating? What am I preparing?

• 30:37Speaker 04

  You know, it becomes very easy to come home, you have something in the fridge or the freezer, you can prepare most of these foods pretty simply. You know, you take a steak, you throw it on the grill, four or five minutes each side, you're eating in 10 minutes, there's no cleanup, there's no mess, you're done. And you only have to do that once or twice a day again, because you're not that hungry. You're eating the food that is, you know, providing the nutrients that your body needs.

• 31:08Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Amber Data. If you're a financial institution entering the digital asset class, you'll need access to granular on-chain and market data from multiple venues to power research, trading, risk management, and compliance. Amber Data delivers comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets, and decentralized finance, empowering financial institutions to apply traditional finance methods to digital assets. Amber Data eliminates the infrastructure setup, integrated challenges, and maintenance headaches to access digital assets data, reducing cost and time to market to enter the digital asset class. Learn more and download their digital asset data guide at www.amberdata.io/pomp. Again, that's amberdata.io/pomp. Go check them out today.

• 31:53Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Bullish. They've reinvented the digital asset exchange. They give you access to DeFi features like automated market making and liquidity pools in a regulated environment. It's a whole new way to generate alpha. Bullish's total trading volumes have exceeded $25 billion just in the seven months since it launched. And their industry-leading order depth means you can trade confidently when you want, at scale, with better pricing and lower risk, all within a regulated market environment. Good reason to be bullish. Learn more at bullish.com/pomp and follow at Bullish on Twitter today. How many times a day do you eat?

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Most days it's one, sometimes it's two.

• 32:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and are there certain hours a day that you eat or certain hours of day that you avoid eating?

• 32:37Speaker 04

  You know, I don't do this intentionally anymore. The way my schedule works out, I tend to eat later in the day. You know, I'm a skip breakfast, you know, work through the day. And then when I get kind of done and home, you know, I'll typically eat late afternoon to evening. While I was trying to get healthy, you know, the intermittent fasting, as it's usually referred to, was more of an intentional effort. But, you know, after you do it for a while, it just becomes natural. Again, you know, when we look back through our history, if you think about your grandparents or great-grandparents, they weren't eating six times a day.

• 33:17Speaker 04

  Like we do today. They typically ate once or twice a day, you know, when you look at the sort of ranchers, the farmer lifestyle, you know, you'd have a big breakfast before you head out into the fields and then you come home and, you know, you have your late afternoon or early dinner. And that's when you ate. Again, this whole messaging around eating so often, it all comes from the food industry. You know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Food industry. There's no science that shows this. The fact that you need to eat every, you know, three hours, every four hours to fuel your day. Again, this is all from the food industry.

• 34:00Speaker 04

  When you really look at it, you know, we don't need to eat nearly as often as we do. So there's really two things that ultimately are causing our health problems around food. It's what we're eating and it's how often we are eating it.

• 34:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So I've heard the intermittent fasting, which I tend to, I'm not a strict about it. I'm not like religious about it. But I definitely try to eat when I'm hungry and that tends to be mid to late afternoon. And what I noticed now is if I eat in the mornings, I'm like a little bit mentally groggy and just, it's like, okay, I actually like better to eat then. And the idea that I heard that made a lot of sense was your body needs time to relax, right? And so if you're constantly giving it food, it's constantly working. And by only eating once or twice a day and kind of eating in these windows,

• 34:59Anthony Pompliano?

  it allows your body to kind of cleanse itself and relax and that's a better way. Now, I always like to flip around the other side of the table and say, well, what's the argument I've heard for eating all day long, right? That at least seems to make common sense to the average person, which is if you want to have a faster metabolism, then eat very small portions lots of times a day and that will keep your metabolism going. I don't know if that's true. It's not.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  It's not true.

• 35:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so is that like a food industry type thing of like this obsession with putting food into your body ends up igniting metabolism? Or what is the relationship there based on how you understand it?

• 35:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, so again, this goes back to the whole concept around calories in, calories out. So, you know, one of the, again, theories as to why we have gotten so obese, why we, you know, have these health problems is just because we're taking in too much food. We're taking in more calories than we burn. And there's this other kind of misconception, I guess, that probably goes along with it, that if you all of a sudden stop eating, you know, your metabolism slows down and you're going to burn less calories. And again, neither of these have really have any, you know, good scientific data behind

• 36:20Speaker 04

  them. The problem with the calories in, calories out model is that we really can't assess either side of that equation very well.

• 36:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  So when you have people try and guess, try and track how many calories they take in, they're widely inaccurate, you know, and there's many different reasons, you know, the amount of food, you know, no one's sitting there really weighing their food scientifically every day. And even, you know, if you look at packaged food and it says it has this number of calories in it, again, science shows that that can be off by 20, 25, 30%, even if it has the label on it. So we have, we're very bad at judging at measuring how many calories do we take in?

• 37:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I never thought of the calories being off, but I've always thought that the nutrition labels were full of shit. I'm like, somebody's sitting here like, what's the difference between 7% or 8% of, you know, total carbohydrates?

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 37:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Literally, somebody is just guessing.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  You know, it, a lot of it, again, is why is the information that's on there even on there? I mean, you know, there could be lots of different things that are on food labels and, you know, they've Certain things to be on there. But, you know, if, again, if you're well intentioned and you say, okay, I'm going to count my calories and you try and count your calories, you're not going to be able to count them accurately. And then you have no idea how many calories you're burning. Outside of a laboratory environment, it is actually exceedingly difficult to accurately measure how many calories someone burns. And we have all these sort of equations that have been developed over the years to try and estimate this. But again, it ends up being widely inaccurate.

• 38:06Anthony Pompliano?

  So what you're really saying is, in order to do calories in, calories out, you'd almost have to be operating in such a perceived, like, caloric deficit to ensure for the margin of error that, like, you would eat 1,000 calories and burn 4,000, and then you could be like, yes, I'm for sure, you know, burning more than I'm eating, but that's nearly impossible for the average person.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Right. And then when you try and do that, you know, you can't sustain that over the long term. I mean, the, again, the sort of starvation reflex, let's call it, you know, our bodies aren't going to let us starve. So it's true that if you severely cut your calories and you're in a severe caloric deficit, your body's then going to ramp down your metabolism, so now you're not burning as much calories anymore. And this is where the calorie in, calorie out model as a basis for weight loss really starts to break down. Because, you know, you can actually flip it the other way. There are foods that are going to cause you to burn more calories. Protein, for instance.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  It takes more body, it takes more energy for your body to break down and process proteins than the other macros. So if you eat a lot of protein, your metabolism is actually going to go up. And so they have done studies, they're called protein overfeeding studies, where they give people just a ton of protein to eat. And those people don't get fat, you know, because their body is going to basically, you know, ramp up their metabolism to meet

• 39:43Speaker 04

  You know, to break down that protein. So, you know, calories in, calories out becomes completely useless, essentially, when you're trying to get healthy, when you're trying to lose weight. But yet, it's the message that continues to get pushed. And again, you look at who is pushing that. It's the food industry. Because if you're the food industry, and you want to distract from the fact that most of the food that you are making is such poor quality, and is damaging people's health, what you do is you say, well, it doesn't matter the type of food that you're eating, it's

• 40:23Speaker 04

  just calories in, calories out. So, we can give you 500 calories of junk food, or we can give you 500 calories of nutritious, whole, real food. And there's no difference between those two. And this ends up, you know, feeding the narrative and supporting what you, as the food industry, are trying to do, which is just sell more of your food.

• 40:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I forget, I can't remember if it was Andrew Huberman, David Sinclair, it's somebody kind of in that general scientific community that looks at nutrition, longevity. They were talking about a study, I think it was done with either mice or rats, where they basically gave them the same amount of calories, and simply giving it to them throughout the entire day, versus packing it into kind of this feeding window. And the animal that was essentially doing intermittent fasting had 20%, 25%, whatever it was, longer lifespan. And the whole idea, going back to being like, the calories were the same. What you're talking about is like, well, imagine if then you swapped out like, good calories and bad calories, even though

• 41:25Anthony Pompliano?

  the number is the same, it actually has a different impact on your body as well. And so, I know that you're a heart surgeon. I'm gonna ask you a whole bunch of questions. At any point, if you're like, hey, I don't know, like, just tap out. But I'm gonna throw you some questions that I've heard other people talk about, that they don't know the answers, and I don't know the answers to. First being, hey, I grew up in a household, and I was a kid, I just ate what my parents told me to eat. They didn't know any of this stuff. Frankly, they didn't care about any of this stuff. They were worried about making money and going to work and, you know, trying to live as happy of a life as we could. Can I reverse the errors of 10, 20, 30, 40 years by now starting to eat healthy? How do you look at, and maybe in some of your patients you've seen, like, can food

• 42:09Anthony Pompliano?

  have a really negative effect and then just simply making the changes today? Can that reverse some of the damage that's been done? Or is it more so just you can stop creating more damage moving forward?

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the great news is that this can be improved anytime. You know, there may be damage that we're not able to undo. You know, again, when I look at the people who end up on my operating table, the people who I'm doing surgery on, you know, even if they change what they eat at that point, we're probably not going to be able to avoid the need for the surgery. But we can still improve them. We can still improve where they are, and we can prevent more future problems from occurring. Because what I tell people now about heart surgery, what I tell the patients that I operate on, is that the surgery that I'm doing isn't changing what led to you needing

• 43:03Speaker 04

  the surgery in the first place. It's not addressing that root cause. And again, this is a problem we see over and over in our healthcare system today. We give you the medicine, we do the surgery, we're not addressing the root cause. But if you start to address that root cause, you can undo some of the damage, you can prevent more damage from occurring, and you can make your life better. You can improve your health. You know, I look at where I was 7, 8 years ago before I started this, and I was prediabetic and I was morbidly obese. Thankfully, I didn't get to the point where I had, you know, heart disease.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  But I would have been there, clearly, you know, and I have many...

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Many lines of evidence that show me that. You know, my dad had heart surgery. My grandmother died of heart disease. So I was clearly headed down that path.

• 44:02Anthony Pompliano?

  For those that don't understand, when you say heart disease, you've mentioned a couple of times, like, what exactly is happening in the heart? It's not a heart attack. It's not like some of these things that people may be more familiar with. What exactly is heart disease?

• 44:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, so there are many forms of heart disease. But again, the most common form we talk about is what we call atherosclerosis. Build up of plaque in the arteries on the heart. So we have to realize the heart is a muscle. And the heart is our most unique muscle because it never stops working until it does. And that's a bad day. But so the heart is constantly pumping and it obviously has a lot of demand for oxygen, nutrients, needs a lot of blood flow to support that. And so when these plaques start to build up in the arteries of the heart and the blood flow to the muscle now gets decreased, it can, it has a lot of problems. And it can take a couple of different forms.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  It can lead to a heart attack. It can lead to what we call heart failure, where the muscle becomes too weak to keep up with the pumping demands. But most of the time when people refer to heart disease, this is the type of heart disease that we're talking about.

• 45:12Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of that is food? How much of that is stress? And how much of that is, I'll call it vices? Drugs, alcohol, you know, whatever crazy things that they're doing. And what made me think of this is the vices, there's some people who are very well known, especially on the internet, for doing all kinds of crazy stuff, from drinking all the time, cocaine, whatever. And they've had heart attacks in their 30s and early 40s. And you're like, okay, well, that seems to be an outlier. Maybe there's some connection with the lifestyle. But then also you hear all the time, like, oh, that person had a heart attack and they were just super stressed out. And so I guess like, is it all three? Is it actually one of these things, but we as humans are dumb and we just like to assign blame to a bunch of different things? Like, how do you, as a heart surgeon, look at it?

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it is all of those things. And genetics also get thrown in a lot. What's the breakdown between them? I don't think we have exact numbers, but I today will tell you that food is probably 90% of it.

• 46:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 46:14Speaker 04

  It's a big part of it.

• 46:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you go as far as to say if you ate healthy and did cocaine and drank alcohol, that you'd be better off than if you ate super unhealthy and didn't do that stuff?

• 46:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I probably wouldn't go quite that far, but I would say if you eat healthy, and again, what does healthy mean to me? It means eating whole, real food. You're probably going to be just fine. When we look at the 80/20 rule, it's clearly the 80% and maybe more is food. It's always interesting because people tend to think of the genetics as a big part of it. And they say, "Oh, well, my dad had heart disease. My grandfather has heart disease. I have heart disease, it must be genetic." But the reality is that much of that is the habits that get passed down within the family. So, like I said, my grandmother had heart disease.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  My father has heart disease. I don't have heart disease. Do I have different genetics? Probably not. But I've changed these habits that got passed down from my grandmother to my father to me. And I clearly was on my way to developing heart disease, but I was able to change my habits and avoid that. So, the message I try and get across to people is that genetics do play some role, but they're very small. It's mostly our habits. And our habits are what we eat, first and foremost. And then the other stuff you mentioned, stress certainly plays a role in it, sleep plays a role in it, how much activity you get plays a role in it.

• 47:55Speaker 04

  And then there are other toxins, is the way that I like to think about it, besides the food that we are eating. And these can be things like drugs. This can be some of the pollution, some of the things in our environment that also clearly contribute to heart disease. But...

• 48:15Speaker 04

  The major cause of the heart disease epidemic that we are seeing today, that we have been seeing for the past 70 years in this country, is coming from the food that we are eating.

• 48:27Anthony Pompliano?

  When we see the food pyramid, when we hear the food industry, when we are teaching our kids in schools, what to eat and what not to eat. If you eat too much red meat, you will get heart disease. You are a heart surgeon and you're saying the exact opposite.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  Yep. And the science says the exact opposite.

• 48:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, what's the disagreement here between too much red meat equals heart disease? Whereas you're saying like, no, actually too much of the other bullshit is causing the heart disease. And like, you should actually be eating more of this kind of nutrient dense meat.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you know, this starts to get into different types of scientific studies. And without getting too deep in the weeds, you know, one of the major types of scientific studies that are used when it comes to nutrition is what we call epidemiology.

• 49:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  So you track how people eat. And a lot of this is self-reported and it's inaccurate. But putting that aside for a moment, we track what people eat. And then we try and correlate to their health outcomes. But the problem is, you know, when you ask someone, you know, how much meat you eat? And they give you an answer. A lot of that, you know, we don't eat meat in isolation. Most of us are not eating only red meat. Although me and a lot of my friends now are eating mostly only red meat. But when someone says they ate a hamburger, what does that mean? Well, it means they had the meat that made up the hamburger. But most of the time, it also means they had the bun.

• 50:00Speaker 04

  They had the ketchup. They had the toppings. They had the french fries that they had with their hamburger. And they drank the Coke, you know, with their hamburger as well. So you look at all that and you put it together and you start to analyze it. And you say, oh, look, they ate more red meat. They got more heart disease. It must be the meat that's causing it. But again, maybe it was the Coke. Maybe it was the french fries. Maybe it's the bun. And you know, when you really isolate out red meat, you cannot find a relationship with heart disease or cancer, by the way, which is another one that gets put forward, or any of these ill health effects.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  And we can look at this in a number of different ways. But, you know, one of the ways that I think is most relevant to look at it is, let's think evolutionarily. You know, what have we been eating for the vast majority of our existence as human beings? We have been eating meat. What haven't we been eating for the vast majority of our existence as human beings? The processed food, the fake oils, the, you know, the highly processed carbohydrates. So when we see these diseases that all of a sudden have become a problem, again, at a high level, you have to sit back and you have to think, you know, what's more likely to be causing this problem?

• 51:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You mentioned oil, a hot topic on the internet. There's the like canola oils, there's the extra virgin olive oils, there's no oil, there's everything in between. What are the good ones? And what are the ones that you're like literally avoid at all costs? And those are gonna, you know, essentially just kill you?

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, so again, this is where it really starts to become ironic. Because one of the things I tell people is if it is a bottle of oil and it has a heart healthy label on it, it is not heart healthy. These are your vegetable oils, these are your canola oils. All of these highly processed seed oils, as they're called, are not healthy. Again, these are things that have been introduced into our food supply only within the past hundred to 150 years. We actually have very good scientific studies. So I mentioned before epidemiologic studies, which are not very good. They can't show causation.

• 52:25Speaker 04

  But there are also things called interventional studies that can show causation. And we have a number of interventional studies looking at vegetable and seed oils. That show that they shorten, they have higher mortality. And they don't lower the incidence of heart disease.

• 52:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 52:45Speaker 04

  What they are promoted to do, they do not do. So again, it's the same thing around, you know, the meta-concept. Eat whole, real food that's been minimally processed. Eat the foods that we have been eating for millions of years. Stay away from these new foods that have been introduced. So what does that look like when it comes to fats and oils? It looks like animal products. So these are going to be your animal fats, things like tallow and beef. These are going to be your butter, you know, your cream, your, again, animal deprived, animal derived fats.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  And then you want to look for what are called fruit oils instead of seed oils. So fruit oils, which are your olive oil, your coconut oil, your avocado oil, that come from the actual fruit as opposed to the seed, takes a lot less to extract them. They don't get processed and they seem to be less damaging than the highly processed.

• 53:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's the problem with the seed oil is not so much where it came from as much as the process to actually extract it is a heavy processing. And therefore, whatever is injected and treated and all of that getting into your body is essentially just toxins to the body and causing a lot of the issues?

• 54:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's, it's the industrial process that goes into extracting it and whatever that introduces into it. And it's also how the ratios of the types of fats that are then changed by that processing. So, you know, we have basically, you know, when we look at fats in our diet.

• 54:27Speaker 04

  They are broken into broad categories saturated fat and unsaturated fats. And the unsaturated fats are then further differentiated between mono unsaturated and polyunsaturated. And the more unsaturated a fat becomes, the more unstable it becomes. So it's prone to being damaged, oxidized specifically. And these damaged fats, these are what ultimately leads to the problems in our body. And so when you look at these vegetable and seed oils, as they become more processed, they become more unsaturated and they therefore become more prone to damage.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  A simple sort of thought exercise for people about this is, you know, that bottle of canola oil labeled heart healthy and you leave it out on your counter with the cap open for like two days, what's going to happen to it? It becomes rancid. It smells horrible. It changes color. You know, we know instinctually, stay away from it. Don't eat it. Now go back and think about your grandmother, your great grandmother, and they very likely had the bottle of bacon grease that would sit out on the counter for months at a time and it was just fine. And they would cook with it and we would eat it and, you know, no issues.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  Bacon grease, you know, lard, pig fat at that time, very saturated, no problems. Coconut oil, again, a fruit oil has basically the highest concentration of saturated fat of almost any oil that we eat. You can leave it out on the counter, it's never going to go bad essentially. And this oxidation process that happens to the vegetable oil sitting on your countertop also happens within our bodies and that's where the damage really starts to occur.

• 56:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Speaking of coconut oil, one of the things somebody sent me one time, people send me weird food things because they know that I like, find this stuff fascinating, was that You can actually take coconut oil, swish it around in your mouth and then spit it out and it'll help like clean your teeth. It's like actually one of like a natural like teeth.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  Whitening it's called, yeah, oil pulling, yeah.

• 56:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And I remember just being like, who figured that out, right? Like, so who was sitting there like, what can I put in my mouth and see if it'll clean my teeth or not? But like, there are these things that we, I think, realize, you're probably not going to get that type of reaction and process out of something that is really bad for you. Right? It seems pretty clear that in that process, it is able to provide a benefit to the body. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that it isn't chemicals and the kind of all this craziness that you're putting into your body.

• 57:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. You know, I think a lot of this, it turns out, is instinctual, you know? Again, when you go back, you know, sort of through the evolutionary record and you see the things that we ate naturally. And we figured it out as humans. And again, we've gotten into this environment, this modern environment where the information around food has become so jumbled, so garbled, that now everyone's like, what do I eat? It's like, we never really had a problem figuring out what to eat in the past. It's only now that we do. And, you know, I do think that that is sort of intentional on many levels.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  Because again, if you're a food company and you're trying to sell this processed food that's highly profitable, but clearly not good for our health. You just try and confuse everyone as much as possible and they sort of throw their hands up and they said, okay, I guess I'll just eat whatever is convenient. And that's what's convenient. And you have success. So, you know, when I'm working with people now and I'm trying to get them to understand how to be healthy. One of the first steps is that intentionality about what you're eating. Instead of just grabbing whatever is most convenient. Think about, you know, is this food supporting my health or not?

• 58:42Speaker 04

  And if we just ask that question more, I think we would end up in a better place.

• 58:47Anthony Pompliano?

  So dinner, lunch, if you want to eat breakfast, whatever, nutritionally dense food tends to be meat. We've talked a lot about red meat. What about like things like chicken or other types of meat that maybe aren't just steak? Or hamburgers or something like that?

• 59:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, you know, one of the other issues we get into is, you know, when you start to think about the types of meat that you're going to eat, you have to start thinking about what that animal was fed. And I know, you know, Texas Slim certainly got into this conversation with you. But, you know, ruminant animals, so these are animals that have multiple stomachs. These are, you know, beef is the most common thing, but, you know, many of the red meats that we eat, these are all ruminant animals. And one of the magic things that ruminant animals can do is that they can

• 59:44Speaker 04

  process these grains, process what they're eating and minimize the damage from it. So they turn a lot of the unsaturated fats that they are fed back into saturated fat. Humans can't do that. Non-ruminant animals can't do that. So chickens, pigs, these are not ruminant animals. And so the problem with pork, the problem with chicken oftentimes these days is that those animals are fed very lousy diets, which they oftentimes are. It's going to have more effects in their meat. So that's why red meat is probably the healthiest thing to eat. Now, is chicken better than the box of Oreos?

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  Clearly it is. So again, I tell people at a high level, you know, eat real food. Make that, you know, kind of the first rule.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  80/20 principle, eat real food first. And then if you want to really get into the weeds, um, yeah, most red meat is going to be healthier than most non-red meat, um, you know, sourcing your food well, uh, connecting with a local rancher in an ideal world and knowing what that food that you're eating, what it was eating, um, is going to be, uh, uh, more beneficial.

• 1:01:07Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by FTX US. They're the safe, regulated way to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital assets. Trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than the top competitors. There are no fixed minimums, no ACH transaction fees, and no withdrawal fees. Download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP to earn free crypto on every trade over $10. The more you trade, the more you earn. Go download the FTX app today and use referral code POMP. This episode is brought to you by Alto IRA. They can help you invest in Bitcoin and crypto in a tax advantaged way. That helps you preserve your hard-earned money. Alto's crypto IRA lets you invest in Bitcoin and over 200 other different coins and tokens, and it has all the same tax advantages of your traditional IRA. There's no setup or account fees, and

• 1:01:52Anthony Pompliano?

  it's all you need to do, invest in crypto tax-free. Let me repeat that again. You can invest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies tax-free. So, are you ready to take your investments to the next level? Diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches. Open an Alto Crypto IRA to invest in Bitcoin and crypto tax-free. Go to altoira.com/pomp. That's A-L-T-O-I-R-A dot com slash pomp. Start investing today. So, doing this at home, pretty self-explanatory. Go get the meat, cook it, don't put crazy shit on it, whatever. When you go to a restaurant, there's a little bit of a black box. Like, you order something on the menu, it comes out, it looks good. You don't really know what happened back there. Is there anything that you do when you go to a restaurant to

• 1:02:37Anthony Pompliano?

  ensure that you're at least increasing the probability that you're eating healthy, even if you're just ordering a steak?

• 1:02:42Speaker 04

  Um, you know, a lot of it just starts with just eating the steak, you know, cause I can tell, yeah, you know, is there a chance that they threw some vegetable oil on the grill with it? Yeah, there's a chance of that. That's probably gonna have minimal effect. Um, but if I'm just eating the steak, I know I'm eating the steak. Uh, if you're eating things that are, you know, have a lot of sauces in them, you don't know what's in the sauce. Um, uh, you know, obviously, uh, the side dishes, things like that, you can, you know, it can lead to more problems. Uh, so I try and keep it pretty simple when I go out to eat. You know, most of the time when I go out to eat, it's going to be a steak. It's going to be a burger without the bun, without the toppings.

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  Um, it's gonna be a piece of fish or something like that, that I can have at least a pretty good idea of what, uh, went into that.

• 1:03:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Eighty twenty.

• 1:03:34Speaker 04

  Eighty twenty rule again. Um, but you know, again, on the big picture, the less you eat out, probably the healthier you're gonna be, you know? If we got better connected with our food, if we prepare our food, if we know what goes into it, uh, that's gonna lead us to a better place than if we're outsourcing that to someone else.

• 1:03:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Airports, I've seen you tweet about this before.

• 1:03:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Anthony Pompliano?

  There's no good food in an airport. And this is coming from somebody in 2019, took 120 flights.

• 1:04:02Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:04:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I lived in airports. I ate in airports every single day. It was horrendous. Uh, I got to the point where I would like, uh, go and get like a Cliff Bar and I was like, well, I guess this is maybe sort of possibly the most healthy thing I could get here. Um, now I'm a little bit more intentional if I'm ever in an airport in terms of going and sitting at the restaurant and, and have enough time and all that. Are there any tips or tricks when people are in airports or traveling a lot that they should kind of adhere to? Maybe it's just not eat at the airport? I don't know.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, so, yeah, travel becomes a great, uh, time to, uh, fast, uh, to do the intermittent fasting.

• 1:04:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you ever had Auntie Anne's though? You smell the front, smell all the way down the terminal, you're like, I gotta go stop.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  Again, they're manipulating you. Um, but yeah, I travel a lot too, you know? So, uh, my heart surgery work these days is all travel, you know, I'm on airplanes, uh, you know. Three weeks a month, I'm flying back and forth for the most part. So I travel a lot. So fasting is probably my best rule. But really, you know, go to any of the burger places and order a couple of burger patties without the bun, without the toppings, you'll be all right. Is it the highest quality meat? No, it's not. But again, it's still going to be better than the alternatives. Or if you have the time to sit down at the restaurant and order the steak or, you know, some grilled shrimp or a grilled piece of fish, something simple like that. Those are my go-tos.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  And then, you know, what can you bring with you? You know, things like a beef jerky, you know, that's made without, you know, too much sugar. Biltong, which is a South African type of beef jerky essentially that's cleaner. Great thing to, you know, throw in your bag. Some nuts, you know, things like this that you can take with you or another great. But it comes again back to that intentionality, back to that sort of thinking about it, planning about it a little bit. And, you know, can you, before you get to the airport, can you, after you get to, you know, after you get to wherever you're going. These are some of the things I think about.

• 1:06:08Speaker 04

  But it is interesting, you know, the airport as a sort of microcosm of our environment. And then being on the airplane and you're just like, you know.

• 1:06:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you see the article recently that says when you're in the air, your taste buds, they change? And therefore, part of the airplane menu, they try to create a menu that when you're on the airplane in the air, it will actually be things that you think taste well. So I think they said tomato juice, I think, like a lot of people like, I think it was tomato juice. For whatever reason, it, the amount that is ordered on the airplane is way outpacing in a normal restaurant or anything. And it has something to do with the changes physiologically while you're in the air.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  I haven't seen that article, but interesting to think about.

• 1:06:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, do you eat on the airplane? Or are you just like, I'm staying away from anything that they possibly could give me while? 30,000 feet in the air.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's pretty rare that I'm gonna be eating on an airplane, you know, a pretty long, you know, overseas trip. I might, you know, try and pick out, you know, pick away, you know, they bring you the whole plate and, you know, and also, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you I'm perfect. I'm not gonna tell you, you know, I never eat processed food. I'm human. But again, 80/20 rule. And think about where you are and what your goals are. This is another key concept around this. You know, if you are very unhealthy, which unfortunately, most of us are, but if you're very unhealthy and you're trying to get healthy, you know, that's gonna look different than if you're healthy and you're active, you

• 1:07:47Speaker 04

  know, then yeah, you do have some tolerance for some of this stuff, you know. Again, most of this stuff isn't acutely poisonous to us. It's not gonna kill you right away. And in small amounts, every once in a while, it's probably gonna be fine. So, you know, once or twice a month, when I'm out with my family and I'm out with my kids, and yeah, I have dessert at the restaurant, you know, and, but

• 1:08:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Cancelled.

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  It's not every night, you know. And again, I, you know, the other 95% of the time, I am eating just whole, real food. And so, and I've gotten healthy, you know, again, a lot different than, you know, eight years ago when I was morbidly obese and I was prediabetic. So you have to, you know, you take all of that into account.

• 1:08:37Anthony Pompliano?

  You mentioned sleep earlier, and it's something that over the last two years, I've gotten obsessive about. I used to, six hours, maybe, and I just thought that's how like everyone lived, right? Was you're kinda, let me get some coffee and move through it. Now, I sleep eight hours almost religiously every single night, sometimes a little bit more.

• 1:09:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And if I ever have to sleep six because I misjudge time or I gotta get up early to do something, whatever, I feel horrible. Like, I'm like, I cannot believe that I live life this way. And the number one thing that I notice, horrible emotional regulation, right? Just irritable. I'm like, all the things that that people associate with lack of sleep. Second thing is I eat horribly. I eat different types of food and I eat way more as well. How, what's the science behind that? Or is that just me like in my own head and I'm like, oh, I only slept six hours. So let me go eat like a pig and blame it on the sleep?

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  No, we do have some pretty good science, you know, that reinforces that. So sleep is essential to our health. You know, what I tell people is, again, two things to consider in terms of your sleep, similar to food. It's the amount that you're sleeping, but it's also the quality of your sleep. So, you know, six hours of good, high quality sleep can oftentimes be better than eight hours of poor quality sleep. So, you know, this is where you want to start paying attention to the things that are affecting the quality of your sleep. The foods that we eat affects the quality of our sleep. You know, that relationship between food and sleep works both ways. Because when we eat lousy food, we sleep worse. And when

• 1:10:23Speaker 04

  we sleep worse, we get hungrier, we get more irritable, we want to eat more of the lousy food that, you know, kind of makes us maybe feel a little better in the short term. But clear relationship there. So, you know, again, what are the high level concepts? What you eat is most important. But then the other things that come into play, sleep is probably the next biggest one.

• 1:10:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm an investor in a company, Eight Sleep. They've had the thermal regulated mattress. And although I love the team, I love the product, all the stuff, one of the most valuable pieces of the product to me is I get a notification every day. And it's almost like a lottery, right? Like, notification will say, have less energy today? Don't be surprised. Like, your heart rate was 6% higher last night than average. Or like this morning, your heart rate was 10% lower than on average. Like, that's why you have so much energy. And I like ask myself like, do I feel like I have more or less energy? And maybe it's 80, 90% of the time, I actually do feel like there's some variability to it. And of course, the implicit thing is that it's the product itself, right?

• 1:11:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And kind of I sleep with it ice cold, so like that should be helping me. But how much of that actual like heart performance in your sleep has an impact on some of this stuff? Like if you can drive that resting heart rate while you're sleeping down, whether it's through a product I eat, sleep, it's exercise, food, whatever, like, is that actually really, really important?

• 1:11:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so specifically what we're talking about there is what's called heart rate variability, HRV, and it does seem to have a impact on recovery and on performance. You know, I do always question, you know, how much of this is, you know, sort of the placebo effect, the psychological effect that you see that number and you're like, oh, today's gonna be a great day, or you see that number, you're like, today's not gonna be such a great day. But, you know, we do see correlate. So for a lot of people, one of the things, you know, that I, that they'll notice around HRV and sleep is if you, you know, don't drink alcohol for a period of time, your HRV tends to get better.

• 1:12:36Speaker 04

  Or at least you don't drink it too close to going to sleep, your HRV is gonna get better. You know, people who, you know, I'll notice it in myself, you know, that once or twice a month that I do have the dessert when we're out to dinner, and then I go home and I'm like, I didn't sleep so good that night, you know? And HRV is one of the ways to, to measure that.

• 1:13:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm gonna tell you a crazy story. This is not an experience I had, but I have a friend who will go unnamed, was in Las Vegas, and he was at the club, and according to the way he told me the story is he saw Tiger Woods at the club and he was having a friggin blast. And he was going back to his hotel room and he just happened to go by the gym, right? And he saw Tiger Woods running on the treadmill at like 3:30, 4 o'clock in the morning. And so he was just like, whatever. And this guy's in the sports world, right? And so he goes into the gym and he's basically like, hey, man, what are you doing? I saw you drinking, it's 4 o'clock in the morning. And the way he tells the story is that Tiger basically was like, if you sweat it out before you go to sleep, it doesn't count.

• 1:13:42Anthony Pompliano?

  What possible science is there behind, you mentioned not drinking right before you go to sleep, is there anything around the effect on your heart or on your sleep of like actually sweating out alcohol before you go to bed?

• 1:13:56Speaker 04

  You know, there probably is something to processing the alcohol in some way. So, you know, alcohol is a toxin to our bodies. It's interesting, you know, when we think about, you know, where we get energy from, you know, everyone thinks about carbohydrates and they think about dietary fat. And, you know, what they don't oftentimes account for is, you know, alcohol is another energy source for our body. But alcohol is toxic to our bodies. So if there's alcohol in the system, the body's going to do everything it can to get rid of that alcohol first and foremost. And it's going to stop processing the things down the line.

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  So, you know, the sugar that so many of us take with our alcohol, you know, it basically ends up hanging out in our bodies longer while our bodies trying to get rid of that alcohol. So, exercise, sweating, these are other ways of, you know, processing this, of getting rid of it. So there probably is something to that. You know, I'm assuming this was Tiger in his younger days and he probably was able to handle it anyway, being in such great shape. But yeah, you know, if you can do something to get rid of that alcohol, whether it's exercise or go sit in the sauna or something like that, there probably is some validity to that.

• 1:15:21Speaker 04

  Now, again, does that mean that you should drink more alcohol because, oh, you can just go sit in the sauna? Doesn't quite work that way.

• 1:15:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So, as a heart surgeon, one of the things I've always been fascinated by, specifically around the heart and I think like lifestyle, is when I was in college, there was an absolute explosion of energy drinks and then alcoholic energy drinks. And I remember kind of watching these, you know, become popular. And at some point, some of them were forced to actually change the formula because it seemed like the amount of energy drink was actually masking how much alcohol was being delivered and kids were dying and it got pretty gruesome.

• 1:16:06Anthony Pompliano?

  How much impact does I guess caffeine, these energy drinks, etc. have on the heart? And like, how bad are they for you, right? Somebody goes and grabs a Monster or a Red Bull and they drink one a week versus if you're drinking one a day, like, is that any different than drinking coffee? Or how do you think about that?

• 1:16:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do think there are some uniquely, you know, damaging effects from these products. And, and, you know, it's probably the concentrated caffeine with the sugar that is in most of these energy drinks as well. So, you know, coffee is one of these interesting things that, you know, the science is always flipping on, you know, coffee's good for you, coffee's bad for you. Coffee and eggs, I think, are the two most common things that, you know, you get every week, there's a new study coming out. In the end, I don't think that there's anything too damaging about drinking coffee.

• 1:17:02Speaker 04

  I don't think it's the caffeine itself that's necessarily a problem. But when you start to combine caffeine, sugar, in these high amounts, in these concentrated amounts, not great for you. You know, so, we talk about processed food. We also have to think about processed drink. We have to think about, you know, one of the other big rules, you know, that I and many others give for people who are trying to improve their health, is don't drink calories. There's really no need to drink calories.

• 1:17:42Speaker 04

  And there's, you know, the, the forms that the calories we can drink come in are usually going to be from sugar, they're going to be from processed food. So, you know, probably something that we should avoid, for the most part, is drinking calories. But yeah, there clearly was an association between these energy drinks and, you know, negative effects on the heart. And they're not, not something that I recommend.

• 1:18:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What about protein shakes? We mentioned earlier, high protein diet, obviously, gets to metabolism and kind of all these things. But it's a synthetic form, right? It's a powder that ends up getting kind of, add water and supposed to deliver all this protein.

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm assuming it's not as good as steak, but is it like the next best thing? Or should people avoid these?

• 1:18:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I think, again, they probably,

• 1:18:40Speaker 04

  if they're a limited part, they shouldn't be your primary source of protein ultimately. And ultimately, you're always going to be better getting it as whole real food. But, you know, real life happens and convenience and, you know, sometimes it's just not feasible to get enough protein or, you know, to have it in forms that are available to you. So I tell people, if you're going to use protein shakes, you know, try and make sure they are as clean as possible. I recommend animal derived proteins, I think are better absorbed, provide a better amino acid profile than the plant proteins. So, you know, I try and look for a nice, clean whey protein shake.

• 1:19:23Speaker 04

  And again, keep it as simple as possible. You know, if you're taking that protein powder, one of the big mistakes I see, this oftentimes will be at the gym, people go and they do their workout and then they go to the smoothie bar and they're like, oh, well, there's protein powder in my smoothie, so it must be healthy. But meanwhile, it's sugar and, you know, all this other processed stuff that's going into that smoothie. And so, you know, is the protein powder itself damaging? Probably not, but all the other stuff you've now put into that smoothie is, you know, going to be undoing a lot of the, you know, benefits that you've gotten from the time at the gym.

• 1:20:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's fascinating.

• 1:20:03Speaker 04

  It's, it's, it's an area that I tell people you should be cautious about. And again, be intentional. Find the best, you know, cleanest, simplest protein powder you can get and then, you know, make the smoothie yourself with, you know, like my go to is going to be whole milk, little bit of protein powder. And then, you know, that, that's really all you need. And that protein shake is going to be better than the prepackaged, pre-made protein shake that has like 12 different ingredients in it that you can't pronounce.

• 1:20:36Anthony Pompliano?

  So you mentioned milk. Growing up, I'm pretty sure we just drank 2% milk. Like that was just what we got was in the refrigerator. You kind of get used to it. And so all of a sudden, whole milk or something else tastes like a little off, right? Whole milk, obviously, I think has had a resurgence, maybe. Like, people are like more excited about it. Then there's raw milk, which is like a whole nother thing. How do you look at these milks? And like, what's good for you, what's not good for you? If you're just drinking milk, is that like 80/20 and hey, milk is better than no milk? Or what do you think?

• 1:21:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, you know, so whole milk is my typical recommendation. Anything that's other than whole milk, again, is going to be more processed. So 2% milk, skim milk, what have they done? They've taken the fat out and they've replaced it with sugar, carbohydrates. So if you're going to drink milk, I recommend whole milk. The raw milk thing, you know, may have some validity to it. So the pasteurization process, which again, was originally promoted for food safety reasons. We see that it damages the proteins in that milk. It changes them, so our bodies can't process them as well.

• 1:21:54Speaker 04

  There is a lot of debate about, you know, whether we should be drinking milk at all. You know, you look at all other mammals and once they are weaned, once they are in, you know, out of childhood, they basically stop drinking milk.

• 1:22:08Speaker 04

  Is milk damaging to us? Hard to say. You know, we get into all the issues with lactose intolerance. But again, a lot of that comes from the processing of the milk. The gut damage, you know, the intestinal damage that so many of us have because of the food that we have been eating, that then allow these milk proteins to get across the barrier in our gut that they don't normally get across. And so we say we're intolerant to the milk, but it turns out that we just have gut damage from the lousy food that we're eating. So I have Worked with a number of people who, you know, I'm lactose intolerant, they tell me.

• 1:22:51Speaker 04

  And, you know, we go through all the thing, we get their diet cleaned up and their gut heals and their overall health improves. And now they can start drinking milk again and they don't have the problems with it. So, you know, it oftentimes becomes hard to separate out, you know, is it the milk itself? Or is it other things, you know, that have damaged our health that we are now no longer able to tolerate this?

• 1:23:16Anthony Pompliano?

  This leads to like the kombucha and like, I'm gonna mispronounce every single word because it's like kinda woo woo science to me. But it leads to gut health and like, oh, we could do all this other stuff.

• 1:23:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Which kinda feels like maybe you're hinting at that like what you're eating ruins something in your gut. And now you're gonna take something else to try to cure what is could just be cured by eating healthy food?

• 1:23:38Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah, that's, you know, gut health is probably a whole nother topic that we can spend another three hours on. But yeah, a lot of that comes down to exactly that, you know? Why are our guts unhealthy? It's because of the food that we are eating. And when you get back to eating whole real food and the gut heals and all of a sudden, a lot of these gut problems get better. You know, again, I've now worked with a number of people and, you know, I've had, you know, contact with a lot more people. And they had all of these gut problems, irritable bowel disease, you know, that got fixed. When they changed the food that they are eating and all the medications that they were given.

• 1:24:23Speaker 04

  And a lot of these people end up unfortunately needing surgery and things like that. And most of it can be tracked down, tracked back to the food that they ate.

• 1:24:33Anthony Pompliano?

  One of your most interesting ideas, which I know nothing about, is the connection between metabolic health and mental health. And when I saw you tweeting about this, I was like, man, I don't think I've really heard that many people talk about that. Cause usually the mental health thing is like, I call it like the thoughts and prayer strategy, like, oh, my word should help you. Or there is a strategy around, let's just give you like pharmaceutical medicine. Explain more as to the connection between metabolic health and mental health and like why you think that if you fix your metabolic health, that may actually help on some of this other stuff.

• 1:25:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, and this is something that has been most fascinating to me as well because, you know, as a heart surgeon, I didn't think a lot about mental health. And then as you get into this metabolic health thing, and for instance, Dr. Christopher Palmer, he's a psychiatrist who has now published extensively on this, has an upcoming book, and, you know, is probably one of the leaders in this area. And he has shown clear relationships between our metabolic health and our mental health, and that a lot of our mental health issues

• 1:25:46Speaker 04

  probably stems from inflammation in the brain. And, you know, just like we get the inflammation in our gut from eating these processed foods, these unhealthy foods, we get inflammation in our brain. And he has extensive experience with pretty advanced mental health disorders, things like schizophrenia, that he routinely now, and he's been doing this for 20 years, he routinely sees improvements in these serious mental health conditions just by changing the food that people are eating.

• 1:26:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:26:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, mind blowing stuff.

• 1:26:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And not even necessarily exercise. I'm sure exercise gets laid in as well, but just food alone could improve the metabolic health, which then could have an impact on the mental health.

• 1:26:35Speaker 04

  Yep, just changing the food that we eat.

• 1:26:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  And there are many different reasons that that can be, that may be true, you know, at the physiologic level, you know, inflammation in the brain, the fuel that your brain is running on, the fuel that your body is running on. One of the other major sort of shifts that we see on a metabolic level, when we stop eating processed food, when we eat less carbohydrates, is our bodies start relying more on fat for energy. Ketogenesis, the ketogenic diet that we've all heard so much about. What that means at a physiologic level is that the primary fuel source that our body is using shifts from sugars to fats, essentially.

• 1:27:23Speaker 04

  And this has a lot of unique effects. And it turns out that two of the organs that it probably has the most effect on are our brains and our heart. So when you shift your body towards a ketogenic metabolism in the brain and the brain starts using more ketones for energy than sugar for energy, a lot of good things happen. And again, this is probably our baseline. This is how we were meant to function. And getting back to that can fix a lot of these mental health problems that we see.

• 1:27:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you have patients like measure are they in ketosis or not? Or anything like, like, I guess, like, how serious or obsessed do you want them to be about actually getting to like that ketosis, you know, kind of environment versus, hey, just do the 80/20 and like, do enough to kind of be headed in that direction?

• 1:28:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, so again, it depends on, you know, where you're coming from and what your goals are. There are certain conditions that you do need to maintain pretty strict ketosis. And so I will have people measure. If it's just a general health thing, probably not as necessary. And it's also, you know, as you get used to it, you know, the information maybe doesn't become as useful anymore. When you're first trying to do these things, getting that feedback, are you in ketosis, can be useful. And so sometimes I will have people measure it, but oftentimes I don't. When you start to look at some of these feedback tools that we can get, some of these things

• 1:29:01Speaker 04

  that we can measure, probably the most useful thing, and again, hot topic that many people are hearing about, continuous glucose monitoring. And we see, you know, many people who wear continuous glucose monitors. That is actually something that I think can be very useful. And again, it's going to depend on where you're starting from, what you're trying to achieve, you know, do you need it all the time? For most people, probably not. But at the beginning of your journey, I find it to be very useful with patients because, you know, when we get back to, again, the foods that we're eating. And we oftentimes don't have something that we can immediately get that feedback.

• 1:29:46Speaker 04

  You know, you eat the food, you might not feel bad right away. It's only over many months and years that these things start to build up. But our blood sugar level is something that we can measure. And we now have very good tools, continuous glucose monitors, that we can see it immediately. And, you know, if you eat the food and your blood sugar is shooting up, that is a problem. And it's a problem maybe with your underlying state of health, and it also may be a problem with the food. So, continuous glucose monitors, I recommend them often. I use them often with my patients. Ketone measurements, again, can be useful. We don't have a continuous ketone monitor, would probably be useful.

• 1:30:31Speaker 04

  Continuous insulin monitoring would probably be one of the most useful things we can figure out, but we don't have it available. So, but intermittently measuring insulin is another thing that I do with my patients as well.

• 1:30:46Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Arculus. Arculus is the next generation crypto and NFT cold storage wallet that combines one of the world's strongest security protocols with the easiest to use form factor and app. They have three factor authentication and you can use your PIN and the Arculus key card along with biometrics. They don't compromise your holdings by requiring a USB port, charging or browser connections. With Arculus, you're protected from hackers and institutions freezing your access. Learn more today and buy it now at getarculus.com. You can use promo code POMP to save 15%. Getarculus.com, use promo code POMP. And remember, with Arculus, it's your keys, your crypto. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep.

• 1:31:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Good sleep is the ultimate game changer and the Eight Sleep Pod is the ultimate sleep machine. The Pod is the only sleep technology that dynamically cools and heats each side of the bed to maintain the optimal sleeping temperature for what your body needs. With the Pod, you can start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. What is the result? Clinical data shows that Eight Sleep users experience Up to 19% increase in recovery, 32% improvement in sleep quality, and up to 34% more deep sleep. How do I know it works? I sleep on it every single night and it works so well that I begged the founders, let me invest in the company. Go check them out today at 8sleep.com/pomp and save $150 on the pod. Again, 8sleep.com/pomp, you get $150 off when you use code POMP.

• 1:32:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I've got a friend Jeff Wu who started a company HVMN. And they recently were able to get their hands on some IP from DARPA and the US government about 15, 20 years ago. What they saw was they ran some tests on if we gave people ketones, could we get them to a state of ketosis on a faster basis? And the idea was basically can we take our warfighters that are out on the battlefield, give them a drink essentially, and if that works, then like this would be amazing. He has been able to commercialize it. I think it's called Ketone IQ. He's given it to me, I've used it, something's going on, right? When I drink it, something happens. I'm not a scientist, but like as I told him, we recorded a conversation about it. I think I'm high, right?

• 1:32:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Like you just have this like mental clarity or whatever. How do you think about the potential for external things? Whether they're pills, drinks, you know, whatever it is to help the patients versus you're just focused on like this is all about the food. And if you get the food right, then like you might not even need some of this other stuff.

• 1:33:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you know, my default is, you know, can we do this sort of, I guess you would say naturally, you know? Can we achieve this just by, you know, the food that we're eating, avoiding certain toxins? And if we can't, you know, then things like supplements may become useful. And there are a number of reasons that that might occur. And there are also certain conditions, you know, that maybe damage has been done that's, you know, already advanced. And we can't undo it all by changing what we eat. And supplements, you know, again, may become useful. So, you know, when you look at things like ketone supplements.

• 1:34:05Speaker 04

  Of any sort, probably the two areas where we have the most data showing their usefulness, Alzheimer's disease, and again, the unique effects of ketones on the brain, and heart failure, the unique effects of ketones on the heart. So there have been some early scientific studies, some animal data, that in these two conditions in particular, ketone supplementation might be useful. Now, again, if we could accomplish high levels of ketosis, therapeutic ketosis, just by changing the food that we eat, probably better. And in

• 1:34:46Speaker 04

  most cases, we can. But in other situations, you know, I do see some usefulness for that.

• 1:34:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's crazy how important that kind of end state of ketosis ends up being for the body. Another topic I thought would be interesting to talk through is, I'm in my mid 30s. I have always been interested in physical health, right? Played sports, did all this stuff, but never from a pure data science standpoint, or like, as I would consider like a nerd, you know, going in and trying to accomplish this. Historically have been, meh, I'll go to the doctor if something's wrong, but like, you know, what's the point? And when I got an Apple Watch, all of a sudden, oh, how many steps? They got the rings? Like, they got all these little kind of data points. Like, that's interesting, but didn't really change my behavior that much. And then I started to get more serious

• 1:35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  about it. I started worrying about sleep, and here we go. The next, like, big leap, I think, for me, who I would put myself in the category of, I'm not the pure novice, but I'm still kind of amateur, in terms of getting serious about your health and understanding some of this stuff, is blood work. And it feels like the blood work, I got some friends who are real serious, and like, I get my blood work done every, you know, three months, some people get it every week, or whatever it is, and they're obsessed about it. When you first deal with a client or a patient, what do you have them go get to just establish the baseline? Like, is it, hey, go get this crazy study done that, you know, takes forever? Or is it like, no, I'm really just looking for like one or two data points and that tells me, you know, 80% of what I need to know? How do you look at blood work and kind of a starting point or baseline?

• 1:36:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I would say my typical blood work recommendations are more towards the basic side. There are some advanced things that I'll typically look at with people. But really, you know, just starting baseline, if you want to know, you know, are you in good metabolic health? The key blood tests to look at. First of all, you want to look at your blood sugar level. And better than just looking at a spot blood sugar level is what's called a hemoglobin A1C. And this is a reflection of your average blood sugar over the past three months, essentially.

• 1:37:01Speaker 04

  So it's a little bit better than just looking at a spot, you know, one spot in time. The cholesterol panel, it turns out, is important to look at, but not how most doctors look at it. When you get your cholesterol panel done, your, most physicians, look at one number on that panel, the LDL cholesterol, the so-called bad cholesterol, and they're going to tell you this is the most important number when it comes to your health. And what I'm going to tell you is, it's not. And again, a whole nother topic that we can get into, but when I look at a cholesterol panel, I look at two other measurements on there.

• 1:37:40Speaker 04

  The HDL cholesterol, the good cholesterol level, as it's called, and the triglycerides. And you can look at the ratio between those two. So the triglycerides divided by the HDL, and that's going to give you an indicator of your metabolic health. Specifically, it's going to give you an indicator of, is your body sensitive to insulin? So insulin resistance, when your body becomes insensitive to the effects of insulin, is the primary physiologic derangement that occurs with poor metabolic health.

• 1:38:18Speaker 04

  And that leads us to another very important measurement for basic blood work, which is check your insulin level. And again, most doctors don't do this. So I advise everyone, get your fasting insulin level. So again, you should be about eight to 12 hours fasted when you do this, and see what your insulin level is.

• 1:38:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And can that be after sleep? Like if you ate at 8:00 PM and you wake up in the morning, then you can go ahead and just take it and that should be good enough?

• 1:38:46Speaker 04

  Correct. Yeah. So that's another important thing. And honestly, if you just check those couple of things, you're going to get a pretty good sense of where you are in your health. Now, I end up doing a lot, you know, probably some more advanced things. I end up, you know, again, getting back to the cholesterol question. You can get into the advanced lipid panel where we look at the sizes of your cholesterol particles. Those are also things that are important. But you really don't have to be doing these extensive blood panels for most people. Now, again, if you have specific problems that you're trying to address, they may become useful. Another very important test that gets outside of the

• 1:39:29Speaker 04

  blood work, but probably when people come to me specifically around heart health, and they say, what test should I get to know if my heart is healthy? What I think is probably the best test to get, and one of the most underutilized tests today, is what's called a coronary artery calcium scan, a CAC scan. So this is a simple, easy to do CAT scan. The test literally takes five minutes to do. They don't have to put an IV in you. It's a low dose of radiation. It's about the same radiation you get from having a chest x-ray. And it's typically pretty inexpensive. You can get it done for somewhere between

• 1:40:12Speaker 04

  $100 and $200. Insurance won't cover it in many cases. We can get into that whole discussion. But this will actually show you whether or not you are developing plaque, specifically calcified plaques, in the arteries of your heart. And this will show You again, are you developing heart disease way before it becomes, you know, symptomatic to the point that you're having chest pains?

• 1:40:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Is this for older people normally?

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  Um, you know, I typically will advise people in their 30s and 40s to get a baseline test, uh, because if you're already showing plaque and you're in your 30s, that's a very bad sign.

• 1:40:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:40:51Speaker 04

  Now, if you don't have plaque and you're in your 30s, what I tell people is, you know, it's not that much of a guarantee, um, as opposed to if you're in your 70s and you have zero plaque, you have a zero CAC score, it's a pretty much guarantee that you're not going to die of heart disease. Um, so, uh, I don't think it needs to be, um, reserved only for older people. I usually tell people, like I said, get a baseline test in your 30s or 40s, uh, especially if, you know, you have reason to think you're at risk for heart disease. If you're diabetic, if you're insulin resistant, um, if you're overweight, uh, then get the scan. Let's find out where you're starting from. Do you have heart disease already?

• 1:41:33Speaker 04

  And then can we stop the progression of that heart disease? And the answer in most cases is yes, we can, with all the things that we've been talking about today.

• 1:41:44Anthony Pompliano?

  So you get these tests done and let's say that you come back, uh, and you're not diabetic, you're not insulin resistant, but, uh, you're not zero, whether it's the plaque or, or, uh, some of the metrics are like, ah, you know, you're higher than we'd like you to be.

• 1:42:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Food seems to be the number one place. Hey, if we correct the diet, what about exercise? Like, are there certain types of exercises? Go for a long run, lift heavy weights, go for a walk? Like, how do you think about the exercise component? What's probably best for the heart?

• 1:42:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, um, the two concepts I try and get people to understand around exercise. Number one is be more active. So that doesn't mean you need to go to the gym for an hour a day. It just means be more active, uh, you know, walk around more during the day. Take that break, take that 10 minute break, you know, if you're sitting at your desk all day, take a 10 minute break every hour and get up and do a few laps around the building. Take the stairs instead of the escalator or the elevator when you can, you know, park further away or walk the extra block wherever you're going. Use stand up desks instead of sitting all day. Simple things like this are probably going to be more effective than

• 1:42:56Speaker 04

  if you go to the gym for the hour a day, you run on the treadmill and then you just sit around the rest of the day. When it comes to exercise, your priority, I believe, should be building and maintaining muscle. Again, we have very good scientific data showing that the better you're able to maintain muscle as you get older, not only the longer you live, but the better quality of life that you're going to have. So build and maintain muscle. The other, you know, the other benefit of muscle is it really gives you more leeway in terms of metabolic health. The more muscle we have, the more metabolically healthy we

• 1:43:39Speaker 04

  are going to be. So, you know, if you're going to the gym, prioritize building muscle and then just try and get more activity throughout your day.

• 1:43:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The, the building muscle, I think, is such an easy one to conceptualize, right? Or to, to understand the concept. Doing it, I find a lot of people who, they're like, ah, what do you mean? I don't want to be a bodybuilder, right? And it always cracks me up because the people who usually say that, I just, I don't think you're gonna have to be the one to worry about.

• 1:44:11Speaker 04

  No one becomes a bodybuilder by accident.

• 1:44:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think you're the person who is likely to have that problem. But it also does get at this very interesting idea, which is we live these sedentary lives and your idea of like be more active, I think is kind of one key piece. But building muscle doesn't have to go, you know, go bench press, go do some of this stuff. Like it can literally just be, if you've never exercised before and you start to exercise, you will build muscles or you will realize things. Are tough that you didn't otherwise realize. I remember in the military, there would always be the person being, you know, a smart ass or whatever, especially like basic training. And they used to take a piece of paper and they'd say, oh yeah, you're a tough guy.

• 1:44:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And they would hand them the piece of paper and they'd have them hold the, what, two fingers on either side, they'd hold the paper out in front of them and they'd leave them there for like 30, 45 minutes, an hour or whatever. And they come back out and the person's like shaking, right? And they can't hold the paper. Like, oh, there's this tough guy came and hold a piece of paper up, right? And so it's like those types of things, they build muscle a very different way, but like something as simple as like holding a piece of paper up in front of you for an hour, can be incredibly difficult and a physically challenging activity. And other people who could bench press the world can't do that. And it's kind of a crazy, you know, dichotomy.

• 1:45:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, no. And that's exactly it. When it comes to, you know, building muscle, you have to think about resistance, you know, exercise, resistant activities. And walking is a resistance activity, you know? And like you said, if you just do more walking, you're going to build muscle. You know, body weight exercises can be very effective. So, you know, if someone's asking me where to start, I'll tell them, start by doing some pushups, some pullups and some squats. If you do those three things and you do it, you know, you don't have to do it for a long time, you know, 15 minutes a day, four days a week can be more than enough. And, you know, there are a number of ways to do this, you know? I personally, again, we get back to travel a lot and okay, so

• 1:46:12Speaker 04

  you can't get to the gym. You know, I use the X3 system, which I'm sure many people have heard of, but it's basically just a resistance band and a bar and a plate. And, you know, you can do a 15 minute workout. And I do it, you know, four times a week. There are two sets of exercises. There's your push and your pulls. And you do it, you know, each one of them twice a week. And that's, that's enough. You know, there are other people that I talk, that I talk with, you know, there's a Dr. Ben Baccicchio, who his, you know, he has a very simple, you know, band and body weight program.

• 1:46:52Speaker 04

  You know, Jerry Texera is another one. Again, simple body weight things can be very effective. You don't have to spend all your life at the gym. And then, as you alluded to, you know, no one becomes a bodybuilder by accident. But really, you know, what does it take to build muscle? It takes eating protein and it takes doing some resistance exercise. And so if we just start shifting that direction, eat more protein, do more resistance exercise, you're going to end up in a better place than where you started.

• 1:47:26Anthony Pompliano?

  It's, um, it's simple, hard execute.

• 1:47:29Speaker 04

  It is.

• 1:47:29Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a simple idea.

• 1:47:30Speaker 04

  That's exactly it.

• 1:47:30Anthony Pompliano?

  How can people interact with you? Like, like, you, you have, obviously, uh, the heart surgery, you know, kind of component of your life. Hopefully, nobody's interacting with you there.

• 1:47:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, no one wants to intentionally interact with me there.

• 1:47:43Anthony Pompliano?

  But you do a lot of other things that I think kind of prevent people from getting to that point. Well, explain a little bit more about kind of some of the stuff you're doing.

• 1:47:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. So my goal, um, you know, uh, for the past few years and moving forward is to keep as many people off of my operating table as possible. Uh, so, you know, along those lines, uh, I've tried and figure it, you know, trying to figure out how best to do that for as many people as possible. So first way I tell people, best way to interact with me, um, is my book. It's called Stay Off My Operating Table. Um, and that's exactly what I want you to do. Widely available all the usual places. Um, so, uh, you can start there. Um, I have, uh, a group coaching program, um, that, uh,

• 1:48:33Speaker 04

  I invite people to. Uh, you can go to ifixhearts.com and you can find all about the group coaching program. Uh, you can also find out there about some of the courses I offer, uh, you know, just a lot of the educational stuff. And then I do have a private telemedicine practice, um, where I do work with people one-on-one. Um, I do this all via telemedicine, so I see people from throughout the United States. That information is at ovadiahearthealth.com, O-V-A-D-I-A, hearthealth.com. And you can find out about becoming a member of my practice there.

• 1:49:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible in the digital age how you can take what used to be somewhat localized knowledge that you could apply, and now you're able to build products that can be consumed asynchronously, in a group setting, or a one-on-one. And what excites me about it is like, for the people with knowledge and information that can change people's lives, you can get that word out to so many more people. I mean, even the fact that you and I were able to connect on the internet, right? It is something that wasn't possible 20 years ago. And now, it just feels like people who are looking and actually serious about changing their life and their health, they can do that now because the information's out there and access to the right people.

• 1:49:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I know how much you talk about, you know, building things to change these problems that we have, you know. We're all aware of this problem, I think, around our health. So what can we start building to really change that? What are some of the big ideas that are going to lead us forward in health? And so, you know, that's another area that I work in. You know, these are other projects that I think about. For instance, you know, I'm currently involved in a project that's conceptualizing, you know, how can your home help you to remain healthy? You know, what does a healthy home really look like?

• 1:50:33Speaker 04

  And all of this data that we have around us, around health, you know, we have our wearables, we can measure all these things about our environment. What if your home was collecting all of that information? What if it was going to a healthcare team that was proactively thinking about your health? And not about, you know, how do we take care of you when you're sick? But how do we keep you from getting sick?

• 1:50:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:59Speaker 04

  So just thinking about, you know, big concepts like this, and what we can do, again, just to normalize health, you know, over the past 50 years, we have normalized being unhealthy.

• 1:51:12Speaker 04

  And we need to change it. We need to normalize health again. Let's make healthy great again.

• 1:51:19Speaker 04

  And let's think about, you know, how we can really bring health back into the conversation.

• 1:51:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And where can people follow you on Twitter?

• 1:51:28Speaker 04

  At Twitter, I'm on ifixhearts is my handle there.

• 1:51:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty good.

• 1:51:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. I was very lucky. So, you know, early days of Twitter, I got on. I'm like, I don't know what this Twitter thing is, but seems to be a good place to, you know, get some news. And I grabbed ifixhearts as a heart surgeon. And here I am 10 years later and it's exploded, you know, for me. It's now the main way, you know, I probably interact with people. It's how you and I started interacting. And but grabbing ifixhearts turned out to be one of those pretty fortuitous things all those years ago.

• 1:52:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. And it's very easy to understand what you do, right? There's no, there's no secret. But listen, I learned a ton today. I really appreciate the time and you're a wealth of knowledge. And I think what's so exciting and kind of fascinating is that you have a very specific view of the world. But I think that you're sympathetic and understand that like humans are humans and you can't show up and be like upend your whole life and change everything. And you're like, look, if you can, you know, do this one thing and, you know, oh, you drink five sodas. I know you said, hey, you've drank five sodas a week, maybe drink four.

• 1:52:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:52:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And kind of just slowly ease people in the right direction, which seems like you yourself did as well. It's a pretty powerful concept to not only have that strong view of the world, but also understand that, you know, it doesn't matter unless people actually kind of internalize it and act on it.

• 1:52:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, thank you for that. I mean, you know, ultimately, I try and get people to understand, you know, I've been there. I've been through the struggle. You know, I, I have all the challenges, you know, I lead the busy life and I have the work and the family and all of that. But it really doesn't take a whole lot of effort if you just understand these simple concepts. And it can be a very easy to integrate it into your life. That doesn't mean it's easy to do. But once you get educated, once you understand, you know, what is it that's damaging your health? It really is not.

• 1:53:42Speaker 04

  That complex as to how to undo these things and how to make yourself healthy again, how to take back your health.

• 1:53:50Anthony Pompliano?

  That is gonna help somebody out there, which I appreciate you, your time, your effort, and we'll be cheering for you and hopefully we'll do this again in the future as you continue to make progress.

• 1:53:59Speaker 04

  Sounds good. Thanks, Anthony.

• 1:54:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends and I'll see you all for the next episode.