Must-Hear Health Hacks From the Doctors who Saved My Life

In many ways These 2 doctors literally SAVED MY LIFE… This weeks episode is 5 % about me and 95 % about all of YOU and all about HEALTH In a personal and pivotal episode of the Ed Mylett Show, I’m sharing something that’s reshaping my journey a bit ….something that does not come as a surprise for those who know me or follow closely here. Its time for a bit of a pause for me from my crazy workload. Actually, its just a season where my health is going to be my priority, not this darn phone and all the demands that come with it! So I'm taking a step back from social media for now and I will do less speaking and crazy travel. Still being focused strategically on biz and mentoring/coaching ..but cutting out the unnecessary and taking time for health, particularly heart health. This decision didn’t come lightly. It’s part of a broader challenge I’ve embraced under the guidance of my doctors - two remarkable women who have cared for me for many years and literally keep me going ! Dr. Amy Doneen and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. OK, so with that being said. Lets focus on YOU and Your health in a VERY detailed episode Today’s episode dives deep into the essence of health, unraveling the steps we can ALL take to ensure we’re not just living but thriving. Together with Dr. Doneen and Dr. Lyon, we explore: The non-negotiable importance of of getting your LABS drawn regularly What EXACTLY are the markers you should be getting tested in those labs and why most doctors don’t test for them! Understanding your genetics through GENETIC TESTING ARTERIAL DISEASE indicators Minimizing your CANCER risks Cancer and HEART DISEASE cross-over screenings SLEEP APNEA testing HORMONE health for men and women WOMEN’S MORTALITY RATES for heart disease and cancer STRESS management 👉You can still stay connected with me and tune in to new episodes of the Ed Mylett Show by joining my email list. Click the link here to sign up https://konect.to/edmylett👈 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  So hey guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now? Maybe stunted in your progress? Well, if you are, I want to recommend a place for you to go called Growth Day. GrowthDay.com/Ed. It is the number one personal development app on the planet. It's got all kinds of high-performance techniques in there. Courses, accountability, journaling, live speeches from some of the top influencers in the world, including me. It's an overall environment to change your life. GrowthDay.com/Ed. I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 p.m.

• 0:43Ed Mylett?

  And my third day, 6:00 p.m. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it waiting weeks on a big bank for capital. Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason. Over 20 years in business, over 12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/Ed. That's cardiff.co/Ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding.

• 1:28Ed Mylett?

  Cardiff, borrow better.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  This is the Ed Meyer Show.

• 1:39Ed Mylett?

  Okay, welcome back to the show, everybody. I am joined today by my two incredible doctors. And when I say incredible, I mean they're among the most important people in my life. And so they've both been on the show before. Let me introduce them properly. Dr. Amy Doneen is the Medical Director at the Prevention Center for Heart and Brain Health. And she's got a book that just came out recently called Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain. She had a previous book called Beat the Heart Attack Gene. And I credit her with me being alive.

• 2:11Ed Mylett?

  I think she saved my life and I've referred her many friends whom I also believe are alive because of her work and care. She's a treasured human being in my life. The other wonderful woman is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. She's a Washington University Fellowship trained physician. Postdoctoral training was combined with research in clinical medicine, fellowship in nutritional science, obesity medicine and geriatrics. She's also board certified in family medicine. She just had a book come out that was on New York Times bestselling book called Forever Strong. And she treats some of the most influential people in the world. She also treats warfighters that have been under tremendous stress. So she treats people under great stress. And so we're going to talk about your health today.

• 2:54Ed Mylett?

  Before I do that, just a little thing on my health. I uh, they've sort of done an intervention these two on me recently and have been for years, kind of asking me to downshift. Yes, and step away a little bit. And so I'm going to step back a little bit from some of the things that I'm doing. One of the easiest things to step away from is this phone right here. And put that down, which means uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna step away uh,

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Well,

• 3:16Ed Mylett?

  at least indefinitely for social media and some other things. Go ahead Gabrielle, you wanted to say something.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  So Amy and I have been caring for you for years and the pace that you are up against. You know, and again, I take care of warfighters and you're traveling roughly 321 days a year. It's a lot. You've got multiple businesses. You have a TV show, podcast. I mean, what people see on social media is just the tip of the iceberg. You have ARTE, you have all of these things and an individual can't keep up that pace. You know, warfighters go on a deployment and then they come back and then they settle in. And you're not deployment after deployment. There's a pause. And uh, both Amy and I, as your physicians, have really been at you for

• 4:05Speaker 02

  well over a year to take a little bit of a pause. So um, I think it's the best thing for you.

• 4:12Ed Mylett?

  Thank you.

• 4:13Amy Doneen?

  I agree. We're proud of you.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:16Ed Mylett?

  Thank you, Amy. I made a promise to my dad before he passed away that makes me emotional, but I made a promise to my dad if my, if my, if I got a little bit worse health-wise, that I would downshift a little bit and take a pause. And so just do a little bit of that, you know, bagged social media for a while, a little bit less speaking, strategic in my businesses, and everything will be just great. So, anyway, guys, excited to-

• 4:40Speaker 02

  We're proud of you.

• 4:41Amy Doneen?

  Ed, let me also add to this. You've been dealt with some genetics from your parents, who are lovely, and they handed you some cards. And you've dealt with those beautifully throughout your lifetime. And we know that stress, which is sort of being in an environment for which you don't have a sense of control over, can actually cause oxidative stress and inflammation in the arteries. And with your genetic predisposition to arterial disease, having this just overhang of stress and workload. And Gabrielle, what did you say, 300? Ed, you told me this too, 300-

• 5:17Speaker 02

  He travels 321 days a year. And do you know how I know this? Because, well, number one, I'm his doctor, I keep track of him. And number two, I will see him, again, we are at mutual events, we have mutual friends, I will see him one day in Las Vegas, then going to Dubai. We're not talking about to Ohio. We're talking about to Dubai the next day, and then back again. And this, this I think reaches out to the listeners and the viewers as well, is that also, community and being with family is really important.

• 5:51Ed Mylett?

  And this community here is like an extension of my family. So I have the two most brilliant people that I know in my life, right here with you today, guys. So we're going to talk about your health a little bit, and just some things. And by the way, this is every single age, because what Amy referenced about genetics is really important. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today. Let's start out just talking about something that most people don't do, but they should. So Gabrielle, I'll go to you first. What's the importance of getting your labs drawn on a regular basis? And is there an age, of any age, that you recommend somebody begins to do that? How often should they do it?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  I'll mention for adults, children are on a pretty rigorous schedule as to when they're being checked for anemia or lead, even vitamin D nowadays. For an adult, after individuals go to college, it seems as if things fall away. I definitely recommend individuals at 18, if you are listening to this and you are inspired by Ed and you just happen to have a leg up and are involved in the entrepreneurial world, 18, great, we can get a baseline testosterone, we can get just baseline, even as Amy will mention, LP little a, baseline cholesterol screening, and I know it sounds early. However, diseases of aging and metabolic diseases like

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Alzheimer's, like cardiovascular disease, they begin decades earlier. And those are things that people don't recognize. Typically, individuals will wait until, ah, I've never been to a doctor, now I'm hitting 30, maybe I should go. The best time to start was yesterday, but the second best time to start is today and getting not even yearly labs. The younger you are, and if everything is metabolically healthy, every six months to a year would be okay. But as individuals mature, that window of opportunity to correct things from an underlying perspective that can do damage over time, this could be quarterly labs. It's very challenging for people, but quarterly labs, in my opinion, and I think Amy's opinion,

• 7:54Speaker 02

  at some point is really ideal.

• 7:56Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, I gotta tell you, and also, everybody, you know, this is why I care about you all so much. Just because you feel good doesn't mean it's great under the hood, right? Because this river of life is your blood, and you can feel good. In fact, when I met Amy, I don't know, what was it, maybe 10, 15 years ago, I didn't really feel that bad, but I had known that there's a genetic history. I didn't have the test yet, but I knew there was a genetic history in my family of different things. My dad's brother died very, very young. And um, and so when I went to see Amy, I was, we were very shocked by what was going on in my blood. And there are markers, everybody, that I think Amy, most people do a generic lipid panel.

• 8:36Ed Mylett?

  But things have advanced significantly that should be tested for now, the last 10 years, even five years. What are some things, this is gonna be so good for all of you, everybody, what are some things that most, like markers, people should be getting tested for, Amy? And what, why, what they indicate and what we're looking for in those markers that probably most people don't get tested for?

• 8:57Amy Doneen?

  Yeah, absolutely. One of the things to, to remember is that arterial disease, whether it be the small vessels that leads to things like memory loss, vision changes, kidney disease, decreased blood flow to the toes, is the same disease state that also drives your risk of heart attack and stroke. So the little vessels and the big vessels are telling the same story. So part of the most critical thing that is not, the things that aren't done is looking for inflammation. So if, if we are able to monitor inflammation, some of the inflammatory labs have what we call bio variability. And those can be thrown off if you've hurt your back, if you're, you know, have an infection and so forth. But some are very, very specific for arterial wall health.

• 9:42Amy Doneen?

  And they're not skewed by things that life can throw at us. So those are things, if I want to be specific, there's one called LPPLA2 that is indicative of stroke risk. There is one called myeloperoxidase. There's some simple things that are out there for everyone. One is called HSCRp. Um, these labs are easy to get, they're very cost effective. And if there's inflammation, we want to pause and ask why? And when we look at, and Gabrielle, at all the root causes of arterial disease, the ones that are just kind of touched on right now that we hear about are blood pressure, cholesterol, and if you smoke, stop, you know, if you're exposed to nicotine, stop.

• 10:24Amy Doneen?

  Those are the three that were evaluated with, matter of fact, we take our age, our gender, we smoke or not, our blood pressure and cholesterol, and that's it. But in the, in reality, there's so many others. There's genetically inherited lipids like lipoprotein A.

• 10:40Amy Doneen?

  There's a lipid that everyone needs to know about called ApoB, which is like a collection of all the bad guys. We need to know, Gabrielle, you touched on this, metabolic health, so prediabetes, which is the fasting growing condition in young adults. It's terrifying. So doing glucose tolerance testing and, and oral health, Ed, you and I have talked about oral health and sleep and stress management over the years, and those may not seem quite as tangible, but they're equally important as everything else.

• 11:10Ed Mylett?

  Okay, can we go back for a second, Amy, and then I'll throw it back over to Gabrielle. I want you to talk about the LP, little A, it's something that you and I have talked about forever. And then why, I know why, and I get tested for it regularly. Wow, I'm behind. I need to get tested again. But why dental health is correlative? Why there's a correlation with dental health? So, LPA, talk about that a little bit, because I found you, I had Bob Harper on my show. I've had other people on the show similar to me that have some form of, you know, heart disease or cardiovascular disease. And it seems as if this LP and people that I've referred to you, seems that that is a very common marker that's elevated in people that struggle with these things. So why that, this ApoB, maybe

• 11:54Ed Mylett?

  a little bit too, and then the why dental health matters?

• 11:57Amy Doneen?

  Absolutely. So lipoprotein A is a genetically inherited lipid abnormality. We either have it or we don't. You can't make it go away. You can't make it part of your system. It's found on chromosome number six. Twenty-three percent of adults have it, or people have it in general. The, the, the challenge with it is really threefold. One, statins don't necessarily treat it. We've known that. We've measured it for 20 years. It's not a new factor. There are new meds on the horizon, and that's why it's getting a lot of attention right now, which is fantastic. The second thing is that it can really drive plaque

• 12:37Amy Doneen?

  Development and cholesterol trapping in the artery wall, which is a major problem for early plaque development or atherosclerotic disease development. The third thing it does is make your body really, really good at clotting. So if someone has vascular disease and they inherit a lipoprotein A and they're traveling all over the country in planes, trains and automobiles, and things you add to that like dehydration, sitting, all the things that can also drive a pro clotting state. It makes people particularly vulnerable. So one, it can be treated. It just needs to be identified. And three, there's our, there are tons of new developments. So people are going to hear a lot about this and it's a good thing that we're hearing about it. But it's not, it's not.

• 13:22Ed Mylett?

  So Gabrielle, there's also genetic testing that can be done too.

• 13:29Ed Mylett?

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• 13:54Ed Mylett?

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• 14:37Ed Mylett?

  Go to ro.co/milet to see if you qualify. That's R-O dot C-O slash Mylett to get started on Ro. For side effects of GLP- P1 medications, including boxed warning, go to ro.co forward slash safety, ro.co slash safety. So when I end, when I end up buying the island, we had to do all of our outdoor decorating and I spent a fortune in the first half of the place. And I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore, but I want the best stuff. And that's where Wayfair came in. My wife wanted to get this new garden bed and Wayfair was the place that offered the perfect solution. Wayfair also helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand vetted by product specialists. They use a 10 point quality inspection system. Here's all I could tell you. The stuff has lasted over time.

• 15:21Ed Mylett?

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• 15:54Speaker 04

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 15:59Ed Mylett?

  And so the first of that I heard about was, I think, um, when it came to women with breast cancer. I remember hearing about that years ago. But now I know, you know, that it's far more expansive than that, that can be predictive that somebody's got a, you know, a predisposition to whether that be, I think, cancer, heart disease, et cetera. So there are tests correct for genetics that one can do now as well. And by the way, some of these things, folks, I think are not, you know, unfortunately, medical care isn't even in our world. And so some of the things we may talk about today aren't part of basic labs and there may be an added expense. Correct me if I'm wrong about that, you guys, because I want to be fully transparent with everybody. But the expense, am I wrong? Can you get that done like anybody else? And two, and two, what tests are there?

• 16:42Speaker 02

  There are two main tests that I use in my clinical practice and we actually use this as well for warfighters through for seven foundation. And it's called the gallery test. And this is an early detection cancer screening test. And it's really interesting because there's only five types of cancer that have recommended screening tests. Breast, cervical, colon, prostate, lung.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  But there are many different kinds of cancers. And when you detect a cancer early, there's a four times higher survival rate. Of course, depending on the cancer. There's two main ways in which we can look at early detection cancer. Number one is something called what was used in research as the GRAIL test now available available to the public called the GALLERI test. And each cancer has its own footprint. And this can test for, you know, multiple different. I think it's 68 or 70 different types of cancers at the very early stages.

• 17:40Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  If you detect a cancer, you can treat it. Most, you know, depending on what it is, that survivability is much higher. The other way in which an individual can be proactive on the offense is something called a PRANOVO scan, a full body MRI. It's definitely getting more publicized. I strongly recommend a scan like that because again, if you catch cancer early, you can do something about it.

• 18:08Ed Mylett?

  Very good. Amy, in the heart world, what are the genetic tests that one can do? I think you're having me, I'll be too personal, but like if you have, if you knew your parents had heart disease or cancer, it, there are tests that you can do now that will show that probably you have a genetic predisposition as well? Or did I just completely butcher that?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Can I, can I jump in here really quickly? Cause this is for the listener. Cancer risk increases for everybody as individuals age, but only a small percentage, maybe five to 10% of cancers are inherited. The majority are either they don't know or environmental exposures. And I think that that's where lifestyle comes into play. So I don't want people to listen and think, oh, well. This person had cancer in my family. I'm gonna get it. That is not true. It really, there is a way that you can live a lifestyle. Uh, for example, we know after heart disease, um, cancer is the second leading cause of death and one of the main drivers of that is obesity. So people can do something about this.

• 19:11Amy Doneen?

  Yeah.

• 19:11Ed Mylett?

  And I want to talk, once we get through these tests, we're gonna talk about, go ahead, Amy.

• 19:15Amy Doneen?

  Yeah. Well, I was just gonna say on the heels of what Gabrielle said, which is so, so important in that if we inherit a gene, it doesn't mean we're going to get that disease state. It means we want to make sure we're screening, we're taking good care of ourselves to make sure that genetic profile doesn't manifest itself into disease. When you also think about cancer and you think of heart disease, there's so much crossover. Um, as Gabrielle so brilliantly said, there's so many lifestyle factors that drive both cancer and arterial disease. We want to know with your family history, do you have disease? No different than a cancer screen, right? We have these screens for early detection of cancer. We have the same screens for vascular disease.

• 19:56Amy Doneen?

  The trick is historically in medicine, all the screens to look for heart disease, look at blood flow. Where the disease is sneaky, 99% of early plaque grows in the wall of the artery. So if we're on a stress test and, and you pass that stress test, that doesn't tell you if you have plaque or not. It tells me, it tells you, you don't have a blockage at that moment. So there are some wonderful tests and as you said, we want to be very transparent with the audience. Insurance does not cover these, but we're talking tests that are a few hundred dollars. Um, some as low as 50. You can get a, a CT scan of your heart and look for calcification of, of arterial disease in the heart. That runs anywhere from $50 to maybe 200.

• 20:40Amy Doneen?

  Uh, we use a, a workhorse tool. We use is ultrasound a lot because it's not just having plaque in the arteries. Ed and Gabrielle, it's having active disease in the arteries. And that's the trick. If I know you have plaque, because let's say you have a calcium score, I really want to know at the end of the day, are you treated and that disease is stable or is it active? So when we use ultrasound, we can depict that. What does the plaque look like in the artery wall? Same with the heart. We can do scans of the heart now and do artificial intelligence overlay on those images and find out, what does the plaque look like?

• 21:19Amy Doneen?

  Are you and I, Ed, together, are you and Gabrielle together, the three of us doing enough to make sure that if you have vascular disease, it is stable because secret's out. You can live a long and healthy life with plaque from head to toe, as long as it doesn't misbehave, as long as it stays in the artery wall. Because our bodies are built to survive. The plaques in the artery wall, we are going to maintain blood flow. And things that would cause it to misbehave are the things we've talked about, like inflammation caused by a periapical abscess, an old root canal that's inflamed. To Gabrielle's point, a metabolic dysfunction, whether it be gut health or hormonal balance,

• 22:02Amy Doneen?

  insulin resistance, prediabetes, blood pressures over 120 over 75, lipoprotein A, APOB. Those are all factors that need to be treated because if you have disease, we want to know if you're inflamed. We want to know why you're inflamed. Reach the why, we see the inflammation go down and see the disease stabilize and you go live your lives.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  I'm thinking about, there's a lot of tests and I don't obviously want to give too much information, but there was a lot of tests that Amy and I both want you to do that you simply just haven't had time to do. And people have to understand that they really, this, if you fail to do the practical, the practical become impossible. And one test that Amy and I both agree on is something called a sleep apnea test. Oh, yeah. Amy is talking about labs. She's also talking about, again, because the number one killer is cardiovascular disease, talking about labs, talking about a scan, CT, or clearly scan, very valuable. I mentioned early cancer detection. We cannot forget sleep apnea.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  And you do not have to be overweight to have sleep apnea. Many of my fittest entrepreneurial patients have sleep apnea. And as Amy well mentioned, it contributes to metabolic syndrome, contributes to obesity. It affects your ability to put on muscle. It affects, you know, from a muscle protein synthesis response, but, you know, kind of like nerdy. Also, it impacts atrial fibrillation, blood pressure. I mean, it's a big deal. Alzheimer's disease. Yeah.

• 23:39Ed Mylett?

  Really, really good.

• 23:42Ed Mylett?

  I, uh, so one of the things, you know, Amy, when I tell people that we do that ultrasound of my carotid artery and the other things that you and I do, um, just want to point that out to everybody because they're throwing a lot at you. And by the way, I started to have that done with Amy in my early 30s, you guys, I think. And, um, I have to tell you, maybe it was mid 30s, but, uh, I have to tell you, as I tell friends of mine that really have great doctors that we do that, they don't know what I'm talking about. So they have done some of these CT scans, these plaque scans, but most of them have not done that ultrasound. And then one of the reasons that I've learned that it's important is because now you've got something that can be measured over time and see if something's progressing. Where performance is measured, performance can improve or at least be, um, altered, at least be mediated.

• 24:28Ed Mylett?

  Maybe reversed in some cases. Amy, the thing I'm doing Friday, is that a unique thing I'm doing Friday? Just share what's that scan, uh, that I'm doing Friday? I don't think I've done this particular one before.

• 24:39Amy Doneen?

  You haven't. So the scan you're having Friday is a CT angiography, which is basically an image, takes an image of all the arteries that feed nutrients to your heart. And rather than just look at narrowing our blood flow, we want to look at the wall of all those arteries and find out what does your plaque look like? Because of your family history, you are predisposed to have active disease. And so what you and I want to determine is, is the treatment you're on right now effective to stabilize that disease? We have two vantage points. We have the carotids, which we can look at the wall with ultrasound, which is excellent, and no exposure to radiation. So this is one we can use annually, and it is a major workforce tool.

• 25:22Amy Doneen?

  It's been around and back since the year 2000. It's not a new test. Insurance doesn't cover it, so people think it's new. The one you're having Friday is to piggyback on that and actually look at your arteries of your heart and determine is the disease stable or not? And we overlay, as Gabrielle said, an image company, one of them is called Clearly, which looks at the analysis of the plaque composition. And that's what we really want to know.

• 25:50Ed Mylett?

  Okay, very good. So Gabrielle, what about hormones? So, and hormone health, let's just talk about that. That's one of your go zones.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:58Ed Mylett?

  A, if you're on hormone replacement therapy of any type, should you be mindful of any markers that can be impacted by that? And B, how important is having your hormones in whatever the normal or regulated range? How important is that?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Hormones, now, again, this is my perspective. I really feel that hormones are everything. It's the thing that people feel. When, and actually, this is for both men and women. Often, people will say, wow, testosterone is just for men. But actually, that's not true. Women also make testosterone. It is, when we think about the labs that I'm looking at, I'm looking at free testosterone in both men and women. I'm looking at total testosterone. I'm looking at something called sex hormone binding globulin. There are certain things that increase or decrease this. And this is, if you think about hormone, like children, they can't go anywhere alone. They need to have someone that holds their hand. And that's what sex hormone binding globulin does.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  So I look at that. I look at estradiol in both men and women. I look at prolactin. FSH LH to see how well the modalities that we're utilizing are and also PSA. This is, I'm sure that I'm missing one or two, but really from a hormonal perspective, these are the things that I'm looking at and they're both critically important for both men and women. And women, we'll, we'll just start there. There's something called female sexual dysfunction and it's really a common condition for women and it can affect nine to there's some data that shows nine to 43% of the female population.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Testosterone is not FDA approved for that because it's not approved in women. I eventually believe it will be. But testosterone can be used for women that are struggling with low sexual function. And on the slip side, for men, when a male's testosterone is low and the way in which we look at it in labs is they'll get two morning markers of 300, a testosterone of 300 or less, that would be considered low testosterone. But the reality is that would mean that if someone is 310, does that mean that they're feeling great? No, and this is really the challenge with how we interpret labs. So the signs and symptoms for men of low testosterone would be

• 28:22Speaker 02

  decreased libido, increase in body fat, individuals also might have lower bone density or mild anemia. And there was a great trial that has come out recently called the TRAVERS trial. I, I just sent it to Amy because it's all about cardiovascular disease and testosterone. There are certain myths that are out there that I think stop people from initiating hormone replacement therapy, but hormones are critical. And then if we take lifestyle into account, a surefire way to go through and have hormonal imbalance, ready? So I'm going to give you that, that the ways in which you can do that. Don't sleep, eat poorly.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Potentially do drugs, a lot of alcohol, and I guarantee you, you will not have a good hormonal status in your body.

• 29:12Ed Mylett?

  Very good. This is so good, you guys. We're gonna go a little longer than I thought, just because this is too good and I have these two huge brains here. So, Amy.

• 29:19Amy Doneen?

  And can I, can I add to what Gabrielle said? Because from my perspective, there's a lot of thought that in a cardiovascular world, hormones are bad, or they're good. There, there's this line of division, and it really is not appropriate, because whether we're talking about women, or men, and hormone replacement, it's all about finding that balance. I'll speak to women, because I just, just spoke about for the Women's Heart Health Month. And what we learned from the Women's Health Initiative, which was a trial years and years ago, that really put this negative spin on hormones in women, really has been a, a real problem for us. Because that trial took women who had been in

• 30:00Amy Doneen?

  menopause, whether they've been surgical or natural menopause, for upwards of seven to 10 years, and gave them hormones that were matched to a 25-year-old healthy female. Well, no surprise that, that they didn't do well. They had clotting factors, they had strokes, and, and it became this, this feeling of hormones are bad, stay out of them in the cardiovascular world. Studies are coming out now, that, that tell us that's not really true. What's appropriate is what Gabrielle is appro, is talking about, and that is, if we catch people early, and we, we make sure their homo, hormone balance is stabilized to an endogenous and natural level, as early as a

• 30:42Amy Doneen?

  woman starts to go through that perimenopausal state. So if she's under 60, and she's starting to have hormonal changes, it's a very appropriate time to make sure her hormones are regulated, and for her bone health, and even her cardiac health. And even in conditions like lipoprotein A. So it's all about finding that balance. And for men, although I do not manage hormones, it's not my expertise. I rely on people like Dr. Lyon to do that. The reality is, if a, if a male has a low testosterone, under around 350, the metabolic outcome of that is not favorable. Whether we're talking about diabetes, whether we're talking about obesity, whether we're talking

• 31:21Amy Doneen?

  about poor sleep, etc. So, I agree 100% with what you said from a cardiac standpoint. It's all about finding that beautiful balance. Hormones are not. All good or all bad. It's about having them managed very, very well.

• 31:36Ed Mylett?

  Cool. You gave a good level number there. You gave a good level number. I, one thing I want to say to everybody too about testing, just, it just occurred to me. One, you know, like, you know, if you have that, you know, maybe your children should get the genetic test. The other thing is there's tests now that you can see, like I, we discovered, you know, I don't get personal medical stuff, but I potentially have a predisposition to clotting. And then there's also how you can get tested to see how certain medications will affect you. And it turned out like in my case, think about this, everybody, I have a predisposition to clotting and the main drug they give you when you go to the hospital for clotting, I'm not going to name it, would very much adversely affect me.

• 32:12Amy Doneen?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Ed Mylett?

  And so these are, these are, this is how sophisticated medicine has gotten. Now, would you not like to know that, that if you went into an emergency room, they're about to prescribe you a drug for something you have, and it's a drug that will not work on you and could potentially harm or kill you.

• 32:27Amy Doneen?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Ed Mylett?

  And so that's how sophisticated this stuff gets. As terms of women, Amy, really quickly, I want you to talk about two things. So you know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing like on repeat all the time? That sweater that kind of just goes with everything or these perfect pair of pants? Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples with premium materials, like a hundred percent Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton. The styles are timeless, versatile, and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for every day. It's what I'm wearing right now. They give you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without the price tag. Quince also makes premium pants, fitted tees and polos,

• 33:07Ed Mylett?

  and breathable activewear. Quality basics designed to work with your wardrobe and hold up to everyday wear. I love their cotton tees. I'm wearing one now, and I get a ton of compliments when I wear them on the podcast and when I speak. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to quince.com/ed for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash ed. So you know, I've been trying to take my health and my morning routine to the next level. And I used to do a whole bunch of different stuff, tons of different supplements. And then I found all in one in a drink with IM8. IM8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine.

• 33:48Ed Mylett?

  Finally, once and for all, 16 supplements replaced 90 ingredients across nine major organ systems in one drink. You can have all these supplements for $2.61 a day. I've changed my mornings. The whole IM8 routine has changed my mornings. I feel great and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to IM8health.com/Ed10 right now, or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at IM8health.com/Ed10. Code ED10 at IM8health.com/Ed10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

• 34:31Ed Mylett?

  This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

• 34:37Ed Mylett?

  One, what, you and I have a mutual person that we both love that we recently found out. She's probably got some difficult labs as well. And when you would look at this person, you would just literally never imagine that this person could have any form of potential disease going on inside of them. So a lot of my audience, more than half, are women. And I think oftentimes when people think heart attacks, or heart issues, or strokes, or Alzheimer's, all these sort of correlated issues, vascular issues, I think you usually think of a man. But the data tells us what about women?

• 35:18Ed Mylett?

  And how important it is that the women understand the data as it relates to them as well. Obviously, men, we kind of know, but what about with women? This is important, everybody. You young women, listen close.

• 35:29Amy Doneen?

  Yeah, so the statistics are staggering. So one out of three women will die from heart disease unless we do something different. Currently, one out of thirty-one women die of breast cancer. So the statistics for heart disease, and the other thing that's happening, and I'll just say this one more stat, the awareness that heart disease is our number one cause of death is actually going down. Comparatively to two thousand and nine to two thousand and nineteen, breast cancer awareness went up, which is a good thing, but it doesn't mean that heart disease awareness needs to go down. So both should be celebrated that we are at risk, and the idea of having an optimistic bias because we take care of

• 36:08Amy Doneen?

  ourselves, perhaps, we look okay on the surface. Heart disease doesn't care. It doesn't care. The guilt associated with heart disease needs to be just gone. It needs to be gone. And what we need to do is really look for disease early, and that can be done very cost-effectively. I talk about that a lot in both of my books, but Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain really brings it down to a level of, as Gabrielle said, start when you're eighteen, find out what you're dealing with, so you can make decisions of screening as you go through your life. Take control over that. Secondly, for women, we, as women, can have the exact same risk

• 36:51Amy Doneen?

  profile as men. It's not like, oh, the men in my family had heart disease. Well, maybe the women in your family manifested that differently with memory loss, or vision changes, or kidney disease, or peripheral vascular disease, and the quality of life wasn't there. It's the same disease state. So women are often missed, and I'm very passionate about that, that because a woman looks okay on the surface, or quite frankly, struggles with some lifestyle factors that may appear that, oh, she definitely might have risk because of X, Y, and Z. That's not true either. Heart disease doesn't do that. And there's clues. One more thing, sorry not to talk too much, but I get really passionate about this.

• 37:35Ed Mylett?

  Love it. Love it.

• 37:36Amy Doneen?

  Look at this, we go through our lives, especially with pregnancy, with women who do have the opportunity to go through a pregnancy, we can learn a lot. If a woman is dealing with hypertension during pregnancy,

• 37:48Amy Doneen?

  A 64% increased risk of heart disease throughout their lifetime is if a woman has preeclampsia during pregnancy, a twofold increased risk of heart disease and clotting risk throughout their lifetime that manifests within the first 10 years even of that child being born. So the child was still in grade school. Gestational diabetes is another one. It's not a matter of if that woman is going to deal with pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes throughout her lifetime. It's really when. But it doesn't mean that it has to happen. If women are educated and their care team takes a hold of responsibility of that, we move forward. Part of the challenge, I think,

• 38:32Amy Doneen?

  and Gabrielle, you and I have talked about this, who claims responsibility of something that if we do our job right, no one's going to feel the benefit. Do you see what I mean by that? So like, Ed, if you and I do our job well with your, your family history of vascular disease and your potential risk for vascular disease, and we do our job well, which means we monitor you, we follow the data, we look at the science, we, we treat everything that you've been dealt with, lifestyle, including stress, and as Gabrielle so appropriate, said, sleep quality and efficacy, and we treat that, the benefit of what you and I are doing means you go live your life and you don't have a heart attack, you don't

• 39:15Amy Doneen?

  have a stroke, you don't have memory loss, you don't have vision changes, you don't have that. And in my biased opinion, that's not the role of traditional cardiology. They do amazing work once there's a blockage. In Gabrielle's work in functional medicine and, and hormones and internal medicine, her goal is that you maintain your health, not rescue you when it's fallen. And that takes initiative both of the patient and of the healthcare team.

• 39:47Ed Mylett?

  So good. Let me, Gabrielle, I want to ask you something about that. And by the way, everyone, I'm doing this today so that you don't have that stroke, you don't end up with memory loss, you don't end up with circulatory issues that affect every single part of your body. Gabrielle, Amy brought this up, and I don't know why I think about it more when it becomes to my female friends and my male friends, because everybody deals with stress. But oftentimes,

• 40:09Ed Mylett?

  You know, I feel like some of the women in my life are responsible for so many different things at one time, but this is true for anybody. What about overwhelm and stress management and how important that is? Just any tactics or strategies or your thoughts about that? Obviously, we spend time talking about that, the three of us with me, which is one of the reasons I'm going to downshift a little bit. But what about overwhelm and stress management? How critical that is? Because you could be doing probably everything, right? From a nutritional standpoint, and even, you know, with the different supplements or medications that you take, the scans. But if you're living in massive overwhelm or stress, that's, that's a trigger, I think, even to turn certain genes on potentially, I think. So what, what are your thoughts about that?

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's interesting because we have one word to describe all these different things. Stress describes that the dog, you know, went to the bathroom on the white rug, or you had to go to the DMV and you forgot your paperwork. And/or, we use the word stress to define heart attack, the death of a loved one. It is the only word in the English language that has this massive undefined umbrella. And by thinking about it that way, we have to understand that our body's internal reaction to the stimulus is quite incredible. And when

• 41:33Speaker 02

  I say that, I mean, things like increasing levels of workload, increasing, just the burden of things over time. And what happens is, again, when we talk about stress, we're talking about high responsibility type things, is that the body, and we see this all the time with elite warfighters, is the body goes into somewhat of a sympathetic overdrive. And what does that look like? And it doesn't turn off. There's a normal sympathetic and parasympathetic response that it's almost as if an individual gets a trauma, and I use that word loosely, and the body continues in overdrive. Blood pressure goes up, heart

• 42:17Speaker 02

  rate goes up, inflammatory markers go up, increasing cortisol, cortisol goes up. And, you know, Amy was talking about gestational diabetes and these, and somewhat of these metabolic influences, it destroys skeletal muscle.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  And that is your metabolic sink. And what happens over time is you stop sleeping. Your brain responds, you know, when I was at Wash U in geriatrics. One of the things that I was responsible for as a fellow is that running, you run a cognitive memory and aging clinic. And one of the, the questions that we always would ask would be stress because we know that there's an impact on the quality of the brain. If an individual is experiencing exceedingly high amounts of what they perceive as stress, stress you have to mitigate. I, I'll tell you this. You cannot get somebody better if you do not manage that.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  You just, and I'm sure Amy agrees. I can provide hormone replacement. I can prescribe a nutrition plan. I can prescribe a diet. That's say, the ideal diet. Individuals who are feeling and experiencing this sympathetic overdrive. Their inflammatory markers will go up. For example, autoimmunity, autoimmune conditions are nearly impossible to treat if you cannot address stress. And the list goes on. So I won't take GI problems. If you don't address that, um, you will see the gut will be in overdrive. People will be nauseous. They will have diarrhea. They won't be able to absorb nutrients or put on weight.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  It is a highly complex, interdynamic. Humans exist in homeostatic way of being a web of everything. You have to.

• 44:10Amy Doneen?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Ed Mylett?

  So good. All right, a couple more things.

• 44:12Amy Doneen?

  I've said on that, I'll just say this really, I didn't, I make, I didn't create this phrase, but I think it's so powerful. And that is the brain is our most powerful pharmacy. So as Gabrielle said, we can really think about our best lifestyle and nurture ourselves. But if our brain is really perceiving a lack of control over our environment, even from my standpoint, from arterial disease, it changes something called smooth muscle cells in the artery wall that become maladaptive and actually trap cholesterol because the brain is really, it's so powerful and that's a wonderful thing. And that's why when you asked Gabrielle and I to come on this podcast, Ed, and you were so.

• 44:53Amy Doneen?

  Honest and vulnerable to your audience and say, look, I'm important. You are important and to make sure that you're present for your audience. You need to make sure your health is top notch. And what you're doing, I don't know if you know the magnitude, but you're giving every one of your listeners permission to say, pause for just a moment, everybody, and look at where your priorities are. Are you seeing your family as much as you want to? Are you getting your health checkups as much as you want to? Are you sleeping as well as you know you should? Just pause for a self-assessment. And if some things are out of sync, out of balance, take the time to fix them and get support and get help.

• 45:38Amy Doneen?

  Because we can't help anyone else unless we make sure our own, you know, world in a sense is healthy. And Amy.

• 45:47Ed Mylett?

  Thank you for saying that. Thank you for saying that. And I, I, I'm gonna let you both make a couple of final comments here. All Gabrielle, you'll go first. And by the way, everybody, I just want to say this. I wanted this to happen today because I love you and I want to make sure you're caring for yourselves. And most of you, I feel like sometimes you're pouring from an empty cup. You're pouring into everybody else all the time. And, you know, one of the things I love about faith is that you can be poured into and fed. And I wanted that to do, do have that happen for all of you. I also have concern that in this society, including me, we're pushing separation season. We're pushing this, the other thing. I'm right now, my separation season is going to be for my health. And, and for many of you, it's just, it's the thing you're going to get around to. And I've just had too many friends.

• 46:32Ed Mylett?

  I'm turning 53 here. I've had too many friends that aren't here anymore that we're going to get around to it. And I don't want that to be you. I certainly don't want that to be me. And so anything, lastly, Gabrielle, I know you wanted to say something there. And then Amy, I'll give you, I have one final question too. But anything you want to add, a marker, a thought? You know, as we kind of put a bow on things today, Gabrielle. And thank you. By the way, you're all welcome. Just shared these two brilliant people with you for the last 40 or 45 minutes. So first off, thank both of you. And then what would you want to add there, Gabrielle?

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Health is the great equalizer and you can never outrun your health. And that really becomes the common denominator to the impact that anyone listening can do in the world. You must address this. And quite frankly, Ed, Amy and I have really been encouraging you to take a pause for a long time, for longer than than people know, just to be able to do all of the things that that must get done. And so, thank you. I think Amy and I are both very excited about that. And then the next thing is that what you do today matters. People struggle with discipline and how do I really need to go to the doctor? Do I really need to get this blood work done?

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Yes, you do, because if you fail to see the long-term trajectory and you put it off, a lot of entrepreneurs put things off, the outcomes are not good. And much of what we are talking about from cardiovascular disease screening to cancer screening to muscle as this organ of longevity, we didn't really touch on training, but that really is amazing, and understanding your hormonal status. These are all things that can be tackled first and foremost, even from a knowledge base and then a lifestyle perspective. Seventy percent of Americans are either overweight or obese.

• 48:28Ed Mylett?

  And by the way, everybody, one thing on training, and we interrupt you. You can go back and listen to the episode with Gabrielle on that. And also my episode with Amy as well. We go a little bit deeper dive on some of these things. Didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead and do that.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  So those, so these lifestyle factors, it truly is the only thing that you have control over. You don't have control over your genetics. You can control what you do, how you live your life, how you manage stress, how you interpret stress, and also execution. Execution on getting the blood work done and then following up and making those needed changes, which is.

• 49:00Amy Doneen?

  Grossly overlooked.

• 49:02Ed Mylett?

  So good, so good. Amy, uh, two things, I'll let you give some final thoughts, but you gotta tell them about the crinkled ear.

• 49:09Amy Doneen?

  Oh.

• 49:09Ed Mylett?

  And, and, and also, we didn't touch on HRV, and I don't think most people even know what it is, but if you would just touch on those two things and then final thoughts, I just want, I don't want to get out of here without those two things, and then whatever your final thoughts are.

• 49:21Amy Doneen?

  Yeah. So, uh, the fun thing you brought up is, is called Frank's sign, and there are these, uh, what we call red flags. These, we don't really know why are associated with heart disease, but they are. And one is this, uh, interesting little diagonal crease in the ear lobe that, uh, once I share this with people, it's like a party trick. You can't help but like, start looking at people's earlobes. But if someone has a diagonal crease, it could be one or both. It could be male or female. It gets more pronounced as we get older based on collagen in our skin and so forth. But if you have a diagonal crease, it's called Frank's sign. Dr. Frank discovered it. You have a 78% increased lifetime risk of having multi-vessel coronary disease.

• 50:02Amy Doneen?

  It, and it's one of the red flags that, okay, so go get plastic surgery and fix it. Doesn't mean your wrist is weak. No. It just means if you have that, it's not your fault. Like, find out if you have heart disease.

• 50:13Ed Mylett?

  Not my fault I have it, because I have it, as you know. So it's not my fault. It just some.

• 50:16Amy Doneen?

  Not your fault, not your fault.

• 50:18Ed Mylett?

  Someone gave it to me. All right, go ahead.

• 50:19Amy Doneen?

  And then you would mention heart rate variability. Um, you know, that's one of the little tools. We've got Oura rings. We have all these fancy watches. We have all these great biofeedback tools, which I do, I'm a fan of, the CGM monitors, all of that. Um, but if heart rate variability is, is, is high, um, we need to understand, like, high or low, basically, like, what our heart rate variability is. And as we move forward, if that heart rate variability, um, isn't managed, as Gabrielle said, get a sleep study.

• 50:52Amy Doneen?

  I think every human, every adult at the age of 50 or higher probably should get a home sleep study. So just tools like heart rate variability and resting heart rate should be low. When we sleep, our heart rate should really fall. In the morning, our blood pressure should be at its peak best, meaning lowest, under 120, over 75. And if it's not, just ask why, you know, ask why. So I will say, I will say, you know, and you fly 320, 40 days a year, right? And what do you always hear you say, if some tragedy happens, you know, put the oxygen mask on yourself and then go help everybody else.

• 51:35Amy Doneen?

  What you're doing right now is just acknowledging to your amazing audience and giving permission to say, you're going to pause and just do a self-assessment and say, gosh, how long has it been since I've done X, Y, and Z? Amy wants me to get my labs. Gabrielle wants me to get my labs. Amy wants me to do these tests. I'm just going to pause and step back a minute and I'm going to do a self-checkup on my health. Everyone needs to do that because in one thing I've learned after 22 years of doing this in, in heart disease prevention, when I meet people after they've had a heart attack, after they've had a bypass, after they had a stroke, they all wish they would have. There's not one person that would say, I am so glad I didn't pause and get checked out.

• 52:19Amy Doneen?

  I'm so glad I didn't do that. Like, that's never the common thread. So we want to maintain our health and in order to do that, we need to pause and do a self-assessment. And these tools are out there and, and they're available.

• 52:32Ed Mylett?

  What a, what a beautiful conversation today, and I'm grateful to both of you. And everybody, I'll be on this pause for a little bit and see me speak a little less. I'm not going to be on social. And, uh, you have some other things, maybe more strategic in where I spend my time. Business is obviously going to continue, coaching, all that other stuff. So, anyway, today was so special to me.

• 52:53Ed Mylett?

  I, uh, I, I have to tell you that you're the two most, most amazing people. And, uh, I'm so grateful that you're in my life. And I'm so grateful I got to share both of you with the world again today. And just today, everybody, as a member of my family, please make sure you're taking care of yourself and your health. You can read the books of these two women and, and it'll help you do that. And, uh, all the things that we listed here today, I know will make a big difference in your life. So Amy, thank you. Gabrielle, thank you. And, uh, God bless you, everybody. Max out your life.