Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now, here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon.
I am Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified doctor of non-force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine.
February is always Heart Disease Awareness Month.
I've been getting some questions coming in and I'm going to address one of those first.
I got a question from a listener whose husband has learned he has a 70% blockage in his right
carotid artery.
That's the main artery in the neck that supplies most of the blood flow to the brain and she
was concerned that he was getting recommendations for various procedures and she wanted to know
whether or not the open surgery procedure called endartectomy or a stent was better.
Obviously, it's nice when you can get a stent for a lot of heart blockages.
A stent is preferred.
It's standard.
But with the carotid arteries, the research has been recently updated and is not so good.
It still recommends open heart surgery plus the fact, just the fact, not open artery surgery,
the fact that the carotid artery is so close to the surface in the neck also makes that
better.
So I was happy to answer that question for her and I invite you to send your questions
about any topic.
I'm not a cardiovascular surgeon but I do have access to medical information that is
difficult for other people to decipher and I'm happy to answer those questions for you
and provide you with the latest most relevant data to support your decision making for your
health or the health of your loved one.
We're going to talk about a great case a little bit later.
We're going to talk about some studies that have come out, chief among them, study about
low vitamin D levels causing increasing risk of cardiovascular disease in young adults
and also here's a headline for you.
Why are we letting insurers dictate patient care?
Prior authorization is wreaking havoc on patient health.
I'm going to come back to that article in a minute as well.
But first I want to give you an overview on how to prevent heart disease.
There's three simple steps anyone can do to prevent heart disease.
Heart disease is the number one cause of death.
It's really important to understand this.
I'm always excited in February to present this to people who are interested because
most heart disease is preventable.
It's not as easy as snapping your fingers or saying yeah I'd like to do that.
You actually have to do something to prevent it but you can do something to prevent it.
Simple things and I hope to arm you with a clearer understanding of what would make an
actual difference.
So to simplify things as much as possible there's three steps to preventing heart disease.
Number one, keep the pipes clear.
Number two, keep the pressure low.
Number three, keep the pump strong.
So what does that mean?
Number one, keep the pipes clear.
Well it means keeping your arteries clear of blockages.
And so most people then first think of cholesterol.
Oh yeah I got to take my Lipitor or my Zocor or like my doctor told me to keep my cholesterol
low.
Well cholesterol is a factor in the blockages that clog your arteries.
It is one of the main things that plaque formation in your arteries is a combination.
It starts.
That's the most important thing.
Cholesterol does not clog your arteries.
Plaque clogs your arteries.
Cholesterol is like a party crasher.
It sneaks in when your guard is down.
It's inflammation that drives plaque formation.
It causes micro tears and disruptions in the inner lining of your blood vessels which then
are healed with little scab like formations which are made of three things.
Fibrin the main protein that is the form scar tissue anywhere in your body and cholesterol
and calcium.
So that's why most doctors are concerned about your calcium levels because most doctors know
that most people have inflammation and if you have a body filled with inflammatory debris
constantly from poor diet and stress mainly then the worse your cholesterol is the more
cholesterol the higher the cholesterol the higher likelihood that you're going to have
plaque formation or worse plaque formation because you've already got the initiation
of the disease.
But guess what?
There are studies on 50,000 people or more in hospitals.
The net result is half the people who show up with heart attacks or strokes have low
or normal cholesterol.
So there was a study done, a national study done on 53,000 hospital admissions for people
with heart attack or stroke and half of them had low or normal cholesterol.
So obviously cholesterol is not the problem.
Cholesterol is a long for the ride.
Cholesterol contributes to the problem but only if you have the problem caused by inflammation
in the first place.
Little tears in the lining of your blood vessels initiate the process of plaque formation.
I'll say that again.
Inflammation causes the inner lining of your blood vessels to become brittle instead of
flexible like their normal state and when little tiny tears, little micro tears occur
in the endothelium, the inner lining of your blood vessels, your body has to heal those
tears with something like a scab like when you cut your skin.
And those bridges, the scabs that bridge the gaps, then those little micro tears are made
up of fibrin, the main protein, the main tissue used to heal and repair a scar.
If you cut your skin, the same fibrin is also what is repairing that scar.
Fibrin cholesterol and calcium.
So having high inflammation in combination with high cholesterol will increase your risk
of heart disease.
But if you have low risk, if you have low inflammation, even if your cholesterol is
high then you will not get the standard plaque formation that most people get on the standard
American diet because you're controlling for inflammation and there are ways to test for
that and ensure that you are doing a good job of keeping inflammation low.
It's so much more important to keep inflammation low than it is to keep cholesterol low because
cholesterol does not cause heart disease.
Heart disease causes heart disease if you keep the inflammation low then the amount
of cholesterol matters little.
So you want to keep the pipes clear by keeping cholesterol low.
So it's important to know where if you don't do that what happens.
Well plaque builds up, piles up mostly where there's a fork in the pipes.
So in the carotid arteries which are the main arteries in your neck that supply blood flow
to the brain and the femoral arteries where the main aorta from your heart going down
through your abdomen branches off to both of your legs and in several other places.
Anytime anywhere there's a fork in the road plaque will tend to build up there.
Also any place there's just a lot of blood flow, a lot of stress.
So as everyone knows the arteries to the heart are prime places to form plaque.
But again that plaque does not form unless you have chronic meaning long standing over
long periods of time inflammation in your bloodstream from stress, from diet, from lack
of nutrients to keep your arteries clear and your health strong.
So what does that mean to keep your health strong?
Well we'll talk a lot about that but you know obvious things, vegetables, fruit, good fats
and other important nutrients reduce inflammation to make it less likely for you to have injuries
in the blood vessels in the first place.
So inflammation is the body's normal response to injury.
This is the normal response to any kind of irritant.
It's the response to infection.
It's sort of like a microscopic combination of the Marines and the Army Corps of Engineers
and the Red Cross.
It's a complexed organized attempt to destroy an invader, to suppress an irritant or repair
damaged tissue.
So if you have a virus or some poisonous chemical or you smash your thumb, inflammation is your
friend.
But if you don't have a virus and you haven't burned your finger or cut yourself or broken
a bone, then inflammation is sort of like a group of bored teenagers with a bad attitude
and too much time on your hands wreaking havoc throughout your body.
So chronic inflammation, and I always have to remind people chronic does not mean bad,
chronic does not mean severe, chronic just means taking place over a long period of time
like chronos, like chronology.
Chronic means something's been around for a long time.
So chronic inflammation occurs when physical, chemical, dietary, even emotional irritants
are constantly prodding your organs to basically dial 911 even when there's no clear and present
danger.
Irritants like this trigger an automatic but mild response.
You don't notice it.
You don't know anything's happening at all, but it goes on indefinitely for years even
as long as that irritant is present.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley and you're listening to Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions to Almost
Any Health Challenge.
The focus this month is on heart disease and I am referring to notes of mine from a lecture
I've given several times on heart disease at Community Memorial Hospital.
When I did it the first time it was so popular they asked me to come back and several nurses
attended to get some continuing education units before that.
I've mentioned before that I love teaching and it's always fun to do this because I provide
a contrarian message to what people normally hear in standard medical training.
So that's always fun.
I've presented this talk at St. John's Hospital to heart disease support groups and Rotary
Clubs and other service clubs.
But anyway I decided that it would get, just to get people's attention.
I don't have the benefit of having a PowerPoint to present to you radio listeners, but what
I'm looking at right now is a picture of normal lungs right next to a picture of smoker lungs.
To just make it as clear as possible and have a little fun with it I've decided to do a
series of slides on how to increase inflammation.
So understand for the next few minutes I'm talking about things that you don't want to
do.
So here's how you can increase inflammation that causes cardiovascular disease.
Inhale smoke.
The worst kind is from cigarettes, but smoke from any source will increase inflammation
that wrecks your lungs and your cardiovascular system.
So smoke from cigarettes, but also from incense, from exhaust, from car exhaust, from living
near a freeway, from working in an environment where you're constantly exposed to smoke,
burning anything in your home and smelling the smoke from that, including wood burning
fireplaces.
I love a wood burning fireplace, but don't breathe the smoke.
So another way to increase inflammation is to eat lots of fried food.
So you know fried junk food, everyone knows what fried food is, but the worst of all the
fried foods, the two worst fried foods are french fries, number two coming in, the runner
up is french fries because potatoes have almost no nutrients in them.
When you peel them, they have no nutrients left.
They're just starch.
And then the fast food industry coats them with things that make them so crunchy and
delicious like chemicals that give them flavor and make them golden and crispy and basically
manipulate you into thinking you need more and more of them.
Has anyone ever eaten a serving of french fries and not wanted more of them immediately?
That's a bad sign.
That's very similar to the addiction that occurs when you eat sugar.
So number one for the worst possible fried foods you could eat, you can eat, people do
eat all the time, are donuts.
You've got the triple whammy with donuts, the starch of the flour, the sugar of all
the other crap they put on donuts and the fact that they fry them in grease, which is
if you knew what happens, go ask someone who's owned a donut shop.
What do they do with that grease after a while?
That's a toxic waste product that is regulated by the environmental protection agency.
Don't quote me on that.
It might be some other government agency, but there's whatever agency governs the removable
of and hazardous waste.
The removal and proper disposal of hazardous waste is involved behind in the back, behind
every donut shop.
That grease that they boiled, they fried those donuts in, it becomes a toxic waste product
and that is what your donuts are lifted from right before you eat them.
So yeah, donuts, top of the list, worst thing you could possibly eat to increase inflammation,
but there's lots of other ways to increase inflammation that cause cardiovascular disease.
You can eat lots of processed foods.
So stay away from the perimeter of the grocery stores where all the good food is, all the
fresh vegetables and fresh meats and real cheese and anything made fresh and stick to
the center aisles where all the processed foods like anything, especially anything that's
room that's meant to be kept fresh at room temperature.
So chips, Cheetos, cookies, crackers, anything that's designed to be have a shelf life for
a long time at room temperature is probably filled with things that will increase inflammation.
So though one of the best ways, if you're a listener to this show, you've heard me talk
about this a long time.
I'm sorry.
I'm never going to stop eat lots of grains, starch and sugar.
So grains are things that are made from wheat.
Starch are things that are made from starchy plants that aren't grains like potatoes and
corn and of course sugar.
So grains, starch and sugar.
So breakfast cereal is a great way.
Start your day with breakfast cereal.
That's a great way to increase inflammation in your body and increase your risk of heart
disease, especially if you then add some pancakes covered with high fructose corn syrup, masquerading
is real brown syrup and muffins.
If you think muffins are healthy food, Google, go to YouTube and listen to Jim Gaffigan.
Jim Gaffigan is a comedian that talks about how muffins are basically cake.
How did that slip in there?
Did it dress up a cupcake as a breakfast food and suddenly people think that's healthy?
It is not.
So inflammation is what drives plaque formation and scientists have identified several markers
of inflammation that predict the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Everyone knows that cholesterol, total cholesterol, LDL, bad cholesterol, HDL, good cholesterol.
Here's our homocysteine, things like interleukin-6, lipoprotein-A, C-reactive protein.
There are studies that have been around for over 20 years that show that C-reactive protein
is a much stronger predictor of cardiovascular events than total cholesterol.
So okay, enough of that now.
Enough of talking about ways to, if you just tuned in, everything you heard for the previous
few minutes were things that I do not recommend, ways to increase inflammation and obviously
the goal is to do the opposite.
So inflammation drives plaque formation.
So to reduce it, consume fish oil.
There are three nutrients that I recommend everyone consume even without testing them
and they are a good multivitamin with adequate absorbable minerals, which is never a one
a day.
It's always a high quality product from a company like Orthomolecular Products, Metagenics,
Designs for Health, Foreign Research and is usually three to four capsules per day for
minerals that your body can actually absorb.
Number one, a good multi for the minerals.
Number two, 5,000 units of vitamin D. 5,000 units is the standard dose of vitamin D and
we're going to see shortly how that can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease even in
youth and so inflammation can also be reduced by fish oil.
Fish oil reduces, there are numerous studies that show that consuming fish oil, consuming
omega-3 fatty acids that you can only get from the ocean, which are DHA, Dicosa Hexanoic
Acid and EPA, Ecosapentaenoic Acid.
Consuming fish oil reduces interleukin-6, one of the most pro-inflammatory cytokines.
When people talk about inflammation, what is inflammation exactly?
Well, it is the production of chemicals that course through your blood system including
things like inflammatory cytokines, interleukin-6 chief among them.
Consuming fish oil reduces interleukin-6.
Consuming fish oil also reduces lipoprotein A, which is another test that most doctors
don't do, which is a much stronger indicator of your risk of imminent heart attack or stroke.
Lipoprotein A, knowing your levels of this is also much more important than simply knowing
how much cholesterol you have, total cholesterol, bad cholesterol, good cholesterol, etc.
I promised I'd present a great case just to give you an idea of what's possible.
I had an 82-year-old female who had been running a high blood pressure of 160 over 90 for many
years, 20 years.
She'd been running roughly 160 over 90 and she refused to take blood pressure medication
because it made her dizzy.
It made her feel wobbly.
She was a very sharp woman and she didn't like the side effects of the blood pressure
medication so she refused to take it.
But when she came to me for other reasons, she came to me for neck pain because she was
a concert violinist but she eventually described to me this situation.
I said, well, it's really not a good idea to not take, you should take blood pressure
medication.
If your blood pressure is that high, you only get one heart, you're going to wear it out.
I asked her if she'd ever taken a number of nutrients that I recommended for reducing
blood pressure like fish oil, pomegranate juice, and reducing inflammation in the vascular
system which all basically have the same synergistic effect.
It's not that nutrients don't work like drugs.
There's no one nutrient to lower your blood pressure.
There's no one nutrient to reduce inflammation in all of your blood vessels to prevent the
formation of plaque.
There's no one nutrient to slow rapid heartbeat and relax you from all of your stress.
There's no one nutrient that provides the most essential, well, there is one.
CoQ10 actually is one nutrient that provides the essential cofactor to healing and repairing
heart muscles.
So anyway, I asked her, I told her about a number of nutrients I'd recommend and asked
her if she'd ever tried any of those before.
She said, oh yeah, individually I've tried all of those.
I said, have you ever tried all of those things?
Fish oil, pomegranate juice, turmeric, natokinase, an enzyme that breaks down that fibrin that
forms that horrible plaque, coenzyme Q10, and an adequate dose and some other vitamins
and minerals.
I also recommended that she do some stretching exercises for flexibility, relaxation, and
stress relief.
She said, well, why would I do all those things at the same time?
Then I won't know what's working.
Well, she did all of them at the same time.
And in six weeks, her blood pressure went from 160 over 90 to 130 over 80.
That's a huge reduction in an 82 year old.
It's really, it's relatively easy to reduce blood pressure, 20, 30 points.
And someone in their 30s or 40s or 50s who's really high stress.
The older you get, the more rigidity, the more plaque, the more degradation is inevitably
going to build up in your blood vessels, even if you have great genes, which she apparently
had.
But her blood pressure went down from off the charts, too high, super dangerous range
to in a safe range.
And six weeks by taking a whole bunch of nutrients that were synergistic, that worked in combinations
to alleviate the effects of everything else that was happening in her body and her life.
It looks like we're about out of time.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
You've been listening to Safe Effective Natural Solutions.
I would love to help you identify your risk factors for cardiovascular disease, yours
or those of someone you love, I'd be honored to help you come up with a solution by using
proper testing to identify what's really important.
That's what it comes down to.
Heart disease is the number one cause of death in America because we all do things that stress
our cardiovascular system.
So how important is it for you to make a change in your life right now or someone you love?
And how do you know?
How do you know what's going to make a difference?
So proper testing and a proper consultation, I've helped hundreds, thousands of people
reduce their risk of heart disease.
I'd love to do that for you.
Tune in next week, next Friday at 4 p.m.
Have a fantastic weekend.
You've been listening to Safe Effective Natural Solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley.
If you have a health question you want discussed on the show, email your health questions to
Dr. Binkley at BinkleyHealingCenter.com.
Take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself and for your loved
ones because our health matters.
Join him next Friday at 4 p.m. for Safe Effective Natural Solutions right here on 98.3 The
Word, KDAR.