0 (1s):
Coming up on the get lean, eat clean podcast.
1 (4s):
And I define health by does your body have the ability to adapt to different situations can adapt to different fuel sources can adapt to different stresses, can adapt to different brainwaves and things like that. Like if we get stuck in one thing, like if you get stuck burning, just carbohydrates or glucose for fuel and your body, if it gets out of burn fat, that's not, that's not being able to adapt. If you get stuck in a sympathetic dominant state where your body is in a stress state all the time and you, and it forgets how to be in a non stress state, that's not training it to adapt. You know? So it's the things we talk about, like, like the cold showers and stuff, like that's training your body to adapt to different things. And that's really, really important. As far as health goes.
1 (44s):
I define health by the ability to buy, to adapt to different situations.
0 (50s):
Hello, and welcome to the get clean, eat clean podcast. I'm Brian grin, and I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it wants was five, 10, even 15 years ago. Each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed Dr. Steven Hussey. He's a chiropractor and functional medicine practitioner speaker, and the author of two books on health. We discussed Dr. Hussey's health journey toxins to avoid for optimal health. The advantages of infrared saunas, along with LDL, statins and cholesterol, poly unsaturated fats for saturated fats and his one tip to get your body back to what it once was.
0 (1m 35s):
Thanks so much for listening. I really enjoyed my interview with Dr. Hussey. I know you will too, and have a great day. All right, Dr. Steven Hussey, welcome to the podcast.
1 (1m 46s):
Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
0 (1m 48s):
Yeah, thanks for coming on. I was, we were talking a bit in the, before we got on and I wanted to know how, how you got into sort of human nutrition and heart health. I know you're you have a heart course as well. How did that sort of come about?
1 (2m 5s):
Yeah, I mean, just like a lot of people, I guess, in, in this space, it's, it's, you know, personal health journey kind of got me into all this kind of stuff. You know, from a, from a very young age, I had some health issues that my parents noticed, whether it was asthma or allergies, or I used to break out and huge hives all over my body for no reason, supposedly, and, and eventually all that inflammation, you know, ended up with me being diagnosed with autoimmune type one diabetes when I was nine years old. And, and so, you know, my parents and I didn't really know too much about these types of things.
1 (2m 47s):
So we were just relying on Western medicine to help us out and, and manage these conditions. But I guess that's the key word is, is managed and not ever explain why they're happening. And you know, it wasn't until I guess college. I, I, I started figuring out that the way I lived my life and the things I did had an impact on how I could manage these things. And eventually I got rid of a lot of them. And so however, I was left with the autoimmune type one diabetes, which you know, that the damage was done, so that's going to be there. And so I started realizing over my time, seeing endocrinologists and things for the type one diabetes that, you know, I was severely predisposed to, you know, cardiovascular conditions and diseases that the blood vessels and things because of chronically high blood sugars are higher than even if it's, well-controlled higher than the normal person without type of diabetes.
1 (3m 48s):
And so, yeah, I kind of, you know, every time I've, I've heard anything about heart disease, my ears perked up, and I tried to learn as much as I could, but, you know, even in my, my, I guess, formal medical training, you know, it, it, wasn't giving me the answers as to why I was predisposed and, and what I could do about it and why all these things happened in the first place. And so just kind of in this never ending journey for me of trying to figure out why this happened. Yeah. And then I started sharing some of that information, you know, maybe three years ago now people liked it. So here I am.
0 (4m 23s):
Yeah. What would you say? You learn, you learn the most through that process. You said you were had asthma allergies, is that right? Yeah. I feel like that's such a common thing. You just hear a lot of people have that. Could you, could you pinpoint certain things that you've done to help remedy that?
1 (4m 42s):
Yeah. I think that the biggest group, like when I was a kid, it was, it was exercise-induced asthma. Or if I would, you know, laugh really hard with my friends, it would, it would happen. And I start wheezing and coughing and, you know, certain things started to trigger it to like, like cats or animals being around would trigger that kind of stuff as well. And, and I'd say that all those things went away for the most part when I became conscious about what I was eating and, and then also talks and exposure as well. I just eliminating exposures, you know, like, like the animals and things like that. Do I have, you know, animals in our house now, and I'm fine, but for a long time it was, you know, avoiding those things.
1 (5m 28s):
But the diet was huge and it took a lot of trial and error and getting through misinformation and trying lots of different diets and things for me to figure out what worked. But, but yeah, it was, it was mainly diet. I think that got rid of like allergies and, and the hives and things like that. It was just like toning down the inflammation that my body was so on edge about, you know, it was just the slightest little thing would trigger all that inflammation. As soon as I got, I guess, my threshold of what would trigger it down, then I could withstand those things. And I did that through, through diet and toxin avoidance.
0 (6m 6s):
Yeah. What type of a toxin avoidance did you go about? You know, you hear that quite a bit as well. And sometimes I feel like it would be tough to pinpoint, like what was triggering it.
1 (6m 19s):
Yeah. And it is. And so you just kind of, you learn about all these different toxin exposures and you, and you work to limit all the ones that you can and not freak out about the ones that you can because you can't avoid them. All right. But I tell people, you know, going through the, you know, the five main areas that I think we're, we're mostly exposed to toxins, at least on a daily basis. One is food. And so, you know, you gotta expect if there's toxins in your food, you're gonna put them right into your body. So whether that's, you know, pesticides and herbicides and things like that, that are sprayed on food, but also, you know, potential toxins that the plant or the food to make themselves, we have to be conscious of those.
1 (7m 2s):
I'm not, I'm not saying that everybody should avoid, you know, plant toxins, but, you know, we need to be conscious of how those affect us. And if they do affect them, then in getting rid of them can be huge, especially for inflammation and autoimmune type things, then those water making sure your water is as free of toxins as possible, which, you know, if you're drinking a municipal water supply, it's probably full of different things from heavy metals to extra medications to pesticides and things like that. So water filters are useful there just being conscious of, of re mental remineralizing the water too. And then there's air, which obviously you can't control all the air, you breathe, but you can do your best to control the air in your home and making sure, especially in your bedroom where you spend, you know, a third of your life, making sure that's clean air that's.
1 (7m 55s):
So we're not getting those exposures there, whether it's mold or, or just, you know, the artificial fragrances and things that are all over people's homes, you know, like the, the air fresheners and things like that. Yeah. Then there's cosmetics and cleaning products. So those types of things, those are the, those are the big five. So just making sure that everything you put on your body or you use to clean your home is, is as, as toxin-free as possible. I mean, really all you need to clean is like water and vinegar and like some essential oil. And if you want it to smell nice, that's, that's enough, you know, you don't need these chemicals and things to, to clean your home.
1 (8m 35s):
And, and yeah, and just being conscious of the, you know, the cosmetics and things, even like laundry, detergents and soaps and toothpaste and all those different things, like, it all sounds like truly the amounts of things that we're getting exposed to. But when you add it all up, it becomes this one big toxin exposure every single day. And it cause lots of these things, many of them anyways, are, you know, water-soluble, your body can get rid of them pretty easily, but if they're constantly coming in, then it's a, it's hard for body to keep up. And sometimes they get stored. And so, yeah, just looking into those areas and, you know, the allergies and the, the, I guess the responsiveness of my immune system, my inflammatory system went way down when I started avoiding all those.
0 (9m 16s):
Hmm. Yeah, you're right. I mean, like, for example, just like deodorant, like it's something that it's it's can be subtle and it's something that you do every day and it can probably add up over time, you know, it's like the difference between, like, if you say, oh, I'm just going to have a French fries and you have it once every three months. But if you're having a little bit every day, that's when it really takes a toll and you don't realize until almost like it's a little bit too late.
1 (9m 41s):
Yeah. Like, was it deodorant? It's an interesting one because like the antiperspirants specifically are the ones that have aluminum in them. And that, that, that compound was illumined is designed to, is what actually makes it, so the, the, the poorest don't sweat. And so it blocks that what what's ironic though, is that the aluminum is getting into your body and that's going to get stores and heavy metals are really hard to get rid of actually, but, but sweating is actually one of the mechanisms we use to actually get rid of, of heavy metals or help our liver out and get rid of those heavy metals. So it's kind of like we're putting the metals in and preventing the way that we get metals out as well.
0 (10m 19s):
Yeah. That's, that's a good point. I actually, my, I was telling my wife to stop using her kids and we've, I I'm, I'm transferring, we're transferring a lot of things over and keeping an eye on that. I'm pretty good with it. Actually. One of the things that I was fortunate to get recently was an infrared sauna. And I know you've talked a little bit about that on your website, on your blog. Maybe let's touch a little bit on that, as long as we're talking about toxin and detoxification.
1 (10m 46s):
Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I mean, I always think of things from like an evolutionary perspective and why it would make sense to use an infrared sauna because that's a very modern technology, right. But you know, 40% of the sun's rays are, are infrared. So that was our original exposure to it. That's where, you know, our bodies got used at the type of thing of, or, you know, the, the, the many, many years of our evolution. And so now we can kind of use these modern technologies to help us get exposure to those. And, you know, there's, there's plenty of research that shows that just regular steam saunas are beneficial for the sweating, mostly like out of finished, like the finished saunas and things, but infrared is particularly important to me.
1 (11m 32s):
Not only because it, you know, the sauna makes you sweat and you sweat out toxins, which there's, there's very interesting research that shows that when you sweat and infrared sauna, more, more metals come out, you know, through the sweat, then if you just to go for a run or something, or just sweat without the infrared exposure,
0 (11m 51s):
Do you know, that's interesting, you know why that is
1 (11m 56s):
Not specifically, but I have a theory as to why, and, and it has to do with, and this may open a whole of a whole nother can of worms, but it has to do with the structuring of water in her bodies, which is, you know, like our bodies are, you know, a large proportion of water. You hear anywhere from 60 to 80% water. Right. So there's a lot of water, but what form is it in? You know, people think, you know, if I was, if I was 70% water, I don't slosh around like a water bed. So, so the, the water, my body is not in a form that is liquid are lots of it. The, the water and the blood or the lymphatic system, or the cerebral spinal fluid. Yes, that's a liquid, but most of the water in our body it's like in ourselves is in more of a gel state.
1 (12m 42s):
So it's not like frozen, solid, like ice. It's not a liquid like water. It's kind of this jail state think like, like jello. And it makes sense. Cause if you poke the tissues of your forearm, they give a little bit, and then it comes back just like jello does, you know? And so
0 (12m 58s):
It doesn't come back as much. Right.
1 (13m 1s):
We have trouble maintaining that structure in, in the, in the water, in our bodies. And so, yeah, so infrared light, you know, water has this ability to hold energy and infrared light is the most absorbable form of that are that water can can absorb. And when it has that energy, when it gets next to a hydrophilic surface or a water loving surface, it actually structures itself. And so this is what happens in the lining of our arteries. What happens in ourselves? However, when you, when you heat that it kind of, it can kind of break it down. So it's energizing the, the water there, but when you heat it, it kind of breaks that down a little bit.
1 (13m 42s):
And so these, these heavy metals that get, can get kind of stored in our body, sometimes they can get stuck in this gel, like state stuck inside the cells. And if we heat the body. So the heat is the important thing. They're not necessarily the, the infrared, but the infrared's important for restructuring at once. The, the heating processes is over, but when we heat it like that, it kind of breaks it down a little bit and that can help release metals. And then when you sweat, I just kind of come right out through, through a different form of water, different state of water. And, and yeah, that's, that's my theory as to why that is. But regardless of whether that's true or not, the research shows that when you sweat and an infrared sauna versus just sweating, normally more metals come out.
0 (14m 27s):
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's good to know. And the nice thing I like about the infrared sauna too, is you don't like, as opposed to just the regular Swedish sauna as you could be in there for awhile, it's not like a, you're not feeling like you're getting like smoked out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think you're meant to be in it for a little bit longer. You can, you can, you can handle the heat just the way it's applied is differently as opposed to just through steam.
1 (14m 55s):
Yeah, definitely. So,
0 (14m 58s):
But now that we talk about toxins, I do want to talk a little bit about the heart and cholesterol. And I have quite a few guests on here. We talk about this and I just wanted your perspective. I, I actually recently got some blood work done and, you know, I think it's, it's a common thing, especially in like traditional physicians. If they see a, you know, high cholesterol and high LDL, they panic, and a lot of statins are, are being, you know, given what are your thoughts around that? And also like LDL particles and things like that.
1 (15m 32s):
Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I've looked extensively at this because, you know, I was interested in the heart and everybody, you always hear that. Yeah. High cholesterol is like the number one risk factor for heart disease, but I, I haven't really been able to find anything that says that it is the, at least the most important risk factor, for sure. It's definitely not the most important. And so resistance, I think, is the most important as far as from a metabolic standpoint. But, but yeah, so, you know, with cholesterol, I mean, there's a reason it's there. It does a lot of different things in the body. It's really, it's essential for life. I mean, cell communication, cellular structure, making over hormones, all kinds of stuff, and so aggressively lowering it doesn't really quite make sense to me, you know, especially with the guidelines saying that it should be a hundred or lower and using these aggressive drugs, whether it's a Staton or a PCSK nine inhibitor to keep it lower than a hundred, it doesn't really make sense to me based on, you know, physiology based on the fact that humans have been, you know, eating cholesterol, rich foods and saturated fat foods for, for, since the beginning of humans on this planet and heart diseases are relatively new, at least in the epidemic that we know it, a relatively new phenomenon, you know, it's really only been an epidemic with the last 150 years or so.
1 (17m 2s):
And so that doesn't really make sense to me that it's all of a sudden these, this, this cholesterol is killing us when it's been around forever. And then the argument is, I guess the devil's advocate is like, what if it gets too high? That's the problem. Yes, we need it. But if it gets too high, that's the problem. And, and, you know, there's studies on people with familial hypercholesterolemia, which is people with extremely high cholesterol levels, LDL and total cholesterol levels. And, you know, when they, when they track these people, they don't seem to die any sooner than other people. And one study even suggested that when they do die sooner, it's not because of the high cholesterol. It's because of other lifestyle factors, you know, that that may have damaged the cholesterol and then therefore damaged cholesterol can, can contribute to those things.
1 (17m 52s):
But that's not the question that was false. That's other things that are damaging the cholesterol. But interestingly, very recently, a study came out and it's just an association study, but it suggested that it looked at cholesterol levels, looked at a lot of things and all cause mortality. But one of the things that looked at was cholesterol levels and all cause mortality, which is dying from anything. And it found that the people with cholesterol levels between about one 10 and 1 51 10, and one 60, something like that had the lowest all-cause mortality of any of the groups and that the people with the cholesterol numbers lower than about 85 had the highest almost all cause mortality, which, you know, the recommendation is for it to be lower than a hundred.
1 (18m 40s):
And many people are prescribed these cholesterol lowering medications to keep it below 100, many times below 85. And that's when we see the association with the highest all-cause mortality and above 100, you know, one 17 to one 50 or so it is the lowest all-cause mortality. So clearly cholesterol is important. We did around for things. And when we, when we decrease it, there's an association with more death from any cause. So, so yeah, I mean, there's, there's all this nuance to cholesterol conversation and you were talking about particle sizes and things like that, particle numbers. And I think that, I think the jury is still out on, on cholesterol and there's this huge focus on it because of the history of how this all played out.
1 (19m 28s):
And I think it's been a huge distraction as to what really causes heart disease, which is what I'm trying to illuminate for people. But with particle size, I think that, you know, the size of your, your LDL molecule. So like it's thought that the smaller denser ones are more problematic because they can penetrate the lining of the artery more. And that only happens when they become damaged. So you don't want damaged or oxidized cholesterol particles. That's the, that's the thing that everybody's looking out for you. So you can get that measured through, you know, ox LDL and help you a little a and things like that. But even that theory doesn't necessarily make sense to me because, you know, we were talking about the infrared sauna and the fourth phase water, the structured water, the gel state water.
1 (20m 15s):
And that's actually something that lines our arteries. If the water in our body is sufficiently energized. And w when it lines the arteries, it's kind of a protective layer for the lining of the arteries. And, and, and one thing that's interesting about it is that the structured water is also another name for it is exclusion zone water, because of the way it structures itself. It excludes anything. That's not it. And only very small hydrated ions of minerals can get through it, but anything bigger than those, anything bigger than that, can't penetrate this barrier is protecting the lining of the artery. And so even a small dense LDL particle is gigantic when, when looking at what can get through this barrier.
1 (20m 60s):
So that's another reason why I like him for it's on us, because it helps structure that water. So you can maintain that lining. And so this whole particle size thing and how, you know, it's not because the particles are smaller, that, that those damaged LDL particles are actually given us more risk. It's the things that cause those LDL particles to get smaller. So what's causing our risk and the things that cause us to get smaller are things that cause damage. So that's going to be inflammation. The toxins we talked about, it's going to be chronic stress. Those are the things that damage LDL particles and make them smaller. However, those are also the things that can break down this protective barrier lining of our artery of the fourth phase water, and also eventually damage the lining of the artery.
1 (21m 43s):
And so when all that happens, the body, you know, responds and it has to repair that because if it doesn't, it'll rupture and that's worse, that's bleeding out rather than then having atherosclerosis. And so it has to repair it. So uses cholesterol and minerals and things like that to like almost like spackle to repair the artery and, and it, but again, the cholesterol is deposited there and it's kind of framed when in reality, what caused it to be deposit. There was all this inflammation, oxidative, stress, all these, all these things. We talk about the causes that stuff. So the reason that a small dense LDL particle is indicative of, of your risk for atherosclerosis is because the things that are causing those small dense particles are also things damaging the lining of the artery.
1 (22m 27s):
It's all just kind of happening at once. So we can't blame those particles, those small particles. So, you know, as that's where you can take from a small LDL or from a particle size test, is that you can say, oh, I have a lot of oxidative stress going on. If you have high particles are low, a lot of low particle size lipid proteins. So he has that make sense.
0 (22m 51s):
Yeah. Yeah. I probably followed you. Yeah. I, so the bottom line is it's cholesterol gets blamed and it's really these other things that are causing inflammation and it's context related, right? Like if, if you have inflammatory markers and like you mentioned insulin resistance and things like that, that that's, that is what should be blamed as opposed to just cholesterol and even particle size as well.
1 (23m 17s):
You know, any disease, you can't just blame it on one thing, one biomarker that's just incredibly reductionist and naive. In my opinion, you know, our bodies are these complex biological ecosystems with many, many things going on. You can't just reduce it down to a disease to down to one thing, you know? And, and so he's like, I have a theory that, that in the context of inflammation, let's say that someone is, is smoking and drinking excessively, and they're really stressed out and they have all these things that are causing this inflammation and oxidative stress. Then at that point, maybe having higher LDL or higher, higher cholesterol may be a problem because there's more cholesterol around to get damaged.
1 (23m 59s):
Right. And when, when cholesterol becomes damaged, it contributes to that process of oxidative stress and inflammation. It just becomes it's, it's like, it's like those OnBase, you know, like, you know, if you get a test by zombie, you become a zombie, you know, it's like, you get touched by the oxidative stress. Now you become part of the problem. Right. And so I have a theory that in that state of this inflammation and oxidative stress, then maybe having higher audio may not be a good idea because there's more around to get damaged. That's just more problems in the bloodstream. But I don't know about that for sure. Just the theory, but, but yeah.
0 (24m 34s):
Yeah. I feel like we wa we want to blame, like one thing, unlike, you know, everything it's like blaming meat, or, you know, like, which has been vilified for a long time and blaming even salt as well for high blood pressure. What are your thoughts around like meat and salt as far as being the victim here and being blamed for, for causing these issues?
1 (24m 57s):
Yeah. And meet with kind of guilty by association. I think because, you know, the whole story of, of ancil keys back in the fifties and sixties and how he did some research, some associational, epidemiological research that shows that the more saturated fat that a, a country ate, the more heart disease they had. However, he excluded countries that didn't fit his criteria. There was data from 22 countries available, and he chose the seven that gave him the conclusion. He wanted left out places like France, where they ate lots of saturated fat and had lower heart disease and, and things like that. And so I, in my opinion, he's been pretty much disproven at this point, whether that's recognized in mainstream circles, I don't know, but, you know, because of saturated fat, you know, meat has saturated fat, it was kind of meat was guilty by association, oh, red meats.
1 (25m 49s):
The reason we're having these problems, when in reality, red, meat's been part of the human diet in large amounts, especially as hunter-gatherers for a very long time. And like I said, this to this epidemic we have today is, is a very new thing. But the other thing that doesn't make sense to me is that, you know, when you look at the physiology, well, there's two things. I guess when you look at the physiology of how your body uses saturated fat versus polyunsaturated fat, like the actual breakdown of it into, into making ATP, like when it uses polyunsaturated fat, it actually kind of breaks your metabolism if it has to use that too much. And so we look at this increase in, in vegetable oil consumption since, you know, the early 19 hundreds and how that's correlated directly with the rise in heart disease.
1 (26m 37s):
It makes complete sense that all these polyunsaturated fats, not that polyunsaturated fats are bad, we need them, but we just don't need them in the amounts that we're consuming them. For sure, because red meat has polyunsaturated fat and it just way lower, you know, we need the right ratios. But yeah, when you burn primarily polyunsaturated fats, it tends to break your metabolism, which it seems to me, based on the mechanisms that leads to insulin resistance, like systemic insulin resistance, what's when you burn saturated fats, that doesn't really happen. So, so that's a huge part of it there. But then the other thing is, is that that's a huge part of why red meat and, and things don't cause heart disease because that, that insulin resistance is what is the main, I guess, metabolic, you know, trigger for, for heart disease.
1 (27m 24s):
But the other thing is, is that when you look at the nutrient content of animal foods, you know, nutrients that are primarily found only in animal foods, especially like red meat and pork and things like that. Things like creatine and carnitine and carnosine and taurine, things like that have huge benefits for the cardiovascular system, whether it's the heart specifically, or specifically for taurine taurine is the health of the vascular system that we have. Like, it's just those, those foods like there. And some of those cases, some of those foods, you can find a little bit in plant foods, but they are primarily in our diet. They come from animal foods like red meat and pork and things like that.
1 (28m 5s):
So, so it makes no sense that if we, with all these, these high quality nutrients that are, that do many amazing things for the cardiovascular system, it's also a food that's killing us. Yeah. It just, it makes no sense whatsoever. And, and, you know, it's been totally ignored that, that the increase in processed food and the lack of nutrients and increase in polyunsaturated fats, like those are the things that have changed. So those are the things that should be under the microscope, you know, and figuring out what's going on there. And instead there's this huge push to blame the red meat. So it's just sad. And then with salt, salt's another really interesting one.
1 (28m 46s):
You know, it's thought that, you know, too much salt causes high blood pressure when exactly it it's actually the opposite. I think because, you know, high blood pressure is again, is caused by primarily in our society, insulin resistance, but also imbalance in our autonomic nervous system. So when you're in this hyper stress state all the time, then obviously blood pressure is going to go up and humans in modern day tend to get stuck in that state. But yeah, and one of the things, one of the contributors to insulin resistance is, is low salt. And so if you think about it, you know, low salt causing insulin resistance, then causes heart disease, high blood pressure, things like that.
1 (29m 28s):
So in reality, we need, we need more salt, but that's not like preservative salt, like sodium bicarbonate. It's not table salt. You know, it's, it's mineral salt, whether it's Himalayan salt or sea salt, things like that. You want, you want complete minerals and your salt. We're not assigned to get the, the table salt and preservatives salts and things like that.
0 (29m 50s):
Yeah. I had a Rob Wolfen doc and we talked a bit about that. He has his company element with, with the, the different, you know, the different salts and they're sweet and a little bit with the Stevia, but I've been putting them in my waters here and there, but yeah, like a good mineral. I always say mineral water. It's a great place to start. And, and like a Redmond, sea salt in your, do you do do that for your waters? Or how do you drink your water?
1 (30m 18s):
I mainly just drink mineral waters. Then I by the store. And then I have a filter that we use for like the tap water and stuff. And I use that for like cooking and stuff where I'm adding, like, if we make a big soup, we use that, but then we're always adding minerals to it with the salt and with the vegetables and things we, you use. But, but yeah, and then the salt I do put on food is always a mineral salt. And that's where I try and balance my minerals that way, because we're not, you know, water should have minerals in it. That's the way it's supposed to come. And there's, there's some evidence that, that, you know, drinking, you know, complete aro, reverse osmosis water can deplete your body of minerals over time.
1 (31m 2s):
And, you know, I don't know how sound the evidence is, but, but it makes sense to me. And I would always, we need minerals in general. So why not just drink mineral water, which is the way it comes naturally from the earth, you know, it comes mineral rich. So that makes sense that that's, that's what it should be. Okay.
0 (31m 21s):
Yeah. And I'm curious with all the research and the things you've learned over the last few years, like how have you implemented into your daily routine and what type of things have you, do you go about whether it's eating or infrared or, you know, things like that.
1 (31m 34s):
Yeah. On a typical Workday, you know, I wake up and I, the first thing I do is like, you know, like breathing exercises for about 15 minutes. And then I, I, I, you know, record things in a gratitude journal, just like things that I think I'm grateful for, like opportunities for the day and things like that, or something that may have happened the day before, things like that. And then, you know, I don't need in the mornings. I only eat from like noon to, you know, maybe around seven or so in that window.
1 (32m 14s):
So I don't eat in the mornings, but I get up and I usually pick like a, a quick like cold shower, which sounds bad for, it sounds bad for lots of, or to lots of people, but it doesn't sound bad
0 (32m 28s):
To me.
1 (32m 30s):
And, and I feel like, you know, when I talk about things like the autonomic nervous system and our stress response, heart rate variability is the best way to measure in that. And, and, you know, the breathing exercises and the cold showers have been one of the things that, that, and dopamine fascinating have been like the things that I've noticed the most impact on the heart rate variability. So, so I do that stuff. Then I go to work and I'm just treating patients all morning. I'm a chiropractor. So I do like very neuromusculoskeletal type things, adjusting patients and that kind of stuff. And then at lunch, there's a, there's a sauna in the basement of the clinic.
1 (33m 9s):
So I usually use the sauna or sit out in the sun if it's the right season, something like that. And then that's when I have my first meal, which is usually, you know, some sort of animal food with vegetables and no polyunsaturated fats and, or at least no added polyunsaturated fats.
0 (33m 32s):
And so you're, you're, you're preparing that yourself, I'm assuming, right? Yeah.
1 (33m 35s):
Yeah. I take that with me. Yeah. And then afternoon, I'm back in the clinic, treating patients and then come home and have a smaller meal at dinner. And then, and then usually we just read or hang out with my wife or something like that and then could to bed and do it all again the next day.
0 (33m 57s):
Yeah. Solid routine salary routine. I've been, I do a bit of all those gratitude journal, the breathing. I haven't quite gotten into that. I gotta, I I've been wanting to, I actually, I, I do some sauna, but I do that towards the actually I find I do. The sauna is actually towards the evening. Cause I feel like I can just go to sleep after it. So I'm like, ah, but the cold exposure I've been looking at just doing build a mountain, a little cold plunge and, and just doing that, I just feel like in the morning that would just like, be such a great way to start the day.
1 (34m 32s):
Yeah. It definitely wakes you up, gets you going, you know, it's, it's pretty, it's really, it sounds bad. Like people have never done it and you're like, oh yeah, cold shower, no way that would, that'd be terrible, but actually feel really good afterwards. You know? And, and, and after like the first week or so, I, I don't even do edit or anything, you know, like, it's just like you do it and you look forward to it,
0 (34m 56s):
Your body totally adapts to it. Right. The first thing you do anything, I mean, I'm big into fast. And we talk about a lot of a bunch in my, on my podcast. And I noticed that, you know, one of your articles was fasting your way to health, heart health. Maybe it's something that I probably don't dive into a lot regarding heart health and fasting. But what are your thoughts around that?
1 (35m 18s):
Yeah, I think the biggest benefit to fasting is that it, at least in this modern day world, that we're living in is that fasting is a way to increase your metabolic health. You know? So even like, even if someone didn't change their diet whatsoever, they just kept eating the same things. They're always eating for the time they were eating. If they had longer periods where they weren't eating, you know, and they were doing a little bit of fasting, it's going to help their metabolism. I still think they should change what they're eating too. But, but that's what it seems to suggest. That's the huge benefit of fasting is that when you do that, it, it helps improve your metabolic health. But it's really interesting as specifically. And so when you improve your, your metabolic health, your you're improving any insulin resistance.
1 (36m 0s):
That may be their insulin. Resistance is a huge marker for cardiovascular disease. So by default, you're, you're improving your or lessening your risk for heart disease. But, but one interesting study did I talk about in my book is, is this one they did on rats, which it's in rats, not in humans, which is, it is what it is, but they, they did. They made these rats intermittent fast. These were health conscious rats, you know, they're intermittent fasting. And now that they made these, these rats intermittent fast, and then they, I guess they induce heart attacks. And then somehow, and they noticed that the rats who were intermittent fasted, and they'd been doing it for a few months or whatever, for these rats, the, the heart attacks didn't, they weren't much, or it didn't affect them as much.
1 (36m 51s):
They recovered quicker. And also the heart attacks were on average, smaller. Like they did the same exact thing in both rats, but this, this one where perhaps it wasn't intermittent facet, the heart attack effected them worse. And it was a bigger, like more tissue was damaged, all this kind of stuff. Whereas the other RAs, they were smaller. And it's really interesting, you know, and I think that, I think it's because of the improvements in metabolic health specifically, cause the heart is an interesting organ in that it, it, it really prefers fatty acids and ketones. And so if you've trained your body a little bit to use those more, it's probably going to be able to recover more, less damage is going to occur when it happens. So I think that's what happens with the rats, but they just observed that difference.
0 (37m 33s):
Yeah. That's an interesting study. I, yeah, I agree. I mean, I love fasting and if you can just find a way to make your eating window smaller, that can go a long way. But like you said, eating clean those hand-in-hand that's that's, that's when you can really make positive benefits, you know, towards health. Do you talk to a lot of your clients about it? Cause I'm assuming people coming in for chiropractic work. I mean, obviously some of them, some of them could be completely healthy and, and, and really good, but I'm sure maybe they're having issues, knees or whatever back joint pain that they're probably over. I would assume that a lot of them are overweight and probably could, their first step would be to, you know, improving their metabolic health.
1 (38m 19s):
Yeah, definitely. We have a, we have a nutrition program. We call it the nutrition program where yeah. I sit down and talk with people because, you know, I, I treat very neuromusculoskeletal type stuff like, you know, spinal conditions, pain, that kind of thing, but really chiropractic where we're treating the system. That's our, the effect we have on pain it's cause we're, we're affecting the nervous system. And so, and there's a structural component to that. So we treat the structure of the spine, but yeah, then there's some people that either don't respond as well, or they're just very interested in nutrition as well. And so, you know, I sit down with them and, and go through how to achieve metabolic health because it's huge.
1 (38m 59s):
And there's actually a lot of research that shows that insulin resistance directly contributed to degeneration in joints like knees in the spine and things like that. So it breaks down cartilage. It's just part of the destructive process. It's not just lack of joint motion that does that. It's, it's the it's insulin resistance that state of insulin resistance that, you know, triggers the joints to break down because insulin seems to be this, this thing that triggers growth and repair. So like that's, that's the problem with insulin resistance in the lining of the arteries is that insulin is the signal for endothelial cells to repair themselves because there's always going to be wear and tear and damage no matter what you do. And it's the ability to repair yourself that that is the key, you know, so if you don't get the signal to repair yourself, then those endothelial cells become damaged.
1 (39m 46s):
And the body deposits cholesterol, same thing happens in cartilage and joints. If there's no signal to repair it and there's no motion. So, so nutrition, so fluid can flow in and out and, and nutrition can get there, then they're gonna degenerate over time. So yeah, it's, it's, it's huge. I mean, I wish that every patient that came in would, would want to do that and want to sit down with me and talk about that too, but not everybody wants to, so you gotta meet them where they are. And, and so, yeah, it's, it's, it's becoming a bigger part of my practice and I hope it becomes bigger and bigger, but again, people come to me for paying. I don't want to be like, oh, you have to do this, this and this, because then I'm just gonna walk out the door.
1 (40m 28s):
I want to help them. However, they want to be helped. And it helpfully eventually get them to a point where they could make other changes to,
0 (40m 35s):
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And you talk about insulin resistance. What would be the, a good marker? Like, let's say someone's listening. They're like, oh, you know, maybe they're a little overweight, they have some health issues. Is it like fasting insulin, something to look for? Or what, what type of markers or things that you would look for?
1 (40m 54s):
Yeah, definitely fasting insulin is probably the most important one, but you could also look at like Tagrisso ride, HDL ratio as, as one. And that again,
0 (41m 6s):
One
1 (41m 7s):
More time triglyceride to HDL ratio. Yeah. Yeah. So if you, if you divide triglyceride by HDL, you get, you get a number and it should be 1.5 or lower, and same with fasting insulin. If you take the fasting insulin and you multiply that by the blood sugar, the fasting blood sugar, can you divide that by 405, you get your insulin resistance score and that should be 1.5 or lower. And that those are good markers of, of good metabolic health, if you have those things that way. But there's other things too that can contribute to, or that you could get an idea, you know, just markers of inflammation in general, cause inflammation is going to trigger insulin resistance and it's all part of the, of the system that's going on.
1 (41m 56s):
So, so that could be an important thing as well as smart cause of inflammation, which you can get really obscure with those. You can go down a rabbit hole with taking out these markers of inflammation, but in reality, like a high sensitivity C-reactive protein is a good place to start. So, so yeah. But yeah, I think that that's good. Good place to start there.
0 (42m 16s):
Yeah. And I know you mentioned briefly about HRV. I feel like that keeps coming up. I do. How do you measure and that's heart rate variability, because do you have a device? Do you like, like the whoop or something like that?
1 (42m 32s):
I haven't, I haven't or rain or, and I don't really like wearing things. I don't like bracelets, things like that rings necklaces. I don't do that kind of stuff. So I like to ring because I can put it on at night before I go to bed and that's when it takes my HRV and then I can take it off in the morning. Okay. So that, that's why like that one, but people can, there's lots of different devices that you can, you can get to do that. But yeah, heart rate variability is it's, it's the best measure we have of, of, of balance in our autonomic nervous system, which is really, really important thing. And I think it's, it's overlooked and unfortunately like heart dissolve, talk about diet and cholesterol and that kind stuff, which is important.
1 (43m 15s):
Don't get me wrong. But I think that that heart disease, the more and more look into it, it's, it's more driven by imbalance in the autonomic nervous system and this constant state of anxiety and unrealistic demand of modern society. And, and I think that that's a huge player that we're not addressing. So I'm really trying to, to bring awareness that in the first place is to bring awareness to is measure your heart rate variability, because you know, you can't really see if it's improving or declining. If you don't have a baseline, if you don't know what it normally is for you. So if you measure it, get your baseline, then you can see what things improve or, or worsen your heart rate variability.
1 (44m 0s):
But what is our variability? So I describe it more. I describe it. I think it's, it's easily more easily understood by describing something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia. Cause it's easier to understand, which is it measures the same thing, which is balancing the autonomic nervous system. But heart rate variability is just the, the variation between heartbeats. You know, it's like, okay. Yeah, whatever. But, but if you look at think about respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which means it basically means that term means the difference in heart rate between breathing and breathing out. So if like you took your pulse on your wrist and you, you kinda got your baseline right there, you can feel it.
1 (44m 42s):
And then you took a, a slow, deep breath in, you would feel your pulse Quicken a little bit. And then if you took a slow breath out, you would feel it go slower. And the difference between the fastest it gets any breathe in the slowest against, and you breathe out as your respiratory sinus arrhythmia. And that is basically measuring how adapted you are to being in a stress and non-stressed state, which is balancing the autonomic nervous system, the heart rate, variability that measures the same thing. It's just different ways of measuring the same thing. But that's what we're looking at. As we're looking at your body's ability to adapt and I define health by does your body have the ability to adapt to different situations? Can they adapt a different fuel sources can adapt to different stresses, can adapt to different brainwaves and things like that.
1 (45m 27s):
Like if we get stuck in one thing, like if you get stuck burning, just carbohydrates or glucose for fuel and your body fat gets out of burn fat, that's not, that's not being able to adapt. If you get stuck in a sympathetic dominant state where your body is in a stress state all the time and you, and if it gets out to be in a non stress state, that's not training it to adapt. You know? So it's the things we talk about, like, like the cold showers and stuff like that's training, you buy it to adapt to different things. And that's really, really important. As far as health goes, I define health by the ability to buy, to adapt to different situations.
0 (46m 1s):
Yeah. Exposing yourself to these hormetic stressors and just for small periods of time, right. Can make, can make a big difference.
1 (46m 9s):
Definitely. And so you look at, you know, you know, modern world is great and I'm not knocking our modern world, but it has made things very easy for us relatively compared to what things were like in the past and as, as awesome as that is. And as much as I want to stay in modern society and not go back to living in the woods and everything, I recognize it for health. I need to challenge my bio a little bit. I need to build up its resistance to things, you know, and increase its adaptability to different things, to maintain my health because that's how my physiology is, has been molded. And so I need to, and to do that in the context of our modern world in different ways. Yeah,
0 (46m 49s):
Yeah. No that that's put, put well and, you know, sauna, fasting, exercise, cold plunging, or even just cold showers. Right. What else could someone do?
1 (47m 6s):
I mean, ketogenic diet for awhile. I don't think that you have to be on a ketogenic diet or a, you know, definitely diet is 70% of your calories from fat, but I don't think that's necessary. I call, I like it more to be a metabolically flexible diet, you know, which is lower in carbohydrate, but not necessarily free of carbohydrate, but, but yeah. You know, a diet like that, that, that keeps that it's kind of, it's almost like a hormetic stress if that's, if you go, you know, clearly ketogenic, so that kind of stuff, and there's all kinds of things that, that you could do, but you need some good ones.
0 (47m 41s):
Yeah, no. Yeah. And I was gonna say, you don't have to go crazy with this stuff. It's just about a little bit every so often and it can go a long way for sure.
1 (47m 49s):
Definitely. Yeah. Just building up your resilience a little bit, which is training your adaptability. Yeah.
0 (47m 56s):
What about, and then a few more questions, but w what's your thoughts around like statins? I work with a lot of like middle-aged males 40 years and older, and it's like, I mean the amount of people that are on Statens, it's just unbelievable. What are your thoughts around that? And, you know, is there a place for them or
1 (48m 19s):
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, and I'm not a physician who's even eligible to prescribe medications. So yeah. So what I say is just for informational purposes, but, you know, yeah. I, I think that there's a place for all these drugs and some people don't, don't like that. I say that kind of stuff, you know, but I think that they're, they're way overused and there's no, there's not enough emphasis on what can this person change to, to improve their life and not just take a pill and then keep doing the same thing they're doing. Right. Right. That's not going to help the person. It's not going to help society as a whole. And so that's my main beef with lots of medications is that in many cases, there are things this person could do that would greatly improve their quality of life that pose no risk or harm.
1 (49m 10s):
Whereas a lot of these medications may have a desired effect, but they, they caused a lot of risks. There's a lot of risk in those, in those that caused a lot of harm to a lot of people on the decreased quality of life. And that's not what I'm about. I want to increase quality of life. And so if you take a statin drug, you know, there's risk of developing type two diabetes, there's risk of developing cognitive decline, muscle pain, sexual dysfunction, all this kind of stuff, because you're inhibiting the production of cholesterol and cholesterol is needed for all those things. So if you're inhibiting that then, and that's an issue. And like I said, that study shows that, you know, cholesterol lower than 85, which is, you know, something that, that many cardiologists shoot for with those drugs is associated with the highest mortality from anything.
1 (50m 1s):
And so that's, that's concerning to me. But when you look at it too, like, I can't tell you how many studies I've read where they were. They were testing something that didn't have anything to do with, with cholesterol or, or it wasn't even a status. It was, they were just testing something and it said, and the intervention didn't have the result that we were expecting. However, it did end up with the people did end up with lower cholesterol that for our, this must be more heart. And it's like, that's just an idea. That's not really founded in science. And so they're, they're assuming this, this intervention that I did is hard, healthy merely on the fact that it lowered cholesterol. And that's just never been proven besides some association with studies that can't really prove anything.
1 (50m 45s):
And so to me, it's irresponsible to, to, I guess, operate based on that notion when that's not really been proven. And, you know, you can get into all the, you know, the influence from pharmaceutical companies and how they've influenced the guidelines on what ideal cholesterol should be. And it's big. It used to be like 200 and then it like for LDL and then it's, it was down to one 50 and then down on 100. And it's just like, and they've been influencing this because the lower, the, the recommendation, the more they can prescribe the drugs, the more money they can make, which is just capitalism at its finest, you know, but, but it's just, it's not resulting in better health for people.
1 (51m 29s):
And so, yeah, there's just, there's, there's a lot there and I'd always want to default to lifestyle stuff before anything else, because ultimately that's the only thing that's going to increase your quality of life. Taking a drug may have a desired effect, but again, it's likely not going to increase your quality of life and may have make it worse.
0 (51m 55s):
Yeah. And you bring up a point about like, being like this in this range that, you know, in your hearing, I hear different ranges all the time. Like the one I did, you know, for total cholesterol, HEDIS head me being a range between a hundred and one ninety nine, which probably is different than, you know, other places. And then for LDL, it was between zero and 99. I actually had 1 0 9 for LDL and my total was 180 9. And I'm not concerned really with those, those, and like you said, what is the right benchmark, right? Is it, is it for just general population? And, and is it being influenced by the pharmaceutical companies or are we looking for like optimal health?
0 (52m 35s):
You know?
1 (52m 36s):
Well, the interesting thing is, is that, you know, our ideas, like he goes to the lab ranges on the side of your blood work. It says, this is the normal range, whatever. Well, there's no more like we've only been testing blood work, you know, for, I don't know, extensively for like 80 years or so. And so we only really know the normal ranges of people living in a modern society, you know, removed from nature, living in the way, eating processed foods, that kind of stuff. So what is the, what are the normal ranges for like, you know, our ancestors? Yeah. You know, like, like what, what are their normal ranges? And let's go based off of that, you know, that that might be something where we should be achieving. Like, the example I gave is like, if you took a giraffe out of the wild and put it in a zoo, so it's a semi similar environment, they're trying to recreate it.
1 (53m 21s):
You feed them, you know, an unnatural diet and, and they're, they're not in their right social environment or not around other giraffes as much as they would be in the wild. And then you took blood markers on it and said, okay, this is what's normal for a giraffe. Like, who would believe that? I don't think anybody would believe that does a normal markers, but essentially that's what we've done with humans, because we've been so far removed from our natural environment. That's not to say that we should go back. It's just that we need to, we need to think about that in that context.
0 (53m 49s):
Yeah. That's a great point. And what we should do, like blood work on, like some of these tribes that are been around for, you know, and like, that should be our baseline when they're, they're no better, no like metabolic disease and, you know, they're all ripped, you know, there's no visceral fat.
1 (54m 6s):
Yeah those should be the, there should be the numbers there because like the numbers, the lab numbers are just based on generally healthy people within our modern-day population. But yeah, generally healthy to me doesn't necessarily mean healthy. Yeah,
0 (54m 20s):
No, yeah. That's a good point. Well, this was good. I could feel like we're almost an hour and I could talk another hour, but I, I, I want to ask a, I asked a lot of my guests, the same question at the end is what, what one tip would you give an individual? That's looking to get their body back to what it once was like 10, 15 years ago, and maybe they were in their twenties and thirties
1 (54m 46s):
One tip like the most it's a loaded question.
0 (54m 49s):
Yeah.
1 (54m 52s):
I would say, and this can encompass a lot of different things. I would, I would just say that one of the things that's going to help you do that and then, and then maintain that is to just make intentional choices. You know, don't just, you know, listen to me, ramble on these podcasts or whatever, or go to your doctor and listen to them and just try and reach, produce what they say or do what they say, you know, like actually learn why you're doing something and make it intentional, like learn the information. And then, and then, then your choices become your choices and not just following instruction. And, and you're intentionally doing them for a reason that you like, you know, like for me, you know, I want to eat healthy diet because I think it's better for me.
1 (55m 39s):
But I also am really passionate about like, you know, the environment and how we're changing the world to a state, which is not very compatible with life. That includes humans. And so I know that me choosing to live healthier thing and healthier way, you know, let's talk to exposure, better die. That kind of stuff is also having an impact on the environment. So like that's an intentional choice that I make. And so then it becomes easy to go to the grocery store, go to wherever I get my food or wherever I do anything and make decisions I'm not thinking about, okay, well, what did, what did that person say? I should do. You know, I'm thinking about what are, what are my intentions is the choice I'm making, supporting those intentions.
1 (56m 19s):
Just make intentional choices. I, and finding out what your intentions are and that'll help guide you and keep you motivated to stay on these types of things.
0 (56m 28s):
Yeah. Like truly figuring out, you know, why you want to make these changes, whether it's maybe even just by being able to play with your grandchildren or, you know, things like that. That should be what's driving your choices. Not necessarily just going to a doctor and him telling you all, you got to clean up your diet. Well, why? You know, so exactly. Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's great advice. Awesome. Well, Dr. Steven Hussey, what are the name of your books? I wanted to mention that.
1 (56m 59s):
Yeah. My first book is the health evolution. Why understanding evolution is the key to vibrant health and that one's available on Amazon. My second book is understanding the heart and it's probably going to have a new subset of, so that one's not available right now because I got picked up by a publisher. And so we're working to republish that through the publisher. So I'm hoping by early next year, that one will be available again. But, but yeah, and then my website is resource your health.com and then I'm on social media, Dr. Steven Hussey on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.
0 (57m 34s):
Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and talking, we touched on a lot of different topics, so
1 (57m 40s):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
0 (57m 42s):
Hopefully it was beneficial. So thanks and enjoy the rest of your day. You too. Hey, get lean equally nation. Are you a man between the ages of 40 and 60 years old looking to lose inches around your waist have significantly more energy throughout the day and gain muscle all while minimizing the risk of injuries? Well, I'm looking for three to five people to work one-on-one with in my fat burner blueprint signature program, which I've developed by utilizing my 15 years experience in the health and fitness space. This program is designed specifically for those committed, to making serious progress towards their health goals. Over the next six months, we will focus on sleep stress, nutrition, meal, timing, and building lean muscle.
0 (58m 29s):
If this sounds like a fit for you, email me@bryanatbriangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. That's brian@briangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. Thanks for listening to the get lean eat clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com. Everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member. That's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
