The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #276 - Dr. Jack Wolfson

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I am about to have. I've been looking forward to it for quite a while, and we are going to dive into so many things in today's episode. But the backstory on today's conversation, when I first was reached out to by the team of this doctor, Dr. Jack Wolfson, for his book, The Paleo Cardiologist, I was, well, just reading the title, I was basically an immediate yes, looking into his work, and reading his book, friends, it was so overwhelmingly amazing. And we were talking before we started recording about how a lot of it is really just common sense, and when it comes to a different approach to health and wellness, that's a little bit outside of what is often prescribed by the conventional medical paradigm. I personally, though, am so excited about this topic because cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of mortality, and I think there is so much confusion surrounding heart health, especially things like cholesterol levels, and lipid panels, and statins, and what that all means. And I know I've had other guests on the show with different opinions when it comes to this, and this is really interesting as well. I'm sure we'll talk about this, but honestly, this is a topic where I follow different people who I respect, and even they will have completely different opinions on this topic. But the book, it's more than just focusing on the heart. It goes into overall health and wellness in general, so much about our diet, our nutrients, our toxic exposure, even our mental health, our activity levels, so many things. So I have so many questions, and Dr. Wolfson, thank you so much for being here.

Jack Wolfson:
Oh, Melanie, it's an absolute pleasure. And yeah, like you said, heart disease, number one killer worldwide. And you mentioned a lot about the whole cholesterol story, but don't forget 100 million Americans are labeled with high blood pressure and is the answer for them to take some pharmaceuticals. The answer is definitely not. And we could talk about that, but there's a lot of pain points that people have regarding the blood pressure, heart rhythm problems, atrial fibrillation, people with palpitations, so many different things. So yeah, I'm excited to share. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
Before I dive into all of those, your personal story, would you like to tell listeners for those who are not familiar, you're a board certified cardiologist, but you have a really interesting history in how you had a paradigm shift when you met your wife, and so what led you to what you're doing today?

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, I think most holistic practitioners have this kind of origin story of either themselves being unhealthy and conventional medicine had no answers for them, and therefore they had to do their own research and eventually, you know, found upon holistic or natural medicine. For me, it was, you know, kind of a combination of things. My father was getting sick and dying of a Parkinson's-like illness. Eventually, at the Mayo Clinic, they diagnosed him with PSP, or progressive supranuclear palsy in his mid-50s, and they said he's going to live for three years on average and then he'll die, and there's no cause and there's no treatment. And simultaneously and serendipitously, yeah, I met this young woman, she's a 29-year-old chiropractor, and she told me all the reasons why my father was sick and dying. And she said, if you don't want that to be you, you better change your life. And that's certainly what I did, but, you know, I was born into the medical matrix. My father was a cardiologist. I followed exactly in his footsteps. You know, I like to say that I'm in my mother's womb and I'm listening to cardiology talk, and that's all the truth. So I was born into that, you know, again, the matrix of that, and to be awakened from the matrix, to use that, again, analogy, you know, by the woman who would soon become my wife and now the mother of our four children and the boss of our six goats and 18 chickens. So if you hear some animals chirping around in the background, they are out in full force and yeah, I am recording this podcast outside from a mountaintop in Colorado. I think that's what kind of makes it pretty cool is that I, you know, lived and trained as a board-certified cardiologist in that one side, and they now practice on the other side and my father would die in those three years and it was cruel, tortuous, but his loss created the man and the physician I am today.

Melanie Avalon:
I was telling you briefly before this, cardiovascular disease issues affect so many people. Even in my personal company with the podcast, actually I was saying one, but two assistants that have worked for me have had heart related issues. We were talking about the different approaches to addressing this and you have a really interesting section in your book where you go through basically all the different conventional tests for the heart, surgeries for the heart, procedures people might get done. Most of them, maybe I'll let you talk about this, but most of them you encourage people not to get, which is very interesting to me. Even things that I think people think would be needed, like ablation or stents or different stress tests. What should we do from the conventional medical system? That part of the book was really, really intriguing to me.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, well, I just, you know, I want to show, there's over 300 references in the book, so I just want people to know what the facts are. And there's a time and a place for modern medicine, if you will, or emergency medicine, most certainly, but when it comes to the prevention, treatment, reversal of chronic disease, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, coronary artery disease, AFib, there are total failure on that, and ablations fail 50% of the time within the first year. That's in the medical literature, of course, in many, many, many studies, and I quote that from years ago, and it's no different today. They're not addressing the cause. Why do people have high blood pressure? Why do people have AFib? And unless you reverse the cause, you're never going to fix the cure. And it's one of the, and even if you do go for an ablation, for example, for AFib, what you'll find is, is that those people who have AFib are at higher risk of cancer and dementia. Well, AFib doesn't cause cancer, but whatever caused the AFib causes the cancer and causes the dementia. So yes, you can ablate the heart. Heck, you can remove the heart and get an artificial heart and you won't have AFib, but you're still at risk for everything that would go along with it. And that was really an epiphany moment for me because we're just, from the beginning of medical school, we start off and it's all about pharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and it's because the medical training in this country is bought and owned by pharmaceutical companies. It's been that way since the early 1900s, and it persists today. So even when you go to your traditional medical doctor or your local medical doctor, it's not that they're not intelligent people, it's that they've just been brainwashed into one thing. It's like, if you and I went on a trip to India and we're like walking around and we're like, oh, all these two are idiots. They don't speak Indian. They don't speak, you know, Kudrati or Hindu or whatever language it may be over there, whatever dialect. And so no, when it's not that we're not stupid, we just, we never would taught that. Again, that's how mainstream medical doctors are. And it's just sad because millions of people are suffering. And for people who are listening, you know, what about your mother or father, you know, who are on all these pharmaceuticals? It's a death sentence. They don't work. Life expectancy in the United States for men is in the mid seventies, women, late seventies. Like, I mean, that's not good enough. That is not, it wasn't good enough certainly for my father. Wouldn't be good enough for me as a father of four. Like I want to live, you know, and most people do as well. And you're not going to live if you're taking pharmaceuticals, you're just not going to make it.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, and you mentioned the blood pressure pharmaceuticals. So is that a case where ironically, because I often talk about the importance of blood labs and doing all these different blood tests, and typically I feel like the conventional ranges are not strict enough, like we should be looking at narrower ranges, but is blood pressure an example where it's the opposite, where they actually made the range, or do they basically adjust the range to make more people look like they have it to overprescribe medication? Well, I think that's it for today. Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Jack Wolfson:
it's undoubted that their goal is to sell more pharmaceuticals. So kind of lowering the bar on the numbers would definitely achieve that goal for people. But I do think that historically normal blood pressure of 120 over 80, like that is the normal blood pressure for the average person, that is the best blood pressure. But how you achieve that are two different things. If you achieve that normally by eating the right foods and the right lifestyle and the right mindset, all those different things. And like you said, doing the most advanced testing in the world to replace nutritional deficiencies or identify toxins that could be interfering with blood pressure control. If you achieve that normally, then you're good. If you achieve that with pharmaceuticals, like I said before, you're not going to make it. It's not a blood pressure in one person at 120 over 80 without meds versus a person 120 over 80 with meds. Totally different risk. Totally, totally, totally different. The person with 120 over 80 on pharma is at big time risk. It's not even close. And that's not even a debate. It's not even questionable, but it's what the medical doctors do on a daily basis.

Melanie Avalon:
I am haunted by the cholesterol issue and the root cause here. And the reason is, and I mentioned it before, but it's because I hear such different things, including from people I feel like are more in a camp that I follow. So to elaborate on that, I've had a lot of guests on the show who are really big in the vegan sphere. So like Dr. Michael Greger and Dr. Joel Kahn, who's really big in the heart health world and Dr. Neil Bernard. And they're all for very plant-based, low-fat diets and very low, going for lower cholesterol levels. So there's that camp. Then there's like low-carb, higher-fat paleo camp where they're not as concerned by higher LDL and higher cholesterol levels. But then you have people like Peter Attia, who I really follow, and he is also for very low, well, apo-B in particular, and low, a certain type of LDL, not necessarily LDL in general, but he's pro-statins, for example. So that further confuses me. So can we talk a little bit about cholesterol levels, the root cause going on there? Is LDL causative in CBD? Or is it more about the inflammatory response? Do people need to have lower cholesterol levels? Thoughts on statins? I'm just so haunted by this.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, I can tell you're haunted by it. And you threw a lot of names at me right there. And I would love to comment on each and every little thing that you said, of course, and I will. And we can break that up into little pieces or not. First of all, I love Joel. Joel is a good friend of mine. He's a good man. He's a good family man. He's very nice, smart guy, you know, well trained. But he's just dead wrong as it comes to veganism. But, you know, I mean, listen, I guess I'll say a couple things here real quick. Our ancestors were all hunter gatherers. That's just the way that it was. And you can even see that today on TV shows like Alone or Naked and Afraid. And if you drop someone in the wilderness, and they're a vegan, like they're going to either die, or they're going to quit the show. So typically, they quit the show, or they turn or they turn and they start eating animal products, if they could possibly because they're not hunters, you know, typically how they were put into that. So that's, that's where the vegans go. It makes for great television copy and stuff like that. Because no one's feeding, you know, Joel's in the wild, no one's giving them bags of walnuts and chia seeds and oatmeal, you know, like, Joel better start hunting quickly. Because even the people who try and subsist on vegan food in the wild, they tap out, they can't make it. Our ancestors were meat and or seafood eaters. And that's what we need to do. I would say that if we could all agree on this following statement, then I would be at least somewhat happy. Eat organic food, get the chemicals out of your food. So if you're vegan, vegetarian, paleo, keto, carnivore, get the chemicals out. So like Sean Baker, who's, you know, carnivore, and he's eating, you know, this Nebraska corn fed antibiotic, you know, backstake, I don't think that's good. I don't think that's a good long term strategy for people in general. And again, if Greiger is not eating 100% organic, I think he's making a mistake because the pesticides, the chemicals, all those things are horrific to the body. But again, just get the chemicals out of the food. When I look at Greiger, I don't know, I mean, I'm not like, I'm not Brad Pitt supermodel over here. But you know, if Greiger doesn't look so healthy to me, McDougald just died. He's a famous, you know, vegan. I just don't think that that's a good survival strategy. Regarding Peter Atiyah, people mention that to me all the time. They're like, What about Peter Atiyah? I don't follow Peter Atiyah. I don't listen to Peter Atiyah. Peter Atiyah doesn't do any bench research. So I don't really care what he says. He's just reviewing what other people say kind of what Jack Wolfson does. I mean, I, you know, I read what other what other original research says regarding the LDL hypothesis, and the cholesterol hypothesis, I think they're dead wrong. I think statins are poison. I think PCSK9 inhibitors are total poison. They interfere with the body, they disrupt things like Heme A, which is part of cytochrome c oxidase. Now the fourth major complex in the electron transport chain, how we make cellular energy. They also make, of course, CoQ10. Everybody knows about CoQ10. They make cholesterol, which again, like the body needs cholesterol. That's why it makes it. It's common sense stuff, people. It really is cholesterol should be put up on a pedestal. It's one of the most amazing molecules ever invented by our creator. So celebrate cholesterol levels. And the other thing, of course, that statins inhibit is something called dolichol, which is a steroid like molecule that's found in substantia nigra of the midbrain, which is why statins are linked to movement disorders, such as Parkinson's and PSP, you know, for that matter, which my father passed away from. So I'm anti statin. And regarding again, all these things about LDLs and HDL, they're all that's why all animals have LDLs, they have a purpose. And the idea is not to drive them down to super low levels. I think that's a horrific strategy. We're trying to find a perfect levels for each and every one of us by eating well, living well, thinking, well, that's what we're trying to do. LDLs, they're a magical, they're a magical thing. I mean, just how it was created, how amazing it is, it has passengers, if you think about the LDL is like a bus. So the LDL passengers are cholesterol and triglycerides, and coq 10 and fat soluble vitamins and LDL is part of the immune system. And it's part of the inflammatory system and the antioxidant system, which is why they become oxidized. And when you have a lot of oxidized LDLs, that is bad, but it also shows that your body is under oxidative stress. So you need to figure out why it's under oxidative stress, which makes testing ox stress markers infinitely more important than LDLs. That's for sure.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. Now it's my turn to say that you, that's a lot there to comment on. Okay. Thank you for this conversation. Cause like I said, I'm just so just trying to figure out what's going on here. So a few comments, do you think it's possible? So you were talking about how, you know, vegans probably wouldn't survive in the wilderness and historically we would have been eating a really different diet. Is it possible that longevity may be separate from that? And what I mean is that maybe if you follow a vegan diet and a artificially supported environment where you're not in the wilderness, that you could have greater longevity from that lipid panel. That would not be possible evolutionarily because we could also make the argument that paleo people were also dying much younger, not from chronic disease, but from the environment. So what are your thoughts on that, on taking the having to deal with the wilderness out of it? Because the wilderness also killed paleo people in their, you know, twenties and thirties.

Jack Wolfson:
Well, I mean, it certainly did. I mean, I think a lot of that was was probably birth related trauma and stuff like that. And we're talking about likely, and according to the paleontology and anthropology literature, somewhat of, you know, war like societies, you know, without laws and stuff like that, it truly was survival, the fittest. But if you were the fittest, if you were the smartest and the strongest, you would survive a long time. That's for sure. And actually, you can look at the PhD literature in those textbooks of anthropology, paleontology, a lot of those people lived a long life. You can look at modern day paleo people's around the world of which there's not many left, but those who are left, there are plenty of old people, if you will, who are there. And the vegans love to tout the Seventh Day Adventist trials and studies in California, and some of these blue zones and stuff like that. But the Seventh Day Adventists, the people who live the longest out of them are the women who eat fish, the pescatarian women. So, and I think also that the way that you and I are talking about eating, right, free range grass fed meats, wild seafood, eggs, avocados, coconuts, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, like that kind of hunter gatherer food. There's really not a lot of, you know, long term data, because there's not many people who've done that for a long period of time, just like carnivore, like there's really, I mean, it may be it may be that somebody who is carnivore from an early age lives until they're 150 because we don't really have that kind of data will, you know, as time goes on, we would see. Now, I'm not a fan of carnivore for a long term approach either just because as much as all animals either eat other animals or they eat a lot of insects, one way or another, humans were never carnivores either and animals in the wild are not sure, you know, carnivores, they carnivore by definition is like 70% or more of your diets from animal products, but you know, lions and stuff like that, they do eat shrubs and twigs and berries and things like that, that would be available. And then of course, as you eat that particular animal, you'd be eating the intestines of the animal and therefore, you know, likely getting plant matter, you know, from that. But yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, ultimately, you know, like you said, you know, time will tell if you know, the Joel Collins of the world in this kind of controlled environment, eating bags of walnuts and oatmeal, how they do, I just think that you know, ultimately, eating cholesterol rich foods, animal foods, you know, we're big eaters of of organs. So my wife, my kids and I, we eat bison liver, bison in the heart, the nutritional value of that is extraordinary. And you can't compare that to kale, and you know, flax seeds, and rice and beans like Joel can't make that up, you know, comparatively. So, you know, I'll just go back to common sense, we are hunter gatherers and go from there. But let me bash Peter at you one more time. And like this spot use of statins and dramatically low lipid particles. He is, you know, from what I can tell, he's probably a super intelligent guy, and everybody quotes him and stuff like that. But again, he didn't do any of the research, he's quoted what he reads in the literature from the original people who did and don't forget all that literature is bought and owned by pharmaceutical companies. So take that for what you will as well.

Melanie Avalon:
Regarding Peter Atiyah, so if you haven't listened to his blog or his website, he actually, the reason I like him is he dives deep into literature. That's like what he does. And he like really, he really deconstructs studies and talks about what they're actually saying. And literally, he's the reason I'm so haunted by this question because of his opinion here. The case he makes, because you were talking about common sense. So like the case he makes is a quote, common sense approach, which he says, you know, the causative factor of cardiovascular disease is LDL-P or ApoB. If it's in the endothelium and, you know, stuck there and oxidized, that's what's causing these issues. So if that's not there, you're not going to get the issue. Like he always says,

Jack Wolfson:
stop. But what we have to do is we have to figure out why it's there in the first place. Why does the body want to put it there? The body's not making mistakes. So the reason why that coronary artery disease develops is because of endothelial dysfunction. So the blood vessel lining the endothelium, which is the main cell layer that lines all blood vessels and then the intima and the media, that all develops this kind of pro-inflammatory immune-related complex, but it's because of the endothelial dysfunction. So the answer really is to fix the endothelium, and then you do not have deposition of LDL particles that are just coming to repair. They're not there because they're evil. So we have to figure out why they're going there, and they're going there because of endothelial dysfunction. And endothelial dysfunction stems from epithelial dysfunction, otherwise known as leaky gut. And leaky gut occurs because we have a sick microbiome, and we have a sick intestinal microbiome because we are toxic in all the blood stuff, and we don't eat enough of the good stuff. So again, Atia and all these other preachers of statin drugs, they can talk about them all day long. Here's the problem. When you take statin drugs, you're going to die in your mid-70s. And if you say, well, that's perfectly fine if I die in the mid-70s, then that's the plan. But you're not finding all these people in the blue zones and all these different areas that are swallowing statin drugs. They're not. The longevity people are not taking statins. So again, that's just my next thing of what I would say is that he thinks that oxidized LDL is a problem. What I'm saying is whatever is leading to the oxidized LDL, that's the problem. And we better fix that. Does that make sense?

Melanie Avalon:
No, it completely does, and it's, I mean, I guess it's the argument. It's chicken and egg, and it's also, you know, proximate root cause, what is actually the main thing here. And what about things like Jill Kahn's thing, which is LP little a, which is essentially genetic. And if you have that, you can't really affect it from my understanding with diet and lifestyle.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, no, he's totally wrong on that too. So I mean, and Joel, obviously, I mean, Joel, Joel is, you know, he understands, obviously, you're better than Peter Tia does, as far as the lipids and whatnot. And the fact that Peter Tia breaks down studies that are bought and owned by pharmaceutical companies, again, is not very impressive, you know, that he's able to, you know, translate what may be essentially made up data, and to, you know, dumb it down for the rest of us, like, that's not going to help. And Joel, and LP, little A, LP, and Peter Tia, I'm sure knows about LP, little A, of course, and LP, little A effects, you know, about 10 to 15, 20% of the population, maybe, I think it actually was a survival type gene, in the sense that it probably makes you more hyper coagulable. So if you were to get injured in the wild, it would lead to some better clotting, so you would survive them. There's no, the gene is not a mutation. In like a bad sense, it exists for a reason. And that's why so many people have it. It's kind of like when people talk about MTHFR, and MTHFR, you know, do you have the bad copies? Well, presumably, it was pretty good. That's why it survived, you know, after all these years. And that's, that's a separate thing. But LP, little A, I think, has value now in a modern society where we don't cut ourselves shaping, it may not be as important to have that particular gene and does increase cardiovascular risk. And the only, you know, real proven evidence based supplements, of which there's many, but evidence that time release niacin can help to lower that number down. So my people who do have LP, little A, we put them on time release niacin, that helps to lower it down. The other thing is that it is a hyper coagulable. So that's where some of the natural blood thinners like natokinase, seropeptase, lumbar kinase can be beneficial in that arena. But definitely test for it. A lot of people come out of the hospital, they had a heart attack, they didn't get tested for LP, little A. So it's something we definitely test for. It's a factor and it should be followed and addressed out in drugs, increase LP, little A, PCS, canine inhibitors do decrease it. There are vaccines coming out against LP, little A. So these things are going to and there's actually monoclonal antibodies against LP, little A. They lower the numbers down dramatically, but we'll have to wait and see if they save lives.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, I love hearing this because actually my first supplement I launched was Serapeptase because of how obsessed I am with it. So I got excited when I saw Natokinase in your book. Okay, going back to the studies thing, because you were talking about, you know, Peter reading certain studies by the pharmaceutical industry and I'd have to, I mean, he looks at so many studies, I'd have to go back and see what he reviewed, but so what studies do you look at then? Do you disregard most studies or like now?

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, I mean, that's certainly a fair question. But it's just, I mean, for you just got to look at studies with a critical eye understanding that the pharmaceutical industry pays in one way or another directly or indirectly, you know, for all these studies regarding pharmaceuticals. So, you know, so that being said, you got to really view it with that kind of, you know, critical lens in order to make anything out of it. But, you know, again, if we just look at the importance of our paleo ancestors, look at their, you know, cholesterol levels, their lipid levels. I mean, what about all the people who, people with the highest levels of cholesterol have the lowest risk of dementia as they get older and how it's a survival, you know, molecule. But I think it's fine, you know, to look at the studies, but it really just comes down to common sense. I know that sunshine is extremely healthy. I know that our skin is a solar panel. I know that it belongs out in the sun. I don't need a study to tell me that. I don't need a study that tells me if I look at TV shows like Alone and Naked and Afraid, or if I look at animals in the wild or people in the wild, that they're eating certain foods, that they're hunter-gatherers. I don't need a study that tells me that our ancestors went to sleep, you know, at sundown when it got dark, and then they woke up before the sunrise, and they watched the sunrise, they watched the sunset. Again, they were outside all day long wearing a loincloth with no sunglasses in the Middle East, which is another reason why people have abnormal lipids, right? Because when you are sunshine deficient, you no longer use the UVB rays of the sun, the wavelength from the sun, to convert cholesterol into vitamin D. When you go out into the sun, vitamin D levels go up because of that, and then therefore cholesterol levels go down. So, you know, again, it just comes down to these common sensible things. You know, we sit inside all day long on technology, and our ancestors didn't. So it's just these fundamental common sensible things. And a lot of times the evidence really starts to bear that out. It really, you know, shows that when you look at the literature by all the data on sleep, all the data on sunshine, all the data on physical activity, all the data on toxins, right? I mean, if you love testing, what about the recent data about the, you know, carotid endarterectomy study, where they took these people and they looked under a microscope at their carotid artery plaque. And what they found is that two-thirds of the people who underwent that surgery had evidence of microplastic in their carotid arteries. And one-third of the people surprisingly didn't. And the two-thirds of the people that did have plastic, microplastics in their carotids, those two-thirds had much higher levels of inflammation. And over a subsequent three-year period, they had tripled the risk of heart attack, stroke, and dying, which makes plastic a bigger risk factor than smoking, diabetes, blood pressure, obesity combined. And if I'm having this conversation about how to prevent, treat, and reverse cardiovascular disease and prevent heart attacks and strokes, I'm thinking, how do I avoid plastic? Not, you know, can I swallow a statin drug or not?

Melanie Avalon:
I could not agree more about the plastics. I'll put a link in the show notes for listeners. I interviewed Matt Simon for his book of poison like no other or none other. That book completely, I mean, I thought I was against plastic, but then I read that book and I was mind-blown. It's just everywhere. Did you know it's literally everywhere? It's at the top of Mount Everest and at the bottom of the ocean. It's like the one thing that's everywhere and it's toxic.

Jack Wolfson:
People should get tested for it too, right? So you can test urinary levels of bisphenol A, which would be one marker. You can test all your urinary levels of phthalates, which are other components of plastic. It's definitely ubiquitous. There's no way to avoid it. Every air molecule, every time you take a breath in, you're breathing in some plastic like compound. But I think then it just comes down to, can you eat well, live well, think well to the best of your ability. That's your survival strategy. Maybe probiotics actually have a role in detoxifying bisphenol A. That's in the literature. But I think ultimately if you have a strong microbiome, then hopefully that strong microbiome will A, prevent the absorption of plastic, and then B, of course, help you break down that plastic. And then a strong microbiome, again, hopefully if you're doing everything else to the best of your ability, then you will not be quite as damaged by plastic. But it's pretty sad in what's happened. And yeah, you know, listen, just look for everything in your life, you know, inside of cans. A lot of like, you know, metal water bottles, disposable metal water bottles, they're lined with plastic. A lot of people are drinking out of those, of course, all the water systems, all the canned food, personal care products, skincare products. It's bad. It's bad.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I really, really appreciated that part of the book. Honestly, I think one of the saddest moments of my life was when I had the realization that glitter is plastic. I was like, this is so sad.

Jack Wolfson:
I mean, listen, we've got young kids and it's just like, you know, all of society, it's kind of like, you know, these are some of the fun things that I mean, I did as a kid and whatever, and whether it's, yeah, glitter and glues and face paints and sidewalk chalk and all these things, but, you know, listen, all we can do is arm people with the information. And then what they want to do with it is up to them. You know, if you want to stick your head in the sand and say, well, whatever happens happens. I mean, I guess that's up to you. It's like telling an 80-year-old woman who, you know, has been smoking for 55 years, she should quit. She'd be like, smoking is the only thing I enjoy. But if we're really looking to make a difference in our health and then the health of the planet, these are the steps that we're going to have to take.

Melanie Avalon:
So before we leave the LDL section, one more question. I'm wondering now, after looking at everything, if maybe the confusing or seemingly contradictory findings about LDL levels correlating to cardiovascular disease risk/overall mortality, do you think there's a role in LDL C and whether or not it correlates or is discordant with LDL P or APO B? Maybe for people where it's discordant, that could be part of the issue for why it might not be definitive, looking at LDL levels.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, well, your question is certainly valid. And yes, the more, the more data we get regarding particle numbers, particle sizes, the best marker we have in the lipid world is a ratio, it's the Apo B to Apo A lipoprotein ratio. We've known that since the early 2000s, Salim Yusef, cardiologist out of Duke University. So it's that Apo B, Apo A ratio is what's critical. And obviously, Atiyah and others understand Apo B. But all these particles have a reason and if they're abnormal, if your ratio is abnormal, it is a sign that there is a problem. It's not the primary problem in and of itself. It's a sign that there's a problem. If you have too many Apo Bs, there are likely small dense particles, they're likely oxidized, which therefore could be targeted by the immune system for disposal. It could get through a dysfunctional endothelium and therefore set up shop in the endothelium and into the intima and media, calling more inflammatory cells, monocytes become macrophages, become foam cells, foam cells, lysate, apoptotic, and then they die. But it's just it's not telling you the fundamental problem. So if you have abnormal lipids, you need to figure out why and your why is not because you're deficient in Lipitoric Crestor Zocor. Let me say, let me say two more things if I may. Number one, most statin drugs contain fluoride. Do you know that? Oh, I did not know that. Okay, so now you know that.

Melanie Avalon:
Every time you're taking it, you're taking fluoride.

Jack Wolfson:
every time you're taking it, the actual atom, the actual molecule, has a fluoride atom in the statin drug. That's number one. And a lot of people are like, Oh, yeah, I don't use fluoride, we don't use fluoridated water. I'm totally against that. Yet they take a statin drug. And I think that's what leads to a lot of the calcification as well, potentially why statin drugs increase the risk of coronary calcification. That's not without debate. I mean, that's, that's, not debatable. I mean, that's a fact, statin drugs increase coronary calcium. So that's another reason why I'm anti CT scan, which a lot of your listeners may be, you know, surprised to hear, but I'm one of the few doctors against CT scans. The other thing I do want to say thing, three things, the sparkle trial. A sparkle trial was published in 2006. And that trial looked at high dose, a Torvostatin, 80 milligrams versus placebo in people who had suffered a stroke. And what they found is that Lipitor, a Torvostatin decreased the risk of having another stroke and or having a heart attack in the future. It did so by a little bit. But here's the kicker. More people died in the Torvostatin group. There was only five more people. So it wasn't statistically significant. But it was to the extra five people who died. So be real careful, you know, Peter Attia and stuff like that about talking about how, you know, these particular pharmaceuticals would save lives, you know, for example, and right. I mean, if you don't die from cardiac disease, but you do die from suicide cancer or dementia, right, I would posit that having a heart attack and dying would be better than dying of dementia. The other thing too, is that, you know, Repatha, for example, you know, PCS canine inhibitor dramatically lowers lipids down study done that was released in 2017. LDL levels at 30. And what they found is that the combination of statin drugs plus Repatha decreased the risk of heart attack by a little decreased the risk stroke by a little. Here's the kicker. 18 more people died in the Repatha group. And ultimately, too, let me say one more final thing. It's not how do we reduce our risk of dying Peter Attia and others from 3% to 2 .7%. It's about how do we reduce our risk of dying to 0%. We know their data, we know the mega dose statin data, and people are still dying. So we can do better.

Melanie Avalon:
So wouldn't that be important, though, that it wasn't statistically significant? Like, wouldn't that be an example of looking at a study and pointing out the part that you wanted to support? Because if it was only five people.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, well, I think it's an important part. I mean, so, you know, again, like, most people are going into their doctor's office, and the doctor says take a statin. And the person says, I heard bad things about it. And the doctor would say, Well, do you want to die? I mean, like, you know, I mean, like, you're a ticking time bomb. So my point is, is that yes, there's evidence that these pharmaceuticals can lower heart attack and stroke risk, but if more people are dying, according to the all hat LLC trial, according to the sparkle trial, according to the original AF caps, text caps, according to the Repatha data, I think that's pretty important that people should know that. Because, I mean, listen, I can remove your liver, and your cholesterol levels will plummet down to zero. And you're going to die. So what I want people to I want people to appreciate how important cholesterol is, and the beauty of the LDL and HDL compounds as designed by God or evolution, or however we got here, what we have those things for a reason, and artificially suppressing them, and the creation thereof is a problem. And then of course, whenever you inhibit that HMG coir reductase enzyme, you're going to have a deficiency of Coq 10 of heme, of dolichol, of friend related proteins, there's no free ride here, you're not getting it in the pharmaceutical industry, they it's just, it's not the answer. And millions of people think it's the answer. And it's like, Oh, well, you know, you whatever you want, live however you want, take a Lipitor, and you're going to be fine. They're not, they're going to die. They're going to die. Peter Ate is going to lose a lot, a lot, a lot of people with that kind of conversation. Now, I would assume he talks about nutrition, I would assume I know, I understand he talks about, you know, physical activity, I'm going to, you know, hopefully, he's talking about toxins. I mean, and you and I haven't even touched on, you know, again, like, for example, let me say this mold, and I'll talk about mold much in the book, mold from water damage. So you have a water damaged house because you have a leaky roof or sink or shower or toilet or humidity or HVAC issues. So the mold releases toxins, mycotoxins, and of which there are hundreds that have been identified. So those mold mycotoxins interfere with LDL receptor function, it's in literature, not only do they interfere with LDL receptors, they also interfere with the Apo-B lipoprotein itself, the Apo-B, you know, protein, you know, that's sitting on the LDL particle. So my point is, is that you need to get rid of the mold and cleanse out the mold mycotoxins. It's not about taking a statin drug, of which actually the original was patterned after citrinin, which is in red yeast rice, which is a mold mycotoxins. So that comes on fermented moldy rice that's put into a capsule. And that citrinin mycotoxin inhibits HMG, CoA reductase, and that's the first statin drug was born, it's a mold mycotoxin. So if you're living in mold, you're in big trouble. And that again, is more I want people's focus to be, as opposed to, well, my particles are, you know, 1700. And I've got a calcium score of 100. And I'm on high dose Lipitor, like, no, that's just not, that's not gonna, you're not gonna make it.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I personally had mold toxicity. I lived in an apartment with black mold for two years and it did a number on me. And I became a mold fanatic after that.

Jack Wolfson:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani The most famous mold mycotoxin in the history organ transplant rejection, it's called cell sept. It's also used in people with autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid and stuff like that. So cell sept is that's the brand name the generic for that is myco phenolic acid myco meaning mold phenolic you know phenol myco phenol compound of which that is, you know, it's got a phenol ring in there. So it's a mold mycotoxin in a capsule that shuts down your immune system. What if you're living in that? And we test people and they're in a lot of them are high in myco phenolic acid. So they're living in mold, they're breathing and swallowing all these things of myco phenolic acid. We talk about the importance of the microbiome. What happens to your gut microbiome if you're constantly swallowing penicillin and myco phenolic acid, you're done, you're done. So that's why these conversations about statin drugs and blood pressure drugs, they're just, I mean, they're silly. They're silly in the context of 95 plus percent of people are living in a water damaged home. And they've got no clue and I've got brain fog and they've got fertility and they got low libido and, you know, the 25 pounds overweight and these people like, Oh, I'm eating all this paleo food, you know, I'm living so how I exercise and I eat this paleo food or I eat this. And I still feel like crap and I'm still overweight and I've got, you know, I'm losing my hair and, you know, I got brain fog and my heart skipping and flipping and flopping. Mold is, I've got a blog post and like a meme infographic, 14, 14 ways mold mycotoxins impact the cardiovascular system. Just, I mean, just 14 different ways right out of the medical literature. I mean, it's just right there. People aren't talking about that. They're so worried about, you know, whether or not they should take a small dose of Lipitor every other day.

Melanie Avalon:
Like I said, after I experienced it myself, it was really, really horrible. Like, so many people have it and they don't realize. Like, for example, I recently had a leak in my apartment and I was talking to the maintenance people about it and I was like, I want them to come check for mold. And they're like, oh, it's dry. So there's no mold. Like, that's not how it works. Like, it could have, um, you know, you don't necessarily see it. And just because it's dry now, doesn't mean there's not mold.

Jack Wolfson:
Well, I mean, if I may comment on that as well, I kind of like in the living mold to the dead mold story like this, it's kind of like a dandelion. So if you got this beautiful yellow dandelion and you pick it, you know, and you blow on it, it's not going anywhere. And they're actually very delicious foods, the whole dandelion and dandelion greens and stalk and the flower. But in any case, that's the living molds, you blow on it and it's probably not even that dangerous. Now, once the dandelion dies or once it morphs into its next phase, which is kind of like what a wisher, you know, looks like right when you blow on that. And then now, you know, you blow on that and it goes all over. So I think dead molds can actually be just as dangerous circulating around your house as living mold and maybe even more so. So that's something to consider. But most medical doctors obviously are extremely illiterate as it relates to water damage, water damage mold, water damage bacteria is highly detrimental. And just what that does to the immune system, to the gut microbiome, to endothelial dysfunction, how there's evidence that mold mycotoxins decrease endothelial nitric oxide and lead to leaky endothelium and therefore coronary disease. So again, that just kind of just goes back to going after root cause. The problem is not the oxidized LDL. It's the fact that mold, for example, and all these other environmental toxins lead to excess oxidative stress, therefore oxidized lipids, which therefore can become a problem. But again, I think they're more so of a sign that there's a problem.

Melanie Avalon:
would maybe common sense say that the safest approach would be reducing the inflammation and reducing these potentially oxidized particles?

Jack Wolfson:
I'm not going there. I'm not going to, I'm not going to give you that. I'm not going to. I mean, there's just no way it's not a matter of.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm not trying to make you say it, I'm just asking.

Jack Wolfson:
It's kind of like somebody who would say take the statin drugs and do all these changes now you're getting the best of both worlds i just of course.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, I think that's basically Peter Tia says.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, and I'm and I'm not going there. There's just no way. I mean, because it's like, your body is the most amazing thing on planet Earth. And why would you want to interfere with a natural mechanisms, you know, of it, especially for chronic illness? You know, it's kind of like, well, I'm gonna take osempic, and I'm gonna eat better, like, no, just eat better. Or I'm just gonna take a diabetes drug and eat better. I don't I don't see how you can possibly do that. You're trying to fight with one arm tied behind your back. And it's just not going to work. And again, the people who take statin drugs, they don't live a long time. They may, you know, if you look at the studies that are done on people who eat McDonald's cookies and cupcakes, and the Lipitor group does a little bit better, but they don't necessarily live longer. I just I don't want that ever to be my message. I don't want my children to ever hear that message. I don't want my, you know, I mean, there are there are medical doctors, as you know, who think Lipitor belongs in the drinking water. Well, that's a that's a pretty big claim, you know, for people, especially when according to the sparkle trial, it published in New England Journal of Medicine, one of the biggest journals in the world showed five more people died in that trial. And if you extrapolate that out to millions, you're talking about potentially, although not statistically significant, you know, you're talking about, you know, tens of thousands of people dying, according to that data alone.

Melanie Avalon:
I guess if we look at people who genetically have low production of these like Apobee and these problematic oxidized cholesterol levels that they tend to not have the CBD issues compared to people with like familial, I can never say that word, familial hypercholesterolemia, that word, you know, do seem to have disease and mortality issues related to that. So that's where I would see an argument for, you know, if you're genetically predisposed to this overproduction, then maybe that's a case where with modern technology, we can address that risk, which seems to be independent of diet and lifestyle. I'm not trying to make you say anything, by the way.

Jack Wolfson:
No, no, no, I believe me. I'm very confident that I'm not going to. What I'm going to say, what I'm going to say is this. Yeah, no, what I would say is that if people have genetically low particle numbers, that doesn't mean that giving people statin drugs or similar to achieve those same numbers, we should expect the same results. Because it's just it's it's again, it's like, if my blood pressure is 120 over 80, and someone else is 120 over 80 on pharma, we're not the same. We're not even close to the same. And that data is very clear, like artificially lowering blood sugar artificially lowering blood pressure down, it does not make you anywhere near equal that and anyone who would say anyways, they don't even know the literature. It's not even close. Journal hypertension 2019, great reviews on stuff like that. Now the other thing is that people with familial hyperlipidemia, it's about one in 250 according to the CDC. So it's not overly common. A lot of people running around like I've got a family history and stuff like that people have family history of disease because they eat and live and think like their parents did and their aunts and uncles. Our genetics are perfect. By the way, our I'll say it again. Our genetics are perfect. We can run and jump and see and feel and make babies. Our genetics are perfect. Don't blame stuff. Blame everything on manmade poisons. That's where you can put it all. And then as it relates to this familial hyperlipidemia, it's not very common. And by the way, it's not from an overproduction of... Oh, is that absorption? Well, what it is is that it is the inability of people to clear LDL particles. So they either have a genetic SNP in their LDL receptor or they have a genetic SNP in the ApoB protein. So again, it leads to suboptimal recognition. And therefore, the LDL particle does not get cleared. So it just circulates around longer and longer and longer. But the liver is not making too much of it in those familial cases. It's one of those things. Now, what I'm trying to say also is that when you have mold mycotoxins or metals or plastic, they gum up the process. For example, they may cause malformations in the ApoB protein B or in the receptor or clog up the receptor as the case of mold mycotoxins. It could be autoimmune, for example, to the LDL receptor. And therefore, things don't get cleared. So that's why you just kind of bring into the whole thing. And how do statins address that? They don't. All statins do is decrease the production of cholesterol, which the body is doing for a reason. I mean, the body is making cholesterol for a reason. And in the cases of hyperlipidemia, a lot of times it may be just it's, you know, because the LDL particles are not recognized, the liver, you know, therefore potentially could put out more of it, but it's trying to compensate because the body itself is sending back signals saying, hey, you know, we're not making enough enough of the good stuff here. Or we don't have enough testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. We don't have enough, you know, digestive molecules. So therefore, we got to make more of it. But those familial people, again, it's not from an overproduction.

Melanie Avalon:
So how do you feel about PCSK9 inhibitors?

Jack Wolfson:
I think they're poison. I've never prescribed them. And I said that before. That comes back to the original statin or the original trial that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed that more people died in the Repathic group. So they're extremely expensive. And again, these things lead to a false sense of security. I can eat whatever I want. I can live however I want. I just take these pharmaceuticals and I'm going to be good. But you're not. You're not.

Melanie Avalon:
So this is interesting for a few reasons, whenever I do interview the vegans, I always find it interesting because they'll often say that in order to have low LDL, you need to be on a plant-based diet. I eat so much animal protein, like shocking amounts, and my LDL is shockingly low. And so when I, maybe not shockingly, it's like in the 40s or 50s, but so when I, I like telling that to them because I'm like, well, clearly you can eat animal protein and have low LDL because I do it. Do you like seeing it higher in people?

Jack Wolfson:
I mean, we know from the Mr. Fick trial, for example, that, and this is from the 1970s, that the total cholesterol, total cholesterol at least, the sweet spot for total cholesterol is 160 to 260. So anything above 260, more people died. Anything below 160, more people died. So I would be concerned that if your LDL is in the 40s or 50s, that your total is probably, you know, around like 130. And I think that, I think in general, that's, but I mean, there could be some outliers into, honestly, you know, Melanie, I mean, the most important thing are the markers of inflammation, oxidative stress. I don't even care about it. Mine's like 120. Yeah. I mean, you know, so that may be the perfect level for you. And I would want to know, ox stress, I'd want to know about, you know, HSCRP.

Melanie Avalon:
My CRP is a flat line. It's always zero, and it has been for years. At InsideTracker, because I thought that was normal because it's such a flat line, but then they commented, and actually one of the founders of InsideTracker, he was like, I've never seen this. I was like, oh, okay.

Jack Wolfson:
Well, I mean, listen, I mean, if your inflammation and ox stress are low, that is a much better predictor of morbidity and mortality than the lipids are. So if I had to pick one marker on someone, it would be just like urinary lipid peroxides. The other thing I would look at, if we think maybe your numbers are artificially suppressed, then I would look back to the toxins and like what is something interfering with your body's ability to make cholesterol, and I would be, you know, concerned about that. And then, you know, of course, there's a lot of people who are carnivore, but they're missing the seafood story. Seafood is the most important food to eat in the entire world. Wild salmon, sardines, anchovies. It's mostly fish that I eat. Yeah, clams, oysters, shrimp, lobster, crab, wild salmon a row. You know, by the way, we have a we have encapsulated wild salmon row product. We tested it for bisphenol A. None. So when people talk about all the, you know, you know, there's plastic in seafood. Well, there may be, but there's not enough wild salmon rows. So I think in general that the benefits of eating seafood far outweigh any potential risks.

Melanie Avalon:
to comment on the seafood, because I'm actually really passionate about this. So I also had mercury toxicity in the past. And it's because I historically was eating. So I was eating. When I started eating fish, I was eating low mercury. But I wasn't really, I didn't really look into it that much. So I was eating low mercury. But then I moved back to California. And I discovered like swordfish. I wasn't having it on the regular, but I tried it a few times. And I didn't realize, and I always bring this up when I'm talking about it, because I think it's so mind blowing. So if you look at the concentration of mercury, the data set is a little bit old. I wish they would update it. There's this nice data set that the government did. And they looked at hundreds and hundreds of samples of fish. And they have all these different species. And if you look at the lowest, and I realize that this is looking at the extremes, but if you look at the lowest piece of tilapia with the lowest mercury and compare it to a piece of swordfish with the highest mercury, it was the equivalent of 300 times the amount of mercury and a piece of swordfish compared to that piece of tilapia, which meant when I ate like a piece of swordfish, I potentially could be having up to 300 times the amount of mercury in that one meal. My mercury got so bad, I didn't realize it for a while. But then when I actually tested, like my blood mercury was 30, which is not good. And so now I'm really intense about only eating low mercury fish. And I do think in general eating fish, the benefits far outweigh the potential negative side effects. But I am also very concerned about mercury exposure, especially people eating like tuna left and right. Yeah, and I know you talk about mercury in the book.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, no, I mean, mercury definitely is a factor. But if I think about mercury in general, like mercury is an element on planet Earth that's been around here for a long time. I'm not saying it's good. But I'm saying if you put that in perspective, compared to like mold, and you talk about the dangers of mold versus mercury, mold is a living breathing organism that secretes toxins in order to survive. It's actually thinking about killing you, not the, you know, anthropomorphize, you know, that too much, you know, as far as its level of consciousness. But in any case, you can select out the good fish, you can wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, the shellfish, I've never I've tested thousands of people's metals in their in their urine. And they're not high because of eating those things, like you said, big tuna, big mackerel, swordfish, halibut, Chilean sea bass, those are problematic fish that we do have alternatives. There are some low mercury tunas that are out there.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I like safe catch. I've had them on the show.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, I mean, exactly. But even still, it's like, if you like tuna, then I think you can do it that way. You don't need to eat tuna, you can eat other things, but you're not getting mercury toxicity from wild salmon. It's just it's not happening. From anchovies, you know, from sardines, herring, you know, those small fish, and those omega-3 fatty acids are so beneficial. And, you know, greager and, you know, Joel Kahn and stuff like that, they're not getting them from chia seeds and walnuts. They're markedly deficient in omega-3 fatty acids markedly.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm curious, and maybe I read it wrong. This was in my notes. I'm wondering if I read it wrong or if you've changed your mind. I think in your book, you said you only recommend shellfish once a week. I don't.

Jack Wolfson:
I don't remember if I said that or not. If I did, I'm mistaken because I do think that shellfish can be had more than that. Although, probably realistically, as far as what you would consume on a weekly basis, I mean, maybe one or two servings of shellfish would fit in just naturally into your diet because you've got shellfish and you've got fish and you've got other animal things and you've got eggs and avocados and coconuts and green leafy vegetables and seasonal fruit and nuts and seeds. So I'm not the carnivore cardiologist. I'm the paleo guy, right? So it's hunter-gatherer ancestral food is the way to go. But one movie I love as an example is the movie Castaway with the actor Tom Hanks. He's living on the island. If we're all living on the island eating coconuts, fish, and avocados and going to sleep and getting sun and no poisons and toxins, as much as that's even possible, as like you said, there's even plastic at the top of Mount Everest. But where does genetics fit into the island where Tom Hanks was? You kidding me? Like people with quote unquote, oh, I've got horrible family history. Get born on that island and you're going to live a long, long, long time. Long time.

Melanie Avalon:
And actually related, so this is something I think some people might find a little shocking that you say in the book that I really agree with this a lot. So going back to all the vegans and all the, you know, intense plant people, they'll often say that, you know, fruit and vegetables, even if it's conventional, that's better than not. And I really think pesticides are such a problem. I don't, I would not advocate eating conventional fruit and vegetables over, compared to not. Like I think the pesticides are really an issue. So how do you feel about that, about conventional versus organic?

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, no, I mean, you know, like I said, in the beginning of this interview, it's like, no matter what diet you follow, make it organic. And that's the way that we live. I mean, I, as I do this interview with you right now, I'm wearing my organic pajama bottoms from Hannah Anderson. And I'm wearing my organic cotton t shirt from a company called Wear Pact, P-A-C-T. And we take this lifestyle extremely seriously. I never eat non organic fruit ever. I only eat organic and preferably local, you know, we're in Colorado right now, it's total, you know, stone fruit season, the peaches and nectarines and stuff like that. And I indulge in those pesticides, if they kill pests, they kill us. And the way they do so, one of the mechanisms, of course, is that they destroy our gut microbiome. And it's in the literature, people with the highest levels of pesticide consumption have a much, much, much higher risk of cardiovascular disease. So your points well taken, I mean, you can never eat conventional fruits. And these people who would give people a whole pass to do that, I mean, it's just, it's insanity. There's just no way. There's just no way you can consume it. Obviously, glyphosate, atrazine, organophosphates, organic chlorines, these are poison, absolute poison, you think they're only affecting the plants, you think they're only affecting, you know, these things, I mean, they're destroying the soil, destroying the microbiome around the soil leading to nutrient deficiencies in the very fruit. But ultimately, again, we are swallowing these downs. And we measure these things. These are urinary pesticides you can measure in people, you can measure multiple different organophosphates, organochlorines, you can measure atrazine, you can measure glyphosate. It's bad. It's really bad.

Melanie Avalon:
And especially with it being water soluble. So this leads to another, another topic. I only drink organic wine. How do you feel about alcohol and the heart?

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, you know, I grew up drinking alcohol. My father was an alcohol drinker. There's no sob story regarding my father's alcohol drinking, except for the fact he's dead. You know, I mean, he was the life of the party joke teller storyteller. He was awesome when he was drinking, and then he died. So I think alcohol in general is a liver toxin. Obviously, it's a brain toxin. It's not ancestral. We don't need it. I try and tell people organic wine, organic tequila or vodka, whatever it may be gluten free beer, maybe once or twice a week would be or, you know, one to two drinks a week would be my limits. Atrial fibrillation, very, very, very common heart rhythm disorder. The line is linear, the more alcohol you drink, the more the higher the risk of AFib. So in general, I think it's probably best for most people to really limit their consumption.

Melanie Avalon:
This is something where I actually, I feel really strongly about this and I don't ever hear people talking about it, but the majority of the literature on alcohol and heart health, oftentimes it's just alcohol. It's lumping all alcohol together. If it does break it down, it might break it down into beer, wine, heart alcohol, but it very rarely, I don't see any studies looking at people drinking organic dry farmed, like low sugar natural wines. And I would be really, really curious what the studies would find on that, especially since just alcohol in general seems to be a J-shaped curve and I know people can debate that when it comes to mortality and heart disease risk.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, no, I mean, as it relates to mortality, and as it relates to myocardial infarction risk, you're right, there is a J, but when it comes to AFib, it's linear. It's just, you know, zero would be the lowest risk. So if you're concerned about AFib, or you have paroxysmal AFib, I think the other thing too about alcohol consumption is that I do believe that it impacts sleep, you know, for example, melatonin secretion, you know, pituitary adrenal axis, hypothalamus, you know, pituitary adrenal axis, I think that there is some, you know, factor with that, but your point's definitely well taken, right? I mean, the data in general is done on people who are drinking Budweiser, right? So what does it mean if you're drinking from dry farms and stuff like that? And I guess the other way really is just ultimately just kind of test it, right? So if like you're eating and living a certain way, and your numbers look good, I think you're probably okay, as long as you keep testing, right, and it's like as long as your inflammation ox stress stays low, homocysteines under control, intracellular vitamins and minerals, toxins are low, you know, then I think in general, you're in pretty good shape, and especially when you feel well, you know, so when you look in the mirror, you know, you look good, you feel good, your lab numbers look good, tests don't guess, that goes a long way to supporting whatever you're doing, you know, so I mean, I used to be extremely anti gluten, and I'm definitely anti gluten, like we don't need it, there's no reason to eat it. But if you're a gluten eater, and you're doing it in a super clean way, and your numbers look good, and your you know, your gut microbiome looks good, and you test these things, then it's probably not a big deal for the individual.

Melanie Avalon:
I was trying to find reviews of meta-analyses of alcohol and heart health in general. The ones I was finding were showing J-shaped curves as well. Yeah, I don't know. I just think there's so many factors.

Jack Wolfson:
Well, I mean, it is J shaped in the sense of right is as far as, you know, coronary artery disease and potentially mortality. I'm just saying for a fib as a one lone diagnosis, because I do see a lot of people with that heart rhythm disorder. That's what it is. But again, I totally agree with you that what would the data be on people who consume it in a very clean fashion. Yeah, so someone swallowing and like six packs, you know, or 12 packs, or drinking, you know, some cheap, you know, rock, got wine or expensive wine that's just soaked with glyphosate. They're undoubtedly going to have worse outcomes than the people who do it in a in a clean way. So and I'm and I'm not saying like never drink it. I'm just saying I practice with a lot of other, you know, cardiologists and they've got the big wine collection and they have like two to three or more glasses daily because they think it's healthy. Like, I think I think that's a problem. I think it's a problem.

Melanie Avalon:
That's actually how Joel Kahn and I met because I there is an article that published about me and I was talking about wine and he DM me and he was like, let's talk heart health and wine. I was like, OK.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, you know, and I think like Joel, you know, a lot of people, you know, they and maybe myself included, right, you find the literature that supports your belief system. And a lot of people really like having a bottle of wine every night, you know, or maybe if you're someone who has $100 ,000, you know, wine, you know, refrigerator or locker, like you want to find the good stuff with it. I just think that the body is so busy trying to detoxify poison. Why add in another compound that the liver now has to detox? Why gum up the system, you know, with that in order to do so, I guess is all that I would say about that. But listen, life is to be enjoyed and whether or not we're debating about alcohol when we're talking again, again, about the devastation of plastic, of pesticides, of, you know, of other environmental chemicals, of electromagnetic fields, you know, around us 24 seven. So I think there's probably a lot bigger fish to fry than is someone having, you know, a drink or two, you know.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I'm actually I'm glad you mentioned that's where I was gonna go next. I'm actually currently developing an EMF blocking product line. I think the EMF exposure is such a problem. And one of the things I like to share with people, I think this out of all the stuff. This is the thing that convinces people the most that they might be a problem is if you have an iPhone. Do you have an iPhone or an Android?

Jack Wolfson:
For the longest time, I was Android and my family made me switch.

Melanie Avalon:
Because I was like, I feel like he's an Android man, but...

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, no, I mean, you know, because let me listen, you know, doctors like me were born into the PC world. So it's like, as you were working in the hospitals and stuff like that, it was all PC based. So as the phones came out, most of the doctors in a lot of cases, they really, you know, went from, you know, Blackberry, and then into Android, because that was also the cheapest investment for for the head of the group and stuff like that, or hospital systems. In any case, my family said enough is enough. I still I was just as happy on Samsung as I was, you know, on Apple. But anyway, anyway,

Melanie Avalon:
If you do have an Apple iPhone, and you go into the legal section of the phone, there's a section called RF exposure. And it literally says in that section, I mean, it says it in like legal words, but it says basically that the phone's been tested for safety and blah, blah, blah, blah. But then it suggests that you use it on speakerphone. Like it literally like, okay, if they did to reduce your exposure, I feel like Apple wouldn't put that in there unless they, you know, had to put that in there. So literally, friends, your phone suggests that you don't even hold it to your head if you look in the details.

Jack Wolfson:
You know, years ago, my wife and I were, you know, the whole family were staying at this development on the beach in Southern California. And we walk into this open house and we're talking to this woman, she's like in her late 30s. She's got this really disfiguring scar on the right side of her face. You know, we didn't say anything. I mean, we were there like to look at the house and I wasn't inquiring about her health conditions. But you know, start talking and she's like, Oh, you got your doctors, you know, and I have this parotid gland tumor. And like, how'd you get a parotid gland tumor? And she's looked at us and she said for the last 10 years prior to that I was walking around with a cell phone, you know, tied to my face. You know, ultimately, we are electromagnetic beings, right? We measure EEGs for brain and EKGs for heart and EMGs for neuromuscular interfaces. I mean, we are all electrical. So what does it mean when you're putting up an electrical box, you know, to your skull? What does it mean when you sleep by the Wi Fi router? What does it mean when you use those wireless earbuds, which I won't even do an interview with someone. I don't know if you know, we're on audio. So but in people who use the earbuds were like, you know, the, the device communicates to one earbud and then through Bluetooth, the one earbud communicates to the other one and in between is your brain. It's not good. And, you know, Martin Paul, PhD researcher, you know, magnifoss, you know, others, you know, who do some of the bench research on this stuff. It's, it's scary. It's scary what that does. Well, listen, you know, we live in a world where Elon Musk, you know, is one of the controllers, where the people who control Elon Musk are in control. And they've got Starlink up in the sky and cell phone towers everywhere. And we're in a world world, which means you have to do everything else you can control, you know, whether it's, you know, mold, or you know, the food that you eat, the lifestyle that you lead, the sleep you get the physical activity, holistic dentistry, big fan of chiropractic care, not because my wife is a, you know, Cairo, but because it works. And then, you know, we haven't even really delved into the whole concept of, you know, think well, and how mental health and mindset is just as important as anything else that we've discussed.

Melanie Avalon:
So what I have in right now is the prototype of my EMF blocking headphones. So not the, I shudder when people put in the earbud, the Bluetooth ones. I'm like, you're literally putting basically like an antenna right by your head or just

Jack Wolfson:
Well, these are the same people too, is like when Apple introduces the actual device that goes full-time in your skull and we become combined with AI and we get into this sci-fi world that does not appear far off, I think it's going to be pretty scary. Time will tell.

Melanie Avalon:
Speaking to the mindset piece, I'm prepping another show right now that's all about stress and mindset and all those things. And one of the studies I was reading last night, and I thought this was so telling, it was a study looking at stress perception and mortality. And the people, so it was looking at people, basically, their levels of stress and their perception of stress. And the people with the lowest stress perception, so I'm not thinking stress was a bad thing, they had the lowest mortality rates, even lower than people with actual less stress. So I think your perception and your mindset surrounding everything is really, really important when it comes to all this.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, you know how how you deal with stress is very important and it's like if you're someone who Despite all the stress like you're loving it, right you It doesn't impact your sleep and it doesn't impact your relationships and it's like stress on the job stressing the family But i'm happy i'm happy with it I think that that probably is okay But yeah for the people that are running around under stress pulling out their hair. They're not sleeping Their relationships are suffering Of course you would combine stressful Situations with bad food and maybe not, you know Exercising and and not getting sleep and not taking care of yourself and not getting sunshine So there's those you know confounding factors as well But the literature is very clear if you are someone who identifies yourself as being under stress you at higher risk of being dead People who have post-traumatic stress disorder higher risk of being dead people with childhood trauma higher risk of being dead with with with the confounding factors Accounded for as best as possible. So ultimately it's about finding you're happy. I believe it is about finding your spirituality It's about finding, you know self-gratitude and acceptance for yourself It's about finding your community your tribe of like-minded people, you know, not being around people who deflate you finding You know, you know good safe and secure work space All those things are are critically important and then you know practicing stress reduction techniques But you know people who identify themselves as socially isolated much much much higher risk of cardiac death And it's and again like this childhood trauma Whatever that may be those people are again at much higher risk of cancer heart disease Dementia and these things are not being addressed certainly by conventional doctors

Melanie Avalon:
I also wonder about like the social isolation versus the perception of social isolation. So I wonder how much of it is about, you know, going out versus not compared to just do you feel lonely or not.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, well, I think what really the studies are done on people who identify themselves as socially isolated. So you're right, whether or not you really are, if you feel that you are, and of course, the last four years really that's been put on steroids as far as people being socially isolated. So, and I think really that's just an opportunity for us as health educators to help people find their community, find their tribe. So if what I say in this conversation resonates with you, well, hey, let's be in the same tribe together so we can continue these conversations. And even if you're on the same Facebook group or the same online community, finding people that are like-minded are, it's extremely important. How can you go through life if everybody you come across, you're arguing about health, you're arguing about the environment, you're arguing about religion, you're arguing about politics, like it's a lot. And, you know, for these people who they don't have good family support, they don't have good friend support, they're truly alone and they die a lot younger.

Melanie Avalon:
I don't follow the news, even with social media, it's funny because people will say with social media that the algorithm is there and it's bad and it just feeds you, what's the word? I don't know, conflicting or hostile things, but my Instagram is literally just Taylor Swift and cat videos. It's a really happy place to be, so my point is I think you can, you curate what you see. You choose what comes into your life, so I really want to empower people with that agency question, because earlier you were saying that we don't have studies, for example, on people who've been carnivore since they're young and what would the effect be? That made me think, when you work with patients, depending on their baseline, how fast can you see change in people and also can people, if they clean up their diet and lifestyle, are there residual effects that linger if you've lived an unhealthy lifestyle for a certain amount of time? Is it, will you just never really get to a place that you could have been at? I'm curious about what you see in your patients as far as the timeline of change and the potential for change.

Jack Wolfson:
There is no way, shape or form that you could ever be as healthy as paleo man was, paleo man and paleo women. So like 15 ,000 years ago, the pinnacle of what those people were, I can't even imagine. Like hunter gatherers, like, you know, the men are six foot one and the women are, you know, five, six, and they're just like bulletproof. Like those people were incredible. The world was too polluted, too toxic, too many generations of people living unhealthy and therefore, you know, leading to unhealthy offspring one after another after another. But I do think that you can give yourself the best chance, right? So if you eat well, live well, think well, test, don't guess, and use those abnormalities to try and fine tune, we're trying to do changes can happen. They can happen very quickly, right? I mean, you can go, you know, on a week long, you know, water fast or week long carnivore cleanse and come out a different person. And it happens very quickly. Lab changes happen very quickly. But, you know, I guess I would say one more thing, too, is that if you look at, you know, coronary artery calcification scans, that represents a life of unhealthy living. That's how it got there, the coronary artery calcium. So that really is a reflection of what's going on over a lifetime. But if you want to know where am I at this particular moment, well, that's where the blood markers and the urine markers come in for the inflammation ox stress, because whatever your, if you're listening right now, whatever your pipes are right now, no matter how calcified they are, the most important thing we could do is A, prevent it from getting worse and maybe more important B is to prevent having a heart attack from a calcified plaque that you know, erodes or breaks loose, whatever you want to call it to lead to the event. And we can measure that by inflammation ox stress. If you have low inflammation, low ox stress, then you're much less likely to rupture a plaque than if you are inflamed.

Melanie Avalon:
Regarding those scans, I'm super curious, your opinion, so clearly if there's plaque, that's a problem. I've heard, though, that carnivore people, for example, will get scans and they'll be clear and they'll say, oh, see, I have a clear scan. But then I've heard the argument that if you're a certain age, you know, 30s, maybe 40s, that it should, like, basically, it's going to be, it should be clear. So basically, it could be a false, what would that be, a false positive?

Jack Wolfson:
Well, no, it'd be a false negative in the sense that, well, no, let me say this. I mean, it's not even a false negative. I mean, it's just a negative coronary calcium scan. Number one, do they have soft plaque? That's a possibility, of course. You know, I mean, again, it's, you know, would it give someone a false sense of security to say, oh, well, look, I'm 35. I've been in carnivore for three years. See, everything's all clean. I think it could give someone a false sense of security. I don't think carnivore is a long-term strategy. Our ancestors never did it. I think it's an experiment. I think it's a decent cleanse. I'm fine with that. A lot of people feel better on carnivore. But ultimately, if they do, it's still they're not addressing the real problem. So if someone's like, oh, you know, I feel so much better on carnivore. I'm not, you know, consuming all these oxalates and phytates and lectins. And therefore, I feel better. Yeah, that's true. But if you're intolerant of oxalates, lectins, phytates, we should figure out why. And it is because of a leaky gut. And because of that damage, intestinal microbiome, and therefore the leaky gut. So the answer is not to go carnivore for the long term. The answer is fix what's leading to disruption of your microbiome and intestinal permeability.

Melanie Avalon:
I have a good success story with my mom because I've been talking about all this stuff for a good decade and she's always thought I was just kind of crazy and I don't know what happened but somebody convinced her to do an elimination diet and she's been doing it and she's literally been texting me every single day saying like, I understand now why you're so crazy, how you order at restaurants and now I understand why you eat certain foods that you eat and it's been really amazing. I only waited 10 years for it.

Jack Wolfson:
I was gonna say, right? I mean, it's unfortunate because a lot of times young people, yeah, they do, they find out too late or they find out after they've had an event, after they've had a heart attack, after they've had a stroke, after they've had cancer. Yeah, I mean, listen, all we can do is keep, you know, preaching, shouting from the rooftops. They're not gonna get this stuff from the medical community. And again, that's just why I'm just so anti the pharmaceuticals because I don't think it's a combination strategy. I think longevity is just give the body what it needs, take away what it doesn't. And that's what it's, you know, what's gonna do it. So happy for your mom. And it's nice because these people, I mean, the human body is so miraculous. It's got the ability to recover extremely quickly. So that's a good thing.

Melanie Avalon:
Maybe one last quick topic to end on. So we've talked all about this, you know, the role of food and environment and diet and lifestyle. And we know you're anti-pharmaceutical. How do you feel about supplements? How do they compare to pharmaceuticals? And your own line, how did you decide to make it? I recently launched my own, a spirulina, which you talk about in the book. So I was excited to hear that you like spirulina. But so how should we approach supplements? Could we make the argument that they are sort of like a, you know, not a whole foods form of, I guess, nutrition?

Jack Wolfson:
Well, let's say this. I mean, so your spirulina product is a whole food product. And I'm perfectly fine with that. Supplements supplement the eat well, live well, think well. So let's not give people permission, which I know you're not, to eat McDonald's cookies and cupcakes, drink Bud Light, and take your spirulina product or take a multivitamin. We're not saying that. We're saying the foundation is the eat well, the live well, the think well. And then you can also add supplements in there and then also based on testing, right? So if you're, you know, kind of doing all the things right, yet maybe you're still having PVCs, PACs, palpitations, you test your levels and say your magnesium is okay, but your intracellular potassium is low. Well, maybe you should take potassium supplements, if you can't do it with food. We're really moving towards the food based supplements, like our kickstart, my heart is a liver, you know, bison or bison liver heart complex, you know, wild salmon roe, instead of taking fish oil, like those kind of things. Some of the, some of the, you know, multivitamins, and even though I do sell one, it's not very often that I recommend it. We're really trying to do things with whole food first, but then based on testing, if they're like, oh, I'm doing, I'm not going to eat any more liver, I'm not swallowing any more seafood capsules. Okay, well, then you could use some of these spot nutrients that I think have value. I think probiotics are always going to be good to help the gut microbiome. There's other products that help support the gut microbiome. I also like detox products, right? So if you're talking about things like charcoal, bentonite clay, you know, zeolite, you know, type products, chlorella spirulina, as you mentioned, there's definitely a role for that. Do you like citrus pectin? I'm aware of the data on citrus pectin. It's not something that I use very often. I know, obviously, there's a well-known doctor and company that promotes it. It's not something I use, you know, too often. I mean, but I love the idea of binders. Like if we're living in a moldy, toxic, polluted world, what are you doing to bind up the mold, the bacteria, the plastics, phthalates, you know, the parabens, the, you know, VOCs? What are you doing to bind those things up? So I do think that supplements are in that kind of biohacking category. And then you do, like your show, right? I mean, it's all about, you know, biohacking is definitely part of it. And, you know, sauna, red light therapy, those are all beneficial. I mean, they're not going to be nature, so they would be on top of nature. But nature, we have to focus on nature first. Like getting sunshine is much more important than red light therapy. You know, IVs, methylene blue, ozone, hyperbaric, right? I mean, there's so many different biohacks that are out there. But, you know, my wife and I, we're, you know, we spoke at A4M, the American Academy of Anti-Aging, and there's like 700 different biohacking vendors there. And my wife's got her line of products at Wild Mamas, which are all, you know, bison and seafood and mine, you know, the same. And we're like just talking to people as they come by and saying, you know, all the biohacking in this room doesn't compare to nature. So it's all, it's, it's at the end of the game, it's before pharma. You know, there's a time and a place for illness. And if you get stents and you need anticoagulants, you know, blood centers and stuff like that, there's a time and a place, but it's really not that often. It's really not that often where you need those things.

Melanie Avalon:
Are you going to A4M in September? People keep inviting me and I'm not going as of right now.

Jack Wolfson:
I don't know where A4M is in September. The big one is in well, the big one is in December and Vegas. Oh, December, sorry.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, is it December? I'm probably confusing it with something else. Day four, though, people keep saying I should go to. In Vegas, right? Yeah.

Jack Wolfson:
I think that that is something that everyone should go to, you know, at least once. I think you'll geek out on all the different tech and then, of course, meeting people. And if you want more people for your, you know, to interview and to, you know, be, you know, circle around, I think it's good. Vegas in general, right, it's just not a healthy place to be, so we don't want to stay there for too long. I mean, honestly, Mel and I would tell you, you could easily pop in there for a day and kind of see everything you want to see at the expo, lectures and stuff like that. You know, a lot of it's kind of promo fluff. And, you know, listen, a lot of the people at A4M, they're kind of like, you know, Peter, it's like, take your stat and drug and, you know, eat some bison. That's just not me as far as my message that I convey, but I don't know. Have you ever been to Expo West?

Melanie Avalon:
I have not, no.

Jack Wolfson:
That's well that's for sure because that's like fun because that's like all there's so much food based off and you walk out of there and you're like oh i just tried twenty different organic ice creams and thirty different gluten free candy bars and you know sixteen different types of chocolate so that's kinda like a fun treat. What you have a guess you know a four m i can't even tell you like other places that i would necessarily recommend but i definitely think it's an experience is that it's time it's on the holistic practitioner bucket list.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you go to, I go to Dave Asprey's biohacking conference. I love it.

Jack Wolfson:
So so i spoke at i spoke at the event on behalf of sunlight and sauna.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, I love sunlight in.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, I was there in September of 22. I was in Beverly Hills. I was out there with my son. The best thing about it is that we escaped to go to Erewhon, which is that organic grocery store. Erewhon's amazing.

Melanie Avalon:
My sister used to live in Calabasas, and she, like, Aeron was where she would go. I was so jealous.

Jack Wolfson:
Like that is probably the only reason that in the beach would be the only reasons to live in California, that place, right? And that's spectacular. Biohacking I thought was cool. I mean, it's not near the scale of what A4M is. It's much, much smaller. And yeah, I mean, listen, do presenters have good things to present? But I think, you know, once again, I'm really not interested. I mean, if someone's talking about certain biohacking, some new form or whatever, like, yeah, some guy's getting up there and he's talking about methylene blue. Okay, listen, I want to hear about methylene blue. I want to hear about ozone. I want to hear about hyperbaric as it relates to where we come in after the you well live well think well, but you know, and all these things, all the biohacks will be better on a body that is optimized, you know, through the food and through the lifestyle. If you're just like, and if you're just like, I'm a totally unhealthy person, but I heard hyperbaric's good, like you're, you're dead. I mean, forget about it. You're wasting your time. You're wasting your money.

Melanie Avalon:
So true. It's like that guy. I don't know if it was recently, but the guy who did the study where he basically just added Oreos to his diet and then reduced his cholesterol, I think.

Jack Wolfson:
Well, I tell people that what I mean, so so what that was, was that, you know, the they took a people, a group of people who were lean mass hyper responders, so they're people who were on extreme low fat, excuse me, extreme low carb diets, they were in ketosis, a lot of them were on carnivore. And they become what's called a lean mass hyper responder. So those people develop total cholesterol levels like six, 700 LDLs, you know, four or 500 massive numbers of particles. And with that, you're going to have some level of oxidative particles. What he did was is that he showed that just by switching to Oreo cookies, that you can dramatically drop it as well as a statin drug did.

Melanie Avalon:
Did he switch or did he just add them in? I was trying to understand how they orchestrated it.

Jack Wolfson:
No, he stopped the statin drug. On statin, it was one number. On Oreos, I think it was a 70% reduction on both. I didn't read the actual what he published or what he talked about. I've only heard about this secondhand. When people have told me about oatmeal, for example, over the years, and how oatmeal reduces cholesterol and LDL, I would say, well, so does eating the box. Eat the box and you can bind up all the lipids in your gut, prevent enterohepatic circulation, and your lipids will drop. Of course, you will be very sickly and stuff like that, the same reason when you eat oatmeal. That argument doesn't do well. What I tell people regarding carnivore and the lean mass hyper responder is that I don't think it's a good long-term strategy, and you should reintroduce fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and avocados and coconuts and olives. One more thing, too. You mentioned earlier in our discussion about low fat. What about the Mediterranean diet? That's the most studied diet in the world, in the history of the world. The people on the Mediterranean diet, they're sucking down olive oil like a kid would suck down a milkshake. How could it be a fat problem if everybody's sucking down olive oil, which by definition is pure fat?

Melanie Avalon:
So, okay, here's the thing about the Mediterranean diet, speaking of studies. So, after interviewing Marion Nestle, who wrote a book called Food Politics, and Nina Teichels for the Big Fat Surprise, it seems like all the studies on the Mediterranean diet, hey, there's not really an agreement about what it is. It's heavily funded by like the olive oil industry, as well as the olive oil studies. After walking away from that, I was like, I don't even know. Like, you just can't win.

Jack Wolfson:
I tell this to people, I'm not telling people to suck down olive oil. I'm telling people to eat olives. I'm not telling people to suck down coconut oil, but to eat coconut and avocado instead of avocado oil. So I think probably all the processed oils are best to be avoided in general. And you're right. I mean, again, just like the statin date. I mean, so if, you know, Nestle and then these others are Nestle and, you know, and others, you know, tichels, I mean, if they're saying that the data is fudged, well, then it all is. And again, you're just ultimately have to rely on common sense. Our ancestors ate olives and they ate avocados and they ate coconuts and they were hunter gatherers and they ate plenty of seafood and they were, you know, foraging for nuts and seeds and they were also foraging for insects, you know. So yeah, I mean, you know, it's egg yolk. I mean, I was talking to somebody when I was mountain biking at a resort with my boys a couple of days ago and there was another family that was there and this guy sucked down an entire cheese pizza. And then he was like, oh, but I never eat, you know, the egg yolks, I just eat the egg whites. I'm like, why would you possibly do that? You know, the yolk is where all the nutrition is. Drop egg yolks or egg whites in front of your dog and see which one they eat. They won't even go near the whites. They only want the yolks. So it does. It just comes down, I think, to common sense type stuff. And I'm not pushing the Mediterranean diet. I'm just saying that high fat is beneficial and these fats are beneficial. Low fat is a total failure, you know, ultimately. And there are some small studies, and I quote this in the book as well, that look at paleo versus Mediterranean regarding inflammatory markers. You're not going to have enough people to come out with like real hard endpoints about heart attack, stroke and dying. But as it relates to changes in some of these soft markers of inflammation, ox stress, lipids, paleo trumps Mediterranean. So I think the problem with Mediterranean would not be the seafood and the animal products or even the plant based foods outside of the grain. It would be that, okay, these people are consuming grain while our ancestors didn't consume grain. Therefore, neither should we.

Melanie Avalon:
just to like elaborate a little bit more. Like I think in the Epic study where they were looking at olive oil, they concluded that olive oil reduced mortality, but they actually didn't even measure the olive oil that the patients were eating. They just assumed based on, which is like mind blowing. Like they were like, oh, they ate this meal and cooked it this way, so it probably had this amount of olive oil in it, which, yeah, and then just in general, I think when they came up with the diet score for the Mediterranean, it was also based on just assumptions. So when I see, because I see all these Mediterranean versus paleo studies and I'm like, well, I don't even, do we even know what the Mediterranean diet is or what the paleo diet is? I don't know, maybe the summary from today is that there's these, like you're saying common sense, like you can have a common sense approach to, what to eat and we can look at the studies and learn from them, but we need common sense in the end, I think with all of this.

Jack Wolfson:
You know, I mean, I like studies when they fit my viewpoint, obviously a lot of people do. So when I find the studies that fit my viewpoint, I will promote them. So when I find all the data that says that people who eat the most amount of seafood live the longest, live the best. People with the highest levels of omega-3 fatty acids as measured in their blood, live the longest, live the best. So yeah, I mean, and again, that just makes sense. Our ancestors ate seafood. Tom Hanks in the movie, he ate seafood. I watched Alone and Naked and Afraid, and they drop these people off in these locations and they eat seafood and they hunt animals. So I mean, if Michael Greiger, you know, comes out and he's like, we should be a thousand percent plant-based, what human ever did that? And I understand what you said. I mean, as far as, well, maybe in this modern world, if we can do that, that will lead to optimal results. Okay. I don't know. I don't know why, you know, McDougall died. I've seen Greiger in person. And again, I don't think he looks that good. My buddy Joel Kahn, he's been vegan for 45 years. When I'm with Joel, I don't know if he looks like the healthiest specimen. I love Joel. And if he ever listens to this, I hope he doesn't take offense. But if he does, that's his problem. He is a friend of mine. And he said the same thing about me. He's like, oh, well, Wolfson lost, you know, a lot of his hair and Wolfson's skin. And Wolfson, for the first 35 years of his life, you know, was eating McDonald's cookies and cupcakes. Chicago deep dish pizza, you know, Italian beef sandwiches, hot dogs, you know, living in a radiation-based cath lab, you know, wasn't breastfed, was fully, you know, jabbed and loaded up with chemicals as a kid, like, you know, my first 35 were not good. So to your point, I mean, we all have a lot of catching up to do, but I think, you know, making those changes, I think changes can happen pretty fast.

Melanie Avalon:
I have so really thoroughly enjoyed this. I just love bringing on people of all different perspectives because I'm like, like it's in the beginning, I'm so haunted by all of this and I just, you know, want to try to find the truth and I really appreciate your opinion and it's been really incredible. Was there anything else you wanted to touch on?

Jack Wolfson:
No, I mean, I would say, I mean, listen, obviously, I think two things that are very important. We should question everything. And we should have the freedom to question everything. So those are very important things. So if you and I have a conversation questioning statin drugs, we should have the freedom to do so. We should never be restricted by Pfizer and or others that would say, you can't talk about that on social media. Kind of trust the science. Exactly. So and we can go we can go down any rabbit hole very quickly with that. And I think everyone knows what we're talking about as relates to that. But you know, it's just, you know, arm yourself with the information. You did all the research about your car and about your house and about where you're going to invest your money or what kind of you did all that research about those particular things. Did you research, you know, how much in depth did you do about, you know, should you take a pharmaceutical or not? But I'll wrap it up again. It's just these are common sensical approaches. And to put the final dagger again and things like aspirin, blood pressure drugs, statin drugs and similar, these are poison. They are not meant for human consumption. And once you kind of realize that, and once you realize that we are our bodies are absolute miracles of God, of creation, of evolution, whatever it is, you just give it what it needs, take away what it doesn't. That's the strategy.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Wolfson. This has been amazing. And for listeners, I bet they are highly eager to get a copy of your book, and you are so kind. So I will, I'm going to make a redirect link for this so people can find it easier. So if you go, and I'll also put it in the show notes, but if you go to melanieavilon.com/paleocardiologistbook, that will get you a free copy of his book, The Paleo Cardiologist. All you'll be paying is shipping. Thank you so much for that. You can get the book that dives deep into all of this. And we'll put that in the show notes. How can people best follow your work and get your supplements, all the things.

Jack Wolfson:
Yeah, I mean, so you know, my company is called Natural Heart Doctor. If you just heard me for the last hour and a half, you can imagine that's my URL, naturalheartdoctor.com. And we're on social media on all those places as well. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter are now X, you know, so you're trying to get the message out there. We got you know, we got a lot of people against a lot of people are listening to Peter, a lot of people are listening to what their conventional doctor, which is a much bigger threat than Peter atia, probably. Yeah, I mean, so there's there's a lot to go after, you know, as far as number one killer worldwide, we're not, I mean, if statin drug is statin drugs, I mean, they are Lipitor is the number one selling drug of all time, the number one selling drug of all time, yet heart disease is the number one killer. Where are people missing it here? We're not dosing high enough? Like, what are we talking about? It's a failure. And if you understand that, that there's a better way. You will live well think well, tests don't guess evidence based supplements, biohacking strategies, we call that the 100 your heart method. That's how we roll

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome awesome. Well the last question that I ask every single guest on this show and it's just because I realize more and more each day How important mindset is so what is something that you're grateful for?

Jack Wolfson:
Oh, what am I grateful for? I'm grateful that I met my wife. That's that's real easy. That's real easy. I'm grateful that I met my wife that she pulled me out of the medical matrix. You know, she saved my life, I undoubtedly would be down the path of my father, whether I developed a Parkinson's like illness or early heart attack or cancer, I was definitely gonna go down that route. You know, I mean, for me, people ask me, they're like, you know, do you feel better now that you eat and live this way and think this way? I don't I felt great when I was 30. And I feel great now that I'm 53. For me, it's all about I don't want to die like my father did. You know, that was my motivation. And I think if more people can get interested in this primary prevention, like don't wait for the heart attack, don't wait for the stroke, don't wait for the cancer. Let me let me tell you one more thing too. And you'll totally geek out on this. I got a phone call like a month ago from another doctor, a friend of mine. He said, you know, do you have any natural remedies for basal cell cancer? Like I have this thing and they want to remove it surgically. And I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of different natural remedies that somebody could do, you know, for that. But you are an unhealthy person, if you have a basal cell. So yeah, you can cut that out. But your entire body is damaged because you've developed the basal cell, your body is allowed that cancer to grow and flourish. So you better correct it, you better figure out, you know, the you know, the cause, you know, causes, you know, real quickly and reverse that. So that's how we do it. Sorry about the ghost in the background here.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, I love it. Those are goats. Yeah!

Jack Wolfson:
I don't know what they're talking about. I'm talking to my son right now. What's a group of goats called? I don't know, it's half their goats. Hoarded goats. What are they yelling about? Hilarious. No, they're free range. They're running around outside of our property right now.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you eat them?

Jack Wolfson:
No, but we don't, and I do believe that we should hunt or at least have that experience of that to feel that and know what it's like because that's very important to know where our food comes from and to respect it and cherish it. The goats though, we milk the goats.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh wow, and you drink goat milk.

Jack Wolfson:
And we drink the goat mesh. So milk is not paleo. Ancestors did not milk other animals. It is all through the domestication process. But I do think if you do like raw dairy, I think you can consume it for most people very safely and effectively. I don't have a problem with that. Oh, wow. Do you, hon? I don't. A year ago, my two boys and I, now 17 and 12, we went on a buffalo harvest. So we were there with 20 people. The buffalo was shot from a distance. We were there with the members of the Lakota tribe. So we really honored and cherished and sang and blessed and prayed over the fallen animal. From what I can tell, the animal led a wonderful life until it was sacrificed, which is why we eat bison. We eat, again, healthy free range, field harvested, un-jabbed bison is that very healthy food. But respecting it. And again, I respect animals. So I only eat those kind of animals. There's no scenario where I don't eat 100% grass-fed, grass-finished animal, preferably bison. That's all that we do. So.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, awesome. Yeah, I'm a big fan of bison. I've done, I've had, I've had episodes on, on bison in particular. So wow. Well, this has been so amazing. Thank you so much, Dr. Wilson. I, I really, really appreciate everything you're doing. And this conversation was really, I needed this conversation. Thank you so much. And I look forward to everything that you're doing and hopefully we can talk again in the future.

Jack Wolfson:
I mean, listen, hopefully, you know, stay strong, you know, again, with the statin data, and these other doctors that, you know, would preach that I just yeah, hopefully, in this whole conversation, I was able to convince you, and convince a lot of other people that nature is always the best way, as of right now, modern medicine, for 99 .9% of diseases, they're not going to beat, you know, our evolutionary God given ability to do what we do. So thank you so much for your interview and your time.

Melanie Avalon:
No, you too. This has been so, so amazing. And enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much. Bye.