41: Revealing Cardiovascular Health Myths with Dr. Jack Wolfson!

[00:00:00] Jack Wolfson: Here's how it goes worldwide, right? Number one is banking. Number two is the military cartel. Number three is the pharma cartel. That's just the way that it is.

[00:00:09] Michael Kummer: So if you were to pick out the top three, I guess, risk factors as far as lifestyle is concerned, what would those be?

[00:00:15] Jack Wolfson: Uh, cardiovascular disease number one, is not genetic.

[00:00:18] It's not from bad luck. It's not because you're getting older. Pharmaceutical companies want us sick. They want us worried. They want us, you know, glued to the television set where we can't sleep at night. And now it's 2 o'clock in the morning and every other commercial is about sleeping pharmaceuticals.

[00:00:32] It's a problem. Right. And then also, let's not, you know, maybe hit too much on the foods not to eat. Let's just focus on what to eat.

[00:00:40] Michael Kummer: Why do you think we need to eat organs? Isn't there, you know, everything we need nutritionally in muscle meat?

[00:00:45] Jack Wolfson: I've never seen a person have any

[00:00:48] Michael Kummer: issues from eating too

[00:00:49] Jack Wolfson: many organs.

[00:00:49] I've

[00:00:50] Michael Kummer: never seen.

[00:00:50] Jack Wolfson: You're

[00:00:51] Michael Kummer: listening to the Primal Shift Podcast. I'm your host Michael Kummer and my goal is to help you achieve optimal health by bridging the gap between [00:01:00] ancestral living and the demands of modern society. Get ready to unlock the transformative power of nature as the ultimate biohack, revolutionizing your health and reconnecting you with your primal self.

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[00:01:32] As a listener, you'll get 15 percent off your first OneSkin purchase with code MKUMMER. at Oneskin. co. That's O N E S K I N. co. And now let's get back to the episode. All right, Dr. Cech, thanks so much for, for joining me on the show today. I understand you're a cardiologist and one that sees things maybe a little bit different to, you know, mainstream advice out there as far as cardiovascular health, etc.

[00:01:58] is concerned. So I'm [00:02:00] super excited to have you on the show and I'd like to talk to you about a couple of different topics that I think concern a lot of people out there, you know, cardiovascular health is obviously important. There are a lot of people dying, unfortunately, of, of cardiovascular issues and health issues.

[00:02:16] And, you know, if you go to the doctor like I did, I mean, I, fortunately, I never had any, you know, any issues with, with my heart, but. You know, during my regular physical exams, I would go there and I do, you know, would do my blood work and then they come back, Hey, you know, your total cholesterol is a little high, you know, you might want to consider statins.

[00:02:31] You know, that's one of the things, unfortunately, a lot of people here and they can get confused and scared and don't really fully understand what cardiovascular risk factors there are. and how they are potentially different to what, you know, the primary care physician, you know, might tell them or even most cardiologists, I would argue.

[00:02:50] So I'd like to talk to you about many of those things and, you know, just maybe start it off with, you know, a couple of simple questions where I'd like to get your, you know, whatever pops into [00:03:00] your head first kind of answer. That makes sense. Sounds good. All right. Maybe let's start off with a very simple one.

[00:03:04] Is cardiovascular disease a lifestyle issue?

[00:03:07] Jack Wolfson: A hundred percent. And, uh, cardiovascular disease, number one is not genetic. It's not from bad luck. It's not because you're getting older. It's all from man made toxic lifestyle and the environmental toxins and poisons, or as I would say, violations of eat well, live well, think well.

[00:03:23] It's all preventable and we can always help people dramatically, tremendously and quickly when you follow those, you know, the eat well, live well, think well.

[00:03:34] Michael Kummer: Right. So in other words, if you already have risk factors, if you already have some sort of condition. There is a good chance that by changing your lifestyle, by making different choices, you can mitigate a lot, if not all of them.

[00:03:48] Jack Wolfson: No, tremendously, you know, so again, changing up your nutrition, changing up the way you live, getting more sleep, more sunshine, more physical activity, taking care of your teeth, seeing a, by seeing a biological holistic dentist, [00:04:00] getting out of the environmental toxins. It's as simple as changing out all the different poisons that are in your home and escaping them, testing your house for mold and water damage and bacterial damage.

[00:04:09] These are important. And then of course, healthy thought processes, finding your happy place, uh, not only through things like yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, spirituality, but again, just better relationships, better community, purpose, gratitude, sense of passion, safety, security. These are all critically important, but yeah, you know, to your point, I never recommend statin drugs.

[00:04:31] I have not written a prescription for statin drugs in many years, neither any of the other pharmaceuticals. Cardiovascular disease is not from a deficiency of pharmaceuticals. Cardiovascular disease is from violations of eat well, live well, think

[00:04:44] Michael Kummer: well. Right. So if you were to pick out the top three, I guess, risk factors as far as lifestyle is concerned, what would those be?

[00:04:52] Jack Wolfson: Well, that's, that's a great question. Number one, it would be lack of quality sleep. That's number one. Number two, lack [00:05:00] of being out outdoors and sunshine exposure. And then number three would be living in an unhealthy home, a toxic home. And a toxic home starts with water damage leading to mold and or bacterial toxicity, right?

[00:05:18] Michael Kummer: So nutrition would not be in your top three. No. No. Interesting. Uh, why is that?

[00:05:24] Jack Wolfson: Uh, well, I mean, it's not that nutrition is not important. I think nutrition is important, but I think that, again, there's a lot of debate in the, in the food story area. And, uh, when I was a cardiology fellow back in 2000, I was at the American College of Cardiology meetings, the biggest cardiology meeting in the world, and I saw two titans in the industry argue against each other.

[00:05:44] One was the late Bob Adkins, a high fat, low carb fam. and the other was Dean Ornish, uh, the, one of the originators of the low fat hypothesis, uh, starting after Ancel Keys and stuff like that, but he took up the, the mantle after that. And these guys hated [00:06:00] each other, but I walked out of that meeting and I said, wow, high fat, low carb, totally makes sense.

[00:06:05] But I guess I would say is that no matter what diet people follow, make sure it is clean, make sure it's organic, get the chemicals out of the food. If you eat meat, awesome, love, love eating meat, but I, 90 percent of the meat I consume is from Free range, grass fed, healthy bison and the bison organs. And then the other component to that is eating wild seafood.

[00:06:26] So I would agree that the most healthy foods on the planet are free range, grass fed meats, specifically the bison and wild seafood. We are always organic. I never cheat, ever. You know, I told you before we started talking, we're coming to an event in Atlanta. I find the natural grocery stores in Atlanta.

[00:06:44] We bring our food to Atlanta. We find restaurants that we can go to in Atlanta. And if I don't do that, Michael, what happens is, is that I wind up being unhealthy. But even more scary is the fact that my wife gets very angry if she does not have [00:07:00] access to organic, paleolithic, hunter gatherer foods. So I am in charge of sourcing all that stuff.

[00:07:07] And that's who we choose to support, and that's, that's the way that we do it. The other thing is, I mean, I'm always a thousand percent gluten free. I don't compromise on that either.

[00:07:16] Michael Kummer: Okay. You know, if, if someone, you know, is unsure if they're at risk for cardiovascular disease, I mean, you know, you mentioned some of the things, you know, if, if I know that I never spend any time outdoors, I always put on sunscreen first thing in the morning.

[00:07:29] You know, I, I live potentially in a home that had water damage. You know, those are all obviously, you know, risk factors, as you've mentioned. But They are maybe for some people hard to quantify because, you know, it's much easier to look at a blood work, you know, or something like that and say, okay, here, here are certain risk factors.

[00:07:44] What would you say an average Joe, maybe in combination with, you know, a blood panel or a, a regular doctor can do to assess their risk factors. What are good risk factors to look at or biometrics to look at and which ones are ones that are. Not really indicative of, of [00:08:00] cardiovascular risk.

[00:08:01] Jack Wolfson: Well, the number one risk factor that I would look at are, is oxidative stress.

[00:08:06] I would look at things, whatever measurement you want to use. You can use urinary lipid peroxides and you can order those tests that are home, home urine kits that can do that. You can also ask your doctor for an oxidized LDL, which is a measurement of the damaged LDL particle. You can also look for things like MPO, myeloperoxidase, That's a great one.

[00:08:25] That's a pretty cheap marker that is obtained at any, any lab where you can do the MPO. The markers of inflammation as well as including HSCRP, it's the most studied cardiovascular risk factor marker outside of lipids. So, all right. You asked me that question, which one I would go for first, and it's the marker of inflammation and oxidative stress.

[00:08:45] The medical doctors know that inflammation and oxidative stress is bad. It's dangerous. They just don't know what to do with it, except for pharmaceuticals. Right. What we know how to do, of course, is to go backwards and say, why does someone have inflammation and oxidative stress? And it's from violations of eat well, live well, think [00:09:00] well.

[00:09:00] Lipids are a reflection. of the amount of inflammation and oxidative stress we are currently incurring. They are not a problem as far as they're not causative on their own. Something is causing the abnormal lipid profile. That's why the treatment of the lipid profile will never be the answer. The only answer is to find out why you have inflammation and oxidative stress.

[00:09:24] Michael Kummer: Right. Makes sense. All right. So I think CRP is probably on most regular blood panels. The other ones you probably have to ask for, I would assume.

[00:09:33] Jack Wolfson: Well, myeloperoxidase, uh, you can definitely find that. That's pretty easy. HSCRP, high sensitivity CRP. You can also ask for something called PLA2. Yeah, it's, it's all, listen, if you're listening to us right now, I think you're interested in spending the money to find out where you're at.

[00:09:48] Because if you're inflamed and you're oxidizing and under oxidized, oxidized stress, you better figure out why, because you're in trial, may not be from heart disease, could be from brain disease, could be from cancer. So these are great ways, because listen, [00:10:00] our hypothesis here, our method here is, is tests don't guess.

[00:10:03] So whatever plan you're currently on, if you want to test how well you're doing on the plan, Get those advanced lab markers. The more you get, the more detailed you get information about yourself. You know, so these are critically important as it relates to preventing heart disease or looking at heart disease, risk LP, little a is a factor.

[00:10:20] Homocysteine is a factor. Omega 3 levels, you know, in the omega 3 index is a factor. Intracellular vitamin K2 is a factor. So many things that we could talk about that go into it. And then. These are all the, you know, again, excess and deficiencies of nutrients, but you can also test, are you being, you know, contaminated by mold?

[00:10:38] Are you toxic in metals? What about all the environmental toxins? Glyphosate, BPA, phthalates, PVCs, VOCs. You can test for all those at home, in the comfort of your own home. It's a very exciting opportunity.

[00:10:50] Michael Kummer: Right. In terms of the inflammatory factors, I know that CRP just tells you if, whether or not there is inflammation, but it doesn't really pinpoint.

[00:10:59] What the root cause [00:11:00] might be, right? Are some of the other biomarkers you mentioned, do they indicate where the problem might be or are they also more systemic and say, well, there is something wrong, but I can't really tell you exactly what it is.

[00:11:10] Jack Wolfson: You're correct in the latter. There is, all those can tell you if you're inflamed, if you're under oxidative stress, that's all they can tell you.

[00:11:18] They can't pinpoint the why, but as we said, and I want to make sure it's clear, it's the food we eat, the lifestyle that we lead, the thoughts that we lead, because again, if you're, if you're in the mindset of chronic stress, fear, worry, anxiety, you know, chronic stress, And your body thinks it's getting chased by a tiger.

[00:11:38] That's how it is. So when you're getting chased by a tiger, you're not talking about how do we quiet down inflammation? How do we deal with cellular cleansing, cellular healing, mitochondrial function, organ healing of the liver, for example, the heart, the brain, the whole process. So it's really just in survival mode.

[00:11:54] So when you're in survival mode, you better figure out a way to get out of it. Because again, that will limit your [00:12:00] ability to deal with this inflammation oxidative stress through processes of detoxification. When you're running from a tiger, your body's not worried about how I detox all these poisons coming in.

[00:12:10] It's just in survival mode. Which is probably, you know, what pharmaceutical companies want. Pharmaceutical companies want us sick. They want us worried. They want us, you know, glued to the television set where we can't sleep at night and now it's two o'clock in the morning and every other commercial is about sleeping pharmaceuticals.

[00:12:26] It's a problem.

[00:12:26] Michael Kummer: Right. Yeah. I mean that, that's a very, I think, important statement that's worth emphasizing and maybe reiterating that Our health care system is not really health care, it's a sick care system that only works if people are sick, right? If everyone was perfectly healthy, you know, we wouldn't need pharmaceuticals, we wouldn't need most of the doctors, you know?

[00:12:48] And so we have to be in a, in a perpetual state of sickness to keep up the prop up the system, right?

[00:12:55] Jack Wolfson: Here's how it goes worldwide, right? Number one is banking. [00:13:00] Number two is the military cartel. Number three is the pharma cartel. That's just the way that it is. And when you understand that, you'll understand why the medical sick system is the way that it is.

[00:13:11] Michael Kummer: Right. That makes sense, unfortunately. So let's talk about, well, one more question to those biomarkers. So if, if your CRP is. Very, very low, let's say below one, 0. 2, which was mine in my last blood work. Is it possible that CRP is low, but some of the other markers are elevated, meaning could there still be inflammation despite one of them being low?

[00:13:35] Jack Wolfson: The answer is yes. The more markers that you check for, the more assured that you can be that, you know, that you are not inflamed, you know, for example, but I would just say overall, yeah, if you have the CRP and your levels are low, it means that in the near term, you're in pretty good shape. Who knows about the long term?

[00:13:53] It's not the only factor, but again, it's a pretty good predictive factor. If it's elevated, you better figure out [00:14:00] why. And then if it's normal, then yeah, you could, you're not gonna rest on your laurels. You're gonna keep working hard to do what you do, but ultimately you can check other risk factors just to make sure.

[00:14:09] Okay, listen, I'll look at PLEs, because believe me, I've seen a lot of people with elevated inflammation oxidative stress numbers. I don't think, that one number, one of those markers is good enough, but one is better than none.

[00:14:21] Michael Kummer: Right. Speaking of maybe real quick about normal ranges, because I've, especially in the realm of, you know, hormones, I've noticed that testosterone being a good example and normal ranges somewhere between 250 and 1, 100 wide range.

[00:14:34] You know, there's certainly a difference between having 250 versus 1, 100 and some of the other. You know, especially then, you know, with micronutrients, how much we should really be consuming of each of those micronutrients. I sometimes feel, we don't really know for sure. And so with those inflammatory markers, you know, there's gotta be a difference, I would suspect between 0.2 and 2.9, you know, and I think three lower than three milligrams per liter is like the, the standard, you [00:15:00] know, range where you are.

[00:15:00] Okay. Should there be concern if you, if your CRP comes back with, with 2.9. Is there something that you want to be doing or are you really okay?

[00:15:09] Jack Wolfson: Oh, no. I mean, I think that, you know, really, as far as there's different scales that people use for, for high sensitivity CRP, the lower is, you know, the better. So, you know, 2.

[00:15:17] 9 is better than three, you know, four is worse than three. So it's, it definitely is that kind of, you know, logarithmic, you know, type of approach, but I would say, you know, back to, you know, these other hormones like testosterone, the ranges, I mean, we don't really know what the optimal, you know, level of any of these things, you know, really is as far as it relates to hormones and others.

[00:15:34] I've checked. Thousands of people's lab test results and the vast majority of people on their testosterone are between that 350 and 600 range. I don't see too many people, including young, healthy males that are, you know, necessarily in the seven, eight, 900 range. I'm not sure where those ranges come from.

[00:15:52] And usually those high levels, about a thousand. Those are the people that are on hormone replacements.

[00:15:56] Michael Kummer: All right, then maybe let's shift gears real quick to some of [00:16:00] the blood lipids, you know, because usually when you go to the doctor, you know, they look at total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides, and CRP is probably, you know, lumped into this, and maybe then some of the ratios between those various markers.

[00:16:14] If I go to my doctor and it turns out that I have elevated total cholesterol. Or elevated LDL. Should I be concerned or does, I mean, you kind of already alluded to that this by itself might not be a good indicator, but can you elaborate more on or put more context around what those blood markers might mean, what means high cholesterol, what means low cholesterol, LDL, etc.

[00:16:36] And, and, you know, What do I need to know?

[00:16:39] Jack Wolfson: Well, first of all, I would say cholesterol is a wonderful, God given, glorious molecule that all animals on planet Earth contain. So, cholesterol is incredibly important. We cannot live without it. So, let's celebrate cholesterol. Number two, how is cholesterol transported around the body, right?

[00:16:56] It's made in the liver and is transported around the body. through [00:17:00] HDL and LDL particles. And those have a purpose. LDL has been vilified as the bad cholesterol. First of all, it's not even cholesterol. It's an LDL particle that contains cholesterol, but it's not, it's not cholesterol. It is the bus that transports passengers around the body.

[00:17:15] Cholesterol, fat, soluble vitamins, CoQ10. It is a tremendous part of our inflammatory antioxidant system, part of our immune system. miraculous molecule. Uh, when it is, uh, damaged, when it becomes small, dense LDL that is oxidized, it becomes problematic. And the issue is, is that the liver is no longer working to clear those particles out of circulation.

[00:17:37] Far less than 1 percent of people have a genetic abnormality that does not allow them to clear adequately. The other 99 percent are perfectly fine to clear out those particles. And we can help the body enable to do that, so that, yeah, we do that through liver, you know, cleanses, detoxification. When your body's toxic and all these other poisons, it can't get rid of the old LDL particles.

[00:17:57] So, ultimately, again, it's, uh, this, you [00:18:00] mentioned ratios. To me, the most important ratio in that area is called ApoB ApoA ratio. So, That ApoB is the stitching on the LDL baseball to switch from bus to baseballs. The ApoA is the stitching on the HDL baseballs. So we can measure all those things, that's the most important marker.

[00:18:19] But ultimately it just tells you what your risk is, it doesn't tell you why it's happening. And then just circle back on the method, right? Eat well, live well, think well. That's how you fix all those lipid abnormalities. Uh, total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, those are 1970s markers. We can definitely do so much better.

[00:18:36] Michael Kummer: Okay, uh, then maybe, you know, I, I'd like to share some of my latest blood work, especially my blood lipids and get your take on it, whether or not, you know, I'm, I'm about to drop dead of cardiovascular disease. You got it, fire away. Um, so total cholesterol 234. LDL 167, HDL 56, Triglyceride 67, and CRP as I [00:19:00] said, 0.

[00:19:00] 2.

[00:19:01] Jack Wolfson: Yeah, so on the surface those sound fantastic. I'd like more information, I'd like the ApoB, ApoA ratio, but I assume it's going to be likely on the good side. I'd like to know more about the small dense LDL particles, the oxidation of those particles to give more detail, but your ratios look good. Your triglycerides are well under 100 and that's fantastic as well.

[00:19:22] You know, it's, you know, I'd like to say everybody's got their perfect cave person, cholesterol, their cave man, cave woman cholesterol. And if when you eat the and live the right way, then again, your lipids will be fantastic. We mentioned before about sunshine. Well, what happens is is that cholesterol is coursing with LDL particles inside of LDL particles through your skin.

[00:19:42] The sun hits the cholesterol and turns it into vitamin D. So when high, when you have elevated cholesterol, You typically have low vitamin D. The answer is to get sunshine and now you change that ratio. What happens is vitamin D goes up until the cholesterol goes down. So I often like to say that abnormal lipid [00:20:00] levels or cholesterol levels are a vitamin D or a sunshine deficiency syndrome.

[00:20:05] And ultimately, that has nothing to do with food, you know, so it's like we all, you know, rush to debate the food side of the story, but we need to make sure that, you know, again, when we sleep, our liver functions and we clear out old LDL particles. When we get rid of the environmental toxins and pollutants that gum up the liver, we, you know, we improve our, our, the processing of these small, dense, oxidized LDL particles.

[00:20:28] Take, for example, mold mycotoxins. They are known to be toxic. In the medical literature, to inhibit with the LDL receptor, to inhibit the formation of the LDL receptor, to gum up the interface between LDL particles and the LDL receptor in the liver. This is just one mechanism of how abnormal lipids, you know, are caused by environmental toxins.

[00:20:50] And it just goes on and on.

[00:20:52] Michael Kummer: Right, maybe, well, two notes. One of them actually did a particle test as well, and that came back good. So, that was actually one of the first [00:21:00] things that my, when my doctor said, many, many years ago, because I've been eating relatively high fat, high protein, low carb for a long time, and when he brought up, well, you know, maybe we should consider statins, I'm like, okay, hold on.

[00:21:11] You know, I want to figure out what type of LDL we're dealing with, and that actually came back good. I'm positive. And then I would never went back to the doctor, but regarding the, the liver, you know, I think that's also one thing that a lot of people kind of misunderstand in terms of how all of those various factors that you've just described, mold, you know, toxins from skincare products, from the water we drink, you know, if you drink unfiltered tap water, et cetera, you know, the liver has to clean all of that stuff out and the liver has only so much capacity.

[00:21:41] And if you over. If you, if you put too much through your liver, so it can't process all that stuff anymore, problems arise. Is that a fair statement?

[00:21:51] Jack Wolfson: Yeah. And I mean, again, let's just go back to the baseball mitt analogy, right? So we've got the baseball mitts and that's, you know, that's in the left hand because I throw, you know, righty.

[00:21:59] So, [00:22:00] okay. So here, the baseball is my right hand and the catcher's mitt is the left hand. So what could go wrong with this LDL baseball and the catcher's mitt, the LDL receptor? So many different things. First of all, something can gum up, you know, or, you know, just come in between us. So we never connect. The other thing would be is that there's a problem with making of the catcher's mitts.

[00:22:22] So we have less catcher's mitts. Pharmaceutical companies try and address this all the time, you know, again, the breakdown of the catcher's mitts. So we make the mitt, but again, it's, it's, it's, maybe it's not made well or it's dysfunctional. So there could be problems again with the, uh, with the baseball in and of itself on that lipid particle.

[00:22:39] So, so many things come into that area and, you know, the more we fix those things, the better off our health is, is going to be. But, you know, clearly it is not a pharmaceutical deficiency that, you know, that leads to cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular issues.

[00:22:52] Michael Kummer: Yeah, totally agree. So for an, an, an average person, you know, they might not have been exposed to a lot of, you know, the concepts that [00:23:00] we talked about, they might not know anything about, you know, how to properly eat, how to, you know, many of the things that you discussed, what is a good starting point?

[00:23:08] What is kind of the lowest hanging fruit? Because I, I always see that when, when, you know, when people ask me, what do you do, you know, and I tell them everything that I do, they get overwhelmed, do nothing because it's so much information, so much. You know, that they figure out they could be doing better and don't, where should, where should someone start?

[00:23:25] What is, you know, and, and, and, and how quickly do you think someone needs to progress through, you know, making those lifestyle choices or improving their lifestyle choices to make a significant dent in the cardiovascular risk or health overall, I should say.

[00:23:40] Jack Wolfson: Well, I certainly, I mean, the faster we, we incorporate all these things that we're talking about, the better.

[00:23:45] And I understand more than anyone, you know, that it is extremely difficult to incorporate all these things into our lifestyle. The medical model is real easy, right? Uh, Hey Michael, good to see you. Blood pressure's high. Take this pill. Cholesterol's high. Take this, you know, pharmaceutical, take an [00:24:00] aspirin.

[00:24:00] I mean, their job is extremely, extremely easy. In the natural side, things are much more difficult. So kind of like, you know, where does someone start? I would just say, you know, just start by eating clean food. Let's, you know, again, if you're like, Oh, you know what? I want to go eat ice creams tonight. Just go get Strauss's free range, grass fed, grass finished ice cream, or make your own ice cream.

[00:24:17] I just make it organic. You know, whatever, whatever your vice is, Mike. And I love drinking coffee. I drink organic coffee. It's very heart healthy. You know, just again, just clean up your diet, clean up your home. How, how difficult is it to take your, your bottle of Tide laundry detergent and throw it in the garbage and get something that's natural.

[00:24:37] It's real, real simple. Your toothpaste, your hair products, your skincare products. And then also, let's not, you know, maybe hit too much on the foods not to eat. Let's just focus on what to eat. Let's just make sure that we're eating more of these foods. Eat more free range grass fed meats and including the organs.

[00:24:54] Eat more seafood, uh, as a, as a great start. Eat more eggs and avocados and, and [00:25:00] coconuts. If you like dairy, make it raw dairy. So many different, again, see, you know, I don't have any, any sugar in my diet outside of fruit and, uh, and raw honey. And I think that that's a great way to go. You know, real quick, I do want to address, you know, some of your listeners may be kind of part of this group called lean mass hyper responders.

[00:25:18] Those are the people who go very low carb and they wind up with a total cholesterols in the five, 600 range LDLs, you know, up in the three, 400 range. We're definitely seeing that very commonly, but again, it comes down to not being fearful about that. Certainly not taking a statin about that. If you want to continue with your diet and those are your numbers, I think, again, continue to, uh, you know, to watch, continue to join Facebook groups that are, or other online sources that address this particular issue, but ultimately, if you're, if you're producing a lot of these things, there's a reason why you're doing it, but just make sure that there's not, that they're not oxidized.

[00:25:55] And that's going to be, that's going to be the key in that area.

[00:25:58] Michael Kummer: Yeah, I actually met someone in [00:26:00] Costa Rica, funny enough, not too long ago. And, and he, I went into a store in Costa Rica called Grass Fed Costa Rica. They are like the white oak pastures of Costa Rica. You might be familiar. And we were in there and got one of, you know, a couple of the burger patties for lunch.

[00:26:15] And, and he saw me. And then later that night, a video on YouTube was recommended to him by the algorithm. You know, featuring me and he's like, I saw this guy today in the store. And so we connected and he also told me that his last total cholesterol was like in the 400 something and he's been doing carnivore for the past six months or so.

[00:26:33] And so he like, you know, should that be a concern? I'm like, you know, I don't think so, but as you just said, you know, depending on what type of LDL, what type of cholesterol is it, is anything oxidized? Is there inflammation? If not, you're probably fine, but I'm glad you. You brought that up because I know some people who have them.

[00:26:49] Jack Wolfson: Yeah, and a lot of times what's getting, what is recommended to those people are coronary CT scans or, you know, calcium scans, which I'm totally against. I'm anti radiation. So there's no, you know, [00:27:00] that's not going to change what we do. I think we can learn all, everything we need to learn from the blood work.

[00:27:04] And if my lipids are markedly abnormal, which mine are not when I go on. Uh, more of that stricter side, although I don't really follow that strict, dramatic extreme, I'm a paleo guy, I'm a hunter gatherer guy, we hunted and we gathered. We have a dog, and our dog will be outside, you know, in the Colorado wilderness, and I'll see the dog eating berries and grass and other, you know, whatever the dog will come across, in addition, of course, to, you know, eating whatever seafood we provide.

[00:27:29] but ultimately don't get a CT scan. Not a good test at all. Radiation causes disease. Shouldn't change your management. Just focus on the, on the lipids because you know, again, if your lipid shoot down the, on the blood testing and urine testing, if your numbers are out of whack, let's figure out why. If your lipids are, Quote unquote very high per the medical norms, but your inflammation is low.

[00:27:51] I wouldn't worry about it,

[00:27:52] Michael Kummer: right? Yeah Good that that's that's good information. All right. Well, I think we [00:28:00] covered what I wanted to get out of the discussion I think it was a lot of good information in particular what I liked is, you know, the additional inflammatory factors to check for that's something I'm gonna make sure to have as part of my blood work, which I do every three months typically to see, you know What my trends are Maybe one, something that might not really relate to heart disease, but since I have you on, maybe you can talk about creatinine levels, which are very often also part of, you know, the standard blood work, and very often I see among those who work out extensively, who consume more protein, those levels are elevated.

[00:28:32] Do you have any, any take on, on that? many times, even though it's more of a kidney, maybe than heart.

[00:28:37] Jack Wolfson: Well, you know, listen, I did three years of internal medicine prior to cardiology. So, you know, I understand obviously renal disease very well. And again, that's just another marker I wouldn't worry about, uh, especially when you have the explanation of what that is, so elevated creatinine levels are expected in people like us who eat a certain way, when you try and compare us to the norm of the people eat McDonald's cookies and cupcakes, you know, then we're going to fall outside of that.

[00:28:59] But I [00:29:00] think for the reason that you said, I think, you know, again, if If people are strictly following a carnivore diet, like 95 plus percent meat, I think that there's, there's many different problems with that. Number one, you got to eat the organs. Number two, you got to eat the seafood. Number three, you should be eating some amount of vegetable products.

[00:29:22] I don't know what else to say about it again. And, and, and I think in doing so, uh, you're not, it's not quite as protein dense there. They're all, all, all people in the history of the world were meat and or seafood eaters, and they ate vegetables and fruits. Every society is hunter gatherer. There is no animal that eats this extreme.

[00:29:42] So some of these people, again, I mean, listen, with all due respect to, you know, my buddy who has converted since then, you know, my Costa Rican friend, Paul Satino, who you know. You know, and Sean Baker and others. Don't try and outsmart mother nature. Mother nature says hunter gatherer. Look at the TV shows today.

[00:29:59] Alone, [00:30:00] naked, and afraid. That's how you can know what you should be eating. They're up to you. They hunt and they gather. You know, listen, we are built a certain way. All societies ate that way. If you violate that, you're at risk. You may feel better for the short term on the strict obliv you get carnivore, I think, as a cleanser or a detox, but I don't think it's a long term strategy.

[00:30:21] Michael Kummer: Yeah, actually I talked to Sean Baker yesterday for a podcast interview and I've been, I met Paul Zaladino a couple of years ago at the first animal based retreat that he had there in Santa Teresa. And it was also very interesting kind of, it's interesting to see those, you know, Different personalities and their take on, on human nutrition, but I completely agree whenever humans try to outsmart nature, things go wrong.

[00:30:48] And, you know, we're opportunistic, you know, and even, you know, we feed our, our dog, we have a German Shepherd, you know, a, a raw meat diet, you know, consisting of whole animals basically just ground up. But when he is out, [00:31:00] you know, he eats stuff that whatever, you know, it might be my, you know, it could be mulch.

[00:31:04] It might be some grass. It might be some, some bush or whatever. I also noticed that we, uh, when he has access to it, he, he licks the raw milk, you know? So he, you know, he is not as strict strict carnivore, even though, you know, obviously I would not feed my dog kibble. So it's gotta be, you know, animal based much like I think, you know, humans to maybe a lesser degree, but still.

[00:31:23] We are, you know, animal based beings at the end of the day that can handle a lot of other things and probably should.

[00:31:30] Jack Wolfson: When, uh, we live in the mountains of Colorado and unfortunately we've got a tremendous elk population here, so there was an elk that was killed by a car, and that elk was outside of our property, just kind of down the street a little bit, and inside of the elk is of course everything that the elk ate, and the elk eats plants, it eats vegetables, and so when the carnivore eats that animal just by that indirect methodology.

[00:31:59] They're [00:32:00] eating those foods as well. So the carnivore doesn't get that unless again, you're eating, you know, you're eating the entire animal, including the innards that get the small ribs and stuff like that. So that's one thing there. The other thing too, you know, regarding Paul Saladino, if I could talk about him for a second, Paul's been talking a lot about mold recently, he's done a couple, you know, videos on that.

[00:32:20] And my wife told him, you know, three years ago. It's mold. It's mold. It's mold. So again, we all love to focus on the food part of the story. Yes, but we forget about we're living in these man made structures. They're unhealthier than ever mold has been here before man mold and bacteria will be here after man, you know, if you respect it and understand that 5 plus percent of people are living in homes with water damage.

[00:32:51] It affects them, themselves. It affects their spouses. It affects their children. It affects their pets. It is again, a much [00:33:00] bigger, bigger problem than are we eating too many carbs or not.

[00:33:04] Michael Kummer: Yes, I totally agree. One thing I picked up on because you mentioned it twice, I didn't brag if we bring it up, but you said organs.

[00:33:12] Why do you think we need to eat organs? Isn't there, you know, everything we need nutritionally in muscle meat?

[00:33:17] Jack Wolfson: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Every animal, look at meat eater carnivore animals. They go after, they go after the organs first. Backstrap and stuff like that, or you know, what's the fillet, what's the ribeye, they know instinctively.

[00:33:32] When a killer whale attacks a great white shark, it smashes into it, rendering it unconscious. Then it comes back around and snatches the liver, and then swims away. The rest falls for the crabs and the lobster on the ocean floor. The liver is the most nutrient dense organ. Organ in the entire world, all the vitamins, all the minerals, all the proteins, all the fats that we need outside of, you know, those healthy omega 3 fats that you only obtain from seafood.

[00:33:58] So the nutrient [00:34:00] density of, of the liver, of the heart, massive amounts of CoQ10. Kidneys are very high in an enzyme called thiamine oxidase, which is a tremendous antihistamine, you know, so. uh, eating those organs are, you know, previous cultures, native peoples just embraced. I mean, everybody in the population got a little bit of the liver.

[00:34:18] It was prized. The muscle needs often were just left for the, you know, for the dogs.

[00:34:23] Michael Kummer: Right. Can you, can you practically, like, you know, if you buy liver in the store, if you buy organs in the store, can you overeat them? Is there, you know, vitamin toxicity concerns, or is that more a theoretical? Concerned rather than practically because nobody would be eating a pound of polar bear liver by week.

[00:34:41] Yeah, I think you're

[00:34:41] Jack Wolfson: right. I mean, like, you know, again, I'll, I'll, you know, I guess liver, you know, liver King would certainly be a polarizing, you know, person, but he's someone who clearly, you know, eats a lot of the organs salad, you know, eats a lot of the organs. We eat a lot of the organs as well. I think, I mean, again, everything, I'm going to say everything in moderation cause I hate that term, but I [00:35:00] wouldn't necessarily want to live.

[00:35:02] on the organs and it's a healthy mixture. So for example, if you're making burgers and you do a burger mixture that contains 70 to 80 percent of the muscle ground and then putting in the organs into that, I think that's probably the best, you know, rule of thumb. I don't have a lot of data on that, but let's just say that, that most, uh, populations would kill an animal and they eat the entire animal.

[00:35:26] So what percentage is the muscle meat versus what percentage is the organ? It's probably again, along like that 70 percent skeletal muscle to 30 percent organs, somewhere in that range. And let me say that again, I've been in this industry, you know, over 20 years, I've never seen a person have any issues from eating too many organs.

[00:35:46] I've never seen it.

[00:35:48] Michael Kummer: Yeah, thanks. That was a bit, because as you might know, you know, my wife and I started a free stride beef organs supplements company a couple of years ago. And one of the questions we get a lot, well, you know, if you eat like the equivalent [00:36:00] of one ounce of liver a day, is that not going to cause vitamin A toxicity?

[00:36:03] I'm like, well, you know, I'm sure it's theoretically that possibility exists. I have never seen or heard. From anyone getting that from eating, you know, either fresh organs or free stride, you know, versions.

[00:36:15] Jack Wolfson: I'll expand that, you know, a little bit further too, you know, we test people's micronutrient levels.

[00:36:19] So we test people's vitamin A levels in the serum and also intracellular. And I'm not seeing any kind of, you know, super therapeutic levels in that area. Most people, as you know, are markedly deficient in vitamin A, which is critically important for the immune system, cardiovascular system, obviously eye health as well, you know, neurologic, So, yeah, we're not running into that at all.

[00:36:40] Michael Kummer: Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, good to know. All right. Well, with that, I think we can wrap it up. I thank you so much. It was a treasure trove of information. Um, and maybe, you know, at some point we can talk again. I know that you also are very passionate about COVID and long COVID. That's also something I, I have found, I find very interesting and many of the other things that [00:37:00] mold is another thing, you know, most people don't even, not even think about the possibility that mold is causing many of the issues that they're dealing with, you know, and as you said, you know, most homes are contaminated to varying degrees.

[00:37:10] And that's also a super important topic, so maybe we can do a 2. 0 of this and then talk more.

[00:37:16] Jack Wolfson: Yeah, I would love to. You know, let me say one final thing, uh, you know, about the mold, you know, story, is that, uh, these mold toxins, the most famous one is called penicillin. It is a toxin that's released from the penicillium mold that's an antibiotic and so on and so forth.

[00:37:29] And then shortly after penicillin was discovered, mycophenolic acid was discovered. It's a very strong immunosuppressant. It is so strong of an immunosuppressant pharmaceutical companies put it inside of a capsule and they sell it under the brand name of CellCept. All it is is mold mycotoxin, mycophenolic acid inside of a capsule that suppresses the immune system so strongly they give it to people who receive an organ transplant.

[00:37:53] If you get a new heart, a new liver, a new lung, a new kidney, whatever. They put you on an immunosuppressant so your [00:38:00] immune system does not attack that new organ. And all it is is a molotov that shuts down the immune system. What if you're living in that? What if you and your family and your children are living in a contaminated and we see that we see it It's very very fascinating, but I appreciate you know, you having me on, you know, listen, you know Part of what we talked about of course is inside a living well is avoiding environmental toxins Environmental toxins include anything that comes in a prescription bottle and anything that comes inside of a needle be careful