Vascular Health Decoded: What Doctors Miss | Dr. Peter Kan

[00:00:00] Dr. Peter Kan: So it’s always a battle between your immune system and the environment, the germs. And even some of these germs are the germs that are naturally occurring in your body, like your microbiome. Your immune system’s constantly trying to trim back the microbiome as well.

[00:00:14] Right? Because if it doesn’t, then the bug just grow way too much. And then what’s stopping that from growing way too much? It’s your immune system. So know that inflammation is the tool, the weapon that the immune system used to kill bugs. And that’s all good. If you have a bug to kill, that’s all good.

[00:00:29] If you have an infection, it’s not good. If the inflammation persists, even after the bug is gone, now you have chronic inflammation. And the thing with inflammation is that. The way that your immune system use inflammation to kill bugs is that inflammation, think of it as a blowtorch, right? if you see some bugs, you know, here’s a bad example. You see some cockroaches, you use a blowtorch, cockroach gone, right? That’s great.

[00:00:52] But what if the cockroach is on your couch? And use a blowtorch. Well, the cockroach is gone, but your couch is on fire too. So your couch might be your tissue, your organ. And then if your couch is on fire, your organ and tissues on fire, that’s when you get tissue damage, right?

[00:01:06] That’s the inflammation that leads to degeneration. So inflammation is not good or bad. It has a purpose, but when it persists, that’s when it’s a problem.

[00:01:17] Dr. Z: Welcome to the Natural Living Family Podcast, where we help you say no to overwhelm and yes to intentional living so you could take your health back God’s way. We’re Dr. Z and Mama Z bestselling authors, Bible Health Educators, and Parents of Seven. And this show is all about equipping you with simple, low-toxic living and budget friendly health solutions so you can walk in the abundant life you were created for.

[00:01:43] This isn’t about chasing trends or doing it all, it’s about renewing your mind, rejecting toxic systems, and embracing God’s design for healing and wholeness. Because the truth is God has a beautiful plan for your life, and yes, your health matters to him. Are you ready to get started? Awesome. Let’s dive in…. 

[00:02:06] Rhonda: Hi, I am Rhonda from Auckland New Zealand. I’ve been following your family and, uh, Mrs. Z for years and really enjoyed it. Thank you for, for everything you post and your books. Uh, my question is Tallow. Um, I see it’s coming up a lot on Facebook feeds and Instagram and just wondering what your thoughts are on it.

[00:02:25] Is it beneficial to use on your skin and or is it just a fad? Thank you. Bye bye.

[00:02:30] Dr. Eric Zielinski: Hi, Rhonda. What a joy to hear from you all the way across the pond in Auckland, New Zealand. And thank you so much for following up and supporting Mama Z and I over the years. We’re really grateful and thankful for you. Now, let’s talk about tallow. Such a great question. You’re right, it’s popping up everywhere lately, especially on social media and really it might feel like a trend.

[00:02:56] Tallow is actually one of the most traditional time-tested skincare ingredients out there. Tallow is rendered beef fat, and when it’s from grass fed pasture raised animals, it’s incredibly rich in fat soluble vitamins like a vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin K. These are nutrients your skin loves and needs.

[00:03:18] It also closely matches the structure of our skin’s natural oils, which means it absorbs easily. And nourishes deeply. So here’s why we love it. Deeply moisturizing, especially for dry cracked or sensitive skin. I use it actually on baby Elizabeth’s, uh, bottom after I change a diaper. So it’s safe for babies too, and it’s anti-inflammatory.

[00:03:40] Great for eczema, rashes or irritated areas. It’s non-toxic and a hundred percent natural, just the way God created it. And when it comes to body care. If y’all have been following us for any length of time, you know that we always go back to the principle of using what’s closest to how God designed something.

[00:04:02] Like Proverbs 3 reminds us, “fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones.” So choosing natural, clean ingredients like tallow is one way that we try to honor that. So yes, we believe tallow is more than a fad. It’s a beautiful, natural way to care for your skin, especially when you’re mindful about the source. Thank you again, Rhonda.

[00:04:27] We’re very thankful, grateful for your heart and your hunger to keep learning and keep those questions coming and everyone else listening. If you’ve got a question for us that you’d like to feature on the show, head over to natural living family.com/ask. We would love to hear from you.

[00:04:46] hey everyone, Dr. Eric Zielinski here and 

[00:04:48] today I’m thrilled to introduce you to a good friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Peter Kan. Dr. Kan supports and manages patients with chronic conditions using a comprehensive approach by merging the exciting advances of functional neurology and functional medicine. Dr. Kan is board certified in integrative medicine, functional medicine, and chiropractic neurology.

[00:05:10] He is the creator of Neurometabolic Integration, a science based program that identifies the root causes of autoimmune and other chronic conditions. Over 6, 000 patients from across the country have come to seek out his holistic approach that is changing the lives of those sufferings from chronic conditions, born in Taiwan and immigrated to America at the age of 13.

[00:05:31] Dr. Kan has deep appreciation of the Eastern wisdom and Western advances in natural healthcare. He believes in the God given ability of the body to heal and regulate itself. And you could follow his work at ask. Well, let’s get started. You’re going to love this talk.

[00:05:49] Well, Dr. Peter, thanks so much, my friend, for hanging out with me today.

[00:05:53] Dr. Peter Kan: Thank you so much for having me, Eric. It’s always a pleasure to, have fun conversations. 

[00:05:58] Dr. Eric Zielinski: Well, I want to begin with the most important question that I think we’ve asked anyone yet. How’s your pickleball game? 

[00:06:06] Dr. Peter Kan: It is not good. Definitely not as good as yours. So…

[00:06:11] Dr. Eric Zielinski: Hey, we got to talk about, I don’t know if we could even do a little bit of the heart health benefits of pickleball. Folks, Dr. Peter and I are part of a wonderful group of natural health influencers. We get together every year and he and I had an epic pickleball battle last year and it was great.

[00:06:25] He’s a tennis guy. I’m not. And so it was really kind of fun hanging out and doing that, but there’s so many fun things that we could do to keep natural living, natural health, exciting. And, you know, ultimately Doc, what we’re going to do today is we’re going to explain vascular endothelial function, and we’re going to make this more into a how to.

[00:06:44] That’s my challenge to me and you is we’re going to get this awesome head knowledge. You’re going to just. bless us really just download that to everyone listening and then really practical. Okay. What can I do now? What are some good next steps? Let’s begin.

[00:06:58] Talk about, the vascular endothelium as an endocrine organ and no one that I have spoken to yet has discussed this.

[00:07:06] So I’m really excited to learn with everyone right now. 

[00:07:09] Dr. Peter Kan: Awesome. Well, thank you for letting me share. And this is a really interesting topic to me because as a chiropractic neurologist,sometimes I see people coming in with post stroke issues. And really, in reality, clinically speaking, we see a lot of people who have previous history of stroke.

[00:07:27] They have previous history of mini stroke that are only identified on MRI of the brain afterwards. And people may not even know that they had a mini stroke, except that one day they felt really brain foggy or had a bad headache, and they just chalk it up to another bad day. But sometimes these are blood vessel damages that can impact blood flow to the brain.

[00:07:48] So obviously the blood vessels is important here.

[00:07:51] Now, the vascular endothelium, right? Vascular means, of the blood flow and endothelium means the inner lining of the blood vessel, right? So in your blood vessel, you have different layers. You have the most inner lining, which is in direct contact with the blood. And then you have the middle layer and the outer layer. So the inner layer is called an endothelium.

[00:08:13] Now this endothelium, vascular endothelium, is a single layer of lining cells or endothelial cells that basically are in direct contact with the blood. This is important because this inner lining is not just simply a barrier between the blood and the tissue, but it also serves as an endocrine organ.

[00:08:35] So what do we mean by endocrine organ? Well an endocrine, meaning something that your body releases certain chemicals that will have an impact on some other tissue distally or more distant, right? So it’s not just acting locally, it’s acting systemically.

[00:08:50] So the vascular endothelium has is now being considered. An endocrine organ, which means that the vascular endothelium produces chemicals that actually help with bodily function outside of just the blood vessel itself. So that’s just so important to appreciate that.

[00:09:06] Now, the function of the vascular endothelium, some of these function includes vasodilation and vasoconstriction, which obviously controls blood pressure. That’s one that’s a main function. So this vascular endothelium actually actively control the constriction and dilation of your blood vessel thereby impacting blood flow.

[00:09:26] It also controls the flow of different nutrients and hormones and different blood cells in and out of the bloodvessel. It also regulates blood flow through controlling the vascular tone. It also directly influence the inflammatory cells, so that your immune system can actually get to the spots where it’s needed to fight an infection.

[00:09:47] So the vascular endothelium is more than just transporting blood. It does a lot more than that; nutrient transport, it controls your blood pressure, your perfusion, which is deliver a blood, therefore fuel, to your working cells, and then also your immune system as well. Some of these other functions, including, balancing electrolytes, balancing coagulation, and then play a major role, as I said earlier, in immune system response.

[00:10:14] Now, the vascular endothelium produces things called nitric oxide. These nitric oxide are gases that your body naturally produce. And there’s different enzymes that produce different, that produces nitric oxide. Now, oftentimes in well, not in the literature, but also, you know, if somebody was to just google it, they’ll see mention of different forms of nitric oxide enzymes and these will be nitric oxide synthase.

[00:10:46] There are three different isomers or three different types of nitric oxide synthase. There’s the inducible nitric oxide synthase. There’s the endothelial nitric oxide synthase, which is endothelium. Endothelial nitric oxide means they’re produced in the vascular endothelium, which is really important. And then you have the neuronal. Nitric oxide synthase.

[00:11:08] Okay, now these are enzymes that basically live in different places of your body. Neuronal means they live in nerve cells or brain. The endothelial nitric oxide lives in your blood vessel. And then the inducible nitric oxide primarily are involved in white blood cells and immune function.

[00:11:24] Now, they all produce nitric oxide, which is the gas. And this gas in the blood vessel has the impact of vasodilation. supporting blood flow and blood circulation and actually has anti inflammatory function as well. So why are we talking about this nitric oxide? Well, turns out this nitric oxide gas, The person who discovered it basically won the Nobel prize for it.

[00:11:48] That’s such an important discovery that the damage of your vascular endothelium can lead to damage of these nitric oxide synthase enzyme within your blood vessel that produces this nitric oxide gas. And the damage of that will lead to a decrease in nitric oxide production. And therefore become a problem for you, become a sort of a risk factor, a predisposing factor for developing stroke, vascular dementias, heart disease, and so on and so forth.

[00:12:18] So, know that damage to the blood vessel is not just like, oh, your blood vessel is busted. Or it’s just atherosclerosis. But really what we’re talking about here is some type of immune system function, some type of inflammatory function that’s damaging the blood vessel, therefore damaging the capacity of your immune system or of your blood vessel to produce chemicals that are protective of the blood vessels themselves.

[00:12:46] Dr. Eric Zielinski: Doc, there’s a lot to unpack here. And one thing I’m concerned about is As I’m looking through this and folks, I want to share with you, just if you’re like me, you get a lot of your research and you get a lot of your information online, whether it’s through an influencer, you might Google things you probably do.

[00:13:02] And with the advent of AI, the wonderful thing is I’ve been trying to do this more and more Dr. Peter is just kind of show people here. Here’s how I’m looking at things. Here’s how I’m utilizing AI because right now, AI is. Our best and most faithful research assistant that doesn’t argue. It gives us all the information that we want within seconds.

[00:13:20] And what you took you and I hours and days to find sometimes to summarize, we get it in minutes. And so I have a concern that I want to bring up to you and just a question. And I want to walk you through a process that I’m walking or that I’m having right now with this whole thing.

[00:13:35] You go to John Hopkins Medicine, for example, and one of the premier institutions in the world, and you look at the anatomy of the endocrine system. And the endocrine system, according to conventional medicine, is the hypothalamus, the pineal body, the pituitary gland, thyroid, parathyroid, the thymus, adrenal, pancreas, ovary, testes.

[00:13:57] No mention of anything that you just shared at all. Endocrine system, National Cancer Institute. Same thing. Look at this. Look at the glands of that make the endocrine system. But here’s something that I want to point out. Back in 2001, there was this study, as the endothelium as a metabolic and endocrine organ.

[00:14:18] And the vascular endothelium very well laid out. And this was well over 20 some years ago. So this conversation about the vascular endothelium being an organ. I want to flesh that out for just a second here, Doc, because it appears to me if practitioners are trying to help patients, especially prevent and or recover from heart attack and stroke.

[00:14:41] And if they’re not acknowledging, if they’re not acknowledging this fact. That the vascular endothelium is an organ that has this systemic endocrine effect. An endocrine meaning create homeostasis in the body through hormone balancing and the connection between the brain. What detrimental effect are we seeing with doctors not recognizing this, with not treating this the right way?

[00:15:09] I don’t know if I’m asking that the right way, but I’m thinking root cause resolution. I’m thinking doctors are missing something if they’re ignoring this. So can you give me a little bit of your feelings and thoughts about why this is like it sounds kind of sounds like you’re coming from left field here with this vascular endothelium thing.

[00:15:25] But after just five seconds worth of AI and me hanging out, I’m like, Oh no, this is going on people and talk about this for 25 30 years. So why? 

[00:15:34] Dr. Peter Kan: Yeah, that’s a great question, Eric. Because when you think of endocrine, you automatically think of hormones, right? So you, so when people have hormone problems, you go to the endocrinologist.

[00:15:46] And endocrinologists are typically one that you know, handle hormonal problems, so that could be insulin, adrenal hormones, thyroid hormones, whatever hormone you want to talk about. And so that’s when you Google John Hopkins, they’re talking about just basic textbook information. Now, when we say vascular endothelium is now considered an endocrine organ, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be lumped into the textbook where, hey, this is where a endocrinologist would necessarily manage a vascular endothelial dysfunction, right?

[00:16:19] It just points to the fact that the blood vessel does more than just transporting blood.I’m glad you pull up research because some people might pull up vascular endothelium as an endocrine organ, they pull it up, they look at Johns Hopkins or Mayo Clinic, they’re going to see no mention of vascular endothelium as an endocrine organ, meaning that they’re not thinking in terms of it producing hormone, in a classical sense.

[00:16:43] But if you go to PubMed and you type in “vascular endothelium, endocrine”, just put in those three words, you’re going to see 1, 700 plus citations. So this is not something, as you say, that’s new. It’s, you know, 20 some years of research. And you ask why? That’s a great question. The reason I’m pointing this out is that your blood vessel gets damaged by inflammation.

[00:17:07] Your blood vessel gets damaged by inflammation, that vascular endothelium gets inflamed and gets damaged. That’s what leads to the stroke and the heart disease. So the punchline here is that allopathic medicine has been treating heart disease and stroke from the perspective of statin drugs. You know, all these medication, polypharmacy of using medications to lower these markers, which are actually the end result of the disease process, not the genesis of disease process.

[00:17:38] The genesis of the disease process is vascular endothelium dysfunction, whether it’s caused by loss of nitric oxide production. Whether it’s caused by inflammation from various sources, which we can talk about. And that’s really the root cause that’s driving this, right, heart disease and stroke still being the number one, number two, top killers in America.

[00:18:02] It’s because of inflammation, not because of lack of cholesterol lowering drugs. 

[00:18:07] Dr. Eric Zielinski: Yeah, I appreciate you mentioned this and just for the fact that endocrinologists are not considering this in my opinion, and I just pulled up a study from 1995. I mean, just flat vascular endothelium as an endocrine organ, 1995. This has been in the conversation for over for nearly 30 years now, and it needs to be part of that.

[00:18:26] And so that’s something to consider, folks. If you do have some sort of hormone problem or you are seeing an endocrinologist, discuss, discuss the heart, discuss your blood, discuss, just see what they’re open to see what they’re looking at. Because you cannot just isolate one problem mutually exclusive from the other, and that’s really what I’m hearing that you’re saying Dr. Peter here.

[00:18:47] So, I mean, let’s dive into this a little bit more, with specifically the inflammation problem and where can we go with this? We’re talking about heart disease. We’re talking about atherosclerosis here. We’re talking about the potential risk of heart attack and stroke.

[00:19:00] Where does someone start?

[00:19:02] Dr. Z: Hey, friend, real quick, if you’ve been listening and thinking, I wanna live this way, but I need help, well, that’s exactly why we created the Bible Health Academy. It’s our monthly mentorship and training hub packed with Bible health solutions, non-toxic living strategies, and the like-minded community.

[00:19:18] You need to walk in the abundant life God designed for you. Whether you’re brand new to natural living or ready to go deeper, this is where transformation happens from the inside out. Visit biblehealthacademy.com to learn more. We hope you’ll join us.

[00:19:34] Dr. Peter Kan: Well, we want to start as upstream as possible, right? So this is where, this is great. So then you can start to hear things that you may not hear from a conventional perspective on mainstream media of actual scientific information, right? Because a lot of what you hear, you know, out there on news or even at your doctor’s offices, they’re trying to dumb it down so much.

[00:19:54] So a lay person will understand it, but when we dumb it down so much. The true meaning can be lost. So that’s why this type of event is great. So where do people start? As I mentioned earlier, vascular endothelium dysfunction, right? The fact that the inner lining, the blood vessels gets damaged is what really caused people to have these heart disease, stroke, vascular dementia, and so forth.

[00:20:17] So just so you know, like this blood vessel problem doesn’t just cause heart disease. It caused brain problem as well, because your brain is richly supplied with blood vessel. If the blood vessel going to your brain is damaged, either by some type of occlusion or stroke or something like that, then you’re going to diminish blood flow to the brain. You know, just like a lawn that doesn’t get water to it, it’s going to start to turn yellow. The grass will no longer be green. If you don’t get blood to certain region of your brain, then that region of the brain is going to suffer and not grow as well.

[00:20:50] And you can, you literally see this on MRI of people with chronic illness that may have decreased brain volume, brain atrophy, and so forth. So when we’re talking about blood vessel health, we’re not just simply talking about heart attack. Because some people will say, well, I don’t have any family history of heart attacks, so I’m totally fine, but it can impact brain function as well.

[00:21:08] So just keep that in mind. So where do we start with this? As I said earlier, it starts with inflammation. So then what the heck causes the inflammation in the first place? Well, first we, you have to understand what inflammation is, right?

[00:21:19] People always say, well, inflammation is just the root of all disease. Well, it is. But it doesn’t mean inflammation is a bad thing, right? Because you need inflammation. It’s a normal bodily process.

[00:21:31] Like the way our body is made by our Creator is that everything serves a purpose. There’s a time to be stressed. There’s a time to not be stressed. There’s time for a stress response to occur so you can make hormones and different things so you can get over the stress. And there’s a time for you to come back to homeostasis. So inflammation itself is not a bad thing.

[00:21:49] 

[00:21:49] Dr. Peter Kan: To really put it succinctly. Inflammation is the weapon of mass destruction used by the body to kill infections. And just keep in mind that there’s always some bug that’s transiting through our system. So we have to always be on alert to kill things that might over that might otherwise overtake our body.

[00:22:08] Like an infection, you know, bacteria there, they want to grow more babies too. Right? So if you let it, then the bacteria just going to keep reproducing more and more. And that bacteria is going to just take over and eat up all the food and invade all your tissue, then you could die. 

[00:22:21] So it’s always a battle between your immune system and the environment, the germs. And even some of these germs are the germs that are naturally occurring in your body, like your microbiome. Your immune system’s constantly trying to trim back the microbiome as well.

[00:22:36] Right? Because if it doesn’t, then the bug just grow way too much. And then what’s stopping that from growing way too much? It’s your immune system. So know that inflammation is the tool, the weapon that the immune system used to kill bugs. And that’s all good. If you have a bug to kill, that’s all good.

[00:22:51] If you have an infection, it’s not good. If the inflammation persists, even after the bug is gone, now you have chronic inflammation. And the thing with inflammation is that. The way that your immune system use inflammation to kill bugs is that inflammation, think of it as a blowtorch, right? If you see some bugs, you know, here’s a bad example. You see some cockroaches, you use a blowtorch, cockroach gone, right? That’s great. But what if the cockroach is on your couch? And use a blowtorch. Well, the cockroach is gone, but your couch is on fire too. So your couch might be your tissue, your organ. And then if your couch is on fire, your organ and tissues on fire, that’s when you get tissue damage, right?

[00:23:28] That’s the inflammation that leads to degeneration. So inflammation is not good or bad. It has a purpose, but when it persists, that’s when it’s a problem. Now this inflammation, if it’s happening in your vascular endothelium, think of a blowtorch to your vascular endothelium. Endothelium, poof, gone.

[00:23:45] And when the endothelium gets damaged, the resultant processes, that’s gotta be some kind of healing that happens after that, right? If your tissue gets damaged, if your skin gets cut, you get a scab, you get a, scar forming. In your vascular endothelium, same process occur. It gets damaged. That damage is going to get plugged up. That’s your cholesterol.

[00:24:03] So cholesterol is really essentially used to heal up a wound that’s happening inside your blood vessel to patch it up like a pothole. But once you patch it up, then that cholesterol has a possibility of being reacted to by your immune system. And that can create damage, like for example, foam cells that are in your vascular endothelium. That can lead to the onset of the atherosclerosis and the plaque formation. So really, the atherosclerosis, the plaque formation, and then the result in either stroke or heart disease.

[00:24:35] See, stroke and heart disease is like 10 steps down the line. Prior to that, you have the buildup. Prior to the buildup, you have vascular endothelium. inflammation or injury. Prior to that, you have something that’s causing the inflammation to occur excessively. That’s causing the tissue damage. So if we just follow the train back, then that lead us ultimately to our lifestyle.

[00:24:55] Like what can we do on a daily basis that are either helping promoting vascular endothelium integrity, or causing damage? And one of the biggest one, I’m just going to, you know, let people know, like, because there’s so many different possible things and different people have different causes, right? Not everybody has the same causes, although we all have something that’s common.

[00:25:14] Because we all live in this common toxic soup, right? The environment is toxic, it’s polluted. The food source is not great. You know, not everything’s organic. So there’s a lot of problem with the environment that we live in. So there’s some commonality.

[00:25:27] But everybody, how they handle different toxins and different stressors is different so therefore there’s different manifestations of diseases presented to different people, even within the same exposure to the same toxin. But the top thing that I see people having problem with is really, number one, is blood sugar issue.

[00:25:43] Okay, blood sugar issue is going to lead to vascular endothelium dysfunction. And this is the reason why diabetes, one of the downstream, the main downstream effect of diabetes, the end sequela of diabetes, is heart disease. Is hypertension. Is retinopathy. Why?

[00:26:02] Because the blood vessels that supply blood to the retina are these fine capillaries that gets inflamed and damaged because the high blood sugar. And therefore that’s a vascular damage to the blood vessel to the retina. You get kidney damage. Why? Because the blood vessel that supplied blood to the kidney gets damaged.

[00:26:19] So, and then Type 3 diabetes, which is, what Alzheimer’s has been dubbed is type 3 diabetes because there’s so much correlation between high blood sugar and Alzheimer’s disease. That Alzheimer’s has been called type 3 diabetes. Why?

[00:26:34] Because the blood vessels that supply blood to the brain can get inflamed and damaged, and you can get these vascular damage. And therefore, you have these mini strokes that show up on the MRI. And then, therefore, people end up with Neurodegeneration, Alzheimer, that develop over time.

[00:26:50] By the way, Alzheimer is one form of dementia under the umbrella of dementia. You have Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and then vascular dementia, super nuclear palsy, you have a whole bunch of different types of dementia. But vascular dementia behind Alzheimer’s is one of the top reasons why someone will have dementia, and neurodegenerative degeneration with age.

[00:27:11] And vascular dementia. The number one reason is either hypertension or vascular endothelium dysfunction. And I will even go on to say that the hypertension then can also lead to this vascular endothelium dysfunction.

[00:27:27] The reason why high blood pressure is so bad, because when your blood pressure is higher than normal, on a consistent basis, you have this mechanical pounding of each heartbeat. That’s pounding the blood into that restricted space of your blood vessel and that eventually just wears down the blood vessel. That causes damage in your blood vessel.

[00:27:47] So then hypertension leads to the damaged endothelium that leads to the plaquing and atherosclerosis and on you go. So you can see how this is all kind of unified in a way, right?

[00:27:58] There’s some common themes here that the inflammation is driving the vascular endothelium damage. Then that leads to nitric oxide production imbalances, which is a gas that regulate blood flow and blood pressure. So then you get the hypertension, then you get the damage in the blood vessel, then you get the stroke and you get the plaque buildup, you get the cholesterols. That’s all downstream.

[00:28:23] So we want to go as upstream as we can. And one of the most important thing, egregious things that we see in America is blood sugar problem, right? And then related to the blood sugar problem is, sedentary activity, which also lead to the blood sugar problem. Those two things are just a one two punch for vascular endothelium dysfunction.

[00:28:42] Dr. Eric Zielinski: I’m so glad you explained it that way. By the way, that was probably the best explanation I’ve ever heard that. And I’ve spoken to many a doctor. and I actually wrote a research paper that was published and that was a great inspiration for me as I was looking at this concept.

[00:28:57] And the reality is when you look at what’s happened in the historical timeline, when fat got demonized, as the source of high cholesterol and then cholesterol became the focus, sole focus and just high, low. It’s just numbers, right?

[00:29:13] It’s a number and the focus becomes a number and by the way, has changed many a time. And every time the numbers change of high, low cholesterol, guess what happens? More and more like millions of people are now indicated to get on statins. And that seems to be the game. I mean, when you look at it, it’s hard not to be a conspiracy theorist.

[00:29:32] Like, oh, the American Heart Association changes the guidelines. 50 more people are now qualified for statins. That makes interesting sense, right? Number one selling drug on the planet. And so when you start looking at what really is the root cause here,it’s not necessarily a quote high fat diet.

[00:29:49] But here’s where I want to maybe shift in some practical things here, Doc. Because what happened? As I know, you know, guess what? Big food companies start coming out with low fat, everything. And yeah, we’re going to now manufacture food that doesn’t have quote fat, but it has what to replace it. Cause it needs flavor? Has sugar.

[00:30:10] Or it’ll have artificial sugars, or it’ll have there artificial flavors that satisfy. Because if something doesn’t have fat, it doesn’t make us feel satiated. It doesn’t satisfy the cravings and hunger that we have. They’ve got to put something else in the food. So people have been essentially poisoning themselves with quote manufactured low fat foods for 30 plus years.

[00:30:29] Because of this scenario and it’s like, okay, how do we bring balance? Like I was hoping what you could do just for a quick minute.

[00:30:35] and then we could shift and maybe end the discussion with brain and really focus. Because that’s as a chiropractic neurologist, I know that’s your specialty. And maybe even dive into the gut brain skin connection for a second or two.

[00:30:46] But, how do you bring balance to this? and how do you help people find peace with this conflicting message that we’re getting? 

[00:30:55] Dr. Peter Kan: Yeah, and I think that you brought up conflicting message. And I think, first I want to say something about cholesterol. And then, as I mentioned in this presentation, in this interview, that cholesterol is also not good or bad. Just like inflammation is not good or bad, right? It serves a purpose in the body.

[00:31:12] Now, if you have very high serum blood cholesterol readings, does that matter? Does that increase the risk for heart disease? And the answer to that is, yes, it does. But again, I think it’s helpful to the conversation to know that why is the cholesterol increased in the first place?

[00:31:31] The cholesterol may be increased as a response to inflammation. Because there’s vascular endothelium injury or other type of inflammation that require the body to use cholesterol to patch something up. So your body might increase the production of endogenous cholesterol for that purpose of healing. Now if you have high cholesterol, that cholesterol can still matter if that cholesterol is inflamed, right?

[00:31:54] So there’s a specific marker that can measure whether you have inflamed cholesterol or you have high cholesterol. You also have inflammation markers. So you can have inflammation markers and you can also have inflamed cholesterol markers. Both of those are going to make the cholesterol problem more insidious, more problematic.

[00:32:12] So I’m not saying that cholesterol numbers does not matter at all. It does matter. It’s just what’s causing it upstream. There are some people that still may need short term management. Or even long term management, if they have a genetic issue, and some people do, they have genetic hypercholesterolemia, where they do have higher cholesterol, and then not every single person with even genetic high cholesterol all have heart disease or die from a heart attack.

[00:32:38] Some have genetic high cholesterol, and they never have a heart attack, even without cholesterol drug, but some do. So it’s, the literature is, the proof is all there. It’s just what’s causing what, that’s the question, right? And my, my idea is that we want to go as upstream as possible. That means that there may be a time and place to use cholesterol drugs. But most often time, if we can go as upstream as possible and work on the lifestyle, then that’s going to give you a better long term outcome.

[00:33:06] Because if you can address it at the root, then there may be less need for the cholesterol medication, or taking a lower dose or eventually not even need it. So we hear people, in my practice at least, people are able to get off the cholesterol medication all the time.

[00:33:21] That doesn’t mean there’s not some people that just need to have cholesterol medication, but I will say a majority of the time in my clinical experience that people are able to get all the cholesterol drugs. So that’s hope, right? There’s a reason for hope and there’s a reason to really continue to learn and continue to work on.

[00:33:36] As far as balance? You mentioned how the low fat craze of the past 30 years has really shifted. Than the focus for the big food manufacturer to put a lot of sugar and flavoring in our food so that we’ll eat it. Because the lack of the fat makes food less satiating, less tasty, so then we’ll just replace it with sugar.

[00:33:54] Absolutely true. But now I think the past 10 years, keto craze has came back in. A lot of people are interested in keto and paleo diet. And I think what’s happening is that there’s a lot of keto snack. Like I go to Costco. There’s tons of like keto snack and you look at it, it’s a lot of nuts and different things like that.

[00:34:11] But then I think the key thing to take away is that just because something says it’s keto or it’s low fat or it’s low, this and that doesn’t make it healthy. It’s really, what’s the source of the food, right? We want to eat whole fresh food whenever possible. So even with fat, if something says keto approved, it just means it has a lot of fat and very little sugar in that food product.

[00:34:31] But if the fat that keto product has is all hydrogenated fat or seed oils, then that’s not so desirable, even though it’s keto approved. Right? Because here we’re talking about vascular endothelium injury. And that has to do with inflammation. And one of the things that can really cause inflammation is the use of these processed fats, like industrial seed oils and different things like that, and trans fat.

[00:34:54] So the focus is on the inflammation aspect of it. Blood sugar problem can cause that. Right? So definitely there’s a reason to do keto because when you do keto, you’re low carb. So by being low carb, you kind of. If you already have high blood sugar, doing keto will help with that aspect of it. But you also need to be aware of other sources of inflammation besides just blood sugar problem. Like sedentary activity, like stress, like toxin exposure, like chronic infections that you can’t clear, like chronic, you know, stress.So there’s a lot of different things that can cause it. So we have to be aware, right?

[00:35:27] So then how do we create balance? Really just prepare whole fresh food and eat food from scratch rather than process. That’s going to be your best bet. And as far as like how much fat, how much carb? I think that’s a more complicated question. Some people might need to be on a ketogenic diet for a period of time. For a therapeutic purpose. Right?

[00:35:48] And then some people may not need to do that. So that’s up to person’s individual goals and their clinical condition for working with their doctor to decide what’s appropriate for them. So I don’t think there’s a one size fits all where everybody gotta be plant based, everybody gotta be carnivore, everybody has to be this and that.

[00:36:03] I think everybody should get to select. What’s best for them based on what they need. And that’s where, you know, learning from you, Dr. Eric will be very helpful in that regard. to learn like, okay, what are the different scenarios? And that’s what we do in our practice. Anyhow, you know, we don’t prescribe one diet for everyone.

[00:36:21] I mean, even for diabetics, you know, some people with diabetes, they do well with keto. And other people with diabetes keto is just not going to work for them. Either the gallbladder is removed so they can’t handle too much fat or the blood sugar is so unstable, they get hypoglycemic if they just don’t eat, so keto just doesn’t work for them.

[00:36:38] So sometimes it’s just balance. So I think for cardiovascular health though, the general rule is, whole fresh food, not so much carbs, not so much sugar. When I say not so much, how much is not so much? Just whatever you’re doing now, a little bit less, right? Unless you’re already keto, then you’re already very low carb.

[00:36:56] But if you’re just eating regular standard American diet? Lower carb. More vegetable fibers. Probably more protein intake. But it’s all about the quality of food. I think with that said, I think it’s going to take a lot of stress off of people having to follow a specific prescription, and if they don’t, then they’re doing it wrong.

[00:37:16] Like that’s too stressful. It doesn’t have to be like that. 

[00:37:19] Dr. Eric Zielinski: I love it. I love it, folks. Dr. Peter said something that I feel needs to be defined or clearly understood because I had no idea, Doc, when you mentioned endogenous cholesterol. Everyone. Your body produces cholesterol. Cholesterol is a main component of your phospholipid membrane that’s surrounding every cell of your body.

[00:37:42] If you don’t eat enough cholesterol, and to my understanding, last I checked, was like eight eggs worth of cholesterol. If you don’t eat eight eggs a day, which most people don’t, your body is gonna produce all that extra cholesterol. So first off, and Doc, I mention this, because before I went to school, I was educated by TV.

[00:38:04] I was educated by commercials. I thought that cholesterol was only in my body because of the foods I ate. No one told me otherwise. And that’s kind of how it’s really kind of tricky. You could lower and increase and all this stuff. low fat, right? So first off, just know that cholesterol is not the enemy.

[00:38:21] I think that’s a big takeaway. It puts a smile on my face realizing like, wow, that’s a big aha moment. When now I’m not looking at a self regulating mechanism as an enemy. And that’s a big deal. And when you start to embrace, oh, that’s how my body really works. Now, what does that look like? Now you don’t have to freak out.

[00:38:39] You can have eggs. You don’t need egg whites. Again, if you are vegan, that’s a different story, but you don’t need to worry. You need to take things in balance. And we’re looking at the root cause of inflammation, which is the root mechanism of this whole scenario. And that’s basically my explanation and summary of what you’re sharing here, because it’s so important.

[00:38:57] So Doc. I want to. I was hoping to get a little bit more out of you with the lifestyle shifts because you mentioned food. I’m really glad you explained the way you just did on how to approach food. And one undertone of everything you’re sharing here is basically what we need to do to stop the endothelial dysfunction, the inflammation, we need to stop the insult of damage and threat.

[00:39:26] And I want to be careful with those. So what could, what are the damages and threats? You mentioned food, you mentioned toxins, other things. What are these lifestyle shifts that you recommend to your patients? Like just blanket everybody. I don’t care. Young, old, black, white, male, female. What are things that everyone needs to start thinking about and maybe even implement?

[00:39:49] Dr. Peter Kan: Yeah, I mean, in my practice, everything I do is, pretty customized. Of course, there’s always some overarching, ideas that can apply to everyone. And I think that one idea, if I were to say will be physical activity, exercise. You know, because of course, within exercise, you have anywhere from just yoga or walking to very high intensity exercise. You can run marathons, you can do CrossFit, so it goes the whole gamut everywhere in between. So that’s even a deeper discussion.

[00:40:18] But I think a lot of people, I think you see a lot more people who are under exercising than those who are over exercising. Just keep in mind, over exercising is a problem too.

[00:40:28] But I see a lot more people who are under exercising, either because they have a chronic health condition, and they’re either told that, oh, you shouldn’t do too much, and therefore they do nothing, right? Not doing, maybe they can do too much, but that doesn’t mean you do nothing.

[00:40:43] You should do whatever you can do at your current capacity to at least get things moving. If you’re having trouble walking to the mailbox and back, then just walk inside your house back and forth, you know, for however many as you can. Even if you just can’t even walk right now, cause your knee is bad. Well, then do something in your bed, right? Aren’t, you know, air bicycle, you know, lay on your back and do dead bug or something like that.

[00:41:04] The point is do whatever you can do because the activity level is with the main driver of nitric oxide production, blood flow. turbulent blood flow. How do you get turbulent blood flow? You exercise. So the blood is gushing through your blood vessel at a faster rate to get to your muscles so you can do the exercise.

[00:41:23] That’s a response, an adaptation to exercise. So the more you exercise, the more you’re going to stimulate nitric oxide production, the more you’re going to help with this vascular endothelium. That will be a blanket statement that everybody can benefit from. Of course, start where you can start and work your way up.

[00:41:38] Dr. Eric Zielinski: That’s awesome. 

[00:41:38] And any sort of general supplementation guidelines? And when I use general folks, we understand you need to be working with a qualified health care practitioner. Ideally, a team, someone who specializes in functional medicine, who understands this. You need to get customized care.

[00:41:53] However, I think you and I are in the same boat here, Doc. Everyone should be minimizing, you know, phthalates and PFOA S’s and forever chemicals and all the things that we’re doing every day in and out that are causing that threat to the body that causes that chronic inflammation. We need to be thinking about, okay, how do I minimize my risk? How do I put my body in a healing state?

[00:42:14] And that’s what we specialize in. That’s what my wife and I have devoted the last 20 years of our life to giving people, Hey, how do you make your home into a healing haven? You mentioned exercise really important. Movement. Any sort of general guidelines about supplementation? Maybe things that people… I don’t know, I would love to kind of put you on the spot. I’d love to hear you say, you know, what things that are out there right now are kind of a marketing ploy? Stay away from that. Or hey, you might want to consider this. You mentioned nitric oxide. Should everyone be taking beetroot powder? I don’t know. It’s like, can you give us some insight into some of this stuff?

[00:42:46] Dr. Peter Kan: Yeah. And that’s a great question. You know, I think some, sometimes a supplement may be needed based on a specific marker, right? Well, let’s just say somebody has very high hemoglobin A1C because they’re diabetic, then their nutritional supplementation need might be different than somebody who doesn’t have diabetes.

[00:43:02] But what I will say is in general, look at, perhaps, do a test for homocysteine. If your blood homocysteine level is elevated, then definitely you want to consider taking folate and perhaps B12 along with it. Because that homocysteine is an amino acid your body naturally produces as a byproduct of making other things.

[00:43:20] And your body normally can get rid of homocysteine on its own. But if it’s not efficient at getting rid of homocysteine, either due to a genetic snip or due to a increased production of homocysteine due to some kind of stressor inflammation infection, that homocysteine is like that blowtorch. That’s endogenously produced that will damage your vascular endothelium. Full stop.

[00:43:41] It’s an independent risk factor for heart disease and dementia because of the damage it can do to your blood vessel. So typically, ideal homocysteine range optimally will be five to seven, minimally less than 10 is what we want, but five to seven is great.

[00:43:57] And the supplement for that will be methylated folate and methylated B12, combination of. That’ll really help with all the methylation pathways to address, you know, the homocysteine issue. So that will say that will be one because we’re talking about heart disease. That’s one that’s just really stands out. There’s also another marker called C reactive protein cardiac or C reactive protein high sensitivity. It’s an inflammation marker. It’s associated with cardiovascular risk. The reason because inflammation, as I said, right, it’s not because it’s a cholesterol marker. It’s an inflammation marker.

[00:44:27] So if you have a high CRP, you need to find out why you have high CRP. Typically there’s some type of underlying infection, toxins, some kind of acute stressor that’s happening inside your body. But certainly supplement wise, turmeric can be helpful here to help just dampen the inflammation pathway as you identified the cost of that inflammation.

[00:44:47] So, you know, supplement. It’s helpful, but at the end of the day, it’s all about what are you doing with your life, right? Are you continuing exposing yourself to chemicals in your household? Are you changing things out? Are you continuing to stressing yourself out with your lifestyle? Are you continuing to stay up late and watch Netflix and not going to bed early?

[00:45:03] Are you continuing to not exercise? Are you continuing to eat those high carb foods? Those are the things that if we can focus on the lifestyle aspect, that’s going to give the most payoff. And then the supplement could be supplementary to that lifestyle, especially if you have markers that can tell you that you need specific things.

[00:45:20] Dr. Eric Zielinski: Doc, as you know, Sabrina, my wife, Mama Z, as many people know her, is pregnant with baby Z, number seven. We are in the throes of the most challenging season of my life, for a variety of reasons. With six babies at home and a lot of pressure on us to be present and to be parents and to be caretakers and to be providers and to maintain.

[00:45:43] Life gets tough. And it’s hard sometimes. It’s hard. And you listen to a talk like this, and I look away, and I look at myself. And one tendency is, and maybe this is that old carnal nature that we read about in the Bible, is to beat myself up a little bit.

[00:45:59] Be like, you know what? I haven’t worked out as much as I normally could. I’ve done this not right. I’ve done that not right. And I start checking the boxes of why I should be on the naughty list.

[00:46:10] Yet, what if we flip the script and start checking the box of why I should be on the good, nice list? And creating boxes that we could start to check off. And so, one thing I want to leave people with is just something a mutual friend of ours, Dr. Isaac Jones, recently shared with me that was really cool. Little exercise snacks, he calls them.

[00:46:32] And I am finding, and I’ll just be very transparent with y’all. Other than me getting away for like an hour and a half here and there to play pickleball with my friends, which is my mainstay. It’s my mental peace. It’s my hanging out. It’s my fellowship. It’s a little bit exercise, a lot of exercise.

[00:46:49] But for me to go to the gym and do weight training and things for me to devote an hour is near impossible. Or at least I think it is, but you know what I can do. After this conversation, I can go out and do 30, 40 pushups. After this, I could go stand on my vibration plate for five minutes. I could take calls instead of Zoom. I could get on my phone and I could go outside and walk back and forth. I’ve tried my best little things like that, right?

[00:47:12] I could throw away my aerosol and put on the diffuser behind me. I could decide not to do this and do that. Little things. So start to check that list off, I want to encourage y’all. Because it’s these little micro habits that will change everything. Because like Dr. Peter said so eloquently, this is a chronic condition that took years and it will take sometimes months, days, and years to reverse, but to find yourself into a well balanced, abundant life.

[00:47:36] I love this talk. I might, or may not borrow your flame torch roach, analogy because I literally just killed a cockroach last night and I love that analogy folks. That is the inflammation when you. You don’t want to burn your couch with a flamethrower because you’re trying to kill a cockroach. Dr. Peter, any other, lasting thoughts you’d like to give to everyone listening? This has been brilliant and I so appreciate your time and your energy and your focus. 

[00:48:02] Dr. Peter Kan: Yeah. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity, Eric. And I think you, you mentioned something that’s great, you know, find the boxes that you can check, right?

[00:48:09] And you don’t have to have a box where it’s so far beyond your grasp. And it’s not realistic. Like, Oh, you know, you’re not exercising right now. And you say, I’m going to run a marathon. Maybe don’t start with that box. Right?

[00:48:21] Just start with doing something every day, even five minutes, 10 minutes. I’m a big proponent of what our mutual friend, Dr. Jones says. And I have been saying, you know, I call it micro exercise instead of exercise snacks, but I’ve been saying micro exercise for years, which is just do whatever you can.

[00:48:37] Like, every hour, if you’re, doing a desk job, set an alarm every hour, just do two, three minutes of something: air squats, pushups. That goes a long way because it does compound. Imagine if you do 10 pushups every hour, you have eight working hours. After eight hours, you’ve done 80 pushups. It still counts. It still works. You’re still going to get stronger. So I encourage everybody to just start doing something on a regular.

[00:49:01] Dr. Eric Zielinski: I love it. 

[00:49:02] I love it. Folks. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to this. A lot of great practical information. You’re going to have to relisten to this one again, Dr. Peter, thank you for your help and your support and for sharing your brilliance with us. And as always, this is Dr. Eric Zielinski, I hope and prayers that you and your family truly experience the abundant life.

[00:49:18] We’ll talk soon. Bye bye.

[00:49:23] Dr. Z: Thanks for joining us on the Natural Living Family Podcast. If today’s episode encouraged you, please take a moment and leave a review and share it with a friend. Your voice helps us reach more families with a message of hope and healing God’s way. Remember, Jesus came to give you life and to have it more abundantly!

[00:49:42] For show notes, transcripts, and resources from today’s episode, visit naturallivingfamilypodcast.com and until next time, stay healthy, stay rooted in truth, and keep choosing the abundant life.