I reversed 20 years of arterial [Music] plaque for years I was eating the wrong diet when I actually got tested I was emotionally annihilated despite my efforts I still developed cardiovascular plaque I truly believe that what I did can be done by many people not everyone can reverse pla but almost everybody can stabilize it and decrease your risk of a heart attack take the vast majority of that risk right off the table this is what I did this is my story of how I reversed my arterial plaque this video is about how I found plaque in my own arteries and what I did to reverse it I hope my story can help you identify whether you have plight and what you can do to minimize it I'll cover the dietary lifestyle supplements and medication change es I did after I found out that I had plag you'll see both my actual cimt studies showing the presence and then the reversal of plaque in my arteries stay until the end and I'll show you how my latest numbers turned out we'll also show medical lab tests demonstrating the exact cause of the problem and then blood tests that show What reversed that plaque spoiler alert I'm like most of us aging took a toll on my insulin receptors remember growing old is just not for sissies at the end of the video I'll share a confession with you it's about an unpopular Choice I've made to manage my plag and I've already caught a lot of grief here's what happened at age 57 I thought I was healthy I've been a prevention dog for four over 40 years about four decades I ran the preventive medicine program at Johns Hopkins so I taught the doctors at Johns Hopkins and that's arguably the number one preventive medicine program in the world as far as prevention was concerned I also practiced what I preached and that was all about lifestyle and no medications lowfat dietary guidelines were the standard at that point in time nobody questioned it at that time we were just discovering that cholesterol in the diet might not be the cause of cholesterol in the artery walls so as that concept turned around it was turning towards calories since fat was the most calorie dense fat must be the biggest problem that was the logic anyway I believed it at that time and for decades not anymore but that's a different story for later back to those previous Decades of my lifestyle I overachieved in the cardio exercise space I ran half marathons sometimes more than every week I ran a dozen full marathons by age 55 I was not only against medication but also against supplements to me supplements at that point were just expensive urine but something happened at age 54 I should have paid a lot more attention during a routine screening I noticed my blood pressure was 130 over 90 and it didn't come back down I didn't like it but I finally agreed to take medication to lower my blood pressure I retired yet again I've retired a few times it's started looking for something to do a mutual friend introduced me to Brad Bale and Amy donine Brad and Amy teach their own form of preventive medicine I read their book beat the heart attack Gene which opened the door to two other perspectives for me first it made me question the standard model of heart disease focused on LDL cholesterol or quote bad cholesterol like most dogs of course I knew that diabetes caused heart disease but I had no clue just how common PR pre-diabetes is and also like most docs I didn't know how to diagnose it and like most docs I really had no clue that metabolic disease causes most chronic diseases and even most of what many of us call normal aging the second perspective I got from Reading Brad and Amy's book was test don't guess coming from Hopkins I'd always been focused more on William osler's advice on History listening to the patient getting focused on Brad and Amy and thinking about tests don't guess gave me a whole different perspective I began to realize that patients listen to lab tests when they won't often listen to their doctor so Brad invited me to their next event they were training doctors in Las Vegas I joined them there some vendors were providing a free screening test called cimt it was a quick test literally less than 5 minutes safe there is no radiation and inexpensive the routine price was between $2 and $300 that test again is called the cimt it stands for kateed intima media thickness test it's an ultrasound of your neck with a special measurement technology component it's used to measure plaque instead of what most tests like the stress tests do measuring blood flow so why looking at the neck the kateed instead of the heart plaque formation is due to metabolic issues metabolism metabolism is the same all over your body so if you have plaque in one artery bin you have it in all the others but here's the key cimt doesn't focus on blood flow it focuses on plaque and more importantly the type of plaque again that's why cardiac stress tests which measure blood flow do not predict heart attacks back to the story so I took the cimt test expecting to see no plague I was wrong look look at this chart this was 2015 and you can see my name and two pictures my right and left cored arteries what really impacted me here was the number next to it 1. 29 mm on the right side and 1. 25 mm on the left side now what does that mean this is an artery and it has many layers let's focus on two of these layers the one in the middle is called the media it's made mostly of muscle it allows the artery to expand like one of those expanding garden hoses then you have the inner layer of the artery wall the intima it deals with the essential metabolic functions of the vessel like dropping off oxygen and picking up cellular waste materials guess where plaque builds up no not on the inside but between those two layers the intima and the media that's why they call this test the kateed intima media thickness test the ideal thickness is 1 mm or less any time you go over that it's considered a significant plaque some more conservative researchers don't count plaque until it reaches 13 mm thickness now it took me time to realize that despite all of my healthy habits I had still developed cardiovascular plaque that was a gut punch At first I felt like all that work that discipline to stay healthy was wasted I felt like maybe I should have just let myself go eat all I wanted lie on the couch watch TV be lazy eat nachos etc etc etc it it took me weeks to emotionally wrap my head around the other side if I still had plaque with my focus on prevention what shape would I have been in If I had not taken care of my body it slowly dawned on me that I could already have had a heart attack I could even already be dead it doesn't take much plaque to cause a heart attack now here's another thing that changed my life right here you can see even though my average IMT was below 1 mm I still had more plaque than the average 57y old I actually had the arteries of a 73y old and that's when I started to think I've got to change something or I could die I lived in Lexington Kentucky at the time each Saturday morning I ran my half marathon through some of the most beautiful horse country in the world I remember starting the Saturday morning after discovering my plaque it occurred to me that if I had a heart attack out there in those horse farms it would be hours before my body was found cold and lifeless pardon the drama but those fears are normal for someone that's first recognized their mortality and often from finding the first time your own cardiovascular risk then I finally composed myself and realized I'm a professional in this space I know more about it than most and I needed to listen to my own medicine for example exercise like jogging doesn't cause heart attacks and I needed to move on so that's what I did when I returned home from that run I decided to make a few changes I did a few more tests I did multiple tests but the most important was an oral glucose tolerance test these next three sentences are the three most important sentences in this video If you hear nothing else at least hear this my blood sugar peaked over 160 that meant I had enough pre diabetes to cause cardiovascular plaque let me repeat my blood sugars peaked at greater than 160 indicating enough pre-diabetes to cause plaque and heart disease risk so remember those changes I committed to make one of them was and the biggest one was I switched from a lowfat diet to a low carb diet my biggest change out of all of them was switching from a lowfat diet to a low carb diet and today I've tested multiple diets ranging from carnivore to vegan to paleo ketovore and everything in between but all were on the low carb side now I'm doing even keto I'm CTIC about 5 days a week I've been fat adapted for about 10 years these days I blow acetone in the range of between five and 20 parts per million again five days a week so if you didn't get that let me say it differently I'm ktic most days I'm burning fat no matter which diet I'm on I just don't eat enough carbs to change that part of my diet no matter which diet I try vegan or carnivore I especially avoid processed carbs grain products let me show you the progress this is the biggest progress I've ever made in about one year I was able to reduce my average cimt from 88 to 067 mm that was one year reduced my average cimt into my media thickness from 88 to 67 millim now let me explain what that means if you look at the image right here it means that I was able to reverse my arterial age from 73 to 52 years in one year I was able to reverse about 20 years of worth of arterial plaque deposition now how did this happen let's go back and talk about what does quote plaque reversal actually mean when you reverse plaque you're not necessar taking calcium out of the artery it doesn't even mean taking cholesterol out of the artery necessarily here's what you're doing what you are doing is taking the inflammatory liquid the swelling and puss out of the plaque so it's like you're deflating a balloon or a tire it will decrease the size of the plaque and the size of the intima media thickness loss of inflammation makes plaque shrink calcium deposits are just biomarkers they're biomarkers of decreasing inflammation but not everything is sunshine and rainbows I still had to plaque take a look at another cimt from 2019 you can read the description of the cimt in different areas of the kateed artery here in the comments my R koted bulb says 1.
3 again in millimeters and and the letter H H stands for heterogenous heterogenous ah this sounds geeky but hang in there for a minute it's essential you'll see why you've seen the word heterogenous heterogenous means mixed just like homogeneous means consistent heterogenous plaque is a mixture of soft and calcified plaque how calcified well it's actually mostly calcified as you can see in the white in the image right here soft hardened and mixed plaque is classified by the amount of calcium embedded in that plaque new plaque is homogeneous soft and deadly it can squeeze into the bloodstream where the inflammatory goo causes clots the clots cause the problem not the plaque itself the inflammatory liquid is basically pus soft plaes have a very thin cap near the intima it doesn't even have to be big just soft as the body heals the plaque it calcifies this is an example of heterogenous partially calcified plaque you can see it has some calcium which is good calcium in this case helps with the healing and scarring process it's a biomarker of of plaque stability now here this is not the healthiest calcification calcium is all over the place it's not organized and it's surrounded by a lot of hot liquid like islands of hot liquid and and calcium this plaque can still rupture if the cap is thin this is calcified plaque the calcium is well organized and it has a thick cap it won't break it's stable it won't cause a heart attack or a stroke removing inflammation or reversing plaque causes more stable plaque and less or no soft plaque the best goal is to have no plaque at all but most of us develop plaque as we age into insulin resistance when we do here's what to do stabilize that plaque and keep it stable so what did I do to reverse my plaque remember when I said I came back from that first long run after finding out my plaque and I decided to change a few things I changed the way I ate as I said I went from low fat to low carb I changed the way I exercise I changed my mind on supplements I changed the way I slept and yes I even started medications some of these changes like medications and supplements were helpful but far less important than lifestyle that's been proven time and time and time again lifestyle is King the most important change for most people is weight loss at 510 I weighed about 157 pounds so I didn't have much opportunity there I did lose 5 to 10 lbs and that did help I also traded in Marathon level distances for a lot more hit and resistance training especially in the legs metabolically active strong legs are the most effective internal safety valve against rising blood sugar I started taking supplements I started with vitamin D3 5,000 international units and nasin 200 milligrams a day mostly because I had some HDL issues I've updated that list to my current needs and now I'm taking vitamin D3 5,000 international units a day K2 400 micrograms a day with an additional tablespoon of natto el citrine magnesium L3 and8 magnesium chloride Kyolic Garlic and I'm also eating taking more nanto let me tell you where I am now this is my latest cimt from December 2023 this cimt is from cardio risk cardio risk has world class cimt quality processes as you can see in my left kateed artery I still did not develop more significant plaque it stayed mostly below 1. 2 millim on my right side that plaque I had from the beginning is still 1.
