Dr. Khan's Prescription for Heart Health: Less Alcohol, More Plants

Prepare to have your thoughts provoked as I, along with our special guest, Dr. Khan, a practicing cardiologist, unravel the mystery behind heart disease's escalating prevalence post-World War II. Dr. Khan and I take a deep look at the controversial subject of alcohol consumption and its health impacts. He helps to shed light on the overwhelming evidence supporting the health benefits of plant-based foods and the detrimental effects of processed red meat.  It's more than a podcast; it's your stepping stone towards better heart health. Tune in to understand, learn, and transform.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC of Detroit, Michigan, is a practicing cardiologist, and a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Michigan Medical School. Known as "America’s Healthy Heart Doc", Dr. Kahn has triple board certification in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine and Interventional Cardiology.  He was the first physician in the world to certify in Metabolic Cardiology with A4M/MMI and the University of South Florida. He founded the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity in Bingham Farms, MI. 

Dr. Kahn has authored scores of publications in his field including articles, book chapters and monographs. He writes health articles and has 6 books in publication including Your Whole Heart Solution, Dead Execs Don’t Get Bonuses and The Plant Based Solution, and Lipoprotein(a): The Heart’s Silent Killer. He has regular appearances on Dr. Phil, The Doctors Show, Dr. Oz, Larry King Now, Joe Rogan Experience, and with Bassem Yousef. He has been awarded a Health Hero award from Detroit Crain’s Business. 

Resources from this Episode:
Heart Doc VIP with Dr. Joel Kahn 
Dead Execs Don't Get Bonuses
Lipoprotein(A), The Heart’s Quiet Killer: A Diet & Lifestyle Guide
The Plant-Based Solution

If you want to connect with Dr. Kahn, visit the following:
Website:  drjoelkahn.com
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Plant Centered Nutrition Essential Resources:

• “How to Go Plant-Based in 30 Days” Digital Course 
• 100% Plant-Based One-Month Meal Plan 

Chapters

• 0:03 Alcohol's Impact on Heart Health
• 11:39 Understanding Arterial Hardening and Preventive Measures
• 19:46 The Controversy Surrounding Alcohol and Health
• 28:25 Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet Benefits

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Plant-Centered and Thriving Podcast. I'm your host, ashley Kitchens. I'm a plant-based registered dietitian and virtual nutrition mentor. I was raised on an Angus Cattle Farm, grew up with a lot of GI issues and used the power of plant-based eating to promote healing. Here you'll find inspiration, ideas and encouragement for your own plant-based journey. I'm so thrilled you're here today. Let's get started. Welcome to the show Plant-Centered Listener. My name is Ashley and I am your host today. I have an incredible guest and topic for you today.

Speaker 1: 0:38

This year I've been really curious to learn more about alcohol and its impact on the body. I started doing some research and I came across an article on Forks Over Knives. There were a couple doctors who were mentioned in this article. I thought, well, these doctors. They had some really great quotes around alcohol. I was like I'm going to reach out to one of them and just see what happens, hoping he'll respond. He did.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Today I have with you Dr Khan, who is a medical doctor in Detroit, michigan. He's also a practicing cardiologist and a clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan Medical School. Known as America's Healthy Heart Doc. Dr Khan is triple board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine and interventional cardiology. He was the first physician in the world to certify in metabolic cardiology. With A4M-MMI and the University of South Florida, he founded the Khan Center for Cardiac Longevity in Birmingham Farms, michigan.

Speaker 1: 1:52

Dr Khan has authored scores of publications in his field, including articles, book chapters and monographs. He writes health articles and has six books and publications, including your Whole Heart Solution, dead Xs Don't Get Bonuses, and the Plant-Based Solution and Lipoprotein A, which we actually talk a lot about, the Heart's Silent Killer. He has regular appearances on Dr Phil the Doctor Show, dr Oz, larry King, now Joe Rogan Experience, and with Basim Youssef he has been awarded a Health Hero Award from Detroit's Crane's Business. This conversation was fascinating and I am so thrilled to be able to share it with you, especially around this time in the holidays, where drinking tends to become a bit more popular and over-consumed. So please join me in welcoming this incredible conversation with Dr Khan, as he brings in his expertise to teach us more about alcohol and its impact on the body. Well, dr Khan, welcome to the show. I'm really excited to talk with you today.

Speaker 2: 2:55

Thank you so much. A little holiday cheer will be shared.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Yes, absolutely. So I would love for you to kind of take us back to the beginning of heart disease and talk about kind of how it starts to develop.

Speaker 2: 3:08

Well, there actually is evidence interesting, I'll be quick that heart disease goes back thousands of years. If you actually put a mummy from Egypt in the CT scanner you can actually see clear-cut evidence that they had heart disease. What percentage I don't know because there's only limited studies. And there's a very famous scientific experiment out there called OCD, Iceman, otzi. Everybody's looking up and they found this almost perfectly preserved body in a crevice of ice in Europe I forget which country it was in 5000 year old body, pretty much like a mummy, but it was encased in ice. And they've done many studies interesting. But OTZI had coronary disease, he had heart disease. So it isn't a new thing but it clearly.

Speaker 2: 3:57

Everybody saw that about World War II, if you talk to cardiologists in the early part of the 1900s or red textbooks, heart attacks were considered very rare. In fact the word myocardial infarction, which is scientific for heart attack, I think, if I remember, was about a 1911 description and there were heart attacks before then. But that was a new word. But after World War II we brought in cigarettes. They were free for GI, you know veterans. We brought in McDonald's. We brought in Coca-Cola. We brought in moms working and not cooking in the kitchen we brought in, you know, the ability to outsource our nutrition and sit all day long at a job and farmer. You know kind of active jobs went down and desk jobs went up and a whole lot of other factors. So there's been a real rise in heart attacks, heart disease the most important heart disease is when you clog your arteries.

Speaker 2: 4:44

Your heart pumps a hundred thousand times a day. It does that because you have generally three large, flexible, soft, clean arteries to just be living pipes to get the oxygen, blood and glucose to your heart muscle. And if you clog them up you're gonna have a problem. Just like a car, you clog the fuel lines. I had that once with an old car I restored. Fuel lines got all clogged and the engine wouldn't work. Well, your heart's the same way, but in a human it might be chest tightness, that's called angina. It might be shortness of breath. It might be so bad you're in an emergency room. It might be a heart attack.

Speaker 2: 5:18

And the saddest statistic is just in the United States over a thousand people a day drop dead suddenly. They never get to say goodbye to relatives, they don't have that deep, meaningful conversation. They could be 41. They could be, you know, 52. They could be 89, but it's called sudden cardiac death and it's usually due to clogged arteries. So there hasn't really been this warp speed. You know impact, we're gonna moonshot, we're gonna cure cancer Moonshot, we're gonna bring vaccines on in nine months, you know, it's like heart disease Okay, you died and you're 41. That's tragic, but we haven't really. We have actually the ability to slash it 70, 80 percent, starting right now. It's not a hard program.

Speaker 1: 5:59

Wow, yeah Well. So how does that? How do your arteries start to get, get clogged up? Like, how does that kind of happen?

Speaker 2: 6:05

Yeah. So the reason? Probably, you know, I don't know that the diet 5,000 years ago or 3,000 years ago was as pure as the paleolithic diet, the paleo diet people would like us to believe. You know ancestral traditions. Yeah, there wasn't any McDonald's around, but you know who knows what the heck. There's a whole range of things people like. So diet may have had a role, Stress probably had a role. I mean, there are some, you know, cultures that smoking of one kind or another was part of their tradition.

Speaker 2: 6:33

But genetics has always been important and even like this Otsi the Iceman it was actually amazingly figured out that he was a male, carried a genetic marker for heart disease. So genetics matter. But again, very succinctly in because of this rise in heart attacks because President Eisenhower had a massive heart attack in the 1950s a lot of money started funneling into research. When I say a lot of money, it's not much compared to what's going on in the pharmaceutical industry and the rest, but some money. And we identified five big things Do you smoke?

Speaker 2: 7:08

Do you have diabetes? Do you have high blood pressure? Do you have high cholesterol and does mom, dad, brother, sister have an early heart attack, stroke or cardiac death? Big five. And of course, there's actually a more upstream question why do you have diabetes? Why do you have high blood pressure? Why do you have high cholesterol? Of course, smoking, it's pretty obvious. Why does your family have a lot of heart disease? Because a lot of that is lifestyle poor choices, lack of education, restricted access to healthy foods, food deserts, all kinds of cultural and other issues. But now we've expanded the big five to in my clinic we check at least 20 different parameters genetic parameters, you know, vitamin levels, inflammation levels.

Speaker 2: 7:47

We go deep on insulin resistance and blood sugar, and I don't want to make it too complex, it still really matters. Do you sleep? Do you not smoke? Do you move your body? Do you eat clean, healthy, largely plant-based foods or my world, exclusively plant-based foods, simple foods beans, bees, lentils, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, soy products like tofu, tempeh? Do you eat those foods, which is what I eat only and exclusively for decades and decades? But you can get complex in it and I love the challenge. I see it every day in my clinic.

Speaker 2: 8:18

People come and you know I had one this week. My son, at age 41, died of a heart attack. I mean talk about tragic. My grandfather had a stroke at age 52. I'd like to go deep. It's usually lab work and usually tell people for the first time. You know we talked about your diet, your sleep, your smoking, your fitness, your stress. But your lab work revealed strong genetic influences you never knew about and now you can tell your children about it. And sometimes there's specific therapy or sometimes you're just, you know, a strong push on lifestyle therapy. But at least you know what you're up against.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Yeah, wow. So it sounds like you really look at the big picture as much as you can to try and help this patient client kind of move forward with helping them either reverse, prevent any further complications, exactly.

Speaker 2: 9:04

We're really lethargic when it comes to heart testing. You know we all go for colonoscopy, mammography, prostate evaluation, cervical cancer evaluation. But tell me, the last time you walked out of, your doctor said oh, everybody gets a heart evaluation in this clinic, and I'm not talking just check up blood pressure. In a couple of simple labs there's a CT scan called the coronary artery calcium scan or a heart calcium scan. It can cost 50 to $99 out of your pocket in most cities. It takes about five seconds, it's painless, it's a very low dose of radiation. Been available since 1990, but the cost has really come down and it's basically the mammogram of the heart, the colonoscopy of the heart.

Speaker 2: 9:44

About age 45, the same age you might have a mammogram of colonoscopy, get a heart calcium CT scan. We'd immediately say here's a group of people that are high risk. It'd be about 50%. Here's a group of people that are low risk and you people eat healthy. We'll see in five to 10 years. But you people over here need a lot of love and attention and we do it with other diseases but the number one killer men and women. We have no real fire in the belly to make early diagnoses. San criteriaproducedcom.

Speaker 1: 10:12

Yeah, I feel like a lot of people don't know about this test, which is unfortunate.

Speaker 2: 10:15

It's crazy. I wrote a book 10 years ago. I've taken it out in the second edition. Funny name dead execs don't get bonuses. It's inexpensive paperback. It's sort of laid out 10 years ago what you could do. But it's sad that under 10% of people at age 50 have ever heard of or had this test and nobody makes money on it. If it's $50, that's what it costs to turn on a CT scanner and get a cardiologist or radiologist to read it. So that's one of the problems. You're not going to see it on billboards. You're not going to see ads. There's no income flowing. It's just good health screening.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Yeah, which blows my mind. Since heart diseases are number one killer, why this isn't talked about more?

Speaker 2: 10:58

It's crazy. That's why I said yes to your podcast.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Yeah, I appreciate it. So what does that test actually reveal for someone who's not familiar with it?

Speaker 2: 11:05

Yeah, almost always when you're starting to develop. If you have a heart attack at age 54, you had the disease for 10 years, maybe 15 years, and in every other disease we want to pick it up early, but heart disease we wait during the emergency room or dead. It's crazy. So when you're developing plaque almost always the mixture of garbage in your arteries and it's not just true of heart arteries, it's brain arteries, it's leg arteries, it's sexual organ arteries, because erectile dysfunction in men and probably some equivalent of women, is a early clue to bad arteries. They get calcified. Everybody's heard the term hardening of the arteries. The hardening is calcification, calcium bone. Your arteries shouldn't be bone like. They should be soft, flexible and free of bone.

Speaker 2: 11:49

So fortunately the CT scan just turns on, turns off. It's extremely precise at identifying calcium and arteries and there's a number and you want to be zero. No calcium, no hardening, no aging detected in my heart arteries, but it's a number that could be 172 or 889 or 1463. It's a software program that's quite valid and available that gives you and then you compare it to others your age. I tell people all the time you're in the 99th percentile, you're first in your class in a bad way and we got work to do. Or I enjoy more telling people good news. I just emailed the patient today. You're a perfect zero, so you don't have to worry as much about the cholesterol when you're a zero. You still worry about your blood sugar and your blood pressure. But you just tell that person come back in a few years and we'll consider rechecking you.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Nice. Well, I'm curious too, because you mentioned plaque, and I would love for you to explain where that plaque comes from. In a way, we hear a lot about well, saturated fat doesn't matter, but it does matter. Eating cholesterol doesn't matter, but it does matter.

Speaker 2: 12:55

The problem with great science going back to the 1960s, at least even 1950s and I'm pretty much a student of that stuff is, without a doubt, saturated fat is related to developing clogged arteries. So when you're eating butter and cheese and marbled meats and egg yolks and maybe coconut oil, which is very high in saturated fat, you are probably going to raise your cholesterol, particularly what's called your LDL cholesterol, and you may increase the rate of clogging your arteries. It just doesn't happen to everybody. So you'll see on Twitter or now X examples all the time.

Speaker 2: 13:30

My cholesterol is 350, but my heart calcium score was zero. Well, might be zero now. I'm not sure it's going to be zero in 10 years and you probably ought to repeat it. But not every smoker gets lung cancer and not everybody that eats Twinkies gets diabetes. I mean not everybody that texts and drives gets in a car accident. But if you're going to protect your health, you probably want to lower your saturated fat content, like every health organization in the world recommends that when you eat whole food, plant-based, as long as you stay away from coconut oil, you're going to eat a relatively low saturated fat diet Now you don't have to get to zero.

Speaker 2: 14:07

It's going to be hard to get to zero because nuts and seeds and olives and some natural plant-based foods that are rather fun to eat and generally healthy has some saturated fat but it's very low compared to the animal oral foods, as an example.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So for someone who has some of these risk factors that you talked about earlier on for heart disease whether it's running in their family or they have type 2 diabetes or something related to that what are some things that you commonly recommend that they can do to prevent something from happening? Hopefully, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:35

So you know if you got a family history. You know, get checked, get the heart CT scan. You know you're welcome to pick up my paperback that execs Don't get bonuses. There's some extra blood work you might consider doing. Family doctors interest. They're wonderful people, gynecologists. They do the same lab work that we did in the 1970s, like we didn't learn anything in 50 years. Yeah, we learned a lot, so there's better labs. To add on to the basics, I'll give one shout out.

Speaker 2: 15:02

There's a cholesterol that 20 to 25% of people inherit from one or both parents and it's got a weird name. That's the marketing problem. It's called lipoprotein little a or LP little a. But 25% of people, which is nearly 2 billion people in the world, from birth are walking around with two cholesterol in their blood LDL cholesterol that can damage arteries, and lipoprotein A cholesterol. And they have no idea because hardly any doctors in the world check it. That's starting to change. There's so many references in the public literature I think the sports illustrator remains GQ or something. There's articles showing up and there's certainly thousands of articles in the scientific literature, but there's no drug right now that lowers lipoprotein A, so it's largely ignored. Now, like all things, follow the money. The pharmaceutical industry has five or six drugs in the pipeline because the drugs that are out that you've heard of Lipitor, crestor don't lower this genetic cholesterol and, unfortunately, diet and exercise don't do much to lower this genetic cholesterol. The new drugs are looking very optimistic and they're going to cost a fortune and they're going to be multi-billion dollar winners for pharmaceutical. But they're going to help people and I'm in favor of this research.

Speaker 2: 16:15

But you know that's one blood test people can ask for. You know, dr Jones, can I get my lipoprotein little A checked? Now again, I don't want to sound too commercial. I was so fired up about this topic and I've checked it in thousands of people and I managed thousands of people that have it. I wrote a book called Lipoprotein Little A the Heart's Silent Killer. It's a nice little paper. Back it has over 50 wonderful plant-based recipes just as a bonus. So if you don't enjoy the academic topic, you'll enjoy the culinary topic. But people want to learn more and you should get checked. You know one out of every four people listening to this doesn't know they have a potentially not automatically but potentially deadly cholesterol in their blood. So those are the kind of things you got to do, and it's always education on lifestyle, talk about sleep, talk about smoking, talk about fitness, talk about weight, talk about stress, but talk about nutrition.

Speaker 2: 17:08

So in my clinic I don't have a dietitian on staff, but my patients get homework and they get follow-up. Did they watch Fork Supernize? Did they watch what the Hell? Did they watch Game Changers Movie? Did they sign on to listen to a podcast like yours or my podcast weekly called Heart Doc VIP? Do they read a book? I've got a book called the Plant-Based Solution. It goes through all the history of whole-food, plant-based eating and health issues. Or Dr Greger, how not to die. Or Dr Esselstyn, prevent and reverse heart disease. Or Dr Furman, eat for Life a wonderful book. Or Dr Ornish, undo it. They gotta read one book. They become very educated and, frankly, the smart ones, the motivated ones, maybe the scared ones they come back six weeks later and they've reviewed this material and they drastically altered their diet with very little effort.

Speaker 1: 17:58

Yeah, and I'm sure the ones who are motivated, I mean, I'm sure they come back with just like, wow, this veil has been unlifted and I've seen my food and my life in a totally different way.

Speaker 2: 18:06

Yeah, you sometimes change the whole family. I'm seeing a wife and my husband lost 10 pounds because he decided to try some of this stuff and my kids are eating tempeh burgers for the first time. It's just again. We're under educating people on these healthy options, even though there's so many great free online resources everywhere. It just it takes a little more work to create some plant-based meals than it does to throw a piece of dead beef on a barbecue. That is a problem. I mean, you can throw a Portobello burger on a barbecue and pretty much enjoy the same food sensation with the same simplicity, but people just don't think about that.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Yep, it's true. And, Dr Cohn, we've included your resources in the show notes because I think if someone listening isn't struggling with this issue, I'm sure they know someone, so there's a lot of people that can benefit from your books, your podcasts and so many other resources that you have.

Speaker 2: 18:58

As we say in Detroit, michigan super ducky. Thank you yeah perfect.

Speaker 1: 19:03

Well, so we're. I wanna switch gears to alcohol, because we're around that time where alcohol really spikes Consumption for some people nearly doubles, and I read an article from Forks Over Knives where you made some comments about alcohol consumption and heart, whether or not it's protective or not. So I would love for you to kind of give your take on that.

Speaker 2: 19:20

Yeah, very, very touchy topic and particularly in the last three, four years in the state of Michigan where I live and practice, you know, schools were shut and liquor stores were open during the pandemic. I mean, come up with a public policies. It's that that was a good idea. And people's alcohol intake, you know, went up dramatically and I think a lot of people have maintained that habit and I'll also. I'll share this with people. I don't really proud of it.

Speaker 2: 19:46

I never really had a drinking problem, but I'm a bit of a wine snob. I'm very knowledgeable on Italian wine. I have a decent collection, not necessarily expensive collection, and I can tell you from Northern Italy, the Southern Italy, the Sicily and to Sardinia, what are the wines of choice. And I was having, during COVID, one to two glasses of red wine every night, dry red wine, low sugar red wine, healthy red wine. Very often, you know, if I had to $10 bottle red wine, I know where to get my value. And it's interesting, about three months ago I had a little epiphany personally and I just overnight, because I knew I wasn't stuck on it, I wasn't getting, you know, smashed I just cut back 90%, you know, to maybe one or two glasses a week and I gotta tell I mean I dropped over 10 pounds in about eight weeks and that that frankly ticked me off. I was hoping there'd be no advantage and these were 10 pounds I didn't really want and I was doing various fasting protocols and I eat clean and I work out every day. It just wasn't coming off. So my own personal story has recently been and I think I've got the staying power to stick with this, you know drastically reduced.

Speaker 2: 20:53

So you know, the national guidelines in the United States are rather liberal. One to two glasses of alcohol a day for a man, one glass a day of alcohol for a woman. That's what the guidelines, the USDA guidelines, say, not necessarily completely sexist, because you could have 180 pound woman and 130 pound man. How can that be the rules? It's also there's a trend that men can metabolize alcohol faster, more efficiently than women and can get rid of it quicker. That's what it's based on. In other countries there's no difference. It's one glass a day for men and women. That may ultimately change in the United States. Probably the liquor lobbies are very powerful on some of these guidelines and that's like one ounce of spirits, five ounces of wine, eight ounces of beer. It's taking into account that. You know there's a big difference between tequila and a low alcohol beer in terms of alcohol content.

Speaker 2: 21:44

When you just go to the topic of alcohol consumption and heart disease, cardiovascular disease, then you actually measure things like death, heart attack, hospitalization Number one. Never has there been a large randomized study that said we took 10,000 people, we let 5,000 people drink to those guidelines that's up to 14 drinks a week and we let 5,000 people have one or two glasses a week or none, and we compare their outcome. There's no study like that. So we're in the weeds, the same weeds that exist when we discuss the optimal diet. Compare a vegan diet to a paleo diet. We have no great randomized studies. So we've got wars and fighting, but people don't fight as much about booze as they fight as much about food.

Speaker 2: 22:29

But when you look just at heart disease, there is data over and over and there's something called review data and meta-analysis data that suggests there's an advantage to a low amount of alcohol intake on a consistent basis? Probably not. You know, binging and not drinking, binging and not drinking this kind of European blue zones, mediterranean diet there's a big family gathering of a healthy meal and around that is a low alcohol, maybe homemade wine or something it's not margaritas and rum and coke and that there is data for heart disease advantage and reduction. Now there's been a lot of pushback because when you look at the global picture of survival, of cancer rates, of brain health, certainly of addiction and liver disease and cirrhosis, we know that there are spots where the data suggests quite the opposite. Obviously, for liver disease, alcoholism and cirrhosis are very problematic.

Speaker 2: 23:27

Brain disease is interesting. There's articles suggest you know everything's. Also there is a sweet spot this one to two drink a day or less, because I think two drinks a day, seven days a week, is a lot of alcohol. But there may actually be some protection for the brain with a little bit of alcohol. That's again Mediterranean diet. That's actually some of the signs.

Speaker 2: 23:48

But many neurologists now are saying you know, alcohol is nothing but a brain toxin and you should reduce or eliminate. So you have to be. You know, and I have patients friends just had a neighbor that are addicted or die of alcoholic diseases, liver disease, brain disease. So you know, if you can't handle it you better get professional help or a 12-step program or AA program or Antibuse or something. I mean. You know, if you think you're just in that sweet spot, doc. You know, friday and Saturday night I have a glass of red wine with the family in a social setting. I'm reproducing the Mediterranean blue zone experience. You know, I don't think you can say that that's satanic and you're clearly going to. You know, alter your health, but be mindful and maybe you know there's a huge movement now people not drinking at all, a lot of young people.

Speaker 2: 24:38

There are some non-alcoholic spirits out there. There are some non-alcoholic wines that are actually showing up in some fancy restaurant wine lists. There are non-alcoholic beers I buy. I have no stock in Heineken but they make a non-alcoholic beer with six to one calories. Not bad and nothing wrong with just, you know, a sparkling water with a lime in it that nobody in a social setting can tell if you're drinking a gin and tonic or just a sparkling water and lime.

Speaker 2: 25:06

So you know it's hard to say never, you can't touch this stuff. But it is a slippery slope, I mean, you know, and it's harder than cigarettes. I mean the easiest answer for cigarettes is none, zero. I'm not sure when cigarette a day harms people, and it doesn't harm them as much as 20 cigarettes a day. But it's just easier. And there's secondhand smoking. I mean there isn't any secondhand alcoholism except it certainly impacts the family and there are drivers on the road that are at risk, so there is some collateral damage to somebody who is abusing and not handling it.

Speaker 2: 25:44

So limit, limit, limit and it's not clear as the benefit, like for wine, is the benefit. The grapes. You know Grapes are incredible food. You can eat them. You can buy unsweetened grape juice. There are some studies that the health benefits of wine can be reproduced by unsweetened grape juice.

Speaker 2: 26:03

And you know how much is the alcohol, other than a slight relaxing factor, promote. There was a study in the last three or four months, I don't remember exactly, but it did show in some I think it was like a brain PET scan that coming home from work having a small alcoholic drink actually did kind of turn off some of the work brain executive function centers, which wouldn't be a good idea if you're walking into a business meeting and making a presentation. But it might be better than staying, you know, completely alert, awake and hyper focused and your sympathetic nervous system and adrenaline system never, you know, quieting down. I'd rather you meditate for five minutes or listen to, you know, some Mozart music, or you know, go take a walk with the family or a dog, do something a little more natural to shut off the day's stress. But so tough topic. But around the holidays, warning, warning, danger, danger. Mr Smith has one of the childhood TV shows he used to watch, lost in Space. Used to say Nice.

Speaker 1: 27:08

And I like to how you touched on that. It's not someone maybe eating the standard American diet and drinking alcohol, but someone who's maybe replicating more of like a blue zone Mediterranean type diet to where there's some benefits that might be there for drinking red wine, right.

Speaker 2: 27:21

Yeah, and the other thing is red wine. Actually, alcohol in general wrecks a lot of people's sleep, is no doubt. Maybe you wear an order ring, a whoop band, an apple watch, a Fitbit, but, boy, you have a cocktail at 9pm and monitor your sleep, or you go the next day and skip that cocktail at 9pm. A lot of people notice it. You know they don't need it, they don't need a whoop band. They can just tell their sleep is much more disrupted with heavy drinking and some people are extremely sensitive to even, you know, one drink and their sleep. So, since there's so much sleep pathology out there and so much you know interference with our smartphones and our pads and our computer laptops and TVs, we don't need alcohol on top of it, just screwing up our deep sleep.

Speaker 1: 28:07

Yeah, it sounds like it's a little relaxing in the beginning, but the long-term benefit, like the sleep benefits, aren't really that great later on, hours later. Yeah Well, I'm curious to kind of like wrap things up a little bit what is like one of the most common pieces of advice that you give your patients?

Speaker 2: 28:25

Well, I want them to become students and I, you know there's nothing better than understanding. I mean there's such a lack of information about whole food, plant-based diets and how huge the science is compared to the other popular diets the ketogenic diet, you know, low-carb diets, the carnivore diets, the paleo diets Certainly, in my specialty of heart disease it's 99 to 1 for scientific data suggesting. Every time you make a bowl of a slow-cooked oatmeal with some ground flaxseed and walnuts and blueberries on it, instead of Speedway egg wraps or eggs and bacon, every time you have a gigantic salad for lunch with some white wine, vinegar and maybe a little extra virgin olive oil with every vegetable nut and seed on it, instead of, you know, driving through Chick-fil-A and getting a burger and you know it's a little more work. And every time you experiment with a dinner, a nice lentil stew or a nice bean soup with a whole grain bread and maybe a big salad again, or broccoli or cow, every time you make these changes, you know you're feeding your body insanely healthy. You know macronutrients, carbohydrates, fat, protein, micronutrients, all the vitamins, minerals, plant-based minerals, you know antioxidants and plant-based foods are 60 times higher than an animal-based food. So protect our cells, protect our bodies, you know. So once they get it, it's pretty easy.

Speaker 2: 29:54

And I mean, there are people that are sick type 2 diabetics, obese, hypertension, heart disease that probably should jump in. Just you know, look it, I'll go two months and try and do Dr Furman's program, dr Essison's program, dr Ornish's program, dr Bernard's program, dr McDougal's program. These are some of the famous, you know, programs out there that are based on books or websites. And there's other people, look it, you know I tell them just conquer breakfast, just get those egg bacon wraps out of your life, you know, take the time to make a overnight oats so in the morning you can just grab something and be on your way, or a quick smoothie. I mean, once you got breakfast down, let's start bringing lunch to work instead of letting some restaurant of poor quality food, you know, dominate your health.

Speaker 2: 30:38

And then, you know, dinner's a little tougher because there could be a spouse involved in children. And you know, a lot of my patients do make two or three different meals a day for dinner because they're trying to eat one way for their health and their spouse won't go along with it. Our children are, you know, the teenagers are revolting, but so dinner's a little tougher. There's even a book out there, very popular about 10 years ago, called Vegan Before Six by Mark Bitman, a New York Times writer. It's a good book but how he lost a ton of weight and reversed his type 2 diabetes by just eating every breakfast and lunch vegan and dealing with life at dinner time as healthy as he could and you know I don't do that I'm you know every meal is plant-based, but some people can start that way and still see health benefits.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Yeah, and it sounds like once you become a student, it's almost hard to not follow through with some of those recommendations that you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 31:28

You know, and then you get it under your skin about the environmental issues and animal rights and you know you're eating a dead animal and you're, you know, just going to a butcher shop. Or you know if you can sneak your way into a slaughter house. I mean that old Paul McCartney phrase of slaughterhouses had glass walls, we all would be vegan and I agree with that. It's the worst industry on the planet and there are ethical farmers and there are some nice people out there. But you know we're talking Tyson, and so you know the other big, cargill and the. You know the massive international conglomerates that make most of our food. It's horrendous how it's. You know both destroying the planet and just you know your desire to have cow milk instead of soy milk is costing you know thousands of gallons of water and unbelievable cruelty to. You know living animals that are pretty nice beasts overall.

Speaker 1: 32:19

Yeah, yeah, they really are. I agree, dr Kahn. As a last question, I'm curious is there one thing, a habit, lifestyle, eating habit that you would absolutely never do as a cardiologist?

Speaker 2: 32:30

Well, if you had to pick one thing in the food world, you'd stay away from processed red beet. You know the thing that people love. You know bacon, pepperoni, sausage, hot dogs, a ground hamburger or pork quality. I mean the studies are just overwhelming that for heart disease it's basically the number one most toxic food for risk of colorectal cancer, probably prostate cancer, breast cancer, maybe pain credit cancer. Probably the number one most toxic food is processed red meat and they have huge studies all over the world and multiple studies. I mean the World Health Organization shocked the world in October of 2015 when they came out and said processed red meat causes colorectal cancer. That not associated. But in every study they combined with a panel of experts, a couple dozen panel of experts and seemingly without too much, you know, funding bias, they announced that. You know it created a huge pushback, but the data has been reproduced and reproduced.

Speaker 2: 33:25

So sorry, bacon lovers, you're killing yourself one crispy bite at a time. Plus, it induces type two diabetes. It's high in saturated fat. So you know, and yeah, you can live to 100 eating bacon. But you know, if you're smart and you want to play the odds and you really would like to be healthy as your kids and grandkids get older and you retire and you're not, you know, medical mess when you're in your 60s and 70s. I would cut that out first. Second would be cheese. Cheese is so addictive and I don't even particularly like the plant-based cheeses. They're two dents and fats, you know. They're mostly coconut oil. I'm looking for that super, you know healthy version and we'll probably get them, but right now I can't find a super healthy plant-based cheese, so I either do very little or none at all.

Speaker 1: 34:13

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, All right. Well, thank you. Is there anything else that you want to make sure that we touched on or touch?

Speaker 2: 34:18

on that Good stuff, good stuff, all right.

Speaker 1: 34:20

Is there a best place where people can find you or connect with you online?

Speaker 2: 34:24

Yeah, right here in my clinic, but the website is DrJoelcomcom. Drjoelcom. I have a podcast, I have a clinic, I have books, I have many articles I've written and some recipes are on there. Good stuff.

Speaker 1: 34:39

Yep. Wonderful Well for you listening. We have all of Dr Khan's information resources below in the show notes. You can easily access those. Dr Khan, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 34:47

Have a great day.

Speaker 1: 34:48

All right, you too, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Plant-Centered and Thriving podcast today. If you found this episode inspiring, please share it with a friend or post it on social media and tag me so I can personally say thank you. Until next time, keep thriving.