Expert Insights on Practices to Lower Heart Calcium Score (Safely)

Have you ever explored holistic approaches to improve your heart health? If so, what methods have you tried, and what results have you seen?

Unlock the secrets to a healthier heart with our latest podcast episode! Join Anthony Hartcher and Dr. Max Gulhane as they dive deep into innovative, holistic approaches to heart health, challenging the traditional lipid hypothesis. Discover the crucial role of sunlight, vitamin D, grounding, and natural light exposure in maintaining cardiovascular wellness. Learn about the significance of blood clotting, endothelial health, and the groundbreaking concept of exclusion zone water. From personal journeys to professional insights, this episode is packed with valuable information for anyone looking to optimise their heart health safely and naturally. Tune in and transform your understanding of heart health today!

About Dr. Max Gulhane: 

• Practicing Australian Health Optimizing Physician and health educator 
• Education: MD/MPH from University of Melbourne, BSc (Hons, First Class) from University of Queensland 
• Research focus: Effects of refined food diets on inflammatory bowel disease
• Experience in general and emergency medicine across Melbourne, New South Wales, and Queensland 
• Currently on leave from clinical practice, planning to resume in Q3 2024 
• Focus areas: Metabolic disease reversal, circadian and quantum biology, low carbohydrate & carnivore nutrition, fertility & pregnancy optimization, endocrine disrupting chemicals, food system decentralization, regenerative farming 
• Hosts the Regenerative Health Podcast, interviewing doctors, health practitioners, and regenerative farmers. 
• Promotes grassroots and community solutions through REGENERATE, holistic health summits held across Australia 

Connect with Dr. Max Gulhane:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_max_gulhane/
Twitter: https://x.com/MaxGulhaneMD
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@maxgulhanemd
Website: https://www.drmaxgulhane.com/about


About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher

me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering. 

Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more

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Transcript

Dr. Max Gulhane: 0:06

These cholesterol-rich particles, the LDL and other forms of lipid particles, they can be damaged and they can be damaged by oxidative stress. And when they get damaged, they are more likely to damage the endothelial lining and therefore cause a clot and trigger the body's healing process. And the key point for people to understand is that healthy lipoproteins, they can't enter the wall of your blood vessel unless they are damaged or the blood vessel wall is damaged. So that's why it's very, a declaring problem in the lipid hypothesis is that you can have people who have a sky-high LDL who aren't laying down plaque. And that is, there's a cohort of people that are actively being studied called this lean mass.

Anthony Hartcher: 1:08

Welcome back to another insightful episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hartcher, a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten your well-being. And today I have Dr. Max Gulhane on the show to enlighten you about heart health and what you can do from a holistic, quantum biology perspective to really improve your heart health. And I spoke to Max about this heart health because of my most recent diagnosis of coronary artery disease and the fact that I was able to reduce my calcium, calcium calcium score by adopting his practices, by adopting what he's sharing in this episode. So if you want enhanced heart health, I thoroughly recommend you tune into this episode with Dr. Max Gulhane because he will enlighten you in this subject matter of what you can do to supposably, well, in fact, in fact, I actually reversed or started to reverse an irreversibly a so-called irreversible condition. So I've been able to gobsmack my cardiologist in terms of what I've been able to achieve around reducing my calcification score around my arteries and it was through adopting Max's practices. So tune in you're going to get such great enlightening insight from Dr. Max Gulhane. Hence, without much further ado, I'd love you to come into the episode with me and tune into this insightful discussion and Max has such incredible background and insight and he shares all of that and more on this episode. Welcome on the me&my health up podcast. How are you, Dr. Max Gulhane?

Dr. Max Gulhane: 2:59

Hey, Anthony. Thanks for having me.

Anthony Hartcher: 3:02

It's such a pleasure to have you on and I'm really, I spoke to the, I was sharing some knowledge that I learned from you, obviously, through your podcast and on my podcast. And I was telling my audience, the listeners, that I would hopefully have you on this year, and it's come to fruition. So I'm very excited for the listeners. And also I'm, you know, excited in a sense to have such an expert on this quantum side of things that I'm learning. I'm on my learning journey. And you're my mentor but you're probably unaware of that.

Dr. Max Gulhane: 3:34

Thanks and thanks for your kind words, Anthony, yeah, will get any and every method to get this information out to people on, yeah, it's a pleasure to speak with you.

Anthony Hartcher: 3:43

Yeah. So before we get underway with today's topic, I'd love to or we'd love for you to share with the listeners how you've arrived at what you're doing today. Obviously, you have a medical degree, you're fully qualified GP. But yeah, just want to hear your backstory as to how it's all come about.

Dr. Max Gulhane: 3:59

Yeah, sure. So I'm still in progress with my GP training. So that hasn't quite finished yet, almost. But look, I started this journey as doing Bachelor of Science and the bench side research. So looking at your mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease and feeding them different diets and looking at inflammation in the guts and all kinds of like technical bench side research. And that was good. That was very interesting. But it wasn't, and I could see that it wasn't necessarily clinically applicable to people in certain ways. So I did a medical degree in Melbourne Uni and along the road kind of got waylaid into studying public health. So that gave me, there was an extra year and that, that gave me even more zoomed out approach. So I'd done the real micro level learning about science in biology and then I did some really macro level stuff and looking at how and you know, the whole health of populations. So I finished my medical degree and throughout this process, I had my own brushes with the medical system. And for a young guy that was in my case, that was acne and quite severe acne. And without any understanding of these holistic health principles that, you know, I talked about and you talk about you, you just simply just go along with with the done thing. And when the acne gets bad enough, and in my case, it was my, in my early 20s, when everyone else had kind of done with that, that phase of their life, you just go to the doctor go to the GP and you basically begin a chronic disease treatment protocol. And what that is, is simply an escalating ladder of basically medical treatment that start with, in the case of acne, start with topical application of various creams and of different strengths and different varieties. And then they progressed to oral tablets, oral antibiotics, which are essentially the same antibiotics that you use to treat an atypical pneumonia infection or other kinds of serious bacterial infection. And then when that doesn't work, and then this by this point, you've, you're in contact with the dermatology profession. They put you on quite a heavy drug called isotretinoin. And that is effective, it's very effective, but it's associated with a range of side effects. Kind of stopped it because I was experiencing some some mood side effects and low mood, this kind of thing. The even though that is a, you know, obviously a young man, it was an insight into this chronic disease process because you can basically substitute acne for diabetes, for heart failure, for kidney failure, and for obesity into that paradigm. And you'll get a similar medically and pharmaceutical-based and surgical-based treatment paradigm. And what the reason why that is unsatisfactory, to say the least, is that it doesn't consider what is actually driving the problem, the disease in the first place. So if we're not addressing the reason why we're manifesting pimples on our face, or we became overweight, and develop visceral fat and became diabetic, if we're not addressing the reason why that happened in the first place, then we're not really going to get to a cure or reversal. So essentially, this, the whole focus of what I was learning in medical school, and later in, in my medical training is simply regard to these chronic diseases, simply just management. And to someone who wants to live an optimal life, to thrive, to be healthy, to enjoy optimal health, like, that's not good enough for me. And it's not good enough for you know, a lot of people who listen to my podcast and follow my work. So the process of working as a junior doctor and I've worked in emergency departments and general medicine, was I basically did a parallel kind of education on my own in understanding what was actually going on here. And, for me, the things that really worked initially and were very effective was simply just cutting out carbohydrates and cutting out grains and fruit. And these types of, of high-carb foods and, and then I progressed from a low-carb diet to a carnivore type diet and found even more benefit. And then after doing a strict carnivore diet for eight months or so, just found that I was not thriving again, and made some changes, specifically discovered the work of Dr. Jack Kruse, who you mentioned offline, and who is basically one of the pillars or kind of godfathers of this idea of combining quantum biological theory and circadian biology into optimising our health and those sound like complicated concepts and they are, but it's stunningly simplistic in its application, which is doing things like turning off the lights at night and seeing the sunrise in the morning, well, all these things that might be associated historically with hippies and natural living folk, we can find these infinitely complex, you know, quantum explanations for why that's a good good thing and a good for your health. So that was my kind of journey of just self-education learning. And it took me to the ability to practice, you know, in general practice and I've been applying and started to apply what worked for me and what I learned through figures like Dr. Kruse and others in the clinic and and found that other people were also benefiting from from that. And, look, it's not a, and or, it's not either or, it's about, as I said, it's about patient choice. And for a variety of reasons, a lot of people aren't ready to make radical changes to their lifestyle or to the reasons why they feel ill and that's fine that I don't judge them for that. But I think it is my duty as a health practitioner to provide you as a as a patient with these various options. And that's the crux of our job, I think is provide informed consent about the risks and benefits of all different options and not railroad anyone down any kind of treatment protocol where that involves lifestyle change or taking lifelong medications or doing some kind of surgery. So, and that is kind of where, where I'm, my journey. And it's it's been a journey of, I think, critical thinking and skepticism. And I think all the, a lot of the breakthroughs that get happened in science and medicine, that they start with a skepticism of the status quo and the current paradigm of scientific thought. And and that's what I'm interested in because I'm always looking for a better way to try and help people and help my patients thrive. Because as I said, it's not good enough to just simply just be, um, to be surviving with, you know, a chronic disease management plan, in my mind.

Anthony Hartcher: 11:27

Yeah. Fantastic backstory, very similar to mine, actually. I had that really bad chronic acne in my teenage years, so a bit younger, I was a bit younger than you. But certainly, it was taken through that whole protocol that you spoke about. And, yeah, so it had a impact on me. And, and the way I see health because I felt disempowered when I was going through that, that journey. And as a result of that, I sought empowerment, I sought education, and very similar to yours. I mean, I didn't go down a medical path, but I've ended up as a clinical nutritionist today, in a roundabout way, but it got there. So I can very much relate to your story and how you've come across, I guess, holism. And these practices that, uh, not, um, well, you know, they are associated with being more hippie-like, but, uh, they're, it just getting back to nature, essentially.

Dr. Max Gulhane: 12:20

Yeah. And on that point, it's, if you really, I like to think, in some ways, like an engineer, and this is an engineering problem, human health optimisation is an engineering problem. And to understand things from first principles, you need to understand what is the biological niche that our species, uh, essentially has its designed specifications for and we can call, I mean, we've got an evolutionary process, you can call God or whatever you want to call it. But there is a specific set of design parameters that homo sapiens are designed for. If you take a Ferrari onto the local board driving track, you're gonna have a bad time, things are gonna break. And similarly, if you take homo sapiens out of its design niche, its evolutionary niche, with regard to the environment, its food, its temperature, and its electromagnetic exposures, then don't be surprised when when that human gets sick. So at, uh, most fundamental level, this is an engineering problem and, you know, maybe the hippies were just a bit, they were just earlier than everyone else in realising that.

Anthony Hartcher: 13:24

100%. Yeah, I totally agree. And it's certainly when you talk about, you know, radical transformation, you took me on that journey personally. So once I got onto your podcast and started listening and starting to get more insight, and really growing my knowledge base, I really embraced the light magnetism and water or, you know, the deuterium side of things. And I was very much before that a plant-based eater, and I thought, you know, with my clinical nutrition background and what I'd learned at university, you know, that was the bee's knees of diets, right? And that was the best thing for me. And I had no idea in terms of what I was doing to myself around deuterium and the impacts that that can have on your health and well-being. And through my journey following you, and then obviously, sharing some insights with my listeners, I actually got diagnosed with coronary artery disease, and it, you know, really shocked me in a sense, because I've, you know, I've taken great, or placed a lot of emphasis on my health over the years, it's been my number one priority. And so I've always watched what I've eaten, you know, exercise, haven't, you know, don't drink alcohol, don't smoke, all these things. And maintained a good, good body figure and basically looked after myself and then to get that sort of diagnosis was a real shock to me. And I was thinking, ah, this, this is bizarre, you know, I'm thinking, if I look at all the risk factors, you know, the only one that I have, you know, is the familial hypercholesterolemia is the only thing that's really linked to what could be behind my heart disease. And I'm thinking, okay, but you know, I'm on a plant-based diet here. So anyway, so I went through this journey with a GP, get diagnosed, sent to a cardiologist, get the cardiac CT scan done, and they've got a cardiac CT angiogram. And in between the CT or the cardiac CT that gave me a calcification score and initially it was I was in the top 99 percentile for my age group. So I had a score of about 506 which you'll understand is very high. And then I went through the cardiologist and he sent me back for a angiogram, CT angiogram, and there was a six weeks difference between the two scans. And he comes into the room and he says, I've got no plausible explanation here, but your calcification score has dropped significantly and I can't explain it. But whatever you're doing, keep doing it. And then we went on with the discussion about what I was doing and I've since referred him to you. So if you get, uh, you get a call from a cardiologist, Dr. Kevin Chu, then you know where he's come from.

Dr. Max Gulhane: 16:10

Wow, yeah, it's quite a journey. And I'm really glad to hear that, that you saw some some benefit from these lifestyle. So, I mean, coronary artery disease is a spectrum. So essentially, for the listeners to understand exactly what's going on here, so the heart is supplied by blood vessels by arteries and these are the coronary arteries because they like a crown, they will, they're basically surrounding the heart and supplying different parts of the heart with with blood. So what can happen is that they can accumulate plaque. And essentially, what plaque is, is it's a buildup of calcification and the body's response to damage of that of that inside artery lining where the blood is flowing. And that becomes a problem because it indicates that the vessel is under stress. And the problem most significantly, is that, that represents a process which can suddenly lead to an occlusion or a complete blockage of that artery. And when that occurs, the hearts ability to pump and work as a pump and, well, that's another whole topic about its actual role, whether it's acting as a pump or a hydraulic ram, but, and, we won't go there yet, is compromised. And then you essentially have an inability to maintain your essential cardiac output and then, you know, you can lose perfusion to your brain and you die. So that is what we call in medicine, acute myocardial infarction. And that can lead to death. So heart disease and another way of calling it is ischemic heart disease, is um, one is still the major killer in Australia and around the world. So we've got, you know, legions of people trying to understand: one, why is the blood vessel why blood vessels? Why are we forming plaque? And two, like, why, why, how can we prevent people from developing heart disease and developing plaque and therefore having heart attacks. So for the longest time, the the school of thought with regard to why people are developing this disease was related to was related to blood lipids, so, and specifically cholesterol, which is carried in in lipoproteins, and that the history is long, but it started with a gentleman called Ancel Keys, who had a hypothesis that those people who ate sources of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat were essentially going to clog up their arteries like, you know, a drain pipe, because he saw that when on people who died, that they have the macroscopic or the look of these arteries in the pathology lab is, appears to be, you know, fat clogged. The diet-heart hypothesis essentially, basically morphed into what's known as the lipid hypothesis. And that was just that if you have a high level of LDL or LDL cholesterol, then you're at high risk of forming these atherosclerotic plaques, and therefore, later on to getting a acute myocardial infarction. And there's a range of problems or inconsistencies with the lipid hypothesis that remain to be addressed by the mainstream preventative cardiology and general practice and essentially, mainstream medical establishment as it stands, there's various kinds of pieces of evidence that just don't fit into a coherent puzzle. So why is it that we repeatedly see on long-term population studies that people with higher LDL and total cholesterol levels, they live longer than people with lower cholesterol levels? And there's more evidence, like if you take a look at people who get admitted with with heart attack or coronary artery, symptomatic coronary artery disease, like angina, and and you measure their blood lipids, then one study in the US, I believe it was 2015, over 130,000 patients, more than half had these cholesterol levels within the normal limit. So if we're putting together a coherent explanation for observed phenomena, then it really you know, there's pieces that don't fit. What the innovation has been in terms of what I like to call decentralised thought or people looking at the evidence themselves and and coming to unbiased conclusions just by their own research, is that rather than these high cholesterol particles suddenly and diffusing across the barrier of that blood vessel and forming a plaque, it's really a process of blood clotting that is responsible for not only the process of depositing plaque, which is what Anthony, your cardiologist found when he did your coronary artery calcium score, your CT scan. He was, he saw and the radiologist saw the evidence of decades of damage because when you can see hard plaque on the coronary artery scan, it represents a accumulation of damage that the body has tried to repair. So what this clotting or thrombogenic hypothesis states is that it's actually a series of blood clots and blood damage to the endothelial or vessel lining that occur again and again and again. And essentially, a buildup to form a hard calcified plaque. And that is the same process that can lead to an acute myocardial infarction, which is that sudden blockage of the vessel. And it's actually sudden blockage of the vessel that causes a heart attack. And you mentioned Dr. Stephen Hussey, who I've interviewed on my podcast, that the one way to illustrate this point is that he did not have any calcium in his vessels, but he still managed to have a large heart attack and occlusion of his left anterior descending artery. And that was because there were other factors at play that increase the likelihood of blood clotting. And he went from a pristine artery to occluded because of other factors related to blood clotting and it led to the blockage of that artery. So and what this thrombogenic or blood clotting model and those who are interested, I really recommend a book called The Clot Thickens by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. And so it poses is that and things that damage our blood vessel and these does include smoking, they include inhalation of lead particles, they include diabetes, insulin resistance, which are inherent with fluctuating high blood sugars, blood glucose levels. It includes high blood pressure and what was called barotrauma or the stress that occurs when we're having higher blood pressure in our blood vessels. So, and, well, to understand why people are laying down plaque like you were, Anthony, and is to understand the factors that affect blood clotting and stress is another one because cortisol prevents or delays or retards the body's ability to heal those those blood clots. So and it's interesting because even the blood clotting issue or from a hypothesis, even though it's not recognised as a kind of orthodoxy, but by the cardiology orthodoxy, it in itself is only part of the puzzle. And to understand more pieces of the puzzle, we actually have to understand the effect of water and how water biologically is acting inside our body. And this goes into the these ideas of quantum health and the essential, the biophysical changes in the water molecule that occurs when it's in our body and when things like sunlight hit our body. So the one way of thinking about this is when a surgeon cuts someone open to do surgery or repairs them, the, when they cut that, that make that wound, and yes, if they're using a cauterisation, sure, it's something different. But if simply using a scalpel and if we had liquid water in our bodies, then it would essentially gush out. It doesn't do that. So the water in our bodies is actually a different structure. It's actually called fourth phase water or exclusion zone water. And this is a almost like a liquid crystal, that structure that water assumes. It's not a solid, it's not a liquid, and it's, you know, it's obviously not a gas either. So, our bodies and our cells are made up of this exclusion zone gel, essentially gel-like water. And the researchers that have done a lot of work on this is one called Gerald Pollack, and he's probably the leading world leading researcher on fourth phase water as it currently stands. But he himself is building on the backs of researchers like Gilbert Ling, who have talked about this, you know, decades ago. So, what happens is that the water in your blood vessels is a is in this fourth phase. And what happens, um, what this fourth phase water implies is that you essentially get a separation of charges, and you get the confirmation of the water molecules changes so that you have essentially a negative and a positive kind of aspect to this structure of this water that is forming. And around basically blood vessels, red blood cells, you have on these what are so-called hydrophilic surfaces, you get this exclusion zone water forming. And that exclusion zone is called, so, called that because it actually excludes things from that inner area or the exclusion zone, meaning things like lipoproteins, or, you know, cholesterol lipid carrying lipoproteins can't penetrate it. And neither can other blood proteins or any other things that are floating around the blood. So what we have is that we have the exclusion zone water inside our blood vessels that sit even above the endothelial or the cell layer that lines the inner lining of blood vessels. And what it also means is that we can hold charge, because when you have a separation of charges, you get, you get a battery. So our bodies actually, you know, these electrochemical vehicles that are essentially charged up, and they can be charged by various things that potentiate that exclusion zone. And what one of the, we can talk about the specific things that influence that exclusion zone. But what it means is that for you, Anthony, for anyone else who is interested in heart disease, is that we have to be disrupting the exclusion zone above our blood vessels, um, well before we can even begin to start damaging the glycocalyx, which is a kind of furry layer that protects the cells, and then damaging the endothelial cells themselves, which will then trigger the clotting and healing process. And you do find cholesterol in these plaques of people that have had coronary artery disease. But really, it appears to be that the origin of that cholesterol is actually the red blood cells that have actually formed the clot. And again, the process of calcification is a healing process that the body is trying to do to repair the blood vessel lining. So when we adopt this different perspective on the blood vessel dynamic and the endothelial health, it really flips the paradigm, because now we can have a more coherent idea of what is going wrong to develop things like a coronary artery calcium score of 500. So, and beyond simply just, you know, you've got a high LDL and stop smoking, and take a blood pressure pill, those traditional risk factors still relevant, but they're incomplete in explaining why you got your event or your findings.

Anthony Hartcher: 27:59

Yeah. Thanks for sharing that insight, Max. It's terrific to hear the way you explain it. And yeah, I'm sure the listeners get it a lot clearer than what I tried to explain it as, but it's something that for me, I was totally unaware of. And of course, you know, I've only just become aware of this now and I'm making more effort around maintaining my exclusion zone and protecting my endothelial layer and prevent any more plaque building up. So I've certainly, and I did your protocol pretty much, you know, in terms of what you share on your podcast, for six weeks, and I really doubled down on it and made extra effort. And so I was, you know, I'd like you to talk to it given that, you know, it's it's what you've really helped me, and I feel honored to have you on the podcast. So I'd love you to share about how the listeners can really look after this exclusion zone, you know, and minimise clots forming and the potential risk of coronary artery disease and calcification. And ultimately, it takes them on this journey to optimal health. So, yeah, I'd love for you to take this segue.

Dr. Max Gulhane: 29:10

Yeah, so we can start with, and I like to, you know, if anyone's ever read Nassim Taleb, he has a concept called via negativa, so essentially the negative road. And it involves removing all the bad things before you start adding anything else on. So essentially, to optimise our blood vessel health and prevent the likelihood of depositing plaque and eventually popping off a clot that gives us a heart attack, we need to remove all the insults that are offensive or causing damage to the exclusion zone and the endothelial layer. And like I mentioned, the glycocalyx, which is if anyone has been fishing, then they feel the scales of a fish. It's slippery and slimy. So what that is, these are called glycoproteins and they are extremely, um, they're extremely slippery, essentially. And what you have inside those blood vessels is like a stalk of a glycoprotein that's waving in the wind. That's a way to think about it. Almost looks like seagrass or, you know, waving on the bottom of the ocean. But what that is doing is that is sitting to help protect the the inner lining of blood vessels. And above it is that exclusion zone that we talked about. To start with, and what can we, how can we protect this exclusion zone, is that we need to potentiate everything that provides a battery function to our body. The energy currency is electrons in our body. It's, that's why it's called the electron transport chain. In our mitochondria in that those little organelles that make energy in all of our cells, um, they rely on inputs. And they use food as one of the inputs of electrons, but there are other inputs. And the grounding, which is a way of absorbing or essentially incorporating free electrons from the earth, which is a negative, is negatively charged, is one critical way to kind of build that exclusion zone and access this abundant source of, of free electrons. So, and grounding is, I mean, it's very simple, it's easy and you just involves planting your bare feet on the ground or touching a tree. And, you know, it could potentially be a contributing factor in certain people. But the maintenance of or grounding or having that connection, really does potentiate the exclusion zone and helps maintain that layer of water that is repelling things from from touching that the underlying cell layer. So, and grounding is important and sunlight is critical. And what Dr. Gerald Pollack found in his lab was that light is massively increases the size of the exclusion zone in blood vessels. And so much so that it's actually uh likely and through his experiments he just, he showed that infrared light on its own is actually able to propel blood through the blood vessels, irrespective of the heart or the cardiac pumping of the of the cardiac muscle. And there's an amazing paper that he wrote quite recently that elegantly displays that using a chick embryo. And because we've known for the 20th century, there's been multiple papers showing that blood flow is continuing when the heart is stopped, obviously, in animal models. And there's, there's a reason for that. And what Pollack showed is that shining infrared light, so for the listener, that infrared light is a non-visible long wavelength light. So we can see roughly from between 300 and 700 nanometers, that's visible light that we can see and starts in blue and goes all the way to red in terms of the visible light spectrum. But, and you know, approximately, just under half of the photons, that are emitted and hit us and on planet Earth are non-visible infrared photons. So what Pollack found was that it was infrared light that was so potently able to potentiate the size of the exclusion zone in these blood vessels. So what that means and therefore drive blood flow. So you can just imagine what this means, that if people live indoors and they're wearing rubber-soled shoes and they never go out or they work in an office with LED or fluorescent lighting, they don't receive any infrared light. And infrared light is what you can get abundantly from just simply being outside. So off the bat, you can see how an indoor light environment is depriving two key lifestyle inputs into growing that exclusion zone and therefore protecting the underlying artery and endothelial layer from damage. So those those are critical. So simply getting infrared light from the sun. And there's a bunch of other factors that will impair the exclusion zone. Interestingly, and this remains to be seen and remains to be fully elaborated, but the Pollack Lab has reported things like glyphosate, so the industrial herbicide glyphosate that gets used to essentially desiccate and kill monocropped wheat, chickpeas, sorghum, all kinds of, you know, human and animal crops before harvest. Glyphosate has the potential to diminish the exclusion zone. And they even have reported that non-native electromagnetic fields or non-native electromagnetic radiation, like a Wi-Fi router, which is another form of non-visible light, was diminishing the exclusion zone. So these are kind of other factors that potentially are impairing or impeding our ability to maintain charge in our body and therefore protect that underlying vulnerable blood layer. But if we go even further, and we try and understand the more traditional risk factors from the thrombogenic kind of perspective of coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis, then it's going to be those micro particulates. So like I mentioned, from smoking, from lead inhalation. And that was a major, probably driver of President Eisenhower's heart attack in the 1950s. He was a three-pack-a-day smoker and, you know, there was plenty of lead in the air. And there's, as I mentioned, this blood pressure, high blood pressure, and there's also things like the modification of the lipoproteins and the oxidation and glycation of lipoproteins. So, what that means is that these cholesterol-rich particles, the LDL and other forms of lipid particles, they can be damaged and they can be damaged by oxidative stress. And when they get damaged, they are more likely to damage the endothelial lining and therefore cause a clot and trigger the body's healing process. And the key point for people to understand is that healthy, um, and healthy lipoproteins, they can't enter the wall of your blood vessel unless they are damaged or the blood vessel wall is damaged. So that's why it's very, a declaring problem in the lipid hypothesis is that you can have people who have a sky-high LDL who aren't laying down plaque. And that is, there's a cohort of people that are actively being studied called this lean mass hyper-responder. And they're essentially a group of people who get really high LDL cholesterol on a low-carb or carnivore diet. Yet, the preliminary research is showing that they're not laying down plaque and they're not having unstable plaque, soft plaque either. So, and it really gives weight to this idea that you need damage. You need damage to the blood vessel. You need damage, impairment of your exclusion zone, or you need damage to the lipoproteins through glycation, which is attachment of glucose through having high blood glucose and eating, you know, ultra-processed foods or oxidation of that lipoprotein through what appears to be one of the contributors is seed oils and polyunsaturated oils of plant origin that are highly refined. So you have to have some of these changes to occur before the blood vessel is essentially being damaged. But there's even more, there's heaps more evidence to really in favour of this thrombogenical clotting model that is essentially built on an understanding of the role of clotting in this disease. Because we look at people who have treated with things like steroids. So people with autoimmune disease get treated with immunosuppressing corticosteroids. And they are at high risk of developing coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis. And when you understand, as I mentioned earlier, that the blood vessel, the endothelial progenitor cells, which are healing up these lesions or these damages to the blood vessel wall binding, they get inhibited or stopped when there's high levels of steroids and cortisol around. So there's all these pieces of the puzzle that are really in favour of this model that simply is putting clotting and exclusion zone really at the center of the piece. So as an individual, we can think about stopping smoking. That's a really kind of basic one. Stopping smoking, stopping eating ultra-processed foods that contain sugar and seed oils. And they are high and they're rich in deuterium. And you mentioned deuterium earlier. And, and maybe we can, that's another whole topic in and of itself. But there's so many reasons why these highly refined foods are unsafe for human consumption. But, you know, that is just simply another way of looking at it. So stopping smoking, stopping getting, uh, eating these foods, and then fixing our relationship with light. Because like I mentioned, the sunlight is massively potentiating our exclusion zone. But that's not the only way it's affecting cardiovascular health. And it's going to be the topic of my talk when I'm in Melbourne in a couple of weeks' time. But what we know, we know for a fact that on various population-based studies that people who avoid the sun die more often. And there was basically a seminal paper that was published in 2016, that you follow the Swedish women, about 25,000 of them. And they followed them over 20 years, and they interviewed them about their sun habits. And they essentially characterised them into three groups, those who actively got the most sun exposure, you know, intermediate, and those who avoided the sun. And what they found is that the sun avoiding, the women who avoided the sun had essentially twice the mortality of the most sun-seeking women. And they were baffled because their hypothesis was that the ones that were getting more sun, that were sunbathing, that were going into tanning beds, that were travelling to overseas to tan, they would be dying more frequently. But they, in fact, were dying less frequently. And what the authors were speculating or hypothesising that coronary heart, less heart disease and cardiovascular disease was one of the key reasons why that they weren't dying as much. So, you know, fast forward to last year, and another massive analysis got got published. Well, sorry, it's still in preprint. It's awaiting final peer review. But it was a massive analysis of over 300,000 people that essentially replicated the findings of that melanoma in southern Sweden cohort. And they found that those with higher ultraviolet light exposure and sun exposure had less cardiovascular mortality, as well as less cancer mortality and less all-cause mortality. But it was really providing more evidence that the sun is critical for cardiovascular health. So to understand this a little bit more, and we kind of previewed for your listeners when we talked about the role of infrared light, but there's basically a massive amount of other pathways that relate to cardiovascular health and sunlight. And to really hammer the point home, and we've known for a very long time, again, in multiple meta-analyses and population-based studies that vitamin D deficiency is associated with cardiovascular death and, you know, again, all-cause mortality. And vitamin D level is simply your body's, is simply a biomarker for your sun exposure. And those people who get less sun have a lower vitamin D level. And what we know is that you can't supplement your way to the same benefits you or we observe for people with having higher vitamin D. So the sun is critical for longevity and it's critical for cardiovascular health. So how is it doing it? Well, one way is through potentiating the exclusion zone through that infrared light. And essentially, aiding in blood flow, irrespective of the heart. And this is getting to this idea of, from a engineering point of view, that the suns don't really add up when you think about cardiac physiology and you see that the blood flow essentially goes from its highest pressure down to its lowest pressure in the capillary beds. And then somehow it accelerates back up to return to the venous circulation. So if you were designing this and it was a purely pump-based system, then you'd really need the pump at the bottom of the hill, which should be in the capillary beds, but it's at the top of the hill hump. So it doesn't, it doesn't really make sense. And there's other inconsistencies, including the fact that the red blood cells, some their diameters is actually, could be larger than some of these finest, smallest capillaries in these capillary beds. So, and the amount of brute force or from a force point of view to propel the blood, if the heart were the only propulsion force, is doesn't, it doesn't mathematically make sense or workout. So there's obviously a massive role that infrared light is playing. And that infrared, infrared light is coming not only from the sun, but it's actually coming from your body because the mitochondria generating infrared light as heat when as part of their oxidative metabolism, for oxidative phosphorylation, they're burning food substrates and creating energy. So there's some, I've heard one figure, I don't know if it's substantiated, but these mitochondria are running at 50 degrees Celsius, you know, in terms of their energy production. So they're emitting a massive amount of energy as heat and light. So that could be another reason why, how the blood vessels are getting this infrared energy. And then, and there's also some, I believe there's some evidence that there is magnetic, essentially magnetic attraction. The heart's magnetic field is playing a role in helping to draw blood back towards the heart. So what that means, that those are the more kind of physics-based explanations, but there's also other explanations. And there's a compound called nitric oxide and nitric oxide was discovered to be stored in, basically within our tissues in surrounding our blood vessels and UVA light. So the longer wavelength UV light is able to strike the skin, essentially liberate that nitric oxide. And what that does is potently dilate the blood vessels. So very, very importantly, and potently relaxing those blood vessels. And what that does is essentially reduces the likelihood of developing hypertension, if you're regularly getting ultraviolet, a light on your skin. Because you're you're essentially relaxing everything down and reducing that, those, those pressures that, you know, the preload on the heart. There is, there's lots of other mechanisms too. And that we could talk about. And there's, you know, there's melanocortin receptors in, inside the blood vessels that rely on what's a very interesting compound called POMC or Proopiomelanocortin. And they, that needs UVB light to basically have that vasodilating effect. And we know that the blue light, blue wavelengths also have a relaxing effect. So all the, this idea of primary hypertension or essential hypertension that people get treated for medications at for like, um, calcium channel blockers, or, you know, ACE inhibitors by their doctor, and some percentage, I mean, it's obviously going to vary but by the individual, but some percentage of these people would not need to, um, take that medication, if they were, if they'd built a solar callus and were diligently getting outside in, in, uh, full-spectrum sunlight. So these are, um, sunlight is a critical part of, of cardiovascular health and preserving our cardiovascular health and therefore reducing the likelihood of not only developing coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis, but also heart failure and atrial fibrillation and all kinds of other cardiac problems. And the another way of thinking about it is the sunlight particularly is essential for your mitochondria. And the mitochondria, again, are these energy-producing organelles that are burning hotly, they're using food. They don't like deuterium, which was that compound in processed foods, that that isotope of hydrogen, because it interferes with their ability to function. But they also receive light. They receive near-infrared and red light. And that light essentially helps them operate. And it gets received by the water inside the mitochondria and the protein complexes in the electron transport chain. So depriving yourself of light and, you know, eating processed food diet rich in deuterium is you're doing your mitochondria a grave disservice. And the heart is one of the most mitochondrially dense organs in the body, because it is so metabolically active. So obviously, the brain, the retina, the gonads, the endocrine system, the kidneys are also very rich in mitochondria. But, and, to preventing coronary artery disease and other kinds of heart issues, is going, it's critical to look after these mitochondria. And therefore, that's when things like, you know, the sunlight and the grounding come in. Because the same things that potentiate that exclusion zone are going to aid in mitochondrial health. And then another facet of the sunlight, the problem is, or the solution, is the circadian rhythm. And the fact is that the heart, not just like all your other organs, they have an intrinsic clock timing mechanism. And your whole body is supposed to run on a clock that respects the light and dark cycle outside. And that has occurred as an ancient evolutionary adaption to the changing environment that occurs as the Earth rotates around the sun. And the fact that there's a profound difference in light and therefore energy between night and day. So we have evolved a mechanism to receive light signals and use that information to help run our bodies and our mitochondria and our cells more efficiently. And that is essentially what the circadian rhythm is. It's the body's maintenance of a clock timing mechanism. It needs the sunlight to help program it and to continue to make sure that it's synchronised. And your body is taking those light predominantly through the eye, through special cells in the eye called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, and feeding that information all the way to the hypothalamus. And there's a master clock there where coordinates all this clock timing mechanism, but, and we also have clock, essentially these secondary or organ clocks in almost all our cells of our body. And they rely, they get programmed by the master clock, but they also have other cues that help entrain them or maintain synchronicity. And the heart is no exception. So not only are things like and the classic circadian hormones are melatonin and cortisol because they're dictating wakefulness and sleep and sleep. But in addition to that, it's the circadian rhythm is programming key cardiac physiology, including heart rate variability, blood pressure, and all these parameters that the heart needs to operate properly, are going to be optimised or harmed by the degree to which you as an individual respect your circadian rhythm. No. And that is not something that I'm aware that any cardiologist is is informing their patient about. And the implications are that if you don't get full spectrum sunlight during the day, and that bright light of every single visible and non-visible wavelength that's on offer, but you also light up your night, and essentially expose yourself to bright light at night, you're gonna, you're essentially getting a massive spanner and, you know, shoving it into the cogs of your circadian system. And if you do that, you're going to be contributing to things like mitochondrial dysfunction and coronary artery. And, you know, like I mentioned, melatonin, it is it is the body's most potent antioxidant. And obviously, grounding in electrons, that's an antioxidant, massive antioxidant source too. But the body makes melatonin. It makes melatonin when you're asleep, when there's a darkness and there's an absence of blue wavelength light. And it also makes melatonin from infrared light during the day. So if we understand another kind of way of thinking about coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis is oxidative stress, then you want to be making sure that your body's innate natural antioxidant mechanisms are running properly. And that involves respecting that your light environment and by getting out in natural full-spectrum light. So, and, you know, some people would say, okay, well, let's prescribe a antioxidant supplement. And again, I'm saying that's not that's not the answer. The answer is get into nature where she has provided you the antioxidant pathways and mechanisms that you need to, you know, solve that problem. So that is how circadian biology is tying into this mitochondrial story and the exclusion zone story. So they're all, I guess, different ways of looking at the same problem. But if we respect our circadian rhythm, we get full-spectrum sunlight during the day, we avoid artificial light at night, and we ground as much as possible throughout the day. And that includes swimming in bodies of natural water because they are immense sources of, of these, these free electrons. If we avoid processed foods, avoid smoking, avoid stress and emotional disturbance, that that is profoundly damaging in and of itself, then those are kind of, that's a strategy to think about optimising heart health. And notice that I didn't mention statins because, you know, there's evidence of statins increase calcification. And if you understand what is what is happening mechanistically with statin therapy, statins are essentially, you know, they're mycotoxins. So they were isolated from yeast, and they are, they have a role of inhibiting this pathway, this HMG-CoA reductase pathway. So their effect is also on the mitochondrial, um, mitochondrial biology and mitochondrial physiology. So and they have a role in disrupting mitochondrial function. And they have a role in in disrupting the lipid rafts that exist in your body. So statin use is associated with diabetes. And if, we know that if you and there's evidence that if you do mess with the lipid raft, that the insulin receptor sits in, then you're going to increase insulin resistance. So I mean, that's a pretty clear pathway between statin use and diabetes. And the kind of the mainstream narrative is that, you know, this is a small risk and, you know, these are, you know, it's a trade off, that's an adverse event that is negligible to the potential benefit. But if you understand that diabetes in and of itself is a risk factor for developing atherosclerotic plaque and developing plaque, then it really becomes a question that that we need to ask, which is, what is the net benefit versus harm is possibly being done here? And one way of thinking about it is an absolute risk reduction or, you know, number needed to treat or days of life gained. And depending on what studies that you read, there's evidence that there's no primary in people who have never had a heart attack. There's no evidence that taking a statin for 10 years extends life. And I think in secondary prevention, people who've had a heart attack that maybe gives you four or five days of extra life, you know, over a period of five to 10 years. So benefit or, you know, potential or not potential benefit, if you if depending on your position, it has to be balanced against potential side effects that not only include muscle, you know, side effects and proximal myopathy and these kinds of things, but potentially could extend to other forms of mitochondrial dysfunction, whether that is diabetes, whether that is things like dementia. I mean, there's conflicting evidence. There's some large trials that say that there's no association and there's another, there's other smaller trials that say that trial and removal of statin therapy was associated with worsening of cognitive outcomes. So it's, it's, it's a mixed it's a mixed bag. But if we think about this from a first principles and the things that are killing people in today's society are diseases of mitochondrial dense tissues. They are dementia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's disease, and heart failure, cardiovascular diseases, and acute macular age related macular degeneration. So these are all that's not killing people, but it's making it's definitely blinding them. They're all functions of mitochondrial or shades of mitochondrial dysfunction. And they're all going to be potentially impacted from something like long term statin therapy. But that's just data that everyone needs to think about themselves and have a conversation with whoever they, whoever their prescriber is about the risks and benefits of their individual situation. This is obviously not medical advice, but yeah, that is my kind of thought as it stands. And obviously, I reserve the right to change my mind. But that is how I think about heart disease and heart disease prevention. And it really does tie back so strongly to our light environment and to our ability to maintain optimal mitochondrial function and healthy exclusion zone water in the blood vessels.

Anthony Hartcher: 55:45

Such great insight, Max, I really appreciate that, you know, extensive elaboration on all the areas that impacts the exclusion zone, the mitochondrial function, and the way in which the listeners should go about, you know, improving their exclusion zone and maintaining it and, and, you know, obviously, then the entrainment of their circadian rhythm, making sure you get that regular sunlight and, you know, throughout the day. And it's so much insight to summarise. I'm not going to do that, given that, you know, we've run over time and value your time. And I thank you for coming on. And before we wrap up, I would love to give you the opportunity to share with the listeners how they can best connect with you to reach out for more, more support. Maybe share your podcast, but yeah, just really engage with the listeners because you've shared so much insight and I really want them to be able to follow up if they wish to.

Dr. Max Gulhane: 56:43

Yeah, I'm happy to. So, you can follow my work at my podcast it's called Regenerative Health Podcast and it's on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. My website is drmaxgulhane.com and this weekend, the, sorry, next weekend, the 21st of Sunday, the 21st of April, we're hosting a live summit in Melbourne and I'm gonna be speaking specifically about heart health and sunlight and light and there's gonna be a bunch of very interesting people in this space. So Dr. Pran Yoganathan, who's a gastroenterologist and gut health expert, Dr. Anthony Chaffee, who's a neurosurgical registrar and carnivore advocate and an educator. There's also Jalal Khan, who's a quantum health expert and dentist, and Natalie West, who's using low-carb and dietary therapies to help improve people's mental health. And Charlie Arnott, who's a regenerative farmer, talking about blending this type of decentralised health with decentralised farming. So it's gonna be a great event. We've got a massive number of exhibitors. We've got a massive amount of beef that's going to be grilled. And yeah, if anyone's in Melbourne on the 21st, then yeah, come along. We've got just just under 20% of our tickets left. So they were looking they're probably will sell out. So jump, be quick if you if you can. But yeah, and look, to be I know I gave your listeners a lot of information there. So I think the most simple ways to think about light as it as it comes to health and cardiac health and general health is try and see the morning sunrise to program those circadian clocks. Try and get some sun on your skin. And early in the morning, if you've got a pale skin type before there's a high UV index and avoid artificial light at night, turn your lights off. Use red red globes or orange globes closer to the ground so you're not tricking the body into thinking that it's it's it's midday. And simply just being in nature because the leaves are actually reflecting near-infrared light into the body and that that light is penetrating 8, 10 centimeters into your body. So you can just simply be in nature and wear a t-shirt and you'll still get some benefit. So reconnect with nature, avoid artificial light and see the sunrise. That's that's my advice if you're looking to implement the light for optimising your heart health.

Anthony Hartcher: 59:13

Thank you so much, Dr. Max Gulhane. And I really appreciate your coming on. And thank you so much for helping me on my journey. I didn't share it, I think, but in terms of when I went back to the cardiologist, he shared with me that my calcification score had dropped to 300. So it was a 30% drop on around that around that percentage in six weeks. And it was really implementing what you've just shared on this podcast. So I really doubled down. And, you know, got right amongst it, spent a lot of time in nature, grounding and getting the early morning sunrise, swimming in the ocean, eating keto, you know, a lot less plant-based and much higher sort of meat and fat, and yeah, really just everything you share. So I really appreciate your insights and really, you probably have no idea that you're having this impact on other people's lives. But you certainly have had a major impact on my life. And I really appreciate it and keep up the great work. I really love the work that you're doing and the effort you put into going deep into the literature and really understanding it and then articulating it in a way that people understand. So thank you so much for the great contribution you're making to health and wellness. And as you put it, you know, health optimisation. It's, it's really awesome. Thank you.

Dr. Max Gulhane: 1:00:33

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Anthony. I'm so glad that you've had that outcome. And yeah, thank you very much for having me on. You're welcome. Thank you.

Anthony Hartcher: 1:00:51

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