E77: Preventing Heart Disease with Dr. Tracy Paeschke

Welcome to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast with Dr. Kerry Reller! This week, I am joined by Dr. Tracy Paeschke, an integrative cardiologist from Colorado. In this episode, Dr. Paeschke shares her extensive experience in preventive cardiology and integrative medicine, focusing on holistic approaches to heart health. She discusses the importance of addressing lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management in preventing cardiovascular disease. Dr. Paeschke highlights advanced testing methods, including coronary calcium scans and coronary CTA with Clearly analysis, to provide a comprehensive understanding of individual heart health. She also compares different dietary approaches, advocating for a whole food, plant-based diet to reduce inflammation and improve cardiovascular outcomes. Additionally, Dr. Paeschke introduces alternative therapies like EFT tapping, grounding, and neurofeedback to support overall well-being. Tune in to learn how to take charge of your heart health and make informed, proactive choices for a healthier life.

Dr. Tracy Paeschke is a board-certified cardiologist and health coach with over 25 years of experience in caring for people with heart disease. After many years of diagnosing and treating heart disease, she now focuses on prevention. Dr. Paeschke practices Integrative Cardiology both in person at her clinic in Monument, Colorado, and through telehealth in several states. She employs the latest advanced lab testing, diagnostic testing, and cardiac imaging to provide a personalized assessment of her clients' cardiac risk. Dr. Paeschke is passionate about helping people prevent and reverse heart disease through personalized medicine so they can enjoy a long, fulfilling life in good health.

0:29 - Introduction of Dr. Tracy Paeschke
0:45 - Dr. Paeschke’s Background and Integrative Approach
6:32 - Primary vs. Secondary Prevention
9:00 - Personalized Patient Care
10:10 - Advanced Testing and Imaging for Heart Health
15:45 - The Role of Diet in Heart Health
18:45 - Importance of Sleep, Stress Management, and Movement
25:28 - Comparing Dietary Approaches for Heart Health
28:56 - Integrating Alternative Therapies
31:33 - Empowering Patients to Take Charge of Their Health

Connect with Dr. Paeschke
Website: https://hearthealth.care/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hearthealthprevandwell
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_heart.health_/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtracypaeschke/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@hearthealth_/

Connect with Dr. Reller
My linktree: linktr.ee/kerryrellermd
Podcast website: https://gethealthytbpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClearwaterFamily
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clearwaterfamilymedicine/
Clearwater Family Medicine and Allergy Website: https://sites.google.com/view/clearwaterallergy/home

Subscribe to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, iheartradio, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Pandora.

Transcript

Kerry: 0:29

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kerry Reller. And today we have Dr. Tracy Paeschke. Welcome to the podcast.

Tracy: 0:39

Thank you.

Kerry: 0:41

It's so nice having you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Tracy: 0:45

Sure. Yeah. So I'm Tracy Paschke and my clinic is heart health prevention and wellness and I'm a board certified cardiologist and I've been in practice for 25 years taking care of people in the sort of traditional setting, you know, when people come in with their arrhythmias and taking care of them. But you know, after you do that for a while, you realize that there's a lot of lost opportunity before people have those events, right, where we could have intervened maybe and prevented those events from occurring in the first place. So that's what my focus is now on preventive cardiology. So helping people prevent those events. And I call myself an integrative cardiologist, so I've kind of cherry picked the best parts of all of it to, to incorporate into my practice. So of course, some traditional things that we do, and then I've incorporated some functional medicine pieces and some, even Eastern medicine pieces just to sort of make an approach That I think, again, based on my experience and, and data and webinars and reading and research, what's the best way to help people prevent heart disease

Kerry: 2:07

hmm. Yeah, I love that. Definitely, I think, you know, treating the problem before it happened would be nice. But in, I guess, a cardiologist shoes that doesn't always, you

Tracy: 2:17

No, it's kind of weird. Yeah.

Kerry: 2:20

Yeah. And me and I'm in, you know, primary care, That's our job. So how did you get it to be your job? Right? So I love this, like a combination of, I guess, functional medicine, maybe integrative medicine, which I think brings in those other things and obviously the traditional medicine approach. So what kind of led you all into this? Was there anything particular or what would you say?

Tracy: 2:42

not really, other than, like I say, sort of all the years of taking care of people when they had their events and the healthcare system, I mean, you know, as well as anyone that even though you made the statement that prevention is the primary care physician's

Kerry: 3:01

Mm hmm.

Tracy: 3:02

well, not always, right? But I mean, it used to be. But now a lot of times primary care physicians, you know that what's the average seven minutes or something that they get to spend with patients. I mean, that's not enough time to do much right. And same way with cardiologist so cardiologist in the traditional setting, you might see your cardiologist. If you're lucky twice a year, but usually once a year for again, if you're lucky 30 minutes, often more like 15 minutes to not only talk about any, how you're feeling any symptoms or problems, but then, you know, how there's not enough time to talk about your diet and your exercise and your stress management and your sleep, you know, it's just our healthcare system. It's not optimal, obviously. So it takes some thinking outside the box about how to best help people. Right.

Kerry: 3:56

Mm

Tracy: 3:57

So I focus on primary prevention, which is people, maybe people with risk factors, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or people with a strong family history of heart disease, everybody in the families died of heart attacks and they don't want to go down that road. So again, preventing events. And then the second piece is secondary prevention, right? So people who've already had a cardiac event, maybe they're seeing their cardiologist once a year for 15 minutes, but they're scared to death they're going to have another event, but they don't feel like they're being supported enough in the traditional setting. So I think it's just feeling of filling a need. Again, it's kind of, you know, our healthcare system has sort of conditioned us to, well, don't really worry about it until something bad happens. And then here's a pill and

Kerry: 4:55

Mm hmm.

Tracy: 4:57

send you on your way. And, and I don't, obviously, you know. There was a study that came out just this week. The American Heart Association estimates that 60 percent of all Americans will have some form of cardiovascular disease by the year 2050.

Kerry: 5:14

Wow.

Tracy: 5:14

Yeah. So obviously whatever we're doing is not working that well, right? So part of what I try to get across to people is empowering each person to take their health into their own hands more, right? So it's estimated that 80 to 90 percent of cardiovascular disease is lifestyle related. Again, that's another statistic from the American Heart Association. So, You know, some people think, Oh, I'm just destined to have heart disease. It runs in my family. I have all these risk factors. No, it's, it's only, that's only 10 to 20 percent of the picture. So that means 80 to 90 percent of it is in our hands. Right. So can be modified and changed and reversed. And, and so that's more of an empowering message, right? So, we're not just destined to all have heart disease. You know, heart disease is the number one killer of men and women. And a lot of women don't realize that. But heart disease kills more women than all forms of cancer combined. So, we need to get that message out that heart disease is important, but we don't have to go down that path. There's a lot of a lot of things that we can do to to modify that path.

Kerry: 6:32

Yeah, let me ask you about secondary prevention then, because I see obviously primary prevention, you are doing both right now, but how does that work with secondary prevention? Say someone comes to you after having a heart attack, one, this, what kind of patient are you attracting in your business or practice? And then, you know, how do you approach it from there?

Tracy: 6:51

Well the classic patient is, you know I mean, I see people, all adults, but the sort of classic patient that I've had the most of is someone you know, middle aged man who had a heart attack a few years ago. He is otherwise healthy. He exercises. He didn't know he had any problems. Right. Professional guy, kind of type A personality this particular patient I'm thinking about finished his you know, mountain biking ride and got to the bottom of the hill and started having chest pain, pressure, sort of shortness of breath, symptoms outside of his normal being tired after the bike ride, right? And so he goes to the emergency room and he's having a heart attack and he's shocked because he didn't think he thought he was healthy, right? So he was treated and he did well and he's alive because of all the modern miracles of medicine, right? And again, he, he sees his cardiologist once a year and he, He is definitely afraid he's going to have another event and his cardiologist doesn't have time to just sit down and go over it all with him. You know, I mean, I think that's just a big part of it. Just having somebody to sit down with and go over it all with and someone that you, you know, if you have some weird symptom, he texts me or he sends me a message. Because a lot of times people who've had a cardiac event, you know, the fear and the sort of trauma related to that is a big deal, that's one of the reasons we think cardiac rehab helps people so much. Just to start exercising with people watching you and you feel like you know, if something bad happens, at least I'm in a setting where people are around and it sort of helps you overcome that fear of getting back into your activities. So I think that's very helpful for people just to have somebody, you sort of, you know, a cardiologist in your back pocket,

Kerry: 9:00

Right. So you have like this personal approach and that you have the time to take with the patients and guide them through things that they need to prevent another heart attack,

Tracy: 9:09

Yes. I have a patient, another guy who had a aortic root repair and aortic valve replacement 20 some years ago. And I see him and kind of just out the blue one day, a few weeks ago, he sends me a question over the portal. Can you explain to me what they did in my surgery? So it's sort of a lingering question that he's had for 20 plus years, right? But either he, he didn't feel comfortable enough to ask anybody, or there wasn't time in his rushed visit, or maybe he just thought about it one day sitting on the couch, who knows, but he sent me a message and I dug up some pictures and I sent it to him and he's like, wow, that's amazing. So again, it's just, it's taking a more personal approach with people. You know, what's going on with you? What do you have? How can, how can I help you understand what you have and how can we work together to, improve your health.

Kerry: 10:10

Right. So how exactly do you help improve their health? What are those kind of things that you focus in on? I think,

Tracy: 10:17

So there's no standard thing. I mean, you as a primary care physician, you know, there are no standard guidelines for cardiovascular screening, like we do mammograms for screening for breast cancer and colorectal screening. There's no, everybody needs stress test or CT calcium score every X amount of years there, but beyond the standard lipid panel, there's not much. So there's no standard guidelines for screening and insurance doesn't pay for cardiovascular screening tests beyond the standard lipid profile. so again, I sort of taken all my stuff and, and made what I call a roadmap to heart health and the first part is an intake and review, right? So an extensive questionnaire that people fill out about your diet. I have people keep a three day food journal your diet, your exercise routine, your sleep routine, your stress. So it gives me a good picture of what's going on in your life because cardiovascular disease has to do with all those things, And then we do advanced testing. So advanced lab testing. So beyond the traditional total cholesterol, HDL, LDL triglycerides that you'll get in your standard lipid panel, things like ApoB, which we know Elevated Apo B is associated with increased cardiovascular risk. LP little A is a marker for genetically transmitted cardiovascular risk. And then things like inflammatory markers like HSCRP myeloperoxidase. We know that, that cardiovascular disease, it's two parts, right? So it's the plaque cholesterol plaque and other inflammatory cells in the plaque and then inflammation. So people can have plaques in their arteries and they just kind of sit there and don't cause problems. But when those plaques become inflamed and unstable, that's what causes our acute events. So plaque rupture and heart attacks and strokes. So it's, it's two things, right? It's not only the cholesterol and the plaque part, but it's also the inflammation. So checking those inflammatory markers helps us determine risk. We know that people with elevated HSCRP have increased cardiovascular risk. So I look at that and then I send a lot of people for imaging, because again, lipid panels and even those tests I just talked about sort of you know, give us some data, but they're not looking directly at plaque, but we do have tests to look directly at plaque. You know, it's 2024, right? We have things we can do. Again, your insurance. isn't going to pay for them for screening purposes, but there are tests we can do. There's carotid intimal thickness testing. So we know that we can take an ultrasound picture of the carotid arteries and not only look for plaque in the carotids, but thickening of the carotid arteries. We know that thickening and plaque correlates with plaque in the heart arteries. So again, it's a useful tool. It's not looking directly at the heart arteries though, but we do have tests for that too. So people may have heard of a CT calcium score. That's looking at calcified plaque in the heart arteries. And again, we know, you know, that's calcification of your coronary arteries and the bigger that number, the bigger your risk. One of the downsides is for a CT calcium score is that it's not looking at soft plaque. So it's looking at hard calcified plaque, which is actually the more stable kind of plaque. Again, it's abnormal. And we know that people with, with increased calcium scores have increased cardiovascular risk, but every cardiologist has seen me included seeing people with a calcium score of zero and a 95 percent LAD lesion. Because it's soft plaque, it doesn't show up on the calcium score, so sort of the latest greatest test is a coronary CTA with some sort of analysis I send people for clearly analysis often. So it's a coronary CTA. It makes a, basically it's a three dimensional picture of the heart arteries. We get beautiful pictures. We can see if you have blockage, which arteries, where the blockage is, percent stenosis inside the vessel. And then we can use this clearly analysis to look at the plaque. It analyzes the plaque. So it can tell us if it's hard plaque, soft plaque, or mixed plaque. Again, we know that people with a lot of soft plaque, are at increased risk because those are said thought to be more unstable type of plaques. So again, all this data gives us a picture of what's going on with you, right? What's exactly going on with you and your body. And then that helps me Devise a plan. So based on that information, then we discuss things like mindset, again, a lot of people, everybody in my family history had heart disease. I'm destined. No, it again, we need to change the the narrative, it's more, you're empowered now, you know exactly what you have you know, you don't have to wait till you have a heart attack, to figure out you have coronary artery disease. We've done these tests and we've got these pictures. We know you have mild disease and we don't want that to get worse. So how can we do things that, that mitigate that risk before an acute event? We talk about a diet. Unlike your previous guest, I advocate for a whole food plant based diet for cardiac patients. You know, there's a ton of data that whole food plant based diet decreases. Not only cardiovascular risk, but risk of Alzheimer's risk of cancer, certain cancers, risk of diabetes. It makes it easier to maintain your ideal body weight. So a lot of advantages we know that the standard American diet, which is a diet high in animals and animal products and saturated fats and processed foods increases inflammation in the body. Again, so thought to be this related to cardiovascular disease, you know, we know that societies across the world, you know, Okinawa, Japan's a great example, they're one of the original blue zones meaning the longest, one of the longest lived populations on the planet. But as soon as the standard American diet became part of Okinawa, Japan and their culture their rates of breast cancer go up they're actually, if not now, they are falling out of a blue zone because, again, the standard American diet messes all that up, so whole food, plant based diet. That's one aspect. Sleep is very important. We know that sleep apnea is linked to lots of heart problems. Abnormal heart rhythms, atrial fibrillation congestive heart failure, stroke and sudden death even. So I investigate sleep you know, sleep apnea, a lot of people have sleep apnea and don't know they have it. So I do some screening for that. We know that sleep apnea increases inflammation in the body. And again, can be a link. Stress management, we know that stress chronic stress that a lot of us live in, in our modern life increases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, and that increases inflammation in the body. So we work on that. And then, you know, new ways to move, right? So again, the blue zones, the, the places in the world where people live the longest, you know, they don't all go to the gym, it's more natural movement. So everyday movement, gardening cleaning going for walks in nature. Being more active in our everyday life is important. So I help people think about that and think about ways that they can increase movement during their day. A lot of people lead sedentary lifestyles and we sit all day at work and then we come home and sit and watch TV. How do we incorporate more movement into our day? Whether that be exercise snacks, right? So you set your timer on your phone and every 45 minutes, you get up and you do jumping jacks for two minutes or something just to get you moving and, and more active. It's good for your body and your brain, it helps focus, refocus your attention. So just some different things That people may not have thought about or heard about to help them. Because all these things are not only good for your heart, it's just good for your health in general, so to be a healthier person, because ultimately that's the goal, we want to live a long life but we want to live it in good health. So how do we reduce heart disease and other chronic diseases is through these healthy lifestyle pillars. You know, these are basically the pillars of lifestyle medicine

Kerry: 19:49

yeah, absolutely. I have a couple of questions. So you mentioned the the coronary calcium scan, which I know people in our area can find for like 100. So that's like very affordable I think in some cases. What about the coronary CTA with the clearly analysis how expensive is that for

Tracy: 20:08

Well so it depends on your area, I think. But in my area, I'm in Colorado. So my area, I can get the CT calcium score part for about 500 cash pay to add the clearly analysis, it's usually another 1, 000. So for the whole full picture, it's around 1, 500 cash.

Kerry: 20:29

Yeah. And that were like you were saying, it really breaks down the different types of the plaque that are there. Yeah. So what, how can you take the, the data from the coronary calcium score? Like, what can you do with that if they don't want to do the defining the different plaques and things like that?

Tracy: 20:46

So when someone has an elevated calcium score again, it kind of depends on the number, but let's say it's 200 300 right? and calcium score numbers are adjusted for sex and age, it gives you a percentile sort of risk. So We address all these things in the road map because we know all these things that I talked about affect calcium scores, and we talk about sometimes there are supplements that that we can use for people to lower Because again a lot of people that that I see Either they've been tried on statins or they don't like statins or somebody took statins and they don't want to be on statins, you know so sometimes we try some other things, omega threes there are some supplements that have some data that show they help arterial function. You know, there are things like other. prescription medications other than satins that sometimes people can use. So sometimes we use PCSK9 inhibitors, right, to really get someone's LDL down. So again, it just kind of depends on the person and And what they have in their other medical history and their family history, which again, is part of that extensive intake and review that I do in the beginning. Because again, it's for a more personalized approach, so beyond standard guidelines, if it's. You know, we use standard guidelines in medicine all the time, right? But that's more for a population based approach, so to get personal with you and what you have, that's again, that's what I try to do.

Kerry: 22:31

Mm hmm. Yeah, I am finding that they're not covering it completely, but the Apo B lipoprotein A and the Hs CRP on like a inflammatory marker panel with the lipids is pretty much affordable as well from quest, which is nice to see lately and it really can give us a better picture. So I often try to encourage. That, but I also kind of say, Oh, well, I'm not sure it's going to be covered by insurance, but I don't think it's going to be more than like 40 bucks out of pocket. So that's nice. I will, I did want to ask about, so if someone comes in after having a heart attack is everything reversible or what's the outlook there.

Tracy: 23:11

Yeah, well, it can be, you know Dr. Dean Ornish is a cardiologist who 20, 30 years ago did the original studies on, he took people with coronary artery disease and put them on a plant based diet, regular exercise, stress management, all the things I've talked about and did angiograms, you know, heart cath pictures before and after his Program and showed reversal of plaque. So, and, you know, kind of back in the day, everybody thought he was a little kooky, right? But he's, I mean, he's right. And he's written books on it and he talks about it and he's been preaching this for, like I said, 20, 30 years. And there's Dr. Esselstyn, you know, he's, heart surgeon who practiced at Cleveland Clinic for many years and sort of the same thing. He operated on people's coronary artery disease for a long time and Became sort of what I was thinking, you know, how do we prevent this in the first place? So he took patients, he has data, the clinical trials that he did, where he took patients that had, some of these people had two bypass surgery, right? So they'd undergone cabbage times two, and they're still having angina and they've got blockage. And he took, I think there were 20 some people and he put them on. Whole food, plant based diet, a strict actually, no oils, nothing. And his was mostly diet based, that's really all he did. And again showed reversal with angiogram, angiographically documented reversal of plaque. So, and you can, both of the, Dr. Ornish has a book, his latest one is Undo It. And I recommend that to people to read. Dr. Esselstyn is, I think his title of his is Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease. And there's great pictures of, of people, the people's angiograms in that book. Yeah, so again, you know, It works, right? Lifestyle things work.

Kerry: 25:28

I think what's interesting is, comparing, you know, the life, the plant whole food plants based approach versus, you know, what I mentioned, we previously had on the podcast, a different approach, which was, you know, you know, low carb or no carb and higher fat diet. And both You know, seem like they're on the same page of several things, right? So one, it seems like the overall goal here is to reduce inflammation from everything that you said about plaque buildup and everything like that. And, you know, I think that that makes sense, right? So I think that the like the Carnivore keto approach is, you know, one way, right? You're both, you're still pulling out the sugar you're pulling out the process foods, the highly refined foods and that are known to be inflammatory. And. So comparing it to the whole food plant base, it's still the same thing. You're removing both of those things, right? So I don't know, what would you say on comparison of those things? And I think, well, I was going to go into seed oil, so we can wait on that for a second.

Tracy: 26:36

The only other part that, so there was a study that came out not too long ago that keto diet is not good for cardiovascular health. And it's thought to be, it has to do with the gut, so we know that the gut is our main barrier to the outside world and the inside world, right? So everything that we ingest goes through our gut and we know that people who have diets higher in animals and animal products and processed foods, you know, there's some breakdown of the gut lining. So you get what we call leaky gut, where some of those Things pass through the gut lining that shouldn't. And that is thought to be a cause of inflammation. We know that some of these animals and animal products, you get changes in the molecular structure. Maybe you've heard of TMAO, that's inflammatory. So that's one of the concerns with diets high in animals and fats. There's some data that a Mediterranean type diet is good for heart health, so that's more of an olive oil based diet, but again, Mediterranean diet in the old sense of the world word, right? So a little seafood, not a lot of animals more fruits and vegetables and fresh, whole grains and nuts and seeds, that type of, yes.

Kerry: 28:07

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there are many approaches to health and wellness, and it's hard to figure out, you know, the best one. And I definitely, there's opposing views, and it's, it's hard to navigate. And I think that in the end, the patient needs to figure out, you know, what, what the best approach is for them and make sure in general of getting out, you know, getting out of the way of the standard American diet is the main thing, right? Yeah. So I think that's, that's super important. I did like your, your comment on exercise snacks. I always think that's a great way to, you know, incorporate more movement in throughout the day. And I liked that definitely a lot too. And then I wanted to ask you with your integrative approach, you mentioned some other things. So not just like the pillars of lifestyle medicine, but what were those other things that you kind of incorporate into your practice?

Tracy: 28:56

I try to, so I spend my time sort of trying different things, right to recommend to people. So things like tapping, EFT tapping. Maybe people haven't heard of tapping. Well, it's a way to uses meridians. So related to acupuncture, Chinese medicine and acupuncture, where you sit down for 10 minutes and you Follow guided, often guided go through the meridians and you think about certain things and it helps people relax often it helps them feel better. I talk about grounding or earthing with people, right? So sort of those the theory that the earth supplies And again, in our modern life, we're not connected to the earth anymore, we're on floors and plastic and shoes and, you know, we don't run around with our, in our bare feet anymore, right? That's thought to be one of the reasons that the ocean is helpful. The walking on the sand, right? It's actually it helps our body. I have patients that use infrared mats for healing. I send patients for neurofeedback a lot patients who have You know, stress or anxiety often related to they had a heart attack or they had CPR performed on them and they have PTSD. There's data that neurofeedback helps them sort of rewire their brain, So a lot of these different things that, that people may not have heard of or may not be familiar with. And again, you're, you're probably not going to hear about them in your traditional cardiologist's office, but I think all that stuff is interesting, because again, in my mind, we've gotten so far away from the earth and nature. And, you know, people have been using healing herbs and Supplements from nature for millennia, right? So even Hippocrates 2, 500 years ago said food is medicine, so people are full of wisdom, the ancient people. And I think sometimes getting back to some of that stuff would be helpful.

Kerry: 31:16

Yeah, no, I agree. I think that that's definitely a great approach. And I don't think I remember that was Hippocrates that said that, but obviously I love that phrase, Buddhist medicine. Very, very, very true. Okay. Well, what other things do you want to share with the listeners today?

Tracy: 31:33

Well, again, I would think, I think the most important thing for people to hear is that we do have a lot of influence on our health. And you know, go back to the old, my body's a temple, right? So whatever I'm putting in my body, whatever I'm doing to my body, as consequences, but again, sort of flipping it to a more empowering point of view that I can put water and plants and good things into my body. And it's gonna be very helpful. The body is resilient. You know, we can even if you've not been doing the best things for the past 50 years, we know that the body has an amazing capacity to heal. So, you know, you just start today, start where you are and, and I tell people to, you know, just do one thing a week even, right? So maybe this week you're going to try meditation for the week. So you, for 10 minutes, you're 15 minutes every day, you do meditation, find an app or a YouTube video or something, we have a lot of resources and just try it for a week and see how you feel. If you don't find it helpful or you can't do it or you don't like it, that's fine. So you drop that one and then you try something else for a week. Same thing I talked to people about their diet. If you're eating meat twice a day, Three times a day. Like most Americans are. It's going to be hard for you to become vegan tomorrow. So start with a meatless Monday. So every Monday, you're not going to eat any meat on Monday. You're going to try some new recipes, some new ways of cooking. Instead of your ground beef tacos, you're going to do black beans and brown rice tacos, right? So just some new ways of thinking about food, because food's kind of weird. You know, we just, we grow up eating certain things and we don't even really pay attention to other stuff, we go to the grocery store and get the same things we always get. So it sort of helps you break out of that. And experiment with different things. A lot of people find they feel better when they're, when they're eating less meat or changing their diet up. So again, just try some different things, you know, make it fun, make it interesting, involve your family and you might find you feel better.

Kerry: 34:05

Awesome. Yeah. I like that one thing at a time, right? Or one thing at a week, I guess is Yeah. And start where you are. Very important. Yeah. Well, I did wanna ask a quick question. Were, you mentioned Omega-3 supplements. Were there any other particular ones that you like to use?

Tracy: 34:21

Well, the ones I take myself and I recommend for people are a good multivitamin every day. You know, there's some data that came out a year or two ago that people who take a multivitamin every day have decreased risk of dementia as we age, so I do a multivitamin. B12, I'm vegan, so people who are vegan need a B12 supplement because we get B12 from Dirty soil from animals. And there's evidence that B12, you know, we don't get as much B12 as we need as we age, so a lot of people recommend everybody over 50 take a B12 supplement, whether they're vegan or not for brain health vitamin D for bones and anti inflammation. Magnesium, I take magnesium. Magnesium is good for the heart, decreases arrhythmias and is good for the brain for aging. And there's one more, the omega 3s. I think that's it. And I do a tablespoon of ground flaxseed every day for the anti inflammatory effects. So you can put it in your oatmeal, or on your salad. It's great for anti inflammatory.

Kerry: 35:32

My husband eats it in his yogurt, but I'm guessing you might not eat yogurt.

Tracy: 35:37

don't yogurt. oatmeal

Kerry: 35:40

yeah, yeah. Well, this is so interesting. So I had a carnivore and a vegan, and we're both talking about heart health. And I, I think, you know, either both could be possible. Just decreasing inflammation and eating real food and not the standard American diet. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast and where can people find you if they want to reach out to you or work with you?

Tracy: 36:04

Yeah. So probably my website is the best place, www. hearthealth. care. And you can see all my links and information. I have some free resources on there as well for people.

Kerry: 36:16

Yeah. Thank you. And you have a podcast, right?

Tracy: 36:19

I do. I have a a podcast. it's sort of a different platform. So I, I use it to give like, you know, five minutes of health information.

Kerry: 36:30

Health snacks,

Tracy: 36:31

health snacks, right? Digestible health snacks. I do a weekly newsletter. So people can sign up for my newsletter, health and wellness newsletter on my website. Those are my main things. And of course I'm on social media, all the social media platforms. So people can.

Kerry: 36:51

so much. We'll include everything in our show notes and I hope everybody enjoyed this episode and please tune in next week. All right. Thanks for coming on.