Speaking with Ivor Cummins; Author & Chief Program Officer for Irish Heart Disease Awareness

Today I speak with Ivor Cummins. Ivor Cummins BE(Chem) CEng MIEI PMP completed a Biochemical Engineering degree in 1990. He has since spent over 25 years in corporate technical leadership and management positions. His career specialty has been leading large worldwide teams in complex problem-solving activity. 

 

Since 2012 Ivor has been intensively researching the root causes of modern chronic disease. A particular focus has been on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. 

 

He shares his research insights at public speaking engagements around the world, revealing the key nutritional and lifestyle interventions which will deliver excellent health and personal productivity. He has recently presented on heart disease primary root causes at the British Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (BACPR). He has also debated Irish Professors of Medicine on stage, at the annual conference of the Irish National Institute of Preventative Cardiology (NIPC).

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with biochemical engineer, author and international speaker Ivor Cummins, key points addressed were core tenants of his book, Eat Rich, Live Long, in which Ivor enumerates the scientifically backed health benefits of eating a low carb diet. We also talked on aspects of fasting and how both his book and Ivor himself have engaged in fasting practices in order to facilitate and enhance benefits received from a low carbohydrate diet. Stay tuned for my informative talk with Ivor Cummins.

 

[00:00:39] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen .COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:31] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia.

 

[00:01:34] And today, I am very excited to be sitting down with Ivor Cummins. He is an author and chief program officer for Irish Heart Disease Awareness. You can find out more about Ivor and all of his work on the Fat Emperor, or dot com, which is his website. And we will be climbing through that as well as his book today. Welcome, Ivor.

 

[00:01:55] Thanks a lot, Patricia. Great to be here.

 

[00:01:57] Absolutely. For those of you that are new to this podcast, I will read a brief bio on Ivor. But before I do that, I want to give everyone an overview of the road map of which our trajectory, the inquiry will be based out of. We took a large part of our podcast inquiry today from you. Public as we reached out and asked everyone what they would like to hear from Ivor on. So I will first spend the first part of it unpacking, Eat Rich, Live Long, which is the book that Ivor has released in tandem with Dr. Jeffrey Gerber. I'll have him unpack the three main sections of that book and some of the core axiomatic details. And then we'll turn straight to the inquiry that all of you have put out there. Namely, we'll look at areas of emphasis that he has in the book and then outside of that, on fasting in general, different types of fasting, fasting, blood glucose levels, things that he's spoken to in the book around that, as well as other knowledge he may have. He has not spoken to. We'll ask him about his future plans of study. We'll ask him about different forms of fasting that he may have practiced himself. We'll ask him about an increase based on hitting a stall for different people who have looked into that, namely calcium scores of zero. A lot of you have written about very specific elements that Iowa or has spoken to. We'll talk about vitamins and minerals supplementation and other cardiological elements with different aspects there. And we'll talk about fast mimicking. And if he's had any things to study or talk about that we're going to get into the questions you guys had about, based on the list of the 10 items to be considered outside of the low carb diet that he advises about sleep vitamin D. I know that I've always done a bunch of podcasts on on his own podcast system based on expertize from people in a lot of those fields as well. So as promised, prior to peppering Ivor with questions, quick bio, Ivor Cummins has completed a biochemical engineering degree in nineteen ninety. Since 2012, Ivor has been intensively researching the root causes of modern chronic disease. A particular focus has been on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. He shares his research, insights and insights at public speaking engagements around the world. Revealing the key nutritional and lifestyle interventions which will deliver excellent health and personal productivity. Iver's 2018 book, Eat Rich Live Long, coauthored with preventative medicine expert Geoffrey Gerber, M.D., details the conclusions of their shared research can be found on Amazon. His public lectures and interviews are available on YouTube, where he has about seventy five thousand subscribers and about six million views as recorded to date. Again, you can find out all of the information regarding either on the Fat Emperor or dot com. So I work instead of kind of climbing through which people can find on your Web site a lot of your academic and occupational background. I know that you come at it from a different viewpoint. Can you briefly describe what your career prior to diving into Eat Rich and Live Long and the studies there in.

 

[00:05:06] OK, Patricia, I'll try and keep it brief.

 

[00:05:08] Yes, I came out. 1990, I started in the medical device company as a development engineer in kidney dialysis units and those kinds of things.

 

[00:05:20] And basically, to put it very bluntly, I very rapidly got into complex problems solving some multifactor kind of complex problems that were causing major impacts to the processes. And I found that that's where the flare. So I focus more and more on that. And then as my career went on, I moved between companies. I. Became a team leader, senior engineer, then a very senior technical expert, and ended up as a master technologist, which is one of the highest levels in the corporation. But I also spent around fifteen years in and out of management roles. So managing teams of people, doing the people management as well as the technical. So I think problem solving was really the thing that unified it all. I would be the person who'd go in and take a very complex problem, multi-million dollar losses per week, say, and I would get to the bottom office as fast as possible using all the Problem-Solving tools. And there are many tools I won't last year. So in 2012, I got some kind of adverse blood tests. There just standard blood tests. And three of the measures were very far off, cholesterol and then a liver enzyme, GGP and Serum Feresten, an iron loading in the blood. And after I went through three doctors in succession over several weeks, including a professor of medicine, I couldn't get the answers to the two key questions that any complex problem that you're faced with or if you're brought in to lead it from outside. And the two questions are what are the implications of the bad metrics and what are the root causes generally that would drive those metrics to be bad so they can be addressed or at least investigated? And I couldn't get the answers from the three doctors. And I realized then something fairly profound, that if these are standard blood tests and I can't get those two questions broadly answered, there's something huge missing in medicine. There has to be I wasn't sure what it was, but I just knew there was no question about that. So I went to research gate and pop mad corporate law guns. And I started going through the last 60, 70 years of human trials, published science, biochemical science. And essentially within several weeks I'd worked through the three metrics I found the answers of the implications of them being bad, and they were pretty huge except for cholesterol. But the other two and I found the processes and I got myself to carbohydrate metabolism, excessive glucose, excessive sugars in my diet. So whole grain breads and pastas and orange juice, all that stuff. And I realized I was trying to eat a healthy wholegrain type diet and a low fat one generally. And it had completely backfired because I also discovered then that the whole thing about fat was fat wasn't really a problem at all. So I switched my diet. Eight and a half weeks later, I had lost thirty four pounds. I had my blood tests, came back fantastic. And basically everything was fixed. My blood pressure, which had been all was kind of hypertensive, was right down, but no extra exercise. So I knew then that I basically found the primary root cause. But then I got into fasting as well during that period. And essentially I began to research and that over the years releasing YouTube videos, you've seen a few. It just became my main career. You know, as though. Yeah.

 

[00:08:53] Did the book write itself then? Were you? I mean, I know the history of it personally, but it sounds like a personal journey.

 

[00:09:00] And this research that you were doing and then you came into this camaraderie with Dr. Jeffrey Gerber. Was it a combination of your own personal research or did you need to put it out there so that you had this kind of cohesive collection of information?

 

[00:09:16] Yeah, there were a few things just from a long time back I knew that I at some point want to write a book.

 

[00:09:22] I wasn't sure about what happened when this happened to me. In 2013, I released the cholesterol conundrum, which is extremely popular around the world. And that's so Gerber and all the other doctors found me originally and we struck up this kind of friendship. And we met in South Africa, the world's first low carb conference in South Africa in early fifteen. But I was basically during fifteen writing this book. And then later in fifteen, you know, I kind of linked up with Jeff and said, Hey, Jeff, you want to be a coauthor on this? And he was delighted because he could bring all of his clinical experience, clinical expertize. Twenty five years as a low carb doctor and kind of complete the package, if you will. But I did. And I'm sure he won't mind me saying this. I did write most of the book for sure in terms all the science and everything else. I mean, brought in a professional chef them to do all the recipes that you've probably seen. But a key thing as well was I got funding in 15 to really support me to be able to write the book and do many other things like travel and research outside of my main job. So that was from David Bobert, an Irish heart disease awareness charity. They found me through the same video, the cholesterol video, and wanted to support me to get the message out. So a lot of things came together. We got a professional editor from Karl Mann agencies in New York, which I was able to phone now. Otherwise, I would have done a book that would have been very different. So the professional editors, they know their craft in terms of structuring and simplifying. So I think it was way, way better as a result of that.

 

[00:11:02] Yeah. The book is beautiful. I must say in layout format, having come from a literary family and I appreciate the content. However, the actual graphics and the layout of it is incredibly friendly.

 

[00:11:13] I think you have a review on Amazon, but I was looking over that said the Kindle version is good, but that the in-person version is great. And I think it speaks to the vibrancy of not just the layout, but also the art, you know, the pictures, the photographs of the food, because it is really a part of what you're speaking to. Right. You're talking about diet and nutrition. And that's best relayed through both Visual Forum and I think lesson. I'm wondering with you, you kind of dropped a little nugget about fasting and you mentioned frequently and a lot of your other YouTube lectures and things like that that I've looked at. You have this conversation with your audience about becoming truly ketogenic and and following a keto diet and how it allowed you this freedom to kind of choose when you eat. And that parlays into this semi fasted mentality where you tend to skip lunch on certain days. You kind of choose your way in and out of meals. Can you speak to how that relationship came about?

 

[00:12:11] Right. Well, originally, actually, during that period of eight and a half weeks, I discovered a few weeks into low carb that my appetite came under an incredible degree of control.

 

[00:12:22] And this was completely new to me. I used to do triathlons and I would do huge amounts of swimming, cycling, you know, running. But when I came home, I'd be ravenous and I'd, of course, be eating lots of healthy whole grains. And what I thought at the time was healthy. But now I found when I was eating meat, fish and eggs and just low starch vegetables, I just found that my appetite, after having one good meal, was kind of suppressed for much, much longer. When I was going to eat lunch, I realized I'm not hungry like I used to be for this lunch. In fact, I could almost skip it and I began to skip meals in work because I was so busy. And then I just learned that there was a different way of living altogether that didn't involve breakfast, lunch and dinner in the evening.

 

[00:13:10] And also some snacks in the afternoon and maybe a bar or two in the mid-morning. I realized if you're eating meat, fish, eggs, high protein, high fat, you know, and vegetables and eating real human diet, your appetite just it just comes under your control. And because I was losing weight, I actually in fairness, during that eight 1/2 week period, I began to fast, more purposefully because I was enjoying losing the weight. And it was such fun, I decided to accelerate it, which happened so people and work out an awful shock, like in four or five, six weeks, I was completely transformed. And that was how I kind of got into the idea of fasting and skipping meals. And I also liked it. It suited me because I could really enjoy a meal then later on so I could get all my work done and put off the pleasure of the meal, which would be a good nutritious meal later on. And at the end of my labors kind of way, I could sit down and really enjoy a good meal. And that suited me. It suited my psychology. So that was kind of it just grew. And by the time it came to writing the book, I had done a lot more research on that because we are writing a book and got a little more technical about it. But in a sense, as Dr. Gerber says, rather than fasting, he thinks of it as meal skipping because you can so you save time.

 

[00:14:33] You can spend the time eating and work doing work, maybe finish earlier and just skip meals here and there and let your hormones, let your insulin, your glucose. Let let all that digestive process calm right down, you know, and it's just it's the right way to live. And I think evolutionarily as well, it's so appropriate. As you can imagine, though, I know that's not proof of any benefit, but it just makes sense and it gives you freedom. There's no downsides that I'm aware of.

 

[00:15:02] It's a laissez faire attitude about eating for sure that I don't think a lot of hyper and intense individuals in this latter day have towards food.

 

[00:15:11] You know, the addictive nature that we've kind of every country that I've seen ascribes to their diet, at least. And I'm wondering, do you. Have you experimented with this control? Has there come? You're a very curious individual. And has there been any curiosity about playing around with forms of fasting? Have you met at these conferences with other like minded health individuals who talk about extended fasts, or is it more about this meal skipping mentality?

 

[00:15:38] Yeah, it's probably more the latter. Patricia, I'm relatively casual, so I'm not really the type.

 

[00:15:44] I did a lot of blood measurements, blood glucose meter and ketones way, way back. And then I kind of dropped it, to be quite honest. Now, if I thought I had any kind of physiological issue that I had to address, I'd be a real metrics person, you know, because I'm an engineer. But I've kind of got more casual about that because I just feel if I'm doing things right, I occasionally take a blood glucose, but I'm not compelled to.

 

[00:16:07] And likewise, the fasting, I don't feel I have to keep a certain routine. So what I've kind of ended up at first sheer convenience is and to get a little longer fasting in, because I believe the longer, fastest way you really get your glucose and insulin down, I'm kind of doing one meal a day around three times a week or four. And the other three or four days, two meals a day. So that's roughly where I've settled for me. Now, I've talked to Jason Fong, many people who know Dr. Jason Fong, the fasting guru, and many other people about fasting. But I explain that I have a longer term. Fast is more like a medical intervention to me. So someone who has profound obesity or very severe insulin resistance that will is not dealt with in a normal, healthy low carb with some meals skipping can push the boundaries further. And I know Jason deals with a lot of those more challenging people. But for me, I haven't gone over 24 hours and I do anecdotally hear that there's not really much published science on it, obviously because of the nature. I anecdotally hear about some people, many people maybe more so female, maybe postmenopausal. That going beyond that 24 hours into longer term fast can just be challenging, you know, tiredness, sleep impacted. Don't feel so good. And I sense that it appears that men appear to be a little luckier in terms of fasting. There's less of that anecdotal feedback. But even myself, when I go to around 27, 28 hours, I really feel like eating. So I've never pushed true the envelope into apparently day two, where the hunger that has come on falls away again. And apparently there a utopia of healing in today, three and four. I haven't done that. But I do hear about his.

 

[00:18:00] Yeah. Curiosity hasn't led you there yet. Well, there's time. I wonder, with your emphasis on I were meant to ask you about that before I start the rapid fire questions with people that wrote in.

 

[00:18:12] In reading through your book, you do talk about faster blood glucose levels, measuring that. And it seems like you tie into you have mentioned actually a lot of your interviews as well as a very quick way to get into ketosis is through this kind of fasted state. And I'm hoping that you can kind of draw that out or enumerate that further for everyone listening.

 

[00:18:32] Yeah, well, my my approach to QI tells us we all know those hardcore Kiesel people who tend to push fat into their bodies with ultra low carb to kind of almost force Quito's.

 

[00:18:45] It's almost like eating the extra fat is creating this beneficial ketosis. And I just never perceived it that way. So my way to be in ketosis and I like to kind of go in and out of it. I'm not entirely convinced from the literature that staying hardcore Akito all the time suit's all genetic type suits everyone so well, I'm not sure now. You know, the jury's out in the sense, but what I like to do is eat low carb and then skip meals and the combination of a good, healthy, new, nutrient dense, low carb diet. It might not make you in ketosis deeply, but if you start skipping meals as well in combination with low carb, then you're going to be going in and out of ketosis in waves. And it's a great feeling and I find ketosis now. I never gone really hardcore, but it does a great feeling of mental acuity. Even so, I give an example and it's anecdotal, but when I'm speaking in a very big conference, maybe eight or nine hundred people in the audience, you know, your tension will build and you want to be at your best. And I always pretty much ensure that I'm around 24 hours fasted before I go on stage. Now, this would be a shock to the average American. You know, who if they didn't have their lunch, you know, they wouldn't be able to concentrate or Irish or anyone nowadays. I don't mean just Americans. But for me, like when you get into that 20 hours fasted. Your mental acuity, it may relate to the fact that Bayt hydroxybutyrate and ketone bodies are feeding our brain, but no one has proven that. But something changes and and you get sharper, edgier. There's a high performance feeling. So I think I've gone off the topic now. But that's why I like to go in and out of ketosis by meal, skipping and eating low carb. And I don't really target eating lots of fat and ultra low carb. Like I said, it's meat, fish, eggs. You know, all of those cheeses above ground, leafy vegetables, sometimes even a little rice. If the family is doing rice, I'll have to eat much smaller portions than I used to. But, you know, for old times sake. Bitter rice. Yeah. So it's kind of that's kind of my approach to it in terms of science. One of the interesting things I always bring up about fasting in ketosis is that everyone knows that exercise gives neurological benefits and does not does nothing faddish about that. Everyone accepts exercise is good for neurologically. But I have a paper that I was amazed to find once, and they'd looked at the whole question of why does exercise give this apparent neurological benefit, even short term? And I think it's brain derived neuropathic factor B DNF. So they went to all the biochemistry and actually found out that when you exercise beta hydroxybutyrate, ketone body rises. And their paper came to the conclusion that the increase in BHB was one of the primary mechanisms that was supportive of neurological function. So it's interesting to think that you can almost fasting is almost like exercise of the pill away and some other papers like that. I love ones that integrate the benefit of exercise and the benefit of the right foods or fasting behaviors into a kind of more unified thing. Those reasons, all these different things are healthy and a lot of the biochemical pathways overlap. So anyway, I just I just thought I'd throw that out there.

 

[00:22:21] Well, yeah. And I think that part of the problem with Western medicine in at least in the early part of the nineteen hundreds, was that, you know, and this necessary isolation view.

 

[00:22:30] But nothing exists in a vacuum, certainly not any system within the human body. And so to not consider other factors would be, I think, to introduce the concept that you love of black swans. You know, with them, with engineering and these kinds of flying in the face of the hypothesis moment. And so I like that you stay open to the inclusive city measure while always looking for things that disprove that. I'm wondering, with what you've said about fast before I drop into the rapid fire questions. You do, have you haven't you explained Fats? And I think it's important with people who do low carb, who don't practice, actually those who practice Vegan diets as well. But there is a very clear distinction between fats for you as well as carbohydrates. And I'm wondering if you can draw those out quickly, because I think I always preferred people to say low refined carbohydrates, because almost everything in the human diet, aside from straight fat, has carbohydrates in it. And I think what most people on a low carb centric diet or way of life are looking at refined carbohydrates. So if you could just drive for you, if you could define those terms as to how you define carbohydrates when you talk about low carbohydrates as well as healthy versus non healthy fats.

 

[00:23:47] Gotcha. OK. How can I do this efficiently? Well, I'd say upfront what I generally say to lay people who are not going to get into the whole falsies stuff. I say to them, look, there's the what I call Satan's triad or the devil's triad that's caused a lot of modern chronic disease, sugar, refined carbohydrates, refined grains and vegetable oils, these fake factory oils, I call them.

 

[00:24:11] So those three things are the primary components and most ultra processed food.

 

[00:24:16] So if you cut out ultra processed food and those three components greatly, you know, for most people, that'll be the vast amount of the benefit they're going to get. I'm honest about it. And then if you want to go low carb, you know, you're going to be careful with the not quite so bad carbs, like fibrous carbs or even for details in moderation. If you want to really go towards ketosis and then the non starchy vegetables are fine. So broccoli, cauliflower and all those carbs and avocados and lots of things. So I kind of say that first. So in terms of refined carbs. Absolutely, Patricia. That's the real devil in the room rather than carbs in general. And I give the example in the book of the catarrh funds, and they're around sixty five percent carb in their diet, which is actually high carb. But again, they're eating nutrient dense fish and meats and another good stuff. And the carbs are eating or like I think contains on the high fiber, low blood sugar spike carbohydrates. And they were eating this high carb diet all their lives and they never got access to refined carb sugars or vegetable oils. So any human who from birth. Right. True. Never gets access to the three. I think they can eat a whole range of diets. No problem. They're never going to be diabetic or obese. So it's when you get a population that those three components have come into and the population becomes diabetic and obese. Now you've got people who are carbohydrate intolerant, generally insulin resistance, and then they have to also maybe be very careful with carbohydrate foods that may be an ancestral person wouldn't have to worry too much about. So I kind of say everything is nuanced on the fats then. So saturated fats from real Whole Foods sources. Fine. And any fats from real Whole Foods sources are fine. The problem, again, I'll have to say it, are the added fats and oils, particularly vegetable oils in all the factory oils, basically, and seed oils. Another name for them. And then you could say that the omega three fats are good to keep, you know, good and high in your diet. Not just not to be low. So eat the fatty fish and get your omega three. Good. And no problem. And saturated fat and omega six kind of polyunsaturated fats that are in the vegetable oils that are a problem. My general part is if they're in real whole foods and the balanced diet, I would not worry about excessive omega six fats. I would only worry about them really coming from added oils of a vegetable oil nature. So that's kind of the fats, really, put simply. And I think I've kind of Kollberg covered the carbs as well. Good versus bad, roughly.

 

[00:27:09] Absolutely. And I'm wondering and I think your book does a good job about talking about Whole Foods and how, you know, the supplementation of fats is not to seek out fat, but rather supplement those calories with the nasty carbohydrate calories that you're removing. And so that augmentation makes a lot of sense for the reader, at least it did for me. All right. Moving on to the Rapid Fire. So we had a lot of questions asking about and because of the work that you've done as over the past two years and with the launch of the book in 2018, where do you see the most research needing to be headed or headed towards this low carb and or fasting scientific research?

 

[00:27:53] Right. Well, I think probably the big gap for me personally or see Ts are randomized control trials are generally designed for drug treatments. So you've got your, say, statton drug and you've got a placebo inert. And the RC teas are usually Dohm, which is one intervention, you know, and that and that makes sense in a certain way. But I would love to see an R t that adds together a multi factor approach. So a standard a kind of heart association, kind of low fat diet, but pitched against a low carb, nutrient dense kind of healthy diet of my defining. OK. Including some element of fasting that's tracked. So you can work out from the data afterwards. Some people may do more, some may do less. But you can work it out at the end of the trial. Add in vitamins and minerals. Not too many Bacau ones like magnesium, potassium, add in sun exposure and ultraviolet light exposure, which gives us way more than vitamin D and like do it, do an experiment, a human trial that admittedly the ethics committees don't like these.

 

[00:29:08] They like to see one intervention. Simple, but I think we're missing out on doing a multi factor intervention of all of what we know is synergistically going to boost health and do all that cluster of things together. Well-documented, undefined, you know, no hiding, no secret changes. What? Just do it against the control of the standard low fat diet on what the Orthodox authorities tell us to do and then pitch. Pitch my system up against that. I'd love to if that experiment was done. I'm not sure of what lever happened.

 

[00:29:44] Oh, I hope so. That sounds fun and kind of along those same lines of research. And and what you endeavor to do. We had a lot of questions regarding how you curate the research. You do. You're one human being. And so even with a team of researchers, how do you curate what you look at, what you incorporate, what you also kind of allow into the metrics of your theories and philosophy?

 

[00:30:08] Yeah, well, I kind of you I'm a lone wolf, to be quite honest, I have no staff.

 

[00:30:12] I have nothing. So what I do is I research our research, our research. And I have around probably nearly 3000 published papers on my hard drive under myriad different directories and topics. And I have a good memory for these things. So like when people ask me about a study, I'll say, oh yeah, that one was a rats. And there was a four percent threshold of adding omega six for a mammary. Tumors were increased in size, but after four percent add, there was a threshold effect. And I'll usually remember studies even though there's so many. So I have an informal system of directories, but I generally do is I take topics of my greatest interest. So for the movie we made extra time movie dot com. We were involved with a scanning forty five ads, guys in their 50s X sportsmen.

 

[00:31:05] We found that some amazing stuff. And we also followed a guy who reversed his score and he did all the stuff we're talking about to do that.

 

[00:31:13] But during the making of that movie, I went deep dove on the mechanisms of calcification, you know, medial versus into more calcification kidney disease and the mineral based calcification that occurs in that. So, again, I went much deeper into the mechanisms because I felt as the movie came out, we really wanted to thoroughly know the state of the art and the science of exactly why calcium may leach back out of Arthur almost as plaques, why it's actually gathered. And it's just an example. During that period, I did a ton of work on that. And another recent example was I finally got the chance to meet Professor Vladimir Subaltern. And I released the podcast a few weeks ago, but I met him in Crossfade headquarters in Santa Cruz last November and I did a ton of work researching on the pathways of cholesterol and LDL particles from the Luman into the Intermap, all of the diffusion coefficients and all of so Boltons science where the cholesterol comes in from the outside of the wall of the artery.

 

[00:32:25] So Vaslav a Sorum and the lymphatic system that drains cholesterol out of the arterial wall, I discovered that HDL good cholesterol. People know that it takes the cholesterol out of your artery wall. But what I found out was it takes it out to the outside. It doesn't take it back into the blood.

 

[00:32:46] So let's just say during that journey that I may be another hundred and twenty published papers on my hard drive. And I've gone through all of the made notes in the margin. And then what I do is I produce talks. So one way for me to kind of store the research, other high level, useful for real people is I'll do a talk maybe an hour, 50 minutes, and I'll do all the diagrams and slides to explain it to a lay person. But behind it, there might be a hundred published papers and maybe, I dunno, three, four or five hundred hours of research. But all those papers and references are there. When people ask about an aspect of the talk, I'll immediately just email them the paper. So it's kind of informal, but I'm very dynamic and these things, you know.

 

[00:33:35] Yeah, absolutely, and you talk about I mean, just to kind of unpack a little bit of what you were saying.

 

[00:33:41] If I could be so bold from what I garnered without having looked at all of the research, you were kind of getting into a lot of the five markers when you're talking about the build up and the X exposing in that lead to like a coronary episode. Right. And also other things that have been affiliated with it, like cancer and things like that. And those are low HDL or good waist size hypertension, blood sugar. And then you kind of we're getting into the very specifics of the plaque within what's found in a C.T. scan.

 

[00:34:12] Yeah. And this was found in the C.T. scan, the C.A.C. score, that's the best measure of your degree of heart disease and degree of risk.

 

[00:34:19] So if you get a zero score at middle age and it simply sees the calcium in your coronary arteries and the inflammatory disease of atherosclerosis driven by vegetable oils and refined grains and on an insulin resistance. Well, all of those things and more lead to pressure on your arterial wall and lead to inflammation, inflammatory forces on the body. When you develop these plaque brings in calcium at a certain stage to try and stabilize these, that could rupture. So the calcium that comes in is is a bone formation process and quite complex and not fully understood, even with all the papers I Gartner's. And this scan can simply see the calcium like an x ray. So if you have a zero score, it means there's no detectable calcium, which means you've developed very little plaque. You haven't even reached the stage that your body is reacting to. And therefore, your risk is very low. Maybe one or two percent risk in the next 10 years of a heart attack. And if you have a very high score, like my sponsor, David Bobert, nearly a thousand at the age of 52, you have an enormous risk, maybe 25, 30 percent. So the measure of the calcium in the C.A.C. score in the scan. That's the best measure of risk. But what causes that then exactly? You mentioned there the five criteria of the metabolic syndrome, which is insulin resistance syndrome, which is essentially type two diabetes.

 

[00:35:51] And you got your low HDL. You've got your high triglycerides. You got your high blood sugar. You've got your high waist size. And you've got your hypertension, blood pressure. And they're pretty good. Five metrics. I would add in serum feresten. I would add in Jegede T Gamma illusional transfer as they were the two I had high rise and they are good markers to for metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance syndrome. And there are lots of other good markers. But I would say if people really wanted a simple way to check themselves out, if you just got a fasting glucose and a fasting blood insulin and you put them in the home calculator, it's online h.o. m.a calculator, you get your home resists our insulin resistance index. And if that's below one point two, you're pretty good. Non diabetic and it is above one point eight or you're you're probably in trouble. So that's a really easy way to skip all the other measures. And a lot of people like that one.

 

[00:36:53] And your book, Eat Rich Live Long talks about the tests that you should really just garner an understanding for as you begin the journey of looking and endeavoring into the advice there.

 

[00:37:04] So I think that's good to know and it's good for people to have understand what those results mean and most importantly, that those are all, you know, retractable. A lot of those those results can be fixed very, very quickly with a correction in diet, which obviously is is the main ethos of eat live long. I'm curious, you have a section in the book and we've had a lot of people. Right. And talking about vitamin and mineral supplementation. And you you advise as specific vitamin A mineral protocol. I won't list them off here, but we do a lot of people. Right. And asking if you consider there to be a chief like catch a multivitamin that hits all of your core constituents. And that advice.

 

[00:37:47] Yes. OK. In terms of products. Well, actually, going forward, I have got a new friend, a Goodbody, who is a nutraceutical manufacturing plant on the other side of the world.

 

[00:37:56] So I am going to be getting more into vitamins and minerals research. So I did enough in the past for the bulk, but I'm probably going to be getting into that more in terms of multivitamins. I've never really looked at them, but I generally do as I get magnesium, potassium, that's magnesium, separate potassium chloride. We have iodine there and see kelp and does a couple more than me think, oh well, the vitamin D though I prefer to get that from my UV lamp and from the sun because that way you get nitric oxide and other folder chemicals. But the vitamin D, if you can't get that, is another important one. And that's kind of that cluster there. I mean, you could say chromium is important, too. There's quite a bit out there on that. But that cluster of around five or the key ones for me. Now, obviously, there's loads more vitamins and minerals that could be beneficial. I never got into the vitamin C thing. I think that if you're eating a very healthy diet, well-balanced, you should be OK anyway. But I notice a lot of people feel very strongly about taking higher doses of vitamin C. I've never been overly convinced that the science behind, rather than just being sufficient and not insufficient, actually getting a lot of it into you. And it's something that I've made a note I must circle back to some day. But a lot of people say to me, Ivor, why don't you talk about vitamin C? It's magic. And I've just never been convinced of that. Yes.

 

[00:39:27] Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've heard it. We're running out of time. And I mean, I apologize in advance to my audience. I'm going to try and quarantine you again, no pun intended.

 

[00:39:35] And before I let you go, I'm hoping to ask you a bunch of people ask what your future plans of study and speaking abroad. Given that, you know, people aren't traveling as much right now, have you looked forward to 2020, 2021? And do you have any kind of a sneak peak you can offer us?

 

[00:39:54] Yeah, well, actually, because unfortunately, sadly, the Irish heart disease awareness funding was supported true business and the impact has been enormous with Korona. And so I'm kind of moving on from that now, largely. So I'm going to have to find alternative sources of support. So I will be probably developing into having some kind of patrie on. I'm talking to people in the U.S. about developing a nutritional program for training medical people. So their connections who have come to me. So that will be a role I left to spend time on and of course, do more research around vitamins, minimal minerals, nutrition at all. I have a lot of it already.

 

[00:40:35] And there's a few more projects as well, that there's one where there's an insurance company in the US. Very large insurance company. And they want to get their people healthier because obviously they'll save an enormous amount in terms of medical bills. So very large amounts to savings. So I may be doing a program with them, with a couple of other doctors who again came and found me. And then there's conferences I just came out of low carb Sydney. Well, it was actually called low carb international all stars, but it was online. But there are going to be more veny torture trick on the West Coast is doing a conference, I think is the end of June. Dr. Burgs, Quito's so much this year is gonna be virtual. So I'm gonna be at that and does the series more of those. Let me see what else. Several more projects I may take on depending.

 

[00:41:28] But I've got to pick my winners because, you know, I've got a family, five children, and I'm going to have to pick things now that are more commercially minded than I would have had two in the past. And I've also got my pal in Extend Life dot com. New Zealand, an excellent manufacturer of vitamins and minerals. So I'll probably be working with him, helping him research the best ones for heart disease, reversal, etc., and engaging to some degree and maybe offering discounts to my followers and some of those products.

 

[00:42:01] So really a lot of balls in the air at the moment. And I just have to do my more engineering manager role now and actually program manage all these different potential projects. I make sure I get I do the the best use of my time.

 

[00:42:18] Absolutely. I think 20 twenty one is the year of the pivot and the juggle for a lot of people. So it sounds like you're no exception to that. Ivor, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. I really do appreciate you taking time out of your really busy schedule and giving us all of your knowledge.

 

[00:42:34] Not at all. Thanks a lot, Patricia. We should talk again sometime.

 

[00:42:37]  I'll make sure of that. And for everyone listening, thank you for giving us your time. We've been speaking with Ivor Cummins. He is author, engineer and speaker. You can find out more on his Web site, the fat, poor dot com.

 

[00:42:53] And until we speak again next time, remember to stay safe. Well, when you do eat and always count on yourself. Slainte.