 Bizarre daily habits that may support heart health. You know, despite modern advancements, heart disease remains the number one most common disease among Americans, and it's the case of one in every five deaths. So what's the big problem? Well, 42% of Americans are officially obese. As I say, fat in your gut, you're out of luck. So belly fat contributes directly to heart health. As I explain in all of my books, and I'm going to spend even more time in the upcoming book, but it releases bacteria and bacterial particles into your bloodstream, and that sets up inflammation. Heart disease is not a problem of cholesterol. Heart disease is a problem of inflammation in blood vessels. Most people don't realize that statin drugs don't work by lowering your cholesterol. Statin drugs work by lowering the inflammation in your blood vessels, but there's lots of other easy ways to do it. So let's start with number one. Eat walnuts. First of all, fat does not make you fat. Not only does fat not make you fat, but fats in the form of walnuts or in olive oil actually benefit heart health. Walnuts are also a great source of a funny chemical called polyamines. I've written extensively about polyamines that have been shown to increase your overall health, your health span, and longevity. Now one of the miracle fats in walnuts is actually a short chain omega-3 fat called alpha-linolenic acid, abbreviated ALA, and I promise there won't be a test. ALA has been shown in numerous studies, including this one, but also in the Leone-Heart Diet Study, to dramatically lessen the incidence of coronary artery disease in people who have coronary artery disease. ALA is present in walnuts. It's present in flax seeds. It's present in organic canola oil. But it's present in my favorite oil for ALA, perilla oil. So any way you can get ALA into your diet, including walnuts, that's what to do. Now alpha-linolenic acid is an essential fatty acid. What does that mean? It means we don't manufacture it, but we have to have it to properly function cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes. So get yourself some more alpha-linolenic acid ALA, and one of the easiest ways to get it is have a handful of walnuts every day. All right, number two, take a shot of extra virgin olive oil. Now there are multiple studies showing the benefit of extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil is a great way of getting polyphenols into your system. Polyphenols actually interact extremely well with blood vessels, and in fact I've written several papers showing the benefit of polyphenols on arterial health, on stickiness of blood vessels, and in allowing blood vessel flexibility. There's a saying in longevity that you are only as young as your blood vessels are flexible, and so polyphenols, particularly in olive oil, are one of the great ways to do it. Multiple areas of the blue zones, for instance in Crete, Italy, in Sardinia, and even in Aciaroli, south of Naples, all use about a liter of olive oil per week. Now they even have olive oil soup in Crete. There's some fantastic polyphenols in olive oil. One of the best is hydroxy tyrosol. It's a powerful polyphenol that can have huge beneficial heart health benefits. I actually performed a science experiment showing this right here on my YouTube channel. Check it out, it's incredibly eye-opening. And once again, fat is not your enemy. So I recommend everyone should try to consume about a liter of olive oil per week like they do in Crete. But to make it easy, have a shot of olive oil every day. Bring olive oil to the table, pour it on your meats, your chicken, your fish, pour it on your vegetables, pour it on your ice cream. Number three, now this one sounds like almost a non-starter, but bear with me. Swallow a whole clove of garlic. Now there's a compound in raw garlic called allicin. Garlic oral administration of allicin lowered blood pressure in hypertensive rats. If you cook garlic, it's inactivated, sorry about that. So swallow it whole or use aged garlic extracts. Now garlic is actually well known as being great for your immune health. Now since you're swallowing garlic whole, you won't get that potent garlic breath. So it's a win-win. So how do you do it? Just peel the clove of garlic. I personally like to roll it in olive oil, pop it in your mouth and swallow it. The olive oil makes it slippery and it goes right on down. Number four, your microbiome, your gut begins at your mouth and your oral microbiome and your oral health is really just as important as your gut microbiome in terms of heart health. Heart disease begins in the mouth and gums. Bacteria get through your mouth, through your gums, into your bloodstream and actually begin to affect the blood vessels in your heart. In fact, people with gum disease have two to three times the risk of having a heart attack stroke or other serious cardiovascular event. Believe it or not, when I'm doing surgery and we've actually looked at the plaque that we take out of people when we do bypass surgery, these plaques have been shown to contain oral bacteria and how they get in there, it came from your mouth. So the benefits of brushing and flossing go way beyond fresh breath. Also speaking of fresh breath, most commercial mouthwashers destroy your oral microbiome and actually raise your blood pressure, exactly what you don't want to do. So instead of mouthwashing, use oil pulling and you'll get great results. In fact, I actually talk about this on episode 221 with Dr. Puneet Nanda, aka Dr. Fresh. It's great watching and it's very entertaining to hear his story. Last but not least, cheese please. Now recently big news was made with a study out of Norway looking at people with stable angina. Stable angina means that these people had coronary artery disease and if they did too much activity, if they walked too fast, if they exercised too fast, they got chest pain. Angina. When they stopped doing that, the chest pain went away and it was predictable. This is called stable angina. Now what they did was they looked at the effect of dairy consumption, butter consumption and cheese consumption on what happened to these people's stable angina. Now what made the news was that dairy and butter dramatically worsened stable angina. In other words, they went on to have heart attacks or needed stents. But what was not mentioned was the fact that the more cheese people ate, the better their angina got. It went away. Well, I've written extensively about this in Unlocking the Keto Code and I'm going into it even more in the upcoming book. Cheese has fascinating products that improve heart health in multiple areas. Interestingly enough, four out of the five blue zones actually are blue zones because they eat goat and sheep cheeses. The fermentation process of making cheese produces very important compounds that actually protect against heart disease, having nothing to do with cholesterol. Now, no, you can't eat nachos in cheese sauce or other highly processed cheeses. If you're going to have cheeses, look for the fact that they're made out of casein A2. These are most cheeses in France, most cheeses in Italy. All goat and sheep cheeses and water buffalo cheeses are casein A2. So enjoy your cheeses, the right cheeses please. Finally, exercise snacking. Now everyone knows that regular exercise is absolutely essential for heart health, but that doesn't mean you have to spend hours in the gym every week. Instead, try exercise snacking. It's super easy, fun, and great for even the busiest of people like me. So what do you do? Wall sit. Wall sit for up to two minutes several times a day. Now this is hard to do. This is how I get ready for ski season. So don't give up. Just sit against a wall for as long as you can before your quadriceps are screaming. And then try to push it a little bit longer every day. Get to two minutes and you'll be shot at the benefit of wall sitting. Couch planks. Get off the couch in a commercial and just do a plank against the couch. It's really easy, it's effortless. My personal favorite, do deep knee bends when you're brushing your teeth. Come on folks, you're not doing anything else twice a day, just do deep knee bends while brushing your teeth. Kind of time your brushing with your deep knee bending. Walk and talk. Instead of taking a call at your desk, get up, carry the phone with you, and walk around the office. Walk down the hall instead of just sitting there talking. It's also incredible for your overall health, including your heart. It's really the most underestimated form of exercise. Go out and walk every single day and you'll notice better health, more energy, and a slimmer waistline. And that's what I tell all my patients, please get a dog. A dog will demand a walk twice a day and it'll get you out as well. I think you're going to love this one. If you're enjoying potatoes in any form, you're accumulating a hefty helping of these toxins. This can contribute to serious health issues.