Dr Philip Ovadia - Unlocking the Secrets of Metabolic Health

Stuart Cooke (00:01.068)
Hey guys, this is Stu from The Health Sessions and I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Philip Ovadia to the podcast. Dr. Ovadia, how are you?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (00:08.788)
I am doing great, really excited to be here with you Stuart.

Stuart Cooke (00:13.388)
Thank you so much for your time. So first up, before we delve into the questions and for all of our listeners that may not be familiar about you or of you or your work, I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, please.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (00:25.944)
Yeah, sure thing. I have, I'm a heart surgeon. I've been a heart surgeon now for over 20 years. I've done thousands of heart surgeries and I was a very unhealthy heart surgeon for a long period of time. I had reached a point where I was morbidly obese. I was pre-diabetic and I realized that I was going to end up on my own operating table, so to speak.

And I also realized I didn't know what to do about that. All of this advice that I had been taught in school, in medical school, know, eat less, move more, follow the food pyramid. We've all heard it our entire lives and it wasn't working for me. It wasn't working for my patients. And I realized that I had to find a different way. Right. And so.

started asking some different questions, I think, coming across some different information and ultimately figured out what I needed to do for my health. Was able to lose, you know, over a hundred pounds and maintain that weight loss, which is something that's even harder to do than losing it in the first place. Reverse my prediabetes. And along the way I came to realize that, you know, what I thought I knew about heart disease

wasn't exactly the truth and kind of took a different approach to heart disease in general and now look increasingly to keep people off the operating table. I still work as a heart surgeon, I still do heart surgery, but I am increasingly focused and more passionate about keeping people off the operating table these days.

Stuart Cooke (02:17.44)
Fantastic. Well, look, 101 questions that I would love to ask you, and I've been digging into a lot of your content prior to this conversation. And the phrase metabolic health seems to be first and foremost, one of perhaps the most strategic things that you would want to address. Why do you believe that metabolic health is crucial for preventing heart disease?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (02:44.045)
Yeah, it's crucial for preventing heart disease because it gets at the root cause, right? It informs us about what is actually driving the heart disease epidemic that is, you know, occurring worldwide. And even more, what's really become so interesting about metabolic health to me is it goes beyond heart disease, right? It turns out that all of the things we die from mostly are related to metabolic health. Things like Alzheimer's disease, things like diabetes, things like cancer, these are all related to metabolic health. So I kind of came across it, you know, looking to address the heart disease problem. But I now talk with doctors who are cancer doctors, who are kidney doctors. who are doctors from all sorts of other specialties, and it turns out that metabolic health is the answer to those issues as well.

Stuart Cooke (04:51.329)
I'm intrigued to ask why you believe it is crucial for preventing heart disease.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (05:01.378)
Yeah, what I came to discover about metabolic health is it is at the root cause of heart disease. You know, we've become increasingly focused on things like cholesterol that yes, they play a role in the heart disease process, but they're not the root cause. And if you don't know the root cause of an issue, you really can't fix it. What else became very interesting to me about heart disease, about

metabolic health is that it goes beyond heart disease. And really the vast majority of the chronic diseases that we suffer from, things like Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, cancer, they're all related to metabolic health. So what's really become fascinating to me of late is, you know, here I am a heart specialist talking about metabolic health. And then I talk to the

diabetes people talking about metabolic health, the cancer doctors, the fertility doctors, OB gynecologists, that you would say, well, what does the heart have to do with fertility? But it's all different manifestations of the same root cause problem, which is poor metabolic health.

Stuart Cooke (06:21.665)
So for the listener that is confused even with the term metabolic health, how would you explain it to them and where should they start if they want to try and correct what they have been told is poor metabolic health?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (06:26.061)
Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (06:33.302)
Yeah, so the simple concept that I want people to understand around metabolic health is that when you are metabolically healthy, your body is able to properly utilize the inputs that you're giving it. And the primary input we give our body is the food that we eat. There are others, but the food that we eat is the prime one. Now, in order to improve something, right, you have to be able to measure it.

and there are five key metrics of metabolic health. And those five key metrics are your waist circumference, your blood pressure, your HDL cholesterol, your triglycerides, and your blood glucose level. And so that's where we want to start, right? And I can give you the numbers. The caveat is I'll give you the numbers.

in the American measurement and you might have to get online and translate them some to international. But for your waist circumference, if you're a man, you want your waist to be less than 40 inches. For women, you want it to be less than 35 inches. And what we're talking about there is at the level of your belly button, you want to take the tape measure and measure.

do that kind of first thing in the morning. Your blood pressure, you want this to be less than 130 over 85. So top number less than 130, bottom number less than 85. And that should be without the use of medications. If you've been diagnosed with high blood pressure, you're already on medications for high blood pressure. That's an indicator that you're not in optimal metabolic health.

Your blood glucose level. You want this to be less than 100 milligrams per deciliter. Some people will look instead at the hemoglobin A1C, which is kind more of an average blood sugar over a three-month period, and you want that to be less than 5.7. And then the cholesterol, right? But again, you'll notice I didn't mention LDL cholesterol, the one that so many doctors focus on.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (08:56.598)
I talked about HDL cholesterol. And this one's a little confusing because you want it to be higher. And specifically as a man, you want it to be over 40 milligrams per deciliter. As a woman, you want it to be over 50 milligrams per deciliter. And then finally, the triglycerides, which are another, it's on the cholesterol panel.

It's not really cholesterol, but it's on that cholesterol panel that people will get checked with their doctors. And this one, you do want to be lower. You want it to be less than 150 milligrams per deciliter. So five metrics of metabolic health. Now, the scary thing is they did a study here in the US. This is actually going back a few years now. And what they found was of the adults in the United States, 88

So nearly nine out of ten were not in optimal metabolic health. They could not meet those five metrics of health. you know, hazard to say that in most of the developed countries around the world, the numbers probably aren't much better than that. The US is probably the worst, but, you know, where you are in Australia and, you know, throughout Europe,

Stuart Cooke (10:15.745)
Hmph.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (10:21.346)
we're seeing this epidemic, this crisis of metabolic disease.

Stuart Cooke (10:27.639)
Why didn't you report on LDL? I'm keen because that does seem to be the metric of concern for so many people yet. It's also a subject of conjecture for the high fat keto carnivore realm as well where they're consuming lots and lots of fat and dairy and meat and very few carbohydrates and seems to be lots of healthy metric stabilized but LDL does go through the roof.

Why didn't you mention that one?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (10:56.3)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, understand those five measures I gave, those aren't my five measures. Those are the well-accepted, you know, in the medical community, in the scientific literature, those are the five measures. And the reason that LDL is not in there is because LDL has no relationship to metabolic health. Now, you're right. There's a lot of controversy. What role does LDL cholesterol play in heart disease?

And this is one interesting thing about LDL, right? You really never hear it talked about in any context besides heart disease, right? Those metabolic health measures that I talked about, they correlate with heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, all these different things, as I mentioned before, LDL, if it's a problem, right? It's only a problem in relation to heart disease.

Stuart Cooke (11:53.132)
Right.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (11:54.068)
Ultimately, there's a lot that I think is oversimplified and misunderstood when it comes to LDL. LDL cholesterol does play a part in the development of heart disease. But it turns out it's not all LDL cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is actually a family of cholesterol-carrying particles, and some of those cholesterol-carrying particles get involved in the plaque that builds up

that can lead to heart disease, but a lot of the LDL particles do not, and we don't differentiate them. We only measure LDL for the most part. So that's one issue. And the other issue is LDL is a downstream part of the process. LDL is actually used by our body to try and repair damage that's done to our blood vessels. And so if you really want to stop the heart disease, right,

You go back and you say, what's causing the damage to the blood vessels? And that's what leads us back to this metabolic health issue. And so that's why I don't think LDL should be our primary focus. And there's a lot of context around whether or not you should be concerned about your LDL at all.

Stuart Cooke (12:56.523)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (13:14.283)
I guess that gets back to the phrase metabolic health. If you are metabolically healthy, I'm guessing LDL reference numbers are going to be less of a concern.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (13:25.064)
Exactly. And the reason why that is is because, you know, like I said, not all LDL is the same. So what I talk about with people is it's not about how much LDL, which is what most doctors focus on. It's really about the quality of your LDL particles. Do you have a lot of the large, buoyant, large, fluffy LDL particles that are beneficial in our body?

Stuart Cooke (13:32.054)
Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (13:53.682)
Or do you have the small dense LDL particles that get involved in plaque? And so we need to go beyond just measuring how much LDL. We really need to start talking about LDL quality. And then again, it's the environment that the LDL is in. Because if the LDL is, you know, in an environment that the blood vessels are not being damaged, then the LDL isn't going to cause any problems.

Stuart Cooke (14:09.239)
Hmm.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (14:22.67)
So if you're not insulin resistant and you don't have inflammation and your blood vessels are healthy, again, LDL shouldn't be a concern for you.

Stuart Cooke (14:33.399)
Yeah, it's a fascinating topic and if you dig so deeply into that and it seems to be so much literature as well that is slowly starting to come out about the importance of metabolic health as a primary driver of health over perhaps just cholesterol numbers or the cholesterol score that your doctor gives you that you scratch your head when he tells you because you don't really understand it. So I'm keen then to get back into metabolic health and understand what you did.

to change the needle with your health.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (15:06.572)
Yeah, so what I did was I, you know, like I said, I kind of got focused on metabolic health. Insulin resistance is the kind of medical term that, you know, measures metabolic health. And so I became focused on reversing insulin resistance. That led me to a low carb diet, cut out sugar, cut out carbohydrates.

Ultimately, I kind of learned more and really cut out processed food in general and really came to ultimately what most people would call a carnivore diet, eating primarily red meat, other animal products, and avoiding processed food and carbohydrates as much as possible.

Stuart Cooke (15:41.771)
Mm-hmm.

Stuart Cooke (16:00.737)
Fantastic. Is that an initiative that you took in the early stages when you were looking at really attacking your metabolic health, or is that something that you've continued to do? Because I'm intrigued by low carbohydrate, and I guess I'm cognizant that we shouldn't blame the apples for what the Oreos did, right? There's a different quality there of carbohydrate. are you introducing more

carbohydrate now or are you sticking to the regime that you started with?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (16:33.31)
No, I really stick to a very low carbohydrate, you know, carnivore diet because that's what works for me. That's what's been working for me. And I don't see any reason to reintroduce carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are not essential to human beings. Full stop. We can survive without them. We can't survive without fat in our diet. We can't survive without protein in our diet. But we can survive without carbohydrates in our diet.

Stuart Cooke (16:40.405)
Yeah. Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (17:02.426)
And, you know, but there are different approaches, right? I don't tell all of my patients that you need to go full carnivore, right? If you are, now, if you are insulin resistant, it means that your body cannot properly process carbohydrates. And any carbohydrates, even if they are, you know, fruit, natural carbohydrates, they...

Stuart Cooke (17:09.516)
Hmm.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (17:29.738)
your body is going to have trouble processing them and they can lead to trouble. If you're not insulin resistant, yes, you can tolerate carbohydrates and you stick to non-processed, know, naturally occurring clean carbohydrates. I don't have any problem with that. But, you know, like I said earlier, the reality is that most of us are not metabolically healthy. Most of us do have some element of insulin resistance.

and therefore carbohydrates in all their forms are going to be problematic.

Stuart Cooke (18:04.043)
Yeah, it's definitely a very, or becoming a very popular strategy, I think, and diet. And I guess because it eliminates so much crap and very nutrient dense as well. It's quite different to going plant-based where it can be tricky to get all the nutrients that you need to thrive, I think.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (18:26.708)
Exactly. And you know, again, that's what's kind of kept me there, right? It's a simple concept. One of the things that I like most about the carnivore approach is, you know, you don't really have to count anything. You know, it's not a matter of, well, I'm gonna stick to, you know, X number of carbohydrates and do I do, you know, total carbohydrates or just net carbohydrates and...

Stuart Cooke (18:31.447)
Mm.

Stuart Cooke (18:51.254)
Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (18:52.12)
you know, what type of, you know, it just, it's a simple concept, right? You know, eat animal products and it fixes the problems. And then like I said, it just, works well for me. So I've stuck with it now, you know, I'm coming up on eight years on a primarily carnivore diet and I just haven't seen a reason to reintroduce things. Now, I, you know, I admit I'm not a hundred percent strict occasionally. Yes.

Stuart Cooke (18:55.99)
Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (19:20.908)
I'll have some, you know, handful of berries or an avocado or something like that. And I don't think that's necessarily harmful. It's just, don't really incorporate it into my day-to-day life because I like eating meat and it keeps me healthy. So I'm gonna keep doing that.

Stuart Cooke (19:25.313)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (19:38.389)
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I have a mince meat and eggs for breakfast and it just works so well. It's so quick, it's so filling, great source of protein, lots of nutrients in there. I don't need to eat till lunchtime when I have that. It's worlds away from the days when I ate things like oatmeal for breakfast and bananas and I was gagging for food half an hour later. It's drastically different to what we're told is perhaps the best intervention.

to what we're doing now. So how does exercise play into what you did as part of your strategy to really boost that metabolic health?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (20:19.33)
Yeah, it really didn't play that much of a role, to be honest. And at the beginning, exercise was not really a focus at all. Now, as I got healthier, I think I just got motivated to get more active. And, you know, I've gone through different periods, right? I went through a period where I was running a lot and I ended up, you know, doing a half marathon. These days, I tend to focus more on resistance exercise.

I think, you know, muscle building and maintenance of muscle is extremely important as we get older and as we're, you know, trying to stay healthy, not just live longer, you know, live better. And so I focus on resistance exercise. Time is very, you know, time is my limiting factor, right? So I want efficient things that can help me build and maintain muscle.

Stuart Cooke (21:02.711)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (21:14.005)
Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (21:17.89)
And that's really how I approach it. That doesn't mean it's the only approach or the right approach for everyone. But ultimately, I kind of look at cardio type exercise as being optional. If you have time to do it, great, and you enjoy it, great. But I've seen plenty of people get very healthy without doing the slightest bit of cardio exercise. And so I don't...

Stuart Cooke (21:44.204)
you

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (21:47.658)
emphasize it in the end.

Stuart Cooke (21:50.347)
Fantastic. Again, it goes against everything that we've been told, but also at the same time, everything that we've been told doesn't seem to be working. So definitely worth exploring alternate routes on that one.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (22:03.884)
Yeah, that's a big thing that I come back to, right? What we've been told is not working, and that's pretty clear. And so if, you know, I think it was Einstein, right, that said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And for 50 years, we've been told basically the same thing around diet and exercise, and it's clearly not working. Our health has clearly gotten worse during that time.

Stuart Cooke (22:09.973)
Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (22:32.834)
So why would we keep doing it?

Stuart Cooke (22:35.157)
Yeah, exactly right. The one thing I think that perhaps has been increasing for people as our lives become busier day by day is stress. And we have been told that stress is the biggest killer and stress can lead to heart issues and everything under the sun. How do you feel about that and what do you do to manage stress? Or perhaps is stress the enemy that we've been told that it is?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (22:45.432)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (23:03.714)
Yeah, do think that stress is a very important thing and it's one of the four pillars of health that I talk about. I talk about what you eat, what you do, how you sleep, and stress. And for me, stress is really about how you manage stress. We live in a very stressful world. We can't avoid stress. I don't think it's about trying to eliminate stress. I think it's trying to...

deal better with the stress that you have to face. And that looks different for different people, right? For some people, it might be something like meditation. For other people, religion. Other people, it's just their community, friends, family. Whatever it is, you've got to be able to process the stress that's coming at you at a constant basis and deal with it.

Stuart Cooke (23:41.623)
Hmm.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (23:59.712)
An interesting thing that I have found though is as people get metabolically healthy, it definitely affects our, you know, our mental well-being. And there's now a lot of, you know, literature on this, scientific literature. The metabolic psychiatry and metabolic psychology fields are exploding.

And we're increasingly recognizing that even these, you know, the psychiatric conditions that people suffer from, things like, you know, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, they have their same root in metabolic health. It's the way that insulin resistance and poor metabolic health manifests in the brain. And so reversing the insulin resistance, improving the metabolic health,

can actually improve these conditions. And I find a lot of people who just say, you know, when they're metabolically healthy, they're calmer. They, you know, don't react the same way that they reacted in the past to these stressful situations. And so it, you know, it becomes sort of a positive feedback loop of, you know, when you get healthier, metabolically healthier, you just...

The stress has less effect on you, ultimately.

Stuart Cooke (25:25.889)
That's right. Yeah, I guess you feel resilient, no doubt, because your body just does what it needs to do. You mentioned sleep as another pillar as well, and we often look at that as perhaps one of the most important pillars, because when sleep breaks, everything else seems to tumble down behind it. What are your strategies for getting a good night's sleep?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (25:48.204)
Yeah, so, you know, one again, of sleep versus quantity of sleep. They both have their importance, right? You can't skimp too much on the quantity, but you got to make sure you get good quality sleep. And, you know, this gets into, you know, making sure your sleep environment is good. It's dark enough. It's quiet. It's, you know, a good temperature. Things like avoiding

Stuart Cooke (25:55.371)
Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (26:16.366)
you know, screens and bright lights too close to sleep, not drinking alcohol too close to sleep. These are all, you know, important as you think about both your sleep quality and your sleep quantity. And again, very interesting to see the effects of improving your metabolic health tends to improve your sleep as well. And, you know, and vice versa.

Right? You know, when you get better sleep, it's definitely going to help your metabolic health. So they all kind of feed into each other. And it's just, you know, you can't ignore it ultimately. And I admit, you know, it's probably the area where I struggle the most in terms of the quantity of sleep just because of, you know, my busy life. But I do get very good quality sleep. So I find oftentimes, you know,

Stuart Cooke (26:55.979)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (27:05.023)
Right.

Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (27:14.11)
six hours of quality sleep is good enough for me. Whereas there are people that are getting nine, 10 hours of poor quality sleep and they still, you know, don't feel rested and it's having negative impacts on their health.

Stuart Cooke (27:23.798)
Mm.

Stuart Cooke (27:31.595)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Stuart Cooke (27:39.199)
You mentioned alcohol as part of that and I know that alcohol can absolutely destroy sleep. How does alcohol fit into perhaps your life or your recommendations to your patients when you're looking at metabolic health?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (27:56.588)
Yeah, so, you know, alcohol is not beneficial to our health. Flat out. that's what we have to acknowledge. Now, I'm okay with, on an occasional basis, someone understands that and they make the intentional choice that, you know, they're gonna enjoy some alcohol. Great. You know, and what I tell people is make it as least harmful as possible, right? So,

Stuart Cooke (28:03.21)
Yep.

Stuart Cooke (28:16.727)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (28:22.295)
Okay.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (28:22.722)
You look for the alcohols that are lower in sugar, lower in carbohydrates. You you try and stay away from the mixers that are high in sugar. And you also try and make sure that you're not drinking to the point that your judgment sort of lapses and you start eating badly, right? Which that oftentimes goes together. Anything really when it comes to your health, right? Even when we talk about

Stuart Cooke (28:41.247)
Yeah, yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (28:49.718)
what we're eating, right? And we know what the ideal might look like. If you make an intentional choice to deviate from that, and it's your choice, and you you can say, okay, it's my birthday, I'm gonna have a piece of birthday cake, right? And, but then, you know, I'm right back on plan. I don't have any issues with that in general, right? It's only when people start doing these things unintentionally.

You know, if you're drinking just because everyone else around you is drinking and then you're drinking to the point that you start making bad choices about other things, that's really where we see the problems occurring.

Stuart Cooke (29:23.767)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (29:31.799)
Yeah, it's a snowball, isn't it? I invariably it leads you into the early hours of the morning searching for snacks as you're famished.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (29:40.598)
Yeah, exactly. get, you know, you, you, you have the drink at night, right? Yeah. You make poor choices around your food at night. Then you get poor sleep and now you wake up, you're not well rested. You're feeling miserable. So you're going back to the poor food again. And it just becomes a real problematic cycle.

Stuart Cooke (29:46.017)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (29:55.489)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (29:58.999)
Absolutely, absolutely. You don't feel like exercising, you just feel like sitting in front of Netflix with a tub of ice cream. No, I get it. Getting back to heart disease, I'm keen to understand if our metabolic health has been well considered and we've got a plan and we're on track, what are some of the other misconceptions then concerning heart disease that you would encounter that we should perhaps be wary of?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (30:28.716)
Yeah, so one of the biggest misconceptions that I deal with is that, you know, it's not, you can't really address it, you know, before you have the heart attack, right? The unfortunate reality is, is that the vast majority of people who suffer from heart disease, they don't know about heart disease until they have the heart attack. And I really, one of the other things I've become passionate about and push for is

earlier detection and proactive management of the heart disease. So in particular coronary artery calcium scans, CAC scans. These are simple, pretty inexpensive tests to get done and they can show heart disease at its early stages. They're kind of equivalent to a mammogram, you know, for your heart.

Stuart Cooke (31:08.459)
Yes.

Stuart Cooke (31:24.743)
Yeah, I...

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (31:24.898)
We wanna pick up on heart disease before it becomes a problem.

Stuart Cooke (31:28.183)
I had a test when I was 50 years old and I absolutely attest that it was cheap, wasn't invasive in any way and it was just peace of mind. So important for me.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (31:42.646)
Yeah, exactly. you know, like I said, one of the biggest, one of the other big issues we have around heart disease is that we're too reactive, right? We deal with it when you have the heart attack, but we can do better. And, you know, if you get that CAC scan and you find out about the heart disease early, and then you address things like insulin resistance and inflammation, we can stop it from getting worse.

And so that's another thing that I now do different with my patients. I'm very proactive and again trying to keep them from getting to the operating table trying to keep them off the operating table by managing this proactively.

Stuart Cooke (32:27.391)
Yeah. Your view on statin drugs? Well, it seems to be back in the day it was like, well, that's fine, there's a pill for this now. So you've got no concern, we'll just give you a pill and you'll be fine. You can continue on your merry way as long as you're taking the medications that we prescribe.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (32:45.954)
Yeah, it's interesting. So I started my career as a heart surgeon 20, 25 years ago. I was undergoing my training. And when I was picking which area of surgery to specialize in, and I told some of my mentors that I wanted to go into heart surgery, they thought I was foolish. They said, there's gonna be nothing for you to do. We have these medications.

Stuart Cooke (32:56.247)
Hmm.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (33:14.018)
we, know, heart disease is solved and you're not going to have a career. Needless to say, here I am 25 years later, busier than ever. Heart disease is more prominent than ever. And it's pretty clear to me that statins are not the answer, right? And so the main problem I find with statins is exactly what you said, exactly what I talked about, exactly what most doctors have been fooled into believing that

If we just give enough statins, if we just lower people's cholesterol enough, we have other medications to do that these days as well, we're going to eliminate heart disease. And this is the approach we've been taking for 40 plus years. And again, it's clearly not working. So, you know, we can get into all the nuances about statins, right? How their benefits are overstated, their risks are understated.

But the main issue I see with them is they're a distraction because the doctors think that if they just prescribe the statin, they've taken care of that patient's risk for heart disease. And the reality is much different than that. I operate all the time on patients that have been on these medications for decades. And the reason is, is because the real root cause of heart disease, insulin resistance,

doesn't get talked about. And that is what I think the biggest problem with statins are.

Stuart Cooke (34:47.157)
Yeah, absolutely. How do you envisage then the future of cardiac care? And perhaps an interesting time to ask that question because I can see that, you know, your government is about to take a major change and for the first time in a very long time, there appears to be a number of topics there that are being raised to the forefront, which were perhaps currently sidelined, that are in the health space with...

food and nutrition and all of the above. What do you think the future might look like or perhaps should look like in this area? Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (35:20.108)
Yeah, I know what it should look like, right? It should look like exactly what we've been talking about here, right? A preventative approach, insulin resistance, inflammation, these being the hallmarks of heart disease and these being the main focus of preventing heart disease. I am optimistic, right, that we do have governmental level discussions around these topics.

Stuart Cooke (35:25.025)
Yeah. Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (35:48.46)
Now I know the reality, right? It's very hard to change this environment. We're talking about our food. We're talking about the pharmaceutical industry. We're really talking about the whole way that the healthcare system is structured. And you know, that's a lot to change, but I do think it's going to change. And I think it's going to change not only because it's being talked about in the government,

Stuart Cooke (36:06.089)
Mm.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (36:16.672)
It's going to change because it needs to change. It needs to change because people are waking up to the fact that our healthcare system, and this is a global consideration, this is not, you know, the U.S., our healthcare system is failing. People are getting sicker and it just is not sustainable. And so more and more I see the people talking about this, the people demanding this.

And that is what I think is ultimately going to force the change because things like, you know, industries like the food industry, right? They respond to what people are looking for, what people are buying. And as we talk more about low carb, carnivore, eliminating processed food, all of these issues become more mainstream and more discussed. That's going to force the environment to start to change.

Stuart Cooke (36:59.073)
Yes.

Stuart Cooke (37:14.795)
Yeah, interesting times ahead. I'm very, very intrigued to see what happens over the next 12 months in that space. hopefully, going in the right direction, hopefully. We're kind of coming up on time. I'm just keen to ask you a personal question around your daily non-negotiables. I'd like you just to share what those might be. And they may be not diet related in any way, shape, or form. But what are the things that you do each and every day

by default, these healthy routines that just make sure that you crush your day.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (37:48.438)
Yeah, so, you know, for me, it probably starts with making sure that I get, you know, quality time with my family. That's kind of first and foremost. And then that I spend time making the world around me better in some way, right? And that's working with my patients to make their lives better. That's educating myself.

Right? I continue to learn. by no means, you know, claim that I know it all and I know all the answers. and, even, you know, being able to come on podcasts like this and, and spread this message and educate people about what I have learned. those are all things that, that give me the energy to, you know, carry on to get through my day. And then of course, you know, eating.

Good, high quality animal protein is another non-negotiable that I make sure I incorporate into every day.

Stuart Cooke (38:56.897)
Fantastic. I think there's a lot of people over there listening to this at the moment that are going to be questioning how they start their day in relation to what you've just told us. what's next for Dr. Avadia? What have you got on the calendar this year?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (39:10.486)
Yeah, lots of stuff. Talking at a number of metabolic health focused conferences. I have a very active telemedicine practice that I run, OVADA Heart Health. And I have a whole team behind me that makes that happen, right? And we have health coaches, nurse practitioner. We see patients via telemedicine throughout the United States and internationally.

And, you know, it keeps me very busy. I do continue to work as a heart surgeon as well. And then some of the other stuff, right, that you alluded to. I'm actually going to be, a few days after we're recording this, I'm going to one of the inaugural ball that is being put on by Robert Kennedy and the kind of Make America Healthy movement.

Stuart Cooke (40:03.703)
Yeah.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (40:07.586)
you know, just figuring out how I can help with with that part of this puzzle. lots of things happening, always busy, but always feeling blessed that I can help so many people.

Stuart Cooke (40:13.58)
Fantastic.

Stuart Cooke (40:21.015)
That's awesome, fantastic. And for all of our listeners that want to find out more about you and your work and read your literature and follow you socially, where would be the best place for us to send them?

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (40:30.924)
Yeah, so iFixHearts everywhere. So you can go to ifixhearts.com on all the social medias. We're at iFixHearts. If anyone wants to check out the book, stay off my operating table, widely available at all the usual places. But you can just come to iFixHearts and start there and connect with us. And we're always looking to work with people that are interested in taking a different approach to their health.

Stuart Cooke (40:34.09)
Okay.

Stuart Cooke (40:59.915)
Fantastic, excellent, wonderful conversation. Thank you so much, Dr. Avadia. I will look forward to sharing this with our audience and put everything that we've spoken about on the show notes and hope at some stage to perhaps to meet you in person in the future. Thanks again.

Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts (41:15.35)
Sounds good. Thank you, Stu.

Stuart Cooke (41:17.419)
Bye bye.