141: Agenda-Free Info on Covid & Blood Pressure – with Dr. Sanjay Gupta

In this era of medical misinformation and propaganda, we need a voice of reason.

We found one! 

Our host Wade T. Lightheart was super excited to have Dr. Sanjay Gupta back on the Awesome Health Podcast because Dr. Gupta is one of the most outstanding communicators for sharing medical information with the public. He has a real knack for presenting scientific knowledge in a simple, straightforward style. Dr. Gupta advocates for the public to have free access to reliable, jargon-free health information.

He delivers once again!   

Every time he comes on the show, Dr. Gupta brings level-headed health knowledge, tips, and hacks to help you be healthy and stay healthy. 

He is a cardiologist whose specialty is providing patients with non-invasive cardiology and imaging services. 

This is a timely podcast, as over half the conversation focuses on the pandemic and the resulting mRNA vaccines. Wade asks the doctor some good questions about what’s happening out there with the virus and the subsequent vaccines. Dr. Gupta doesn’t flinch – he provides straightforward, transparent, honest answers that do not have any hidden agendas. 

The other half of this conversation focuses on blood pressure. As a cardiologist who believes in prevention, not just reacting to symptoms, Dr. Gupta reveals some fascinating aspects of blood pressure that many lay people don’t know. If you are getting older or deal with blood pressure issues, this information is something you don’t want to miss. 

Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll get…

In this podcast, we cover:

• Dr. Gupta’s experiences during the pandemic
• How to get solid, accurate Covid information and skip the propaganda
• Recommendations from Dr. Gupta on protecting yourself from Covid
• How Dr. Gupta determines if a patient is ready for major surgery
• Is the push for mass vaccinations in the middle of a pandemic a mistake?
• Why everyone needs easy access to accurate medical information
• Fascinating insights about blood pressure you probably haven’t heard
• How to spot heart disease in the eyes and kidneys
• In the context of personal growth, what’s the difference between “stretching” and “growing”? 

We should never have a society where people are afraid to ask questions.

This is Dr. Gupta’s foundational philosophy with his medical practice. His commitment to patiently answering questions for his patients is more robust now as Covid brought new challenges. 

Here’s some more on this from Dr. Gupta: “This is a fundamental problem. It’s clear to me that people are getting sicker. Why? Is it the food? Ingredients in the food? How do we sort out the experiments needed to determine these answers? The problem is this propaganda today. We should never be afraid to ask questions. The answers should be found in properly designed experiments geared to answer our questions.” 

“However, unfortunately, that isn’t allowed to happen because the minute you say something, you get branded anti this or that.” 

“I think the point is simple: you should be able to ask questions. Then you design an experiment that answers important questions.”

“For example: if you have a population of a billion people vaccinated, and then we start seeing things like more chronic fatigue syndrome, or more migraines, or whatever, how do you determine what’s going on? It’s going to be difficult to tease out.” 

Dealing with Covid as a young person vs. an older person

At one point in his conversation with Wade, Dr. Gupta said, “This is why the younger, healthier, more independent will cope fine both with some of the social distancing and social isolation. But the older population, the people who have the most chance of suffering if they get the virus, also struggle more with the mental consequences of being trapped in their house. Suppose a vaccination program offers you some hope that you can get out of the house. For an 80-year-old person, quality of life is more important than the length of life. Most 80 year olds will say they want some quality in my last few years. So why deprive them of that?” 

“That’s why it was important to come up with something like a vaccination program, which gave people hope that they would be okay going out.”

“We won’t know if the vaccines or social isolation and lockdowns are what’s working. How do you tease out whether the effectiveness is from the vaccination or the lockdown as things are opening up? It will be interesting to see what happens.” 

This is so refreshing to listen to a caring doctor who doesn’t like hype or manipulating people. He wants to give you honest facts about Covid and heart disease – not sensationalistic anecdotes. Dr. Gupta keeps it real, and he uses science, level-headedness, and open-mindedness to help people get answers. 

And the talk about blood pressure is eye-opening. For example, if a BP reading happens to be on the higher side, you don’t have to panic. Retake your BP again 30 minutes later. That higher score might be because you’re nervous about seeing the doctor. 

Check out this episode – some Covid clarity and heart health hacks could be good for you!

Episode Resources:

AHP Listeners in the UK get 15% off total order with code: DRSANJAY15 on BiOptimizers.co.uk
drsanjayguptacardiologist.com
Yorkcardiology.co.uk
Episode 55 with Dr. Gupta: Keeping Your Heart Healthy
Sanjay Gupta’s YouTube Channel
Sanjay Gupta on Facebook

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. It's Wade T. Lightheart From BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. And I'm so excited today because we have a wonderful guest. Returning was one of our more popular guests on the podcast. As you might imagine, our guest is going to talk about empowering patients to take control of their health by addressing their lifestyle and preventing disease from happening in the first place. So, Dr. Gupta is a consultant heart specialist in York, UK who believes in high quality, reliable jargon-free information about health should be available at no cost to everyone in the world. He wants people to stop being fearful and anxious about their health by getting them to focus on improving their quality of life and living fearlessly, born in Zambia and raised in Kenya. His specialty interests include all aspects of non-invasive cardiology and imaging. And you can check out his episode of keeping your heart healthy in episode 55 which was just a wonderful experience. And Dr. Sanjay Gupta, welcome back to the show.

 Sanjay Gupta: Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be called back. Yeah.

 Wade Lightheart: And you know, I have to notice since their last one, you've got a, you got a little beard going on there or YouTube, you know, looking a little bit more of the Sage. How has things been for you during this whole pandemic? COVID kind of responsiveness, that's, there's so

 Sanjay Gupta: Much, so much concern

 Wade Lightheart: And it's very hard to find sources of information. Of course, all the regulations that have been implemented, the population, how you've been keeping during this time.

 Sanjay Gupta: Yeah. It's been it's been a time, like no other both on a personal level and in terms of what I see at work I've seen some of the sickest people, people I've ever seen, you know, so the virus is very real and very, very when it strikes it can be really bad. I mean, some of the people I saw, it was like going into a completely different world, you know, you see blood tests, which are so extraordinary compared to anything else that you would normally see and you see a ward full of patients were just gossiping away scary stuff. I was fortunate that I actually contracted the virus in March and I had a mild flu like illness and I recovered after that. And that left me with a degree of kind of confidence and that because I'd had it perhaps I was less likely to get it again.

 Sanjay Gupta: So I didn't feel the kind of fear that a lot of people who had never had it felt but sure. I mean, both on a professional level and a personal level, it affected us. It affected me, my family, my friends. Yeah. And I, I don't know where it's heading. I don't know what's going to happen next. I think certainly where we are there was a great degree and UK was very proactive in getting the vaccines out, but we are now talking about a possible third lockdown and that's all a worry because you know, to my mind, where does attend, how many times do people have to be inoculated or what are the long-term consequences of this? No one knows. These are very, very unpredictable times.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. I think that's one of the interesting components. Cause I have members in over like friends and associates in the professional class, on the medical side, on naturopathic medicine side, then you have the people who are kind of indoctrinated by the mainstream media. And then you have people who are kind of on the alternative non-legacy based medias. And, and unfortunately it becomes increasingly difficult for people to make educated decisions, especially when there's so much fear. And I have seen, as you indicated, I have professionals who have literally witnessed people with the more extreme cases of COVID and it's pretty nasty for people it's, it's, it's shocking and it's devastating. It's very fearsome and it's approach. And then there's such a variance. It seems between some people get it. I didn't feel too bad and that was fine. And then these other people that are literally dead in very short periods of time, and then now we're rolling out vaccinations across the country.

 Wade Lightheart: And then that's implemented political stuff as a, as someone who is really tied into particularly preventative care in, in the heart based area. And of course this, primarily if I understand correctly as attacking at the blood cells and oxygen carrying capacity, this is why people can't breathe properly and you might be better versed to kind of explain it in layman's terms to people. How does somebody navigate this world as a, as both as a professional, such as yourself, we have a lot of professionals that are listening. And then also as just a lay person like myself, who is tr you know, I'm bombarded daily with Amin, the whole cornea Copia of opinions and ideas. And you know, it's very hard to sort out the wheat from the shave. How do you do this as a, as a professional in your area?

 Sanjay Gupta: You know, I, it's very difficult to try and distinguish between what is true and what is coming out to for scientists mouth. And they're two different things. So everyone sort of equates whatever the government says. The government will say, like we follow the science actually, no, we follow what the scientists says, right? That's and that that's, I think is really important to distinguish. And at the same time, the reality is this is a very new condition. You know it takes years and years and years for us to be able to understand one thing. It takes years and years for us to approve the data regarding what works, where this is in our, in our hospital in particular, you know, initially we were told you have to be two meters apart from each other. Then they just turned around one day and said, oh no, no one is fine.

 Sanjay Gupta: We're following the science. Actually, I don't think anyone's suddenly started doing these studies and proving this. What I have personally realized that the best way to deal with it is to keep yourself safe. As long as you keep yourself safe, you're doing the best you can for yourself and everyone else around you. And to my mind, I think there is a lot to be said for keeping your distance avoiding close contact and, and doing the basic hand hygiene and et cetera. All that I think is really important. I do have, I mean, I was very interested in the vaccination program because that came across as something which could make a real difference. The problem with that is, you know, where it's very difficult. You know, the elderly population seem to be the population that get hit really bad. If there's one thing I've worked out, the older you are the worst you do, the worse you do. So there's little doubt in my mind that the elderly, when you have a vaccinate vaccine, whatever it does should be given that because, you know, they, they need any kind of protection they can get,

 Wade Lightheart: Right. And their run rate to the end is much shorter. Right?

 Sanjay Gupta: Exactly. And they're, and they're probably not going to live long enough to notice whether there are major adverse consequences of this anyway. So because of age, but when you come to younger people, you're dealing with something that in general, doesn't cause too much of a problem in the younger people. You do hear about cases. There's little doubt that you have the people, but they're very rare in general. And the reason they make the headlines is because there but the problem there is that you then produce a vaccine which has been hurried, you know, most vaccines take a long time to produce. You need a lot of data. You produce something like this. You would not correlate everyone without understanding what the long-term consequences are. And then we talk about reinoculating and reinoculating right. That's those are all, you know, worries to me because most people to my mind who are young, if they catch the virus in some way, they have developed a degree of humanity.

 Sanjay Gupta: Now, regardless of what everyone says, it's just my observation, very, very, very few people who get a choice. Right. And I've certainly not come across anyone in my own practice who got it once was okay. Got it. The second time and died, you know, in general, I think that that natural immunity that your body produces is perhaps the, the safest way or correct. Absolutely. I think so. When the virus, when the vaccine was being produced, I mean, I had concerns in my mind because I thought one looking at whoever produces this is gonna, you know, whichever company produces, this is gonna be huge, right? There's so much at stake financially. As a professionally, academically,

 Wade Lightheart: The perverse incentives of putting forth government regulated vaccine, which from all standpoints will give you protection for approximately six months, I think is what they're saying. And you might have to re up, it seems to be indicative that, you know, the, the, the likelihood of somebody removing the safety mechanisms in order to get it out, certainly outweigh the benefit of being late to the party. If you're looking at large multinational companies who are dependent on the bottom line, so there's a couple of thank you for kind of sharing that cause it's I think it's a really interesting point. There's a couple areas that I think would be really good to tack into. We'll get into blood pressure in a second, but I think this is so much on people's plate and I'm trying to get maybe some standpoints of how people can protect themselves.

 Wade Lightheart: Cause you said, one thing that, you know, older people are obviously more at risk than younger people. Also, the data seems to show that people who are obese are also much more likely to run into complications. So those are two definite indicated components. But what about the people who do seem to have some form of natural immunity? I think vitamin D levels are one that's a very concurrent, what are some suggestions that you have for people to kind of boost their natural meaning? Cause I'm on that side of the equation, as I'm hesitant to take the vaccine, I haven't taken it. I I'm I'm I'm in the middle of the road, although it seems I'm just under 50, so that's kind of middle of the road of where I could run into problems, but I've see, I'd rather wait and continue to bolster my own immune system to see, even if I do get it. Well, I got a good chance of beating it as opposed to taking the risk of what could be the complications from you know, multiple levels of vaccination. It's very uncomfortable because it's cutting my ability to travel or go places. It looks like they're going to implement vaccine passports, which that's a whole quagmire we won't have to get into, but what are you suggesting for people to, to bolster up their natural immunity?

 Sanjay Gupta: You know, the nature gives us the best the best antiinflammatories because really at the bay at the core of most disease, most chronic disease, because chronic disease, it's a major risk factor.

 Wade Lightheart: Think I lost your recording here.

 Sanjay Gupta: You can do the better. In fact, we use this principle in cardiac surgery or any kind of surgery, you know, when someone comes to, when someone comes for an operation, how do you decide whether they're going to be okay for that operation? And one might think, oh, you can do this test. You can do this test, et cetera. And that will give you an idea of whether they'll be able to sustain that operation. The reality is there's nothing better than just asking them what they can do in their day-to-day lives. And actually someone who says, look, I struggle walking a flight of stairs is generally going to do badly. Someone who says I can run around the block twice is generally going to do fine. It comes down to something as simple as that. So, so how much activity do you do and how active you are and how much you can do without actually having symptoms as a, is a really good gauge to your overall heart, heart health.

 Sanjay Gupta: We know that we often, when we're doing assessments on the heart, we put people on the treadmill at, and, and a lot of the data now points that if you can just do more than nine minutes on the treadmill that puts you in a low risk category. So you may have a similarly tight narrowing in your heart artery, okay. And two people can have similarly tight narrowing. So the, the magnitude of the diseases, the same, but the person who can do more than nine minutes is generally going to do well. The person who can only do two minutes as good, generally going to do badly, even though the magnitude of the disease is the same. I think regular exercises

 Wade Lightheart: Speak to that directly because my father last year during COVID went through a quadruple by Platt pass and my dad's been relatively fit his whole life and he's worked in manual labor and he was literally out in his backyard, cutting down trees. In that evening he was having problems pain in his shoulder and chest. And my mom eventually got him to go to the ambulance at two o'clock in the morning cause he couldn't sleep very well. Of course he was resistant. And finally he said, okay, they kept him in there. And what had been interesting is he had done, he had done these type of tests already earlier that season for his heart. And he was fine on the treadmill. He was continuing to going, he was still active, very labors. And eventually, you know, then they looked at him, he had less than 30% of his blood flow.

 Wade Lightheart: And so then they had surgery at them and he's up in his seventies and he had the surgery on Wednesday and was out of the hospital on Friday and re recovered in three months. And you know, he's kind of back to his old self again, which is remarkable to modern medicine. And we know a lot of other people might possibly have been dead in that situation. I mean, to think that he was only running on 30% of his, his his capacity. What do you feel when you, when you talk about protecting oneself and there's a fine I want to know as a physician, how do you see protecting yourself from the aspects of the who you're connected with their social distancing or all these sort of things can coordinate with, you know, the mental health issues that we start to see happening around people not being able to socialize with their friends and their families and you know, like we're seeing that whole consequence and we know that that has also damaging effects.

 Wade Lightheart: And I think you're very balanced in your approach. How does someone navigate those things from your perspective? Cause you know, I have friends, their families are fighting ridiculously cause some people are like, everybody has to vaccinate and then, then some of them are saying no. And they're like, well you're an anti-vaxxer or you're you hate your family. I mean, we're getting into these types of horrible conversations that are just people that I know that I'm friends with. How do you, how do you navigate that as a physician? When someone comes in and says, Hey, what do I do here?

 Sanjay Gupta: It's incredibly, it's incredibly difficult. I mean, I think I would never quite understand the impact it has on mental health until I am in that position where I am, perhaps not as mobile, I'm not as independent. I need my family around me. I I'm, you know, so, so it would be harsh of me to even try and pretend what goes on in people's lives when they get to that stage. And I completely appreciate, and that completely appreciate it. And that's why I think that anything that, you know, when you're older, when you're more dependent, anything that gets you out of that is fine. You know? So the vaccine comes along and if it says, okay, you can get out and you can spend that time with your family because at the back of a lot of people's minds is look, you know, I'm not worried about how long I live. What I'm worried about is my quality of life. What I do want to do is be lonely. What I do want to do is be isolated.

 Sanjay Gupta: I think it's interesting. And, and this is why the younger, generally healthier, more independent people will cope fine both with some of the social distancing social isolation. But also if they've got the virus, the older population, exactly the population who will suffer, the mental consequences of being sort of trapped in their house is the person who's most likely to do badly if they come out. So in that setting, if there is a vaccination program, which offers you some hope that you can get out, whatever that means, you know, at least it gets them out. At least it makes them it's very difficult. But I think, I think what you have to always see is what is important is quality of life important with length of life important for an 80 year old, most eight year olds will turn around and say, well, look, if I've had a good innings, I'm not fussed about that.

 Sanjay Gupta: I just want some quality in my last few years. And so why deprive them that? Absolutely. You know, I think and that's why it was important to come up with something like the vaccination program, which gave people that hope that they would be okay to go out. We don't know, we don't know what it will do because most places where they're doing the program, they've also been socially isolating and lockdowns in place. And now certainly in the UK, this is going to be the acid test. How do you tease out whether it's the effectiveness of that vaccination program versus the lockdown right now that things are beginning to open up, it would be really interesting to see what happens.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, it is. And one of the channels that I listened to is Bret Weinstein, he runs a podcast called dark horse podcast. He was he's an evolutionary biologist and his wife is also a strong, I would say scientific acumen is they're not prone to sensationalism or politicization of their messages, which has, is really, really important. Cause it's kind of hard. So much of this has been politicized used by opposing parties and the political spirit. And it's just really. It has no place for that. And it's, it's, it's, that's, that's probably the most dark part of the whole thing is, is, as you said, we're listening to the scientists, but you know, this scientist has this opinion. This have scientists and science is about testing hypothesis and debating it out and then coming out with the best solution as opposed to politicizing and turning that politicize into propaganda, which is making it hard for people who don't have that background to make informed, educated decisions so that both people can, like you said, Hey, I'm seven years old, probably a good idea.

 Wade Lightheart: If I get a vaccine, Hey, you know what, I'm 17 haven't had families or kids yet or whatever, and lived on with my life, probably better to maybe set aside, but you know, could we have us what really should be a scientists getting together and issuing a standing scale of, you know, likelihood. Maybe we'll get to there at some 0.1 thing that was brought up and I, you might have an opinion on it. You might not in the Weinstein podcast was the concern that when you start vaccinating in the middle of quote unquote, a pandemic that you may actually accelerate the more dangerous mutant strains by doing so. And that this was a virologist that came on, there was a Dr. Bhakti that came on and there was another Dr. Vanderbosch who both had deep concerns there, virology stuff. Is there any weight to that?

 Wade Lightheart: Is there any sense to that? Because I don't know on it could vaccinations actually accelerate the problem as opposed to, to, you know, cause, cause they said the average virus, you know, you got 18 months that just not it doesn't and it's, despite what we've tried to do globally, it doesn't seem to stop that, that, well, I mean, of course we don't know what it would have been had we not done that stuff. Of course. And then they say kind of mutates itself and then becomes you get to herd mentality. But with vaccinating populations in the middle of it, you may actually create more resistance or more lethal mutant strains as a consequence, like your overreaction, because it's like, okay, I'm throwing gasoline on the fire trying to put it out. Is there any merit to that? Did you know anything about that?

 Sanjay Gupta: It's very possible. I think, I think, you know, I think the very fact that to my mind, you know yeah, you know, the, the more you're vaccinating, the more the variants are beginning to show up, certainly in the UK, you know? I think that's a real possibility. I mean, the problem is we've not been in this situation before. So a lot of what we know about this as from previous experiences, but for a lot of us, this is the first time. So time will tell how things turn out. It's really, really difficult. I don't know. What I do know is that when I was at the beginning of the pandemic, when I was listening to people and they were talking about a second wave and a third wave and they were talking about this, we're never going to be normal and we're going to go to the new normal and all that is beginning to come true.

 Sanjay Gupta: Isn't it, when we, when we had the first wave for us, we were all called to this conference room and we had the most pessimistic, you know, scary lecture about how awful this virus is going to be. And how are we going to be you know, we're going to have patients in corridors and, and actually during and was shut down and people were being turned away because we didn't want the hospitals to be full. And we wanted to create that. And actually it didn't turn out that way at all. And in fact, we were more worried by the end of the number of people who missed out on potential care that could have been provided because we decided to close things down to try and accommodate all these patients that were

 Wade Lightheart: The stop or slow the curve was to create ways to prevent an overwhelm in the hospital settings.

 Sanjay Gupta: Okay. Exactly. And that never happens. So the first wave to my mind was, gosh, well that was, that wasn't even that big a deal. And then you know, and you think, okay, well, it's going to fizzle out and that's it it's gone. And then the, we had the, all the protests, you remember the black lives matter protest

 Wade Lightheart: Across the United States

 Sanjay Gupta: Across the United States. And that was just happening at the end of that first wave. And actually we thought, okay, now we're going to see a huge surge of cases a month later, nothing. And then we support, okay, well this is all that maybe it has really gone. You know, all these people get a gathering together, nothing. And then the kids started going to school again and we thought, okay, well, we're going to see something. And then slowly it started creeping up. And then this time we had a much bigger wave. So, you know, we lost about 40,000 in the UK and the first wave. And then the second wave came along and we lost twice as many more people.

 Wade Lightheart: We'll be, we'll be worse again. Well,

 Sanjay Gupta: Yeah, well, so I've learned that certainly, you know, some of these guys, some of these public health professionals, whatever the advice they were giving in retrospect did come true. You know, there was a very good, very knowledgeable professor. I'm not sure where she works, but she had actually predicted this once upon a time. And she'd said, look, you know, the way there's going to be this, if someone's going to get something from a meat market or somewhere, and that's how it's going to spread, et cetera. And she was talking about the fact that looking at isolation. So, you know, lockdowns don't work in the long-term because as soon as you put things up, things come back and it's all proved true. So it's kind of delays the inevitable. It seems. So I am, I am convinced that there are lots of people who know exactly what they're talking about. And I think that those people who turn around and say, maybe you are increasing the risk of variants is true as well. Absolutely. I do believe that that's very possible.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, certainly certainly makes for a challenging time. And we'll probably be looking back on this, hopefully in 10 or 20 years as what we could have done better and what we did poorly and what we did. Right. And of course, it's hard to get a unified strategy across nation states, political divides, economic realities, because of course the devastation that's happened, particularly in the lower class of populations around the world is, is we don't even, we can't even comprehend the, the, just the economic impact and what that's going to result in, particularly in Africa. There's a lot of people, I know the world health organization at early on doubled the amount of people that they thought would be shortened for food because of supply lines and channel sounds without, and then, you know, we'll see how the economic reality is because we've been giving out money and giving it with people at working. So we don't know what all the full toll is going to be in, probably be a decade or so before we, we even grasp it. Thank you for, by the way, for just sharing your insights on it. Cause it's such a, it's such a dicey topic and it's, it's hard to kind of navigate that. And I've been, you know, having conversations with my friends and colleagues about this to try and get their 2 cents worth.

 Sanjay Gupta: Sorry, one of the other things I was going to just quickly mention is that the big problem with this kind of worldwide vaccination drive is that at some point it will become very difficult to tease out what is due to the vaccine and what it, what is it when something becomes so embedded in society, then it's very difficult to do an experiment like, like trying to do an experiment on wifi. Yes, you can do lab based experiments, but where are you going to find a million people who are not being exposed to wide by who participate in clinical trial, compare them to a million people who will have wifi follow them up over the 30 years, who's got the money who's got. How would you find these people and how do you then work out what impact these things have on our long-term health?

 Sanjay Gupta: This is the fundamental problem. The thing is, you know, clearly it is very obvious to me that people are getting sicker, you know, is that, is that food, is that certain things in the food because, and but how do you, how do you now do those experiments? And the problem is that there is this propaganda when you, I don't think we should ever be in a society where we're afraid to ask questions, right. You know, we should be able to ask questions and those questions should be answered by properly designed experiments, which are geared to answering that question, unfortunately, that isn't allowed to happen because the minute you say something you're branded, oh my God is anti. This is that I don't think I did think. I think the point is simple that you should be able to ask the question. There is nothing wrong. And, and then you design an experiment, which tries to answer that very question that just the way I think it should be the problem here now is, you know if you have the whole popularity of a billion people vaccinated, and then we start seeing things like more chronic fatigue syndrome, we see things like more migraine. We see more, you know, all this kind of stuff. How do you know, how do you know it's going to be very difficult to tease out? It

 Wade Lightheart: Is going to be very difficult. And I really am not envious of our frontline care workers, such as yourself, people who are put in these essentially impossible positions that, you know and I think a lot of people haven't really reflected on this accurately is, is that, you know, we trust our physicians to do the heavy lifting, to be able to interpret the data and the research and to make the best recommendations possible that they can, but it becomes extremely difficult to, to, to, to mitigate the potential variants in this equation. And, and so you're really left back to the individual to work with their physician, to do kind of a risk analysis and make the decisions back on that and not, and to try not to project that on to other people. And I have this ongoing debate with one of my MDs who was on the front line and he's, he's helping in the Canadian front provide vaccines.

 Wade Lightheart: And he has come to the conclusions that vaccinating the population based on the research that he has is, is the way to go, which surprised me a little bit. So the last week we spent a three and a half hours and he was generous enough to spend three and a half hours on the telephone. As we walked through piece by piece by piece. I don't necessarily agree with him. However, I respect his opinion as an, as a physician. And, and I, and I go, okay, I understand how you've come to that conclusion and why you're doing what you're doing. I'm going to stay here on the sidelines and keep hitting you up with the various components. And we'll see who wins the bet. And I really hope I re like, I've never wanted to be more wrong in my life. And I hope that I am wrong for my own decisions in my own life and that sort of things.

 Wade Lightheart: And we'll see how it all shakes out to move on, because I don't want to dominate this, although this is probably the most relevant conversation. Let's talk about one of the things that my dad is now as, as a post cardio cardiac surgery person, he had, like I said, a quadruple bypass and he's in his mid seventies and he's been doing well ever since, but one of the things that they monitor and now my mom is monitoring this regularly, is this blood pressure and, you know, saying, Hey, we need to look at your blood pressure on a regular basis, particularly if he gets tired or winded or things like that, which we have noticed the difference in him since the surgery, that sometimes he gets very tired. Now we don't know if that's from di training because he was so physically inactive for extended period of time. It's harder to come back when you're older or it's because of some consequence of, you know, the, the post-surgery recovery, whatever it is. Why do we, what can you explain to people what blood pressure is all about? Why a physician monitors that, and what are some of the insights that you can say that people can use this as a tool to monitor their health and wellbeing?

 Sanjay Gupta: Yeah, I think the, I think the concept of blood pressure is fascinating. And despite the fact that it's hyper aware and all the doctors are, you know, all upon about it, it is so incredibly poorly understood even by the people who manage it well patients. Okay. And a lot of my understanding is just come from trying to work it through in my own mind. The first thing I would say is to try and understand blood pressure. We have to understand what pressure is. Pressure is force over a certain area. So if you increase the force over the same amount of area, you get a higher pressure. Or if you have the same force over a lieu or area or smaller area, you increase your pressure that way, right? Not pressure the ideas, the fault, the force of the blood, the blood over the area of the blood vessels. So if you take all the blood vessels, open them up, that's your area and the forces, the amount of for supply by the blood being ejected onto that area.

 Sanjay Gupta: So in some ways, when we think of blood pressure, it is dependent on how hard or how much blood comes out of the heart and the heart rate. And that determines all the injection fraction. Right? Well, the ejection fraction is that. Yeah, but I mean, I think, I think so the, the ejection fraction just tells you how much blood comes out with one heartbeat, right. But it's not an absolute value. It's say it's a fraction. Whereas what I'm talking about is the stroke volume, meaning the actual, absolute volume that's coming out of the heart multiplied by the heart rate, how much how many times your heart is beating in a minute, for example. So it's a little bit like taking a balloon and saying, well, what did take dictates the pressure within that balloon? Well, obviously how much I, how many times I blow into that balloon and how much air I'm getting into that balloon with each breath,

 Wade Lightheart: Right? How many breasts that you take to blow the boom,

 Sanjay Gupta: Your blood pressure will go up. If your heart rate goes up, it'll go up. If you've got volume and coming out of your heart. But the other thing that determines pressure blood pressure is the area. And so if you're dealing with a balloon for whatever you're blowing in, because the balloon stretches, the pressure remains lower. If you did the same thing with a hot water bottle, doesn't stretch as much, the pressure goes up much quicker. And this is inherently the issue that all pressures lead. The kids are so dependent on our heart rate, how much blood is coming out of her heart, but also that's all pathological blood pressure. So you have physiological blood pressure changes. You know, you get anxious, your blood pressure will go up. Your heart rate goes up, et cetera, right? You exercise your blood pressure goes up. Your stress, your blood pressure goes up. However, pathological blood pressure is about the stretching, stretching us of your blood vessels and how stretchy are they. As we get older, it become less stretchy. And because they get less stretchy, the surface area is smaller and therefore the pressure goes up,

 Wade Lightheart: Right? And so that's so arterial sclerosis is, or heart hardening of the arteries is the loss of flexibility inside of these arteries. And the more that, that, that, that loses its flexibility, the higher, the blood pressure tends to go up as we age. Is that

 Sanjay Gupta: Exactly? Okay. And absolutely you get more of that. And therefore, the important thing to understand is that that is the process, which is the thing that is, is the thing that dictates pathological blood pressure rises, not your heart rate going up not. And so one of the most important things to understand is that people have to realize that, okay, well, what is the whole issue with that? Okay, well, if your pressure goes up and what will it do? Well, if you have very fragile blood vessels as with pressure in any container, if the pressure is too high, it damages the container, right? So if your pressure is too high, then your most fragile blood vessels will burst. And that has two effects. One because these blood vessels have best. They will heal by clotting off. And therefore the organs that they're supplying are not going to get as much blood. But the second problem is that the size of the balloon gets smaller because these blood vessels have now plotted up. So the pressure goes up, right? Because the balloon has now become smaller, same amount of force, but the areas become even smaller. And so the pressure goes up and because the pressure goes up, you then have more damage and then the pressure goes up again and you have more damage. So that's the whole idea behind this and

 Wade Lightheart: Is this what's important as people age, they'll start to give them little pills to modulate their blood pressure, to keep their blood pressure down, but would that potentially cause other problems of not getting enough blood supply to organs that might not be getting as much blood

 Sanjay Gupta: Well, so you're quite right in the sense that if you age, as you age, your blood pressure is supposed to go up right now, the problem here is that what we do is when we start getting people who are just aging naturally, and their blood, pressure's going up, we start getting the medications to lower their blood pressure. What can happen is you can exaggerate a fall in the blood pressure. And the reason for that is very interesting. Again, it's worth understanding this because if you if you think about the difference between blowing into a balloon compared to blowing into a hot water bottle, right? When you blow into a balloon, you're blowing a lot of air and because it's stretching you, you know, your pressure, doesn't go up with with a hot water bottle, a small amount of air. The pressure goes up quite a lot.

 Sanjay Gupta: So imagine what would happen is if I take some air out in the hot water bottle, the pressure will go down very substantially. Whereas with the hot water would be with the balloon. It won't go down to the so, so if you try and say, dehydrate a patient with high blood pressure or give them some medications that suddenly level the blood pressure, and they're a bit dehydrated, the drop, the change in pressure is much more marked, right? And that can then cause people to collapse fall, et cetera, et cetera. And that's why you will often see people going in saying I've been taking high blood pressure, and now I've gone into the fall. And they said, actually I have low blood pressure. How can that be? And the idea is that it's is the very nature of blood pressure to be very variable and the higher, the pressure, the more variable it becomes.

 Sanjay Gupta: The, the reason I'm talking about all this is because the, the whole idea is that all blood pressures change all day long. And there is this idea that high blood pressure exposes you to bad things happening in the future, right? And so you will go to your doctor and the doctor says, oh my God, your blood pressure is one 68. Right? Let's do it again. Oh my God. One 60 operator. You've got high blood pressure, got to treat it. You could have a stroke. My question is when your number changes all day long, which number do you choose to measure against this one gold standard, which by the way, it changes as well all the time by, by a bunch of professionals, they'll change value of soul.

 Sanjay Gupta: So which number do you use? Do you use your number in the morning? Do you use your number in the evening? And this is fundamentally the problem. You should only use the number that was used in the study that suggested that if your blood pressure is high, then something bad could happen to you. Right? Right. But no one uses that number because no one knows what that number is. The best number to my mind is a 24 hour average. You, you measure the blood pressure every half an hour during the waking hours every hour at night. And you calculate an average and that then takes away a little bit of the peaks and troughs that you would get daily. And then you use that number as your number to compare against the study. So a lot of people knew that number, right? They're being treated on the basis of isolated numbers, which could be just because they come to their doctor and their blood.

 Sanjay Gupta: Pressure's a bit high or they're anxious, or they didn't get parking. Well, something like that. And they're put on medications. And the problem with that is the problem with being put on medications is they will never, ever ever know, after taking a lifetime of medication, whether those medications have done anything, because the reason you're taking the medications is not to lower. The number, the reason you're taking the medications is to prevent a heart attack or a stroke or something bad happening to you in the future. Right. You will never know how would you know, because you don't know what would have happened if you weren't taking the medications. Right? Right. So the problem here is that a patient will then put, get put on a lifetime of medications. His insurance will suffer. You will have the fear of God stuff inside his head that, oh my God, this could happen.

 Sanjay Gupta: That could happen. That could happen. He starts becoming medicalized. He's going to be put on one medication because his blood pressure is probably to a certain degree, just an incidental thing due to anxiety. When he goes again, the doctor will say, oh, we need to increase. So two tablets, three tablets. And before you know it here, you have a medicalization who's paying heavily for his insurance. And the most interesting thing is when he ends up in a hospital with a heart attack, they'll say, oh, you've got high blood pressure. That was why you've had the heart attack. Well, what were you treating the patient for for 10 years? Wasn't that the whole point? Wasn't it? The point that you were going to stop the heart attack, that's why you were treating them. So you can see how crazy it is

 Wade Lightheart: And into this chicken or the egg type situation. And this is what you've, what you've said is the exact situation that my father is going through. Particularly trying to get this. And one of the things he gets very anxious when he goes to a doctor, my dad's is tough as nails or whatever. He goes to a hospital. And that's probably the only thing that makes him anxious is when he goes to a hospital or a doctor or whatever. And one of his doctors actually recognize that because they would look at his daily activity level, which was very excellent for a man at his age. He, they would run them on the treadmill and the treadmill seems, he seems to be okay for them. Then he goes in for a thing and has this heart blushing, but then it turned out he had a major blockage in the end that, that went unnoticed.

 Wade Lightheart: Then didn't get picked off you know, in that thing. And luckily enough, we had some good surgeons that could save his life and in, in the final analysis, which was wonderful. But then, then now he's back in recovery and of course they're monitoring it. So if, to summarize what you're saying, how would one go about getting these 24 hour kind of tests doing this regularly? And then how would you submit this to your physician in a way, and in what would you kind of lead that towards, about making kind of working with your physician? Because I always say, Hey, if you've got a physician, they've got professional training in a very small area relative to their speciality. And they're to give you expert advice from that position, but you have to give them the data in order to make that decision. And those two needs.

 Wade Lightheart: So the physician works with the patient in unison. And I think a lot of people don't think of it that way they don't think of their doctor is, is, is, is I always like to think of the doctor, like a barber or a hairstylist you'd go in. And the guy's like, well, how would you like your hair? Well, you know, you want it all shaved off. Do you want it with purple? Like, so you, I always say, I always defer to my hair. So I want to like, we'll try to make me look good to the best of your ability, which no one's ever been able to pull it off, but at least I look a little better by their decision, but then they say, is that good? And I'm like, yeah, that's cool. How does, how does someone do this 24 hour thing? And how would they submit that to their physician? 24

 Sanjay Gupta: Hour ambulatory blood pressure monitors are widely available? What are they, what's the name of those again called ambulatory blood pressure monitors. So this is a machine that will automatically record your blood pressure several times during the day. So every half an hour during the day and every hour at night. And the advantage of that is yes, whilst a lot of people say, well, that would get me really anxious. The reality is you will start seeing the, the, the, the, this balancing out of the peaks and troughs. That's the first thing. The second thing, these things offer is the ability to measure your blood pressure at night. And B that is a very interesting time because all the confounders have been taken away. You're not stressed, right? Not exercising. You know, this is a much more, you get a much cleaner signal when you're asleep.

 Sanjay Gupta: So a lot of people are now beginning to believe that the blood pressure at night, your average blood pressure at night is perhaps the best predictor of bad events in the future. If you have high reading, if you truly have high blood pressure, then generally you lose your circadian pattern with regards to the blood pressure. So most people's blood pressure will detect night. You know, you can have high blood pressure during the data, but if it dips like nicely at night, that's a really good sign tells you that maybe the confounders are affecting your blood pressure. If it doesn't dip, it might, then that's a bad sign that's telling you that maybe your blood pressure is truly there's something going on. Remember when the stretching, when the stretchability starts scaring, it's going to affect all phases, right? It's going to affect the daytime and the nighttime.

 Sanjay Gupta: So that's an interesting thing. And, and most jobs have had it. The problem is they don't deem it. Cost-Effective they think, oh, well just three temporary, one it's much easier. And it's much more profitable to just choose the number and just hit everyone with it. And actually some places you're rewarded for giving people, getting people, you know, identifying as many people at a certain level and treating them the more that I think that's the first, how I do it, as I say, well, first let's find out what your number is. Ben let's work out whether your numbers are even associated with anything bad happening to you. So now, you know, if you go to America, your blood pressure, if your blood pressure is one 30 of Reggie, you've got high blood pressure. Or if you've got above that, if you go to Europe, it's one 40 over 90, then you've got high blood pressure. So different people have different definitions. To my mind. The definition of blood pressure is much easier than that. And not one which is so variable, the definition of blood high blood pressure is that blood pressure, which does that person, some kind of, because if it's not high for you,

 Wade Lightheart: Right? How do you determine that?

 Sanjay Gupta: Thank you. Excellent. So, so the, what I would then say as well, as we said, what does blood pressure, how does a Tom it's about pressure in an inclusive company? And therefore, if the pressure is high, the compartment is damaged. So let's look at the most fragile compartments in the body. Where can we directly visualize the most fragile compartments while at the back of the eyes? Okay. You can look at the retina. The retina is full of little blood cells, little blood vessels. These are the tiniest best fragile blood vessels. So in people with high blood pressure who have two high blood pressure, you may expect to see little hemorrhages in the back of the eyes. You may start seeing changes with any of those blood vessels. So I think looking for that is really helpful. One, the second thing I would say is that very small, fine blood vessels exist in your kidneys. And if those start getting damaged in the kidneys, don't do their job. They start leaking out things that they would otherwise be absorbing. And so you can actually measure microscopic amounts of protein in the urine, and this is called microalbuminuria. And that is a very good sign of trying to pick up damage to the kidneys at an early stage. In fact, most doctors use Medicare, something called creatine. Yeah. You know, to assess kidney function, actually you could lose a kidney before you're creating installs going

 Wade Lightheart: Up, or, or you can take a lot of creatine and it can throw your RA. And

 Sanjay Gupta: That could do does that too. Exactly. So I think looking at stuff like that far more sophisticated, what you're trying to do is offer individualized therapy, individualized treatment. If the eyes are okay, the kidneys are okay. You can look at the heart, the heart on an echocardiogram, an ultrasound, the heart is a muscle it's working harder. If it's working and it's a higher power, it's going to become more muscular. If the heart is not muscular, you're up, you don't have any kidney damage. You don't have any [inaudible]. Then on what basis are we then saying, okay, your pressures are high for you, right? On what basis are we saying that? and, and if you look at all the data, there are two things which are really interesting. Actually, the, the analysis chairs, all the meta analysis showed that even people with blood pressures of one 59, over 99, who don't have any evidence of damage, you know, if you treat them with medication, all you do is give them side effects.

 Sanjay Gupta: You don't make any difference to their outcomes. Okay. and so again, find out what your number is, look to see whether there is any evidence of damage, because the reality is there are conditions called Mohs hypertension, where your blood pressure may look normal, but you're still getting damaged in those people. That number is high for you. Right? And then the third thing on the basis of that, if they then say, okay, well, this is my risk. What is it about my lifestyle that I can address? Because maybe, maybe the blood pressure is a symptom of something else,

 Wade Lightheart: Right? Like hype too much, hydro corn syrup and fats in there, and your dietary habits,

 Sanjay Gupta: Lack of sleep, et cetera. And in some way, you'd miss a trick by just shutting down the symptom, by giving a person, lots of tablets, look at your lifestyle, try and become a healthier person. Because when you try and become a healthier person through good nutrition, good exercise, good sleep, minimizing your stress, correcting any nutritional deficiencies, that kind of thing. Then you tackle the inflammation. The thing that often manifests with symptoms of blood pressure, et cetera, this is to my mind, this is fundamentally important that we have to understand that we should not mistake symptoms for the disease process. Even if there's a tiny chance that that's not pressured number could be telling you something else, then it surely doesn't make sense to just dumb down. That's a cry for help and in, so doing ignore the underlying process. And if you do that, then that underlying process will manifest as something else like high blood sugars.

 Sanjay Gupta: And then what do you do? You dump down the blood sugars and the underlying process goes on, and then it will manifest as a heart attack. And that is why so many diabetics and hypertensives go on and have heart attacks despite remaining on medications for 10 years. And the doctor said, well, it's because of your diabetes. Maybe they're not maybe the heart attack and diabetes and high blood pressure, et cetera, are siblings. Maybe it is not that the diabetes and the high blood pressure are parents of the heart attack. I think it's really important. So always that should start off with trying to become a healthier person. And then therapies may give you additional assistance. If there is evidence of some kind of damage happening.

 Wade Lightheart: This brings up another question. Cause we've seen so many what, what many in the medical field we'll call anecdotal unusual research where you'll see a person, he gets, you see the testimonials or the guy gets diagnosed. He's 60 pounds overweight. They're in their late fifties and you know, live a horrible lifetime. If it goes in, the doctor says, if you keep living this way, you're going to die. One patient goes onto medication goes through that road lives another 15, 20 years. And whatever another person goes and says, no, I don't want to do the medication. I'm going to get into my diet. I'm going to change my diet. I'm going to start exercising and they get the positive impacts and either delay the day for medication or don't need it all together. What do you feel is a sufficient amount of time upon doing say the analysis that you suggested in someone making, Hey, I'm going to make some lifestyle changes here to kind of move forward. What is this sufficient amount of time do you feel on? And I guess we're generalizing here a little bit, but for people to see positive benefits from their dietary and lifestyle changes that you could say, okay, we've got a new quote, quote, unquote, a new normal for that person. What did they notice?

 Sanjay Gupta: I usually give my patients three months, three

 Wade Lightheart: Months. That seems to be about right at 12 weeks. I think

 Sanjay Gupta: To them, you know, this is your chance. Your body is trying to do something. And after three months, if they haven't managed to engage them in all likely, they're not going to that. This is the, you know, if they're going to bed too. Well, then, then you know, a lot of times you just do the thing that you're supposed to do as a doctor, because you don't want to be seen as an outlier. You don't want to get into trouble. You don't want, you know, a lot of what we do is largely about keeping ourselves safe, really protecting ourselves. We're not that bothered about the patients,

 Wade Lightheart: Right? First do no harm, but also don't get anything that gets you a lawsuit and shuts down your practice, a harm to your own business as well. And you know, here's the thing, but we have to give both sides of that equation as well, because I think we'd be remiss if we didn't identify and suggest that, Hey, the doctor is in a difficult position as well. You obviously you've with your genetics and your lifestyle choices. You're putting a disproportionate amount of responsibility on this person to get your life right. And why shouldn't he, he or she protect himself somewhat from your inability to manage your life. And so I don't think it's fair to just dump it all on the doctor and say, well, he's protecting herself. Well, of course he is. And for most doctors, they would probably say that, you know, nine out of 10 patients don't make the lifestyle adjustments. But what you're talking about, I think is inviting people to say, Hey, take the time to make the lifestyle adjustments. And then before making that step into, you know, getting on, on the various pills and after three months of lifestyle adjustments, it's not enough. Okay, well maybe that's the right choice for you. Would that be a fair assessment?

 Sanjay Gupta: Absolutely. I think patients, you need to sit down with patients. You need to talk to them in a language. They can understand, you need to be able to show them what it says. You know, ultimately you need them to see what the data show, right? You need them to understand their individualized risks. You need to show them that, okay, this is what I'm picking up here. And then they go and do that. But if you have five minutes with the doctor and he says, okay, you need to go and exercise and lose some weight. It's difficult for the patient to take that when a patient is just told, okay, here, you've got to take these tablets in some way. You've missed, you've missed that opportunity to really engage with that patient and really let him feel empowered. This is the most important thing. You know, in fact, I did a video on blood pressure and I got a professor from the U S writes really scathingly.

 Sanjay Gupta: And he said, how can you say this? Do you not know that for every decade of life, you, if you, if you're, if you're, you know, if your blood pressure is above this, it doubles your risk of something bad happening to you. And I said, that's fine. I that's. Okay. But first tell me what my risk is before you talk about how it could be doubled, right? Because in some ways it's a bit like going and buying a lottery ticket you know, okay, you, you buy two, you doubled your chances of winning the lottery. I've got to know what my risk is first and that I think no one tells you.

 Wade Lightheart: Yes. And I think there is a disproportionate amount of focus on the risk. I mean, at the end of the day, life is a risky business that we all lose the bet sooner or later, the body battery runs out and you go from one things. And one of the suggestions I had, and this was one of my arguments I was putting forth with one of my doctors recently. I said, Hey, look, call me in the end or fall, but I believe it's not how it's not necessarily how I'm going to die. That's the issue. It's how I'm going to live until that moment. That is of more concern to me. And I put the onus of responsibility on myself to go out there. And I just, I mean, engaging in this 50 week process. So I started at this week 50 weeks to 50, I turn 50 next, next year.

 Wade Lightheart: I'm very excited about the prospect. And I said, okay, well, I'm actually going to document in show week by week, everything I've hired a bunch of coaches for myself to give me insight on different areas. I've got hormone testing and blood testing and genetic testing. And I got my fitness coach. And even though I'm well versed in all of these areas, I know that it's very hard to overcome one's own biases or one's own tendencies to let oneself off the hook. But if you have people there that are kind of giving you the gears a little bit prissy, particularly they are, are, are a much better expert than myself in that area. I think it's very helpful to kind of stack the deck against lethargic or rationalizations of behavior. Would you agree with that?

 Sanjay Gupta: I agree. I mean, I think, I think it's nice to have something to measure yourself by. The reality is all we want to do is let as long as possible and live as well as possible, right? And actually we have no control over how long we're gonna live. We could, we could do all those things and we could be happy that our cholesterol is fine and then we can be hit by a virus or something like that. You know, we have no control of our, our length of life. And I think that is so important because this idea and trying to get that out in an empathic way, so important, this idea that the only thing you have any control over is your quality of life. And actually that is the only thing that matters. When, you know, you will never be able to measure your length of life, anyone who comes in and tells you, oh, I'm going to make you live longer.

 Sanjay Gupta: You will never be able to work out whether that claim is correct or not. Because you just get the one line. If you can't do the and say, okay, well I followed him and I left longer than when I didn't. Right? So, so the only thing you can measure is your quality of life. You cannot measure your own length of life. And so I think a lot of quality of life comes from, you know, personal investments. You know, you investing in yourself, you've been creative. You spending time with people you love that, that is what quality of life is about and growth, personal growth, whatever that may be, that is so important. Unfortunately, in the Western world, we're expected to stretch. We're not expected to grow. We stretch, we don't grow.

 Wade Lightheart: Can you, can you define the difference between those? So,

 Sanjay Gupta: You know, when, when growth is about you investing in yourself and you are rising to a point where you can look at yourself and say, well, my investment has actually lifted me in some way. Whereas a lot of times in places you would be said, okay, if you work hard, you'll become the boss or you'll become this, that, that, and actually what that means is you'll do everything else and you'll just get a lot more work and you'll be able to stretch and just have to try and incorporate this. It's, you know, that's not real growth to my mind. Growth comes from that kind of growth is inherently very nourishing. I think, you know whereas a lot of us, we, we try and incorporate lots of different things. And you know, and we're literally just stretching to try and cover everything that we're expected to do.

 Sanjay Gupta: And I think that's where stress comes from. And I think stress is something that not only impacts very badly on our quality of life, but also probably our length of life. So I think that this idea trying to get this idea across to people that there is new medicine, there's new dark art, which would you know, that where we know so much more than normal people. I think, I think medicine, I think good medicine is not about what we're doing at the moment, which is we are enslaving people. You can't eat this. This will happen. You can't do this. This will happen. You can't, your blood pressure is too high. We need to live with this. I think good medicine is about liberating people. And I think good medicine is about saying, go out there and have the best quality of life you can. If things work out for you, great, we're going to be with you rejoicing.

 Sanjay Gupta: If things don't work out for you, we're going to be here to try and patch you up. Cause that's what we do. We patch things up. We don't stop people from breaking. No one does. If it's, if you're going to break, you're going to break. But you, you maintaining a good quality of life. Looking after your health allows us to patch you up much easier like with your dad, you know, he did everything right yet. He's got the coronary disease or main fit, et cetera. Cetera, there is no magic solution to that. If you're going to, you know, that's dependent on age genetics, bad luck, lifestyle, et cetera. Unfortunately, the only thing we have any control over is lifestyle.

 Wade Lightheart: And, and there's considerable evidence that if my dad hadn't been in the condition that he was, he might not have been able to even initiate or survive the surgery itself or even get to the surgery point. So, you know, again, we're back to that moot point, but I think all the evidence points that investing in a high quality life and really determining what a high quality life is, both in wealth and maybe accommodate like career ambitions, self-development your relationships. And that, that, that mathematical algorithm is going to be a little bit different for different people based on their psychology and their personality, and what's important and value to them. And I know I, I'm a big fan of psychological testing about understanding oneself. There's some great book series out there by Jordan Peterson right now on the self-authoring suite, where you go through your life and you determine your five major personality traits.

 Wade Lightheart: And then you kind of write out, you know, where, what your past is, what your present is, take a laundry list of the things you like to work out. And then what would you like to be like? And I think by laying out, if we teach people those methods and recognizing that some people are artists and some people are scientists, some people are social, some people are not so social, but if you understand yourself and cultivate that practice for yourself, that's fantastic and a great way to live. Before we close, I would like to invite you to share maybe what are the things that you believe for yourself or what you've seen with your patients? Because you're in a unique position where oftentimes, I suppose patients are coming to you when life has gotten away from them and they're on the they're on the back nine, or they'd say, or the last few holes of the course, how would you define quality of life? 4:00 PM knowing where they end up near the end of it or when it's been compromised. I think that puts you in a very interesting position.

 Sanjay Gupta: Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the most important thing is I think the most important thing from my perspective is that you have to understand that there are always options in life. You don't have to, it's never a case of you don't have a choice. It's how uncomfortable you feel about thinking of something else. That's an option, but there are always options. And this is about you choosing to take those firstly, being able to see those. And then secondly being brave enough to take those. And as a doctor, what I find is this ability or this, I find it very empowering for myself and reaching for myself to be able to show those options to patients and saying, look, you know, this is your life. I'm not here to tell you to do this or that this is your life. But all I want you to know is it's not like I will stop supporting you or stop wanting to help you.

 Sanjay Gupta: If you choose something that doesn't work out for you. That's okay. Because at the end of the day, that's what it's about. You know? And I think we should listen to people. And I think personally, I find that in my consultations, the thing that I have realized more than anything else is that all people want, all medicine is, is one person coming to another, wanting to be treated like a human being. And more importantly, by a human being. And that humanity is what is it's all about, right? It's it makes everything go around, bad things happen. And it's the humanity that makes it bearable yet. At this point in time, what we find is that people feel so incredibly isolated and you don't go and see another human being. You go and see a robot. You go and see someone who regurgitates jog and who regurgitates guidelines, who tells you this thing could happen. That could happen. It doesn't have time for you. I think empathy education, engagement, and empowerment. I think that beats every set of pills I've ever prescribed and does as a doctor. I think that that's what I can give patients. And I think their quality of life improves as a result of that

 Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said, and I love how clear you are about those things. And I do believe that is potentially where the future of real health care will be is fusing the greatest scientific stuff, but not using fear and emotionality or a mathematical algorithm to determine to de-humanize the experience. And Dr. Gupta, I know you're a big fan favorite with our audience, and they're going to love this interview as always. It's so nice to be able to see the empathy and care that you obviously embody in your work and taking the time to share with us on the awesome health podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today and for all our listeners, if you'd like to find out more about Dr. Gupta and his work, can you kind of give us all the social media things?

 Sanjay Gupta: Yeah, thank you. I, I run a channel called your cardiology which is based around where I work and it just, at that time seemed like a good idea to capitalize on your cardiology. And yeah, I know we share some views and I'm very grateful to be invited here. I think you do amazing. It's seldom I come across people who are so incredibly educated and so open and so easy to talk to you as a healthcare professional, you know I feel very comfortable talking to you and I feel that I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.

 Wade Lightheart: Well, thank you so much, much. And we'll put all the sh all the catch points in the show notes, some of the references, and of course, as Dr Gupta said, it's about quality of life and you always have choices. So make the right choices for you. That's another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. I'm Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers. Thanks so much for joining us. If you liked this, hit the light button, smash it, share it. And, and we appreciate all your feedback and comments. Thanks so much. Take care.