Well, I have my second stent placed May 3rd of year 2019, and I'm 57, and
I've got a history... a family history of cardiovascular disease.
So on this video, we were seeing a patient yesterday, and we got through
with the or we were about halfway through the meeting. And he said to
us... his name is Dan by the way... and he said, Doc, I feel so much better, I felt
like I wasn't entirely sure what was going on with some of my health risks
before. Now, I feel a lot better. I feel like we've uncovered a lot of
interesting things, a lot of things that not only have we uncovered. Now, I feel
like I've dialed them in. And I know what to do. And physically I'm feeling better
as well. Maybe, that's a good, good start to or a segue back into the topic for
today. You want to take it from here? Sure. Well, I have my second stent placed
May 3rd of year 2019. And I'm 57, and I've got a history a family history of
cardiovascular disease. And I was really feeling physically and mentally kind of
beat down because I traditionally I'm tall and thin. I'm about 6'6". I
weigh about 195 pounds. So I wasn't a really good candidate for a stent. I
don't think from the physical appearance on the outside. However, after the second
stent, I just felt maybe a little mentally
defeated, a little bit weak physically. And consequently, through the
recommendations of a collaborative effort of you, Dr. Brewer, Dr. Wright, my
cardiologist and my family doctor started out on the cardiac rehab process
and also some meetings with you and Dr. Wright. And it was really, really neat.
It was just the transformation or a metamorphosis. Similar to
that of maybe a caterpillar evolving into a butterfly and really started to
feel stronger. I felt a higher capacity for my desire to work out and to do a
lot of cardio work. And my eating habits were always the same. And
man, I just started feeling stronger. I felt better mentally. I was having
better success at work, and it really it just was a great pivot in my life. And I
feel like... I think I might have told you Dr. Wright yesterday that I kind of
feel indestructible if that's not too boasting to say. But everything
really came together when I started to work with you gentlemen
and you guys just part of me in the right direction. And I just feel
wonderful. I feel indebted to you guys that I
wanted to share my story with those who may get some benefit from it. Well, I do
appreciate that any highlights on any of the challenges that you had and
focus points on how to to get further get three of those. I think it was really
a lot of it. Was just how I felt in my mindset. You know the mindset can be a
really wonderful thing, or it can be a tragic thing, you know. If your mindset
is pointing down, and you're feeling beaten and defeated, it's easy to gain
momentum in a negative fashion. But of course, on the flip side, when your
mindset is raised and you're highly optimistic, man, once you get
momentum going in a favorable... to a favorable direction, it's just
outstanding. And there's really really no limits to what you can do so you guys
have put me there. You put me there. Just my general vitality in life, my zest for
exercising and working out. I've got a nice home gym with a treadmill
instead of dumbbells, a little weight machine, and just recently bought
elliptical trainer. So I was really tentative after my stent that I wouldn't
be able to use all that equipment again. But I'm rocking and rolling now.
You've actually brought up a couple of really good points. The first one that
you brought up was that you're tall and thin. And yes, I will admit very few
patients coming to me with challenges are tall and thin. I've got... I get a lot
of patients that have had a lot of weight in the
past. And in fact, over half of my patients coming in now, I'll start
working with them and realize fairly quickly after going through their labs
and their imaging that recently lost 30 pounds
last week. Somebody had lost 95 pounds over the past year. And the week before
that, someone had lost 130. But you're very different in many ways. You
remind me of me. Most people just make an assumption that
well, if you're thin, you're gonna be healthy and not have any heart attack
and stroke risk. But obviously, given what you told us coming out of the blocks, you
just went through your second stent. So that's not always the case. Another
significant difference with you is that not only are you tall and thin. Now, it's
not that you've lost 30 pounds recently or 100 pounds or anything like
that. You've always been tall and thin, right?
Yes. I've had about a 10- to 12-pound variance since college, yeah, yeah. Always
been the same. So you're living walking proof that it's not just BMI alone.
There's some other things too. And sure enough, as we started digging a little
bit deeper, we did find some things. We were able to make some adjustments.
And then we came to that second place which you just brought up at the
the end of your story, and that is having recently had my second stent. I
was very nervous about using this new equipment, exercise equipment. I can
share that with you as well. But I remember after my first episode of
finding that I had significant plaque, going out to do my next long run, and
at that point in time, I was doing these half marathons, training runs once a
week. So you take off, but if something happens to you when you're out there,
it's gonna be a while before you're discovered. And it's a little bit of an
emotional component to get back on the horse after you first find out that you
have some of that. So but we all got to do it, and I'm glad
you did. I also appreciate you sharing your story with our folks, Dan. Anything
else, Sir? Well, I think people just need to to seek out information to
give them a stronger peace of mind really in any aspects of life -
financially, spiritually, physically with your body appearance, and also physically
with what's inside. And it's what's inside that's the unknown. And once you
can connect yourself with a knowledgeable resource that has some
proven results, the proven track record, slowly things start to become
uncovered. You learn new things and I will never forget when you and Dr.
Wright told me yesterday that I had a happy heart muscle. I wrote it down in my
notes. I shared it with my wife last night. And you know, that was cause for
celebration because you know being the tall thin guy with heart problems,
it's just not expected. But getting a handle on that and then making course
corrections and then maintaining and then monitoring what's being done and
then adjusting again. And you know, I'm just in a really really great spot at
this age and at this point in my life. And I really appreciate the expertise
that you and Dr. Wright have afforded to me. And I'm singing your praises to
people that I know. So maybe you're almost famous. Well, I certainly do
appreciate that. Do you mind if I explain that comment about the labs don't admit?
Please. We can go through some detail. Okay, so one of the references was to
hs-troponin. And another related one was the happy heart test. And yes, basically what
we're doing is looking to see if there's any significant strain to the muscle or
loss of of cardiovascular access. Another key
component that Dan had was Lp(a). And as we got a little bit deeper, that
was something that he was not aware of. His docs had not been looking for that.
Dan got started on some niacin and had what had the reaction we usually get
and we usually expect with niacin you get 20 to 30% decrease in
in Lp(a), and that's what we want. For those of you who are not familiar
with Lp(a), we've got about half of those videos on it. You may remember
the name Bob Harper. But I've got a video called "Lp(a): Is That Ready for
Primetime." And the message was with Bob Harper's heart attack hitting the news
and then him coming out a week later and saying... yep, I think he's on The Biggest
Loser Show. He's a well-known fitness and health coach and looks like he's in his
50s. I'm not sure how old he is, but it was a big surprise. Happen to maybe 18... 24
months ago within a week or so of having the heart attack. He came out and said,
guys, I've got Lp(a) and didn't get much deeper in terms of the details
behind there. But Lp(a) is a... it's a genetic subcomponent of LDL, what other
people have called the bad cholesterol. Some of us make it as... actually most
of us make some Lp(a). It's very common to see a significant amount given
what I do, you might imagine. I do see some world-class level of Lp(a)
activities. I've got some patients... there's a French-Canadian gene
pool that tends to have levels up around
500 and more. Now folks like that will often have aortic calcification. But
again, it's the situation with FH (familial
hypercholesterolemia). It's a... it's another genetic variation in terms of LDL. There
are about 2,000 different snips or genetic variations associated with
familial hypercholesterolemia. Some of them cause the person to make more
LDL than others. Most of them are variations which cause people to not make as much
or not dissolve or metabolize that LDL as much. Bottom line is, like Lp(a),
FH, they do increase risk. But the bigger risks happened to be when they actually
decrease your reserves. In other words, some of those patients really get into,
they're fine until they start getting in their 50s and 60s and start developing
some challenges with insulin resistance. And then they just don't have the
reserves to push back with two risk factors like that. So again, thank you so
much Dan for sharing that part of the story. My pleasure, Dr. Brewer. Glad to see
that you'll be having a little bit better mental health and less stress.