I have with me today Jake Hesseltine. Jake has seen me and
has had some interesting challenges he's had to deal with and has agreed to share
them with others so they can learn by sharing and hearing stories
about other folks dealing with the issues.
Couple of the issues that have come up in discussions with Jake have to do with
FH (familial hypercholesterolemia) and lean mass hyper responder. Jake came to
me already knowing a good bit about both. The other thing you can see just
right off the bat is that Jake is a young fellow. So Jake, why don't you take
it from there and tell us a little bit about what's going on. And again, thank
you so much for sharing your story. Sure thing, yeah, and my pleasure. You
know, as long as I can remember, I think I got my cholesterol tested when I was
maybe 19 or 20 years old. And even at that age, I thoughy the numbers were
considered relatively high. However, my age kind of mitigated any risk
apparently that there was for having those numbers. I have a great deal of
heart disease on both sides of my family, on my dad's side and on my mom's side
and multiple grandparents who have passed away. And then on top of it,
my dad... he had triple bypass not that long ago. He's always had had trouble
controlling his cholesterol, and he's very much like me. He's an athlete and
for the most part does right by his body and whatnot and so has had issues. And so
he's always been on me to try to stay in touch with my cholesterol numbers. But
of course, I was kind of an optimum use and try to figure it out my way, you know.
And so that being said, although I'm young now, I'm 40 and I got two kids and
it wasn't that long as you know I've always had high numbers and the one
that I refining went in for my general practitioner and he suggested I go on a
statin. I did a lot of research, and I had done a lot of research prior. And I've
always tried to control the numbers, but I've never really been able
to get my like total cholesterol down below 200. And then on top
of it, you know like I'd work out, I'd eat proper and
implement as much as I possibly could to control it, but it just never seemed to
work out. And so about a year ago, I started researching keto and looking
into that and seeing what I would do for potential heart disease and whatnot in
inflammation. And so I went down a lot of different rabbit holes and I
fully embraced the keto lifestyle, and this is unbeknownst to my general
practitioner. And so I ended up doing that for probably about 6 months and I
went and got my numbers tested. But at the same time, I also got a calcium score,
and just being really blunt and straightforward, it freaked me out.
I got a score and so at age 39 basically I was in like the 93rd percentile for
risk factor for heart disease. So no longer was it just kind of this thing
that my dad was always warning me about, and those numbers have consequences and
all of that kind of stuff. And I was determined also just that way I could
not just go by the numbers. It was, you know, I really wanted to have a healthy
lifestyle. And so that being said, when I got that calcium score, scared the life
out of me. And so I went and got my cholesterol tested and I was doing the
keto diet and I had read Dr. Ivor Cummins (but not Dr. Ivor Cummins, he's not a
doctor, an engineer). And I read his book, and I really enjoyed it, and
full-on I did it exactly to a tee. And as Dr. Brewer knows, I'm very regimented and
pretty disciplined. So I went, got my CAC score and then I went and got my
blood samples done. And I don't know exactly what the numbers were but they
were astronomical and I absolutely floored all of my... My general practitioner
was absolutely floored. I went and saw her specialist and therefore
the numbers like the realm of like... 460
was my total cholesterol with like LDL... I actually... I could look it up real quick
379. No, I thought it was real to us, you know, and so that was pretty
frightening on the other side of it. And so I am... that's when I actually
started to also look into some of your videos and taking a look at somebody who
was aware of someone like maybe a low carb-type lifestyle and seeing and
eliminating the risk potentially of you know that I don't have prediabetes or
anything like that. But this is the cholesterol thing, and I've also been
going down rabbit holes as far as like, just trying to basically just trying to
control this all by lifestyle and by diet and meditation and all of that.
But I needed like a happy medium and I didn't. Neither I needed a doctor to kind
of understood what was going on both thumbs of it. And so I didn't want to
take a statin, but I saw some compelling videos that you had put up. And so
anyways, I paid out of pocket to come and see you and to kind of get control over
this. And long story short, I've got numbers now that are, I mean, beyond my
wildest dreams, like just from numbers perspective. But it's been a huge process
you know. It's like, and yeah, it's you know, I do I potentially have familial
hypercholesterolemia along with the lean mass hyper responder. So I don't do the
keto diet necessarily anymore. But I do kind of a low carb-type lifestyle diet.
I was first introduced to Dr. Brewer through his YouTube channel and I was
just intrigued with all of the information that was been presented
there. So I decided to come to the conference because I thought that there
would be people that had shared similar things you know with me and that
we could collaborate to here as a group. And that's why I came
and I have been just very fortunate and grateful that the people here that
they're just... we now see my friends and family because we not only were teachers
while we were here. We were also students because we learned and we shared
information with each other about our experiences. And I think that's been
great just having the open dialogue. And I've really enjoyed it.