Steve Prussack
Hello and welcome. This episode of Juice Guru Radio is brought to you by Tribest, making healthy living easy.
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(Announcer) Welcome to Juice Guru Radio. Discover what the magic and power of juicing can do for you. And now your host, bestselling author of ‘The Complete Idiots Guide to Juice Fasting,’ Steve Prussack.
Steve Prussack
Hi. I’m your host, Steve Prussack. Today we’ve got Dr. Joel Khan. He’s the author of five books, including the latest ‘The Plant-Based Solution: America’s Healthy Heart Doctor.’ And he’s here to show us how we can get healthier. This is really something we all need to tune into, so spread the message. Share this audio on iHeartRadio. We’ll be back right after this with Dr. Joel Kahn.
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Juice Guru Radio
Steve Prussack
Hello and welcome back to the show. We’ve got Dr. Joel Kahn. His new book, ‘The Plant-Based Solution: America’s Healthy Heart Doc’s Plan to Power Your Health.’ He’s the founder of the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity and owner of GreenSpace Cafe, Professor of Medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. I’m all choked up because my dad had a heart attack last week, and I couldn’t be more amazed by the timing for this interview. Let’s welcome to the show right now, Dr. Joel Kahn.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Alright.
Steve Prussack
And also we’re gonna have some puppies joining the crew too.
Dr. Joel Kahn
...having dogs in your life. It’s a scientific and emotional path. Apparently, found a colleague outside to communicate with.
Steve Prussack
Dr. Kahn, thank you so much for being here and for the incredible work you’re doing.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Well, thank you very much. And my heart goes out to you and your father and a speedy recovery. But as I say, reverse not manage heart disease. I would bark that as loud as my dogs are barking in the background (ohhh.. It’s the FedEx man bringing wheatgrass cubes or something) but there is so much to talk about about how you’re the avatar. What can you do for the next 20 years to not reproduce your father’s path? And sometimes it’s inevitable, but most of the time it’s identifiable, and I’m just fired up as I’m in my 30 plus year of practicing cardiology, and we’re closer to that goal of truly being able to find people early and prevent this number one killer of men and women. Number 1 maimer, number 1 disabler and just needs to go away. We need to recognize it for what it is, largely a foodborne illness.
Steve Prussack
Well, the message needs to be heard, so thank you for the work you’re doing. Thank you for the books you’re writing and thank you for helping to get the message out. And so talk to us about heart disease. What do we know? And obviously, you’re saying it can be prevented. And once we have it, it can also be reversed?
Dr. Joel Kahn
Yeah. So there’s a whole broad spectrum of heart disease and certainly some cannot be dealt with juice and food, congenital heart disease, babies born with complex situations, you can get in the car accident and damage your heart. But we’re talking about the single deterioration that’s most common in numbers and actual mortality, which is clogging of your arteries, predominantly 3 little arteries that feed the heart, called heart arteries or coronary arteries. Same process affects to the brain and is part of the reason people have strokes, affects legs, part of the reason people lose legs or have impaired quality of life.
Dr. Joel Kahn
And it impacts sexual function and kidney function. And we know a lot, we’ve know a lot for 50, 60, 70 years. Some of it’s real simple. I mean, it’s the smoking, it’s persistently elevated blood pressure, persistently elevated blood sugar, persistently elevated cholesterol, having a mother, father, sister, brother at a young age. But that just raises the question that’s a risk factor for why? What do they have – that I may be inherited in conjunction. Or maybe we inherited the lifestyle, in conjunction. As a statement, ‘Diabetes runs in my family because nobody runs in my family.’ Kind of a little bit of humor on a genetic connection and it can be a lifestyle inheritance, in the sense.
Dr. Joel Kahn
And there’s so much more now. There’s 20 factors, at least. I check in every single patient to identify why their arteries are potentially getting clogged and identify early. So yeah, but the bottom line is it’s simple. And I’ll just get to questions but two large studies in Europe say if everybody just writes this down, memorize it and remembers nothing else – 20 years from now, if you want to drop your risk of having a heart attack by 85% and nothing here is high tech. One, don’t smoke simple, but it’s still powerful with 15% of Americans and about 25% of millennials smoking. Number two, walk 30-40 minutes a day. You want to do more great, but don’t go a day without walking 30 to 40 minutes a day. You can do it 10,15 minutes, three times. You can do it all at once and try not to sit all day long in the process. Number three, try and get 7- 8 hours sleep a night. That’s a new scientific kind of benchmark, as opposed to less, less than 5 hours are very common situation due to the internet and iPads and international business and WiFi and a bunch of reasons people sleep poorly, coffee late in the day. Number four, keep your waistline thin. That shows up repeatedly in studies. Thin waistline, lower heart attack risk.35 inches for a woman or less 40 inches or less for a man. So these aren’t like super twiggy numbers but there’s a whole lot of people that are over those two points and need to lower the risk by getting down.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Next one is the hardest one, eat more than five servings of fruit and vegetables a day. That shows up consistently, people that don’t do that versus people that do that. And it’s only about 1 or 2% of Americans and most countries that actually achieve five or more servings of fruit and vegetables a day. And the last one is a fun one, if you have no issues, which is enjoying alcoholic beverage now and then during the week that shows up as a protective factor. That’s six little steps that drop your risk in the next 20 years by 85%.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Not expensive, doesn’t require a doctor, that’s self-care. Then we can talk about all kinds of high tech beyond that.
Steve Prussack
So great suggestions and beginning with what we put in our mouth, what we consume and eat. Your new book is ‘The Plant-Based Solution.’ So are you recommending that people eat primarily plant foods? What is the ideal diet?
Dr. Joel Kahn
Right. And I’ll join in with colleagues that, I’ve been personally 100% plant-diet for 40 plus years, starting at age 18. I’m a big enthusiast. It was not a plan to save the world. It was a plan to try and avoid horrible dormitory food in my first day of freshman year and I just stuck with it. True story. But as I developed my medical school career and interest in the environment, interest in animal rights and such, it kind of seemed like the perfect solution to all those interests.
Dr. Joel Kahn
But I sit on panels and I greatly respect people with slightly different opinions. So, it’s 90%+ plants. I belong to a large nutrition group of academic people all over the world that have very disparate police. But we’ve all agreed with a core: eat mostly plants, locally sourced, close to the ground – meaning not very processed and drink mostly water. Four little simple nutritional principles. If you are going to eat 100% plants like I’ve done for 40 years and in my own case, weight, blood pressure, labs, no medication, lots of vitality, energy, and all the rest. It’s worked out well, as it has for my wife.
Dr. Joel Kahn
It isn’t always that way. I do struggle with people that are trying hard and aren’t hitting their goals. But you’ve got to supplement. This is an experiment – to eat only plant has not been a centuries old tradition with hundreds of thousands of people. We don’t know what’s the optimal diet. We know it always includes a boatload of fruits and vegetables. So if you are going to eat only plants, don’t be dumb. Don’t take a risk. Take B12, take vitamin D, take some algae, Omega-3. Don’t eat junk food, eat whole foods, real foods.
Dr. Joel Kahn
And it works out great for almost everybody, if you do that. But I don’t guilt people a few times a week to throw in some in line-caught salmon in there. I feel badly for the salmon and I feel badly for the oceans and all that but I’m not going to guilt you down. That may also be a very, very healthy version of a longevity diet.
Steve Prussack
Wow, that was a lot. Hopefully everyone’s got their pen and pad out. And if not, you want to rewind the video and get that down. This is really important information. So, what about juicing? And you know, you mentioned wheatgrass before. What’s the role in juicing? Is there a role in juicing in getting our nutritional needs met?
Dr. Joel Kahn
Right. So, in a society where we are overfed but undernourished because we’re eating foods that are calorie dense but not very nutrition dense. With the average number of servings of fruit and vegetables a day in the United States, in under too, I’m all for pathways to get more fruits and vegetables in. And I’m all for juicing. There actually is a small little disagreement and the ultra-vegan heart disease reversal community that you’re better off eating broccoli than juicing broccoli or eating kale than juicing kale. But honestly, I am all for it.
Dr. Joel Kahn
And there actually is signs. This gets a little heavy but certain foods, cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens, arugula and such have dietary nitrates that if you chew them and you don’t use Listerine and Scope, which destroys healthy bacteria on your tongue. If you chew leafy greens, you create a wonderful chemical in the blood called nitric oxide – lowers your blood pressure, keeps your arteries free of plaque, improve sexual responsiveness. That’s why athletes are doing beet powder and other such things. Eating beets is great, juicing beets is great. There is some thought that chewing beets and arugula and kale and spinach is a more effective way to produce this heart-friendly, artery-friendly response than juicing, but I won’t go into it.
Dr. Joel Kahn
There’s a second pathway where even if you juice nitrate-rich, this is not the nitrate of processed meats like bacon, this is intrinsic dietary nitrates in beets and greens, even if you juice them you will, through a miraculous path in your salivary gland, you will still create lots of nitric oxide. The point is JUICE, JUICE, JUICE, JUICE! And I think for a lot of people I’m inspired always by Rich Roll, Ultra Athlete “Finding Ultra”- new book out. He just got named ‘Fittest Human in the World’ by Men’s Health or ‘Fittest Vegan Human’ in the world or some such thing.
Dr. Joel Kahn
But you know, his entree from horrible diet, ultimately this amazing, fueled body on plant was a 7 to 10-day juice immersion, change his palette, gave him energy, sort of a detox. I’m inspired by Joe Cross’s, I’ve had the pleasure to meet and lecture with and friendly with. You know, different people need different tools and different entrees. I’ve had a son spend some time getting educated with a degree at Hippocrates Health and every morning, juicing his own wheatgrass and juicing his own green juice. And it’s clearly a great, great practice in a world full of donuts and frappuccinos and processed food out of a window in a yellow bag. So yes, I’m a pro-juice.
Steve Prussack
Yeah. You never know, right. Because there is the controversy, which always surprises me because there are studies to back juicing, too. And there are certain doctors speaking out against it as the greatest travesty to humanity. Then I wonder, why is that when it’s used in Europe and some of the cancer clinics and things like that, right?
Dr. Joel Kahn
No. They can serve a therapeutic role. It can serve a nutritional role. And one of the language of nutrition science nowadays is, ‘instead of what?’ So I mean Coca-cola vs a green juice, frappuccino vs a green juice, a BPA-line can vs a green juice, my carrot juice. I mean, it doesn’t always have to be green. You know, nobody’s a big fan of Minute Maid orange juice that’s been sitting in vats for a couple of years, and is basically devitalized. But we’re talking potentially some of the most vital you can find fresh, cold pressed juice or HPP juice, you’re drinking some of the most vital and living of all nutrition sources. So, I’m all for it.
Steve Prussack
So, this is the part I’m hoping my dad turns up. And my dad is someone who had 100% clogged artery, double stent. They got him on the blood thinners and the medications, and he’s someone who historically didn’t eat vegetables. I’ve been eating only vegetables for 26 years, but he won’t eat them. Now he’s starting to, he’s starting to juice. What are some of the things I could tell him in reversing it? What are some of the more aggressive things he can start doing to really and is it possible to reverse it? I’d like to you to communicate that to him.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Yeah. So there’s data back from 40’s, 50’s-physicians that have been forgotten but published data about the tremendous impact of adding plants, removing animals and animal fats on outcome. Then we get the Nathan Pritikin, this innovative and kind of crazy engineer who proved scientifically, you can lose weight, lower your cholesterol, blood pressure, reverse Type 2 diabetes and heart disease to the point now, it’s a Medicare-approved program called the Pritikin Intensive Cardiac Rehab Program for heart disease reversal. And then we get to 1990 and Dr. Dean Ornish, still an active researcher, still a young man but in 1990 showed definitively you can actually, you can tell your dad, “Dad, if you read Dr. Ornish’s book on reversing heart disease, you will see a program that’s scientifically proven to actually clean out your arteries by changing your diet to plant diet without added oils, emphasizing walking, no smoking. Social support, a little bit of stress management with breathing and yoga.” To the point from 1990 to now, it’s also another Medicare-approved, Medicare-reimbursable, only two programs that Medicare has looked and said we will pay for heart disease reversal because there’s so much definitive data and large data over the years – that’s the Pritikin Plant Program and the Ornish Plant program. They work.
Dr. Joel Kahn
And in my own practice in Detroit, an advanced preventive center. Today, I showed two people their arteries dramatically younger than they were six to twelve months ago. It’s real. It happens. It’s objective and based on imaging tests that I don’t read. They’re read by university and we celebrate. So part of it is that you got to find the science. Go watch “Forks over Knives”, go watch “What The Health, ” read Dr. Esselstyn from the Cleveland Clinic “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease”. Maybe read Dr. Joel Furman, “The End of Heart Disease” book that’s about two years old now. Wonderful book.
Steve Prussack
That’s the one I mailed him.
Dr. Joel Kahn
I kind of go, I’m certified in Integrative Cardiology so I got plants and pills. And there are data points that there are supplements that independently, even on a bad diet, reverse arteriosclerosis. So I often bring them in and sometimes I’m criticized, why not just sprouts? Well, I love sprouts and I love greens. And I love exercise. And I love sleep. And I love lifestyle. Like you’re telling me, here’s a study in 400 people over four years that plaque is going away with certain antioxidants – the real plants, but they’re in a tablet form. You’re not going to eat the bark of a French maritime pine tree and get Pycnogenol.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Well, you might want to take Pycnogenol because in large Italian studies, it reverses plaque. So there are other treatments and I think it’s nothing wrong. It’s kind of like a cancer approach. Multi-amount, multi-modality, nutrition is the core. But anyways, yes, your dad can reverse his plaque and dramatically decrease the risk of the third step before stent. But if he’s in the traditional model, that doesn’t happen with just prescription drugs alone.
Steve Prussack
Thank you for that. And you know, one thing we keep hearing about a lot of health coaches are now teaching these popular trends like Paleo and Ketogenic, and they’re actually integrative nutrition school- the school is teaching the health coaches to teach about these trends. What do you think about these diets?
Dr. Joel Kahn
They’re very trendy. They’re flash in the pan and they’re scientifically fraudulent, at the present time. Paleo is fading. Paleo had its moment in the CrossFit gym. I think, CrossFit gym-life is still strong but the idea that we want to eat like a caveman that lived to age 30 or 35 with all kinds of illnesses never sounded like a real good goal, but it was something attractive and romantic. And to be honest, if you read the book that sort of set the movement off by Dr. Loren Cordain in Colorado, it’s a very reasonable book to read, although none of them actually follow to the T what he talked about in the first edition about saturated fat and animal foods is bad for you. You want to be eating largely fruits, vegetables, legumes. He wasn’t into grains. And then you want to keep your meats very infrequent and you want to get totally away from dairy and eggs aren’t paleo. I mean, the book was fairly reasonable and much cleaner than the standard American diet, so I would not contest anybody that transitioned from eating garbage food to that kind of approach.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Find your venison, find your bison and find your wild salmon. And don’t eat it too much, but I wouldn’t contest that. It’s still not maybe environmentally or from a kindness standpoint, the highest level of evolution, but nonetheless, it’s better. It’s been changed where people are putting butter in their coffee and some goat milk is back in and goat cheese is back in and feta’s back in. I don’t think there’s much data about the cavemen eating feta cheese. I think it’s pretty unlikely. And then the ketogenic diet is the hot one now. It always works for a lot of people for short term weight loss. Dr. Atkins, the Sugar Buster diet, the Zone diet, the South Beach diet. The question is – Is it the optimal diet if you’re wanting to be alive, healthy and free of chronic disease when you’re 70, 80, 90? And like a lot of things, you go to the scientific data, you go to the National Library of Medicine and almost all publications on the issue of a low carb diet that induces ketone bodies. A ketogenic diet, it’s for epilepsy, it’s for seizure, it’s for refractory seizure.
Dr. Joel Kahn
That’s not what people are adopting it for. They’re adopting based on hype, based on romance, based on six-pack abs, based on weight control, which is certainly a lot of a goal. There’s lots of ways to lose weight like plant-based diets, ketogenic diets, chemotherapy, HIV and Zika. You can lose weight on all those, but you don’t necessarily want to adopt them. The most concerning aspect of ketogenic diets using animal foods is there’s about seven studies suggesting that mortality goes up, so you get a great six-pack, but it’s 6ft under.
Dr. Joel Kahn
That’s not really a good goal. That’s not made up. These are large database studies. They’re not perfect. We’re never going to have a large randomized study. 200,000 people eat plant-strong diet. 200,000 people eat low-carb, high-fat, animal based diet. It’s not going to happen. But when you look at databases of people that describe their diet and they’re a sign that is a diet that would be called the low-carb high-fat keto diet, mortality goes up whether you’re a heart patient.
Dr. Joel Kahn
So your father would want to read the study from the Harvard School Public Health. If you’ve had a heart attack and you follow a low-carb, high-fat diet, your risk and dying and follow up is greater than those that don’t follow that program and eat whole food, higher carb, fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grain strong diets. So that’s scary. And anybody that advises an animal keto diet to a heart patient is flying in the face of medical science. Now there’s a growing movement just to shut the topic down of plant based ketogenic diets and whole food plant-based ketogenic diets.
Dr. Joel Kahn
And there are some Type 1 diabetics doing this without animal products and achieving very good biomarkers. There’s a program out of University of Southern California called ProLon, that’s a plant based ketogenic diet, but it’s only five days a month. The founder, who’s been a Nobel Prize-nominated scientist Dr. Longo, does not believe chronic keto state is when you want to be in. It doesn’t mimic any natural state we’ve ever been in. There were days we were hungry and days we were fed. Why would you want to have ketone bodies 30 days a month?
Dr. Joel Kahn
Feels that it’s a very unhealthy way. So there is plant based ketogenic diets, there’s a Facebook user page about plant based ketogenic diets. It’s very interesting and very popular, so we still got lots to learn, but plants almost always put you in a better place.
Steve Prussack
Well, it’s interesting how marketing really takes a hold of everything. You walk into whole foods now and you see this buttered coffee everywhere and people are confused. They call it game changers. They’re under the conditioning of marketing.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Yeah, I agree. Marketing whole foods, hospital cafeteria. It’s disturbing and it’s wrong, and it’s hard for the public to parse out where to get credible data. There is an organization called True Health Initiative. It’s this large organization that had these four dietary principles – is one place to get credible information besides my book, ‘The Plant-Based Solution,’ a book came out a day after by Dr. Valter Longo at the University of Southern California called ‘The Longevity Diet.’ I encourage anybody to read that book, just came out on Audible if you want to listen to the book.
Dr. Joel Kahn
It’s the best science of biochemistry and studies and centenarian studies and randomized studies. And he doesn’t conclude, in fact, one paragraph – keto diet is out of his book for total lack of scientific credibility. It’s pretty interesting stuff. Although he’s the founder of this modern plant based ketogenic movement, he just wipes away the animal and coconut oil strong approach to ketosis.
Steve Prussack
You’re listening to Dr. Joel Khan. His website is www. drjoelkahn.com. We’ll have links to that under the show notes so you can find it there to check out his books. Like I said, he’s got five books. The latest is ‘The Plant-Based Solution,’ so check out the incredible work he’s doing. Doctor Khan, thank you so much for being here. And before we wrap it up here, I mean, there’s so many directions we can go but what is the final message? What are the words that we didn’t touch on or how can we motivate more people to wake up? Because I was going to ask from a medical practitioners point of view, are you seeing the medical community waking up more to the ideas that are obviously contrary to popular belief, we should say.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Yeah. I’m encouraged by the young, the medical students and the residents. I own two restaurants in Detroit that are plant based. We get a lot of young people. They’re very open minded. They want to know what Beyonce is doing and Venus Williams is doing, and why is Kyrie Irving slam dunking on plants. And they’re open to the idea that life doesn’t have to revolve around ribeye and a burger. The older medical personnel are moving very slowly. Hospital administrators are moving very slowly, and they need to be bitch slapped. Sorry, I use that term. That’s a horrible example.
Steve Prussack
Is that a medical term?
Dr. Joel Kahn
I’m a staff member of Harper University Hospital. Largest medical school in America. Walk in and there’s a Wendys, there’s a Chik Fil A in the lobby to welcome you. Oh, my god pull my hair out. I’ve been fighting that non stop, but it gets worse. It doesn’t get better because the economics of hospital administration, that’s a moneymaker, even if it’s absolutely a blight on every possible approach. So the last message to answer your question is, gliding back to your father when President Dwight David Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1955, let me just say he changed his diet for the larger plant based diet, lived 15 more years at a time that medical care wasn’t very advanced, and did have a good outcome from that massive heart attack.
Dr. Joel Kahn
His cardiologist, Chief of Medicine at Harvard said, “President Eisenhower – a heart attack after age 80 is an act of god and a heart attack before age 80 is a failure of the medical system to identify the problem and solve it early.” That was 1955. We’ve done very little. I live by this little credo, “Test not guess”. There’s ways they’re described in my first book, “Your Whole Heart Solution”. But if you just Google me about preventing heart attacks, having a heart CT scan with a little blood work and $100 CT scan anybody for a small amount of money can be exquisitely accurate if they’re walking around with silent heart disease. And are they really sitting on a time bomb? Or are they really in a very good place. And it hasn’t been adopted like a mammogram and a colonoscopy has been adopted. Even though science bases are strong, the cost is not the issue. It’s a $100, $75 to get the most accurate evaluation of your heart arteries by Cat Scan, but test not guess. Find out. Go Google some articles I’ve written about calcium scoring, calcium CT scans, prevention of heart attacks and get yourself checked.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Don’t guess. This is too common a problem. Today, I saw a big shot attorney in Detroit. It was at the Mayo Clinic in October, just went to the Mayo Clinic, spent a ton of money. Mom and dad both had by-pass surgery at age 60, he’s 60. They told them your blood pressure, blood sugar, your cholesterol, your lifestyle, your diet. It’s all pretty good, go back to Detroit you’re in good shape. And he said, I want one of those CT scans I heard about. He didn’t know me, but he add me up, came back like 99th percentile for terrible.
Dr. Joel Kahn
He was walking around with all kinds of stuff. And today we set a program and I hope a year from now be able to tell him we’ve been able to reverse some of it. He had never heard of Forks over Knives, or juicing or barely knows what a vegetable is. There’s a lot of work to do and that’s just one on my mind example that your listeners, I hope will be on the forefront of better nutrition, but also earlier detection of this really extremely common problem.
Steve Prussack
And one last question from the community here, Diane wrote in – have you seen any correlation between A-fib and diet, all tests indicate heart has no abnormalities?
Dr. Joel Kahn
Yeah, atrial fibrillation and a regular heartbeat, the most common kind of sort of serious irregular heartbeat. Every cardiologist have seen 100,000 times. It seems like the biggest connection with diet is the large proportion of Americans are overweight. Overweight begets sleep disorders, sleep apnea, snoring, blood pressure elevation and that can trigger atrial fibrillation. Overweight, sleep disorders, high blood pressure, boom. All of a sudden you’re in the emergency with your heart going coo-coo. So when you eat a plant diet rich in magnesium tends to favor a healthier weight.
Dr. Joel Kahn
Healthier weight tends to favor better blood pressure, better sleep, less snoring. You may be in a position to prevent it. It’s not so simple. We don’t have trials and juicing in plant based nutrition for atrial fibrillation. But like my grandmother would say, “it couldn’t hurt” to take care of your health with a plant based, healthy, whole food diet while you’re struggling with atrial fibrillation. There are some people that we just can’t easily identify the cause, but it’s called lone atrial fibrillation but eat your plans and do your juicing anyways.
Steve Prussack
He’s phenomenal. Doctor Joel Kahn right here on Juice Guru Radio – his website again, www.drjoelkahn.com. We’ll have links to in the show notes. Doctor Kahn, thank you for the awesome work you’re doing, the incredible work you’re doing. We’d love to have back anytime
Dr. Joel Kahn
Thank you, you’re so kind. I’m impressed by you and also impressed by cold- pressed juice. Thank you.
Steve Prussack
Dr. Joel Kahn right here on Juice Guru Radio. I’m Steve Prussack and we’ll see you next time.
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