Day 4 Recording.
Day 4 Recording.

Day 3
Day 3 Recording.

February is American Heart Month | Dr. Gina Pritchard

The Importance of Heart Health
The American Heart Association's Essential Eight
Understanding Heart Disease in Women
Deep Dive into the Essential Eight
The Power of Personalized Testing
Protecting Our Hearts

For more information, resources, and support on your heart health journey, visit Let's embark on this journey together and prioritize our heart health for a vibrant and longer life.

It's February! Hooray! February is one of my favorite months, and one of the reasons it's one of my favorite months is because it's Heart Month. The American Heart Association designated February as American Heart Month.

And guess what? Heart disease is still the top killer. In fact, most years it's increased in the number of heart attacks and strokes and the number of deaths. Certainly, there's way more heart attacks, strokes, and deaths today than there were back in 1934 when The American Heart Association first designated February as Heart Month.

So, you know I tell you all the time that heart disease is preventable, that heart attacks and strokes are avoidable, they're optional, so to speak. Meaning there's so much we can do to protect ourselves. And I'm going to review that again today, and it is true. And we'll talk about why heart attack is still the top killer.

If we have a month dedicated to it and we know what to do, we'll talk more about that later. But I want to say that I wore my red heart earrings for today. I'll probably wear them a lot this month and I'll wear red a lot this month to increase our awareness of heart disease. And every time you see a red heart or you think about Valentine's, and you think about those you love, I want to think about your physical heart.

The American Heart Association has designated eight essential things, eight essential areas that if we focused on the data shows us we can reduce our risk of heart attack and stroke both by 80%.

First of all, it's to eat better. We know that. Secondly is to move more, be more active. Thirdly is to quit smoking, of course. Fourthly is to manage our weight. Fifthly is to manage blood sugar. Sixth is to manage blood pressure. And seventh is to control cholesterol. You know that I believe that's too broad of a focus. We can't ignore cholesterol, but I have a lot to say about that. It's one of the essential eight though according to The American Heart Association. Yes, it cannot be ignored. It's not the topic for today's video. Then number eight, and that's a new one actually. They, added the eighth one, I believe, two years ago. Before that, it was seven topics. And finally, The American Heart Association has rightfully added high quality sleep to the essential eight. We know that we need not only an adequate quantity or amount or length of time that we're asleep, we also need ideal oxygenation all night long. It means we need to breathe nice and slow and deep through our nose, inhaling high quality oxygen all night long. That's another topic for another day.

But I want to get back to the point that if we did these eight, we would prevent 80% of heart attacks and strokes, or reduce our risk by 80%. So, why is it that so many people still have heart attacks and still have strokes? And why is it that the number of heart attacks and strokes keep going up every year, and the number of deaths keep increasing?

It's because number one, we're not understanding the nuances about each of these eight, and we're not individualizing it for ourselves. And I believe that percentage, in fact, I know it's true, because I see it in my practice and in my patients. That 80% could go much higher to 90%, 95% and greater if these last few things that I'm going to talk about were implemented in everyone's life as well.

The American Heart Association also brings to our awareness that heart disease is a women's disease as well as a man's disease. Both men and women equally die of heart disease. Women often have problems with heart disease or a heart attack or stroke about five to ten years later in life than men.

The average heart attack occurs for a man at 55 and women at 65. But women, did you know this, are more likely to die from their first heart attack than men are. More often, men will live long enough to have a second one. Maybe even a third one. But nonetheless, women are affected by heart disease as much as men. It's incredibly common.

So, what are we to do about it? So, number one. Of course, these essential eight in more in depth and a better understanding about yourself.

So remember, every time you see a Valentine's this February, every time you see a red heart and you think about your loved ones, I want you to think about your actual beating heart and the beating heart of your loved ones.

Root Causes: The Overlooked Key to Heart Health | Dr. Gina Pritchard

The Problem of Patients Coming Back
Leaving Vascular Disease Untreated
Focusing on The Wrong Thing
Stop Mowing The Lawn
Looking at Nuances

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I discovered after many years of this was that first of all, a typical patient that comes in with a heart attack and then goes to the cath lab, which is a picture of what we're seeing here, the cath lab team, heart catheterization team trying to open up a blocked blood vessel in the heart arteries.

That's the way we save lives and we have the best technology, the best health care teams in the United States. So if someone is having a heart attack, that's exactly what you need. But then what I discovered is I would be sending patients home, discharging them from the hospital and seeing them back in the clinic after a procedure like this, after saving their life from a heart attack, and tell them, "we took care of that blockage that was 99% or 100% or 85%. Don't worry. It's wide open now. You've got a stint in there. You're on maximal medical management or some people call it optimal medical management now. And so things are fine. We're going to work on your diet. You call me if you have chest pain."

So, the reason that patients keep coming back is because we leave all of this vascular disease untreated. We're led down this path of the lie that mild blockages or small amounts of vascular disease are not dangerous. We took care of the bad one. But now, you know, don't worry about the little ones. "You're on optimal medical management."

So have you ever felt like- this is what I began to feel like as I was rounding on people in the hospital, seeing them in the clinic, realizing this wasn't really the truth. If I reassured them things were fine because that blockage was open, knowing there was other areas of smaller amounts of plaque throughout their vascular system.

But we would just focus on the wrong thing: meds. "Are you having chest pain? How's your diet? Are you exercising?" In a very cursory way, not in depth at all. So after months of this and finding out that there are more powerful prevention techniques, which requires collaboration, like we're talking about today.

I felt like I was focusing on mowing the lawn, for example, while the house is on fire behind me. When patients would come to the office, I would feel like it's just a glorified medication check. "How are you doing on that medication? No side effects? Okay. Your blood pressure is pretty good. Your heart rate's pretty good. Yeah. Your lipids are pretty good. Call me if you have chest pain."

So, I discovered I was focusing on the wrong thing. It was inaccurate, what I was taught to focus on.

Here's some examples. If we stop mowing the lawn and focus on identifying and eradicating root causes, inspecting the coronary wall, the wall of the artery where plaque lives, looking at things like are there airway issues? Saliva testing? Is there bacterial pathogens lurking? Blood work? Where the fire is lurking, meaning that's how we can find out if inflammation and infection is actually happening, then cardiovascular disease would not be the top killer, periodontal disease would not be prevalent.

And we do now have better measures to understand these things. Everything we were taught is wrong. We need to use these new measures. We need to use collaboration to truly save lives. So we, rather than accepting this is how I would practice in the clinic, that a fasting blood sugar above 95 is okay, and a non-fasting above 200, okay. From now, in time to time, you're going to see that blood pressure of 140 or over 90 or even higher. I can't count the times I would say, "okay, keep track of it at home. We're going to check it again next time. And maybe we need to go up on your blood pressure medications."

Do you know there's many other things we can do to reduce blood pressure besides going up on the medications? And even if we have to go up on the medications for a little while, blood pressures at 140 over 90 or anything above 118 over 80 is causing damage to the brain, to the heart, to our organs every day.

So, we need to get away from focusing on these high-level metrics we have and look at the nuances. I'd look at cholesterol numbers and say, "that's pretty good."

We kept just putting in stints. "If you have another problem, if you have more chest pain, we'll just put in another stint and send you home on the same meds, more meds," and we would watch year after year, mild to moderate AHI scores. And we now know that's killing people, to just monitor a mild to moderate AHI and not really seek out the root cause. Can we do better?

Dr. Gina Pritchard on The Carnivore Diet: Day 51

Personal Experience with Carnivore Diet
Diet Components and Personal Observations
Advice on Protein Intake
Recommended Foods and Personal Dietary Choices
Continued Success and Body Changes
Potential Challenges and Solutions
Final Thoughts and Future Plans

Day 51 of the carnivore diet for me, and I have to say more good things to report. I continue to feel great. I continue to, I say, lose weight. I haven't weighed, and I will weigh the next time I go to the office, and I'll update you on that. But my body is definitely changing. My clothes are fitting looser. In fact, I ordered some new clothes recently and ordered a size smaller. When they came in, I actually have to send them back and order two sizes smaller than what I normally wear.

My body is feeling more muscular, and workouts are, I don't know that I would say easier, but I am feeling stronger. I would definitely describe it that way and seeing more muscle definition, but I just feel great. My outlook on life is better. I feel more like my youthful self. I'm laughing more, smiling more, enjoying life more. I just can't say enough good things about the carnivore diet. Day 51. My skin is softer and it's so simple.

I truly eat primarily ribeye steak or ground beef, eggs, butter, and salt, a lot of salt, high quality salt. I drink coffee still. It seems like whenever I veer outside of those things I just mentioned, it's not awful, but I don't, I just don't feel as good. I don't feel as mentally sharp. I don't feel like I'm thinking as quickly. I just don't feel the energy I do when I stick with those things I just mentioned. Now, I don't think that'll be my only components to what I eat for the rest of my life, but right now, I'm going to stick with this and I'll keep you posted as I add in other things.

Also, I want to say that this is not medical advice, obviously. Absolutely not medical advice, and I'm not even recommending it to my patients, and I'm not recommending to you that you go on the carnivore diet. But I am suggesting that you check into the carnivore diet if you think it's something you might want to explore. I have told a few of my patients, selectively, to try it and you know, this is not a dramatic change from what I was doing in that I've been recommending to my patients.

I've been practicing eating a high protein diet, what some might consider a high protein diet, but prioritizing protein into our lives. Most of us are not getting adequate protein. When we don't, we can't maintain or build muscle. We can't adequately optimize our hormones and our brain isn't functioning as well.

There are so many reasons to make sure that we're getting enough protein in our diet. I shoot for about one gram of protein per day to ideal body weight. So not the weight that you are now if you're wanting to lose weight or gain weight, but what is your ideal body weight? Start moving towards one gram of protein daily for each pound of body weight, whatever your ideal body weight is.

So that being said, I've been recommending that for a long time to patients and focusing on real food with meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, high quality oils only, such as olive oil or avocado oil or butter or beef tallow, collagen, bone broth. Primarily, those are the things that I recommend patients eat from.

Dairy can be tricky. It kind of depends on the individual and on the type of dairy. I definitely recommend whole milk or full fat dairy, not low fat, ever. Anyway, that being said, I've eliminated all of that except for the foods that I mentioned earlier, meat and eggs and butter.

And I do occasionally have half and half or cream, but not every day, not regularly. I do think that I feel a little less energy when I have half and half or cream in my coffee.

I'm definitely improving my body composition. I love the way that my body is looking and feeling and the way my body is serving me. It's just stronger and I love it. I absolutely love this carnivore lifestyle. It's simple and it feels so good. Love the way my clothes are fitting and looking and that I'm needing smaller sizes.

I highly recommend you check into it. Certainly, this is not medical advice, but this is working out really well for me and I can't imagine that I'm going to change from it. I don't want sweets. I don't want vegetables. I'm not tempted by fruit. This is so satisfying and just lovely. I can't say enough good things about it.

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Skip Your Next Heart Attack: Day 3 Cardiac Cuisine | Dr. Gina Pritchard
Skip Your Next Heart Attack: Day 3 Cardiac Cuisine

0: 03 Importance of Nutrition in Heart Health

On this day, we're going to cover nutrition. What do we eat? We probably get that question more than anything else. Is it a diet? Is it what I'm eating? Of course, what you're eating can be contributing to your risk of heart attack or protecting you from heart attack. And there's a lot of controversy out there regarding what on earth do we eat.

0:25 Exploring Different Diets

We're going to clear all of that up for you on day three when we talk about cardiac cuisine. Is it intermittent fasting? Is it keto? Is it vegan? Is it paleo? We're going to clear it up so that you know exactly what to eat to protect yourself from heart attack.

0:40 Finding the Best Diet for You

So, day three, you don't want to miss this one. This is where it's at. Everybody wants to know we're going to get quiet down all that media out there and find out what diet is actually best for you. See you on day three.

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Day 2 Recording
Day 2 recording.

Day 1 recording
Day 1 Recordings. We had some tech issues and did not get full recordings for Day 1 and 2. Thanks!

Welcome To Skip Your Next Heart Attack | Dr. Gina Pritchard

Hi everyone and welcome to my YouTube channel. I'm Dr. Gina Pritchard, and I help people live their entire life without a heart attack.

0: 09 Understanding Heart Attack Risks
Whether you've had your first heart attack and you're trying to avoid a second or even a third, or you haven't had a heart attack but aren't positive that you are not at risk, then this channel is for you.
You see, everyone can know, and I believe deserves to know, if they're headed for a heart attack or not. Because in this day and age, we can, I say, turn the car around and keep you going the other direction. We don't want you to head straight for a heart attack, whether it's next year, or in five years, or in thirty years. You want to know now where you stand.

0:42 The Importance of Complete Cardiovascular Evaluation
There are at least five tests that you probably haven't had. I say most people that have been evaluated for cardiovascular disease risk for heart attack risk, their workup has not been inaccurate. It's just been incomplete.

0:57 Benefits of Heart-Healthy Living
So, listen to my channel and learn everything you need to know about not only living a life free from the crisis that can occur from cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack, stroke, dementia, diabetes, but also because this information, if it's good for your heart, I say it's good for the body. It's good for the heart. It's good for the brain. It's good for the body. It's good for every cell in your body. And so with this information, not only will you protect yourself from the top killer, but you will create the body that you want and the future that you want, because truly at the core, this is longevity medicine.

1:32 Personalized Holistic Approach to Prevention
This is prevention medicine. This is precision medicine and it's holistic. It isn't just prescribing medications. No. It's a thorough evaluation, a thorough understanding on your part of what's going on inside your body and then specific recommendations for you that really are not that hard. And they're going to help you feel better. And as I said, create the body and the future that you want.

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