The Science of Gratitude Practice

shining a light on the path to feeling better, lookingking better and living better. This is Heart Doc VIP Healthy, integrated and preventive with doror Joel Khan on Empower Radio. Now, here's America's healthy heart Dc, Dr. Joel Khong Well hello everybody. This is Heart Doc V IP episode five hundred one Your host, Joel Khan, medical doctor, triple booard certified cardiologist, preventive cardiologist Welcome back or maybe you're catching up and finding us on episode five hundred one hardoc Vvegan, integrative and preventive, VIP. Thank you for being here. We're excited to move into the next five hundred episodes And hopefully, you did listen and did enjoy last week The long path to building an integrative cardiology practice episode five hundred A lot of really nice emails and other messaging around social media You follow me on social media. Are you on Instagram We've had a very busy week on Instagram with LO prrotein APost Tens and tens of thousands of views. So get over there, D R J K A H N Twitter, D R J K A H N TikTok My handle is hard Dock VIP And Facebook it's just Joel C MD So join me on social media I didn't mention YouTube. I'm all over YouTube Almost every day, you'll see a short video post because that's what people want. Sordan Sweet. We call this a be cast being a pod short and sweet. And that's what today is again going to be. Let's give a thank you to aggenist. com But what you want to write down is I G E N n US. com backsash. D R K A H N. their whole long thing Ienis. com back s K Because when you go and order a product and put that in the discount code right before you check out You'll see twenty percent off of already great prices So that's very kind of this wonderful company in Cambridge, England, but they're all over the United States. So don't worry, you're going to get your product right away. 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So you are just gonna be the best maker of colleagen in your community For sure with a wonderful powder compleplete nutritional package for collagen production And It's all the things that it doesn't have. They don't add all those toxic additives and food coloring. and all the things we don't want. they do make this in a GMP accredited facility, that's the best there is. clean hypo allergenic, well tolerated ingredients All kinds of testing for safety, purity, and activities. I'm very proud to work with this great family owned business. The vegan pro collollagen protein powder It's so perfect to put into a bowl of oatmeal, a bowl of cereal A smoothie A drink whatever you want, just do it as I do and I do it every day Thank you, Mrses Conn. you make sure I get my scoop A vegan pro collagen protein powder Thank you Igenis. com backsiz D R K A H N All right, we are going to go as you know, the usual sequence to some short topics, short papers, short information. your knowledge high, high high. D I mention I'm going to be back in Florida, January and February. seeeeing live patients in Boca Raton, Florida. You can book it now, new patient and follow up two hundred for eight seeven three one seeven four, one, two But we also offer all kinds of telemedicine twenty states. So if that doesn't work for you to see me in Florida Just see me, okay Let's talk about a paper in a prominent journal NPJ aging. may twenty fifth, twenty twenty six Lice, essential aight and longevity cardiovascular health and mortality all the way to centenarians This is an absolutely crazy study done in China thirty one thousand people that were between the age of thirty and one hundred and sixteen years old And they had database data on How long they lived They also had data on their lifestyle, using the American Harvestization Life's essentially construct. They found it did not matter if you were in your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and even over a hundred The more adherent you were to life's essential a Over time, the lower was your risk of dying during the study follow up This is absolutely spectacular data. Nobody has an excuse Not to eat well, move well, sleep more, stress less, donon't smoke Take care of your body weight and be a responsible CEO of your health Even listen to this. In the group that was over one hundred years old in this study, Those that were completely adherent to l essential a versus those that weren't at a fifty five percent lower risk of dying, even though they are already over a hundred in this study compared to the group that did not pay attention during the study follow up. So Lead that healthy lifestyle, G study lifeife's essential eight. What a great paper. Hey, here's a really interesting one. If you're a patient at the C center You probably know that if you need to be on cholesterol medicine probably going to be on a low dose statin plus ten milligrams of azetamide Statins decrease cholesterol production in the liver Azetamyide decreases cholesol absorption in the intestines Well, in the Journal of Lpid Research, okay, I gott to go back to february twenty twenty six High cholesterol absorption efficiency increases the risk of fatal and non fatal Athrocratic events from Finland And what they did is they took a group of patients W serious heart disease, two hundred of them Without heart disease, two hundred of them They measured in their blood, it's called sterile SDEROL concentrations characterize Wh is a high absorber, super efficient absorber of cholesterol and who's average and who's even belelow average And the findings and follow up of these four hundred people followed up during the duration of the study about ten years. was the hyperabsorbers of cholesterol. This is basically largely on a genetic input But you can do a blood test. Vibrant labs and Boston Art offers it And the hyperabsorbers of cholesterol had more risk of having another heart attack or dying than those who weren't hyperabsorbers. It's not such a great thing to be a hyperabsorber. Now the alternative testing everybody to see if you're a hyperabsorber. is to use a etamite If you're a heart patient And your cholesterol needs treatment Beiana Zetemide, Zetia alone Or as I just said beyond a low dose statin with azetamide. That is the perfect combination because then the hyperabsorber status no longer matters. You've taken care of it. Okay. Can you understand that That's why I'm so bugger crazy. about his Zenimi. I think it's the number one prescription I refill in my clinic over and over and over and over Crazy. Okay, here's one that's a little distressing. If you've got a little punch around the belly, If your belt right now, your pants are a little tight June fifteenth, major journal called Nature Metabolism Adopocity and cancer, a review. Adiposity means too much fat This from the National Cancer Institute in Maryland And this is a review article looking at hundreds of articles onene and a half million cases of cancer What's the relationship between obesity and dancer And very sadly, it's very strong. It's very strong for nineteen different kinds of cancer And if you're curious endometrial cancer, a opvageal cancer, kidney cancer, call butter cancer liver cancer, breast cancer, thyroid cancer U colorectal cancer reallyally big for prostate cancer Pretty big for non Hodkinens. Let's try it again Non Hodgkins lymoma Lung cancer. In all these instances, adipacity AKA obesity is really a major issue and actually end endometrial cancer may be number one. It's obviously got to be are monorally related. So Talk to your doctor saying, I'm concerned by my waistline And I need help. Maybe it's Proon, mayaybe it's a nutrition referral, mayaybe you're going to use an app like Zoey or Noom or some of the others out there Maybe you're going to get on medication if nothing else works And all of it should be wholeo Food plant based theaters helps with the weight. All right, let's talk about Lp protein L A. always interesting June twenty twenty six, the journal sleep It was a report The authors are Chinese And their affiliation is in Beijing. Loo at a fairly large cohort in China of eleven hundred patients, U There were those that had sleep apnea There were those that had lipoprotein A There were those that had both And all these people had heart disease And what they reported was There was an additive risk If you have a high lipoprotein A and you have corony disease, you're at high risk If you have obstructed sleep apnea and coronaryart disease, you're at high risk If you have both, You have an additive increase risk, that's rather concerning So step one, get your blood checked for lipoprotein L LA T get a home sleep study and find out if you I have pererhaps obstructive sleep apnea Maybe a sleep partner says you snore, stop breathing Maybe a relative's been over the house had to put in airplugs. Whver it is It's so simple nowadays to do a home sleep study. And I so much encourage you not to ignore the possibility At the C Center, we offer something called Ultimate Heart Sleep Eal where you meet with me, you have blood tests, you have a carotid ultrasound And you get a home sleep study all in one And it's very popular and it's very powerful, okay? And then I believe we have two last. Very exciting papers One is in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, really an interesting Research study They used the famous Harvard database for nurses and doctors, but they looked at women They had over one hundred thousand. They followed these women for many years, usually over thirty years. Every four years, they had them fill out very detailed surveys. about did they exercise, what kind of exercise, how many minutes of each kind of exercise And they updated it And actually, to be specific, the average follow up in the study was fourteen years A good number of people, a sad number of people developed heart events like heart attack or death, little over five thousand And the magic sweet spot was women who did resistance training, strength training more than two hours a week. or two hours a week or more, let's say it accurately. and a twenty percent lower risk of developing major cardiovascular events than those that did no strength training Now What is A woman organized her exercise life. to do two hours or more of strength training to also do the recommended amount of cardioaerobic training. Uually it's one hundred and fifty minutes a week. thirty minutes, five days a week And also at a very low TV watching sedentary time Somebody went three for three. Great strength training Good cardio work And they don't sit in front of the boob tube all day long They had an even greater reduction in risk And it was closer to thirty percent to forty percent reduction. So You want to be the triple threat. The strength Cardio And they're not sitting around all day long as much as you can help it. Wonderful paper. I didn't say, Journal American College of Cardiology U I do not know the authors Resistance training, aerobic activity television viewing and risk of major cardiovascular events in U S. women. I don't know if this has been researched in Men. I'm sure it's a similar finding And the last short topic here at our doock VIP Brought to you by remember WWW d. genis. com backslash D R K A H N Dr. Khon is an interesting paper a year ago But I did a podcast interview. And I was asked a question. What do you have to say about the relationship between both thyroidism and homocysteine levels And I As we say in Michigan acted like a deer looking in the headlights And I said I'm not sure I know about that relationship. Well, There's a lot of data now I'm familiar I'm looking at a paper Frontiers in endndocrinology, july twenty twenty five where they parse out the fact Maybe you carry a diagnosis of about thyroidism Well, you're your primary care doctor, your endocrinologist tyypically does not check your homeocysteine level A functional medicine integrated medicine doctor Will Your advanced lab work will show it. And it turns out many people with hypothyroidism have elevated homeocistine levels Many people with hypoththyroidism have an MTHFR genetic defect. That's interesting Many people with hypthyroidism are actually deficient in the proper kind of B twelve or Fy that lowers your home assisting. So I learned something new. When I did this interview, even I've had a give that bllink stare at first, but I was able to pull this article up while I was still being interviewed and we talked about it and I think I walked away You know, you can't know everything Somebody tells you they know everything, their name must be Claud That's a little AI joke you probably got Okay, let's go to the major topic here episode five hundred one Do you think I'm grateful? Yes, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for so many things My wonderful family, my wonderful career friendriends and wonderful people I know U, my health and on and on. In fact, the first thing I do every morning Even sometimes before I open my eyelids is I say a two line traditional prayer in Hebrew called Moda Ani. I am grateful that expresses your gratitude for waking up again. And if you follow me on social media, remember I suggest you do that You'll see I post hashtag gratitude all over the place because I truly am 'm grateful Life can turn in a moment So I do a lot of reading during the week. You probably figured that out. I read books, I read blogs, I read substacks I read research articles And one of the substxts I read is by a MD PhD just graduated medical school named Nick Norowitz And I'll give a shout out to Tim. I don't agree with hardardly everything that he talks about, but I will pick from the bowl as my good friend Tony told me just the other day over a gratitude session together. takeake the luggage, leave the baggage. So. I take the luggage from Nick Noritz. I leave the baggage. I don't agree with And his most recent paper was on Gratitude undernderrated longevity practice, and I could not agree more What what I was intrigued by is that there is actually there has been a fair number of interesting research studies that a gratitude practice, a formal gratitude practice is actually quite important for cardiovascular health, a positive psyche having an optimistic outlook. Having a purpose in life. These things are harder to measure But they actually are, you know crucial and gratitude is sort of the foundation of all of that. And I just want to go over with you actually a few of these studies and an idea about actually practicing gratitude, off course Say, please and thank you. I do that. Don't take things for granted And as I told you, I wake up For decades and decades. So does my wife with a gratitude practice But here back in two thousand nine, journalist psychosematic reesearch Gratitude influences sleep throughrough mechanism of pre sleep cognition, Alex Wood is The first author, this is from Manchester, United Kingdom pretty close to eygenist. com backsash doror Khn And they found by questionnaires of people' sleep and a measure of gratitude there actually are a variety of scales to judge your gratitude a high gratitude level predicted better sleep quality Bet sleep duration less sleep lacency and less daytime dysfunction. And this was the first study to show that a positive trait of gratitude is related to sleep quality. Isn't that interesting? You having trouble sleeping Go to bed and go through the list of things that were good during the day. It's that statement Not every day is a good day, but there is good in every day. Somebody held the door for you today Somebody let you in when you were making your left hand turn Somebody perhaps offered to help you with a grocery bag, someomebody somewhere did something nice to today. Probably And if it wasn't a person, it might have been a dog or a cat That little bit of gratitude may be very important If we jump to july twenty sixteen Psychoatic medicine First author, Laura Redwine from University of California, San Diego. Pilot randomiz study of gratitude journaling. ChV and inflammatory biomarkers in congestive heart failure Oh, my good friend Alan Misel, a cardiologist from Detroit, but he's been in San Diego for decades A very, very funny cardiologist. You should follow him on TikTok. He's a He's a hoop. He's an older cardiologist who does stand upp commenting. He's one of the authors And what they actually did is they took seventy patients Over eight weeks Half of them are asked to write in the journal at the end of the day Things they were grateful for for that day. and the other half was a control group. And they measured before and after Objective markers and slammatory markers. parasympathetic nervous system function, HRV function Who do you think did better? Well, the conclusion was Regular gratitude journaling. may improve biomarkers related to heart failure morbidity Such as reduced inflammation, larger studies are needed. Are you inflamed? Do I go over your labs at the C center And you tell me that your high sensitiv EC reactive protein is up and you don't know why Well Maybe a little gratitude journaling wouldn't hurt, huh a similar paper by the same group in San Diego. The role of gratitude in spiritual well beinging in heart failure patience differentiffere journal. P a psych net This is twenty fifteen. And they took a bigger sample this time one hundred and eighty six men and women with a diagnosis of Congestive heart failure, very serious diagnosis. with education given on spirituality practices, grratitude practices and related them to sleep, mood, fatigue cardiac function and inflammation And in this larger group, they once again found Gratitude, better sleep Gratitude, less depression Gratitude, lower inflammation gratitude, more self efficacy, which I mean is getting stuff done. So efforts to increase gratitude may be a treatment for improving wellbeing in cardiac patients' lives and be of potential clinical value. Isn't that great And then I'll just share one more for you probably relevant to all of us. Go back to the Journal of Personal Social Psychology two thousand three. Robert Emons U I'm trying to share with you Wh he's from? Now also, you see Davis The California researchers Tk a look at the role of gratitude on overall well beinging bunch of patients, a bunch of surveys. And again, people that scored high and having gratitude practices reported having much more wellbeing B health behaviors fewewer physical symptoms B coping behaviors. And just generally, happier people in life. So maybe that gratitude journal, maybe that gratitude prayer Again, if you want to look up the phrase that I say You want to go over and putut in a search engine Mode Ani M O D E H A N I Ancient prayer, noobody knows who wrote it It's pretty much not specific to any particular religion It's just a statement of justust what it said. Gratitude So just circling back to Nick Noritz He was suggesting that a regular gratitude journaling practice writing it down What were you' grateful for today at the end of the day. And you can' put down raggon on people and everything else. I met a new doctor today at a coffee shop. who practices one building away from me And she's a real whiz bang at integrated medicine and hormone replacement And I needed somebody close to refer to And I realized I got to the coffee shop without my wallet I was gonna buy her. a green tea, which is what she was drinking and I had So she ended up buying me a green tea. I had gratitude. I said, thank you many times The suggestion here is maybe a gratitude journal is Three times a week But I don't know, getet a notebook, get a pen, put it on your nightstand And maybe you want to do it as much as every day. and surround yourself with positive I listen to a bunch of podcasts in the course of a week, as many as I can on my drive time and such But I'll just give a shout out if I can find it real quick. lookingoo up u on my podcast app on my phone while I'm Beaming out to at ourDoc VIP. But it's Sean Croxton S E A N C RO X TON and he has every morning ten or twelve or fifteen minute podcast. My favorite is when he has Less Brown. It's called quote of the Day Show And you may want to get a bit of zig ziggler in the morning Less Brown. I love Less Brown. I think he's great. And many other, you know, what you might call motivational speakers That really, really raiseed the bar that today's going to be a good day. That's another practice I have I tend to share those short podcasts with my children. I want them to develop those habits too and Maybe I can consider you the great family here at Ardke VAP. like children if that's okay and not too weird. So One more time, genist. com GE andNS. coM backslash. D R K A H N for the vegan, pro collllagen protein powder Episode five hundred one here at hardard Doc VIP full of gratitude that we're moving forward. I'm twelve and a half weeks post mitral valve repair doing great I hope you're doing great and I'll see you back nextxt week If you need a flurred appointment Give Lis a call. We'll book it up for you. We're ready, willing and able to help. Have a wonderful day.