Ep. 196 Alternative Tools to Optimize Your Health

I am delighted to have Dr. Bret Scher joining me on the podcast today! Dr. Bret is a board-certified cardiologist and lipidologist in San Diego who is helping to change the narrative around health and prevention. He is the host of the Diet Doctor Podcast, and he also does telemedicine cardiology.

Dr. Bret is a forward-thinking cardiologist who is very well-versed in the medical literature. I have the greatest respect for him and believe he is changing the future of medicine moving forward. I feel fortunate to have interacted with him on social media and to have had the opportunity to be a guest on his podcast. 

In this episode, Dr. Bret shares his background and talks about how he started in preventative cardiology with a low-fat veganism approach and later evolved to focusing more on low-carb ketogenic diets and lifestyle medicine. We discuss the broken medical system, the contributors to it, and the outdated dogma that continues to be perpetuated. We dive into the cholesterol paradigm and what you need to be aware of that could help you figure out whether or not you need to be concerned about your lipid values. Dr. Bret shares his views on biohacking, and we also discuss metabolic flexibility and the future development of preventative cardiology and metabolic flexibility.

I hope you enjoy listening to this helpful and informative podcast. Stay tuned for more!

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

• Dr. Bret talks about his evolution as a cardiologist, and how his practice was initially influenced by the perspective of Dr. Dean Ornish.
• Why is it so hard for health care professionals in the U.S. to shift their focus and change the dogma around metabolic health? 
• The perspectives of hospital-based physicians are slowly starting to shift towards lifestyle and prevention.
• Dr. Bret talks about the valuable pieces of technology he utilizes with his patients.
• There is a benefit to using tech devices, but it is easy to take things too far and assign too much importance to them.
• Why is it helpful to count net carbs with whole foods and total carbs with packaged and processed foods?
• Dr. Bret shares his take on seed oils.
• Dr. Bret unpacks cholesterol and the different types of LDL.
• Looking at Coronary CT angiograms for those who want to quantify whether or not they have any plaque in their arteries.
• Dr. Bret unpacks the issue with saturated fat.

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow

• Follow on Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn
• Check out Cynthia’s website 

Connect with Dr. Bret Scher

• On the Low Carb Cardiologist and DietDoctor websites
• The Diet Doctor Podcast
• The Diet Doctor YouTube channel

Book mentioned:

The Unhealthy Truth, by Robyn O’Brien