402: Earthing and Grounding Benefits For The Heart

Dr. Stephen Sinatra And Ashley James 

Highlights:

• Earthing and grounding
• Emotional and mental component to healing
• Disorientation of the domains,
• Invoke the mind, body, spirit into one phase of healing
• Bioenergetic Psychotherapy
• Experiencing your emotions
• When you free up emotions, you will allow the heart to breathe better
• Resentment is actually a killer in people
• When people get out of synchronicity, illness sets in
• There are certain aspects of the diet that are healing
• Coenzyme Q10 is the greatest heart healer of all time
• Achieving optimum health involves six specific domains
• Consider detoxification as part of a remedy for going forward as a species
• Oxidized cholesterol is pro-inflammatory
• Anti- inflammatory effects of earthing and grounding
• High blood pressure in a woman is worse than a man
• Alternate nostril breathing for stress
• When you ground, you improve heart rate variability. Whenever you improve heart rate variability, you're “healthier.”

In this episode, Dr. Sinatra will discuss the emotional and mental component to healing and how our emotions affect our health. Know the anti-inflammatory and healing effects of earthing and grounding and releasing emotions.

[00:00:00] Intro: Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast.

Before we get to today's interview, I have a few announcements. First, my guest today talks about his experience as a Cardiologist with grounding and earthing. And I think that's absolutely wonderful. They've done studies and he's participated in that and seen in his patients and in these studies the results that people get in healing when grounding and earthing.

In the Learn True Health Facebook Group, which is free to join, just search Learn True Health in Facebook and join the Facebook Group. In the pinned announcement section, you can see Clint Ober's full documentary. He actually gave it to us and gave us permission to host it there. Currently, that's the only place to watch it as it's not available online because it is currently being shown at film festivals. I've heard that it's eventually going to be on Netflix. But you can watch it now. You don't have to wait. I didn't interview Clint Ober. It's wonderful. I highly recommend listening to it if you haven't already. Go to Learn True Health Facebook Group and check out Clint Ober's documentary on earthing and grounding as they go through all the science and the studies. It's just fascinating.

So my guest today talks about earthing and grounding as one of the subjects that we cover. We also cover how to get blood pressure under control, cholesterol under control, how to prevent heart disease, many topics that are wonderful. But he does think that grounding is absolutely key to health. And I agree I've had amazing experiences with grounding and earthing since I had Clint over on the show. When you go to learntruehealth.com/grounding. You can see Clint Ober's grounding mats. So if you're like me and you're in a colder climate and you can't get out outdoors for an hour a day barefoot in the ground to do earthing, the next best thing is grounding using grounding mats. Go to the Facebook Group and search grounding, earthing, or grounding mat and see what the other listeners are saying about it. Because we have some great testimonials of other listeners who are sharing their experiences when using the grounding mats or when earthing. So you can see from the community what it is doing for us, for our health, and that people are really getting great results, better sleep, decrease pain, some people are completely out of pain.

My cat who was arthritic and unable to jump on furniture, started – actually he's right now on my grounding mat that I use in my office. He is on it and he never wants to leave it. And after starting to use it, he is able to jump back up on the bed. And he's 16 years old and he hasn't been able to do it in a long time. So I'm seeing that he is out of pain now and he's more active since using the grounding mat, which is phenomenal. So check it out, go to learntruehealth.com/grounding, there are mats for children, for adults, for pets. You can use it in your office and you can use it when sitting on the couch or get a mat for sleeping. And that's the best kind. I think for people who are so busy, they don't want another thing to remember, so you just put it underneath your sheet. What it does is it takes excess electrons out of your body which are free radicals. So it's like an antioxidant and that it is neutralizing your body of those free radicals while you're sleeping, which is anti-inflammatory and so supportive of the body. So check it out, go to learntruehealth.com/grounding and also go to Learn True Health Facebook Group and watch the documentary to get more information on that.

The last announcement I have is that I'm about to launch Learn True Health Home Kitchen. I've been working on it for several months with Naomi. If you don't know Naomi, she is in the Facebook Group, very active. And she's a wonderful cook who has three boys. So she has taught herself how to cook very healthy foods for her whole family. Everyone has a different palate. And we got together because we both are passionate about cooking for health. I have reversed several diseases. Naomi has as well. And we use food as medicine. So we've been filming videos for the last few months teaching people how to cook really healthy, delicious, affordable, quick meals that your whole family will love. That is our healing for your body. And that help you to reverse disease and prevent disease. And we're about to launch a membership. It's going to be affordable so everyone can do it. So you can learn to use food as medicine even if you don't know how to cook, even if you don't have any time, even if you don't think you can afford to eat healthfully, even if you don't know you like the taste of healthy food. All those things were going to handle so that you love this food, your kids, your husband loves this food, your family will love it. And it's healing for the body, which is the most important thing. Because if we don't have our health, we don't have anything. So I want to teach you how to use your kitchen as your biggest health tool. And you will learn that in the membership. I'm about to launch Learn True Health Home Kitchen, so stay tuned. You can do that by going to my website learntruehealth.com, and when the pop up comes up, put in your email address. That's to join the email list. So when we do launch it, I'll send you an email so you'll know about it. Or you can join the Facebook Group and I will be announcing it in there as well. Or just subscribe to this podcast so that when it is launched, you will be notified.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing the show with those you love so we can help as many people as possible to learn true health. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me ashley@learntruehealth.com. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy today's interview.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 402.

I am so excited for today's guest We have with us Board Certified Cardiologist Dr. Stephen Sinatra. I love your books. I think the work that you do is amazing. And you have been a doctor for – is it almost 50 years now?

[00:06:30] Stephen Sinatra: Oh, yeah. Well, let's see, it's close. I graduated medical school in 1972 so it's real close.

[00:06:39] Ashley James: Right. And then following the work that you've done, you've really branched out to see the truth. You know, some doctors like to stick with the status quo and just keep toting the line that they're fed. And they just want to stay in their lane. You're not one of those doctors. You have you have looked at what really works. I love that I saw you talking about that there's an emotional and mental component to healing. That you saw that after a heart attack a man who goes home to an empty household or a household that's hostile has a lower recovery rate than a man who goes home to a loving dog or loving family. And you really saw that there's more to healing than just, “Here, take this pill. Call me in the morning.” And you saw that there's a really important need to address diet and supplements.

But you also saw that what we've been fed for over 30 years, these myths, these lies about cholesterol are wrong. And so you've written many books and I love them. And one of the books is about setting the record straight on cholesterol. I want to talk about that today with you about setting the record straight on cholesterol, about helping to reverse high blood pressure. You have a book on lowering blood pressure in a short amount of time. And then also grounding. I had Clint Ober on the show and you co-authored a book with him on earthing and grounding. And I think that these three topics are so wonderful.

But, first, before we get into all those, I'd love for us to learn a bit more about you. Because what happened in your career that had you become a maverick? How did you rise above and no longer be part of the status quo to help people really figure out how to gain their health beyond drugs and surgery?

[00:08:41] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. That's a good question, Ashley. mean, I've thought about it often myself because my path is sort of very, very unusual for a typical Physician in the country. I mean, I guess when I went to medical school and I graduated back in May of '72, I applied to five different internships and I applied big. I mean, I applied to San Franisco General, Grady Memorial in Atlanta, Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Because I wanted to do an internship where I was extremely busy. And I wanted to go to a highly regarded area in a country. Because when it comes to a doctor, you want to see a lot of pathology very early because that's what makes a doctor very strong in his assessment of differential diagnosis, of pathology, et cetera, et cetera.

As fate would have it, I didn't match my internship. Meaning, I had no place to go. But then as fate would have it, Albany Medical Center, you know, the school I went to an Albany, New York, they didn't match on a psychiatric residency. So here's what happened, Ashley, Albany, offered me a first year residency in psychiatry. But they said I could take eight months of medicine, four months of psychiatry, and it would count towards at, what we call, a straight medical internship. Meaning, that I could do two years of medical residency after that and become board eligible to take the board certification exam and internal medicine. I thought, “This is great.” And you got to realize when I took the psychiatry courses in medical school, I didn't really sort of connect with it. I thought it was okay. But I said to myself, “Well, geez. I'm not really going to go into psychiatry. I'm not going to be treating a lot of depressed, or crazy people, or schizophrenic people, or manic depressives, et cetera, et cetera.” So I can probably just go through this one and just put my time in and that would be it.

Then all of a sudden on June 30th or July 1 where a medical student now becomes an intern. I didn't become an intern. I became a psychiatric resident. Meaning, that now I was on-call in Albany, New York every third to fourth night as the psychiatrist on-call. I got to tell you, Ashley, it was a baptism by fire. I'm glad I did it. I was reading, like, a book every two or three days. I was so frightened about the fact that I would have this enormous responsibility. And yet it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Why? It opened me up. It opened me up to another new healing phase of emotional healing. You know what? Let's face it, when you become a doctor and health professions, you're focused on physical healing. But we all know that when people get sick, it's sort of like a disorientation of the spiritual, physical, and emotional domains. So when these three domains become haphazard or they become out of whack or they become disheveled or they're not in line with one another, people get sick.

And an emotional illness can certainly be driven right into a physical illness. And I've seen that happen over and over again. So when away, I was so blessed because having the four months of psychiatry and having direct emergency room experience, locked ward experience, opened me up to the fact that when I was in my first year of medical residency, I decided to go into a Gestalt psychotherapy training program. Meaning, that I took this as extra time. And when I was in the Hartford area, it was amazing because I was studying with psychologists who were Fritz Perls disciples coming out of San Francisco.  And they were part of the Hartford Family Institute. And I learned two years of Gestalt psychoanalysis.

And one of the books on the reading list was a book called Bioenergetics by  Dr. Alexander Lowen. And I'll tell you, Ashley, have you ever read a book and you felt so connected that you needed to meet the author? Has that ever happened to you where you were just driven to meet the author because he was speaking directly at you? So anyway, as fate would have it, Dr. Lowen was holding a Bioenergetic Psychotherapy workshop in New York City. And on a lock, I applied. And they were, like, 80 people that showed up in New York City. What I didn't expect to find was that there were only three Americans in the entire group of 80 people. And I'll never forget this. There were people from China, people from South America, Australia, a lot from Western Europe. And I'm saying to myself, “How lucky am I? I just had to drive two-and-a-half hours to go to New York City when everybody else had a fly in.” And it was amazing because when I went to the workshop – and it was pure – it's a workshop on emotional based medicine on psychotherapy, on feelings, emotions, repressed emotions, how our emotions get stuck in the body, physical attributes of emotional distress, et cetera, et cetera.

But when I went to the workshop, I realized that I found a so-called mentor that I wanted to train with. So when the workshop was over, I asked Dr. Lowen, if I could work with him. And it was amazing. He said to me – and he was in his early 70s. I was only in my early 30s at the time. And he said to me goes, “I'll take you on. You'll be one of my last students.” And I studied with him for three years. And then he talked me into attending a Bioenergetics Psychotherapy training program, which was another eight years of training for me. Actually, it was five years of training with eight weekends a year for five straight years. And then another three years, we had to present at international conferences, undergo supervision with psychoanalysis, write a paper. That was a lot of work. I have to tell you, it was more work than going through medical school. But at the end of the day, when I finished my several years of training, I became a Bioenergetic Psychotherapist, and a board certified Cardiologist, as well as a board certified internist.

So my path was really amazing. I really got into the depths of mind body medicine. And then several years later when I met Tommy Rosa, when he went to heaven and back, he and I wrote a book, Health Revelations From Heaven. And then, you know, several years ago when I worked with this highly spiritual person who went to the other side and came back, then I sort of culminated my training into mind, body, and spirit. Because Tommy brought a lot to the table. And having spent a lot of time with a co-author who was on the other side, it's sort of culminated in doing a full circle of being a healer. Where now, you not only invoke the physical and the emotional, but you bring on the spiritual as well. I mean, there's no doubt about it. I mean, I really feel some people are under spiritual attack. I think there's other forces – unseen forces that involve people, whether it's a physical illness or an emotional illness. But I have to tell you that at least being in a spiritual domain, it just makes sense to invoke the mind, body, spirit into one phase of healing. And that's sort of a nutshell of what I have done in my training now.

Yes, I took the nutrition boards exam. I became a certified nutrition specialist. I took that exam in the 2000. I studied like crazy for that exam. I mean, that was an amazing talk in the sense that when I was at [inaudible] [00:17:29] I met other doctors that flew in all over the world and it was just incredible that they were like me trying to get board certified in nutritional healing.

[00:17:41] Ashley James: I love that you just constantly are expanding, constantly learning, and absorbing information, and utilizing it to help people heal. What is Bioenergetic Psychotherapy?

[00:17:53] Stephen Sinatra: Well, bioenergetics is like taking Gestalt to a higher level. Gestalt and what Fritz Perls' projected was, be here now. I mean, be in the moment. Ram Dass did a lot of work on that later on. And basically, it's experiencing your emotions. In other words, if you have sadness, have your sadness. If you have anger, it's okay to be angry. It's not okay to go into rage. Rage is uncontrolled anger and you can hurt somebody else or hurt yourself for that matter. But the Gestalt analysis was great. And the bioenergetics actually brought that to a deeper level. Because what bioenergetics is all about, it's about how locked emotions. And by the way, we all have locked emotions. I mean, you know, a lot of us have had intense heartbreak.

The best book I've ever written in my lifetime was my book, Heartbreak and Heart Disease. It took me about ten years to write. I finally published it in my early 40s. It was right smack after my Gestalt and bioenergetic therapy trainings. And in the book, I wrote about how heartbreak that we've all experienced as children. I mean, we all can't escape heartbreak, Ashley. It happens to all of us now. It happens to us on different levels. You know, the death of a pet and a ten year old could have disastrous consequences. Certainly, a divorce and a ten year old could be more. The death of a parent could be even more. But we've all had heartbreaks on different levels in our lifetime. And when we do have heartbreak, over time, it could shield the heart into a heavily armored chest or a very, very – what I call – rigid character structure that can lead to the development of heart disease later on in life.

So what I've done in my own lifetime in training and all these different health domains, I've always looked at stored emotions in the body as a way of trying to free up the body that can free up locked emotions. And I mentioned heartbreaks, surely we all have sadness and anger. In other words, when you free up these emotions, you will allow the heart to breathe better. And you allow the heart to escape from the perils of whether it's guilt, shame.

And Louise Hay wrote about this years ago, I think the worst emotion is resentment. I think resentment is actually a killer in people. And she wrote about it how resentment was a big factor in the genesis of breast cancer. I fully agree with her. The problem with resentment, Ashley, is this is one emotion that a lot of us can't give up. But we have to give it up. So if any of your listeners on this podcast have resentment towards a family member, a friend, or relative, it doesn't matter. The best thing to do is just give it up because you really pay heavily for harboring that toxic emotion in the body.

[00:21:07] Ashley James: I always look at it like we're shooting ourselves in the foot by holding an emotion against someone else. I had someone do a large wrongdoing to my family a few years ago. And it took me years to process the resentment. I went through the anger. I went through the sadness. I went through all the emotions because it affected us on many levels. And you're right, the resentment was the hardest one to give up. And I've been working on that in the last year. And I had to come to a place where I had to look at what I'm grateful for. Because of the path – even though it was a wrongdoing to my family and it harmed us, we bounced back. We moved on. And who knows maybe we're better off because of it. And so I have to hold on to the – and actually I've thanked him for what he did because I am now the person I am now. And the goodness I have in my life I have built out of that wrongdoing, out of that tragedy. And so I think that we need to look at the gratitude and think that actor, think the negative for putting us on the path we're on now because we can be grateful for what we have now. And then letting go of the resentment. Because the resentment doesn't harm the person we want to harm. It just keeps harming ourselves.

[00:22:32] Stephen Sinatra: No. It harms you.

[00:22:34] Ashley James: It's allowing them to continue to hurt us.

[00:22:37] Stephen Sinatra: Exactly. And you really said it beautifully. I couldn't say it better. And I'm glad our listeners are privy to this right now because we're getting kidding privy to it. But I have to tell you, there's no doubt about it. Resentment is the hardest to give up. It's the most destructive in the body. And it's the most toxic emotion that we carry on in our lives. And I have to tell you, I have seen so many acute heart attacks including sudden death because in – and the reason why I know this, I resuscitated many people in my life. And because I was a Psychotherapist, I would always get into the emotional aspects of the illness. I would ask these people if they ever had toxic emotions against another or any sadness or heartbreak or resentment. And you wouldn't believe what poured out of these people. But it's not worth getting a heart attack by holding on to that emotion of resentment. It's a very, very powerful emotion as you stipulated.

[00:23:37] Ashley James: So really from the beginning of your medical career you have respected and honored that we have an emotional body, and a mental body, and a physical body, and a spiritual body. That these aspects of ourselves cannot be isolated. That we can't treat someone allopathically and just give them medication. Because you're seeing that there's obviously mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical all happening at the same time. That will give you a unique perspective. But you also didn't shy away from it. I've seen other doctors shy away from it and want to only stick with what's in the physical world, with what's tangible and physical.

[00:24:22] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. What they're comfortable with. Yeah.

[00:24:23] Ashley James: Right. With what they're comfortable with. So your personality, do you think it's your personality that wants to challenge yourself and continue to grow? Is that just the kind of person you are?

[00:24:35] Stephen Sinatra: Well, it has a lot to do with personality. But training as well. With all the extensive training I had, you come to realize that when people get out of synchronicity of the emotional, spiritual, physical, or mental for that matter, illness sets in. I mean, I've sat with a lot of people face-to-face in the office. And I've asked people why this illness occurred in their lives. And again, it's my psychotherapy training because it's not just treating the physical illness. You always want to see if there's a why behind it or maybe a contributing factor. And I was able to really go deep with a lot of patients.

I remember one woman who had breast cancer. And I just asked her point blank, I said, “Why do you think this was placed in your path at age 50 right now?” And she came back with a very profound answer. And she said to me, she said, “Part of my life is a lie. I need to live the truth.” And little things like that by verbalizing it – because one thing about an illness, especially an illness like heart disease or cancer because they could be life threatening, people get it quickly. And if you have somebody on the other side talking to them face-to-face and you're able to not strike a nerve, but go to a different area that they have some feelings about, many times they surface.

And I'll tell you this, Ashley, I mean, I've been a doctor for a long time. And I realized to be about 10 or 15 years of medical practice to realize this – maybe even 20 years – but the most important communication between a Physician and a patient is literally in the last 15 or 20 seconds of the office visit. I sort of call it the hands on a doorknob syndrome. This has happened to me dozens and dozens of times. I'll sit with a patient for five, ten, 20 minutes, an hour sometimes. And as I'm leaving the exam room, I'll say to the patient, “It was nice talking to you. See the nurse for this and that, blah, blah, blah.” And the patient will say, “Oh, Doc, there's one more thing.” And that one more thing, in Gestalt psychoanalysis, we would call the death layer. Meaning, that that one more thing that that particular patient wanted to discuss was really the whole essence and their whole being of why they were in the office in the first place. So many, many times, Ashley, I had to go back, take my hand off the doorknob, and sit. And I would say, “Okay. Tell me about this one more thing.” Because I knew it was the most provocative healing statement that came out of the patient. Because if we dealt with the “one more thing,” I knew that the healing was going to be miraculous after that. Because when you harbor these things, it creates the healing to be not as forthcoming. It stifles it. And when these patients who are able to communicate this one more thing and if I was able to get them on the road better traveled now, so to speak, then the healing went – it skyrocketed.

See, and that's the essence of a good doctor and a good patient. It's not just the doctor that does the healing. I've always believed that the doctor and the patient, they do a dance. And the patient comes out a little bit and the doctor comes out a little bit. And there's a lot of unconscious communication that goes that goes on between them. But the real healing takes place when a lot of the negativity, a lot of the shadow is dispersed. A lot of the camouflage is penetrated. And basically the death layer is sort of opened up. Because I can tell you this being a doctor for decades, healing is like peeling an onion. We all have our issues. We all have things that have happened to us. And it's like peeling an onion. We get to this layer. We go through that layer. We handle that. We peel off another layer. And at the end of life, it gets better and better. I'll tell you this.

One thing I can also tell you about being a healer, it takes decades to really get it. And the worst thing about being a doctor, like myself, or a Psychotherapist, or a nutritionist or whatever it is, it takes decades. You finally learn this information in your 70s, 80s, and 90s. But then you die. And maybe it bring you to the spiritual domain – I don't know. But I have to tell you, it takes a long time to really assimilate a lot of these aspects into the healing of the whole person.

[00:29:55] Ashley James: We need to get to the point where holistic medicine is so good that our doctors are living to 120, living to our genetic potential. And they're not retiring until 110. And then will really be on track. So we need to start doing what we need to do to live to our genetic potential. Because I hear you. I'm just approaching what they call, I guess, midlife. And I'm thinking to myself, “I'm nowhere near halfway done this life. I got so much left to do. I better figure out how to live to 120 and grow my telomeres or something.”

[00:30:35] Stephen Sinatra: Well, a BioGenome Project only came out 20 years ago. And I think the doctors of the future are going to have it very simple. They're going to know your genetics. I go to conferences now. I go to several conferences a year. And you got to realize, Ashley, when you go to a medical conference, whether it's alternative or complementary or straightforward medicine, it takes three to five years for a lot of that information to filter through journals, textbooks, et cetera, et cetera. So when you go to these cutting edge meetings, it's really important that they get the cutting edge leading edge material. And I'm convinced that what I hear now – and I just got back from a conference in Las Vegas. And last month, I was at the American College of Nutrition Conference in San Diego. And I'm convinced that the newer doctors of the future are not going to rely on differential diagnosis that the doctors in my generation relied on. But when you go to a doctor, when you see a Physician, you tell he or she your symptoms, and they come up with some calculated guesses, so to speak, based on your laboratory, your history and physical and et cetera, et cetera. I think the doctors of the future are going to find out your genetics, listen to your symptoms, plug in your genetics to see if they fit your symptoms, and give you the instant cure. They're going to plug up your genetic insufficiency, so to speak. And I think it's going to be a lot more simple going forward than what I had in my generation.

[00:32:11] Ashley James: It's interesting you say that because there's a whole realm of epigenetics are weakened. Depending on the stressors like the toxin, toxic load, and also the stressor being the deficiencies and nutrient deficiencies can turn on or off genetic expressions. And that we can support the body. So when they analyze the genes, they can see, “Oh, you're really deficient in this, this, and this. And your body needs this kind of nutrients and this kind of diet based on your genes and also your epigenetic expressions.” And so looking at that, we can then turn off. Like a friend of mine who was born with ichthyosis, scaly skin covering 70 percent of her body. The textbook pictures in Canada – because she's Canadian – all the textbooks or the pictures that they have of ichthyosis were her father because he was the most studied person with it. And the whole family has it. Well, she changed her diet, got on really good quality supplements. And three years later, no longer ichthyosis. But they said it was genetic. And she'd always have it. And she got it from her family. So why is it that she can turn it off or on based on her nutrient deficiencies and stressors? And that I find fascinating that our genes can help show the Physician where we're heading or what deficiencies we have. But it's not going to – it doesn't say just because you genetically are predisposed to cancer, it doesn't mean you have to get it. It just means we have to adjust the diet. Is that where you're seeing it go where doctors are going to be able to see –

[00:33:58] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Again, it was very well said by you. I'll just give you an example. You know, if you look at the highest longevity sections in the world that used to be Okinawa, followed by the Mediterranean Basin. Now, in the last Bloomberg report that came out about five months ago, Spain is the top country in the world with the best longevity. In fact, about six – maybe seven to eight years longer than the average American. Italy's in the top five. Portugal is in the top five. Okinawa, instead of being the number one country, it fell back. And if you look at the Mediterranean Basin in general, whether it's Algeria or the island of Crete or Greece or Italy, it doesn't matter, but there's one thing that connects the Mediterranean Basin. And I read this article in one of the medical journals about six or seven years ago and it explained to me this whole aspect of the unbelievable longevity of people in the Mediterranean Basin. And it was olive oil.

And basically, there are certain aspects of the inhabitants of the Mediterranean Basin that they all do and olive oil is one of them. And if you look at olive oil, what olive oil does, it changes our pro-inflammatory genes. You were getting into this a couple of minutes ago. But it changes pro-inflammatory genes that we all have. And it transfers them back to a non-inflammatory state. Now think about that, Ashley. That's unbelievable. And if you look at the antioxidants or the polyphenols and olive oil, one of them is hydroxytyrosol, another one is [inaudible] [00:36:04] purine. And these are remarkable – what we call – bioflavonoids and polyphenols. That not only are anti-inflammatory but they actually can change the caliber of our gene expression. And when you were talking about the ichthyosis with diet, people don't realize this, but there are certain aspects of the diet that are so healing. That these healing foods are just incredible.

And let's fast forward to the Predimed Study that came out of Spain again. This was a study where people were eating the American Heart Association diet where they had a couple of handfuls of nuts a day. Because the Seventh Day Adventist in our country have shown that if you do eat a lot of nuts, you have better longevity. And then another group would drink four tablespoons of olive oil a day. That's a lot of olive oil. So they had the olive oil group. They had the mixed nuts group. And they had the American Heart Association diet. And what it showed was that even though the olive oil group had a lot more fat and the nut group had a lot more fat in their diet as opposed to the American Heart Association diet, they had less Alzheimer's, less heart disease, less cancer, less diabetes. And they ran this study for only, approximately, five years. But the data was absolutely amazing. So there's something special about olive oil.

And when I read this data years ago and I had Dr. Gonzales present at the American College of Nutrition, I was with him on the podium. Because I wanted the Americans to get this information. But when I read this and I read the article in science and you look at antiquity with all these centenarians all over the Mediterranean Basin, there's something special about olive oil. And I call it the secret sauce of the Mediterranean diet. I really do. That's one of the reasons why I ended up going to California several years ago myself. And in my Vervana, we have a healthy website that we engage in the purchase of different olive oils. And we get our olive oil from California. And the reason being is that if you're certified by the Growers Council in California, then the olive oil is 100 percent extra virgin. Because the olive oils over the last few years, even though the Mediterranean Basin has this incredible longevity, the olive oils in the last few years have been cut with canola oil now in the Mediterranean Basin. So I don't know if you are privy to this. I mean 60 Minutes ran a great show on this a few years ago. But in the Mediterranean Basin now – and not all the countries do this – but you can have an olive oil that's 75 percent extra virgin. And as long as it's 75 percent extra virgin and it has 25 percent canola, the label will say 100 percent extra virgin. If it's 26 percent extra virgin, I have to put the extra virgin percentage on the label.

So it's amazing but consumers have no idea how unhealthy supposedly healthy foods can be. And the GMO foods, the glycophosphates in foods, I mean, it goes on and on. But I know we're a little off the topic. But I would say that securing very pure, clean, healthy food for our families, I believe is going to be one of the major challenges of the 21st Century. And one or two, I'm a big advocate of – what I call – high vibrational water. Water is extraordinarily important. I mean, I'm looking at deuterium-depleted waters, waters that are very complex in their structure. But they're very, very healing at the same time.

[00:40:22] Ashley James: I was just reading up on some studies where they've seen that blood pressure drops when people drink the Fiji water where there's more silica in it, I believe, is the mineral or the element. That there's certain nutrients in some water that has gone through, like, volcanic rocks, artesian wells, that contain more minerals. And they're seeing also detoxing of aluminum. That was one of the things that did, detoxing aluminum.

[00:40:56] Stephen Sinatra: Really? It's interesting because I used to drink Fiji water years ago because they're volcanic. But a lot of the Fiji waters that, I think, were investigated – maybe they took it out – but they were endowed with mercury . Ad I stopped drinking Fiji water when I learned this information. The silica is good. I like silica. But mercury, the problem with mercury in our environment it's a very, very profuse toxin. The dentist will put it in silver amalgams years ago. Hopefully, they're not doing it now. But a lot of the fishes loaded with mercury. The burning of coal in the atmosphere. A lot of coal burning. Mercury gets deposited and lakes and oceans and streams because of the interaction of coal and raining and stuff like that. Because methyl mercury is a byproduct. And we got to remember, you know, smaller fish eat the algae and bigger fish eat smaller fish. So mercury is one toxin I'm really worried about. And I think that's one of the major toxins involved in the widespread dementia and Alzheimer's disease that's occurring in lower and lower populations in our country.

[00:42:20] Ashley James: Uh-huh. There's also heavy metals in medications and vaccines.

[00:42:25] Stephen Sinatra: You don't want to touch the vaccines. That's another radio show.

[00:42:31] Ashley James: Well, I'd love to have you back on. I think we could talk for days. So we were talking about – I just want to go back a little bit and cover the extra virgin olive oil. What if someone instead wanting to drink olive oil, what if they just ate olives? Couldn't they get the same medicinal benefits?

[00:42:47] Stephen Sinatra: In a way they would. But olives, I don't recommend all of us because they're loaded with sodium chloride. They are very, very – I mean read the amount of sodium in olives the next time you get a jar. See, here's the deal, Americans eat far too much sugar and far too much sodium. And hypertension is one of the biggest problems in this country. And the taboo foods for sodium, olives are one of them. But dill pickle it. A typical dill pickle will have 1,000 milligrams of sodium. A fast food, chicken, let's say, in a fast food restaurant could have 1,300 milligrams of sodium. So canned soup for example, canned soups can have 500, 600, 700 milligrams of sodium. Even these pasta sauces.

At Vervana, we do a pasta sauce that's very, very clean. It passed California Prop 65. It's non-GMO. It's all organic, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the things I had to do to the pasta sauce is I really had to lower the sodium. Because, again, if you got 300 milligrams per serving, it's okay. But if you have 750 milligrams per serving, that's not okay. And there's so many areas of foods that are laden with sodium. It's a great preservative. And the problem is, is Americans in general, we eat far too much sodium chloride as well as far too much sugar.

[00:44:21] Ashley James: I wonder if there's sodium free olives. I wonder if there would be a way to process olives.

[00:44:26] Stephen Sinatra: I would check that out, Ashley. I really would.

[00:44:29 ]Ashley James: Yeah. I wonder. There's a concept that some doctors talk about – some Naturopaths talk about around the use of oil. And that the moment you extract oil from the fiber, it begins to oxidize. It's just like cutting an apple, the fat and the apple begins to brown the apple. And there's very little fat in apple.

[00:44:48] Stephen Sinatra: Which oils? I mean, the polyunsaturated oils?

[00:44:50] Ashley James: Right. When you remove fat from fiber, it is now be exposed to oxygen and starts the process of becoming rancid. It starts the process of, basically, creating free radicals. If someone were to drink oil that has been exposed to oxygen. So the idea is one of these doctors proposed that they produce oil in a nitrogen chamber. And then put nitrogen in the bottle so that there's no oxygen exposure whatsoever. And that would preserve the oil that would make it so that there wouldn't be any free radical damage when you drink it. And then you'd have to immediately seal it. And it would have to be in small bottles so that the oxygen couldn't be exposed to the fat, basically, to start to make it go rancid. Have you heard about that theory?

[00:45:42] Stephen Sinatra: Well, yeah. I mean, what you're getting into is the amount of rancidity that can occur with different types of fats. I mean, clearly polyunsaturated fats like canola oil, for example, corn oil or sunflower oil, these soils are more prone to oxidation. The monounsaturated fats, like an olive oil, they are less prone to oxidation. Omega 3s and fish oil are very prone to oxidation. That's why you should always take an Omega 3 in a tight capsule. You don't want to drink it and put it in the refrigerator. Because when it's exposed to air, it can become oxidized. So you are correct.

I mean, you take coconut oil, it's a saturated fat. It's very resistant to oxidation. That's one of the advantages. I mean, when you look at these oils – and oxidation is a factor. I mean, the different oils based on this saturated fat bonds or polyunsaturated hydrogen bonds. Some are more prone to oxidation as others. But one of the reasons why olive oil is placed in a black bottle, for example, as opposed to a lower bottle, one of the reasons is that the darker bottle keeps out light which actually is a factor in oxidation. So whenever you get olive oil, the darker the bottle the better.

[00:47:15] Ashley James: Very good. Now this leads us to one of the topics I really wanted to cover which is cholesterol. I think that there's so much misinformation. And that it's kind of standard that if you're 50 years or older walk into an MDs office, they're going to put you on a statin. I've heard of people who go to the hospital and they're in the hospital for whatever reason. They're staying there for a few nights or maybe they've gone in for surgery. And they're automatically put on a statin regardless of where their cholesterol is. And I just keep hearing that it's basically being given out like candy. Where they're seeing that it's not actually helping. It's not really doing anything to lower heart disease. And in fact, heart diseases continue to rise while we've continued to give statins for years to the population. I'd love for you to bust this myth and teach us the truth about cholesterol.

[00:48:14] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah, I mean, you know, statins have a dark side and the light side. I mean, when I was chief of cardiology in my institution about 20 years ago, I used to use statin. I mean, I believed in a lot of the “science.” Although, a lot of it has been disproven since then. I mean, I feel like statins were really good for people. And then back in, I think, it was 1996, I read an article that came out of the Indian literature, that statins were great cholesterol killers. But they also knocked out the endogenous production of Coenzyme Q10. And you got to realize, Ashley, I built my whole reputation as a doctor on Coenzyme Q10. I mean, I've been using it for almost 40 years. And Coenzyme Q10 is the greatest heart healer of all time. I mean, it's unbelievable. And when I read this article that was published in a really good peer reviewed journal, I immediately stopped using statins.

And then one of the other journals asked me if I would write an editorial on the statins because there was an article in another major journal on it. I told him I would and that forced me to do maybe another hundred hours of research into looking at these. And I tried to look at it from an unbiased point of view, even though I use states for years prior to reading this article, which really shocked me. Because you knock out CoQ10 then this is the – I mean, I feel it's the most important nutrient in delay in the ravages of aging.

So long story short, I really researched this whole statin situation. And then Johnny Bowden and I aa few years later ended up writing the book, The Great Cholesterol Myth. And just in a nutshell, I'll tell you this, I mean statins do lower cholesterol. But the way I feel they're really working – and some of the studies support me on this – is statins change the shape of RBCs, red blood cells. In other words, they make the red blood cell more slippery when it goes through the spleen, so to speak. Statins have powerful antioxidants as well. So when you change the shape of an RBC, red blood cells, and their antioxidants, they have some very mild blood thinning capabilities. And one of the problems right now with 21st century man, is that we live in a computerized world where hypercoagulable blood. Our blood instead of being like red wine is like red ketchup. And if statins do any good and I think they do some good in low dosage. If they do any good, I don't believe has anything to do with cholesterol lowering. Although, look, if you're familiar with hypercholesterolemia and you have cholesterol of 400, 500, 600, 700, yes, yes, I'm all in on statins. Because those high cholesterol numbers will cause havoc in the body. There's no question about that. Although some people with high cholesterols do well as well.

But when it comes to a male, not a child, not a female, not a person over the age of 75. But let's say a young male who has documented coronary disease. I will use a low dose statin, give lots of Coenzyme Q10 at the same time. And the reason why I use a low dose statin – and I'm only talking like 5 to 10 milligrams. I'm not talking like 80 milligrams of a powerful statin to take a day. I'm talking a low dosage. I'll use a low dose statin because I believe the pleiotropic effects – now, what I mean by pleiotropic is the extra side effects that you get, the beneficial effects you get with a statin. Not the cholesterol lowering effects that you get. But I believe it's the other effects that make a difference only in younger men under the age of 75. So I do like statins in that age group but they have to have proven coronary artery disease as well.

[00:52:31] Ashley James: Could you get the same results – instead of putting them on low dose statin, could you get the same results by changing diets and increasing antioxidants?

[00:52:41] Stephen Sinatra: Yes. You could. You could. But again, once you have coronary artery disease and plaque development, you don't want that plaque to be like a snowball going downhill. Now, statins can also cause calcification of the coronaries. That's been reported in literature. Statins can also predispose to breast cancer and prostate cancer. And statins do have a dark side. But again, the really good clinician, the really good Physician can weave through these sort of dark tendencies. Because the really good doctor,  Ashley, is one that will fit the program, whether it's pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, dietary, whatever it is, will tailor make the program to fit their patients. So being an integrative Physician, I would use the best of both worlds. I would use pharmaceutical drugs. Many times in combinations with nutraceutical support, mind-body medicine. Certainly, earthing and grounding. All the things that I do, I bring a lot of detoxification remedies to the table as well. So basically, achieving optimum health – and I'm writing this in my next book on vibrational medicine. But achieving optimum health, I think, involves six specific domains. And certainly dietary is one of them. But you have to invoke all these domains because having, let's say, an Achilles heel in one domain will ruin it for the rest of them. And you don't want to have an Achilles heel because, again, the genesis of heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's is increasing in the country. And I have a feeling a lot of it has to do with, again, the electromagnetics, the extraordinarily toxic environment, whether it's petrochemicals or preservatives or toxins, heavy metals. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

But when I was born in 1946, we had very few situations of sterility. We had very few situations of congenital inborn errors of metabolism or autism spectrum behavior. I remember it was one in 10,000 autism spectrum behavior. And now it's, like, in 146 males. So something has changed in the last six decades or seven decades of our 21st century. And basically, we all need to consider detoxification as part of a remedy for going forward as a species.

[00:55:30] Ashley James: Absolutely. Now there's this concept that we're actually fat deficient. And that's another reason why we have Alzheimer's and we have these infertility. Meaning, sex hormones coming from fat – needing to use fat to make them.

[00:55:46] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. Cholesterol, they all come from the base. It's so important.

[00:55:49] Ashley James: Right. But we've been saying that all cholesterol is bad or all fat is bad. We become fat phobic and, thus, increase the amount of processed sugar in the foods. Taking that fat out and put more sugar in to make it all taste good. Everyone's eating processed foods. There's a Naturopath who started out as a pathologist who says that LDL, the low density lipoprotein, the bad cholesterol, is actually oxidized cholesterol. And it's not a problem. It's not the cause of heart disease. It is a symptom. It's like saying the smoke not the fire. That it's showing us that there's free radical damage in the body. And that the free radical damage is, in part, causing the heart disease and also the lack of the raw building blocks to repair faster than the damage. So the damages is outrunning the body's ability to repair. And then the LDL is not the cause but the smoke left behind. And that if we can give the body – fill the body up with antioxidant rich foods and nutrients and nutraceuticals, if possible, that you can see it turn around. Has this been your observation?

[00:57:01] Stephen Sinatra: Well, yeah, to a degree. I mean, oxidized cholesterol is pro-inflammatory. And we know that inflammation is the root cause of heart disease. So if you have unoxidized cholesterol, who cares? I mean, that's the way I say it. But what oxidizes cholesterol? Well, anything from heavy metals to insecticides, pesticides, toxins, that will oxidized cholesterol. But the real cholesterol story is not LDL. I mean, sure. Does it contribute? Yes. But to a minor degree. The real cholesterol story is a subparticle of LDL. We call it L-P-little-A. Has any of your previous Physicians or Naturopaths commented that on L-P-little-A? 

[00:57:47] Ashley James: Yeah. They've touched on it. They haven't gone deep. I'd love for you to explain it.

[00:57:50] Stephen Sinatra: L-P-little-A is really the major risk factor of heart disease. And we used to think that it was much rarer than it is now. Now, some of my colleagues have stated that because of genetic mutations and spontaneous alterations of our genes going forward, that now L-P-little-A may be expressed intent at 20 percent of the population. Now this is serious now.

And here's the deal, to my knowledge, there are no cholesterol lowering drugs that can compromise or eradicate high L-P-little-A. In fact, sometimes the cholesterol lowering drugs can make L-P-little-A worse. L-P-little-A is a very small cholesterol particle. So small that it gets inside the basement membrane. It has what we call a disulfide bridge to it. It is very pro-inflammatory. And worse yet, Ashley, it is hypercoagulable. Meaning, that it causes blood clotting. So now you have two evils brought to the table, you have blood clot and inflammation. And again, living in our society with electromagnetics, and computers, and cellular phones, and cordless phones, and all this stuff causes blood thickening as well. So if you do have high L-P-little-A, this is one risk fact that I checked in all my patients when I was practicing Cardiology in a day to day basis. And I found that in a number of people. And the antidote to L-P-little-A are not cholesterol lowering drugs, despite the fact that it's a form of LDL. The antidote is things like niacin, fast acting niacin, for example, lumbrokinase, which goes by the name – your Canadian, right?

[00:59:52] Ashley James: I am. But I live in the States now. But yes, I am Canadian.

[00:59:54] Stephen Sinatra: Well, the Canadians, I believe in Toronto, it's called Boluoke, B-O-L-U-O-K-E. I really liked the lumbrokinase. I get it myself from Canada. And I take it because, despite the fact that I don't have a high L-P-little-A but I like thinning the blood, because, again, we have this thick sludgy blood that we have now that we didn't have of yesteryear, like 30, 40,50 years ago. So nattokinase bring something to the table. But these blood thinning agents, I think, are important. And they do – whenever you want to thin the blood, this improves our profile. Because you don't want your blood to stick in the brain or the heart because then you'll have a stroke or a heart attack. So certainly, we want to keep our blood slippery. And again, the the two greatest discoveries I've ever made in my 50 years of being a doctor, my two greatest discoveries were Coenzyme Q10, for example, and grounding.

[01:01:05] Ashley James: I knew you're going to say grounding because that is so incredible. Grounding for viscous blood, isn't it?

[01:01:12] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. Because, you see, both Coenzyme Q10 and grounding, they share something in common. They're both profound electron donors. And whenever you bring electrons to the table, it's like swallowing a handful of antioxidants. You mentioned it before they sequester free radicals. You were talking about free radicals. So basically, whenever you bring grounding to the table, you're lowering the pro-inflammatory state because instead of engulfing or taking handfuls of antioxidants, now you're getting it through the K1 point of your foot or your feet, so to speak. So I'm all in when it comes to grounding. And I got to tell you, I've published maybe 60 or 70 papers in my lifetime and written about 20 books or 20 plus books. And I got to tell you, I mean, I think grounding is one of the healthiest things you can possibly do to create incredible homeostasis and ridding the body of intense inflammation that we all have, you know, in this 21st century.

[01:02:17] Ashley James: I love it. I'm actually using my grounding mat right now at the desk. I have a desk mat. And my hands are on it. And then when I'm sitting, sometimes I'll have my feet on it. And my cat who's a senior, he's about 16 or 17. He stopped jumping up on the bed maybe about a year ago. He's just, you know, old. He's got arthritis and kidney disease. And we have a holistic vet and we're giving him everything we can give him. When I got the grounding mats, which I did this year, he took it over.

[01:02:53] Stephen Sinatra: Because animals know. Dogs do the same thing.

[01:02:55] Ashley James: They do. They do. I have to close my office door because he would be in here on it and he personally –

[01:02:59] Stephen Sinatra: Horses too, Ashley. I mean, these mammals they know. They know intuitively that the grounded energy is healing them.

[01:03:09] Ashley James: So what happened was, he got on the mat and he won't give it up. Anytime the office doors open, he's on this grounding mat. And now, he's jumping up on the bed totally fine. Just the other day my husband's like, “Whoa.” He couldn't believe how high our cat jumped. And we haven't seen him do that in a really long time. But we're watching him kind of come back from being really sick and walking like he has arthritis and walking like he's in pain. And now, he just walks like he did years ago. So the only thing we changed was the grounding mat. So I absolutely believe you that it has an effect. But I can feel it. It's very interesting. I feel very – it gives me a sensation like a warmth and almost like a tingling, energetic sensation when I use the grounding mat. Like, I can really feel it. Some people really feel it, some people can't. I've had hundreds of listeners do grounding after having Clint Ober on the show. And they've reported – we have a Learn True Health Facebook Group with over – I think it's 3,500 people now. And so many have shared their stories. And some are even in Canada and they're digging holes in the snow and they're grounding. They have pictures of themselves grounding outside. Putting their bare feet on the grass, where there's snow all around them. Because they're seeing such positive benefits. And of course, people don't have to do that. You can get a grounding mat, which I love. When did you -tell us a story about how you discovered earthing or grounding and its benefits.

[01:04:43] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. I was on an American College of Cardiology meeting about, maybe, 13 to 15 years ago. And I was looking at endothelial cell dysfunction. And it's like a traditional Cardiologist. I going to cholesterol talks. I was a straightforward doctor then. And then I met Clint Ober there. I bumped into him. I guess he heard who I was like an alternative Cardiologist. And he wanted to talk to me about earthing. And we sat down together and I listened to him. And I said to him – he's singing to the choir. I said, “If you can bring electrons to the table and if you can show in clinical studies that earthing or grounding makes a difference, I'm all in. But the problem is, is you're going to have to report maybe 10 or 20 studies in the medical literature for even the doctors to even consider it.” So that was about, maybe, 13, 12, maybe 15 years ago.

Since then, Mr. Ober has funded over a dozen clinical studies. And maybe several more that were done as well that other funding came to the table. But long story short, it has been about 25 articles in the medical literature. Most of it independent research. Demonstrating the anti- inflammatory effects, earthing and grounding. And it's just absolutely amazing. And I like I said a few minutes ago, I mean, to me grounding it's free. I sleep grounded. I sleep on a grounded sheet. And my son, I have to tell you, if you ever want to interview him, he knows so much about grounding because he feel it saved his life.

[01:06:34] Ashley James: Oh, really?

[01:06:35] Stephen Sinatra: And he feels that if it wasn't for earthing or grounding, he wouldn't be here right now. Because he got very sick. He was a Wall Street trader – trading on Wall Street before 9/11 hit or around the time as well. But he got very, very sick from EMF and computers and cordless phones and cellular phones and stuff like that. Where it really impacted his DNA and he lost about a hundred pounds. And we thought we were going to lose him. It was terrifying, I have to tell you, Ashley. Basically, he did survive. And he attributes his survival to the natural energy of Mother Earth. So it would he would be a great one to interview because he can even talk from his own personal experience about how he feels grounded versus ungrounded.

[01:07:21] Ashley James: I would absolutely love that.

[01:07:24] Stephen Sinatra: He's all in on grounding. He just swears by it. And again, in his life, it was life or death. So it made a difference in his life.

[01:07:32] Ashley James: Wow. I'd love to have him on the show. That sounds great. Was he in the documentary?

[01:07:37] Stephen Sinatra: He does podcasts all the time. I'll tell you this, Ashley, he's a non-MD. He's not a Naturopath. But because he was so sick for 20 years. He's like an MD Naturopathic license by studying on his own. It's amazing. I got to tell you. He points me in directions of research that I never heard of, whether it's exosomes or stem cells or stuff like that. He gets me up to speed and leading edge, cutting edge technologies.

[01:08:11] Ashley James: Very cool. I love that you have that relationship with him where you listen to him and he listens to you. And so many families haven't achieved that yet. So it's wonderful to see a father and son learning from each other and keeping open minds and respecting and honoring each other. I think that's really cool. Was he in the documentary? I know that Clint Ober did –

[01:08:34] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. He was in two of Clint Ober's movies. I don't know if he was in the third one. The third one came out with a lot of actors and actresses. I thought it was fairly well done. I thought the trailer was better. I think he was in a trailer. I know that it was two documentaries that came out on grounding. I thought they were both good.

But anyway, if any of your listeners listen to any of these documentaries or these videos, I mean, some go on for an hour and some go on for a little longer. But it's worth the time investment. Because whenever you bring Mother Earth energy to the body, you're bringing healing to the body.

[01:09:14] Ashley James: Absolutely. In the Learn True Health Facebook Group we have pinned in the announcements section at the top, you can click on the tab announcements, and you'll see Clint Ober gave us one of his documentaries. So the entire film, which is not available right now – I think they're going to be releasing it with Netflix at some point. I know it was traveling through all of the – and winning awards at all of the independent film festivals.

[01:09:39] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. Clint has won multiple awards. And one of these days, I think – well, grounding is one of my six pillars of healing. It's a good phase on my next book, Vibrational Healing. And I have to tell you, I just think that the beauty of grounding is free. One of the reasons why I moved to Florida is I wanted to be on a seashore. Because when you walk on the incoming tide at that juncture where the tide comes in and you're walking in water, in about an inch deep in water around your ankle and you hid in that wet sand, that's the essence of earthing and grounding. You are really healing the body.

You know, Ashley, I'm sure you've heard this before. But you have people that go on vacations, maybe Mexico or Florida or Southern California, and they come back and they say, “Geez. I really feel good. That was a great vacation.” What they didn't realize was a lot of them were earthing and grounding. They thought they were getting away from their jobs. And they thought that they not have to cook meals, et cetera, et cetera. But it was really the earthing and grounding why they felt so much livelier and more in touch with their feelings, and their emotions, and their body. And the truth is they had less inflammation.

[01:11:05] Ashley James: I love it. Wouldn't it be great if you stepped into a doctor's office or a therapist's office and they have you take off your shoes and step on a grounding mat or put your hands on a grounding mat?

[01:11:15] Stephen Sinatra: Well, my son, Drew, he works in Mill Valley, California. And they have grounded chairs and mats in the office for the patients to sit in.

[01:11:24] Ashley James: Your son, Drew, is a Naturopathic Physician that went to Bastyr?

[01:11:27] Stephen Sinatra: He's a Naturopath, yeah.

[01:11:28] Ashley James: Right. And yeah, you were telling me that you used to teach at Bastyr when he went there. That's so cool. I have such an affinity for Naturopathic Physicians. I think that we need to continue to support Naturopaths and doctors like you who integrate holistic medicine with Molecular Medicine. It's really important that we know that we have these options. And we know that we don't just have one doctor. We have a whole array of holistic medicine that we can tap into. And that's one of the reasons why I do the show, is to show people all the different therapies out there that they didn't know they had access to.

[01:12:11] Stephen Sinatra: You know, Ashley, you just made a very, very important point that I want to emphasize. You mentioned different therapies, and you got to remember that pharmaceutical drugs may not be good for some people. But for some people, they're lifesaving. So we don't want to throw the pharmaceutical industry under the bus. But at the same time, we want to be productive without being self-destructive. Even my son, Drew, for example, he had a little touch of psoriasis. And he probably got it from me because I have some patches on my body. And he's a Naturopath and he says, “Dad, why don't you go on low dose naltrexone?” Have you heard about low dose naltrexone?

[01:12:54] Ashley James: I have. I haven't been on it. But I've heard of it

[01:12:57] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. But basically, it's like a miracle. It's just amazing. Now, they use high dose naltrexone, and opioid, and alcoholic addiction. They use, like 15 or 20 times of dosage. Sometimes these pharmaceuticals or these compound pharmacies that do these things  or hormones or whatever they are, they can bring a lot to the table. And I will tell you this, as an Invasive Cardiologist, I would be treating heart attacks in the middle of the night. And sometimes I have to bring people to the cardiac cath lab. And if it wasn't for pharmaceutical drugs, I wouldn't have a lot of people who'll be breathing right now. So there's a time to use them, in emergencies. I mean, think of a child and asthma who has status and you got to get them breathing again, whatever works, works. You know what I mean?

[01:13:49] Ashley James: Absolutely. We want to save our life.

[01:13:51] Stephen Sinatra: We have to keep in mind, in the process of healing, whatever we have at our disposal, whether it's pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, prayer, meditation, whatever it is, whatever works, works. And we have to utilize it in the whole healing process.

[01:14:08] Ashley James: Absolutely. And my beef though is that when someone goes to run of the mill MD, they're going to be put on drugs. Because the average MD, their education does not include how to heal the body, how to get to the root cause, how to support optimal health. That is not their wheelhouse. But they are taught to have the hubris that is their way is the only way and everything else is alternative medicine, is quackery, and is malarkey. And that's the marketing of the AMA and the marketing of the pharmaceutical industry for over a hundred years has been defaming natural medicine. And natural medicine has its place just as much as allopathic medicine has its place. We need to know what tool to use when. And we need to know what specialist to go to. You don't go to a plumber to get your electricity fixed. So don't go to a run of the mill MD when you want to achieve optimal health. But we should go to any MD if we have a life threatening situation. Or if we're heading in that direction, absolutely, they are very important, crucial save people's lives. I 100 percent agree with you.

[01:15:21] Stephen Sinatra: You're right. I mean, if we have a broken bone or, let's say, a pregnancy emergency, we don't want to tell people to take Coenzyme Q10 official. I would want to conventional medicine to the table immediately. I agree 100 percent. I'll tell you this, Ashley, I was at the [inaudible] [01:15:43] meeting in Las Vegas. There was about 2,000 health professionals there and over 90 percent of them were MDs. So I think a lot of MDs are – I think the Achilles heel of a doctor is this, they go through medical school, they may go through five, seven years of training, an internship, a residency, a fellowship. They come out razor smart but they come out very narrow minded. The best MDs are the ones that take their medical education and they say, “Okay. This is a great base to work from. But I'm going to get trained in nutritional medicine or mind-body medicine or toxicology or whatever it is.” And some of these MDs that I meet at these conferences, I'll tell you the truth, they are so advanced that any patients seeing them are so lucky to be in their care.

[01:16:41] Ashley James: I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to hear that they're wanting to expand themselves and learn more. And we have to know which practitioner to go to for what we want to achieve. So go to a Naturopathic physician, Naturopaths are trained in drugs too. They're likely to give you a drug too.

[01:16:59] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. I know Naturopaths that use drugs all the time. Oh my god, it was scary.

[01:17:05] Ashley James: So you have to – what I like to tell people is, interview the practitioners. Go and find all the practitioners your insurance covers if you're looking to go under your insurance. Call them up, interview them, meet with them, have 15 minute – they should give you free 15 minutes to talk to them or meet with them. And you are the ones hiring your team. And you can fire your doctor too. You need to figure out and build your team of healthcare providers that want to get you the results you want to get.

I've talked to a Naturopath who I said, “Why are you just giving out high blood pressure meds like candy?” And she became so jaded, she said, “You know, when I started out, I gave them the diet. I told them to exercise. I gave them the supplements. I got them everything they need to do for high blood pressure. What did they do? Nothing. They still drink the coffee. They still drink their beer. They still eat the pizza. They didn't exercise. And then they came back and their blood pressure was worse and worse and worse and worse. And eventually I just started putting everyone on meds because I just don't believe they'll do the work.” That's the problem is that then the doctor becomes jaded who just puts them on the meds because they don't believe they'll do the work. That they're not giving the patient a chance. Because they've seen past patients do this. So we have to tell our doctors we're willing to do the work. Give us the holistic methods, the diet, and the lifestyle, and everything that we can do to help our body. Because we will do the work.

I think the listeners who are who are listening, because they're still here listening, are the ones willing to do the work and put the work in, in order to help heal their body. And that brings us to the other topic I really, really wanted to touch on which is healing high blood pressure. You have had such great success with helping people. You even have a book, Lower Your Blood Pressure in Eight Weeks, that you published in 2003. Obviously, after many years of seeing people successfully lower their blood pressure naturally, can you tell us what we can? Do those who have high blood pressure. And first of all, maybe start by premising what is high blood pressure? Because I think there's some questions around that. When should someone be concerned? How can someone know that they have high blood pressure? And what can they do about it?

[01:19:18] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. Good question, Ashley. And first of all, I would agree with my conventional medical colleagues that they just reduced the numbers for blood pressure. It used to be like 138 of 88 was considered normal, anything below that. Now they're saying it's 120 over 80.

[01:19:38] Ashley James: Is high blood pressure?

[01:19:39] Stephen Sinatra: If your blood pressure is 110 over 70, that's really ideal. If it's 120 over 80, it's “Okay.” So when it comes to blood pressure, lower is better. Now, the same is true with blood sugar. I mean, we used to think of fasting blood sugar of 100 was normal. Now, it's down to 70. A fasting blood sugar that your doctor draws just for your metabolic analysis. So when it comes to blood pressure, like blood sugar, lower is better. And I agree 100 percent with it. Now, I had many patients with high blood pressure. I mean high blood pressure is probably the worst risk factor for a woman other than cigarette smoking. And high blood pressure in a woman is worse than a man. I mean more women get side effects of high blood pressure. So I would be more aggressive in women. And when we look at blood pressure, we look at the numbers, we want to get the numbers lower.

But how do you treat high blood pressure? Well, we talked about – you know, we just got off grounding. There was a nice little pilot study we did in Southern California that all 12 patients in the pilot study when they grounded for 10 to 12 hours a day, they all had lowering of their blood pressure. And they all able to get off either one or two drugs, which was really good. So grounding brings something to the table. Again, it thins the blood. And now, we can use that in blood pressure reduction. I think a simple loss of weight is probably one of the easiest things to do. There's no question that if you do have a lot of padding around the waist and you do have signs of insulin resistance, your waist sizes increasing, triglycerides are up, your HDL are down, your blood sugar is up ,and the blood pressure is up. And 100 million Americans have either diabetes right now or insulin resistance. That you actually do do something with weight loss, if weight loss is something that you can do. So as a Physician, I remember even a mere five pounds of weight loss – ten would be better – but I've seen patients drop their systolic blood pressures at least 10 points, 15 points with a five pound weight loss. Ten to 20 points on a 10 pound weight loss. I mean, it's amazing.

So a good non-inflammatory diet, weight loss, grounding. And then there's so many nutraceuticals you can bring to the table that lower blood pressure. I mean, Omega 3s, for example, are good. Certainly Coenzyme Q10, I've used Coenzyme Q10 for years, and I was able to reduce the blood pressure in many of my patients. I love magnesium. Different varietals of magnesium lowers blood pressure. And I would tell a lot of my patients to take it at night because for some people you would get like a bowel cleansing effect in the morning, which they would want. So when it comes to blood pressure, there's so many things we can do irrespective of pharmaceutical drugs. And even certain foods you can eat. Like, any nitric oxide foods like kale, for example, is good. Migratory salmon is good. Sardines, for example, contain different proteins that have blood pressure lowering in it. I mean, there's so many you can bring to the table. No pun intended. But I've had great success with my patients with a whole mind-body spiritual approach to blood pressure lowering.

I used to teach at the to yoga ashram in Nassau. And chanting, for example, prayer meditation, being in silence, all these things tend to help lower blood pressure. So there's lots of things you can do. And people do not have to be victim to pharmaceutical support. But I will tell you this, anybody who can't get their blood pressure down and if it's running like 160 over 100, I would want to get it down. And if you have to take pharmaceutical agents, by all means take it. Because they call high blood pressure the silent killer. And it's true, Ashley. High blood pressure is the prodrome of not only heart attack but stroke as well. So you have to be careful with rising numbers and you want to respect them. And the problem is, a lot of people don't know they have high blood pressure until an event occurs like a dissection, a stroke, or a heart attack. And they never knew they had it because they feel fine. So that's one of the reasons why they call hypertension a silent killer in people because most people feel absolutely fine with rising blood pressure numbers.

[01:24:50] Ashley James: It gets to the point where you can start feeling it in your neck. I've talked to someone who is like 160 over 110 and they're like, “Yeah. I can feel it in my neck. I can start to feel it.”

[01:25:00] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah.  What their feeling is the bounding of their carotid vessel.

[01:25:03] Ashley James: Yeah. That's scary. That's scary. You don't need your brain to explode.

[01:25:08] Stephen Sinatra: No, you don't. You don't.

[01:25:10] Ashley James: That's really scary. And that is so rampant. Now, when's the best time to take it? Take your blood pressure, I heard that 6:00 p.m. is the worst time to take it because everyone has the highest blood pressure at 6:00 p.m. I don't know why.

[01:25:24] Stephen Sinatra: Because our circadian rhythm is coming in a little earlier. I would say taking blood pressure anytime during the day or at night would be okay.

[01:25:34] Ashley James: And then just with an electrical machine –

[01:25:38] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I like is the old fashioned way. Unless, if you're very astute at taken blood pressures. I worry about the wrist cuff on the wrist. I'd rather have an arm cuff over the brachial artery. What we used to doing when I was practicing medicine, we used to have my nurses teach patients to take their blood pressures at home. And we would tell them what cuff to they get or what stethoscope. Because I think home blood pressures are a better index of what the blood pressure really is.

Now, look, we haven't talked about white coat hypertension. But I can tell you from being a Physician, I've had many of white coaters. When they would come to the office, their pressure would be so high. When they would go home, it would be lower. And I've done enough 24 hour blood pressure monitoring, we would monitor somebody and take the blood pressure every hour. That white coat is really real. It is real. And I would tell our listeners whenever you go to a doctor and they take your blood pressure, make sure your feet are on the ground, make sure you close your eyes. And when they're taking a blood pressure, think pleasant thoughts.

[01:26:48] Ashley James: And do deep breathing. Just slow deep breathing.

[01:26:51] Stephen Sinatra: And don't do a Valsalva. Don't hold your breath. That's a good point.

[01:26:53] Ashley James: No. Yeah. Deep breathing. And let your shoulders drop. My mom used to say, “Don't worry your shoulders has earrings.” Just let your shoulders drop. Relax your body. Deep breathing. I love the close your eyes. And maybe imagine we're walking on the beach. And absolutely. I've had that in just about – I think it was last month, I was at the doctor's office. And they were asking me some questions about things that were stressful. Questions that would stress me out. And my blood pressure was so high. It's so funny because the week before, I was at a different doctor's office. I went to get some blood work done with by Naturopath. And the nurse came in and took my blood pressure and it's 110 over 70 or 80 or something like that. It's really like – I'm so proud of my blood pressure after changing my diet and really fixing some things. I'm very happy about it. Also lowering stress. And I can just see that just asking me a few questions that might be stressful to ask someone. And then they took immediately to my blood pressure. It was way higher. So it's really interesting to see that.

But also when you're taking it home, take it more than once. Sometimes the first reading, you're just getting settled down. And take it two or three times. Do some breathing and just allow yourself to get kind of an average. I like that you said put your feet on the ground. That's good. So if someone has blood pressure that's higher than 120 over 80 – at what point would you say, “Okay. Now it's too serious. We should get you on meds until you make the lifestyle changes and get it down.” Like is that 140 or 150? Is it a 90 or 100?

[01:28:40] Stephen Sinatra: If they're running 138 over 88 – I'm using the old standard. Okay? But they're certainly at that area and they can't get it down. And I tried nutraceutical support. I tried mind-body. I tried grounding. I tried everything. I might give him a light pharmaceutical agent as well.

[01:29:00] Ashley James: And is that for the rest of their life? Or is that temporary? Do the try testing it?

[01:29:03] Stephen Sinatra: Well, it's interesting. Sometimes people go on pharmaceuticals, they have an epiphany. They're feeling better. They'll go on a diet. They'll go to an exercise program. I mean, it's amazing. And then all of a sudden, they have a change in lifestyle. And then I'll take them off the pharmaceutical and they're okay. I've seen every scenario, believe me, it's amazing.

[01:29:27] Ashley James: I've seen [inaudible] [01:29:28] which is a natural supplement work really well, especially if the blood pressure was related to their stress. If they're a kind of person where they're constantly running worried thoughts through their mind and they're not really realizing they're doing it. That [inaudible] [01:29:42] has that effect on the mind to slow down and maybe decrease the worrying and the stress.

[01:29:47] Stephen Sinatra: Did you say [inaudible] [01:29:47] or Cardizem?

[01:29:49] Ashley James: [Inaudible] [01:29:49].

[01:29:51] Stephen Sinatra:  [Inaudible] [01:29:51]. Okay. 

[01:29:51] Ashley James: It's a natural herbal supplement. There's a certain percentage of people – small percentage – that will experience maybe a little bit of lethargy and depression from this herbal supplement. So it's best to, obviously, work with a qualified Naturopath or qualified doctor when getting on it. You can buy it at any – it's a supplement that you can get online. And I've seen it work really well with people. And like I said, some people – it's a very small percentage – but some people will notice that they're just less motivated, maybe a little bit depressed. And that's like, “Okay. Maybe this isn't for you.” Because it acts on the brain and decreases the stress. And sometimes it down regulates too much.

But for those people who it's just like, all the lifestyle changes, all the diet changes aren't impacting the blood pressure because the blood pressure is really coming from their constantly triggering the stress response by constantly thinking about worried thoughts, that's where [inaudible] [01:30:45] has seen to play a positive role. I was wondering – so you were saying things like meditation, grounding, breathing. Anything else that you see really helps for decreasing that stress that attributes to –

[01:31:00] Stephen Sinatra: Well, the best antidote that I know from a stress response – and I stumbled upon that by accident when I was teaching down at the yoga retreat – is alternate nostril breathing. Are you privy to that? Do you know what that is?

[01:31:14] Ashley James: Yes. Yeah. But for the listeners, please explain.

[01:31:17] Stephen Sinatra: Well, basically, you take your right finger – I'll do it as simple as possible because they can't see it. But you just press your forefinger on your right nostril and you breathe into the count of four in the left nostril – I'm sorry – to the count of nine. Just breathe in to the count of nine. On the opposite nostril, breathe out. You're breathing in to the count of four and out to the count of nine. So if I put my forefinger – let me start with the right nostril and breathing in to four. And then I switched nostrils out to the count of nine. And on the same nostril that I went out through nine, I'm breathing into the count of four. I hold it, go to the opposite nostril, breathe out to the count of nine. Then in to the count of four. Hold and then out through the count of nine on the opposite nostril. So basically, that's alternative nostril breathing. And I stumbled upon the fact that when we do that, it supports heart rate variability instantly. It's amazing. So I would tell your listeners, when you're under extreme stress, this is one thing that will reset your autonomic nervous system.

[01:32:52] Ashley James: I love it. Yes.

[01:32:52] Stephen Sinatra: This is a pearl.  This is absolutely a P-E-A-R-L, a pearl of medical knowledge.

[01:33:02] Ashley James: I love it. I love that you brought up the heart rate variability. Have you tried monitoring heart rate variability in patients? And are you seeing that low heart rate variability in patients that are sick and higher heart rate variability in patients that are healthy? Have you looked into that?

[01:33:22] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. Yeah. And we published the paper on heart rate variability and grounding. So in other words, I think I published that in 2011 in integrative medicine. But when you ground, you improve heart rate variability. Whenever you improve heart rate variability, you're “healthier.” It's that simple.

[01:33:40] Ashley James: Fantastic. I just did a whole interview on heart rate variability with Forrest Knutson. It's Episode 393. He's a yoga monk. He's been doing this – oh gosh.

[01:33:52] Stephen Sinatra: What's his name again?

[01:33:53] Ashley James: His name is Forrest Knutson. You can go to ThatYogiGuy.com. It just takes you straight to his YouTube channel. He does all kinds of YouTube videos. I've known him since 2006. And he's –

[01:34:05] Stephen Sinatra: Is his first name Guy [inaudible] [01:34:07]? 

[01:34:06] Ashley James: No. Its Forrest Knutson.

[01:34:09] Stephen Sinatra: Forrest. Okay. 

[01:34:11] Ashley James: He stumbled upon heart rate variability few years ago. But he's been teaching meditation and yoga breathing. And he really is focused on how to get into the different brainwave frequencies by going into meditation. And then he saw that heart rate variability was the key. And so he's been exploring heart rate variability and he's been developing breath – different kinds of breath rates to maximize heart rate variability. So it'd be really cool for you guys to hook up because –

[01:34:42] Stephen Sinatra: Sure. Oh, yeah.

[01:34:43] Ashley James: Yeah. That's amazing. I love it. I love that we're just in the pioneer days of heart rate variability. But there now are life insurance companies that are exploring using heart rate variability in order to determine whether they'll insure someone or not. Because they're seeing –

[01:35:02] Stephen Sinatra: Wow. I never heard that. That's a first for me.

[01:35:04] Ashley James: Yes. They're seeing that based on heart rate variability, they could monitor or observe how healthy or how sick someone is. So maybe their blood pressure is okay and all their numbers are okay but their heart rate variability is awful. And they might charge them more because the person might not live as long. So yeah, they're looking at longevity studies with heart rate variability which is really fascinating.

To go back to you were talking about the L-P-little-A, when they're taking someone's cholesterol, what are the numbers that you want to see someone's L-P-little-A in? Like, what ranges are healthy?

[01:35:43] Stephen Sinatra: Well, there's two standards. But the usual standard is less than the number 30. And there's another standard less than 60. It depends on what the standard of the laboratory is. But L-P-little-A is something you don't want elevated. Any elevation is not good, for the reasons I stipulated before. It's pro-inflammatory and it clots the blood.

[01:36:09] Ashley James: And then what about triglycerides? I keep hearing that cholesterol isn't really the cause of heart disease. But triglycerides are absolutely the determinant that someone might have heart disease in the future.

[01:36:24] Stephen Sinatra: Well, I think the best determinant or one of the best determinants of possible heart disease, it's a ratio. You put your triglycerides on top and your HDL on the bottom. So let's do a little math. Suppose your triglycerides are 90 to 100. And your HDL is 50. Well, then your ratio is going to be slightly less than two. If it's 100, it'll be exactly two. You follow me?

[01:36:54] Ashley James: Uh-huh. 

[01:36:57] Stephen Sinatra: So any ratio that's less than two, I really like. I really like it.

[01:37:05] Ashley James: Got it. So we want to increase the HDL, we want to decrease the triglycerides. What are some ways to do that?

[01:37:11] Stephen Sinatra: Exactly. See, the average diabetic might have a triglyceride of 300. And they might have a HDL of 30. That's a ratio of 10. That's very, very pro-inflammatory.

[01:37:25] Ashley James: I mean, from where my brain is going with this though, they're not the cause. They're the smoke. They're showing us – they're pointing us that there's something wrong but they're not actually the cause of the problem. They're evidence of a problem.

[01:37:41] Stephen Sinatra: Well, they have a metabolic abnormality. And some people know it. Some people don't. But getting triglycerides down is not rocket science. I mean, exercise and weight reduction and avoiding carbohydrates is probably a knockout punch for most people to get triglycerides down. And then remember, triglycerides respond to Omega 3 essential fatty acids. I mean, I take squid oil every day. The reason why I use squid oil as opposed to fish oil is because squid can only live in the oceans. The smallest squid up to maybe a little more than a year or maybe a-year-and-a-quarter, maybe 450 days is the absolute lifespan. And they're small. The small squid are about, maybe, two times the size of a grapefruit, maybe. But I like CalaMarine oil and squid oil because it's heavily weighted in what we call DHA, docosahexaenoic acid. And the reason why I like DHA over EPA – although if I'm treating arthritis, the small joints of your hands, I would use more EPA. But I like DHA because it penetrates the retina of the eye and the heart and the brain more than EPA does. So that's why I chose squid oil. And it's amazing.

I flew to that factory in Norway. And I've been to a lot of vitamin and mineral factories in the USA and I got to tell you, this factory that I visited was the cleanest. You can literally eat off the floor. The stainless steel was wiped down. It was glistening. There was not any speck of dust. It was like the clean – it was just incredible where they manufactured, where they bottled, where they encapsulated these Omega 3s and squid oil.

[01:39:42] Ashley James: So interesting. I like that you pointed out DHA, good for the brain, eyes, and heart. EPA good for arthritis. You mentioned cutting out carbohydrates or decreasing carbohydrates to help decrease triglycerides along with exercise, along with making sure blood pressure or blood sugar is balanced. Any carbohydrate? Like if someone ate potatoes and broccoli versus pasta.

[01:40:09] Stephen Sinatra: No. I mean, broccoli is much better than potatoes. But look, if you're a potato lover, I'm not going to restrict it. I mean, remember, potatoes have a dark side because it's a carbohydrate that's going to elicit insulin response. But potatoes are one of the best sources of potassium, which is very, very important. Should you eat potatoes every day? No. Because it's a strict carb. But if you want to have a potato once a week, I don't see a problem with that.

[01:40:39] Ashley James: And what kind of diet are you seeing the best results with for creating heart health?

[01:40:46] Stephen Sinatra: I like a modified vegetarian diet. I don't like a pure vegan or vegetarian diet. I like a diet that's maybe 80 percent vegetarian, 20 percent are high quality proteins. I'm talking about proteins that have no hormones in it like bison, or migratory safe fish, or hormone free beef, so to speak. Certainly, range free chicken, stuff like that. So if you ate, let's say, meat once or twice a week, and you had fish once a week, and you did vegetarian the other times, that would be okay with me.

[01:41:27] Ashley James: Got it. Earlier on, you talked about that emotions can play a role in tightening the heart for years. Like a trauma when you're ten can tighten the heart. Have you noticed or seen evidence of physiological changes that the body creates because of emotional stress? For example, like in Dr. Sarno's — or he wasn't a doctor. John Sarno's book book, Healing Back Pain, he talks about when there is guilt, for example, certain muscles will become ischemic. Because the unconscious mind is tightening the muscles to the point of pain – of creating pain in order for us to finally stop and feel our emotions if we're suppressing them or we're not resolving them. But you said the words tightening of the heart and it made me think, is there's something physiologically going on in the body, like a schema in the muscles to –

[01:42:28] Stephen Sinatra: Well, it's more complex than that. But basically, whenever you're under high emotional stress, you are overdosing on cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. And these hormones can have a profound effect on the body. I've had patients under extreme emotional stress, have dissection of the aorta, heart attacks, sudden death. I mean, I've seen it all as a heart specialist. And that's why I would tell my patients all the time, “I don't care how bad the news is, don't die for it. Do not. There's nothing worth dying for.” And anger and rage, like I mentioned before, the Achilles heel. One of the best ways of alleviating emotional stress is to cry. Crying is one of the healthiest emotions you can do. There's no doubt about it.

And not only do you release endorphins when you cry, but you're increasing thromboxane. You have an interaction with thromboxane A2 in the lung. So in other words, when you're crying, you're breathing better. You know how some people have like a heavy heave, so to speak, with crying where you're sucking in air and stuff. So you're breathing more deeply. And this actually causes blood thinning to a degree. So I think crying or sobbing is one of the greatest ways of releasing emotional distress. Laughing, too, by the way. Remember, Norman Cousins laughed away his ankylosing spondylitis. But remember, if you laugh hard enough, you'll cry. So basically, those two emotions – they're not behaviors. They're more like reactions to behaviors – I find very supportive to the body.

[01:44:10] Ashley James: Oh, that's so beautiful. And I love that there has been observed that through an emotional response of releasing through crying that you can see the physical body creating hormones. And that it has all this cascade of beautiful effects towards health. That's brilliant. And I think that that's given permission to a lot of listeners to finally let go and be okay to cry. Because I think we're often told, especially from when we're young, it's not okay to cry. But now we can. It's okay to cry because it's healing for the body. It's really beautiful.

[01:44:49] Stephen Sinatra: When I was in medical school, I was a senior in medical school in 1972. I never saw a woman in the coronary care unit. And when I became an intern, I thought women didn't get heart disease. It's amazing. Then in the mid-90s, when I was Chief of Cardiology at my institution. This is like 20 years later, right? Twenty plus years later. Half the coronary care units were full of women. And I remembered back when I was in medical school, I go, “How could this be?” I didn't even think women got heart disease when I was in medical school. Because I never saw it again. I never saw women with an MI. Because of my psychotherapy training, et cetera, et cetera, I really start to think about this.

And then in the year 2001, I wrote a book, Heart Sense for Women. And I realized that the reason why more women were getting heart attacks, as opposed to men in the late 1990s and even today, by the way, women get more heart disease than men. See, most women are afraid they're going to get breast cancer. They're going to get heart disease way faster than breast cancer. I mean, one in eight women get breast cancer. But one in three to three-and-half die of heart disease. So I really thought about this. And I talked to my wife about this. I talked to female co-authors about this. I wanted a female perspective. And if you look what's happened in the workplace over the last 30 or 40 years or whatever, women have become in a workplace. And one of the greatest assets in women in not engaging illness or disease was, basically, women would have the feelings out more than men. And women were more intuitive than men.

And I've been studying intuition for decades. It's something that you can really cultivate. But here's what happens, Ashley, when you take a woman – and I have no problem with this in the workplace. I mean, look, I think women are fantastic in the workplace. But when you take a woman and put them in a corporate workplace and she climbs the ladder like men do and she shuts off her feelings. In other words, you're the manager of a corporation, you're the CEO, you can't cry. You can't get into your sadness. You have to stifle it, stifle it, blah, blah, blah. This shuts off the major feminine reality of unleashing sadness, which is crying.

Now, men do this as well. But it's harder for men to cry than women. And you mentioned it, you know, when you're a child that could have something to cry about, a lot of this stems from childhood. But there's something worse than shutting off tears. And that's becoming so right brained that now the woman's greatest asset of her intuition, which is left brain, now becomes stifled. I might have got that mixed up with my dyslexia again.

But anyway, when a woman shuts off her intuition by becoming more left brain – that's right – more left brain, more scientific, more managing, more on facts and figures, blah, blah, blah. When she becomes more engaged in the working modalities, her intuitive “tower” recedes. And I think the greatest risk factor for women going forward in this century with heart disease is that once her intuition becomes stifled, she develops a more male oriented disease. Because intuition is the greatest protective factor that a woman can possess. I really believe that. And I'm speaking more as a Psychotherapist than as a Cardiologist. But I can address that as a Cardiologist as well.

So to you, women, listening, whenever a woman can cultivate intuition more and more, remember, it's the truth. Intuition comes like a thief in the night, Ashley. It's very fleeting in our brains. It comes in and out, sometimes in a second, maybe even a millisecond. But when it's there, you say to yourself, “Oh my god. Where did I get that thought from?” You pause for a second. That's intuitive power. And 99.9 percent of the time, it's the truth and you need to act on it. And when you act on it, now you're going into the direction of achieving real, real mental, physical, and emotional optimum health.

[01:49:40] Ashley James: Oh, I love it. I love it. I just did an interview with the homeschooling mom of seven who's been really into personal growth. And she came on the show to share some great tips. And she said these little thoughts would pop in her head and that it would be a really positive thought. And then they'd be preceded by three very negative thoughts. So it would be something like, “I should go make the neighbors who I know are having a hard time, I should go make them dinner and bring them dinner.” And that thought would come out of nowhere. And then three negative thoughts will come in, “Oh, they won't like what you're cooking. And they'll think you're weird. And you don't have enough time anyways.” And for a long time she gave into those negative thoughts. I think we all do. I think we all have the self-talk that immediately suppresses the intuition.

[01:50:30] Stephen Sinatra: Her intuitive sense was, “I need to cook my -” see, her intuitive feeling was, “I need to help my neighbor.” And then her rational mind kicked in and lied to her and told her, “Oh, no. No. You don't have to do that.” That's her negative self-talk. But that woman you interviewed, if she made her neighbors dinner, she did the right thing.

[01:50:51] Ashley James: She did. That was, I think, one of the first times that she actually caught herself. Because it's often we have to slow down our thoughts enough to figure out why we behave the way we behave. And then she slowed it down and she went – because she had just learned about the hero's journey and the hero's path. And it was like this hero inside her that set out on a quest. And then the negative thoughts, all these doubts, these limiting decisions, were trying to keep her stuck, keep her safe, keep her in a rut. And she went, “Aha. I've heard three refusals in my brain. That means I must do it.” So she created a rule for herself and for her children, as she homeschooled them growing up, that if you hear the refusals after – whatever thought, this thought is always something to take action on. Because intuition is always something that gives you something. Like, “Hey, something's not okay.” Or, “You need to do this.” And then if there's some refusals that follow it, that means you have to do it. And she says, she's never had a bad experience from not listening to the refusals and for following the intuition.

[01:52:03] Stephen Sinatra: No.  Because her intuition is the truth. She'll never have a bad experience. That's the thing. And she's very lucky because she can rely on that. If you ever speak to her again – and I'm sure you will – I mean, that's her greatest strength right now. Boy, that's great. I like hearing that.

[01:52:20] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. Isn't that cool? It's so cool. I feel like we're waking up as a society. I feel like our consciousness is evolving. If we connect with like minded people who are on this path, we're seeing that we're awakening and we're sharing this information. I know you are so ahead of your time. I feel like your books are going to be textbooks in the coming years. Because you have listened to your intuition and you've chased these rabbits. You've gone down these rabbit holes.

[01:52:55] Stephen Sinatra: I've been down the rabbit hole many times. I like it. I like it. I made a lot of bad decisions in my life. But I'm optimistic for the future.

[01:53:02] Ashley James: Good. Well, I expect you to live to 120.

[01:53:08] Stephen Sinatra: I don't think so. But that would be, like, almost 50 years from now. Oh my god.

[01:53:11] Ashley James: Right. Well, you have a long life ahead of you. Now, you have so many books. Of course, the links to everything you do is going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com. Do you want to tell us about your most recent book? Or what do you want to make sure listeners know about in terms of what you do, how they can work with you, or follow you, or learn from you?

[01:53:35] Stephen Sinatra: Well, I mean, I've written so many books in my life. I used to write a newsletter for Healthy Directions. I used to do a lot with vitamins and minerals. I certainly feel that it's an area that I'm still growing in and stuff like that. But my latest book, Heaven and Earth with Tommy Rosa, I think, was one of my best books like I did with Heartbreak and Heart Disease. Tommy was placed in my path for a reason. He went to heaven and back. I became his doctor. I thought it was just an amazing, amazing experience he had. And it really – I mean, I grew up Catholic. But it really redirected my spirituality. It's just an unbelievable story. And I think when people want to read Heaven and Earth or Health Revelations from Heaven and Earth, it doesn't make a difference what organized religion you're in. That doesn't matter. But the spiritual realm is vitally, vitally important. And I really believe that we have guardian angels and there's people that pray for us on the other side. I just feel that as we increase the vibration of the planet and I think a lot of these 2012 babies that came in around 2012 plus or minus, maybe a month, or two, I think these 2012 babies are going to be the saviors of the planet going forward in the future. And now most of them are seven years old right now. But I think  it's a very, very special group. So'm optimistic for our planet. I really am.

[01:55:18] Ashley James: Interesting. Yeah, I heard of the indigo children. I think I'm an indigo child. And then there's the rainbow children. And the crystal children. Does this cohort have a name?

[01:55:25] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. But I think that's all been surpassed by the 2012 children. I think the 2012ers coming in are just unbelievable.

[01:55:34] Ashley James: My son was born in 2015 and he constantly blows our minds.

[01:55:40] Stephen Sinatra: When was he born, Ashley?

[01:55:42] Ashley James: 2015 – early 2015. He constantly blows her mind. I don't know if he's part of your 2012 cohort but he is – the things he knows and the thing she says –

[01:55:52] Stephen Sinatra: It's amazing isn't it, these young kids coming into the world.

[01:55:55] Ashley James: Yeah. It definitely fills me with hope. So your friend that you co-wrote this book with, How to Die –

[01:56:04] Stephen Sinatra: It's Tommy Rosa. I mean, if you want to do a podcast with him, I'm sure he'd do it. He can talk about his experience in heaven, and what he saw, and who he met, and stuff like that. It's a great book. I was blessed that he came into my life.

[01:56:20] Ashley James: Oh, brilliant. Well, then that is going on my reading list for sure. And I'll make sure that –

[01:56:25] Stephen Sinatra: Yeah. Health Revelations from Heaven and Earth or Health Revelations from Heaven. It's on Amazon and stuff like that.

[01:56:32] Ashley James: Yeah. We'll make sure the link is in the show notes for everyone.

[01:56:36] Stephen Sinatra: If you resonate with the book, I'm sure Tommy would be happy would be happy to be interviewed by you.

[01:56:41] Ashley James: Brilliant. I love it. Thank you so much, Dr. Sinatra, for coming on the show today.

[01:56:46] Stephen Sinatra: All right. This was great, Ashley.

[01:56:48] Ashley James: This was wonderful.

[01:56:48] Stephen Sinatra: And 10:00 here. It's probably dark in Seattle right now. Is that true?

[01:56:52] Ashley James: Well, actually, we have this huge rainstorm. They call it like a category for atmospheric river. And it basically looks like a hurricane, if a hurricane was in a straight line. And so we've got something like – I think we've already got three inches of rain. We're expected another three inches. A friend of mine who lives on a hill, her basement just flooded. Luckily, I'm not in an area where I will get flooded. But there has already been flooding around Seattle. So this is going to be a very interesting Christmas week.

[01:57:21] Stephen Sinatra: Oh, boy. Well, this was a lot of fun. And I hope your listeners get a lot out of it. And if you want to talk later, just drop me an email and we can work it out. And like I said, Tommy would be great for your show.

[01:57:33] Ashley James: Oh, I'd love that. Thank you so much, Dr. Sinatra. It's been such a pleasure. I can't wait to have you back.

[0:57:38] Stephen Sinatra: All right, Ashley. We'll see you.

[01:57:39] Ashley James: Thanks.

[01:57:41] Stephen Sinatra: Bye bye.

[01:57:43] Ashley James: Bye.

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