Your Health Toolkit: The Neurology Sessions

Inside the Hidden Heart Brain Connection

• Dr. Lauren Young • Season 2 • Episode 3

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Your heart and brain are in constant conversation, and when that connection falters, everything from memory to mood to energy pays the price.

In this episode of Your Health Toolkit: The Neurology Sessions, Dr. Lauren Young and Dr. Ashley Burkman sit down with cardiologist Dr. Jeffrey Thompson and physician assistant Shawn Brady to explore how your heart and brain work in sync, and what happens when that balance is lost.

They unpack how blood flow, inflammation, and autonomic control shape your memory, mood, and energy—and why “normal” checkups can overlook early warning signs.

You’ll learn:

  • How the autonomic nervous system connects heart rhythm and brain clarity.
  • Why fatigue, brain fog, and poor sleep can signal cardiovascular imbalance.
  • What sleep apnea and microvascular dysfunction reveal about hidden stress on the brain and heart.
  • The early role of endothelial health and oxygen delivery in long-term resilience.
  • Key labs and tests that catch issues before they become crises.
  • The daily habits—nutrition, movement, and stress recovery—that protect both systems.

If you’ve ever been told your heart looks “fine” but you still feel worn down, this conversation is your next step toward understanding why and what you can do about it.

Resources & Links:

Your Health Toolkit is a podcast created by the physicians from Collaborative Natural Health Partners (CNHP) – your go-to hub for holistic and integrated family healthcare in Connecticut and New York. At CNHP, we’ve crafted a special blend of expertise, bringing together naturopathic physicians (NPs), osteopathic medicine physicians (DOs), and Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) to offer you a warm, integrative, patient-centered approach to health and wellness. If you’re interested in learning more, head over to our website or follow us on Facebook or Instagram for information, articles, and resources to take the guesswork out of your health.

Your Health Toolkit is a podcast presented for general information and educational purposes only. The discussions presented by Dr. Lauren Young and the show’s guests should not be considered medical advice but rather a conversation starter with your doctor. Everyone’s body is unique, and we recommend having a discussion with your personal healthcare team before trying anything discussed on the show.


Dr. Lauren Young:

Hi there, welcome to your health toolkit. I'm Dr. Lauren Young. And I'm Dr. Ashley Berkman. Dr. Berkman and I have been working together for over a decade at Collaborative Natural Health Partners. We have decided to put together a brand new series all around neurology.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

Yes, thanks so much for inviting me to be part of this series. Brain and nervous system health is something I care deeply about, both in my work and my personal life. I see many patients who navigate through tough diagnoses like Parkinson's, MS, Alzheimer's, either for themselves or for someone they love, and it can feel like a lot.

Dr. Lauren Young:

So over this series of episodes, we're going to be bringing you guys specialists from around the country on functional neurology and integrative medicine to explore what's really going on with nervous systems and brains and what we can actually do about it.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

These conversations with these experts have been eye-opening, very inspiring, and we can't wait to share them with all of you. So let's dive in.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Now when we talk about brain health, one thing that really goes hand in hand with it is heart health because our hearts and our brains are so strongly connected. So that's what we're going to explore today. Joining Dr. Berkman and myself is a board-certified cardiologist, Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, and physician assistant Sean Brady from the Center of Healthy Heart in Connecticut. They're experts in the connection between cardiovascular and neurological health, and we are thrilled to have them with us today. Dr. Thompson, Sean, welcome to the show.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Great to have you here. So we're doing this neurology series, and we decided to kick it off with cardiologists. I really just wanted to hear about you guys first, what you do and your role in healthcare and how neurology is an important thing to you as cardiologists.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Well, thank you. Um yeah, we're we um run the Center for the Healthy Heart uh Northern Connecticut, and uh we've been in the preventative specialty of cardiovascular wellness for about 13 years now. Um yes, neurology is completely linked, especially the autonomic nervous system and how that affects uh affects the heart. Uh we we study that as well. Uh so you know we can go into some of our lines of service that we do. Uh we are an integrative cardiology practice, so we tend to use the best science wherever that takes us.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Yeah, and then it's really a cardiovascular, right? The cardiology is the heart, but the cardiovascular system is connecting everything. And so we see sometimes a lot of patients with uh brain issues, and we wonder what's going on, lots of strokes and TIAs, and then sometimes just cognitive decline. We wonder, you know, that connection. We see it sometimes with a lot of the cardiovascular issues. So um we treat the whole patient, and so sometimes we see the heart, people come here for the heart, but they get a little extra, so to speak.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Yeah, for sure. I think you know, it's very in line with our kind of thinking of treating the whole person, and you certainly can't just treat a heart without looking at the nervous system, and you can't treat a brain without looking at the heart and the rest of the body as well, right? You touched on a term, and I want to make sure we make it um like the autonomic nervous system. I think that's something we want to just have a little primer on for listeners so that they understand what that is.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Well, essentially it's it's all the nervous function that we don't do consciously. The parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system is probably part of the autonomic nervous system. Uh, so we wonder, well, why does the heart change its heart rate? Why do we change our respiratory effort and rate? Uh, all of those are controlled beyond our ability. The disease process affects those nerves, which will affect uh cardiovascular system. Uh it's it's so interesting. Um, when I trained uh in medical school, we didn't discuss uh the connection of the nervous system and the cardiovascular system, we didn't discuss the GI system uh with with the heart, but uh all three of those systems are linked together. It's just fascinating. Uh and for those who are interested in the microbiome and and what kind of bacteria exist in our uh in our GI systems, uh that affects the heart as well. So it's fascinating.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Yeah, and then the link between GI and neurology as well. Like they're all so intertwined. Um, you know, you just were speaking our language because we are complete microbiome nerds. Um yeah, yeah. Um Yeah, and I would love to hear how you kind of explore all that. So yeah, we were just talking about like there's this Venn diagram of cardiovascular and neurological conditions, and there's a lot of overlap in symptoms, but also in etiology and pathology associated with conditions. Um what kind of symptoms put on your radar that you should be looking at neurological components to um people's illnesses?

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Well, I would say fatigue is is one of the biggest. Uh it turns out that our uh the fatigue that uh people experience is is is largely related to uh heart rate uh variables, uh as far as cardiac contractility uh and uh cardiac output when we need it. Uh fatigue, dizziness, uh lightheadedness, uh just a feeling of being unwell. If you've seen a if you've seen a patient with advanced uh congestive heart failure, heart disease, they have an ashen appearance about them. And a lot of that is just poor cardiac contractility, poor uh cardiac output. Uh and and those are those features of the heart are largely related to our uh our autonomic nervous system.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Yeah, that fight or flight response and how that gets impacted. And you know, it's one of the things we kind of have to reiterate with patients all the time is you're not supposed to feel tired. You know, that's not that shouldn't be normal.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

It is normal for so many people, but and we know we know this because when we Sean can attest that there is there is no more rewarding procedure in cardiology than a standard pacemaker. As people age, uh their ability to raise their heart rate with activity goes down dramatically. We call it chronotropic insufficiency. And uh when you if they're dizzy, if they're passing out, if they're extremely fatigued, and we see electrical disturbance in their workup, uh a simple pacemaker, uh getting them up to an adequate heart rate will change their entire life. Sean, your thoughts?

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Oh, absolutely. I've seen uh patients actually with Lyme disease uh that had some heart conduction issues, um, and that actually affected the heart as far as having too slow of a heart rate, passing out dizziness, and you know, the pacemaker was the ultimate uh savior as far as that. But on top of you know what you're talking about, fatigue, you know, in cardiology, one of the big things that can cause fatigue is a rhythm called atrial fibrillation or AFib. Um that rhythm sometimes goes undetected because sometimes people don't have any feelings of it. Sometimes you do get palpitations or racing heart, but fatigue can be the only symptom. So in our practice, we're kind of uh AFib detectives. We do a lot of heart monitoring because it's such uh a low-hanging fruit to find before somebody comes. I work in the ER too, so sometimes we see people come in with strokes, and lo and behold, the reason they had the stroke is because they had AFib, but they had no idea.

Dr. Lauren Young:

And and it could present as like brain fog, fatigue, other things that are going on, you know, that dizziness, that fatigue, absolutely.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Sean's right, because if you take uh a patient that has no atrial contribution to their cardiac output, they're losing right off the bat 30% of their blood flow, uh just because the top of the heart, the atrium, is not is not contracting in a synchronous fashion. So uh it is it is devastating to people. And and like Sean said, they don't really have the palpitations. Uh they just feel overall unwell and fatigued.

Dr. Lauren Young:

And I feel like nerve cells are so sensitive, right? Like they they don't like not getting enough oxygen and blood. Like, and so symptoms of fatigue, but also like brain fog and those type of things hit really quickly for those patients. We just don't have the um, you know, bandwidth for those things. Like those nerve cells are are our little canaries in the coal mind, you know, they're gonna let us know right away that they're not happy, you know.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Yeah, fatigue just opens up this barrel. So we see fatigue and we start looking for sleep apnea as well. Such a such a huge factor on the heart and the brain, right? You just said the the neurons are so dependent on oxygen, so is the heart. So the two big organs that get affected when somebody has sleep apnea because of the hypoxia that's happening and the inflammation that it causes, the free radicals, it damages the heart, it damages the brain. So we start seeing brain fog and fatigue because of sleep apnea as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

We go after aggressively sleep apnea. It affects every single disease process in the heart. I tell patients it's a nine-hour scary movie that you're watching uh when you're sleeping. It's the heart doesn't know the difference between fight or flight and uh and suffocating during sleep apnea. So it's it can be devastating.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

Yeah, sleep sleep apnea was something we were just discussing this morning, is such a component for everything from heart health to neurologic health. And patients present not only tired, but they also can have anxiety. They just are in that fight or flight response. It's palpable. You can kind of experience it when you're just not even talking to someone, like something must be going on with them. So I think it's such a huge component of overall neurologic health and cardiovascular health. Yeah.

Dr. Lauren Young:

So we've got this Venn diagram looking at like neurology and cardiology, and um, certainly sleep apnea is right in the middle of that. Inflammation is a big piece of it as well, right? I imagine you guys are assessing that and looking that at that a lot. Um insulin resistance would be another one, right? I imagine you're seeing a lot of that as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

And the insulin resistance is linked is linked to autonomic nervous dysfunction. Uh it it all is is intertwined.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Yeah, gumming up the works with a little too much sugar is definitely uh doesn't help anything. You know, do you guys look and think about like microvascular disease, mitochondria, other things like that at all?

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Yeah, that was thinking of another symptom, you know, when we talk about microvascular, certainly endothelial dysfunction, we were huge on the blood vessel function. And like in males, we see somebody with uh erectile dysfunction, that equals endothelial dysfunction. We say ED equals ED. So we actually use a device called endopat, and it looks at the function of the blood vessels because that's where it all happens, right? It's the foundation of your heart, it's the foundation of your vessels. So if you damage that, if there's this dysfunction in the endothelium, there's going to be problems downstream. You know, the heart is a pretty strong muscle. Uh, and we think the heart pumps to our fingers, it pumps to the organs. Well, it's not that strong. We depend on that microvascular circulation, the our arterioles and the muscles that are in those small vessels to get the blood actually to those organs. So if you're having microvascular issues, endothelial dysfunction, you're going to have brain fog, cognitive decline.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

We started our endothelial function analysis in 2010, and it's it's been proven at Mayo Clinic to be linked uh to in in actually hand blood flow is linked 80% linked to all forms of coronary artery disease, from the most mild to the most severe. It's an 80% correlation. The arteries of the hand are behaving exactly like the ones of the heart.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

I was just going to mention Rhanods disease and just that Rheynods phenomenon. Like when patients tell me about experiencing that, that's a clue that their autonomic nervous system may be a bit out of balance, not just cardiovascular disease, but of course we want perfusion to peripheral uh hands and feet. Um and talking about ED, that's one of my best ways to get people to get a sleep study done. It might help that way. It's you gotta figure out a way to get someone to want to do that and then talk about what it means to actually treat it. But um it is a very uh good symptom to think about when you're thinking about neurologic health and how it overlaps cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Yeah, for sure. And I think when you're looking for sleep apnea, you know to like it, it doesn't, you know, people be like, well, I don't snore. And you're like, okay, but then I don't I don't not interested in like, well, I'm a healthy BMI. Yep, not interested in that either. You know, like we're just seeing so much of it.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

So thank you for that that point, because people are under the misconception that uh if they're uh if they're you know low, low body weight, that they can't have sleep apnea. It turns out it's just related to the pharyngeal anatomy. Uh and uh we've had uh gentlemen with neck size of 14 and a half come in uh with massive heart failure plus sleep with sleep apnea.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

And once that sleep apnea was addressed, it was corrected.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Heart failure was corrected. Yes, we can get the heart functioning back to normal once we we treat this uh this grave condition at sleep.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

I think it's also important. I think a lot of patients that I see or that I'm starting to see more of are compromised neurodegenerative conditions that are going to increase their risk of sleep apnea and things like that. And I think helping people understand that not only is this going to protect your cardiovascular health downstream, it's also gonna protect your neurologic function, your memory, your focus. When people talk about wanting to prevent like cognitive decline and things like that, it's so super important that they really look at the basics, which is of course their diet and lifestyle, but how you sleep and if that's affecting you. So so super important.

Dr. Lauren Young:

That's a good point. That like I think, you know, um Dr. Berkman and I come from a world where we're seeing a lot of uh uh neurology and you know, people have multiple sclerosis, for example, and then or Parkinson's disease, and they don't think to really focus on their cardiovascular system. And I do you guys see people with those conditions and want to do a deeper dive just given the fact that we know that there's already some pathology happening in their bodies?

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes a patient will come in just because they they passed out, they had syncope, and they have this underlying condition like multiple sclerosis or dementia, and we always look at the heart because they're connected. And usually you find you know either a rhythm issue or carotid artery disease. Sometimes, you know, sometimes general cardiology, we just think of the heart. Uh again, we talk about the whole patient. So we look at carotid arteries, we look at intimal thickening, can be the very first sign that somebody has uh atherosclerosis. But sometimes I find these terrible pathologies um in the neck, you know, 70%, 80% stenosis, and people feel fine. So absolutely, when we have some patient, we evaluate the whole system.

Dr. Lauren Young:

I want to circle back too and and um just talk about labs real quick and what you like to look at, because you've kind of mentioned some testing and those type of things. Um what are some tests that you feel like are not on the conventional docs radar that are some of your favorites to kind of assess people's cardiovascular and neurological health?

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

If you look at a standard cholesterol profile, uh we're getting about 10 to 20 percent of the information that's truly needed uh to assess cardiovascular pathology and risk. Uh, we start with the inflammatory process. So there are uh lab assessments that look at uh coronary artery inflammation specifically, that uh those if abnormal are linked to cardiac events, stroke, etc. Uh, then we look at uh the large family of lipid uh particles that might be abnormal, even though the nor the standard um we'll call it primary care uh uh lipid analysis is really unremarkable. So it it turns out we'll take good we'll take quote unquote good cholesterol, uh with which is HDL. Uh HDL is a family, and everybody can say in their family, you have some that carry their weight and some that don't. And there are HDL particles that are either not beneficial or harmful. Uh so really the good cholesterol moniker of HDL needs to be done away with. It's very heterogeneous, and uh we study the particle size, we start study the function, and actually we we can have what's called dysfunctional HDL, which is even more harmful than quote unquote bad cholesterol. So it's it's a very complex analysis. Uh preventive cardiology is not really a handshake, pat on the back, and say exercise and eat well. It's a very sophisticated analysis, right down to the molecular and genetic level, and then corresponding or correlating that with the physiologic data that Sean had mentioned.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Yeah. Yeah, the uh the other markers too. I I we we look at those markers that Dr. Thompson just mentioned, uh specifically. Uh homocysteine is another marker we look at when that's elevated. We know there's higher risk of vascular inflammation inflammation. We know there's higher risk for aneurysms when that's there. And sometimes, you know, that because we're not eating well, we're kind of chronically stressed, but there's also some genetics involved, like MTHFR. Uh, so we can look at that. Um, insulin is one that's often missed. And I look at it all the time because, like Dr. Berkman said earlier, it's it's it's huge. A lot of people have insulin resistance. And if you're just measuring the hemoglobin A1C or a fasting blood sugar, you miss that. So we can look at improvements with looking at insulin and see peptides.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

And gut gut health as well. We we study uh we study bacterial composition in terms of what what bacteria are linked to that that are linked to cardiovascular disease. Uh it there it is a lot that that we can study on the on the gut health in the heart.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Like T the TMAO is one that we look at that's a byproduct of the bacteria that live in the gut. And it actually blocks reverse cholesterol transport. So if we see that, we see people with higher cholesterol and more cardiovascular risk. Um, so those are those are some of the ones we look at. Um often missed too on a traditional panel is magnesium. Uh it's such an easy target to look at that's never looked at because it's not usual if you have to order it separately. And a lot of people, it's never checked and it's a lot of times low from our diet.

Dr. Lauren Young:

This is such a breath of fresh air. I know, isn't it? I will say, like one of our first projects together, Dr. Burke and I wrote this like extensive uh article on TMAO, like probably over 10 years ago now, right? Steve. Yeah, yeah. So it's awesome to hear you guys talk about all of this, and it's so exciting to really acknowledge that like a standard lab panel can look normal when they go to their primary care or they go to a even a someone who's not looking at functional medicine, and yet there is underlying pathology that's driving both neurological and cardiovascular disease that we should really make sure we're addressing.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Yeah, there's a few red alert labs we look for. Uh one is TMAL, one is LP little A, uh, which is gaining more uh gaining more traction in in uh in our knowledge to as far as valvular heart disease, accelerate coronary artery disease, and those sort of things.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Yeah, for sure. I think um, you know, really realizing that you have to do a deep dive into this stuff and um and you know, some of them are more modulo um modulating than others. Like we can shift, I mean LPA, I know there's some stuff, but it is a persnickety little bugger. Um so I think it's nice to know when you have that, then you know you have to go even harder on all the other lifestyle things and make sure everything else is in order, sure. Um we're gonna take a quick break and then we will be coming right back to start talking about solutions and um and all the great stuff that you guys are doing at your clinic to empower patients. If you're a fan of this show, you'll know we talk a lot about conventional and naturopathic medicine and how they can play a role in your overall health. We call this collaborative medicine. And through the work we do at Collaborative Natural Health Partners, we're able to give people the knowledge and tools they need to feel great every single day. If you're interested in learning more, head over to our website, ctnaturalhealth.com, where you'll find articles, courses, and a bunch of resources to take the guesswork out of your health. Don't wait for your next checkup. The doctor will see you now. Hi there, welcome back to your health toolkit. We're here today with Dr. Jeffrey Thompson and Sean Brady from the Center for Healthy Heart in Connecticut. We're talking all things brain and heart health. Um we were just kind of discussing a lot of the symptoms, lab tests, red flags. Um, but I really want to dive into, you know, how are we addressing this in our clinics? You sound like you guys have some really awesome stuff going on that I want to hear about. So we get a, you know, they get their normal blood work from their um doctor, they go for a deeper dive with you guys, and we find some underlying issues of inflammation, insulin resistance, uh microvascular disease. What are our next steps?

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Well, if I'm seeing inflammation, I start thinking, okay, what's the low-hanging fruit? What does everyone do every day? Eat. So we have to look at diet, right? That's the first thing. Uh, if we're putting something in our mouth, it's either helping us or it's hurting us. It could be neutral, but that's how you have to think of food. So, what can be causing inflammation in our diets? So I always look at patients and have them start a Mediterranean diet where we're having um really high amounts of uh colorful vegetables, uh, getting rid of the white foods, the sweet foods. You try to get 10 to 12 servings of organic, fresh uh vegetables and fruits, kind of an eight to four ratio of vegetable to fruit, get rid of the high fructose corn syrup if they're eating it, and sugars. Those are huge for inflammation. Um, trans fats. So we look at the diet first off. And of course, you know, the other pillars we look at, you know, exercise, sleep, and stress management. Um, the world in the last five years has become so stressful with the way everything's had to change. We're doing tons of zooms, uh, we're starting to people are still not working in the office, we're not getting exercise. We saw that huge decrease in exercise and movement um during COVID, uh, social isolation. So all these things are things that we can work on for lifestyle. Um, exercise, I try to get patients moving uh about an hour a day uh for four times a week, doing resistance training and uh aerobic training, um, and sleeping. I try to get sleep, eight hours of sleep, at least seven, um, but uninterrupted sleep, like we talked about before, if there's um sleep apnea, that's gonna totally throw that off. If uh sleep hygiene, some people are doing work on their computers, get that blue light, they can't sleep, they're waking up a lot, throwing off insulin at night and blood sugars. So certainly trying to work on sleep hygiene and then stress management, right? Uh, everyone's uh pretty stressful or busy with kids, families, multiple jobs, um, and then you can't sleep, and so your mind is uh confused during the day. So doing yoga, meditations, balancing out that sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Let's talk about duration of eating, uh, Sean. Uh often, you know, people get up at six in the morning and then they spike their insulin with you know some donuts and then they late night snacks. So their battle with insulin spikes is going on 14 hours a day, where if they were to shrink that window to where uh the glycemia is more regularized. Sean, your thoughts on that?

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Oh, absolutely. The uh intermittent fasting and time restricted eating, you know, getting your food into that six to eleven, six seems pretty tough to start with. I usually challenge people at least 12 hours to start with, eat during this 12-hour period and slowly move it back so they get comfortable. It's really hard to do, you know, you hear about six hours. That's a tough time. But if you can do an eight-hour uh time timed eating in that window, that helps a lot.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

I love the thought of intermittent fasting and just fasting in general. There's so much research on neuror regeneration, uh, reduction of inflammation, rebalancing insulin, things like that. So I'm glad you brought that up. It's a very powerful tool.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

And it helps the cleanup through for the nerve the nervous system in terms of cells that uh need to be uh need to be cleaned up, uh senescent or dead cells, and the the regeneration uh that is possible with that.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Yeah, and sugar, sugar is such a uh a huge endemic problem. I mean, I'm a recovering sugarholic myself. I couldn't stop, I'd have a bag of MMs and that it would have to be uh it would be gone by the end of the day. So um I know what it's like, but it's amazing how those cravings are gone once you stop it.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Um yeah, and I mean, and realistically, our cardiovascular system doesn't love being like becoming a caramel apple, and our brain certainly does either, like becoming a crouch potato. I thought it was really interesting to bring it back to the autonomic nervous system, too, right? The like fight or flight, rest and digest. And really the way to help all of this is to, you know, addressing the fight or flight and the rest and like get us back into that parasympathetic um chill mode by nurturing our sleep, our stress management, our food, all these basic things. As far as uh other therapeutics you're looking at, are you guys prescribing any specific supplements? Or do you not that we want to obviously give anything particular for people, but just in general, things that you guys are looking at. I know we talked about um homocysteine, for example, and so there's things like that that um may be on people's radar to like talk about.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

We believe uh that nitric oxide is where we start and anything, diet lifestyle uh supplementation that can get us to nitric oxide, uh, which is the benefit of these lifestyle modifications and diet modifications. Turns out nitric oxide is the most potent uh uh substance that is that is going to improve endothelial function. So we start really there. If you look at beet beet root, it it's it in terms of supplementation, it is the closest uh benefit of nitric oxide. Your thoughts on that, Sean?

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Absolutely. The beets are really great for that. Nitric oxide is super important for the for the dilation of the arteries to keep vascular tone relaxed. You know, when we have uh elevated homocysteine, just since we started talking about that, um the B vitamins are super important as well uh to help with blood vessel function and regulating that. Um, certain things like omega-3s, we always try to get patients to eat their way to health, right? Because I'd rather have them get nutrients because they have to eat anyway versus taking pills and pills and pills. Sometimes it's their best attempts, it doesn't work. So we do need supplementation, but trying to get omega-3s uh from the smash fish, the sardines, the macaron anchovies, salmon, and herring, since they have low mercury, that's a good way. But if somebody doesn't eat fish, you can get some omega-3s from the flax seeds and chia seeds, even spinach and brussels sprouts. So getting those omega-3s up, but if not using a high-quality supplement that has a a good uh balance of omega-6 and threes and a uh GLA and some of the store brand ones are suspect sometimes because of the amount of chemicals that might be in there. So we usually use a high quality product.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Um and we uh we we also Sean, you can discuss uh some of the benefits of niacin uh therapy. It is a vitamin. Uh we tend to uh use uh the higher higher doses of niacin, uh but the benefits of niacin on lipids is is tremendous. Uh I mentioned the HDL family of particles. Uh you we we have seen better functioning HDL, uh better quality HDL with three months of niacin therapy. Uh and uh and uh you can't that's something that pharma just has never been able to succeed with.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Right, yeah. Dr. Young mentioned LPA, and that's one of the treatments we usually um see working pretty good, certain types of niacin, not the inositol or the flush-free niacin, uh, but nicotinamide and uh niacin, nicotinic acid, uh, those are the ones that usually help. Um, NAC can sometimes help lower that as well. Um another nutrient we're talking about is coQ10. As we age, uh coQ10 levels go down and it affects the heart because ATP is vital in the mitochondrial. It's important to make ATP, which is our our body's energy source. So the brain and the heart are the two organs that need the most of it. So as we age, we don't get enough coQ10. So meats and fish have it. Um, if not, then we can use a supplement as well.

Dr. Lauren Young:

I think, yeah, coQ10 is definitely, we were talking about that Venn diagram of neurology and cardiology. CoQ10 is definitely like smack in the middle as far as things we want to think about and can be a nutrient. depleted from certain medications um or inhibited from being produced in our bodies, right? Um and certainly is is found in foods, but um, you know, is definitely one that I like to lean on a uh a higher dose. Right.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

It's in our population patients, the patients that have had heart attacks and bypass surgeries, you know, their statin medications are standard for that. And statins, unfortunately, the way they block the cholesterol production in the liver, they also block the production of cochi 10. So you can't eat your way out of that. So we always have to supplement Coke 10.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

And we mentioned the microbiome in terms of dietary effects on that. It turns out that the high the high sugary foods promote the bacteria we don't want. The high fiber diet for fermentation uh and production of short chain fatty acids are really what we're after. So sugary, high fiber diet and things like that are so beneficial.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Yeah, I I love the idea of food as medicine. I mean that's like all what we're into for sure. Dr. Berkman, can you think of any other supplements or things that you like or dietary picks for um that cardiovascular neurology picture?

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

Yeah I think anything that supports the mitochondrial function. So cocutent is the probably most popular one but all the B vitamins which are going to overlap with homocysteine levels and just mitochondrial function and mitochondria being the powerhouses of our cells that regenerate and so if we've had you know a heart attack or something you know of that nature, like Sean said, we really want to revive those cells and and really you know support in that way. And of course low sugar.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

Your thoughts on L-carnitine in terms of mitochondrial function, I think that's also a benefit.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

Carnitine, yeah I love carnitine. So I think about it a lot in my patients who are vegan and vegetarian I mean same coQ10 and things like that. So there is a subset of patients that I'm more concerned about maybe supplementing these things a little bit heavier just because they're not going to get it dietarily. But yeah carnitine, deribose, things of that nature certainly we can pull out the whole kit and caboodle depending on what's happened and how much we want to invest with that.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

For the heart patients that heart failure patients we have L carnitine and deribose is a must coq10 for sure PQQ can sometimes help with that and taurine actually sometimes helps as well.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

You guys are just like not normal cardiologists I know I'm loving this.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

We don't normally have conversations like this with cardiac yeah providers this is pretty awesome we're either in the ICU or we're we're in the in the office discussing prevention.

Shawn Brady, PA-C:

Yeah it's hard when I see patients in the hospital how I can try to transition to help them but I can't do it there. You know that they're there for an acute phase right so for sure traditional medicine in a hospital in a in a general setting works right we have this acute care model emergency medicine it's amazing. But if we try to this is what I learned after years of doing practice where I wasn't seeing patients get better. I was like what is missing so we're using the same model to fix something acute to fix a chronic problem and it wasn't working.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

And then I think I think the most drastic example of that is uh when I was in fellowship uh we had uh performed a code on a a gentleman in a on the tennis court 55 just succumbed to a sudden cardiac death event uh we could not resuscitate him uh but there was uh someone who astutely got a limpid panel and sure enough that HDL was you know 34 uh so it was that link that first made me so interested in how the genetic uh and and metabolic profile could put somebody in that in that risk and here the gentleman was uh still with the tennis gear and everybody thought uh uh he was in complete excellent health but there was way more to the story and since I uh since I learned about the the slipidemia and the metabolic component to how that affected that man's risk it it's that that's what got me thinking about it. And Sean deals that with that a lot in the ER.

Dr. Lauren Young:

Yeah I think one of the takeaways I take from today is that there's a false sense of security with a lipid panel and a calcium score maybe even you know that we want to make sure we're doing a deeper dive and really looking at the tissue down from like either a battery pack to the cells, the mitochondria or looking down to like the the lining of our blood vessels that endothelial dysfunctions that we're looking at that piece of things to start, right? And then really making sure that we're good there so that we can build off of that. And knowing that like the nervous system and the cardiovascular system work so interconnected and so um dependent on each other that you really can't treat one without looking at the other. They're really that connected so any other final thoughts as we kind of tell people, you know, there are a lot of things we can do we have a lot of tools. I thought that was really interesting to hear from you guys as well that you know you can reverse things, you can address things, you can get hearts working better, you can get people their brains working better if we address their sleep apnea and underlying conditions.

Dr. Ashley Burkman:

I was thinking you know for people who are listening who don't have a provider they can talk about this stuff with I just wanted to leave them with some tangible things that they could start looking at today. And really for me I think like Sean said we're just in this overstressed environment so if we can chill out that probably is one of the best things you could do. So creating a gratitude list decluttering your space and really connecting the research and science behind connection and lack of it during the pandemic was huge on cardiovascular health, on neurologic health, you know, just mental health in general so I feel like connection is is key. So connecting with peers connecting with friends.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompsen:

And let's go back to books and not the phone maybe not people people come to me you know on their phones and like we're talking the heart here and you could almost see they're they're they're on overdrive from from the events that they're looking looking at on a second by second basis on these problems.

Dr. Lauren Young:

I'm guilty as charged but uh you know it's something that we need to go back to to the basics uh in terms of you know our our overall wellness that's probably all the time with a patient that I'm questioning about so sorry I've been I've been buying magazines for that same reason of like magazines in the house phones get tucked away you know read a fun article in National Geographics or something you know I love it. I love it. Well Dr. Thompson uh Sean thank you so much for your time Dr. Berkman for your time today guys I feel like we've given people some some great um thinking points and some tools to kind of bring to their physicians and to their lives um and to all our listeners thank you for tuning in to your health toolkit um we absolutely love talking about health and wellness so if you have a question or a topic idea please find us online at ctnaturalhealth.com or on social media. Until next time it's me Dr. Lauren Young wishing you the best in health happiness and longevity

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Lauren Young, N.D.

Host
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Ashley Burkman, N.D.

Co-host
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Jeffrey Thompsen M.D.

Guest
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Shawn Brady, PA-C

Guest