The True Cause of Heart Disease: A Conversation with Dr. Aseem Malhotra

The way you eat, how much you exercise, how you manage stress and your exposure to environmental toxins all contribute to things like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and of course, heart disease.

The current way doctors treat heart disease is misguided because they treat the risk factors not the causes. To think we can treat heart disease by lowering cholesterol, lowering blood pressure and lowering blood sugar with medication alone is like mopping up the floor while we leave the faucet running as the sink overflows.

Instead, we need to ask what is causing the high blood pressure, high blood sugar or abnormal cholesterol in the first place. Spoiler alert: These are not medication deficiencies! We treat these problems with medication, but studies have increasingly shown that treating these risk factors has very little benefit if any at all. Research shows changing your lifestyle can be a more powerful intervention to prevent heart disease than any medication.

In February of this year, I released The Fat Summit and was so honored to interview more than 30 leading health experts about dietary fat, sugar, chronic disease and the truth about heart disease.

One of those experts was Dr. Aseem Malhotra who is truly a leading thinker in cardiology and has challenged the status quo around fat, calories and conventional wisdom around statin use. During our interview, Dr. Malhotra and I got a chance to talk about why heart disease is on the rise; the benefits of a higher fat, lower carb diet; and much more. It was such a fascinating discussion, I decided to re-share Part 1 today to keep the conversation going.

I am excited to announce that the conversation on fat is just beginning! Dr. Malhotra and 30+ other experts have come together again to continue our discussion of the fat we eat, the fat on our bodies, chronic disease, and definitely a lot more about heart health. I hope you enjoy Part 1 of my conversation with Dr. Malhotra, and to see Part 2 (plus more interviews), sign up for The Fat Summit 2: Separating Even More Fat From Fiction. It starts November 7th, and I hope to see you there!