It's really about integrating the science with your

lifestyle to make it easily accessible, easy,

implementable, something you enjoy to do. And also you feel the

benefits from it and you understand what's going on and how

it's improving all of your cardiometabolic metrics and your blood

vessel health. And so that explanation of why is important,

and I encourage everyone listening. When you hear someone

online tell you don't eat this or don't do this, if they don't have

a good reason for why, it's important that you second guess it.

And if you also see that they're selling a supplement after they tell you to

avoid a certain food, that should be a red flag. Cause a lot of

times they're telling you to supplement, but they're telling you to avoid.

And we need to be very careful on that because excess

supplementation can also lead to liver damage and kidney

damage, which impact your heart health. Welcome to a

special October edition of Open Heart

Surgery with boots. All month long we're

diving into heart healthy eating with none other than

my cardiac dietitian, Michelle

Rothenstein. Each Tuesday we are serving up

bite sized ten to 15 minutes episodes to give

you practical tips to keep your heart in tip

top shape. Whether you're recovering from surgery

or just looking to show your heart a little extra love,

Michelle's got you covered. Don't forget to check out

our

patreon@www.patreon.com

openheartsurgerywithboots there we are building

a community of fellow heart buddies where we are going

to start meeting up on Zoom and being of support to each

other. And I'll be curating special

playlists to help you get started on your heart

journey if you're just starting out. So thank you so

much for being here. Thank you for supporting this podcast.

I am so excited to bring Michelle to

you every Tuesday for the month of October. So let's get

right to it. I am so excited to

welcome my cardiac dietitian,

Michelle on for the whole month to give

us bite sized nuggets of

wisdom for how to eat

for your heart health. When I started

my podcast in 2023, I thought

about how can I best show up for all the heart

patients that would come after me. And

one of the things that is really important to me

is if I'm going to make a suggestion, if I'm going to

elevate a caregiver or healthcare provider that's

really helped me, I want to make sure that

my recommendation to you, the listener, is solid and that I

have benefited myself from

help that I am now sharing with you for the month of

October. And so I didn't realize

how important it was to

really scrutinize my diet until I started

working with Michelle. And I really believe

in her work. And we are going to be spending

the next several Tuesdays bringing you little

nuggets of wisdom that have really elevated my

life. It's directly impacted my husband because I cook for

him. I have healed my relationship with food,

and I look forward to

each meal knowing that it is well thought out

and that it is directly treating my endothelial

dysfunction. I'm starting to lose weight. I

feel confident in my body again. All these

things that we heart patients really struggle with,

Michelle has directly helped me with. And

so, Michelle, thank you so much for saying yes

to this idea, this crazy idea I had.

And I'm so grateful to you

that you've come into my life. And it's like one of the

amazing, unexpected gifts of starting

this podcast is all the wonderful people that have come into my

life, like yourself. It's truly my pleasure and honor,

and I'm so happy to do this. I think it's so important for people

to understand the benefits of science based

nutrition and what it does to our blood vessel health. So I'm super

excited to dive into all of our topics, and I hope your audience learns a

lot through our time together. So what is the

purpose? Why a cardiac dietitian? Why

you? Because I remember when I

was in the hospital post open

heart surgery, I saw a nutritionist once, and

all they said was, just watch your salt intake.

And all my cardiologists has said to me

is, watch your salt intake. And that's it. No

one's talked to me about inflammation. No one's talked to me about

eating the rainbow. I mean, I'm really dumbing it down right now. But like,

it, it was like that. That was it. And there was nothing

else. And so help us understand, like,

who you are, what you bring to the table, and your

purpose, and like, your, what you are doing for heart

patients. So I think it's important to understand

the intricacies of heart health and how it's much more

than eating clean or avoiding sodium. My background

is a registered dietitian. I did my clinical residency, my

master's degree, my undergraduate degree at NYU, and then I

kind of was in this field of, okay, I want to specialize

in something specific. And in my clinical residency, I

was in the liver clinic, I was in the ICU, I was in the cardiac

rehab clinic. I was in every single area of

where nutrition would have a focus, and everyone was having

heart disease related complications. And I really took that

to, why? Why is that? Why is heart disease the number one killer? Why is

there so much heart disease when research shows that 80% to

90% of it is preventable? And when you really look at

this, I took it under myself to go and really be alongside

preventative cardiologists and lipidologists and

electrophysiologists and heart transplant doctors and interventional

cardiologists and understand the medical background behind heart

disease. And you have to understand that it is, unfortunately, very

complicated in that there are many pathways that your

body has, and it needs certain nutrients to work. And so I would go to

conferences where only cardiologists were at, and they're like, why are you here? It's

all about drugs. I'm like, well, if you listen to those details, there's a lot

more to this picture here. So I spent a lot of time really

going into the cardiovascular space, and it's

complicated. We have three main functions that most people don't think about.

When you think about heart disease, right? You think about, you have your heart

pump, the ability for it to pump. You have that vascular system that you need

to allow for good blood flow. That's one. You have your electrical

system, which is the heartbeat regularity, and then you also have the

plumbing system, your plaque buildup, the atherosclerosis. And these are

all connected. But most people who don't study heart cardiology

don't really look at it that way. You kind of take your heart for granted

until something happens. And so my work and my background and being

a cardiovascular dietitian for over 13 years is really about

how do we optimize vascular health? How do we allow for good

blood flow in the body and in the arteries to allow for our heart not

to overwork. And that takes into account specific

nutrients we need to include in our diet. You know, this no

salt diet idea is important. We can't have a

very high sodium diet. That's not what we're saying. But when you just

focus on that, you don't actually look at what else you're eating. Oh, I don't

put salt in my food. People take that also to an extreme. I have many

clients who will say, I'm not going to have any salt. So it has to

be zero milligrams. And so you end up becoming nutrient

deficient. Your body needs nutrients to do all of those jobs. I

just mentioned from electrical plumbing and pumping. And so

we end up not actually paying attention to the

nutrients that help our arteries and reduce stiffness in our arteries

so our heart can do its job. Wow. It just. It's

like a three pronged stool that you have to think about the three main

functions. Okay, so you're saying

knowledge is power. That's what I've realized with working with you. And

the more I have come to understand how the heart works.

Cause again, when, you know, I was thrust into my journey

at age 42, it was a shock. It came out of

nowhere, and I had to quickly learn what all my defects

were about. What I didn't do was learn really, truly

how the heart functions. You know, I don't think many people

have, like, a full and clear understanding of

how we function under our own hoods. We probably

have a better understanding of how our cars operate than

how our hearts work to keep us alive. At least that's

the case for me. And it's interesting because I'm, like, a biology

major, and I have a master's degree in teaching. But,

you know, I never thought to, like, really understand how my heart worked.

I didn't have the awareness to even worry about my

heart. I had the privilege of not worrying about my heart for a long time,

just like I have the privilege now of not having to worry about my spleen

or, you know, all these other organs that thankfully aren't causing me trouble.

But then I was thrust into this, like, whole situation, and

I. I'm just fascinated that I wasn't given the education of,

this is exactly how your heart works. This is how it's compromised right

now. This is how you could better take care of it. Like, I wasn't

given that education until I met you just a few months

ago. And because I have all this awareness now, I

am more aware when I'm eating and when I'm making

choices for what I put in my body and, like, how it is going to

affect my electrical system, my plumbing, my

pumping. It's just amazing. And because of

that, I am more and more every day

making better choices for my overall health. So I just

want to share that with listeners. It's like I am now in the. Driver'S

seat, and I think that's important to recognize from an

advocate for your own health. I'm very big about explaining the

why behind my recommendations, because the unfortunate

truth is that there's so many things on the

Internet that's just wrong and doesn't have any scientific

validity, but a person comes on, they sound like they know what they're

talking about. You know, they look good on the outside, but that doesn't

depict their insides. And arterial health, it's important that you're

getting a good explanation of what is going on, and

then when you understand what is going on and then you understand

the nutrition implications of how that would help you click it more, it's

going to allow for you to have a longevity factor, which is

so important for optimal heart health. Right. If you

do anything for a month, that's not really protecting your heart. We're really looking

at this as a lifelong journey. And when you have these

understandings of how cardiometabolic health works,

how certain nutrients paired in the same, in the same pairing, helps

to be better, absorb those nutrients and give you more energy and give you

the vitamins in a more bioavailable way, it clicks

so that when you're in other situations, you're more likely to do

it long term. And that's the big component of I always stress

if I teach you something and you do it for a month, get good results,

but you don't continue for the rest of your life. I didn't do my job.

It's really about integrating the science with your

lifestyle to make it easily accessible, easy,

implementable, something you enjoy to do. And also you feel the

benefits from it and you understand what's going on and how

it's improving all of your cardio metabolic metrics and your blood

vessel health. And so that explanation of why is important,

and I encourage everyone listening. When you hear someone

online tell you, don't eat this or don't do this. If they don't

have a good reason for why, it's important that you second guess

it. And if you also see that they're selling a supplement after they tell

you to avoid a certain food, that should be a red flag. Cause a lot

of times they're telling you to supplement, but they're telling you to avoid.

And we need to be very careful on that because excess

supplementation can also lead to liver damage and kidney

damage, which impact your heart health. You need those organs

for optimal blood flow, and you also need those organs for optimal

ldl breakdown and metabolism so that atherogenic

LDL can be properly excreted in your body as well.

Truth balm right there, that's major. And from where I

sit then, I wondered, those that are struggling with LDL

numbers, I mean, that could be for several different reasons,

but I wonder, though, if people are so heavily supplement

like, if they're taking so many supplements, if it's just causing

this like, negative feedback loop with the kidneys and the

liver, that could elevate the LDL. Is that a thing? So

LDL for supplements in LDL, it's actually a little complicated.

A lot of supplements, when we look at the research, they actually go

rancid by the time you consume them. So if you're having a rancid

oil, that's going to increase your ldl cholesterol. So we have to be

careful in terms of our supplement usage on

that front. But the other thing you have to realize is there's been a recent

study, actually in August, that showed that there are a lot of supplements

that cause liver failure and liver damage. One of them is an

alternative to a statin drug. We see red yeast rice can do that,

and that's why it was taken off of the actual pharmaceutical market. And it

just showed how it could affect your liver. So if your liver is not

working, your enzymes are elevated, it's under stress, it's

not going to be able to break down ldl cholesterol as effectively.

So is it going to be the cause of LDL to be high? No. But

could it be a component to lDl being high because you

can't break it down and lower the value? Perhaps. So it's

not going to be your main cause from that aspect. But we know that it

has a component in the puzzle. And we need to be looking at everything.

We need to be looking at this as a whole picture approach. And I think

many people will say, michelle, I don't eat junk food. I don't eat processed

foods. How do I have plaque formation in my arteries? And

it goes way beyond that. Okay, there you have it, folks.

Tune in for the rest of October because Michelle

is full of so much wisdom that we're gonna leave it right there

for, for this Tuesday. But I think we're gonna pick up with

that next Tuesday of just the downstream effects

of this on your body. So, Michelle, thank you,

listeners. Please join us next Tuesday for another

little bite sized nugget and find Michelle in the show

notes. We are gonna be talking about how you can work with Michelle.

This is all about elevating her services. I so

strongly believe in what she's doing. So thanks, Michelle. We will be

back next Tuesday. Thank you.