#66 Ivor Cummins on How to Prevent Heart Disease

Ivor Cummins (0:00)

A recent report in one of the medical journals called out that the rates of heart disease are increasing beyond our ability to tackle them. Evolution was never ready for the last 50 years of bad food. Most people are asymptomatic, they don't really feel anything or show symptoms.

So you really don't know about this problem until you're dead. If you can do things to stop your score rising in the next few years, and that means you've stopped the inflammatory processes that drive calcium, then you can change your future and live probably as long as anyone else without disease.

Siim Land (0:36)

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Siim Land (0:44)

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Siim Land (0:49)

Welcome to the Body, Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land, and our guest today is Ivor Cummins.

Ivor is a medical researcher who has a degree in chemical engineering and he's contributing a lot to the study of heart disease prevention. He's written some books, given a lot of speeches and been involved in several documentaries about battling modern diseases. Ivor, I'm glad that you could make it to the podcast and I wanna welcome you.

Ivor Cummins (1:15)

Thanks Siim, it's great to be here.

Siim Land (1:17)

It's my pleasure as well.

So you're doing a lot of traveling and giving speeches in many health conferences. What has been your schedule like recently? Where were you being over the past few weeks?

Ivor Cummins (1:30)

Well, the past month or two, I was in KetoCon in Texas, Austin in the US.

And then I more recently went to KetoFest in New London, in North Carolina and Ancestral Health Symposium in Montana and Low Carb San Diego, the west coast of the USA and a few more. I've been traveling a lot.

Siim Land (1:55)

Sounds a lot of, there's a lot of Keto stuff going on in the states especially.

Ivor Cummins (1:59)

Yeah, it seems to be really trending. I'm more low carb myself with a lot of fasting and intermittent fasting, so I would go in and out of ketosis.

I'm not so much the ultra high fat keto, but keto seems to be the really trending thing at the moment.

Siim Land (2:15)

Yeah, there are definitely at least some similarities across all these diets like Paleo and Keto.

Ivor Cummins (2:23)

Yeah, I think Paleo is a little higher carb, but the principles are very similar, of course. Yeah, and the Paleo guys kind of take out dairy and anything that wasn't there 10,000 years ago, whereas low carb and keto are more accommodating.

Siim Land (2:38)

Yeah, but I'm not sure how many cavemen got to eat like Paleo bars with honey and some dates or something.

Ivor Cummins (2:47)

That is a very good point. And I'm sure they didn't have ketone esters and medium chain triglyceride oils and all this stuff either.

Siim Land (2:56)

Yeah, that's true.

But have you noticed like any similarities or common patterns among these places and conferences? How are the people there, are they similar or are they completely different?

Ivor Cummins (3:07)

Yeah, they're pretty keto and low carb is where I've mainly been. I've never been to Paleo FX, but generally they're the similar type of people. They're very focused on their health. They want to avoid chronic disease. They want to lose weight.

And they're generally a really nice bunch of people. I think because they're health focused, they'd like to help everyone else as well with all the right answers. They're explorers.

And yeah, they're pretty similar people. You will get the people who just wanna lose weight and you'll get the people who just want to get a little bit healthier. And then of course, there's a fair few people who are more extreme. They want to do every single little thing that can improve their health. And they'll try everything. And they're the real searchers.

Siim Land (3:52)

Right, right, yeah. That's something more into the areas of biohacking and things like that.

Ivor Cummins (3:58)

Yeah.

Siim Land (4:00)

So maybe let's start addressing the big elephant in the room, which is heart disease. And they say that heart disease is the cause of one out of every four deaths in the United States.

And it's one of the most common killers in Western populations. And I don't want to put like immediately spotlight on you and you ask what causes heart disease, but maybe can you tell us what's the current situation with this disease? Is it getting worse or is it getting better?

Ivor Cummins (4:27)