Why Your Heart Is Not A Pump (& What Most Doctors Don't Know About The True Cause Of Heart Disease).

Ben Greenfield Life

Ben Greenfield

Education, Fitness, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2016

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I first introduced you to Dr. Thomas Cowan in the podcast episode released a few weeks ago entitled "How (& Why) To Eat More Vegetables, Why A Plant Is Like An Upside-Down Human, Little-Known Superfood Plants & More!"

In that episode, you learn how when Dr. Cowan was a 20-year-old Duke grad-student, bright, skeptical, and already disillusioned with industrial capitalism - he joined the Peace Corps in the mid-1970s for a two-year tour in Swaziland. There, he encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and Weston A. Price - two men whose ideas would fascinate and challenge him for decades to come. Both drawn to the art of healing and repelled by the way medicine was―and continues to be―practiced in the United States, Cowan returned from Swaziland, went to medical school, and established a practice in New Hampshire and, later, San Francisco.

For years, as he raised his three children, suffered the setback of divorce, and struggled with what we didn't really talk much about in that previous podcast: a heart condition. He was intrigued by the work of Price and Steiner and, in particular, with Steiner’s provocative claim that the heart is not a pump. Determined to practice medicine in a way that promoted healing rather than compounded ailments, Cowan dedicated himself to understanding whether Steiner’s claim could possibly be true. And if Steiner was correct, what, then, is the heart? What is its true role in the human body?

In his new book "Human Heart, Cosmic Heart: A Doctor's Quest to Understand, Treat, and Prevent Cardiovascular Disease", which is a deeply personal, rigorous, and riveting account of his own struggle with heart disease, Dr. Cowan offers up a daring claim... ...not only was Steiner correct that the heart is not a pump, but our understanding of heart disease - with its origins in the blood vessels - is completely wrong. And this gross misunderstanding, with its attendant medications and risky surgeries, is the reason heart disease remains the most common cause of death worldwide.

In today's episode, Dr. Cowan presents a new way of understanding the body’s most central organ. He offers a new look at what it means to be human and how we can best care for ourselves―and one another. During our discussion, you'll discover:

-The strange root vegetable (which you probably haven't heard of) that Dr. Cowan had for breakfast before our interview...[7:56]

-Dr. Cowan's own heart struggles that caused him to have a heartbeat of over 200 beats per minute while playing basketball...[9:20]

-Why it is physically impossible for the heart to be able to pump blood through the body in the way that you (and your doctor) have learned...[13:25 & 15:25]

-How the way that blood flows through your body is actually quite similar to the way that water flows through a giant, tall tree...[28:45]

-What a "chestahedron" shape is, why is the exact shape of your heart, and how it creates a very unique vortex inside your chest....[40:35]

-How I personally structure my family's water in a way extremely similar to the way that the heart structures and "spirals" your blood...[42:30]

-Why most doctors don't know about this concept of the heart not being a pump...[45:50]

-Why coronary angiograms, bypass surgery and stents don't work...[54:00] -A strange Brazilian plant molecule called "Gstrophanthin" and why Dr. Cowan talks about it in the book...[66:50]

-How to use fats, oils, vitamin K, parasympathetic nervous system activators and compression therapy to drastically lower your risk of a heart attack...[70:15]

-The single biggest key to preventing heart disease...[76:20]

-And much more!

Resources from this episode: -Human Heart, Cosmic Heart: A Doctor's Quest to Understand, Treat, and Prevent Cardiovascular Disease -My interview on structured water "Is All Water The Same" with Dr. Gerald Pollack -The whole house structured water filter Ben uses to create a "vortex" for his drinking water -The NatureBeat heart rate variability system Ben uses every morning to measure his nervous system -The Strophansus extract / ouabain Dr. Cowan mentions -Organic emu oil -Vitamin D/K2 blend -The Normatec recovery compression boots that Ben wears

Do you have questions, comments or feedback for Dr. Cowan or I? Leave your thoughts at BenGreenfieldFitness.com and one of us will reply!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. I got to tell you between hoisting kettlebells up to my shoulders doing obstacle course races and generally just being a kind of clumsy guy.
0:11.5	My watch face looks like frickin' scorched earth.
0:16.9	I usually wear a digital watch for just about everything because it's got a little chronograph on it.
0:22.7	I don't use like Apple Watch. I don't use one of these like Bluetooth enabled self-quantification fancy watches.
0:28.7	I just have a plane J and watch, plane J and digital watch.
0:31.7	But recently I started wearing a nice watch. Like when I do things like go to conferences and speak on stage or go to church, you know, with my hair all slipped back,
0:43.7	looking like a big boy wearing real clothes, not sitting at home in my underwear.
0:48.7	And I've actually gotten a lot of compliments on this new watch that I'm wearing. It looks like a million bucks. And it actually works. It ticks.
0:57.7	Like a fine watchmaker's watch should tick. And it's got this like classic old-school-y, I guess like you'd call it like almost like a mad man kind of design.
1:07.7	I think mad men is the TV show. I think I'm thinking of from the 40s or the 50s or the 60s or I'm beginning to delve into my complete ignorance of pop culture now.
1:18.7	Anyways though. So the watch that I'm using is produced by this company called movement. M-V-M-T movement. And what they do is they design these revolutionary new watches that look like a million bucks.
1:33.7	And they actually cut out the middle man. They give the watch straight to you. And they start at just 95 bucks for a watch you'd normally pay $400 to $500 for.
1:44.7	And I gotta tell you, having a nice watching a wrist actually makes you feel like a little bit of a bad ass. I gotta say.
1:51.7	So I dig them and now they are giving everybody listens to this show a 15% discount. Just in time for Christmas-ish season. Just saying.
2:00.7	With free shipping and with free returns. So to get that deal, here's what you do. Go to M-V-M-T watches.com slash Ben. That's M-V-M-T watches.com slash Ben.
2:15.7	And this watch has a really clean design. I've been getting a lot of compliments on it. So now you can step up your watch game. It's time to step up your watch game. See what I did there?
2:24.7	Okay. Movementwatches.com slash Ben. M-V-M-T watches.com slash Ben. And now let's jump in with Dr. Thomas Cowan. And everything your doctor doesn't actually know about your heart.
2:40.7	In this episode of the Ben Reef of Fin the Show.
2:43.7	They said the human being is just a pure mechanical object. It just works with mechanics. There's no such thing as life.
2:51.7	We might as well study it in a dead body because it's all the same. And that was how we started thinking and doing medicine and science ever since.
3:00.7	A heartbeat is the expansion of expandable walls and then a passive contraction. There's no bush needed which also makes it very easy for a muscle to do that for 80 years, 24 hours a day, you know, 360 days a year.
3:15.7	He's an expert in human performance and nutrition. Voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ben Greenfield, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Ben Greenfield and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.