Microplastics Linked to Heart Attack, Stroke Risk in New Study

[00:00:00]we have another study finding that microplastics are linked with increased risk of cardiovascular disease let's dive into these details I think this is so important because as you know the medical community is monom manically focused on lowering your ldo cholesterol but what about the microplastics we now have this year alone we've talked at least on this channel the study that was published in the new New England Journal of Medicine in March of this year finding that microplastics was linked or was actually found detected in the crowded artery plaque and was correlated with increase of 4.5 fold increased risk of having a heart attack or a stroke okay so the more microplastic that's in your body it is directly proportional to the severity of having a major adverse carvas event which is not you want to avoid a major adverse carvas event by the way yet we have this new study and this followed 108 people over the course of several years investigators in China published the study titled microplastics are associated with elevated atherosclerotic risk and increased vascular complexity in acute coronary syndrome patients so let's just pause here and slow down there was a lot of multi- syllabic words in that study title okay so what is acute coronary syndrome patients these are patients that are present to the hospital with heart attack like symptoms such as chest pain such as shortness of breath and they are frequently uh put on diagnostic machines like an EKG to figure out what's going on is there enzymes being released from the heart uh individuals might get some blood work to see if there was a myocardial infarction or heart attack and so the investigators have this really interesting study design is you can see from this graphical abstract on the video portion of this podcast if you're on iTunes or Spotify just click the link below and you'll you'll get this image here so these individuals underwent angiography and then they also had some blood tests looking at Mass spectroscopy looking at the detection uh or trying to ascertain and enumerate the presence of microplastic and they had a control group and they also had an intervention group or people not an intervention group they had an arm of the study who was experiencing significant symptoms related to poor cardiovascular function or heart attack and they found significant correlations between blood levels of microplastics of all kinds phalates polyethylene and various different M microplastic species and the concentration in the blood of microplastics directly correlated with the severity of the acute coronary syndrome and the symptoms related to a heart attack now here's where it's hard to Suess out the direction of causality could it be that the individuals having a heart attack are having significant occlusion or naring of the vessels and that is causing the liberation of the microplastics that's one Theory but the other theory is that these microplastics are directly causing and are linked with immunologic shifts that increase the susceptibility to develop plaques in the first place that will over time cause a heart attack or a stroke or blood clot okay so that's the more uh the more pragmatic way way to sort of think about this and the investigators I'll share with you what they wrote but as you can see here from figure five there's a direct correlation between blood levels of microplastics and risk of coronary artery disease as well as the acute coronary syndrome so we're going to talk a little bit more about this I think this is really interesting to keep in mind because as I mentioned you know the the medical community is still very very focused on having you cut out butter red meat and minimizing sat fat consumption and lowering your oldal cholesterol um when was the last time you heard a mainstream medical doctor say you know you need to stop drinking out of plastic bottles I don't know I I haven't been in the doctor in years because I run my own labs and most of my friends are doctors anyway so I get advice from them but um our doctor I don't know let me know in the comments are are healthc care practitioners talking about this yet if not they should because we have recently reported a study finding that microplastic accumulation was significantly correlated with erectile dysfunction and was found in the penile tissue we didn't talk about this study but in April of this year there was an analysis finding that microplastics are detected in the human male testicles we now see this in the placenta so it's in the coronary arteries it's in the cored arteries it's in the penis it's in the testicles it's in the placenta these things are everywhere so you might be saying what do I do about this well the number one thing I think the number one source of exposure I should say more accurately is from plastic water okay there was I believe it was UCLA or Mount Cy or Cedar cyani sorry looked at the amount of microplastic found in pla commonly over the count you know just stored by plastic water and we're talking about millions of particles per liter so if you're drinking out of plastic water bottles just don't just don't do it the second source that I think is really important to minimize is coffee cups and I'll share with you in a moment why that might be and I think we should all bring our stainless steel tumbler to coffee places I'm not saying don't ever go out and get coffee I do that all the time I get a matcha tea or an espresso or whatever but I ask for the fer mug and a stainless steel tumbler so we're going to dive into that shortly but friends thank you for being here if you're enjoying the content hit that like button let me know what you think in the comment section now since we're talking about Plastics I think one way to help to excrete these Plastics is by supporting glutathione this is your body's most important intracellular antioxidant as well as detoxification molecule it's been shown to help neutralize some of the problems that have been linked or ascribed to PL microplastic exposure because it turns out as we will talk about microplastic effects your immune system which could increase the risk of having all these other complications that we've been discussing so if especially as you get into your 40s and 50s and Beyond you want to support glutathion levels because glutathion levels inversely correlate with age the older you are the lower your levels are going to be and scientists at Baylor have recently found that pairing NAC as well as the amino acid glycine together helps support multiple aspects of Aging as well well as um supporting healthy glutathion levels so I wanted to let you know about the novel NAC glycin Supreme by myoscience that not only features 1,600 milligrams of NAC which is a very Hefty dose along with, 1600 mgrs of glycine but also torine together in an easy to drink powdered drink that you can drink in the evening because glycine also in addition to providing one of the three essential amino acids to make glutathion it helps support sleep glycine is really important for sleep as well so you can take it in the evening it will help your sleep and research shows that it also may help support healthy aging you can save by going to myos science.com and use the code podcast at checkout I will put links in the description below so getting back to disposable coffee cups you might be saying well gosh these are cardboard they're paper like how hard harmful could they really be well you might notice that inside of many to go food packaging even at Whole Foods I mean Whole Foods is not not implicit here I mean they are part of the problem and I I it's hard right you make a a product that people are uh consuming food out of you don't want the food to stick to it like if you just ate out of a cardboard box like and you had like a rice and potatoes and some meat it would start to embed into the cardboard and so these food packaging companies they line the uh cardboard material with polyethylene with micr with plastic and so you add hot elements to that like coffee or tea and guess where that's going that's going into your coffee or tea or your food and so it turns out that food packaging as well as drink packaging is a significant source of exposure to these microplastics that as we now know are not benign increased blood levels of these microplastics are linked with heart attack like symptoms they are linked with cored artery plaque and all you need is a little piece of cored artery plaque to break off and then you can get a stroke this is serious stuff and so you need to be kind of a nerd when you go to the coffee shop or you go out with your friends tell the Barista hey can you put that in a for here a ceramic mug most Co I've never actually had Kickback I mean there are small sometimes a very small coffee shop that doesn't even have forer mugs but most do and they like to sometimes sell you their mugs they'll brand their mugs and put their logo on it and all that so um and sometimes I buy those it's kind of fun so you got to be a little bit nerdy about this stuff because you don't want to have erectile dysfunction you don't want this stuff to get into your genitals your organs you s certain do not want it to get into your coronary or cored arteries like I said all you need is little piece to break off and you you're going to have to spend significant amount of time in the hospital you want to avoid that so I think the data really shows that as we get older Our arteries stiffen and we lose elasticity and a major working theory has been that it's the cholesterol and the saturated fat and the butter and the Tallow that is causing all this uh atherosclerosis but another more plausible Theory because if you look at the incidents and the rates of all these vascular complications that have been occurring they temporarily coincide with the introduction of microplastics and we're now seeing younger and younger people having Strokes having heart attacks I mean how many videos have you seen the last year where an individual is playing soccer or basketball and they grab their chest and they fall over I mean we're seeing a lot of that so there are multiple causes here but I we can't rule out the possibility that microplastic exposure is actually driving this whole phenomenon of atherosclerosis that is leading to premature cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease like Strokes uh and mortality from that uh and so I think really good uh information here and what I think is important I want to finish off here uh this is table 4 and the investigators are looking at various Incans and cyto kindes and it turned out the levels of microplastic correlate on par uh with blood levels of various Incans that are pro-inflammatory particular Incan 6 which we know to be one of the prototypical pro-inflammatory sakin and so that correlated uh linearly with blood microplastic levels as well as other sakin like interferon uh and Beyond now sakin do vary based upon you know the time of day that they're drawn and so forth but I think it makes sense logically to think that you know these microplastics are not only hardening Our arteries which is problematic in of itself but they're driving inflammatory pathways in the body I mean how many people do you know that have allergies that have skin issues that have weird autoimmune conditions and we blame the environment and people just say oh it's the environment is changing but let's be a little bit more specific I mean could it be the microbiome sure but probably these microplastics are immunogenic and that's why I mentioned I think NAC especially if you've had a historical increased body burden or exposure to plastic water bottles and things like that uh make a lot of sense going in the sauna sweating detoxifying by way of uh improving body temperature the sweat we've talked before about the blood urine sweat study from Stephan jennis over in Alberta Canada he's found when putting people in saunas or doing hot yoga that uh persistent organic pollutants like microplastics as well as heavy metals actually are found and detected in the sweat and so I know uh sauna has been relegated as a luxury it's and I understand you need some resources to access a sauna other countries like Finland and Norway and parts of Eastern Europe saunas are everywhere and so I think we should all uh we should be subsidizing sauna instead of subsidizing Doritos and Cheetos like why aren't we doing that that does it makes no sense you know where our government is allocating uh taxpayer dollars to and speaking of Doritos and Cheetos the lining of Doritos and Cheetos and all the fast food and processed food you're getting significant microplastic exposure from that so I think the benefits here is when you eat a whole healthy real food diet where you're making majority of your meals at home from scratch uh and you're being more mindful when you go out and enjoy coffee or alcohol or whatever with friends that you're uh requesting these things or um you know delivered in ceramic or stainless steel uh mugs and cups and things of the sort and just being mindful bringing your water with you you know when you go out and you're going to go shopping with your friends or spend the day with your partner or your kids just fill up your stainless steel water bottle before you leave home so you don't have to have an Impulse at 3:00 you haven't had water all day so you succumb to the plastic bottle at the fair whatever just plan a little bit of planning ahead can significantly reduce your exposure to these microplastics and we now have pretty good data that they're harmful in a in a serious way having a heart attack or a stroke I mean that's serious stuff here and and the data is pretty clear that these Plastics are hardening Our arteries and and are linked with inflammatory Pathways so it's time to be a little bit more intentional about this guys I I can't tell you how many times I go to a health conference and there's plastic water bottles on the on the you know in the display table it's like what are we doing we all have to be a little bit more serious about this and share this message with friends or family because I think people think oh it's just a little water like what's the harm in this well a little water uh you know 16 ounces I mean that's we're talking about hundreds hundreds of thousands if not millions of pieces of microplastic and so you add that up to one little bottle of water every day over the course of a lifetime pretty soon you might have significant atherosclerosis as a consequence of that so we have pretty good data please share this mage message plastic is not safe especially I will say for children so make sure that your kids are not cooking in plastic or and and all the fast food I think part of the reason why fast food and convenience food is so unhealthy and the people that consume it look so unhealthy is because not just that this food is manufactured in a lab somewhere it's the packaging I think the P packaging is a significant source of exposure to these compounds so again you want to minimize your intake and exposure and enhance your excretion part of that is exercise this is why exercise is so Health promoting just going for a run and getting hot you're sweating you're sweating this stuff out which is great you can go for a run sweat and then hop in the sauna for a couple minutes we get a SAA blanket there's a lot of things that you can do so as always I'm grateful that you tuned all the way in hopefully you find these videos helpful if you did hit that like button be sure to subscribe and let me know what you think of this video in the comment section below we'll catch you on a future one down the road