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Wisdom Wednesdays: A Simple Blood Test That Predicts Your Cardiovascular Risk And Longevity, And Is Easy To Influence · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

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  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today,
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  Speaker 1: I want to talk about a very simple blood marker
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  Speaker 1: that can predict your risk of cardiovascular disease and how
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  Speaker 1: long you're going to live to a certain extent. And
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  Speaker 1: the very cool thing about this blood marker, unlike many
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  Speaker 1: other blood markers, is it's very easy to change. So
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  Speaker 1: I want to talk about something called the Amiga three
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  Speaker 1: index that was created back in two thousand and four
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  Speaker 1: by doctor Bill Harris and doctor Vaughan Shacky. They published
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  Speaker 1: an article that basically announced the creation of the Amiga
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  Speaker 1: three index, and it's now been used in quite a
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  Speaker 1: few research studies. And there's a particular one of interest
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  Speaker 1: that I want to discuss that was actually pub least
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  Speaker 1: in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in late twenty
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  Speaker 1: and twenty one, and the title of the paper is
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  Speaker 1: using an aritzocyte fatty acid fingerprint to predict risk of
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  Speaker 1: all cause mortality the Framingham Offspring cohort.
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  Speaker 2: So a little bit of background for this. We have
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  Speaker 2: known for a while that red.
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  Speaker 1: Blood cell and long chain Amiga three fatty acid percentages
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  Speaker 1: are being associated with lower risk for total mortality, but
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  Speaker 1: it's been unknown to this point if looking at a
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  Speaker 1: whole heap of fatty acids could actually improve risk prediction.
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  Speaker 1: And so the objective of this study was to compare
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  Speaker 1: a combination of red blood cell fatty apid acid levels
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  Speaker 1: with standard risk factors for cardiovascular disease in predicting risk
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  Speaker 1: of all cause mortality. So in order to do this,
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  Speaker 1: and they used a cohort called the Framingham Offspring cord.
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  Speaker 1: You may have heard of the Framingham Study before. That's
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  Speaker 1: where we got a lot of the early indications about
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  Speaker 1: risk factors for cardiovascuar disease.
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  Speaker 2: They've been followed up for many, many years.
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  Speaker 1: And it took up a bunch of these people who
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  Speaker 1: didn't have cardiovascular disease but did have red blood cell
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  Speaker 1: fatty acid measurements and a number of basic clinical measures
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  Speaker 1: at the start, and then they followed them for eleven
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  Speaker 1: years and they basically evaluated the association of eight standard
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  Speaker 1: risk factors things that are typically used for cardiovascuar disease. Age, sex,
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  Speaker 1: total cholesterol hits, the ESK hits, the L cholesterol, whether
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  Speaker 1: or not you were on medication for hypertension, your systolic
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  Speaker 1: blood pressure, you're smoking status, and whether or not you
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  Speaker 1: had diabetes. And then they compared that with twenty e
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  Speaker 1: at fatty acid measures and looked at the associations with
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  Speaker 1: all cause mortality, and what they actually find was that
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  Speaker 1: this Amiga three index that was created years ago by
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  Speaker 1: Bill Harris was actually as good a predictor of all
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  Speaker 1: cause mortality as the standard traditional ones that we've done
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  Speaker 1: that I just listed. But really interestingly, and this study
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  Speaker 1: found that the people who had a high Amiga three index,
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  Speaker 1: which was a score of eight percent or greater, had
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  Speaker 1: a whopping ninety percent reduced risk of sudden cardiac death
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  Speaker 1: compared to those who had an Amiga three index of
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  Speaker 1: less than four percent or four percent or less. I
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  Speaker 1: should say, now just take a moment to clarify what
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  Speaker 1: this Amiga three index is. As I said, it measures
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  Speaker 1: the amount of Mega three in your red blood celled membranes. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the reason that this is important a lot of traditional
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  Speaker 1: measures of Amiga three fatty acid status have been done
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  Speaker 1: in your plasma pospholippets. And this is end of the
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  Speaker 1: CM as a measuring blood glucose versus HbA one C.
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  Speaker 1: So some people may know this already. Your blood glucose
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  Speaker 1: is very heavily influenced by what you recently et as
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  Speaker 1: is your plasmo phosphol lipid measure of a mega three
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  Speaker 1: fairy acid. So it really is reflective of whether or
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  Speaker 1: not you've had any Amiga threes, fish or other sources
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  Speaker 1: of mega threes in the last twenty four hours before
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  Speaker 1: you've done the test.
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  Speaker 2: Whereas, because red.
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  Speaker 1: Blood sales take one hundred and twenty days to turn over,
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  Speaker 1: and you're actually getting a measure of the last four months,
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  Speaker 1: just like HbA one C is a much more stable
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  Speaker 1: measure than your blood glucose. So, and as I said,
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  Speaker 1: those with the high a mega three index have had
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  Speaker 1: ninety percent reduced risk of sudden cardiac death compared to
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  Speaker 1: those who had four percent or less. But interestingly, in
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  Speaker 1: this cohort, and the people who had eight percent or
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  Speaker 1: more so a high Amiga three index had a five
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  Speaker 1: year approximately increased life expectancy compared to the people who
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  Speaker 1: had an Amiga three index of five percent or less. Now,
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  Speaker 1: very interestingly, in the United States, the average Amiga three
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  Speaker 1: index is around five percent, it's just below five percent.
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  Speaker 1: And in Japan, because they eat a lot of fish,
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  Speaker 1: and their Amiga three index of the population on average
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  Speaker 1: is eight percent, and we know that the Japanese live
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  Speaker 1: five years longer on average than the Americans. So that
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  Speaker 1: is a very very interesting correlation that in this study
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  Speaker 1: they found that people within eight percent and a Mega
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  Speaker 1: three index that lived five years longer than people with
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  Speaker 1: five percent of Mega three indecks are less and we
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  Speaker 1: see exactly the same thing reflected in the population the
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  Speaker 1: United States versus Japan. But it's interesting to do a
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  Speaker 1: little bit of a deeper dive in the study because
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  Speaker 1: they had a table in there that really caught and
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  Speaker 1: what they looked at in this table, or what they
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  Speaker 1: represented in this table were what's known as the Kaplan
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  Speaker 1: Meyer survival curves of a bunch of different people. So
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  Speaker 1: what they did was looked at the percentage chance of
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  Speaker 1: them surviving and to certain ages, and they had four
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  Speaker 1: different categories. They had those who had a high a
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  Speaker 1: Mega three index and were non smokers. Then they had
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  Speaker 1: those who had a high a Mega three index who
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  Speaker 1: were smokers. Then they had those who had a lower
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  Speaker 1: Mega three index non smokers and low a Mega three
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  Speaker 1: index and smokers. Now you won't be surprised to hear
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  Speaker 1: that the people who had the least chance of survival
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  Speaker 1: to the age of seventy five with those of the
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  Speaker 1: lowest Amiga three index who were smokers, and they had
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  Speaker 1: just over a fifty probably fifty five percent chance of
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  Speaker 1: survival to the age of I think it was about
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  Speaker 1: seventy six m in this study then, and very interestingly,
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  Speaker 1: those who had the high Amiga three index but were
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  Speaker 1: non smokers, and they had over eighty probably eighty five
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  Speaker 1: to ninety I'm just kind of reading it off the graph,
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  Speaker 1: a percentage of survival to the age of around seventy six.
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  Speaker 1: But the really interesting thing was somewhere in the middle
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  Speaker 1: were both those who were smokers with the high Amga
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  Speaker 1: three index and those who were non smokers with a
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  Speaker 1: low Amiga three index, right, so, and they were pretty
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  Speaker 1: much inseparable. So what this was basically saying was having
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  Speaker 1: a low Amiga three index is akin to being a smoker,
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  Speaker 1: or if you're a smoker, you might want to hear
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  Speaker 1: it presented this way. If you're a smoker and you
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  Speaker 1: have an Amiga three index of eight or greater, it
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  Speaker 1: pretty much nullifies the impact of smoking and compared to
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  Speaker 1: people who have a low.
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  Speaker 2: Amiga three index.
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  Speaker 1: So I think these two things taken together, are pretty
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  Speaker 1: strong evidence that we need to have a high Amiga
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  Speaker 1: three index.
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  Speaker 2: So how do we do that? The best way to
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  Speaker 2: do that is eat lots of fish.
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  Speaker 1: If they don't like to eat a lot of fish,
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  Speaker 1: we know that supplementing for greater then two grams or
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  Speaker 1: two grams are greater. A day of really high quality
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  Speaker 1: fish oil over a number of months will get you
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  Speaker 1: up to that level. And if you're a vegetarian or vegan,
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  Speaker 1: you will not get to that level just by eating
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  Speaker 1: things like flax seeds because they're pretty poorly converted. You're
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  Speaker 1: going to need to take a supplement, ideally one of
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  Speaker 1: the really good quality micro algae supplements, which is the
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  Speaker 1: stuff that the fish actually eat. So that's really what
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  Speaker 1: you want to be looking at, rather than trying to
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  Speaker 1: get it from flax seeds and linseed oil and that
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  Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Now, the other big question is how
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  Speaker 1: do I know what my Mega three level is? Well,
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  Speaker 1: you can go to Amiga quant that's O M E
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  Speaker 1: G A q U A n T dot com and
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  Speaker 1: you can actually order the test and it's pretty damn
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  Speaker 1: cheap and they just send it out to you and
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  Speaker 1: you do a fingerprick and off you go. I have
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  Speaker 1: got no financial ties to these guys whatsoever. I just
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  Speaker 1: think it's an absolutely awesome product, and we should all
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  Speaker 1: be getting our Amiga three Index above it.
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  Speaker 2: At least. That's it for this week. Catch you next time.