Well. Welcome everybody. Welcome back. This is a epic episode of Reverse Your Heart Disease. Naturally. Summit. People hear all the time about plant based diets having the capacity to reverse heart disease.
And we know scientifically it's true. And we've interviewed the great doctor, Dean Ornish and the great Caldwell Esselstyn and Joel Fuhrman, MD is my co-host.
We've had other amazing nutritionists, but in my own practice, most of my patients aren't familiar with really, the grandfather of them all that preceded all of the amazing doctors I mentioned Mr.
Nathan, Pretty Kid, and the clinic that bears his name. And we have the medical director, Doctor Deneen Fuji, and I hope I got that right. I think I did, I proudly always keep in my office a book written by Nathan Frederick Kim, as well as some others, that these were New York Times bestsellers.
And there are, so many publications and patients. My own parents went to the Prediction Center and brought back lentil loaf instead of meat loaf when I was transitioning at age 18 to a plant diet.
And it was that incredible kind of timing that my home and my college diet became one and really reinforced that, this is healthy. So without further ado, Doctor Ferrucci, thank you for taking the time to educate this large crowd about the Prediction Center.
Thank you. It's really my pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's absolutely critical that you be here. I will just say, Doctor Ferrucci is medical director at the Prediction Longevity Center in Miami, on the grounds of the beautiful Doral Country Club.
I've been there. It's quite, quite remarkable. She's a medical graduate of Louisiana State University School of Medicine, has been treasurer of the AMA, LSU chapter state project, chair of LSS New Medical Society, Florida Hospital Resident Research Award, and former president of Women in Medicine.
20 years at the Printing and Lifestyle Center. She had a family history heart disease and decided to put her, put her chips into lifestyle medicine rather than other forms of medicine.
She has done the Disney Marathon and paddleboarding and cycling and hiking. This woman walks the walk and talks to talk both and has had to plant modify all these great Cajun French.
Recipes that her husband brought to the relationship so she knows how it is to, adopt, an American culture that promotes disease into her family, which includes herself, her husband and three sons, undoubtedly very active.
So tell us, first of all, maybe first before I ask any other question. Prediction. The actual center has been around for almost 50 years. Who was Nathan? Pretty good.
Just give us a short bio. So Nathan pretty can was clearly a man before his time. He was a pioneer in the field of longevity, medicine. And then particularly in the reversal of heart disease.
He originally, learned about this through epidemiological studies for the United States government after World War Two. He found that the food rationing during the war directly correlated with heart disease.
Going down. As soon as the war was over, people went back to eating their typical, I guess, way they had heart disease go right back up. And this was revolutionary because at that time there was not any common idea that food did anything for you.
It was more or even exercise for that matter. So he he was basically told, get your affairs in order. There's nothing we can do for you. It's in your family. Good luck.
Wow. And and I know he trained as a aerospace engineer, in fact, had a vibrant business in, coastal California as an aerospace engineer. But here we are in a reverse heart disease summit talking about a pioneer.
Really? A generation before Doctor Ornish, doc, Esselstyn Doctor Fuhrman, and others that, preceded, you know, my own interest in lifestyle and reversal, heart disease.
Incredible. So how has in this 50 year history where there's actually been a physical center of, teaching and lifestyle and inpatient, lifestyle change originally in Santa Monica, California?
Originally actually in, Santa Barbara, then Santa Monica, and now for many years of Miami. How over the years has it held on to the original teachings of Mr.
Nathan pretty can, and how has it sort of modified over the years? That's a fantastic question. We still are true to the roots, which are plant based, daily exercise.
We've added mindfulness. We've added sleep medicine, we've added, rest and rehabilitation, because the times have gotten so much more difficult for people to manage the part of the nervous system, the fight or flight.
So we've added that what we've kept is Nathan's original research that he did on himself. He actually changed his food to be able to reverse heart disease.
He had four kids, his wife, and he cooked recipes, and he literally checked his cholesterol every single week, just like we do here. We've added more than the cholesterol. Of course.
We look at blood sugar and liver and kidney and uric acid, and we look at CRP, and we do a full, thorough evaluation of how does food really affect the individual person week by week?
I want people to realize we're talking about a physical place. Imagine walking into a resort, which it is, with palm trees and pools and golf courses and beautiful, hotel rooms.
That can be an option, but not mandatory to stay in. But then we go over to this beautiful building because again, when I visited it, where? There is a demo kitchen and a very large dining hall and a very large fitness center and a large medical clinic, how many people, at the prediction Center in Miami, are actually there any given full workday now that the pandemic is, you know, pretty much quieted down?
Well, we're seasonal, just like, most of South Florida is we have our snowbird season, which we're full underway. We can go up to 90 people, you know, in a week's time.
Our low season might be about 40, when it's hot. How many people actually work at the Brick and Center? Just about 100 to take it out. Yeah. Whole team approach.
You know, we have the whole full kitchen that, really goes to great lengths to make healthy food taste good. And I didn't, know if people would really, adapt to that.
But being at in 20 years, I've seen people not only get the results, but they say, you know, I, I like eating this way. Now, this is my new normal and I like it.
So not everybody listening to A knows that in 2010, our, health care system in the United States recognized the Can program in something called intensive cardiac rehab and said, you can go to Miami after your bypass, after your stent, after your heart attack, or if you're having angina stable, you can go before your heart attack.
Much better way to go and spend a week and do it all. People have heard of cardiac rehab, not all have heard of intensive cardiac rehab. And your insurance company, after appropriate authorization will pay for the medical aspects of that.
So tell us about the intensive cardiac rehab program, please. Sure. I would be happy to, but I want to just say one little thing about how Nathan figured out about, aerobic exercise, even before the great Kenneth Cooper coined the word aerobic.
Okay, at that time, he was told, Nathan, you better not walk too far. You might find yourself face up on the concrete. You better nap. You better take elevators.
He actually saw some research on dogs and treadmills and saw how it increases. Blood flow to the heart. Collateral circulation in particular. So once again, he, defied modern medicine at the time, which said, you know, food and exercise won't do a thing.
You can't change this. He did a stress test on himself every single week. And that was the beginning of cardiac rehab. He actually said his heart disease would have reversed faster had he been able to do the pace of cardiac rehab we do today, so intensive rehab is the pinnacle.
I think Nathan would be very, very pleased at how that's come out of his original work. ICR intensive means we do 72 sessions as opposed to 36 with general cardiac rehab.
It's a totally immersive with, not only the exercise portion, but also teaching the label, reading, teaching the cooking, teaching the mindset in an outpatient basis.
We originally, lobbied him to try to get this covered by insurance and have it at the Miami Center, which we did for the beginning, and everyone trained with us.
We put all the, hospital cardiologists, nutritionists, exercise staff, yeah, at the Predicting Longevity Center here in Miami. However, in looking nationwide, the decision was made to now have it based out of individual hospitals.
So currently we're not actually running ICR out of Miami anymore. Now we're running it through about 30 hospitals across the nation, growing all the time.
This was more advantageous to the patient. They could stay with their home. Cardiologist, especially if they just had a heart attack and they felt more comfortable, being in their own environment.
And so they do it in many, many, many, many hospitals throughout the US where people can find a way to have that covered by insurance. It's the exact same knowledge that predict can use to reverse its own heart disease.
It's the same that we teach at the mother center where we are. It's fantastic. So people will spend 72 hours learning about plant based nutrition, mind body medicine, but they'll actually do the traditional cardiac rehab, which is perhaps a recumbent bike, a treadmill, a, lightweight, be monitored very, very carefully.
Again, I've been in the gym at the beautiful Broken Center Miami. And, see, you know that it's a medically equipped gym, and very carefully supervised, I will say I served as medical director of cardiac rehab at my very large hospital in suburban Detroit through 2011.
And when we heard word that the Prediction Center had been approved, I agitated as a longtime plant based supporter, to no success. I moved on to a different, situation.
But, quickly thereafter, Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, about 45 minutes away from where I am right now, and then their sister hospital in a area called Livingston County, both put in the program I visited.
I know the medical director. It's chain. I refer to it. It's changed lives. I tell people, you know, for 12 weeks or eight weeks, just drive the extra 45 minutes because the education you're going to get and the fact that it's approved originally by Medicare, but now it's extended to many, many other insurances.
So, fantastic stuff. Tell us about, you know, the experience with diseases, because you may visit the, Prediction Center in Miami and insurance won't pay for it, but you might go for high blood pressure.
And what are you going to do for that person that says, I'm going to come in for a week or two? I need, desperately, a lifestyle change. I mean, they're going to see medical docs.
Absolutely. In fact, I think one of the best parts of the premium program is the face to face time you get with the doctor who customizes everything for you.
This is not to say that they lose touch with the doctor home. Of course we're going to, you know, continue to have them follow up with their doctor. But this is an educational immersion program and is in a resort setting where it's a lot of fun and you don't realize how much you're absorbing in your habits, which is the thing that people find most difficult on their own in their home environment.
We take you out of the rat race and you come for a healthy vacation, so to speak. But you're learning and you're you're learning so much that it becomes the new normal, very practical.
People say when I want results, I come to prediction. And this may be heart disease like ICR, right? ICR does things for heart disease. That is coronary artery disease.
It's been approved also for congestive heart failure. So we see a lot of folks with heart failure have to go back into the hospital, get loaded up with salt, loaded up with fluid.
We teach a way to eat healthy where the salt is much lower to where the, breathing is better. The weight comes off, as you mentioned, high blood pressure.
That's one of the claims to fame. 83% leave without medication. And this is sometimes people on 4 or 5 medicines leave on to somebody on two, or one might leave on a half dose.
Now, should they be off of it for the rest of their life? That's going to simply depend on whether they eat the way that their body needs them to. But the exciting thing is they get to see it in their own body day after day after day for two weeks.
That's our general program, two weeks where you'll get all of the lectures we recommend, especially for someone's first visit, that two weeks get you the fundamentals, and then the second week would be our action plan.
How do you take all this great knowledge and experience home into your own environment? Takes a while to change the standard American diet when you've grown up a certain way.
We have a very full occupancy during holidays. Right now, during the winter season, we get very full, people enjoy spending the holidays or even in the summer, because that's why we run our specials.
So it turns out that there's so many things that people learn, and they don't realize how much easier it makes the rest of their life. Doctors oftentimes will email us, and actually ask, what did you tell my patient?
I've been telling them that all this time, and I said, well, it's just a lot easier doing it in a group where everybody's got the same mindset. It's kind of, enthusiasm.
You get motivation from seeing the person who's sicker than you say, wow, if I don't change something that's going to make me in a few years, or you might get motivation from somebody who's in their 80s or 90s who is really doing great and like, wow, I never met anybody of that age that has this much mental awareness, cardiac.
And then, you know, seeing the heart disease, reverse hearing people who were told they were going to die. And here they are 20 years later, they didn't reach denotes a stent.
They didn't clogged their bypass. Because the truth of the matter is, if you don't change, those aren't cures. Yeah. You're just going to clog the new one.
The way you plugged the original. So when people see all of this inspiration, it really flips a switch to where they, I think, say to themselves, I must be some kind of fool not to make these changes.
And when it becomes the patient's own idea and not the doctor, that's what I love to see it all come full circle. The person says, this is what I want to do.
This is my health investment. This is worth it to me. So it's a really rewarding thing to see. Even type two diabetes, which I was not taught in school, could reverse.
I've seen that go into remission, and it's quite fascinating that the same thing that helps your heart, we believe, is helping prevent dementia and cutting down on some of the what we used to call age related conditions.
Now we think they're more lifestyle than genetic in some cases. So it's very, very rewarding that if you decide to take these steps, you can have a whole different experience of your current everyday life with energy being, feeling better in your own skin, and also the longevity, your risk of having chronic disease complications really plummets.
Very rewarding to watch people discover that and live it. So you you tossed out an absolutely amazing statistic that 83% of people that go through the two week program, with an issue of high blood pressure, will reduce or some eliminate their medicine while they are there.
And obviously as long as they adhere to the program at home. Now, you know that because the Prediction Center is a research center. Well, more than 100 medical publications, we're not just taking this from your mouth, which is a very honest and ethical and, esteemed mouth, but anybody can go to, pub med.gov, National Library of Medicine, go back to the what, the 1980s, maybe even the 1970s and see some early publications.
77 yes. Nathan predictions original study was on the veterans in California. It was a big study and as a matter of fact, he was on 60 minutes. He's been in the, Congress. He's recorded.
There's been so many land breaking, he really research that has shook the world to say, wow, this really works. Cardiologists actually wanted to know where could they send their patients to learn what Nathan was teaching.
Nathan said, well, send them on to the Prediction Center. And that's where it was born back in the 1970s. Incredible, incredible. And, you know, let's talk a little bit more about Nathan because he is so amazing or was and anybody can read the book I have in front of me the Prediction promise 28 days to a Longer, Healthier Life by Nathan Prediction.
And then there are many other books by other writers for the Prediction Center. But Nathan, you know, kind of gambled it all. He knew that he could reverse heart disease.
And when he passed away in around 1985, I recall tell everybody what he did with a request, after life for his autopsy results. He wanted it made public.
And the reason he wanted to make it public is because he knew he didn't have disease anymore. And he knew he used to have pretty serious disease. He wanted to show as a man, almost 30 years older, 30 years older, his arteries were clean.
There was no heart disease. Thus proving his life's work was very legitimate and evidence based. Yeah. And if I recall again, I believe his autopsy, which, of course, he couldn't have predicted during life, he was, putting it out there that I have enough confidence that I'll publish my autopsy postmortem.
And, it was, I think, in the New England Journal of Medicine, which got a lot of attention and a lot of eyeballs. It was a very prestigious medical journal.
Right? That's right. Wow. Wow. So we talked about something people are, you know, clearly interested 83% reduction or elimination during this day in blood pressure medicine.
What happens over a two week stay on average? Of course, we know people very to wait. So let's take that one. Yeah. So originally when people come in, we tell them weight loss is a side effect of healthy lifestyle.
So your goal is not to try to dehydrate yourself, not try to starve yourself. Because we see in long term studies this does not maintain or sustain over a lifestyle, a like a person's lifetime.
They generally don't continue if you just focus on weight. So when people actually lose weight, it again, it is not our, focus to say, oh, you have to lose a pound a week or 10 pounds a month, or everybody is at their own pace based on their abilities.
Some people are able to go faster, some people a little bit less, but everybody loses weight. The first certainly is when we drop salt. Since water follows salt like a sponge, people do what's the medical term?
We diaries, which is we let go of all that, fluid, that kind of bloats you up and, you know, makes your rings tight and the soft lines and so people are like, wow, I feel so much better in my body.
Even my joints feel less stiff, which is quite fascinating that that's a whole other topic for another day. But it appears that healthy lifestyle may have a role to play in the experience of the aches and pains of aging.
So I think in general, people do, they are satisfied with their weight loss. But I want to really dispel the myth that we're a fat farm. That maybe what, some people have said, but we're really not about just focusing on weight loss, per se.
Weight loss does come. And the best thing is, this might be the last time you lose that last 25 pounds, you're not going to go up and down. So I just encourage people don't put the focus just on the weight, but on what you're eating and your body's metabolism becomes more efficient and you enjoy foods.
Still, there's no more of this emotional stress eating because you have a different relationship with food. Once you see food, it's medicine you no longer see.
Food is good or bad, okay? And so all of these things tend to work themselves out. So I don't put a whole lot of attention on the scale. Although we do measure and people do want to know and they do lose weight.
I'll say it's variable from in a two week visit, maybe somewhere between at the low side, 5 pounds at the high side, maybe 10 or 12 depending on if it's a man or a woman, how big we are, how much we, you know, we're loaded up to begin with.
What might happen in two weeks to, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol before. And I'm discharged from the program. So we actually focus more on the triglyceride, because that's the immediate effect of eating.
It's a really fantastic to see. Blood pressure changes first triglycerides. The second the triglycerides can go down. Get this sometimes 33 to 50% in seven days.
I came from a cardiac hospital. I would have never believed such results had a patient brought them to me. So any doctors out there, if you've seen the patient, they didn't cheat.
No, we don't add statins to the food. I've been accused of that. We've been accused of putting blood pressure medicine in the food because people cannot believe that these numbers are real.
They'll say, but when I was 18, I had a cholesterol problem. Oh, I was already starting to show blood pressure. In my 20s, I got the white coat syndrome, which we all know probably happens more than in the doctor's office.
So it it's actually significant. We find that these folks never probably knew how to eat when they were 18. Think about it. How did we eat when we were young?
We just did whatever we wanted to do. So a lot of people who thought there was no way they could get lower numbers see these amazing reductions. And as you know, triglycerides don't really have much effect from statins.
Statins don't really work that well. So we see a huge effect from the food. Just within a week, the LDL can take a little bit longer. We do recommend people stay on their statins for the time being.
If you want to earn your right to come off of the statin and I say earn the right, you have to prove yourself to your doctor at home that I like the quarterly plan you do every three months, and you're checking how you are.
Spring, summer, winter, fall. Once you've passed the test and your doctor sees that you've maintained beautiful numbers all year round, now you can start talking about maybe the medicine can be reduced.
I want to share an anecdote with you in the audience, but, my parents went, pretty good in California and came back with a completely changed perspective.
Good bye. I'm getting goulash. Hello, tofu. Stir fries. And I was again, just entering college and medical school. And this all made an impact on me and my own very long relationship with plant based diets.
But they were invited there by friends of theirs or just a couple of years older. Those friends are still alive at age 96 and 93. That's very vibrant.
And I think my mother ate, dinner with them last night. But the the female part of that, relationship said to me a couple of years ago at age 89, you know, I have followed the Prediction Center program food so carefully for 45 years.
I want to calcium score, heart CT scan, calcium score. And I argued with her. You know, you're doing wonderful. You look great. You have absolutely no symptoms.
And she said to me, it's $99. I just need a prescription. I'm very curious. I want to know. She is undoubtedly probably the oldest, female ever shown to have a calcium score of zero.
Of course, I have a lot of 45 year old women that are zero, but 89. And now I'm not going to retest her at 93. I'm pretty confident she stays zero. But it is an anecdote.
I've never written that up and I don't know for sure. That's the oldest calcium score. Zero winner of cardiovascular health. But sort of like Nathan's own story.
You always need a little bit more proof, and there's just more and more to share with you. So it's made a big impact. That's inspirational. Thank you so much.
The more we hear of stories of real living people who are doing it, the more people realize, wait, if they can do it, maybe I should try. And there's a lot of evidence out there.
So it's very it's very exciting to meet real people who have done it. I just wanted to talk a little about the website because I get emails regularly and their website is pretty incom pretty cnn.com, and I am sure that there's a place for anybody listening to sign up and get free newsletters.
I don't find them sales lady, so nobody needs to get too worried. You guys have a library of resources? Jack? Why don't you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah. So we have a fantastic new, updated website. There's, sections for professionals to look at the research and, and anybody really who wants to look at the research, there's, articles, all the time.
We call it the prediction perspective. You get to see what other people have said who have come and their success stories again, more real world people.
You get to meet, your program advisor and you ask any questions. You're right. We don't do any kind of a high pressure sale. So the program speaks for itself.
What we do is we have people come in and they'll do an exercise, treadmill test. They'll get their blood. They get time with the doctor. That is, you know, quite frankly, a lot of face time where you can customize what their goals are.
Rather than problem list. We call it goals because people have health goals and this is a health investment. And then we figure out how best to customize prediction for each and every individual goals.
I will also point out in the team of doctors that I work with, they're fantastic. We will all, teach what is the most important, probably priority of those health goals.
And we'll show what is the most practical way to achieve that in the real world, we have dining out experiences. We have grocery store shopping trips where you can put your label reading class to real work, and the real world, where you can practice ordering and eating with one of our nutritionists.
To see how to overcome some of the hidden, things that you might think are healthy. And I actually really think that that's valuable. And people say that's a really a shock.
And, type of situation. A lot of folks are really, really trying to eat healthy. And when they learn weight that isn't healthy, that doesn't have what I thought it it or that does contain, you mean that's not really zero?
Zero doesn't mean zero on the food label. How is this possible? And people are really, really shocked. So I'm very proud of the educational piece that people will get from the website.
Tons of articles, lots of resources. That's all free. And then if they come for a visit, the the education is just. That's why I work there. I actually live two hours away.
I literally drive to come to this place because it is so amazing. It is just absolutely. I can't think of any better way to put it all together with our nutritionists, our exercise staff, our cooking school, our mindfulness behavioral health psychologist to help people, find easy ways to break through some of those places where they were previously, stuck and make it in a way that, you know, it's fun and enjoyable to the point where people say, I can do this.
My favorite words that anybody can say is, wow, I can't believe I could do this, but now I do believe I can do this. This has changed my life, and that's just the most rewarding thing any doctor can hear.
The passion is oozing the honesty is rising, the sincerity is oozing. And I think a lot of people really appreciate that and did not know that there's this many decades history of lifestyle and heart disease reversal.
And, you know, not everybody can go to, you know, and I see our program that everybody can go to True North, an amazing program. And we have interviewed Alan Gold hammer and all.
And, you know, people need to know that this amazing program, is, is alive and well. And if people don't want to stay at the resort, but are either living nearby in Miami or all, maybe it's an economic thing.
Can they stay at a nearby hotel? Or maybe they live two minutes from there again and just be very good students for two weeks of driving and coming? Well, typically we recommend people stay at the resort because what we find is once you go back to your home environment, things fall apart.
When you're in our hotel rooms, you don't have to worry about what happens if the food calls your name in the middle of the night, when you don't really feel like getting up through the traffic and getting to work out when you can just walk out of your villa across the beautiful, golf course area and the pools and you see all the lush environment and you say, you know what?
This is what I deserve. So we have not found, when people live at home and try to do it in an outpatient, that it's as effective. Sure. I think that people can learn really any way that they're open to.
But there is something quite magical, quite phenomenal about just being immersed in it. And I think that, it's a gift that you can give to your loved one, to yourself.
It was a gift that your parents gave to you. My parents gave to me the gift of learning about health at a young age. So I think that sometimes it's worth that one time, one shot.
Even if you couldn't come more than once. Just to see you know, what do I need to know? I need an owner's manual for this body. This is the only one I got.
It's a classic. At this point, we need to be able to protect it. If somebody is working on something that is, more difficult. Health goal. We've had people stay a couple months, believe it or not.
And, you know, literally change their mobility, change their whole situation, work from there. Some people get hotel rooms and work. Some people will come back at three months or six months or annually.
A lot of my patients in their 90s, I met in the 70s, and they literally came back every year. And they credit why they're hanging out with younger people, able to do things younger people do, rather than their peers who have often, unfortunately passed on.
They credit just getting the mindset, getting the reset, getting the refresh. So I think staying at the resort is probably worth it for most people to get that immersion experience.
All right. And if somebody's listening right now, they can go to the website. The website will have a way to contact or apply or speak to a advisor about, you know, arranging a visit in the next few months.
Right. We had something we call a medical application, just kind of like applying to college, but a lot easier. And, you give us a little bit of your background and we make sure we customize the program for you.
In the past, we weren't, sure about people with chronic kidney disease because some people's kidneys weren't able to handle, some of it, quite frankly, the fruits and vegetables, their body had to be very carefully monitored.
People that are on insulin, insulin pumps. So we know how to monitor this. Now, after all these years with our nutrition team and our, award winning chefs, we've been able to customize programs.
If somebody did not fill out an application, they just show up cold like you would to any hotel. We wouldn't be able to design the best program for you.
So we try to take everyone we can and give everybody a chance so that, they can have the most bang for their buck, so to speak. Fantastic. So I just want to ask you, last question.
You do believe that heart disease is a reversible condition? Listen, I can't believe I'm this old, and I'm saying this, but when I was in medical school, I knew as a former athlete that there was much more.
It could be done in the field of lifestyle. I knew it, I absolutely knew it, but we weren't allowed to say it. And now we're living in the time where we can actually say these diseases.
Yes, they can go into remission. But due to people like Nathan and and the research of, Dean Ornish and many of the other greats we have seen, this is actually reversing disease.
We even had a, ophthalmologist come. He saw retinopathy get better. I didn't even know that could happen. Quite, quite phenomenal living in this day and age.
Well, I agree I'm more excited practicing cardiology and medicine than any time in the last 33 years in my career. So thank you so much for taking the time, for sharing the passion, the experience, the history and the results.
I think for a lot of people, they're going to be fired up to check out prediction.com and hopefully there will be a lot of people will meet you face to face as medical directors.
So thank you so much for your kindness. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. And, just everybody come on down. It's a great experience. Thank you so much, doctor, for doing this fantastic summit to get the awareness out that this is something you don't just have to give up on.
You can definitely do it. Well, it was a better summit because it included you. So thank you, thank you.
