What if heart attacks weren’t a surprise? Dr. Jeffrey Boone of Boone Heart Institute shows how imaging plus modern meds can make heart disease optional. Bold claim, big data. Listen and tell us: would you get scanned before symptoms?
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Ashley Love (00:00):
So now I'm so old now that many, many things have
come true.
And so now at what could be thetail end of my career, uh I'm
being viewed with, wow, you knewthis 30 years ago.
And so I've gone from beingcapital C crazy to lowercase C
crazy
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (00:18):
cool.
Ashley Love (00:18):
What if heart attacks weren't a surprise?
Or even could be preventedaltogether?
Today I'm talking with Dr.
Jeffrey Boone, a preventivecardiologist who chose medicine
with a crazy idea and has turnedit into a life-changing
reality.
We unpack why waiting forsymptoms fails patients, how
elite athletes can still carryhidden cardiovascular disease,
(00:42):
and what heart diseaseprevention could mean for the
future of healthcare.
Welcome to Shadow Me Next, apodcast where I take you into
and behind the scenes of themedical world to provide you
with a deeper understanding ofthe human side of medicine.
I'm Ashley, a physicianassistant, medical editor,
clinical preceptor, and thecreator of Shadow Me Next.
(01:04):
I invite you to join me as wetake a conversational and
personal look into the lives andminds of leaders in medicine.
Dr.
Boone, thank you so much forjoining us on Shadow Me Next
today.
Absolutely incredible what youare doing in preventive
cardiology.
Cannot wait to discuss it withyou.
Thanks for being here.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (01:22):
Thank you very much.
Great to be here.
Ashley Love (01:24):
So let's start at the beginning.
Dr.
Boone, you are a cardiologist,um, have been doing this for a
number of years.
Has your practice in cardiologylooked the same since you
started working or has itshifted over the last number of
years?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (01:40):
Yes, I have a kind of a unique approach to
this.
I'm actually completely apreventive cardiologist, which
really doesn't exist.
It's really a cornerstone ofmedicine that has been far
underutilized.
The typical board certifiedcardiologist is really learning
procedures like how to manageemergency rooms and cath labs
(02:01):
and angiograms and pacemakers,stents, and that's a whole
different skill set than I have.
So I actually went to medicalschool for the only reason that
I went in the, you know, the 70swas to prevent heart disease.
Well, everyone sort of thoughtI was crazy because they were
just now learning how to helpfix heart disease, which I
(02:22):
thought that's fabulous, takes alot of skill.
So I would say in the world ofcardiology, which I'm not the
usual typical cardiologist, I'vebeen pursuing for, you know,
close getting close to half acentury the prevention of heart
disease.
Now, when I first started, evendoctors of all levels were not
talking about lifestyle at all.
(02:43):
And in the 70s, there were nogood medicines to use that were
actually comfortable to take toprevent these diseases.
So I sort of went in itinitially to be a voice because
I saw how powerful the degree ofMD is.
That rather than being someonewho counsels for hours and hours
(03:03):
about diet and nutrition andexercise, which is very
important, but there are manypeople that had those skills
already.
I thought just having the voiceof an MD would empower them.
And so that is how my careerbegan to develop.
And um uh my my wife, before wewere married, was the first one
(03:24):
that kind of suggested that Ishould go to med school because
I was dreaming and talking aboutour futures.
And uh, she eventually became alawyer, me, a doctor, but
neither one of us was doing muchof anything rather than just
surviving at basic jobs at thatpoint.
I had already gotten a master'sin exercise physiology.
So I was always working in uhexercise facilities.
(03:45):
In those days, there were nohealth clubs, there was no
lifetime or planet fitness,there was just big YMCA
buildings in downtown majorcities of America.
And those were sort of thefocal point of fitness,
basketball, racquetball, squash,things like that.
So that's why I worked andbegan pioneering in the uh in
the mid-70s, uh, exercise beinga medical tool, actually, to
(04:10):
evaluate your heart.
And then Paul Dudley White hadmade uh Dwight Eisenhower uh
exercise after his heart attack.
And that was veryrevolutionary.
People used to think you shouldlie still after a heart attack.
And so the YMCA became a focusof post-MI, post-cardiac event
(04:30):
rehab, and I was the exerciseperson that led the rehab in a
place of Des Moines, Iowa.
And that's where I met my wife.
So I was thinking about gettinga PhD in exercise physiology,
but I met at the time a guynamed Ken Cooper, who pioneered
aerobics and was sort of thefather of jogging almost.
And he uh I got to meet him andhe said, you know, a PhD in
(04:52):
exercise physiology would begreat.
And this was even before theLos Angeles Olympics, long, long
ago.
Um, he said, if you can be anMD, you'll just have more power,
flexibility.
You won't have to ask anybody'spermission to do much.
And so I said, Okay, where do Isign up?
Because I'd never even thoughtof being a doctor.
I was like 27, and my wife hadfirst suggested it.
(05:14):
And uh I thought you could justgo down and sign up, you know,
and uh, where do I start?
And I found out that if Iinterviewed, nobody was
interested in my ideas aboutpreventive cardiology.
But fortunately, the Universityof Iowa didn't interview, so
they didn't know that I wantedto prevent heart disease.
And so I got into Iowa.
I was a uh uh it was amiraculous entry, but my whole
(05:34):
medical school career, I was oneof the few doctors that knew
exactly what I wanted to do.
Most of the time you're gettingeducation, whether it's in
physician assistant school ormedical school, whatever, you're
sort of learning the languageof the profession, and then you
decide whether you want to gointo eyes or or skin or heart or
uh bowels or whatever you wantto go into.
(05:56):
But I knew right off what Iwanted.
So every course, whether it behistology, biochemistry, uh,
nephrology, I would always lookat what are the preventive
aspects of it?
What could exercise andnutrition do?
Um, and so that continuedthrough that process, uh, got an
internal medicine residency andreally totally focused on
preventive cardiology, whichstill didn't really exist.
(06:19):
And then uh the program I wasin now in Portland, Oregon, uh,
Nike had just invented joggingshoes.
You know, it was just gettingstarted.
And so Portland was a goodathletic running type of a city.
And so all the doctors therewere very fatherly to my
interests.
(06:39):
And so even during myresidency, I was the head of
cardiac rehab and I would do,you know, articles and write uh
papers on exercise and thedialysis patients.
So I was fortunately in a lotof places that sort of fostered
my interests.
I never really actually didinterventional cardiology or the
typical cardiology trackbecause it was really teaching
(07:00):
me everything that I wanted toprevent.
We have plenty of guys that cando stents and take care of ERs.
And so I sort of pioneered thisprofession that didn't exist.
Asymptomatic preventivecardiology.
So that's a bit of thebackground of how I got into
this and unfortunately justcontinued to try to pursue the
dream with really no jobs reallyfocused on that.
(07:21):
Uh, from healthcare systems toinsurance companies, nobody was
interested in prevention.
Um, they thought they were, andthey would advertise that they
were, but they really weren't atthe very highest level.
And then the imaging of theheart, the imaging of plaque,
and the medications, just everytwo or three years over the last
40 years, just an incrediblearray of medicines that have
(07:44):
moved cardiology now mainly intoprimary care.
Like, as I think the actualdisease of heart disease is
every specialty is involved.
And that's where a physicianassistant, nurse practitioner,
family physician internistshould actually be leading the
charge.
And cardiologists are onlythere for our failures.
(08:05):
Meaning that if we aggressivelyredefine significant and
aggressive, we've tended tothink of significant disease as
one that's involved with chestpain or severe blockages.
But actually, in our case, anyany detection of plaque,
atherosclerosis in our world atthe Boone Hart Institute is
(08:26):
viewed as the detection ofcancer.
And obviously, you don't tellanyone, well, you've got just a
little bit of cancer, so let'swait until it gets really big
and then we'll take care of it.
But that's what we do in heartdisease.
Number one, we don't measureheart disease, and number two,
we don't treat it aggressivelyuntil it's symptomatic.
Ashley Love (08:46):
Oh my gosh.
So many mind-blowing thingsthat you just mentioned right
there.
Absolutely incredible.
I want to dive into three.
There were three things thatyou mentioned, and I want to
make sure that we we really wereally push into a couple of
these.
Um, first being I am justinfatuated with the idea that
you you saw it medicine reallyas more of a platform so that
(09:08):
you could do what you needed todo.
I think a lot of people go intomedicine hoping medicine will
tell them what they should bedoing with their life, right?
For you, you knew what youneeded and you knew that
medicine would give you thatability.
And becoming an MD, um, thatwas going to be the road for
you.
Being a pioneer is verydifficult when your ideas are
(09:28):
going against the grain orperhaps a little, a little
unique.
Did you were you everdiscouraged?
Did you ever think, well, maybeI have the wrong idea in all of
this?
Maybe this is silly, maybe I'mthinking incorrectly, not just
differently.
Um, and how did you how did youmove past that?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (09:43):
Very good question.
And you put it very well.
I've never thought of thatbefore, but I I used medicine as
a platform to get where Iwanted to go, as opposed to the
reverse.
Um so interesting.
Yeah.
And so always I had everybodywas kind of intrigued with what
I was doing.
But there were a lot of uh uhnaysayers.
Oh, exercise is gonna help.
(10:04):
Who cares if you lowercholesterol, you know.
We were it was pretty easy tobe a decade ahead of whatever
was going on with like at theUniversity of Iowa where I was
in med school, they were justbeginning to invent CT scans.
And an interesting fact is thefirst inventor of the CT scan
was a guy named JoffreyHounsfield from London, and he
(10:26):
was funded by the extra moneythat the Beatles were making in
the music world.
They were looking for somethingto invest in, and so they
invested in Hounsfield.
He developed the CT scan, andnow I'm at the University of
Iowa, and it was still at theend of the time when you would
do exploratory surgery to findout about something.
And now you turn it on a CATscan and you know exactly what's
(10:48):
going on.
So I was there with just thebeginning of CT scan, so that
was kind of uh kind of amazing.
But everybody at the medschool, I'd say, I uh I'm gonna
try to prevent heart disease.
And they all thought it waskind of interesting.
And then I was pretty good atjust being focused and being
passionate about it.
And so it was hard to talk thatdown.
(11:10):
But then another thing that'sdeveloped in our work at the
Boone Hart Institute, one of ourcore corporate values is called
humble confidence, meaning thatI would always double-check, as
you say, my theories, mythoughts, what could be
possible, and really listen tonaysayers or critics and never
really got discouraged, butwould always reassess the data.
(11:32):
This is a great time to pausefor quality questions, a segment
on the show where we talk abouta question that you might hear
on your own pre-healthinterview.
So, what Dr.
Boone is talking about here isbasically this quality question.
What problem do I feelresponsible for solving, even if
no one else is focused on ityet?
So many students enterhealthcare hoping the profession
(11:55):
will tell them who to become.
Dr.
Boone did the opposite.
He chose medicine because itgave him the authority and reach
to solve a problem he alreadycared deeply about.
If healthcare were just a tool,not the goal, how would you use
it to build
or change a problem?
And it doesn't just stop atquality questions.
(12:17):
There are more resources foryou as a pre-health student on
ShadowMenext.com to include ournewly released application
readiness course.
So head on over tocourses.shadowmext.com and check
it out.
And I would often say, no, they're wrong.
I think we could prevent thisdisease.
And then as every new drugbegan to develop, oh my gosh,
(12:38):
now we've had a safety net.
So I always kind of figuredyour lifestyle is a bit like a
trapeze act.
And you want to get very goodat the trapeze.
When you fall off, though, youought to land on a safety net.
And we had very few safetynets, and that's where the
medicines come in.
So I'm happy if you loseweight, but let's get you on a
diabetic medicine while you'relosing weight, or I'm happy that
(12:59):
you're exercising to lower yourcholesterol, but let's get on a
cholesterol medicine to be asafety net if you fail, because
every meal is a new challenge.
And so that uh that that humbleconfidence, I think, got me to
through the next four decades ofuh uh and and then as I got
older and older, more of thethings that I had been sort of
pioneering in thought in mylectures and other things began
(13:21):
to come true.
So now I'm so old now thatmany, many things have come
true.
And so now at what could be thetail end of my career, uh I'm
being viewed with wow, you knewthis 30 years ago.
And so I've gone from beingcapital C crazy to lowercase C
crazy cool, you know, because alot of even world leaders are
(13:44):
saying, my gosh, he's been doingthis for 30 years, and we've
just now proven he was right.
And, you know, so very humblythough, not to say I told you
so.
Uh and then if I'm worth mysalt, what we're doing today
should be 10 years ahead ofwhat's happening even now.
That and that that's sort ofhow I weathered the uh the
discussions, the criticisms overthe year.
(14:05):
But it's usually prettylogical.
Uh, you know, i the other thingI did is in in law, you're sort
of innocent until provenguilty.
But in medicine, we make thingsguilty until we prove them
innocent.
So it takes 30 years to provethat exercise is good for you,
or 30 years to prove thatsmoking is bad for you.
(14:25):
When you could ask any10-year-old and they could have
told you the answer, but it tookdecades for the statistics to
actually prove those things.
Ashley Love (14:33):
It does seem a bit backwards.
And I'm sure your your wife,who is a lawyer, would uh
probably giggles at us andthinks uh, you know, medicine is
is quite quite reverse a lot oftimes.
I love I love the humbleconfidence that you've
described, but I also like thefact that you said you listened
to the naysayers.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople say, well, tune them out,
don't listen to them, ignorethem, ignore them.
But really, if we listen tothem with humble confidence,
(14:55):
like you said, um it's not adiscouraging thing.
It's really it's a it's a it'sa push to investigate further,
right?
Okay, well, perhaps they'reright.
Um that's fantastic.
And I'm so glad that you pushedthrough and and really have um
have pioneered this whole field.
Uh medicine has advanced.
You know, we've talked aboutthe medicines that are available
now, the GLP1s, all of that.
It's incredible what medicinehas done.
(15:17):
And you've seen you've seen thelifestyle um movement really
advance as well, right?
I mean, gosh, anywhere fromlike the post-MIYMCA to the
invention of jogging shoes.
I mean, you've seen major,major advances.
Are we in a good place rightnow in in preventive cardiology?
(15:37):
Have we have we arrived?
Is there more to do?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (15:41):
I think we've arrived.
My goal when I started mycareer, and then my my family,
my sons are the CEO, thepresident, lawyer, social media
director of our company.
And I remember a couple ofyears ago as I was getting
older, and we really had veryfew doctors that were working
with us at that time, and theythey were thinking, ah, darn,
(16:02):
your your dream is not going tocome true, because my dream is
to eradicate artifacts.
I mean, literally, and that'spossible.
And then about four years ago,we discovered that yes, we can
do that, but you've got to doexactly what Boon Hart tells you
to do, which anybody could do.
Uh, and that really empoweredme that now the next step is not
(16:24):
only to do it with ourpatients, which is pretty easy
to stop the biggest disease inthe history of the world, uh,
but how do you get it now toeverybody of every socioeconomic
class?
And you're right, we now haveuh so to kind of further answer
your question, I'm getting, wegot now several doctors.
We've even got, uh we're hiringour ninth provider here just
(16:45):
this week.
Uh, used to be just me likefour or five years ago, but
everybody is seeing thepossibilities and how free we
are.
We're unencumbered by insuranceor universities or others, but
then there's a big trust factor.
Like, unless you can trust me,you should just listen to what
they're doing in the the regularmedical world, which is pretty
(17:06):
much pedestrian, I think.
Uh the approaches are oftenthere.
And then uh what's happened isat the last meeting of the
American Heart Association inNew Orleans, just three months
ago, the whole convention justswitched to becoming preventive
cardiology.
Because now we have we have atleast 12 medicines beyond
(17:27):
statins.
Hardly any of them have anyside effects that just do
incredible things that literallyhalf of America ought to be on.
And then we have incredibleimaging.
Now, the big problem with I'vealways thought, even back in the
80s, how can you treat adisease if you don't measure it?
Like you got to look at theskin and see what's going on.
(17:49):
You've got to examine, you'vegot to find the disease.
And so almost every disease,including breast cancer and
colon cancer, we do strategiesto image the disease.
But the biggest disease thatkills the most people in the
world for the last hundredyears, we don't image.
We look at risk factors.
And cholesterol is not thedisease, blood pressure is not
(18:12):
the disease, blood sugar is notthe disease.
There are numbers that predictthe disease.
But we've always been kind ofpioneering how can you actually
image the disease?
That means you've got to lookinside the arteries.
And so, beginning with thoseCAT scans, with Hounsfield, who
invented CT, there was a scorein 1986 was developed something
(18:34):
called the coronary calciumscore, and it measured a part of
the plaque.
So that now in our world is apretty pedestrian test, but it
measures calcium.
And then the other thing, justas a sidebar, I've got a
43-year-old friend that wastalking to my daughter-in-law,
and she had a mammogram at 43,and they discovered no breast
(18:57):
cancer, but they discoveredcalcium in the mammary artery,
which is a simple heart scan.
If you have calcium in themammary artery, you've got
atherosclerosis, you've gotheart disease.
So if we could get the redribbon and the pink dress
programs together, you couldsave 10 times more lives with
mammograms if you just looked atthe calcium in the mammary
(19:19):
artery.
So there's a lot of littlecorrelations that would empower
people.
The same thing in dentistry.
If you see calcium in some ofthe images they take of your
teeth, you've got the diseasethat will kill you.
Half of America is gonna, well,all of America will die of
atherosclerosis at some point.
Half of them, something elsewill get them first, you know.
And so it is the disease and itdoesn't hurt.
(19:41):
And you look great in yourcoffin when you die young.
There you go.
Ashley Love (19:45):
Yes.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (19:45):
And then as I get older, 80's not old.
90's not old if you're 90.
And it I think you can you canprevent all those things.
So imaging, very important.
Now, calcium score, quick scanof the heart.
You can go down and get thosefor cash for a hundred dollars.
Now.
But then most people aren'tempowered to do anything.
If you've got calcium in anyartery, you need to treat
(20:07):
atherosclerosis.
You've got cancer at that pointin my mind, metastatic
atherosclerosis, and it needs tobe treated aggressively.
And aggressively, it might justbe vitamins, risk factor
control, GLP1s, PCSK9s, statins,aspirin, all kinds of vitamins,
omega-3 fish oils.
I mean, there's dozens oftherapies that will stop the
process, halt the process, andwe now know even reverse the
(20:31):
process.
Ashley Love (20:33):
It's incredible.
I mean, it is just, it is justincredible.
And thinking about this interms of cancer and how, you
know, if somebody said you haveyou have cancer, but it's just a
little bit of cancer, so we'lljust wait until it's just, I
mean, it makes no sense when youthink about it that way.
So why can we not apply it towhy should we not apply it to
(20:54):
heart disease as well?
Um, I I think what it was veryinteresting because uh what
we've always operated under, atleast, you know, uh not in
preventive cardiology, is umMI's heart attacks always felt
very um like a surprise, right?
All of a sudden you're doingfine, everybody's doing well,
and then he just had a heartattack.
It was just a surprise.
(21:15):
But from what I hear from whatyou're telling me, is it doesn't
have to be a surprise.
If we can, if we can not justlook at the risk factors, which
are helpful, but not and notreally as great as imaging with
um the uh is that the CAC, thecoronary artery, yeah, is that
what that accuracy is?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (21:31):
That is good.
Uh it's not perfect, but it'sgood.
And it's only good if you takeany calcium.
Now in 1993, I started thinkingof the idea that any calcium
score is the disease.
And that was one there was alot of naysayers.
And now 30, 40 years later,that's true.
(21:52):
If you have any calcium, theplaque as it grows in your
arteries will calcify as ittries to heal itself.
So if you treat any calciumlike you treat skin cancer, you
go after it.
You don't wait.
Oh, this is looks like asquamous cell, but let's wait
until it gets a little bigger.
Uh you know, I mean, it'sridiculous the way we've
(22:13):
approached it.
And a lot of it is, I think,uh, hospitals, cardiologists,
all well intended, but all themoney is waiting until you are
sick.
All the money.
And it is any article, if anydoctor, any program tells you
that you should wait forsymptoms, they are 100% wrong.
And that comes out of thehumble confidence.
It's that everybody's nowrealizing if you wait for chest
(22:37):
pain, you've waited too long andyou'll be lucky to live.
Now we have all kinds ofincredible things we'll do once
you get the chest pain.
Oh my gosh, all just brilliantstuff is being done at that
point.
But that's like throwing afourth quarter Hail Mary in
football.
That's right.
That's right.
You're you're in uh Tebow land,and that's a lot of fun when
you win, when you win, but a lotof times the ball doesn't land
(22:58):
in hands uh as happens uhoccasionally now during the
football playoffs.
Ashley Love (23:03):
So it brings it to a really great question, which
is how I mean, you're workingthen with patients who you've
mentioned it already, who areasymptomatic.
That means they're notexperiencing this chest pain
that you're describing.
Their legs aren't, um, youknow, they don't have
claudication.
They they're they're notexperiencing anything.
They feel generally healthy.
How is caring for somebody whodoesn't have symptoms different
(23:25):
from treating somebody perhapswith symptoms?
Are they are they motivated?
Are they less motivated?
What's that look like?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (23:31):
It's interesting.
It it a lot is around thatarea.
The best way to treat heartdisease is when you don't feel
at all bad.
Every part of it should beimaged and aggressively pursued
uh long before you havesymptoms.
Now, certainly we have a lot ofpeople that have warning
symptoms, and but really therethis guy named Nick Nurmal Howid
(23:51):
from London just did a study offive million heart attacks, and
2.5 million had no ideaanything was wrong.
And most of the, at least halfof those 2.5 million, a week
earlier, their doctor wouldn'thave even done much because
about half the people havingheart attacks have pretty normal
cholesterol.
You don't know who to treatuntil you image.
(24:12):
And then when you image,everything falls into line.
Your motivation for lifestylechanges might improve, and
certainly the safety net of allthe various medicines.
And we just have incrediblemedicines.
I expect all of my patients tohave zero side effects of any
medicine.
Uh and sometimes it takes 10 or12 of those uh to do the job.
(24:33):
And then by 2029, everymedicine that I use from GLP1s
to PCSK9s to will be there willbe a generic form of them.
So this doesn't have to bedoesn't have to be expensive.
And then I think what you'redoing is so well.
I think insurance hospitals andmost physicians are will be the
(24:55):
last to adopt all these ideas.
Now I say that with great uhpride and and uh ad adulation of
what their skills are, but it'sgoing to take patience to say I
could never have a heart attackor stroke or dementia.
The same it's funny to me thatwe don't think we know what
(25:17):
causes dementia.
It's exactly the same riskfactor pool as heart disease.
So we think if we clean out theheart, ultimately the heart is
just a big pump in the middle of60,000 miles of blood vessels.
And those and those bloodvessels go everywhere.
So if you clean out the bloodvessels, my patients don't have
to be highly educated tounderstand, oh, I'll bet you
(25:40):
you're cleaning out the 30,000miles of blood vessels that
float around our brain.
And most of them would think,yeah, you know, those little
brain cells sitting along thoseblood vessels probably get
well-nourished and may come backto life.
So I think we're on the vergeof curing most of dementia.
Now that's on top of alifestyle and a genetic overlay.
You know, you though I tend tolook at broad strokes, but it's
(26:04):
more like discovering who mightnot benefit rather than who's
going to benefit, because Ithink everyone will benefit from
those approaches.
Uh so the heart, uh, thepreventive cardiology approach.
Then, well, at this Americanheart meetings, amazingly, it
transitioned to where thecoolest thing at the meeting,
and this is, you know, guys fromLondon, Harvard, Korea that are
(26:28):
presenting all the data, youcould just sense the audience,
realizing, oh my gosh, we couldprevent it all.
Wow.
And they actually, they wouldactually, these some of these
lectures were getting standingovations.
And some of the lectures wereabout the medicines that are
unprecedented.
And one of the biggest trialswas called Vasalius, about a PCS
(26:48):
canine inhibitor evil ocumeb ora patha.
And it it was the first bigstudy that proved that you don't
have to wait for chest pain totreat with this aggressive
plaque reversing andcholesterol-controlling
medicine.
And then I was getting pointedout from the podium of yeah,
Boone over there's been doingthis for 20, 30 years.
And so that was all of a suddenI was not just capital C crazy,
(27:11):
but lowercase crazy.
He's been doing this for awhile.
Because it and then on theother side, the imaging is
unbelievable.
I was at Montreal at the worldmeetings of the Society of
Cardiovascular CT.
And at the start of themeeting, you know, they've they
they now can image the heart waybeyond the CAC or the calcium
score to actually look insidethe blood vessels.
(27:34):
And amazingly, it went from thestart of that convention where
everybody said, Oh, it's wecould never do this on a whole
population.
By the three days later, at theend of the convention, the
whole place was saying, youknow, artificial intelligence is
going to score this stuff.
All we as radiologists andcardiologists have to do is look
overlook the data and make sureit hasn't made a mistake.
Wow.
(27:54):
But I think the coronary CTAwill be like a colonoscopy in 10
years and every 40-year-oldwill get one.
And then they'll decide, andit'll cost $300, and insurance
will want it.
And the tr I mean, I think itwas all lining up from imaging
to treatment.
We've got it all.
So in my little clinic here,all I got to do is pass the word
around and get the whole worldto believe us.
(28:16):
We had somebody the other daytalking to us about starting
Boon Hart Rwanda in the middleof Africa.
Ashley Love (28:21):
Oh, wow.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (28:22):
Because it's and not that we'll do that, but
the whole world could do it.
And it doesn't take skill.
Like I could do thisblindfolded and with no shaky
hands because I'm not doingsurgery or stuff.
Right.
It's a it's a it's a mindset.
And if we can transfer thatmindset to the population, and
then my sons who are trying tofigure out how do we get
everybody interested, not justfor our own little clinic here,
(28:45):
but how do you change the world?
The key might be stories.
Like most of my patients now, Isaid, you know what you're
buying here is at least one,maybe two more generations of
life.
Buying life, because this isthe biggest disease in the
history of the world.
And it's killed more peopleevery year for the last hundred
years than anything else.
(29:07):
And there's a lot of otherhealth problems.
But if you could stop thisdisease, you could do a lot.
And then all of a sudden, thesidebars is most
neurodegenerative, carcinogenic,atherosclerotic,
cardiovascular, they come from acore of inflammation oxidation.
So most of the medicines we useand everything we use is
(29:28):
associated with reduced cancerrates.
So I think accidentally we'regonna prevent dementia and heart
disease.
And then we get back toprocessed foods and you know,
exercise, the things that you'reI'm I think we can help you
live to 90 and kind of createyour own blue zone in the middle
of your own body, no matterwhether you live in Sardinia or
(29:48):
you know, Costa Rica or not.
But you're not gonna enjoy itunless you're fit, strong, lean,
eating healthy, and all that.
So as my career unfolds,hopefully the end of it we'll be
getting back to lifestyle,which is not enough to overwhelm
aging and genetics, but it'sgonna make you enjoy life more.
So I think it's it's all comingtogether, but but it's really
(30:12):
who is the market, and it's thepatient that has to hear it and
have to want it.
And then you've got to befoolish to think that your
insurance company is interestedin your health.
Your insurance company isinterested in the cost of your
health, that's right.
Which doesn't make themhorrible, but is a whole
different game.
So you've got to.
(30:32):
I tell my patient, you're gonnayou need to look for look for
ways to spend more money on yourhealth.
Because if your insurance iscovering everything, you're not
getting cutting-edge stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Oh, that is a hot take.
And you are absolutely rightabout that.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (30:49):
You're getting cheap, you're getting
cheap stuff, and yeah, and thenthat's where I think the the
double blind placebo controlledtrial, it can be a crutch for
both doctor, hospital, andinsurance company, because they
can always say, well, we needmore data.
No.
Well, if I if you show me astudy where it's good to have
(31:11):
plaque and it's good to havemore of it, I don't need 30
years to tell me I should treatit.
Now, if I saw three studies,that's where the humble
confidence comes in.
If I saw three studies, ohyeah, it's good if you have a
lot of plaque in this trial, orit's good that you have a
cholesterol of 300, it's then Iwould slow down, but I'm not
(31:31):
gonna wait for 10 years for themto actually prove it.
Um, especially if I'm humblylooking and listening to the
naysayers.
No, I've never seen a downsidefrom this medicine, or you know,
but if it's 50-50 up and downand there's 500 side effects,
then you don't go for it quicklyor aggressively.
So it is an exciting, excitinguh possibility nowadays for this
(31:55):
to occur.
Ashley Love (31:56):
It's incredible, Dr.
Boone.
And I think something that wehave not mentioned, but it's
absolutely important to mentionis you know, the person
listening might be thinking,well, yeah, you know, most of
America really does need whathe's describing, right?
We all need to eat better, weall need to exercise, we all
need to protect our health.
But here's the thing, Dr.
Boone, is you are coming from apractice that is not just your
(32:17):
typical average Joe.
You are working with eliteathletes across the NFL, the
MBA, the MLB.
What does what have you learnedabout working with these
incredibly gifted athletes whoare at the epitome of health,
really, and yet still,unfortunately, experiencing some
of these things that, you know,me who doesn't have a
(32:38):
nutritionist and a personaltrainer and all of this, um, I'm
experiencing it as well.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (32:44):
Yes.
Yeah, I think we uh back in the90s, I was trying to figure out
uh how do you get America'sattention about that?
And that's 30 years ago when wereally didn't have, you know, a
third of the medicines we'vegot now and all that.
And I started working with theDenver Broncos uh players and
coaches testing them.
And then we I thought, well,they're young.
(33:06):
We're looking, the players areyoung, so we're usually looking
for odd genetic genetic holes intheir heart or cardiomyopathies
or arrhythmies to protect theplayer.
Um, so then I started talkingto some former players about the
idea we could try to develop apreventive cardiology program
for uh NFL alumni.
(33:27):
And we were able to do it allwith a lot of corporations
getting involved, donatingmedicines, testing, and that was
in the 90s.
And the main reason I was doingis that all the people in
America, you know, what do theylove?
The NFL.
Ashley Love (33:40):
Yeah.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (33:41):
And if all those guys, you know, it was in
the time when the the beercommercials were the Miller
Light All-Stars.
And so the they were alladvertising beer before they so
I thought, could we develop likethe Lipitor Light All-Stars,
where you know, all these famousplayers are telling their
people to go get on Lipitor, uh,you know, because that was the
big hot drug at the time.
That never panned out, but itwas really designing not only to
(34:03):
help them, but them as anexample for that.
And that continues to mature.
So now a company calledHeartflow, for example, which is
one of the artificialintelligence companies that that
uh um interprets uh uh cardiacCT scans, they've now authorized
uh a series of studies calledGame Film, where anyone that's
(34:26):
ever played NBA, NFL, or NHL cancome to Boone Hart.
And now we're developing anumber of centers around the
country for a free CT angiogram.
And again, it'll be good forthem.
We're already presenting somedata at the American College of
Cardiology meeting.
But I think even doctors, itgets their attention when they
see those three letters, NFL,NHL, NBA, you just want to read
(34:50):
about it, you know?
And that could be very helpfulin selling the idea.
So oftentimes, though, it getsto the point where people think
they've got to be rich or famousathletes to do what we do.
And not true at all.
Ours is really quite middleclass priced and quite
accessible to everybody if theyreally want it.
Uh, but I think thoseinteresting athletes are are a
(35:13):
lot of fun.
And you uh, you know, we'vewe've tested everybody from
Tebow to Peyton Manning in theuh uh in the Broncos, just you
know, being players uh that thethe screen.
And now they've developed thecombine at Indianapolis where
they test all players for heartdisease out of that Broncos
experience.
Ashley Love (35:30):
Well, it just it blows my mind, you know, and I I
think a lot of people feel thisway, where you can have
somebody who literally theirlife's work is to be healthy
enough to compete at the highestlevel and and their heart, uh
all of their organs areinvolved, but especially their
heart.
And if these things canunfortunately happen in these
(35:51):
athletes who are beingmonitored, who are being very
well taken care of, you know, itis a fantastic, um not a
cautionary tale.
How do I want to say this?
It's just a fantastic motivatorfor us to say, you know what,
this could this could besomething that could help me as
well.
Um, I can't throw a football 10yards, let alone as far as Tim
(36:13):
Tivot throws up a ball, but Ican protect my heart the way
that he's protecting his hearttoo.
So I think it is um, I thinkit's incredible.
Dr.
Boone, this has been an amazingconversation.
And before we close, I did wantto ask if the listener who is a
pre-health student, let's talkto our pre-health student
listener right now, wanted toexplore preventive medicine,
(36:33):
whether it's cardiology oranything else, what what would
you what would you say to them?
Where should they look?
What should they be pursuingright now?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (36:42):
Yeah, it's interesting.
A lot of the fun of medicine islearning these high-end skill
sets.
So what I do is not foreveryone.
Even cardiologists, you know,have learned all these
techniques.
And so you have to be verypassionate about prevention to
do what we do.
Now, what's happened though isour ultrasounds, treadmills,
(37:02):
echocardiograms, uh CT scans arenow the highest level of
technology.
So, other than interventionallygetting involved, there's a lot
of high-tech skill sets thatcould look at there uh as a
possibility for their career.
And then I think uh Universityof Colorado is pioneering the
first physician assistantfellowship in preventive
(37:23):
cardiology.
Wow.
So as a physician assistantnurse practitioner, you could
actually develop almost afellowship interest in this.
Um, so your profession has uhgreat opportunities there.
We have patients uh that uh, orno, uh med students, uh
fellows, uh others that rotatethrough and spend a month with
(37:45):
us or sit in on consultations tokind of learn what we do
because it is very unique.
And then I think the otherthing is remember the most
important thing you've got isyour brain.
So a doctor, ahealthcare-trained person needs
to always think outside the box,you know, listen to the data.
I'm always watching the data toeventually prove what I think
(38:08):
is true.
And that's pretty easy to beway ahead of the game.
Um, you ever heard of the SwanGans Cather Catheter?
It's a it's a catheter.
So I'm long ago, I was at alecture with Jeremy Swan.
And some of those guys are sofamous, they don't even have to,
they don't have to show slides.
They just talk wisdom.
And it was interesting.
He he just said, now remember,all these trials are great, but
(38:31):
it's your brain that's the bestto filter that data.
Don't don't rest on studies,think outside the box.
Now, we also need to beprotected from abnormal misuse
of unproven things.
But I think if you're followingthe data, there's usually a
thousand studies that havealready been done before you get
(38:51):
to the human trials of doubleblind placebo control trials.
And you can tell if they'regoing the same direction, your
wisdom is there.
For example, ACE inhibitors.
I had a nephrology that if I'dhave waited for the data, you
could tell something was specialabout an ACE inhibitor.
But if I'd have waited untilthey had all the proof, I'd have
500 more people on dialysis.
(39:11):
Right.
Because you could tell that itwas doing more.
So that's the kind ofcutting-edge thought that I
think young healthcare providerslook at it, think about that.
And then even simply back whenI'm just a young pup, I'm
thinking, how can you treat adisease if you don't measure it?
And that started, you know,with 30, 40 years ago.
How do we got to measure it?
Uh, how do you risk factorsaren't the disease, they're just
(39:34):
numbers.
Uh my medicines, I didn't go tomed school to use cheap
medicines, bad medicines, justbecause insurance wants to use
them.
And so I think think outsidethe box in these things uh uh
and and realize I do think thatheart disease is psychiatry,
lipidology, hypertensionology,uh rheumatology, cardiology,
lipidology.
(39:55):
The best person to be apreventive cardiologist is a
primary.
Care provider.
And the cardiologist reallyshould be in a role of just
empowering that.
Because the I want them tospend time learning how to throw
a fourth quarter Hail Mary.
And we're talking about a freeseason and we need uh the whole
(40:17):
country involved with that.
Ashley Love (40:19):
That's incredible, Dr.
Boone.
As our last question as we wrapup, if we as patients and as
clinicians truly embracedpreventive medicine, what would
healthcare look like, do youthink, in 20 more years?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (40:36):
Well, I think you'd have an entire generation
of 90-year-olds who haven'tdied.
And I think if you then we justfinished a book called A World
Without Heart Attacks, and thethe person who was helping us
write it, um, she said, Whatgreat things could people do if
they were dynamite from 65 to95?
(40:59):
Right.
30 years of not just playinggolf or recovering from strokes
or heart attacks.
So I think there's a lot ofpsychosocial things that could
be great for society if peopleturn that on.
Um, but it's still a toughworld out there.
And I I just think that for thepeople that want it, you could
eradicate that these diseases.
And then as a byproduct, yourbrain and your uh uh your cancer
(41:23):
prevention will go well aswell.
But yeah, to see how healthcareit'll it'll take the patient
taking charge.
We can't depend on thegovernment or a system to pay
for it.
We've got to want to pay forit.
And it's not gonna be thatexpensive.
You know, don't buy another carif you got a lot of, you know,
go buy some better health care.
Yes.
Uh, and so you can enjoy it.
One of the most fun things forme is the patients to come in to
(41:44):
hear about their latestescapades because they're young
and healthy at 80 and they'renot dying and they don't have
anything to recover from.
Love and they've got, you know,19 grandchildren to play with
and all that.
So it'll be a strange world,but I always figure my job is
not to figure out how to liveyour life, it's to make sure you
can live it as long as ispossible and not die of
something you could haveprevented.
Ashley Love (42:05):
Absolutely incredible.
Dr.
Jeffrey Boone ofBooneheart.com.
Thank you so much for spendingthe time with us, for motivating
us, and for giving us thisamazing look into preventive
cardiology.
It is just incredible.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (42:18):
Thank you very much, great to be with you.
Great job.
Ashley Love (42:21):
Thank you so very much for listening to this
episode of Shadow Me Next.
If you liked this episode or ifyou think it could be useful
for a friend, please subscribeand invite them to join us next
Monday.
As always, if you have anyquestions, let me know on
Facebook or Instagram.
Access you want, stories youneed, you're always invited to
Shadow Me Next.
(42:41):
Please keep in mind that thecontent of this podcast is
intended for informational andentertainment purposes only and
should not be considered asprofessional medical advice.
The views and opinionsexpressed in this podcast are
those of the host and guests,and do not necessarily reflect
the official policy or positionof any other agency,
(43:02):
organization, employer, orcompany.
So now I'm so old now that many, many things have
come true.
And so now at what could be thetail end of my career, uh I'm
being viewed with, wow, you knewthis 30 years ago.
And so I've gone from beingcapital C crazy to lowercase C
crazy
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (00:18):
cool.
Ashley Love (00:18):
What if heart attacks weren't a surprise?
Or even could be preventedaltogether?
Today I'm talking with Dr.
Jeffrey Boone, a preventivecardiologist who chose medicine
with a crazy idea and has turnedit into a life-changing
reality.
We unpack why waiting forsymptoms fails patients, how
elite athletes can still carryhidden cardiovascular disease,
(00:42):
and what heart diseaseprevention could mean for the
future of healthcare.
Welcome to Shadow Me Next, apodcast where I take you into
and behind the scenes of themedical world to provide you
with a deeper understanding ofthe human side of medicine.
I'm Ashley, a physicianassistant, medical editor,
clinical preceptor, and thecreator of Shadow Me Next.
(01:04):
I invite you to join me as wetake a conversational and
personal look into the lives andminds of leaders in medicine.
Dr.
Boone, thank you so much forjoining us on Shadow Me Next
today.
Absolutely incredible what youare doing in preventive
cardiology.
Cannot wait to discuss it withyou.
Thanks for being here.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (01:22):
Thank you very much.
Great to be here.
Ashley Love (01:24):
So let's start at the beginning.
Dr.
Boone, you are a cardiologist,um, have been doing this for a
number of years.
Has your practice in cardiologylooked the same since you
started working or has itshifted over the last number of
years?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (01:40):
Yes, I have a kind of a unique approach to
this.
I'm actually completely apreventive cardiologist, which
really doesn't exist.
It's really a cornerstone ofmedicine that has been far
underutilized.
The typical board certifiedcardiologist is really learning
procedures like how to manageemergency rooms and cath labs
(02:01):
and angiograms and pacemakers,stents, and that's a whole
different skill set than I have.
So I actually went to medicalschool for the only reason that
I went in the, you know, the 70swas to prevent heart disease.
Well, everyone sort of thoughtI was crazy because they were
just now learning how to helpfix heart disease, which I
(02:22):
thought that's fabulous, takes alot of skill.
So I would say in the world ofcardiology, which I'm not the
usual typical cardiologist, I'vebeen pursuing for, you know,
close getting close to half acentury the prevention of heart
disease.
Now, when I first started, evendoctors of all levels were not
talking about lifestyle at all.
(02:43):
And in the 70s, there were nogood medicines to use that were
actually comfortable to take toprevent these diseases.
So I sort of went in itinitially to be a voice because
I saw how powerful the degree ofMD is.
That rather than being someonewho counsels for hours and hours
(03:03):
about diet and nutrition andexercise, which is very
important, but there are manypeople that had those skills
already.
I thought just having the voiceof an MD would empower them.
And so that is how my careerbegan to develop.
And um uh my my wife, before wewere married, was the first one
(03:24):
that kind of suggested that Ishould go to med school because
I was dreaming and talking aboutour futures.
And uh, she eventually became alawyer, me, a doctor, but
neither one of us was doing muchof anything rather than just
surviving at basic jobs at thatpoint.
I had already gotten a master'sin exercise physiology.
So I was always working in uhexercise facilities.
(03:45):
In those days, there were nohealth clubs, there was no
lifetime or planet fitness,there was just big YMCA
buildings in downtown majorcities of America.
And those were sort of thefocal point of fitness,
basketball, racquetball, squash,things like that.
So that's why I worked andbegan pioneering in the uh in
the mid-70s, uh, exercise beinga medical tool, actually, to
(04:10):
evaluate your heart.
And then Paul Dudley White hadmade uh Dwight Eisenhower uh
exercise after his heart attack.
And that was veryrevolutionary.
People used to think you shouldlie still after a heart attack.
And so the YMCA became a focusof post-MI, post-cardiac event
(04:30):
rehab, and I was the exerciseperson that led the rehab in a
place of Des Moines, Iowa.
And that's where I met my wife.
So I was thinking about gettinga PhD in exercise physiology,
but I met at the time a guynamed Ken Cooper, who pioneered
aerobics and was sort of thefather of jogging almost.
And he uh I got to meet him andhe said, you know, a PhD in
(04:52):
exercise physiology would begreat.
And this was even before theLos Angeles Olympics, long, long
ago.
Um, he said, if you can be anMD, you'll just have more power,
flexibility.
You won't have to ask anybody'spermission to do much.
And so I said, Okay, where do Isign up?
Because I'd never even thoughtof being a doctor.
I was like 27, and my wife hadfirst suggested it.
(05:14):
And uh I thought you could justgo down and sign up, you know,
and uh, where do I start?
And I found out that if Iinterviewed, nobody was
interested in my ideas aboutpreventive cardiology.
But fortunately, the Universityof Iowa didn't interview, so
they didn't know that I wantedto prevent heart disease.
And so I got into Iowa.
I was a uh uh it was amiraculous entry, but my whole
(05:34):
medical school career, I was oneof the few doctors that knew
exactly what I wanted to do.
Most of the time you're gettingeducation, whether it's in
physician assistant school ormedical school, whatever, you're
sort of learning the languageof the profession, and then you
decide whether you want to gointo eyes or or skin or heart or
uh bowels or whatever you wantto go into.
(05:56):
But I knew right off what Iwanted.
So every course, whether it behistology, biochemistry, uh,
nephrology, I would always lookat what are the preventive
aspects of it?
What could exercise andnutrition do?
Um, and so that continuedthrough that process, uh, got an
internal medicine residency andreally totally focused on
preventive cardiology, whichstill didn't really exist.
(06:19):
And then uh the program I wasin now in Portland, Oregon, uh,
Nike had just invented joggingshoes.
You know, it was just gettingstarted.
And so Portland was a goodathletic running type of a city.
And so all the doctors therewere very fatherly to my
interests.
(06:39):
And so even during myresidency, I was the head of
cardiac rehab and I would do,you know, articles and write uh
papers on exercise and thedialysis patients.
So I was fortunately in a lotof places that sort of fostered
my interests.
I never really actually didinterventional cardiology or the
typical cardiology trackbecause it was really teaching
(07:00):
me everything that I wanted toprevent.
We have plenty of guys that cando stents and take care of ERs.
And so I sort of pioneered thisprofession that didn't exist.
Asymptomatic preventivecardiology.
So that's a bit of thebackground of how I got into
this and unfortunately justcontinued to try to pursue the
dream with really no jobs reallyfocused on that.
(07:21):
Uh, from healthcare systems toinsurance companies, nobody was
interested in prevention.
Um, they thought they were, andthey would advertise that they
were, but they really weren't atthe very highest level.
And then the imaging of theheart, the imaging of plaque,
and the medications, just everytwo or three years over the last
40 years, just an incrediblearray of medicines that have
(07:44):
moved cardiology now mainly intoprimary care.
Like, as I think the actualdisease of heart disease is
every specialty is involved.
And that's where a physicianassistant, nurse practitioner,
family physician internistshould actually be leading the
charge.
And cardiologists are onlythere for our failures.
(08:05):
Meaning that if we aggressivelyredefine significant and
aggressive, we've tended tothink of significant disease as
one that's involved with chestpain or severe blockages.
But actually, in our case, anyany detection of plaque,
atherosclerosis in our world atthe Boone Hart Institute is
(08:26):
viewed as the detection ofcancer.
And obviously, you don't tellanyone, well, you've got just a
little bit of cancer, so let'swait until it gets really big
and then we'll take care of it.
But that's what we do in heartdisease.
Number one, we don't measureheart disease, and number two,
we don't treat it aggressivelyuntil it's symptomatic.
Ashley Love (08:46):
Oh my gosh.
So many mind-blowing thingsthat you just mentioned right
there.
Absolutely incredible.
I want to dive into three.
There were three things thatyou mentioned, and I want to
make sure that we we really wereally push into a couple of
these.
Um, first being I am justinfatuated with the idea that
you you saw it medicine reallyas more of a platform so that
(09:08):
you could do what you needed todo.
I think a lot of people go intomedicine hoping medicine will
tell them what they should bedoing with their life, right?
For you, you knew what youneeded and you knew that
medicine would give you thatability.
And becoming an MD, um, thatwas going to be the road for
you.
Being a pioneer is verydifficult when your ideas are
(09:28):
going against the grain orperhaps a little, a little
unique.
Did you were you everdiscouraged?
Did you ever think, well, maybeI have the wrong idea in all of
this?
Maybe this is silly, maybe I'mthinking incorrectly, not just
differently.
Um, and how did you how did youmove past that?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (09:43):
Very good question.
And you put it very well.
I've never thought of thatbefore, but I I used medicine as
a platform to get where Iwanted to go, as opposed to the
reverse.
Um so interesting.
Yeah.
And so always I had everybodywas kind of intrigued with what
I was doing.
But there were a lot of uh uhnaysayers.
Oh, exercise is gonna help.
(10:04):
Who cares if you lowercholesterol, you know.
We were it was pretty easy tobe a decade ahead of whatever
was going on with like at theUniversity of Iowa where I was
in med school, they were justbeginning to invent CT scans.
And an interesting fact is thefirst inventor of the CT scan
was a guy named JoffreyHounsfield from London, and he
(10:26):
was funded by the extra moneythat the Beatles were making in
the music world.
They were looking for somethingto invest in, and so they
invested in Hounsfield.
He developed the CT scan, andnow I'm at the University of
Iowa, and it was still at theend of the time when you would
do exploratory surgery to findout about something.
And now you turn it on a CATscan and you know exactly what's
(10:48):
going on.
So I was there with just thebeginning of CT scan, so that
was kind of uh kind of amazing.
But everybody at the medschool, I'd say, I uh I'm gonna
try to prevent heart disease.
And they all thought it waskind of interesting.
And then I was pretty good atjust being focused and being
passionate about it.
And so it was hard to talk thatdown.
(11:10):
But then another thing that'sdeveloped in our work at the
Boone Hart Institute, one of ourcore corporate values is called
humble confidence, meaning thatI would always double-check, as
you say, my theories, mythoughts, what could be
possible, and really listen tonaysayers or critics and never
really got discouraged, butwould always reassess the data.
(11:32):
This is a great time to pausefor quality questions, a segment
on the show where we talk abouta question that you might hear
on your own pre-healthinterview.
So, what Dr.
Boone is talking about here isbasically this quality question.
What problem do I feelresponsible for solving, even if
no one else is focused on ityet?
So many students enterhealthcare hoping the profession
(11:55):
will tell them who to become.
Dr.
Boone did the opposite.
He chose medicine because itgave him the authority and reach
to solve a problem he alreadycared deeply about.
If healthcare were just a tool,not the goal, how would you use
it to build
or change a problem?
And it doesn't just stop atquality questions.
(12:17):
There are more resources foryou as a pre-health student on
ShadowMenext.com to include ournewly released application
readiness course.
So head on over tocourses.shadowmext.com and check
it out.
And I would often say, no, they're wrong.
I think we could prevent thisdisease.
And then as every new drugbegan to develop, oh my gosh,
(12:38):
now we've had a safety net.
So I always kind of figuredyour lifestyle is a bit like a
trapeze act.
And you want to get very goodat the trapeze.
When you fall off, though, youought to land on a safety net.
And we had very few safetynets, and that's where the
medicines come in.
So I'm happy if you loseweight, but let's get you on a
diabetic medicine while you'relosing weight, or I'm happy that
(12:59):
you're exercising to lower yourcholesterol, but let's get on a
cholesterol medicine to be asafety net if you fail, because
every meal is a new challenge.
And so that uh that that humbleconfidence, I think, got me to
through the next four decades ofuh uh and and then as I got
older and older, more of thethings that I had been sort of
pioneering in thought in mylectures and other things began
(13:21):
to come true.
So now I'm so old now thatmany, many things have come
true.
And so now at what could be thetail end of my career, uh I'm
being viewed with wow, you knewthis 30 years ago.
And so I've gone from beingcapital C crazy to lowercase C
crazy cool, you know, because alot of even world leaders are
(13:44):
saying, my gosh, he's been doingthis for 30 years, and we've
just now proven he was right.
And, you know, so very humblythough, not to say I told you
so.
Uh and then if I'm worth mysalt, what we're doing today
should be 10 years ahead ofwhat's happening even now.
That and that that's sort ofhow I weathered the uh the
discussions, the criticisms overthe year.
(14:05):
But it's usually prettylogical.
Uh, you know, i the other thingI did is in in law, you're sort
of innocent until provenguilty.
But in medicine, we make thingsguilty until we prove them
innocent.
So it takes 30 years to provethat exercise is good for you,
or 30 years to prove thatsmoking is bad for you.
(14:25):
When you could ask any10-year-old and they could have
told you the answer, but it tookdecades for the statistics to
actually prove those things.
Ashley Love (14:33):
It does seem a bit backwards.
And I'm sure your your wife,who is a lawyer, would uh
probably giggles at us andthinks uh, you know, medicine is
is quite quite reverse a lot oftimes.
I love I love the humbleconfidence that you've
described, but I also like thefact that you said you listened
to the naysayers.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople say, well, tune them out,
don't listen to them, ignorethem, ignore them.
But really, if we listen tothem with humble confidence,
(14:55):
like you said, um it's not adiscouraging thing.
It's really it's a it's a it'sa push to investigate further,
right?
Okay, well, perhaps they'reright.
Um that's fantastic.
And I'm so glad that you pushedthrough and and really have um
have pioneered this whole field.
Uh medicine has advanced.
You know, we've talked aboutthe medicines that are available
now, the GLP1s, all of that.
It's incredible what medicinehas done.
(15:17):
And you've seen you've seen thelifestyle um movement really
advance as well, right?
I mean, gosh, anywhere fromlike the post-MIYMCA to the
invention of jogging shoes.
I mean, you've seen major,major advances.
Are we in a good place rightnow in in preventive cardiology?
(15:37):
Have we have we arrived?
Is there more to do?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (15:41):
I think we've arrived.
My goal when I started mycareer, and then my my family,
my sons are the CEO, thepresident, lawyer, social media
director of our company.
And I remember a couple ofyears ago as I was getting
older, and we really had veryfew doctors that were working
with us at that time, and theythey were thinking, ah, darn,
(16:02):
your your dream is not going tocome true, because my dream is
to eradicate artifacts.
I mean, literally, and that'spossible.
And then about four years ago,we discovered that yes, we can
do that, but you've got to doexactly what Boon Hart tells you
to do, which anybody could do.
Uh, and that really empoweredme that now the next step is not
(16:24):
only to do it with ourpatients, which is pretty easy
to stop the biggest disease inthe history of the world, uh,
but how do you get it now toeverybody of every socioeconomic
class?
And you're right, we now haveuh so to kind of further answer
your question, I'm getting, wegot now several doctors.
We've even got, uh we're hiringour ninth provider here just
(16:45):
this week.
Uh, used to be just me likefour or five years ago, but
everybody is seeing thepossibilities and how free we
are.
We're unencumbered by insuranceor universities or others, but
then there's a big trust factor.
Like, unless you can trust me,you should just listen to what
they're doing in the the regularmedical world, which is pretty
(17:06):
much pedestrian, I think.
Uh the approaches are oftenthere.
And then uh what's happened isat the last meeting of the
American Heart Association inNew Orleans, just three months
ago, the whole convention justswitched to becoming preventive
cardiology.
Because now we have we have atleast 12 medicines beyond
(17:27):
statins.
Hardly any of them have anyside effects that just do
incredible things that literallyhalf of America ought to be on.
And then we have incredibleimaging.
Now, the big problem with I'vealways thought, even back in the
80s, how can you treat adisease if you don't measure it?
Like you got to look at theskin and see what's going on.
(17:49):
You've got to examine, you'vegot to find the disease.
And so almost every disease,including breast cancer and
colon cancer, we do strategiesto image the disease.
But the biggest disease thatkills the most people in the
world for the last hundredyears, we don't image.
We look at risk factors.
And cholesterol is not thedisease, blood pressure is not
(18:12):
the disease, blood sugar is notthe disease.
There are numbers that predictthe disease.
But we've always been kind ofpioneering how can you actually
image the disease?
That means you've got to lookinside the arteries.
And so, beginning with thoseCAT scans, with Hounsfield, who
invented CT, there was a scorein 1986 was developed something
(18:34):
called the coronary calciumscore, and it measured a part of
the plaque.
So that now in our world is apretty pedestrian test, but it
measures calcium.
And then the other thing, justas a sidebar, I've got a
43-year-old friend that wastalking to my daughter-in-law,
and she had a mammogram at 43,and they discovered no breast
(18:57):
cancer, but they discoveredcalcium in the mammary artery,
which is a simple heart scan.
If you have calcium in themammary artery, you've got
atherosclerosis, you've gotheart disease.
So if we could get the redribbon and the pink dress
programs together, you couldsave 10 times more lives with
mammograms if you just looked atthe calcium in the mammary
(19:19):
artery.
So there's a lot of littlecorrelations that would empower
people.
The same thing in dentistry.
If you see calcium in some ofthe images they take of your
teeth, you've got the diseasethat will kill you.
Half of America is gonna, well,all of America will die of
atherosclerosis at some point.
Half of them, something elsewill get them first, you know.
And so it is the disease and itdoesn't hurt.
(19:41):
And you look great in yourcoffin when you die young.
There you go.
Ashley Love (19:45):
Yes.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (19:45):
And then as I get older, 80's not old.
90's not old if you're 90.
And it I think you can you canprevent all those things.
So imaging, very important.
Now, calcium score, quick scanof the heart.
You can go down and get thosefor cash for a hundred dollars.
Now.
But then most people aren'tempowered to do anything.
If you've got calcium in anyartery, you need to treat
(20:07):
atherosclerosis.
You've got cancer at that pointin my mind, metastatic
atherosclerosis, and it needs tobe treated aggressively.
And aggressively, it might justbe vitamins, risk factor
control, GLP1s, PCSK9s, statins,aspirin, all kinds of vitamins,
omega-3 fish oils.
I mean, there's dozens oftherapies that will stop the
process, halt the process, andwe now know even reverse the
(20:31):
process.
Ashley Love (20:33):
It's incredible.
I mean, it is just, it is justincredible.
And thinking about this interms of cancer and how, you
know, if somebody said you haveyou have cancer, but it's just a
little bit of cancer, so we'lljust wait until it's just, I
mean, it makes no sense when youthink about it that way.
So why can we not apply it towhy should we not apply it to
(20:54):
heart disease as well?
Um, I I think what it was veryinteresting because uh what
we've always operated under, atleast, you know, uh not in
preventive cardiology, is umMI's heart attacks always felt
very um like a surprise, right?
All of a sudden you're doingfine, everybody's doing well,
and then he just had a heartattack.
It was just a surprise.
(21:15):
But from what I hear from whatyou're telling me, is it doesn't
have to be a surprise.
If we can, if we can not justlook at the risk factors, which
are helpful, but not and notreally as great as imaging with
um the uh is that the CAC, thecoronary artery, yeah, is that
what that accuracy is?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (21:31):
That is good.
Uh it's not perfect, but it'sgood.
And it's only good if you takeany calcium.
Now in 1993, I started thinkingof the idea that any calcium
score is the disease.
And that was one there was alot of naysayers.
And now 30, 40 years later,that's true.
(21:52):
If you have any calcium, theplaque as it grows in your
arteries will calcify as ittries to heal itself.
So if you treat any calciumlike you treat skin cancer, you
go after it.
You don't wait.
Oh, this is looks like asquamous cell, but let's wait
until it gets a little bigger.
Uh you know, I mean, it'sridiculous the way we've
(22:13):
approached it.
And a lot of it is, I think,uh, hospitals, cardiologists,
all well intended, but all themoney is waiting until you are
sick.
All the money.
And it is any article, if anydoctor, any program tells you
that you should wait forsymptoms, they are 100% wrong.
And that comes out of thehumble confidence.
It's that everybody's nowrealizing if you wait for chest
(22:37):
pain, you've waited too long andyou'll be lucky to live.
Now we have all kinds ofincredible things we'll do once
you get the chest pain.
Oh my gosh, all just brilliantstuff is being done at that
point.
But that's like throwing afourth quarter Hail Mary in
football.
That's right.
That's right.
You're you're in uh Tebow land,and that's a lot of fun when
you win, when you win, but a lotof times the ball doesn't land
(22:58):
in hands uh as happens uhoccasionally now during the
football playoffs.
Ashley Love (23:03):
So it brings it to a really great question, which
is how I mean, you're workingthen with patients who you've
mentioned it already, who areasymptomatic.
That means they're notexperiencing this chest pain
that you're describing.
Their legs aren't, um, youknow, they don't have
claudication.
They they're they're notexperiencing anything.
They feel generally healthy.
How is caring for somebody whodoesn't have symptoms different
(23:25):
from treating somebody perhapswith symptoms?
Are they are they motivated?
Are they less motivated?
What's that look like?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (23:31):
It's interesting.
It it a lot is around thatarea.
The best way to treat heartdisease is when you don't feel
at all bad.
Every part of it should beimaged and aggressively pursued
uh long before you havesymptoms.
Now, certainly we have a lot ofpeople that have warning
symptoms, and but really therethis guy named Nick Nurmal Howid
(23:51):
from London just did a study offive million heart attacks, and
2.5 million had no ideaanything was wrong.
And most of the, at least halfof those 2.5 million, a week
earlier, their doctor wouldn'thave even done much because
about half the people havingheart attacks have pretty normal
cholesterol.
You don't know who to treatuntil you image.
(24:12):
And then when you image,everything falls into line.
Your motivation for lifestylechanges might improve, and
certainly the safety net of allthe various medicines.
And we just have incrediblemedicines.
I expect all of my patients tohave zero side effects of any
medicine.
Uh and sometimes it takes 10 or12 of those uh to do the job.
(24:33):
And then by 2029, everymedicine that I use from GLP1s
to PCSK9s to will be there willbe a generic form of them.
So this doesn't have to bedoesn't have to be expensive.
And then I think what you'redoing is so well.
I think insurance hospitals andmost physicians are will be the
(24:55):
last to adopt all these ideas.
Now I say that with great uhpride and and uh ad adulation of
what their skills are, but it'sgoing to take patience to say I
could never have a heart attackor stroke or dementia.
The same it's funny to me thatwe don't think we know what
(25:17):
causes dementia.
It's exactly the same riskfactor pool as heart disease.
So we think if we clean out theheart, ultimately the heart is
just a big pump in the middle of60,000 miles of blood vessels.
And those and those bloodvessels go everywhere.
So if you clean out the bloodvessels, my patients don't have
to be highly educated tounderstand, oh, I'll bet you
(25:40):
you're cleaning out the 30,000miles of blood vessels that
float around our brain.
And most of them would think,yeah, you know, those little
brain cells sitting along thoseblood vessels probably get
well-nourished and may come backto life.
So I think we're on the vergeof curing most of dementia.
Now that's on top of alifestyle and a genetic overlay.
You know, you though I tend tolook at broad strokes, but it's
(26:04):
more like discovering who mightnot benefit rather than who's
going to benefit, because Ithink everyone will benefit from
those approaches.
Uh so the heart, uh, thepreventive cardiology approach.
Then, well, at this Americanheart meetings, amazingly, it
transitioned to where thecoolest thing at the meeting,
and this is, you know, guys fromLondon, Harvard, Korea that are
(26:28):
presenting all the data, youcould just sense the audience,
realizing, oh my gosh, we couldprevent it all.
Wow.
And they actually, they wouldactually, these some of these
lectures were getting standingovations.
And some of the lectures wereabout the medicines that are
unprecedented.
And one of the biggest trialswas called Vasalius, about a PCS
(26:48):
canine inhibitor evil ocumeb ora patha.
And it it was the first bigstudy that proved that you don't
have to wait for chest pain totreat with this aggressive
plaque reversing andcholesterol-controlling
medicine.
And then I was getting pointedout from the podium of yeah,
Boone over there's been doingthis for 20, 30 years.
And so that was all of a suddenI was not just capital C crazy,
(27:11):
but lowercase crazy.
He's been doing this for awhile.
Because it and then on theother side, the imaging is
unbelievable.
I was at Montreal at the worldmeetings of the Society of
Cardiovascular CT.
And at the start of themeeting, you know, they've they
they now can image the heart waybeyond the CAC or the calcium
score to actually look insidethe blood vessels.
(27:34):
And amazingly, it went from thestart of that convention where
everybody said, Oh, it's wecould never do this on a whole
population.
By the three days later, at theend of the convention, the
whole place was saying, youknow, artificial intelligence is
going to score this stuff.
All we as radiologists andcardiologists have to do is look
overlook the data and make sureit hasn't made a mistake.
Wow.
(27:54):
But I think the coronary CTAwill be like a colonoscopy in 10
years and every 40-year-oldwill get one.
And then they'll decide, andit'll cost $300, and insurance
will want it.
And the tr I mean, I think itwas all lining up from imaging
to treatment.
We've got it all.
So in my little clinic here,all I got to do is pass the word
around and get the whole worldto believe us.
(28:16):
We had somebody the other daytalking to us about starting
Boon Hart Rwanda in the middleof Africa.
Ashley Love (28:21):
Oh, wow.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (28:22):
Because it's and not that we'll do that, but
the whole world could do it.
And it doesn't take skill.
Like I could do thisblindfolded and with no shaky
hands because I'm not doingsurgery or stuff.
Right.
It's a it's a it's a mindset.
And if we can transfer thatmindset to the population, and
then my sons who are trying tofigure out how do we get
everybody interested, not justfor our own little clinic here,
(28:45):
but how do you change the world?
The key might be stories.
Like most of my patients now, Isaid, you know what you're
buying here is at least one,maybe two more generations of
life.
Buying life, because this isthe biggest disease in the
history of the world.
And it's killed more peopleevery year for the last hundred
years than anything else.
(29:07):
And there's a lot of otherhealth problems.
But if you could stop thisdisease, you could do a lot.
And then all of a sudden, thesidebars is most
neurodegenerative, carcinogenic,atherosclerotic,
cardiovascular, they come from acore of inflammation oxidation.
So most of the medicines we useand everything we use is
(29:28):
associated with reduced cancerrates.
So I think accidentally we'regonna prevent dementia and heart
disease.
And then we get back toprocessed foods and you know,
exercise, the things that you'reI'm I think we can help you
live to 90 and kind of createyour own blue zone in the middle
of your own body, no matterwhether you live in Sardinia or
(29:48):
you know, Costa Rica or not.
But you're not gonna enjoy itunless you're fit, strong, lean,
eating healthy, and all that.
So as my career unfolds,hopefully the end of it we'll be
getting back to lifestyle,which is not enough to overwhelm
aging and genetics, but it'sgonna make you enjoy life more.
So I think it's it's all comingtogether, but but it's really
(30:12):
who is the market, and it's thepatient that has to hear it and
have to want it.
And then you've got to befoolish to think that your
insurance company is interestedin your health.
Your insurance company isinterested in the cost of your
health, that's right.
Which doesn't make themhorrible, but is a whole
different game.
So you've got to.
(30:32):
I tell my patient, you're gonnayou need to look for look for
ways to spend more money on yourhealth.
Because if your insurance iscovering everything, you're not
getting cutting-edge stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Oh, that is a hot take.
And you are absolutely rightabout that.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (30:49):
You're getting cheap, you're getting
cheap stuff, and yeah, and thenthat's where I think the the
double blind placebo controlledtrial, it can be a crutch for
both doctor, hospital, andinsurance company, because they
can always say, well, we needmore data.
No.
Well, if I if you show me astudy where it's good to have
(31:11):
plaque and it's good to havemore of it, I don't need 30
years to tell me I should treatit.
Now, if I saw three studies,that's where the humble
confidence comes in.
If I saw three studies, ohyeah, it's good if you have a
lot of plaque in this trial, orit's good that you have a
cholesterol of 300, it's then Iwould slow down, but I'm not
(31:31):
gonna wait for 10 years for themto actually prove it.
Um, especially if I'm humblylooking and listening to the
naysayers.
No, I've never seen a downsidefrom this medicine, or you know,
but if it's 50-50 up and downand there's 500 side effects,
then you don't go for it quicklyor aggressively.
So it is an exciting, excitinguh possibility nowadays for this
(31:55):
to occur.
Ashley Love (31:56):
It's incredible, Dr.
Boone.
And I think something that wehave not mentioned, but it's
absolutely important to mentionis you know, the person
listening might be thinking,well, yeah, you know, most of
America really does need whathe's describing, right?
We all need to eat better, weall need to exercise, we all
need to protect our health.
But here's the thing, Dr.
Boone, is you are coming from apractice that is not just your
(32:17):
typical average Joe.
You are working with eliteathletes across the NFL, the
MBA, the MLB.
What does what have you learnedabout working with these
incredibly gifted athletes whoare at the epitome of health,
really, and yet still,unfortunately, experiencing some
of these things that, you know,me who doesn't have a
(32:38):
nutritionist and a personaltrainer and all of this, um, I'm
experiencing it as well.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (32:44):
Yes.
Yeah, I think we uh back in the90s, I was trying to figure out
uh how do you get America'sattention about that?
And that's 30 years ago when wereally didn't have, you know, a
third of the medicines we'vegot now and all that.
And I started working with theDenver Broncos uh players and
coaches testing them.
And then we I thought, well,they're young.
(33:06):
We're looking, the players areyoung, so we're usually looking
for odd genetic genetic holes intheir heart or cardiomyopathies
or arrhythmies to protect theplayer.
Um, so then I started talkingto some former players about the
idea we could try to develop apreventive cardiology program
for uh NFL alumni.
(33:27):
And we were able to do it allwith a lot of corporations
getting involved, donatingmedicines, testing, and that was
in the 90s.
And the main reason I was doingis that all the people in
America, you know, what do theylove?
The NFL.
Ashley Love (33:40):
Yeah.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (33:41):
And if all those guys, you know, it was in
the time when the the beercommercials were the Miller
Light All-Stars.
And so the they were alladvertising beer before they so
I thought, could we develop likethe Lipitor Light All-Stars,
where you know, all these famousplayers are telling their
people to go get on Lipitor, uh,you know, because that was the
big hot drug at the time.
That never panned out, but itwas really designing not only to
(34:03):
help them, but them as anexample for that.
And that continues to mature.
So now a company calledHeartflow, for example, which is
one of the artificialintelligence companies that that
uh um interprets uh uh cardiacCT scans, they've now authorized
uh a series of studies calledGame Film, where anyone that's
(34:26):
ever played NBA, NFL, or NHL cancome to Boone Hart.
And now we're developing anumber of centers around the
country for a free CT angiogram.
And again, it'll be good forthem.
We're already presenting somedata at the American College of
Cardiology meeting.
But I think even doctors, itgets their attention when they
see those three letters, NFL,NHL, NBA, you just want to read
(34:50):
about it, you know?
And that could be very helpfulin selling the idea.
So oftentimes, though, it getsto the point where people think
they've got to be rich or famousathletes to do what we do.
And not true at all.
Ours is really quite middleclass priced and quite
accessible to everybody if theyreally want it.
Uh, but I think thoseinteresting athletes are are a
(35:13):
lot of fun.
And you uh, you know, we'vewe've tested everybody from
Tebow to Peyton Manning in theuh uh in the Broncos, just you
know, being players uh that thethe screen.
And now they've developed thecombine at Indianapolis where
they test all players for heartdisease out of that Broncos
experience.
Ashley Love (35:30):
Well, it just it blows my mind, you know, and I I
think a lot of people feel thisway, where you can have
somebody who literally theirlife's work is to be healthy
enough to compete at the highestlevel and and their heart, uh
all of their organs areinvolved, but especially their
heart.
And if these things canunfortunately happen in these
(35:51):
athletes who are beingmonitored, who are being very
well taken care of, you know, itis a fantastic, um not a
cautionary tale.
How do I want to say this?
It's just a fantastic motivatorfor us to say, you know what,
this could this could besomething that could help me as
well.
Um, I can't throw a football 10yards, let alone as far as Tim
(36:13):
Tivot throws up a ball, but Ican protect my heart the way
that he's protecting his hearttoo.
So I think it is um, I thinkit's incredible.
Dr.
Boone, this has been an amazingconversation.
And before we close, I did wantto ask if the listener who is a
pre-health student, let's talkto our pre-health student
listener right now, wanted toexplore preventive medicine,
(36:33):
whether it's cardiology oranything else, what what would
you what would you say to them?
Where should they look?
What should they be pursuingright now?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (36:42):
Yeah, it's interesting.
A lot of the fun of medicine islearning these high-end skill
sets.
So what I do is not foreveryone.
Even cardiologists, you know,have learned all these
techniques.
And so you have to be verypassionate about prevention to
do what we do.
Now, what's happened though isour ultrasounds, treadmills,
(37:02):
echocardiograms, uh CT scans arenow the highest level of
technology.
So, other than interventionallygetting involved, there's a lot
of high-tech skill sets thatcould look at there uh as a
possibility for their career.
And then I think uh Universityof Colorado is pioneering the
first physician assistantfellowship in preventive
(37:23):
cardiology.
Wow.
So as a physician assistantnurse practitioner, you could
actually develop almost afellowship interest in this.
Um, so your profession has uhgreat opportunities there.
We have patients uh that uh, orno, uh med students, uh
fellows, uh others that rotatethrough and spend a month with
(37:45):
us or sit in on consultations tokind of learn what we do
because it is very unique.
And then I think the otherthing is remember the most
important thing you've got isyour brain.
So a doctor, ahealthcare-trained person needs
to always think outside the box,you know, listen to the data.
I'm always watching the data toeventually prove what I think
(38:08):
is true.
And that's pretty easy to beway ahead of the game.
Um, you ever heard of the SwanGans Cather Catheter?
It's a it's a catheter.
So I'm long ago, I was at alecture with Jeremy Swan.
And some of those guys are sofamous, they don't even have to,
they don't have to show slides.
They just talk wisdom.
And it was interesting.
He he just said, now remember,all these trials are great, but
(38:31):
it's your brain that's the bestto filter that data.
Don't don't rest on studies,think outside the box.
Now, we also need to beprotected from abnormal misuse
of unproven things.
But I think if you're followingthe data, there's usually a
thousand studies that havealready been done before you get
(38:51):
to the human trials of doubleblind placebo control trials.
And you can tell if they'regoing the same direction, your
wisdom is there.
For example, ACE inhibitors.
I had a nephrology that if I'dhave waited for the data, you
could tell something was specialabout an ACE inhibitor.
But if I'd have waited untilthey had all the proof, I'd have
500 more people on dialysis.
(39:11):
Right.
Because you could tell that itwas doing more.
So that's the kind ofcutting-edge thought that I
think young healthcare providerslook at it, think about that.
And then even simply back whenI'm just a young pup, I'm
thinking, how can you treat adisease if you don't measure it?
And that started, you know,with 30, 40 years ago.
How do we got to measure it?
Uh, how do you risk factorsaren't the disease, they're just
(39:34):
numbers.
Uh my medicines, I didn't go tomed school to use cheap
medicines, bad medicines, justbecause insurance wants to use
them.
And so I think think outsidethe box in these things uh uh
and and realize I do think thatheart disease is psychiatry,
lipidology, hypertensionology,uh rheumatology, cardiology,
lipidology.
(39:55):
The best person to be apreventive cardiologist is a
primary.
Care provider.
And the cardiologist reallyshould be in a role of just
empowering that.
Because the I want them tospend time learning how to throw
a fourth quarter Hail Mary.
And we're talking about a freeseason and we need uh the whole
(40:17):
country involved with that.
Ashley Love (40:19):
That's incredible, Dr.
Boone.
As our last question as we wrapup, if we as patients and as
clinicians truly embracedpreventive medicine, what would
healthcare look like, do youthink, in 20 more years?
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (40:36):
Well, I think you'd have an entire generation
of 90-year-olds who haven'tdied.
And I think if you then we justfinished a book called A World
Without Heart Attacks, and thethe person who was helping us
write it, um, she said, Whatgreat things could people do if
they were dynamite from 65 to95?
(40:59):
Right.
30 years of not just playinggolf or recovering from strokes
or heart attacks.
So I think there's a lot ofpsychosocial things that could
be great for society if peopleturn that on.
Um, but it's still a toughworld out there.
And I I just think that for thepeople that want it, you could
eradicate that these diseases.
And then as a byproduct, yourbrain and your uh uh your cancer
(41:23):
prevention will go well aswell.
But yeah, to see how healthcareit'll it'll take the patient
taking charge.
We can't depend on thegovernment or a system to pay
for it.
We've got to want to pay forit.
And it's not gonna be thatexpensive.
You know, don't buy another carif you got a lot of, you know,
go buy some better health care.
Yes.
Uh, and so you can enjoy it.
One of the most fun things forme is the patients to come in to
(41:44):
hear about their latestescapades because they're young
and healthy at 80 and they'renot dying and they don't have
anything to recover from.
Love and they've got, you know,19 grandchildren to play with
and all that.
So it'll be a strange world,but I always figure my job is
not to figure out how to liveyour life, it's to make sure you
can live it as long as ispossible and not die of
something you could haveprevented.
Ashley Love (42:05):
Absolutely incredible.
Dr.
Jeffrey Boone ofBooneheart.com.
Thank you so much for spendingthe time with us, for motivating
us, and for giving us thisamazing look into preventive
cardiology.
It is just incredible.
Dr. Jeffrey Boone (42:18):
Thank you very much, great to be with you.
Great job.
Ashley Love (42:21):
Thank you so very much for listening to this
episode of Shadow Me Next.
If you liked this episode or ifyou think it could be useful
for a friend, please subscribeand invite them to join us next
Monday.
As always, if you have anyquestions, let me know on
Facebook or Instagram.
Access you want, stories youneed, you're always invited to
Shadow Me Next.
(42:41):
Please keep in mind that thecontent of this podcast is
intended for informational andentertainment purposes only and
should not be considered asprofessional medical advice.
The views and opinionsexpressed in this podcast are
those of the host and guests,and do not necessarily reflect
the official policy or positionof any other agency,
(43:02):
organization, employer, orcompany.
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