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Summary
On episode 202 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Dr. Thomas Cowan, a physician who has written extensively on nutrition, homeopathy, and herbal medicine, principal author of The Fourfold Path to Healing, co-author with Sally Fallon of the Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care, and a founding board member of the Weston A. Price Foundation.
They dig into his book Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, starting with the idea that cholesterol plaque does not actually cause heart attacks. Dr. Cowan argues plaque is the body's response to an inflammatory injury in the blood vessel, not the cause, and that if high blood cholesterol alone caused blockages, they would show up in capillaries too, which they don't.
He walks through what he says really causes heart attacks (a breakdown in the autonomic nervous system that shifts heart cells toward inefficient, acid-producing metabolism) and then through the six principles of his Cowan Heart Diet, from food quality to structured water to trusting your own instincts.
Links
- https://humanheartcosmicheart.com
- https://thebigfatfix.com
- Episode 463 – What we don't know about Covid with Dr. Tom Cowan and Sally Fallon Morell
Key Takeaways
- Cholesterol plaque is not the cause of heart attacks, it's the response. Current thinking holds it seals an inflammatory injury to the blood vessel wall rather than randomly clogging arteries like a pipe.
- The classic cholesterol theory has a hole in it: plaque doesn't build up in capillaries. Blood moves slowest there, so if high blood cholesterol alone caused blockages, they should show up everywhere blood flows, not just in the coronary arteries.
- Heart attacks trace back to the autonomic nervous system, not plaque. Over 90% of people who go on to have heart attacks show reduced parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) tone in the months beforehand, often driven by smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, and chronic stress.
- Under a suppressed parasympathetic state, heart cells shift to an inefficient, acid-producing metabolism. Because the heart can never stop and rest the way a leg muscle can, that lactic acid buildup causes the tissue death known as a heart attack.
- The Cowan Heart Diet rests on six principles. Eat high quality, mineral-rich food grown in healthy soil; eat a wide variety of vegetables alongside animal fats and proteins; practice roughly 18 hours of intermittent fasting most days; favor high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate meals; drink structured, moving water instead of stagnant water; and trust your own instincts over outside experts.
- Grass-fed, grass-finished meat, wild fish, and pastured eggs matter because of what the animal itself ate. Whatever is good for a healthy animal eating its natural diet tends to be good for the person eating that animal.
- Water quality is about more than removing toxins like chlorine and fluoride. Dr. Cowan argues water that has moved, over rocks or in a vortex, forms a more “structured” state that the body's cells, which are roughly 70% water held in a gel-like form, use more effectively.
- Trusting your own instincts beats blind reliance on experts. By age 70, Dr. Cowan says, most people should already know which foods make them feel good or bad through their own observation, without needing an outside authority to tell them.
- Intermittent fasting is one of his highest-leverage recommendations. Going without food for roughly 18 hours shifts the body from an insulin-driven, fat-storing state to a glucagon-driven, fat-burning one, which he says most people notice as reduced inflammation and higher energy almost immediately.
“The trouble with science is it's not very scientific.”
Dr. Thomas Cowan