Dr. Ron Sinha: On Medicine And Mindset

Fasten your seat belts for an incredibly fast-moving, wide-ranging, and deeply impactful show from Dr. Ron. This guy has fought a valiant battle against dated mainstream medical advice and in favor of a comprehensive ancestral approach emphasizing not just healthy, whole foods, but also choosing out of the flawed mindsets and hectic lifestyle behaviors that are on display in Silicon Valley like no other spot in America.

Yes, Dr. Ron works in the most affluent community in America. Tech workers make some bank for sure, but we are talking $1.3 million for a median home price in the Silicon Valley counties. The affluence comes at a cost with a hectic workplace, painful commutes, and consumerism traps. Indeed, Dr. Ron observes numerous associated problems: scarcity mindsets (someone around you always has more); excessive rumination, leading to anxiety and depression; and adults pushing this crappy stuff onto their kids with over pressurized parenting leading to troubled, overstressed teens.  

Dr. Ron works runs the corporate health division of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. He develops onsite health/wellness services for major Silicon Valley companies like the tech giants you have heard of. He delivers lectures on assorted health topics and also gets to do initial consults with patients that last for an hour — he can really get deep into lifestyle modification tips that will keep them away from the doctor’s office.  

For the past decade, Dr. Ron has gained notoriety for fighting the valiant battle against conventional medical wisdom, particularly the widespread use of statins to address heart disease risk. Dr. Ron has succeeded wildly with dietary and lifestyle modification strategies, and communicated his approach to other physicians to inspire change. Dr. Ron is smiling now, and mainstream medicine has progressed over the last 10 years away from the flawed and dated notions about cholesterol, statins, and the proximate cause of heart disease.  

Years ago, Ron promoted the results of a UCLA metastudy revealing that 80 percent of heart attack victims had LDL cholesterol levels widely considered to be in the “safe” range. As most of us have awakened to by this point, heart disease risk is not as simple as monitoring ones’ total LDL number. If one is concerned about high LDL, it’s important to test for small, dense particles as these are the potentially problematic ones that are small and dense enough to lodge on the walls of your arteries. In contrast, the large, fluffy LDL particles are commonly harmless. Guess what? If you have high triglycerides (over 150), you likely have a small, dense LDL problem. Even if your total LDL is artificially lowered by statin drugs, you can still be at high risk of heart disease. Remember CNN anchor Tim Russert? He passed of a heart attack in his 50s despite a total cholesterol number in the low 100s! 

This is crazy talk if you compare to decades of conventional wisdom boilerplate: “Don’t eat fat or cholesterol, take statins if your total cholesterol is over 200 and then you will be fine.” Ron has bravely gone toe to toe with the establishment to convince other doctors that diet modification can reduce heart disease risk better than statins, and that statins can often compromise health and not address the biggest risk factors of heart disease. He, like Dr. Cate Shanahan and other evolutionary health leaders, favors tracking your triglycerides-to-HDL as the most relevant disease risk marker. It’s urgent to get 3:1 and optimal to get 1:1.  

Dr. Ron shared his strategies for affecting lasting dietary transformation and lifestyle change among his patients. First, patients have to get interested in their health. Ron finds that many are too busy trying to make money or push their kids really hard to excel in competitive modern life. Second, to motivate them accordingly, Dr. Ron finds that educating them about the why’s, and offering incentives and competition with clear metrics is an effective strategy. For example, he might challenge a patient to focus on an important blood value like triglycerides and lower it by 100 points by the next blood test date. Third, and this is pure genius, Ron adopts an Additive approach to diet, focusing on efforts to include healthy foods rather than grind on people to eliminate many of their favorites. Some of Ron’s patients have wailed that, “rice is my drug,” so he tells them to add more nuts and meat to their biryani dishes! Fourth, don’t ruminate! This leads to depression when ruminating about the past and anxiety when ruminating about the future.  

This show can get a little science-y but I urge you to play it slowly, repeat passages, and do whatever you need to do to fully understand the important insights and suggestions from Dr. Ron. The podcast is giving you the opportunity to get an hour-long private consult with one of the leading big picture health guides in the world. I am committed to getting Dr. Ron back on the show in the future, because we hit so many points so quickly that there is plenty of fodder for further focus. We have exchanged long thoughtful emails on the disturbing trend of helicopter parenting and over-pressurized youth experiences, and we get a bit of that going on the show. Hey parents, here is a both-parents-are-doctors family working hard to give their kids a balanced life and a healthy approach to education and sports goals. If they can get over themselves, so can we!