How Dr. Ovadia Will Optimize Your Health And Keep You Off His Operating Table (#197)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth.

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.

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Conducting over 3000 heart surgeries taught by Dr. Phillip Ovadia, that good health comes from lifestyle and nutrition, not from surgery.

He is now on a mission to help people stay off his operating table by giving them the tools and mindset to never need a heart surgeon.

Dr. Ovadia graduated from the accredited med program at Pennsylvania State University and Jefferson Medical College. He then went on to complete a residency in general surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at Tufts New England Medical School.

Dr. Ovadia has practiced cardiothoracic surgery in Beaver, Pennsylvania, and Clearwater, Florida. In 2020, he established Ovadia Cardiothoracic Surgery and now works as an independent cardiothoracic surgeon in various locations throughout the US.

In an effort to overcome his lifelong struggle with obesity, Dr. Ovadia adopted a low carbohydrate focus wave eating in 2015. He has maintained a weight loss of nearly 100 pounds. And since March 2019 he has maintained a mostly carnivorous way of eating. He has extensively researched the health benefits of low carb with a focus on heart health, through many hours of reading the medical literature, books, and listening to podcasts as well as personal discussions with many of the physician leaders and citizens scientists involved in the low carb movement.

In his recent book, Stay Off My Operating Table, Dr. Ovadia discusses the principles of optimizing metabolic health to prevent heart disease and other chronic diseases. He also hosts the Stay Off My Operating Table Podcast, is a frequent guest on other podcasts, focused on metabolic and heart health, and has delivered lectures at conferences focused on metabolic health.

Dr. Ovadia has also established Ovadia Heart Health, a tele-health practice that focuses on the prevention and treatment of metabolic and heart disease, utilizing lifestyle and dietary modification.

He incorporates his hands-on clinical experience with heart disease and the personal insights he has gained in his own struggle with obesity and poor metabolic health.

Dr. Ovadia is board certified in cardiothoracic surgery and general surgery. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and is a founding member of the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners.

Dr. Ovadia currently lives in Florida with his wonderful wife and two amazing daughters.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast, and we have the doctor in the house. We have Dr. Ovadia with us, who is not only a thought leader, an author, he's saving lives.

He's got an amazing personal story. And for all you listeners out there, I have a bit of a rhetorical question, but I'm gonna ask it anyways. You know your health is your Wealth, but if you're not healthy, What's the point of your success in business? What's the point of all those zeros in the bank account?

And today, I promise you, you are gonna come out with life-changing strategies for the better. But I'm gonna stop it there. We have a lot to cover and Dr. Ovadia very kind, having us call you, feel welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast and you know what? There's always a story behind the story, so, Phil, what's your story?

What got you to where you are today?

[00:04:54] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Sure thing, Jeff. It's great to be here and great to connect with your audience. My story certainly interweaves between my personal and professional story and I'll try to cover a little bit of both. I have been a heart surgeon now for 20 years and during much of that time I was very unhealthy myself.

I have struggled with obesity since childhood. And this really got worse as I went through medical school and the difficult training that it takes to become a heart surgeon. And for the first half of my career as a heart surgeon, I just found myself getting more and more unhealthy, and I reached a point where I was morbidly obese.

I was pre-diabetic and I realized that I was gonna end up on my own operating table, so, to speak. I was following the path that so many of my patients followed. And I saw the pattern in my family as well. My grandmother underwent multiple heart surgeries, ultimately died of heart disease.

My dad had developed heart disease and ultimately underwent surgery, but I was at a loss. Because I quite frankly, was following all the advice that I would give my patients, all the advice that I had learned in school as to how to be healthy. I would eat less, I would move more. I would count my calories.

I would eat a low-fat diet and eat according to the food pyramid, and many others. I would have some short-term successes. I would lose some weight. I would end up gaining it back and more.

And thankfully, a couple of events happened and I started to come across some different information about how we get sick and how to be healthy.

And ultimately I changed, some things about my diet and my lifestyle and was able to have great success. I lost over a hundred pounds that is now coming up on seven years ago and been able to maintain it. And in that journey, I realized how I could help my patients better. And ultimately I've come to realize that heart disease, the number one killer in the United States for the last 60 years is a preventable disease.

And we'll get into some of the science behind that and some of the techniques, that I educate people on. But ultimately what I realized is as a heart surgeon, I should not be as busy as I am.

I have kind of refocused my career some, although I still continue to work as a heart surgeon.

I have a greater mission, I would say, to help people stay off my operating table, to teach them how not to need heart surgery. And that has led me down a few different paths, writing a book, opening a private telemedicine practice where I work with people, and really just figuring out all the different ways that I can get this message to the people that need to hear it.

[00:07:53] Jeffrey Feldberg: And for our listeners, this will be in the show notes and I encourage you to click on the link and buy the book, Stay Off My Operating Table: A Heart Surgeon's Metabolic Health Guide to Lose Weight, Prevent Disease, and Feel Your Best Every Day, number one best seller. And it really is a game changer. And Phil, I gotta share with you.

Went through the book, really enjoyed you. Leave nothing on the table. You talk about your personal stories and from being overweight to what you've gone through to what you're seeing, and you're really one of the few people who say, I wanna put myself out of business. I shouldn't be as busy, I shouldn't be doing this.

And then you give very practical strategies and tips. And for the listeners out there, here's another rhetorical question for you. Here we have a man of science, a doctor, who followed all the prescribed rules that we're told to do, and yet he wasn't at his optimal health. So, what does that tell you? And so, we're up against some really big roadblocks.

And Phil, what's really interesting in how you approach it, in your book, you have the 12 myths, in your words, the 12 myths they want us to believe. And sadly, if we look at the population, we are believing those 12 myths. So, why don't we start there? If you had to take a few of the 12 myths that really are at the top, what would be the number one or two of those myths that we can just dispel right away and see where that takes us?

[00:09:09] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah, so, probably, the biggest myth. And this has been propagated it's something that both the medical community and the public have been led to believe is that the food pyramid as it is, the US dietary guidelines are healthy recommendations are recommendations that are going to improve your health.

And the evidence, unfortunately, is very to the contrary. The dietary guidelines were first introduced in 1980. And the food pyramid, as most people recognize it came along, late 1980s, early 1990s. It's been revised a number of times. But what we see over the 40-plus years that these recommendations have been in place is that our health has gotten worst.

The incidence of diabetes, obesity has skyrocketed. Heart disease remains the number one killer in the United States and really there has not been any noticeable impact on that.

So, we really have to step back and start questioning these guidelines. And people will always say well, the problem is that people don't follow 'em.

But the reality is, is that people do, when you look at the kind of macro trends as to the types of food that people eat, they have shifted in line with the guidelines. We eat less fat, we eat more grains and carbohydrates, which is the bottom of the pyramid. And again, our health has clearly gotten worse.

So, that's something we really need to start questioning. And unfortunately, the process that has led to the US dietary guidelines and the people who are involved, the committee that revises these guidelines, every five years have been captured by the food industry and they are really serving the interests of the food industry, and they are not serving the interests of the people who are eating the food not focusing on their health.

That's probably myth number one that I think needs to be corrected, needs to be busted as it is.

[00:11:13] Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure. And you know the irony here is the standard American diet commonly referred to as SAD. It is sad. It's a sad state of affairs in terms of what it does to people and so, going down this path for just a moment. And you know what to eat, what not to eat. There's all different kinds of tribes out there, and people get into very heated discussions and we'll look to stay away from that.

But generally speaking, what would be some terrific takeaways for our listeners of what they should be avoiding, what they should be welcoming more of into what they're eating?

[00:11:42] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Exactly. And I go into it in the book in detail. But you know, I take a similar approach to what you discussed. There are all these, the food wars going on, and there are all these camps that promote one dietary strategy over the other. And what I tried to do was step back from that and look at what are the commonalities between all of these different diets.

 What do the people who have success, and what do they have in common? And it really comes down to eating real food.

First and foremost, we need to eliminate processed food from the diet. We need to be able to look at our food and know what it is, what is in it, and you know where it came from and how it was made.

And when you do that's where the magic happens. That's where you start to improve. And then we can have the debates about should you be eating more plants? Should you be eating more animal products? But ultimately I think if you stick to some simple concepts of eating whole real food, I always tell people, eat the things that grow in the ground and eat the things that eat, the things that grow in the ground. And so, as I said, I go into more detail in the book. I go through all the various, popular sort of dietary strategies of the day, looking at the vegan diet, looking at the carnivore diet looking at Mediterranean, keto diet, lots of stuff in between. But when you really drill down to what you know, what is the commonality, what leads to success, it comes back to eating whole, real food.

[00:13:10] Jeffrey Feldberg: And from what I really loved of what you did in the book, and you're absolutely right, you have all these different regimes. Eat this, don't eat that. Oftentimes they conflict with each other, but you looked at the entire spectrum, and then like you were saying, you pulled out the commonalities and so for the listeners, again, another reason to go through this book and read it.

It'll change your health forever in the best of ways You come out of it knowing, okay, regardless of what regime I prefer or what I'm going to start following. You have the basics, you have the foundations of what you should be doing. And then to put this in perspective, because I'm sure some listeners are saying wait a minute.

Phil, you seem like a great guy. Congratulations on the book and your practice, but I've got a great doctor and I trust them and they're telling me what to do. And if you look at your medical experience and your medical education specifically, why don't you share with the listeners how much education you received when it came to nutrition?

And I don't think that's really changed if we fast forward to today.

[00:14:03] Dr. Philip Ovadia: No, it really hasn't. Doctors receive very little education on nutrition and what we receive is superficial. And quite frankly, it's centered on the US dietary guidelines. We are told that is the best way for people to eat. Low-fat diets are promoted. And again, I look, all around me today and I say, what are the results we are getting from this advice we are giving?

And the results are not good. In terms of, when you see your doctor, we have to realize that your doctor has been educated to focus on treating your medical problems. We are not educated on preventing them and especially not using, dietary strategies. That is something I had to educate myself on, quite frankly.

And like I said, it started with my personal journey. I had to figure out how to improve my own health, and that has led me to become more educated on this, which doctors certainly can do. It's just that they quite frankly don't have the time. One of the central problems I see with the healthcare system today is the system is overwhelmed by taking care of sick people.

And so, doctors don't have the time to focus typically on how to keep people healthy, how to actually reverse their medical conditions instead of just trying to manage them. And this is the reason that you know many people have started to sort of opt out of the traditional medical system or find physicians like myself who are using a different model that allows me to spend the time with my patients.

My average visit with a patient, my initial consults that I do with patients are usually 90 minutes long. My maintenance visits with them are usually a half hour to 45 minutes. So, for everyone out there who's thinking, oh, I got a doctor and they're taking care of me.

Think about how long was your last visit with that doctor and what did they focus on? Did they talk to you about diet and nutrition and how it is the primary determinant of our health? Or that they just talk about what medications you're on and shuffle around your medications and unfortunately, it's typically a 15-minute visit and much of that time is spent looking at the computer, typing things into the computer, and not actually addressing how we can keep you healthy and how we can reverse your medical conditions.

[00:16:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And for the listeners, let's do this because there is a method to this madness, Phil, if we look at two of the myths, and I'm gonna put two of them together, myth number six and myth number seven. We'll talk about that in a moment. And then from there we're gonna jump into some of the metabolic markers and what you should be looking at, and start talking solutions.

But it's interesting, and this may come as a surprise for the listeners because you're saying myth number six, high cholesterol causes heart disease, and myth number seven, medications are the best treatment for any kind of medical issue. What's going on with that? Because that can be, for some people, a shock to hear.

Wait, what do you mean? I was always told that that is the case. You're saying it's not the case. What's going on here? So, what would you say to that?

[00:17:09] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah. myth number six is a big one. You know that cholesterol is the primary cause of heart disease. And again, something that I was educated on and I believed for the entire first portion of my career. But when you really look at the evidence, what you find is that cholesterol is a secondary player.

And it turns out that cholesterol is our bodies repair mechanism for when blood vessels get damaged and so when the blood vessels of your heart and elsewhere get damaged. Cholesterol is the speckle, you can think of it as it's how we repair the wall. And if you keep damaging the wall and you keep piling on the speckle, eventually that speckle sticks out and in the blood vessel it forms this plaque that ultimately causes a blockage or can break off and lead to a blockage and you know, cause heart disease and so it made sense.

We looked at the blood vessels that were damaged. We saw this cholesterol. And we said, oh, cholesterol's causing heart disease. But you know, we need to step back. We need to go back a step in the process and say what is damaging the blood vessel in the first place. Because if you can stop the blood vessel from getting damaged, cholesterol is in our bodies all the time.

 It serves many vital roles in our bodies. You literally could not exist without cholesterol. It helps to make up the structure of the. And so, it's not the cholesterol that's the problem, it's the damage to the blood vessels in the first place. And again, that's a problem that largely can't be corrected by medications.

And really comes down to diet and lifestyle issues. It comes down to metabolic health, which is a topic we're gonna get into a little bit more.

[00:18:58] Jeffrey Feldberg: And for our listeners, we're gonna dive now into Phil's seven principles of metabolic health. And as we're doing that, maybe in the back of your mind, you can be thinking of this.

When it comes time for your taxes, are you doing them yourself or are you going to an accountant? Perhaps you're even working out. Are you doing that yourself or are you getting some kind of a fitness trainer? So, really with Phil, Dr. Ovadia with us today, think of him like an Advisor for the most important person in your business as far as you're concerned.

Yourself that you take the guesswork out of it. You have a trained medical doctor who's been through it himself, has found a system that works and is now helping thousands of other people. And so, why not shorten your path to success? I mean, that's what we do as business owners. We don't wanna be blazing the new trail out there if others have already done it, that we can learn from and then get there quicker and that's what we're gonna be talking about now, so the seven principles of Metabolic Health. Where would you like to start? Because they're really different principles most people haven't heard of, but they're effective and they get the job done.

[00:19:58] Dr. Philip Ovadia: So, I think we should also first lay the groundwork, so, people understand what is metabolic health because quite frankly, this is something that most physicians don't understand and therefore are not able to, educate their patients on.

Metabolic health at its most basic refers to our body's ability to utilize the inputs that we are giving it.

And the input is primarily the food that we are eating. When we eat, one of three things happens to that food some of that food gets turned immediately into energy that gets used to fuel all of our activities, both on the kind of cellular micro level and the macro level. Some of that food gets broken down and it's used to build and rebuild our tissues, which is a process that's constantly going on in our bodies.

And finally, some of that food gets stored as energy gets put into storage because there are going to be times that energy, that food isn't immediately available. Historically, that was a huge problem, the lack of availability of food for us, and we were in a constant struggle to find enough food, to find enough energy.

What has happened in modern times is we now have an abundance of food and abundance of energy around us and so, we end up storing too much energy. And that leads to downstream problems. So, that is how I explain metabolic health to people. And when we get people who are not metabolically healthy to be metabolically healthy they are better able to utilize the food that they are eating.

And that's what it comes down to. Shocking statistic that, I always share with people is that 88% of the adults in the United States are not in optimal metabolic health. There was a study, looking at this about it actually came out in 2016 and they looked at some markers of metabolic health and there were five major markers that we use.

Only 12% of the adults in the United States met all five markers. So, the first kind of principle of metabolic health. This isn't one of the seven principles in the book but the first step in understanding metabolic health is finding out are you metabolically healthy or not.

[00:22:22] Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure, and think about that for our listeners, you're in a room of people. If you took 10 people, I'm gonna round up here a little bit, 9 of those 10 people either have some kind of metabolic disease or they're well on their way.

 Let's get that help. Let's figure out what's going on. And so, for the listeners. Phil, what are the five markers of metabolic health? You talk about that in the book. Maybe we can just do a quick recap for the listeners.

[00:22:47] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah, definitely. And as you pointed out, it is very important. You can't assume that you are healthy just because your lean does not mean you were metabolically healthy. And that same study when they broke out the normal-weight people, they saw that 50% of them were not metabolically healthy.

Being overweight certainly makes it more likely that you're not metabolically healthy, but you can't assume just because you're, not overweight, that you are metabolically healthy. So, it's important to look at these five markers some of them involve some blood work that you're gonna need to, work with a physician on or there are many ways that you can get this done yourself.

And some of them you measure at home. So, the first measurement is one measurement that you can do at home and it's your waist circumference. So, very simple just take a tape measure. You want to measure just above the level of your belly button. It's best to do it first thing in the morning.

And if you are a man, you want that to be less than 40. If you were a woman, you wanted to be less than 35 inches.

The second metric we look at is your blood pressure. Again, you can check this at home. Almost every pharmacy or grocery store these days has a kiosk that you can go get it checked, and most of the time when you go and see a physician, they're gonna check your blood pressure.

And the gold there is for your blood pressure to be less than 130 over 85 so, both of those numbers should be below those values, and that needs to be without the use of blood pressure-lowering medication. If you've been diagnosed with high blood pressure, it is oftentimes one of the earliest indicators that you are not metabolically healthy.

And unfortunately, most physicians don't recognize it as. And instead of using that as an opportunity to look at metabolic health, they'll just prescribe you a medication to lower your blood pressure which is not addressing the underlying root cause problem.

[00:24:42] Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.

[00:24:43] Dr. Philip Ovadia: The final three metrics come from some blood work, very basic blood work. Most physicians are gonna get this as part of a, routine examination. Or like I said, there are many websites these days that people can go to and order their own blood work if they want to. You wanna look at your fasting blood glucose level, so it's the amount of sugar that's in your blood when you haven't eaten for about 8 to 12 hours, and you want that to be less than a hundred milligrams per deciliter.

Again, without the use of medications. If you have type two diabetes, that is a very strong indicator that you are not metabolically healthy. It's one of the hallmarks of poor metabolic health. And then we look at your cholesterol.

And you heard me before, say, cholesterol isn't as important as we think it is, isn't the cause of heart disease.

And what I want people to recognize is when we look at your cholesterol panel, we actually look at it differently than most doctors look at it. Most doctors focus on what's called the L D L cholesterol, the low-density lipoprotein. And it's been nicknamed Bad Cholesterol.

 LDL cholesterol is not a marker of metabolic health.

There are two other numbers on that panel, however, that are, and these are the important ones to look at. You wanna look at your HDL cholesterol, high density lipoprotein,

Nicknamed by many as good cholesterol. And you actually want this number to be higher which again confuses a lot of people that you need higher cholesterol levels.

Specifically, if you're a man, you want it to be over 40 milligrams per deciliter. If you're a woman, you want it to be over 50 milligrams per deciliter. And then we look at the triglycerides, which is another number on that lipid panel. And this, you do want lower, you want it to be less than 150 milligrams per deciliter.

So, those are the measures of metabolic health. I encourage everyone to get these checked. These are like your basic KPIs for your health, you know, and you need to be keeping an eye on these. You need to be tracking these. And if they're not at those goals, you need to develop a plan to get them at goal.

Just like you talked about if you're going to your accountant and you're asking them, how am I doing financially? And their only answer for you is you haven't bounced any checks yet, so, you must be doing fine. None of us would accept that yet that's what we do with our physicians.

Oftentimes we go to our routine exams with our physicians and the physician says you haven't had a heart attack yet. You don't have type two diabetes. You must be doing okay. But when you look under the hood and you look at these metabolic health measures, they can actually tell you, are you doing okay or not?

[00:27:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: Now what's interesting, Phil, is you use the business term in a medical sense, which you don't hear all that often, KPI, key performance indicator. And as business owners of course, for the business, we have all kinds of KPIs, or at least we should have KPIs for the business. If we're successful of, are we on track?

Are we not on track? And oh my goodness, look at this, we're falling behind. Let's, now that we know what's going on here, let's pick things back up. Let's get back to where we were or do even better. Why not do the same thing on our personal side when it comes to the health and with the five markers of metabolic health, some terrific personal KPIs to start following and to start doing.

And again, this podcast and this episode, we're not here to give medical advice and everyone obviously should go refer to their own physician when doing some of these things and not to words in your mouth or say things that really aren't the case. And you can correct me if I'm on base or off base, but when you start following some of these principles, these health strategies that you're doing, I know in the book you talk about this for people perhaps that have type two diabetes or if they have high blood pressure, these strategies can not only reverse these metabolic diseases but also eliminate the need for the medications.

Am I on base with that? What are your thought?

[00:28:43] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yes you are. I have now worked with many people who have gotten off their medications, have corrected and reversed their diabetes, their high blood pressure and that then has the downstream effects of preventing heart disease, preventing other chronic conditions. When we look at the top 10 causes of death every year in the United States, seven out of the 10 of them are directly attributable to poor metabolic health. And this includes things like heart disease. This includes many forms of cancer. This includes Alzheimer's disease, chronic kidney disease, stroke type two diabetes like we talked about. All of these things are related to metabolic health.

So, the most powerful thing about metabolic health is that it's not only you. Preventing heart disease. It's also preventing all of these other chronic conditions that are going to lead to not only a shorter life, but a poorer quality of life. And so, that's what I work with people on. As the title of the book says, I want you to feel your best every day.

[00:29:51] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And stay off of your operating table while you're at it and as we go through these seven principles now, and for the listeners out there as you're thinking about why, hold on. Just stop. Wait a minute. That's gonna cost more money. It may take more time. Let me ask you another rhetorical question.

What's the cost of not doing this? If you're on meds, what are those meds costing you? Even with insurance, and if you have to maybe see the doctor more than you should, and you're taking time out of the business, you're not feeling well, you don't have the energy. Perhaps that you once had, what's that costing you?

And what's interesting with principle number one, you wouldn't expect this from a doctor, but Phil, you just nailed it because it's really a mindset. And here at Deep Wealth, we're all about mindset. It's the art side of business. This is now the art side of life that you're talking about. And principle number one, reframe health as a system, not a goal.

So, what were you thinking with that? What should be the takeaway for our listeners?

[00:30:44] Dr. Philip Ovadia: And you know, this is kind of borrowed from Scott Adams, who I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with. But it is very applicable to your health. We tend to focus on very short-term goals when we're thinking about our health. Most people, they say, okay, I wanna lose 20 pounds.

And when you set the goal like that, one of two things happens, and I'm sure many people will have experienced this. You make some changes and you lose the weight. And you say, great, I did what I set out to do. And you tend to slide back to your old habits. And then, you know, this is why we see people cycling through weight loss programs, so often. Quite frankly, this is the whole business model of Weight Watchers that, they know you're gonna have some short term success.

Then you're gonna fail, and then you're gonna say well, it sort of worked so, I'm gonna go back to it. So, that's you know, outcome number one. Outcome number two is that you're not going to lose the weight. You're gonna make changes. You're not gonna be able to achieve your goal. You're gonna get discouraged and you're gonna say, why bother? I can't lose the weight? It was something that I had been through many times. Instead, what I tried to get people to do is think of their health as a system. Tell yourself I want to be healthy. I want to be metabolically healthy. Find the habits that then support that system and these will lead to long-term success.

I find it's a much more positive way to think you're taking positive action as opposed to, restricting things and taking negative action. And it's a much more sustainable, long-term, focused way to think about your health.

[00:32:21] Jeffrey Feldberg: Now what's interesting with principle number one in the book, you give a terrific strategy and tool, and I may botch the name here, so, please help me out with this. But it's the OODA loop. Observe, orient, decide, and act. And it's simple enough to remember, but it's powerful. And so, what should our listeners really be taking away from this principle?

[00:32:43] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah, exactly. The OODA loop is very powerful and the important thing about the OODA loop is it is a loop. So, you're constantly restarting the process but basically, you know, observe and orient is figuring out where you are, where you're starting from you know what direction you wanna move in.

That's the orient. And then decide on a path. Decide on a change you're gonna make an action, you're gonna take act upon that. And then see what happens. See what the results are. And this is where you circle back to observe and orient again. See what happens, see what you need to change.

And again, I find this to be a very useful rubric when it comes to health when it comes to business, quite frankly. It is applicable to multiple areas of your life.

[00:33:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: And from the OODA loop into principle number two, because it really goes hand in hand. You're talking about eat real whole foods, and then you talk about there's all these different systems, and you talk about yourself personally. I don't subscribe to any wine specific system. I'll go with what works for me, and that may be a little bit from here, a little bit from there.

And back to the OODA loop with, regardless of what regime we may or may not be, following. Every body, every person is different, respond differently to different kinds of foods, different environments. What works for your significant other may not work for you. And so,, can you delve into that when it comes to real whole foods and not falling into the trap of I gotta just stay with these foods because it's only in this system, and if I get outside the system, I'm gonna be in trouble.

[00:34:15] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah, exactly. And it's also important to recognize that not only is there, not one right answer for everyone, but even for each one of us individually, the answer may change over time. What I did to lose a hundred pounds is slightly different than what I do now to maintain that weight.

And depending on where you're starting from and what your goals are you may come up with a different answer for you. And again, this is where it's important to be working with a practitioner or a partner, a physician, whoever it is, that can guide you through this and can help you with this evaluation piece of it.

The central principle though, being eat whole real food just start there is really what I want people to understand. And then, like I said earlier, you can do that as a vegan, you can do that as a carnivore. You can do that lots of ways in between. And you're gonna do some experimentation.

You're gonna be adjusting things as you go along. But you know, start with the central principle. Eat whole real food, and then find what works best for you in your lifestyle. And, depending on your goals and where you are starting from.

[00:35:24] Jeffrey Feldberg: In case in point with the OODA system, I'm not gonna name names. It's a person that most people would know behind one style of eating. Also, a physician, very honest person, started a whole revolution of what to eat, what not to eat. And a couple years into it, he came out and said, you know what? I was wrong.

I said to exclude these kinds of foods from the diet. I found that in the beginning, I was responding well, but a couple years into it, I'm really not. I've now included these foods and at least from my body type, I'm feeling a whole lot better. So, things change. People change, we all react differently and to your advice, it's such sage.

Do what feels good for you after you eat something, how do you feel? I mean, that's, you don't need a doctor to tell you that. Are you feeling good? Are you not feeling good? Are you feeling less energy? More energy? And again, that may also change to your point over time, what work today may not work tomorrow.

And then we go, it's actually a terrific segue into principle number three, which could be as much a business principle, which it is. As it is a personal health principle. And number three is make one sustainable change at a time. And I know in business, particularly in marketing, maybe we're doing an AB test.

We are only changing one thing. Did it work? Did it not work? Are we better off, not as well off? And now we apply that to our personal health so, any insights, Phil, that you have with principle number three?

[00:36:41] Dr. Philip Ovadia: yeah, just, you know, and this is one reason that I like working with business owners so, much, is that they understand these concepts. They just oftentimes haven't thought about applying it to their health and to their personal lives. But the key about making one change at a time is so that you can assess the results of that.

If you're changing a whole bunch of things it becomes hard to determine, what worked within those things, what didn't work within those things. So, I am a fan of focusing on one area, making one change at a time, assessing the results of that, and then moving to the next thing.

[00:37:16] Jeffrey Feldberg: And you know what? Perfect segue. Moving to the next thing, principle number four, move. And I'm gonna take a quote right from the book. I just really appreciated how you took things and put it out there in very easy to follow principles. And I quote, you don't need to be a bodybuilder to achieve good results over the course of your lifetime.

You just need to maintain a reasonable amount of mass. And you keep it really simple so, you don't have to be in the gym for three hours pounding it out every day and putting on all kinds of muscle. And Phil, it turns out you and I have something in common. We both use the X three bar for resistance training, which was nice to see.

And you mentioned that in the book. But it seems to me that most business owners and just people in general underestimate how powerful, something like walking regularly. After meals or first thing when you wake up so, when it comes to moving. I would love your insights on how underestimated that is, but how powerful when you do it?

It is on our health.

[00:38:10] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah, exactly. The simple principle that I talk about is just moving more. We can all be incorporating more movement into our days. This can be simple things like using a standup desk instead of sitting taking a 10-minute walk around the office, every hour or two taking that walk after you eat.

Just real simple things that we can incorporate more movement throughout our day. Really have very big payoffs perhaps more so than if you go and spend that hour on the treadmill at the gym but then sit around doing nothing the rest of the day we know that does not lead to good results.

[00:38:49] Jeffrey Feldberg: You're absolutely right and a study recently came out, Phil, maybe you heard of this or saw this, and they're looking specifically at blood insulin levels after eating and ideally, It's recommended that after a meal you can walk 20 minutes to 30 minutes and some people say, Hey, that's great, but I can't do that all the time.

And so, what the study found that even if it was two minutes, someone walking around or moving around for two minutes following a meal, blood insulin levels responded in a better way. So, in other words, you're healthier even with two minutes and so for our listeners. Come on, you can find two minutes after you have a meal, park your car a little bit further.

You're gonna go walk to it or take the stairs or do something. Two minutes. We can all find so, love the suggestion on moving and principle number four, and then principle five. Love to see that there because it's probably the most underrated thing to do. It's free and it has the biggest impact. And here you're talking about sleep enough.

Principle number five, so, what's going on with that?

[00:39:46] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah so, sleep is a very vital component of our health and specifically of our metabolic health. And you know, it's a two-way street. If you are not metabolically healthy, one of the effects of that is that you are going to have worsening sleep. And then if you don't sleep enough, it's gonna be more likely that you are metabolically unhealthy.

One of the things I talk about in the book, and I want people to understand though, that it is not only about the amount of sleep. We all hear the magic number. Get eight hours of sleep, get seven hours of sleep a night. But it also, you have to account for the quality of your sleep because there are people who sleep 10 hours a night, but it's all poor quality sleep and they are not, getting the benefits of that.

And there are other people who, you know, sleep six or seven hours. But it's very high-quality sleep, and they do see the benefits of that so, it's a combination of time and quality when it comes to your sleep. But I strongly encourage people, you need to be thinking about your sleep. You need to be more intentional about some of your habits to improve your sleep.

[00:40:55] Jeffrey Feldberg: And filter your point. All kinds of studies are out there, and it's interesting. Let's go back to measuring insulin because it's something so easy to measure. People who had more sleep compared to people who had less sleep. What happens? People who had less sleep, their insulin spiked higher than it normally would've.

They felt hungrier, so, they ate more during the day. They put on more weight because of that and sleep we're only starting now to understand what's there, but for our listeners, Take a look at your sleep. There's all kinds of different rings or bands or watches that you can get. It's a little bit of money to spend on the technology, but the insights that you get and the changes in real-time that you can make to your lifetime really are priceless and invaluable.

And then principle number six, relieve stress. Stress again tends to be underrated, but such a big impact as a physician, a doctor, someone who's operating on people. What are you seeing from stress in you know, your practice and with your patients?

[00:41:49] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah, so, I was very intentional in the way that I phrased that as relieving stress, not eliminating stress. Stress is a daily part of our lives. We can't get around that, we're all busy, especially, you know, if you're a business owner. There's always going to be stress in your life but it's how you respond to that stress, how you process that stress that determines how it's going to affect your health.

And if you are not able to offload that stress to deal with it in some manner, it is going to have a negative impact on your health. And again, multiple studies have shown this. So, you just need to find some way to deal with that stress. And that can be, community, religion, family. Some people use meditation techniques, whatever it is, just find some way that the stress isn't constantly building in you so, that it doesn't have those negative effects on your health.

[00:42:42] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And stress is that silent killer. It's robbing us of our health over time. You may not notice it and then wham, it hits us. And then rounding things out to principle number seven. Get a doctor who gets it. And Phil, you're really modest. I'm gonna ask you to not be so modest with this next question because you're different than most doctors.

And so, for a listener who is hearing all of this and saying, you know what? I'm not really getting any of this from my current physician that I'm seeing. I'm in there if I get five minutes, that's a lot of talk time with a doctor, and then it's out the door and who knows how long I'm waiting. So, as a business owner, we're busy.

We have that stress. We're trying to manage all of that. When we come to you and you take us on as a patient, what are you gonna be doing that we're probably not going to get with another doctor and not seeing that's really gonna be so beneficial for optimizing our health and ultimately longevity.

[00:43:35] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah so as I said, we're going to do the deep dive. We're going to focus on your metabolic health. We're going to see where you are. And that typically involves extensive conversation around these habits that we've been talking about, what you're eating, how you're sleeping, what kind of activity you're getting, and how you're dealing with your stress.

Looking at your lab work in very good detail and understand those five metrics we talked about. Those are just the starting point. Those are the very basics. But we're gonna do the deep dive and figure out where you are, and then we're going to start tackling those challenges that you have, what we need to do to improve.

If you are already on medications and have some of these conditions that we've talked about today, what can we do to improve that, to reverse that, to get you off of the medications where possible? What should we be doing to prevent you from developing things like heart disease and cancer and Alzheimer's disease?

These are the things that we work together very intensively on. And it is a very hands-on practice. As part of it, I have health coaches that work with me. We have coaching programs that go along with it. But it's a very different experience. And the other thing that I think is different Is that it's all telemedicine-based.

You don't have to fly to Florida to work with me. I work with people throughout the United States via telemedicine and so there's that convenience factor that goes along with that. And I just try and run my practice in a way that it's very conducive to working with busy people like business owners.

Being a business owner myself and being a surgeon we oftentimes, it's not typical doctor's hours for sure. I'm oftentimes having appointments, in the evenings with people or the early mornings and working around their schedules and my schedule to make things work.

So, it's a very different medical experience. And we get very different results ultimately.

[00:45:30] Jeffrey Feldberg: And for what I really like with what you're saying and for our listeners, just to do a comparison. The Deep Wealth nine-step roadmap helps you grow your business, and then when you've grown your business, your profits are up, you have a higher enterprise value, it's time to sell your business. You're gonna go to step number four, which is due diligence.

Guess what? Phil and his team of coaches and advisors, they're your due diligence for your health. They're looking into areas you would never know to look into. It's just like you're gonna do a quality of earnings report or have your accountants give you audited statements, and you're just doing a deep dive in all those different areas.

This is what you're doing with your system, Phil. You're really at a health level, at a personal level, finding our blind spots, finding those skeletons in the closet that we never knew we had, that health-wise can just make the biggest of impacts. You know, Phil, in the book, you go on brilliantly, you take some of the most popular ways of eating these different diets, and you talk about how you can eat metabolically healthy on them. And then I love how you ask, frequently asked, rarely answered questions about metabolic health. It's all in there. And for our listeners, again, it's all in the book and I would love to do a deep dive on that.

But we're bumping up against some time, so, take away for our listeners, get the book, read it. Better yet, we'll have this in the show notes. Reach out to Phil, arrange an appointment with him. He does things virtually and sees where your health is and sees what's there. I suspect you're gonna be pleasantly surprised and you're gonna find some life-changing things.

But Phil, before we wrap this episode up, we have a tradition here on the Deep Wealth podcast, and this is where I get to ask my favorite question. I'm honored and feel privileged to be able to do this with you now as well. And here's the question for you. I'd like you to think of the movie Back to the Future.

And in the movie, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in. So, imagine now it's tomorrow morning. You look outside your window and not only is the DeLorean car there, but the door is open, and Phil, it's waiting for you to hop on in and you're now gonna go to any point in your lifetime.

Maybe Phil, as a young child or a teenager, whatever point in time it would be. What would you tell your younger self in terms of life wisdom or life lessons, or, hey Phil, do this, but don't do that. What would that sound like?

[00:47:41] Dr. Philip Ovadia: I think I would probably go back to myself, maybe college or as I was starting medical school, and just encourage myself to be more curious and to really question dogma more often. Many of the things that I was taught in medical school, I now realize in retrospect we're not correct.

And one of the problems, within the healthcare system these days is that we're not able to question these things that have been put down as absolute truth. And since I have started doing that since I have made these changes and started doing that, I have seen, such great improvements not only in my health, but in my life and in working with patients in the way that I interact with patients so, that would probably be a big piece of advice that I would give myself.

[00:48:28] Jeffrey Feldberg: Certainly some sage wisdom from someone who's been down this path and really, you've seen so, much. What a terrific takeaway for us. And Phil, we're gonna put this in the show notes for our listeners who would like to reach out to you, talk with you, learn more about what you're doing online, where would be the best place for them to find you?

[00:48:45] Dr. Philip Ovadia: Yeah, so, you can go to ovadiahearthealth.com, you'll find all the information about joining the medical practice there. And on social media, I'm active on Twitter. I'm active on LinkedIn. On Twitter, I'm @ifixhearts. And LinkedIn just search my name and always look into connect with people.

My messages, my direct messages are open on both those platforms so, feel free to reach out.

[00:49:12] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And you know what, for our listeners, again in the show notes, we'll have all the links there, including the link to the book. Highly recommend that you get that and read that. And Phil normally here as we wrap up the episode, we would normally say, please say healthy and safe. But I'm gonna modify that and I'm gonna take the liberty of taking how you end your book and just change it slightly because you say, if you forget everything else, remember this.

And for our listeners, in Phil's words, you don't have to end up on my operating table. Bad metabolic health is preventable. And Phil, really a heartfelt thank you for sharing some powerful strategies to help keep us off your operating table and to optimize our life for health and for happiness. And thank you so, much for sharing your wisdom and part of your day with us today.

[00:49:55] Dr. Philip Ovadia: For having me on.

[00:49:56] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.

[00:49:59] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.

[00:50:09] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity

[00:50:14] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:50:20] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.

[00:50:36] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.

[00:50:58] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.

[00:51:09] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:51:22] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.

[00:51:40] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:52:07] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.

[00:52:26] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?

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