Aug 13, 2026 · 1 hr 26 min · 17 segments
If you still think that high cholesterol is bad, that arterial blockages cause heart attacks and that the heart pumps your blood, then have a listen to this interview to have your heart health…
Tom CowanGuestSasha KalavodaHost
So one of the things I've discovered in my life is that the process of what we call science, which I would also call logic or rational thinking, and I would submit that of anything that I might say here, this is the most important thing, is once I got it clear that what I was doing was investigating claims, and not necessarily coming up with my own theories or ideas, then I actually started to learn about the world.

So it's important with anything, you know, so what is the heart is to say, what is the claim? In other words, what are we told? What are we told in medical school? What are we told in fourth grade or whatever? We're told that the heart is a pump.

And it's actually, there's a better word than a pump, is a pressure propulsion device.

And what we're told is the walls contract, especially the left ventricle, and that pushes the blood around the body.

So when you investigate that and say, okay, is that true? The first thing I came upon was there's like 10,000 miles of blood vessels in the body.

goes out of the left ventricle and then goes through arteries and then arterioles and then capillaries and then venules and then veins and then back to the heart.

And in order to push a pretty sticky fluid with stuff in it that's about the size of the diameter of the vessel, because the red blood cells are about the same size as the internal diameter of the capillaries, that would be a hell of a push.

In fact, I would say it would be hundreds, if not thousands of times more than a one pound muscle can generate.

Then I found out that if you do a flow diagram and you measure the velocity, the speed the blood is moving, it's going fastest as it exits the heart.

And so the question was, so you mean it's pushing from behind and then it's going slower and slower and slower and stops.

So one of the things I've discovered in my life is that the process of what we call science, which I would also call logic or rational thinking, and I would submit that of anything that I might say here, this is the most important thing, is once I got it clear that what I was doing was investigating claims, and not necessarily coming up with my own theories or ideas, then I actually started to learn about the world.

So it's important with anything, you know, so what is the heart is to say, what is the claim? In other words, what are we told? What are we told in medical school? What are we told in fourth grade or whatever? We're told that the heart is a pump.

And it's actually, there's a better word than a pump, is a pressure propulsion device.

And what we're told is the walls contract, especially the left ventricle, and that pushes the blood around the body.

So when you investigate that and say, okay, is that true? The first thing I came upon was there's like 10,000 miles of blood vessels in the body.

goes out of the left ventricle and then goes through arteries and then arterioles and then capillaries and then venules and then veins and then back to the heart.

And in order to push a pretty sticky fluid with stuff in it that's about the size of the diameter of the vessel, because the red blood cells are about the same size as the internal diameter of the capillaries, that would be a hell of a push.

In fact, I would say it would be hundreds, if not thousands of times more than a one pound muscle can generate.

Then I found out that if you do a flow diagram and you measure the velocity, the speed the blood is moving, it's going fastest as it exits the heart.

And so the question was, so you mean it's pushing from behind and then it's going slower and slower and slower and stops.
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