Andrew Huberman· PhD
yeah we don't want to rely on feeling when it comes to atherosclerosis just to put some perspective on this when I was in medical school we had a I I think I even write about this in the book we had a pathology lecture where the professor stands up there and he says um what is the most common presentation of a heart attack and you know us Keener first year Med students hands shoot straight up chest pain no that's not the most common uh oh uh uh shoulder pain AR radiating down the left arm no nausea shortness of breath no no no we rattled this off for a few minutes and he goes death the single most common presentation for a myocardial infarction is death more PE now I would say today that was 25 years ago today it's probably not the most common because um Advanced cardiac life support is so much better but it's still strikingly common so well you could say that um the the best predictor of a heart attack is still a heart attack um I not saying that the best underlying predictor but um and actually this hits home when I was uh postto I was living in San Francisco and I'll never forget this taking my coffee and uh out on my porch in the morning this is right near the UCSF Parnassus campus and this guy's walking down the street he's probably about my age and I said hello and he said hello he walked a few more steps and boom he just hit the concrete and died right in front of me it took a minute or two to know that he was truly dead I'll never forget it because that's a for a non surgeon you know it's it's an event right and they and I followed up on this and because it's family you know the the whole thing um because they wanted a report and no cocaine in his system no prior history of any kind of health issues and but he was just strolling along and just boom as if he'd been hit by a bus it's crazy so it's I mean again this is just one of those things where we're g we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about things that feel good and feel bad when you change them right like if you take a person who's not sleeping well but who thinks they're sleeping well and you ask them for a leap of faith which is hey give me a month to help you sleep really well yeah you're going to feel better you might not know it now because you don't know how bad you're sleeping now you've become acclimated to this U but this is not one of those domains you know exercise nutrition sleep all those things when you do those things better you feel better but I you know I don't want to overpromise on this you're you're not going to feel better in the moment when you fix your lipids but you'll feel better when you don't have a heart attack