Mindfulness And Leadership Beyond The Mat with Dr. Julie Rosenberg and The Mission Of Enhanced External Counter Pulsation with Sara Soulati

Every workplace in today’s society has people stressed out at work. They battle this stress through exercise and meditation. One of the best ways to do so is through yoga. Dr. Julie Rosenberg is a long-term thyroid cancer survivor who uses the principles of yoga beyond the mat. She believes that corporate life will not feel as demanding when we learn to pause, breathe, and stay quiet even for a moment so we can be mindful of ourselves and our environment. Poor circulation and inflammation are two of the common causes of diseases and these two are effectively addressed by the Enhanced External Counter Pulsation Therapy. CEO of Global Cardio Care Inc., Sara Soulati, has been having an amazing 22-year journey seeing people get better from different types of diseases. This has been her drive and she shares how she and her company are giving back to communities by providing them prevention and lifestyle education.

 

We’ve got an interesting show now because it’s got a medical slant to it. We’ve got Dr. Julie Rosenberg and Sara Soulati. Dr Rosenberg is an executive but she’s also a physician and she’s worked in a variety of leadership roles. She is an Executive Coach and part of Marshall Goldsmith’s MG100 Coaches. Sara Soulati is a CEO of Global Cardio Care. They have a piece of equipment called the Enhanced External Counterpulsation device that’s very good for your heart. It’s very interesting what she’s doing with that.

Listen to the podcast here

Mindfulness And Leadership Beyond The Mat with Dr. Julie Rosenberg

I am with Dr. Julie Rosenberg, who’s a physician executive who has worked in a variety of leadership roles in academic medicine and in the pharmaceutical industry. In 2017, she was selected by number one executive coach and leadership thinker, Marshall Goldsmith, from among 16,000 applicants as one of the MG 100 Coaches. Dr. Rosenberg teaches yoga primarily beyond the mat, helping individuals and groups to apply principles and practice of yoga in their daily lives, and to support their overall health and well-being to achieve success and to become more effective leaders. Dr. Rosenberg, can I call you Julie?

Sure.

I worked for AstraZeneca for twenty years and I know you’ve worked with Pfizer and you have this medical background. People hear yoga and they start to think, “What does this have to do with leadership?”

Here’s the reality of corporate life as I see it, Diane. I’ve been working as an executive in pharma for almost thirteen years now and I’ve worked for several companies. The pharma industry is not like other industries to some extent. The challenges are industry agnostic. Everybody’s trying to do more with less and leaders at all ranks organizationally. I believe that anyone can be a leader. Leaders are stretched and they’re challenged in ways that they’ve never been challenged before. Corporate life is so demanding. There are many uncertainties within the environment and beyond.

I have looked for ways to manage those uncertainties myself and to share my management style and techniques with individuals on my teams and beyond so that folks can have a better ride of it in corporate America and enjoy their jobs and also preserve their health and wellness while leading themselves and others better. It’s a big remit that I have for myself and others. What I’ve done in my book, Beyond the Mat, is take yoga, the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali and the wisdom of yoga, and make it into a modern day framework, giving it a structure of how one may live and lead optimally in modern times. It’s not a yoga book per se, it’s just that some of the ideas and concepts are derived from yoga.

One of the things you hear a lot from people who want to take yoga is they like the meditation and the mindfulness of it. In the current workplace, a lot of people are stressed out and they can use some of the advantages of meditation. How do you tie that in to supporting leaders and business, and what kind of a meditation practices do you suggest?

First of all, meditation can be a variety of things. Many people see it as something that one does in a solitary way. More and more, there are group meditation classes, but I myself am a fan of what I call “meditation on the move.” I say this not to minimize a formal meditation practice by any means, but to take a few minutes in the morning or in the evening or even during the work day, to try to pause, to take a few moments, focus on your breath, sit or stand quietly, minimize the distractions in your environment. When you do this, sometimes you open yourself to a larger awareness and you are less apt to act in a way to external stimuli that might be reactive. This can really help. I call this “meditation on the move” because the goal of yoga practice in general, as most folks who do yoga will understand, is to take it from the mat beyond the mat, and hence, the title of my book.

That’s helpful not just for leaders. I get a lot of people who listen to the show who are speakers and they need to get a grip before they get on stage. They’ve got to become confident. You are a seasoned and confident public speaker. I read you had a disorder following surgery for thyroid cancer that affected your voice, but I don’t notice that. I imagined that would be a terrible thing to go through. How did this impact you? Do you use these techniques to help you with your speaking?

I do, Diane. I am a long-term survivor, over 24 years now. I had this at a young age, a limited stage thyroid cancer. At the time I had a complete thyroidectomy, I took radioactive iodine as my treatment. Subsequent to that, I had some injury to the laryngeal nerve. Basically, my vocal cords don’t vibrate quite as well as others. One of the reasons why I got into yoga in the first place was the breath work of yoga. There were many reasons, but the breadth of yoga was of great interest to me. By modulating my breath and my reactivity, I could be relatively be certain that my voice would be clear.

The other thing that’s critical when speaking in front of others, as your speakers will know, is to maintain a strong presence. It helped me to expand my breadth, maintain my presence, slow down my speaking and have a certain level of confidence that I could overcome a disorder and the limitation to do what I wanted to do. I like to share that so that others will feel the same way. There are always workarounds to the challenges that we face.

You bring up some important points about some of the challenges we face. I’ve met a lot of people who tell me that they get very stressed out, just work in general. They’ll have overactive thought process in their heads and can’t sleep, whatever the things are. Since you a physician, an MD, is this a cortisol thing that they’re having? How does this benefit them to do yoga or to meditate in terms of their cortisol reactions?

In general, when we are stressed, we do a cortisol-type reaction. Stress is a normal part of our living. What we don’t want to do is get into what we call a sympathetic nervous system overdrive. That’s that real stress response when we’re anxious and nervous and going at 100 miles an hour. One thing that yoga does, especially the breath work and the ability of one to focus and to remain present, has actually helped to impart on the parasympathetic nervous system to calm down that fight or flight response.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep, my job is international and I’m often traveling and sometimes overseas where time is a different than my usual base, which is in Connecticut and New York, I use these techniques, especially the breathing, to try to quiet myself down and to better adapt to different time zones. Usually, I can get to sleep relatively readily and adjust to those time zones through my breath work and my meditation practice. It is a great way to conduct held down. Back to the speaking part, a few deep breaths prior to speaking or prior to a major high stakes meeting can help one to settle down and to be able to manage the room and the audience more effectively.

You have a very calm tone and they have a lot of people on my show that very much into different ways to meditate in different practices that help them to be self-aware in that type of thing. There are a lot of us who are super hyper on overdrive, like you mentioned that it maybe doesn’t come as naturally. I remember taking some yoga classes where everybody’s all relaxed and the more they would tell me to relax, the more it made me like not relax because they’re telling you to relax. How do you get people who are super hyper, like me and others who are just hot Type A personalities to buy into all of the value because they’d have a hard time slowing down to begin with?

The main thing is you have to try it before you buy it. It’s always a journey. First and foremost, I myself am a bit of a fitness Geek. I started in fitness well before I started in yoga. I wasn’t that interested in yoga for many years. I had thyroid cancer and the subsequent challenges therein that we’ve talked about, but also I had more and more challenges in my job as I ascended the corporate ladder. What I realized was that the state of relative calm, which by the way, I am innately, not unlike yourself and others that you describe Type A. This relative calm makes me more approachable to a variety of audiences. I also want to ensure that I focus and that I’m present for the team, for the people, and when I deal with patients. I work in Global Drug Development and there are times when I work with teams and other times when I work with patients, but the goal is always the same, to deliver new drugs for patients with cancer and I must listen.

Basically, what it’s done for me is I’ve got a recognition of the value and I tested it. As I’ve tested it, it has helped me to have the real underlying confidence that perhaps in the past was more of a fake it till you make it situation. Now, I feel like I have it and I feel more grounded. I’m relatively calm most of the time and I’m much better paced. I feel like for all of this, my health is better. I have achieved what people call work-life balance because I insist on this of myself. It’s doing these techniques because my environment isn’t as crazy than it’s ever been, but my management of the environment is so much better. I encourage people to try it, little doses at a time, and just see what you get. If you get something, try it more.

[Tweet “It’s important to prioritize people because our people are our biggest resource.”]

What’s your specialization? That was an interesting thing, what you said to try it. I think of doctors a lot of times. They say, “You can try this.”A lot of doctors like to experiment with different things that they know work really well, but I’m curious what your background is? What is your specialty?

I’m trained totally in the mainstream. I’m trained as a pediatric oncologist. I did medical school. I did a pediatrics residency and then fellowship in pediatric oncology. Dealing with children with cancer is very challenging. Before I moved into the pharmaceutical industry, I did have an academic appointment for about eight years. I wanted in my career more global reach. I love working with patients in a cancer center and at a university. I’m fortunate that I still have those types of ties. In my global reach of my current job and a couple of positions before it, I have seen people worldwide and I’ve looked at the condition of society as it relates to medicine. Here in the US, as you’re aware, we have a treatment model of disease.

What I’m trying to do is intersect my interest in personal leadership practices and corporate leadership practices with what is actually required to maintain health and wellness. I believe that we can become a healthier society if we each impart some of these practices for our self as individuals. There could be a ripple effect for a more unified and healthier society. This is a lofty goal, but I do believe we have more control than we believe. I started some of this work as well coincidentally when the Childhood Cancer Survivor Movement was in its incipient stages. I was very involved in that, and I’ve been delighted to see more and more people surviving cancer over time. That cancer story for all of us affected with cancer, it’s a journey. For everyone else, it’s always a journey. What can we do to make our journey more manageable and even more joyful and opportunistic for ourselves and for others? I do believe these practices help in that.

You said a few things that are interesting to me. My husband’s a plastic surgeon and my years of working in pharmaceuticals, I have enough background to be dangerous. I remember that most of the treatments we always thought in terms of stepped care and whatever books that they read. If they didn’t read it, the patient probably was crazy because it’s in their head. I got a lot of that feeling from doctors. They didn’t think outside what they were taught. I’d seen a lot of changes since then. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in pharmaceutical position.

They do still treat disease rather than preventative things. That’s why I think it’s interesting what you do. What interests me most is doctors aren’t traditionally business thinkers, even though they’re running business models. They’re entrepreneurs, obviously. I’ve seen a lot of doctors who don’t have a lot of great business training. What drew you to the business aspect and working on with yoga and relating it to effective business models? How does that all tie in?

In this day and age, many business models are still built on a hierarchical structure with organized leadership. I’m in such a situation and there’s a guiding principle based on the bottom line. However, as time has gone on, many business models are much more open. Many companies are offering things like meditation and yoga and fitness activities and other benefits to their employees. We read about this in a variety of journals. We hear about it on the news and on the radio and in the media, etc. It’s important to prioritize people because our people are our biggest resource.

What I’ve seen in the companies that really offer this focus for people is that even still many times the people don’t know how to best assimilate the information. My interest in business at this point is in the broader societal impact and the broader organizational impact. For me, developing drugs has been very rewarding. I’m very committed to it. I’ve loved and do love serving patients with cancer because I still am in such a role now. However, we need to prioritize health and wellness more globally. It doesn’t always have to be about treatment. Through effective business modeling and through teaching people how to adopt the practices that are now being offered in many organizations, we might be able to do this in a more systemized way.

You bring a lot of important points. I’m curious what you think we should do to help physicians be more prepared from medical school levels when they get out to deal with some of the things that you’re helping with now.

What my goals are, in the longer term, is to move back into medical school environments. Some of the principles and practice that we’re discussing here today and that I do outline in my book, Beyond the Mat, are very user-friendly for folks in medical school, graduate school, business schools, and the like. It’s almost a colloquialism. We must take care of ourselves before we take care of others. Physicians are not always the healthiest people around. There is a major problem as you may be aware with physician burn out. These types of principles in practice help one avoid burnout. I’m certainly not any different than anyone else.

While I was writing Beyond the Mat, the principles that I espouse helped me write the book. I have a busy career, I also have a family life, but I think this dedication and focus on a certain mission is also very helpful in feeling like you’re serving society and meeting personal goals. Doing these practices that I’m espousing has helped me to accomplish my goals. It’s many faceted. It’s health and wellness, it’s leadership, and it’s also at the individual level. Accomplishing your career goals may be enhanced by your personal life practices.

I’m curious how you got on Marshall Goldsmith’s list. Did you start out looking to get involved in groups like that or did this happen naturally on practice? How did you end up with Marshall’s group?

I love Marshall’s work. He’s a wonderful person, a wonderful mentor. One of the best books I ever read in business was Marshall’s book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, which talks about it in a different way, some of the leadership practices that I’m espousing. In other words, there are things that are more humanistically-based and relationship-based that are critical when it sends the corporate ladder. When I wrote my book, I thought, “Who would I like to review this work?” Marshall was one of the people as I was thinking about who’s work I was aligned with in the business.

Marshall thankfully loved the work and I applied amongst the 16,000 people for the MG 100. This is a pay it forward initiative that is spearheaded by Marshall. I’m surrounded with wonderful colleagues from a variety of different disciplines. I feel that ultimately, my ability to influence through this type of organizational structure that Marshall has created to enhance global leadership and allow people to pay it forward will allow me to get my messages out more broadly. Hopefully, I can make a bigger impact on society than I wouldn’t have if I just did all this myself.

He definitely gives you great exposure. He’s a fascinating guy. He’s got things going on and he’s very well-respected. I can see why you’d be attracted to that. I’m curious if you’ve got any more books that you have in mind? What’s next?

I’m thinking about several things that are on my mind. One of the things that is sorely under underrated is listening. I provisionally am working on something called Talk Less, Listen More. It’s in the incipient stages now since Beyond the Mat was just launched and working full time as well. I am interested in how we can enhance our leadership of ourselves and others. The next work that I do will continue to be along those lines, but my current focus is on better listening to achieve greater success.

I’m curious, have you ever taken a personality test to see if you’re an introvert or an extrovert?

Believe it or not, my personality does come out as an introvert. However, I function in the world as an extrovert. I’m very comfortable with people. I’m very comfortable in a variety of domains, but I definitely have introvert qualities at least on assessments like the Myers-Briggs, and they’re consistent.

I asked because listening is such a big part of what introverts are good at doing compared to extroverts. I loved the book Quiet by Susan Cain. I don’t know if you’ve read that about introverts, but if you haven’t, I would put that on the list because it’s fascinating. She and Amy Cuddy has some great YouTube videos that help with the introverted issues which support the value of listening and those types of things. It’s been fascinating to hear more about your work.

I am always interested in physicians and the new perspectives. We see doctors are branching out. It used to be MDs, DOs. They were completely opposite, and now we’re getting all these different specializations of people who are trying to get other kinds of medicine involved. There’s a lot of things that we used to just shut out that we need to start looking at, and this is some of that. It’s great that you brought that here. A lot of people want to know how they can get your book and find out more about you. Can you share websites on how they can find you?

My website is www.JulieRosenbergMD.com and Beyond the Mat is available through all your local bookstores if you wish to support local. It’s available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s and other outlets. It’s widely available now, and I hope that your readers will offer me feedback. I do have a newsletter that I send out monthly. I am active on social media and would love to hear from folks and get their feedback on Beyond the Mat.

That’s great. I hope that you do hear from everyone. This has been a lot of fun, Julie. Thank you for being on the show.

Thanks so much for having me, Diane. Take good care.

You’re welcome.

The Mission Of Enhanced External Counter Pulsation with Sara Soulati

I am with Sara Soulati who is the CEO of Global Cardio Care, Inc, a firm she launched in 2002 to manage physician practices that deliver EECP. Since 1996,she’s been a leading authority on practice and delivery of EECP which is Enhanced External Counterpulsation to prevent and reverse cardiovascular disease. Her life as a vegan makes her a proponent of plant-based nutrition. Her passion is to teach and be a health coach to share what she’s learned about the correlation between EECP plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine. Her goal is to help people take control of their lifestyle, to reverse and prevent heart disease and lifestyle illness. It’s so nice to have you here, Sara.

I’m so excited to be on the show. I’m a huge fan.

Thank you. I’ve been watching some of the videos that you’ve had. I got to see this counterpulsation and how it works. It’s very interesting what your product is. I want to talk about a few things because I’m very interested in your background and what led to you becoming the CEO of Global Cardio Care. Can you just give me a little bit on your background?

I went to nursing school because my father was a surgeon. My father is still a surgeon and we come from a strong medical family. I wanted to walk into the same footsteps, but nursing school was a little bit challenging for me because there was not a lot of the education on lifestyle diseases. It was more pharmaceutical and working with side effects of medication and things like that. While I was in nursing school, I got introduced to EECP. There was only one center in the United States which was in Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York. Then there was one little clinic in Newport Beach and there was an ad out in the paper.

My friend took the job and then two or three months later, she introduced me to EECP. That was in April of 1996 and that took my life down to a completely different road. Then I was a pioneer in the field and I got to learn about this process through working with the clients and teaching myself what was going on. It’s been almost 22 years and it’s just been an incredible ride developing, creating, and then having the ability to have a company and running a company that’s dedicated into quality of life and prevention of medicine.

What you do is really important. I’m sure a lot of people who is in the show want to be healthier. A lot of executives tend to get heart disease, a lot of bad eating, lack of exercise. You get a lot of things that make it hard when you’re on the road and you’re doing all this. It’s interesting if anybody could look up this equipment that you have because you’re on a table with these straps over you. Can you describe it? It’s an interesting process.

If you can just imagine laying on a comfortable bed and three blood pressure cuffs are wrapped around your calves, your thighs, and your buttocks and to the rhythm of your heartbeat, these blood pressure cuffs start to squeeze your legs and start moving the blood through the lower extremities and circulating the blood throughout the whole entire body. What this therapy does is it circulates the blood to every single organ. Anyone that had blocked artery, it helps develop collateralization. The body actually does that. It starts developing new arteries to bypass the blockage. It also has a huge effect on arterial stiffness, which is high blood pressure. It helps the body reverse that hard artery to become more elastic and supple.

The last thing which it does is to help stimulate stem cells to come out of the bone marrow and into the circulatory system. It’s amazing. It’s not so much the treatment. I give so much credit to the human body that we have, that if you put it in the right environment and give it the right ingredients which is circulation, oxygenation of blood, and then helping the anti-inflammatory factors which what EECP does, and then changing your lifestyle, here you have it. Your body can repair itself from hard arteries and from diabetes. We’ve seen a huge effect on patients with diabetes and renal failure. It’s just circulation. As we know, most diseases have to do it with poor circulation and inflammation. EECP addresses both of those.

Who created this practice of doing this?

This device was invented in Harvard in the ‘50s by the name of Dr. Birtwell. He was an incredible man. Back then there was no bypass or stenting, and so people would get heart attacks like we do today, but they had no ability to rush them into bypass surgery. They didn’t have blood thinners so it was a hydraulic water system. Imagine it was a steel casing where you actually would get in and this water pressure would move the blood from the lower extremities and drive it into the coronary arteries to the heart muscle while the person was having a heart attack. It actually worked and they were shocked because the person that was having chest pain and having an MI, the heart attack and the chest pain started to go away, but the water got everywhere and it wasn’t working the way that they needed the technology.

The Chinese took it from the water hydraulic to what we have today which is air sequential squeezing. Calf, thighs, and buttocks, there’s a bladder inside that pumps like a blood pressure cuff to the rhythm of the heart. When the heart is resting, these blood pressure cuffs squeeze the lower extremities and circulate the blood throughout the body, lowering the heart rate, lowering the blood pressure, but increasing blood flow. It’s been an amazing journey for 22 years, watching people get better from all different types of diseases. It’s something that’s obviously I’m extremely passionate about, but what drives me is the patients and how they’ve gotten better from the therapy.

This is FDA-cleared treatment. I was a pharmaceutical rep for a long time and I had to sell blood pressure medicines. I remember peripheral resistance and all the things that causes high blood pressure. You’re bringing back some of my training in my head. What’s interesting to me is that it is FDA-cleared, correct?

It’s been FDA-cleared since 1995. That’s when it’s got a clearance. Then it was FDA-cleared for cardiogenic shock and acute MI. If you’re in a really bad state of heart attack or stroke, this is what they use it for. It’s FDA-cleared for people that are having chest pain, angina, and poor circulation to the heart. Basically, anyone can do the therapy because we’ve treated professional athletes. It’s a passive cardiovascular workout. It’s timed to the rhythm of the heart and it’s very safe. There’s definitely more modalities that EECP addresses because if it’s going to improve the heart function, it’s going to grow new arteries around the coronary arteries.

If it’s going to deliver more blood to the heart, what is it going to do to the kidneys? What will it do for a person that’s had a stroke? What would happen if you were diabetic and your pancreas wasn’t functioning? At age 26, I sat next to clients and they would come for end stage of life heart disease. I would document the improvements of their blood sugar, their improvements of their renal function, and their memory and their eyes. After all this time, I now recognize and see, and we’ve documented all the benefits what just simple blood flow does when you deliver it in the right way.

It is interesting to see such a non-invasive thing. Do people do this if they just want to have just better healthy life? How often would they do this? How long does the treatment take and that type of thing? I’m just curious.

If you’re here that you want to do it because you have blockages in the arteries or you’ve had a heart attack, and you’re dealing with severe hypertension, the protocol is anywhere between five treatments a week. Each treatment is about one hour up to 35 sessions the least. I’ve been providing support to physicians doing this therapy since 2003 when we opened the centers. Even before that, we’ve seen the long-term effects of EECP work so much better. We treat patients that are in their 80s that have never had any cardiovascular issues, but they do it for circulation, improvement of quality of life, exercise duration.

The aging process starts with the endothelium health which is the lining of the artery. If you can improve that artery wall, if you can keep that artery wall supple and elastic, then you’re addressing the slowing down of the aging process. Our oldest patient is 104 and we treat a lot of people that are end-stage heart disease. At the same time, we treat a lot of people that are in their 30s and 40s and 50s or 60s that just want to keep improving their quality of life. There is something about that because even when you’re healthy you get on EECP, you sleep better, you exercise better, and it pumps the lymphatic system. It’s just circulation and there are definitely benefits to that.

I’m thinking about maybe if you had congestive heart failure or something like that. Usually, it used to be that average life span if you’d had CHF was probably like five years or something. How is it with congestive heart failure?

It’s so incredible and once we’re done, we’ll talk about all of the testimonials that are on the YouTube channel there. This is the most amazing thing because it got FDA-cleared in 2005 for congestive heart failure. It actually pumps the blood up to the heart, areas of the heart muscle that we’re dead, ischemic, that’s called the ejection fraction, the normal EF is like 65 to 75. We’ve had patients as low as nineteen and seventeen come in their end-stage of life and they can’t do any more surgeries or they can’t do surgery because they’re diabetic or they have small vessel disease.

After 70 sessions, which you can see this gentleman on YouTube who’s giving his testimonial, his ejection fraction went from 19 to 65. He had flown from Vancouver, Canada from University of British Columbia. They had brought him down here because he had nothing. They couldn’t do anything else. We see an amazing benefit for congestive heart failure and it’s not just subjective. This is all objective measurements with echoes or cardiolytes or stress test that they do, and they see the before and after.

[Tweet “If you can keep that artery wall supple and elastic, you’re addressing the slowing down of the aging process.”]

My father died from congestive heart failure and I can remember, they get pneumonia a lot. I can imagine that a lot of people could benefit from that. Where is your base? Where are you located?

There are two centers that do my program. One is in Inglewood, California, which is next to LAX area. The other one is in the west Los Angeles area next to UCLA. These two clinics are clinics that are physician-based, but they do my lifestyle program. My lifestyle program is not just EECP because first you have to make sure you have the right devices. There are many devices out there, but you’d have to have the right EECP device. Second, you have to do it correctly because it is a therapy and it has to be done correctly. Third, we add the component of changing lifestyle and making sure that people actually change what they’re doing that’s causing the problem. My lifestyle program is patent pending. These two centers in Inglewood and in West Los Angeles are doing my program.

People would need to come to California. They can’t do it anywhere else.

As of now, yes.

It’s interesting that you went into this business. You said some of the things that led to your interest in this. I’m curious, to become a CEO, how big is your company, first of all?

At some point we had about 80 employees. Now we’re just trickling down to just making sure that people that are just fine tuning everything at first. It’s a very service-oriented business. You saw the therapy. It’s very labor intensive. When we’re in the African-American community, which is a clinic that we have in Inglewood, we’re on a mission to bring something to a community that never had anything as far as prevention and lifestyle education. We had to build the company pretty big.

What drove the company to where it is, it was just what was needed. Everything that was needed, we try to provide for the client’s needs too. At the end of the day, it ended up being this company. We are able to now duplicate this process and take it outside of California. We learned all together and developed this company that is based on the greatest service that we can give to the clients and the community.

It’s interesting that you’re in the African-American community. They have the worst hypertension as I recall. It’s a tough group to treat. That’s great that you’re giving them some options because a lot of times they just keep doing stepped care therapy with hypertension. They keep adding and adding  drugs.

Just September 2017 last year, my data for the lifestyle program plus EECP got accepted in the American Heart Association and the Hypertension Society. There was a poster abstract presented which was a severe hypertension stage three and four. They measured and they saw 35 hours of the therapy and the program combined that there was a huge marked reduction in the severe hypertension, especially for the African-American community because they have a hard time with certain hypertensive medications not working or they have to double it up, like you’re saying. The data start coming out and hopefully we’re going to get a publication out of it, and that’s what we’re submitting for now.

We talked about what groups have more cardiovascular disease. I know in my family, everybody has heart disease. Is it genetic and what can you do, if it is?

There’s definitely a genetic component when we’re dealing with anything that’s passed on. We’re talking on stuff that’s epigenetic at the same time, like lifestyle diseases that are passed through the family and the DNA. At the same time, it’s important to look at the things that we’re doing that are contributing it. I have high diabetes in my family. Pretty much all my relatives were diabetic at a very young age. I became a vegan at age nineteen, and not just a vegan but a carbohydrate vegan. It’s a plant-based green diet with good carbohydrates and nuts and legumes and beans.

Changing my lifestyle had a huge effect on me. I’ve seen patients that have had elevated cholesterol forever. They were like eighteen or nineteen because they had that in their family trait. When they get on a vegan plant-based and combine it with EECP, get the exercise and drinking that water, we have seen metabolic issues such as diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity, all of the bad cholesterol and all the good cholesterols rising. I do think that just because it’s generic, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get it 100%. It just means that you have to do things differently. Having an anti-inflammatory lifestyle is definitely a really important part of it. We’ve seen some big changes with that.

When you’re talking about epigenetics, you’re seeing ghosts in genes. Those are interesting YouTube series, and I think you carry on. The theory is right, you get some of the things from your ancestors that they experience and they go down through generations. You brought up a very important point about inflammation. Carbs are a big culprit in inflammation. People think that if you’re a vegan, you could eat bread and you can eat it all, but that stuff is all carbs and that’s what causes heart disease.

Sugar is way worse than anything else to begin with. Everything turns into sugar. That’s why we really have to teach here. What we teach here is plant-base, and that’s what we called it, plant-based versus just vegan lifestyle. We want to address that it’s more about the greens and the vegetables and the good nuts and the seeds and the good fat. Every day that someone comes in to get the session of 35, they listen to an audio tape and every day there’s a lesson in a handout.

For example, we talk about good fats and we talk about hemp oil and flaxseed oil and we talk about coconut oil and we talk about making sure we have avocado oil. The word vegan has gotten a little played out, and people are just running around with it. It’s important to address that an anti-inflammatory, low-carbohydrate, high-vegetable diet is what we’re looking for.

It changed their opinion on cholesterol. Remember when eggs were bad? Then butter was bad, and then butter is good. It keeps going back and forth. They always stuck with the cholesterol ratio, the HDL type. You’d want a high HDL ration, right?

Yeah.

You’re seeing high plant-based, but do you have issue with them having a meat in their diet if they do it in moderation?

Most of the population here is dealing with heart attack. They have heart disease. They’ve had bypass. They’ve had the stroke. They’re diabetic. They have a high cholesterol. We’re dealing with metabolic issues already in place. We want the fats. The point is not to get the fat because the brain needs the fat. We focus on having the plant-based diet and having a brown low-carbohydrate diet and lots of legumes and lots of nuts. We focus on getting the good fats. That’s why I mentioned that whole day that we have on fat because we need that for the brain. It’s not so much that we needed the animal fat, it’s just that we needed the good fats.

Our patients that come in here do have a low HDL which we want to make sure. The HDL particles are the ones that go grab the LDL particles out of the artery walls. Most people have low HDL. When we turn on the whole story and we educate them about the good fats and everybody starts taking the hemp oil, flaxseed oil is the highest omega 3 and hemp oil is the highest omega 6, and if we start adding that into their diet with coconut oil or not cooking any of these but just actually drinking these within our salad or in our shakes, we start seeing a giant elevation in HDL. My HDL is 90, which is really high in general. Men have a tendency to have a lower HDL. This process has worked for us over here. We have data to show that getting off the meat, getting off the inflammatory foods, sugars and meats and fried foods and things like that, and adding the good fats and bringing that fresh organic and non-GMO products has made a huge tremendous benefit for their health.

That would definitely help. I have a high HDL as well and even though my cholesterol is high. Your ratio is so great so nobody worries about it. My family tends to get visceral fat, which is a bad thing, too. I meet a lot of people who have visceral fat and they don’t realize the damage that that could do. Visceral fat isn’t like so towards the surface where it rolls, so you don’t look fat. You are big and thick. You’ve got fat around your intestines.

Just about around the intestine, but at least it’s not in the artery walls.

It’s interesting to know that you guys are doing all this stuff. What’s next for your company as a CEO? What do you have planned for growth? What’s your vision?

I mentioned to you about not all devices are the correct device as far as EECP. There’s about five or six different manufacturers in the United States that are now creating the device of EECP. The machines that I use are the original machines that were FDA-cleared in 1995. You can imagine how old these machines are, but there is a major five or six components why EECP is successful. Unfortunately, the new manufacturers are going towards Ohio Technology, making it portable, making it cute and pretty, but they’ve forgotten the essence of why EECP works. I have my own manufacturing. I connected with the original manufacturing company.

I’m excited that I’m going to be able to make a great line of EECP equipment that are going to work. We’re able to put these around the United States and combine it with my program so the people can license the program, license the therapy, and bring this into their hometown. We have a lot of support out there that are looking to bring therapy into their neighborhood, but we’re making sure that they’ve got the training, the support and the program, and the right machine combined.

Do you sell to chiropractic offices or family physicians? Who is you’re market?

Anybody that is interested in that, we sell it to them. We have a list right now. The machines are under FDA clearance because it’s the third generation of the same device that I have. It should get FDA cleared this year. We are starting to speak to a lot of people internationally that we can place the machines now. Pretty much anyone that is interested can put a device in their office. Even homeopathic, naturopathic MDs can do it and can have a facility that has the therapy.

[Tweet “We focus on having plant-based diet and brown low-carbohydrate diet, lots of legumes and nuts and getting the good fats.”]

What if they’re just a nurse practitioner or a nurse? How high of a level of do they have to have to be able to handle this?

The thing with EECP is that even a person that is a business person could open up a clinic, hire physicians, get the physician team inside, and then get the training and hire technicians to provide the therapy.

Is that the unique requisition to oversee it or can they do it without physicians?

You do need a physician. It just depends if you’re going to go with insurance. Everything is based on insurance. If you’re dealing with certain insurance companies, you need to have a physician on staff. If you’re going straight for cash and you’re doing for prevention, you can do it. I mentioned that I had worked with professional athletes. I sold a machine to the Miami Heat. There is a huge component of EECP in sports. There are different laws in different states as far as how the structure needs to be put in place.

A lot of people want to know more about this? Can you share your site information? How they can find out more?

I’m speaking about all this and it’s always so good to go hear from other people. The YouTube channel, Global Cardio Care, if they go on YouTube and punch that in, it’s great because they can see all the testimonials of what people have gone through. Then GlobalCardioCare.com where they can see the two centers that have my program. They can read a little bit more about it. Anyone that’s interested to try it down there in the Los Angeles area can call the centers and come in and get a free experience of the program. We allow people to come in and get a complimentary experience.

This has been fascinating, Sara. Thank you so much for being on the show.

I am so grateful. Thank you so much. I enjoyed speaking with you. Anytime I get a platform to share about something that is so life changing, I’m grateful for that. Thank you so much.

You’re welcome.

This was an interesting show. Thank you to Julie and Sara. I enjoyed listening to both their company stories and what they’re up to. I have so many fascinating guests on this show. If you’ve missed any past episodes, you can find them at DrDianeHamilton.com. If you go to the blog section, you can read them and if you go to the radio section, you can hear them. You could hear them both locations actually and you can sign up to find out when new episodes are coming out. It’s a really great way to just connect with some of the top thought leaders out there. Every time, I talked to somebody on my show, I just learned something new and I hope you find that it’s as useful to you as well. That’s going to do it for our episode, but please join me for the next episode of Take the Lead Radio.

About Dr. Julie Rosenberg

Julie Rosenberg is a physician executive who works in the pharmaceutical industry where she oversees a multi-million-dollar global drug development program. In addition, Julie has devoted the last 15 years to the in-depth study and practice of yoga. She received her advanced teaching certification from Down Under Yoga in Boston in 2015, under the tutelage of Natasha Rizopoulos. In 2017, she was selected by Number 1 executive coach and leadership thinker Marshall Goldsmith from among 16,000 applicants as one of the MG 100 coaches. Enthusiastic and passionate about helping people ensure good health for life and quality of survival, Julie has become a highly sought-after keynote speaker for corporations, patient groups, and premier resorts and health spas. She lives in Connecticut and Florida. Beyond the Mat is her first book.

About Sara Soulati

My professional and personal life has always been about you — healing your heart and making you a champion for healthier longevity. On this journey, I live and breathe what I preach — vegan nutrition, moderate exercise, low risk factors, meditation, and a spiritual path that all contribute to a healthier cardiovascular system. In 2010, I created a program, now patent-pending, called The Sara Soulati® Health For Life™ Program, and it’s simple to understand because it’s about HEALTH FOR LIFE™! At my management company, Global Cardio Care where I work with physician practices, my program is delivered alongside EECP® (Enhanced External Counterpulsation) therapy.

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