Your weekly health questions answered by Dr. Simone Gold, one of the nation’s top physicians and medical freedom advocates
Every week, the GoldCare HealthDesk receives questions from readers looking for answers about their health. Our team selects three from the many submissions for Dr. Simone Gold to answer, offering clear medical insight, practical guidance, and the straight talk she’s known for.
Question:
Have they come up with a cure for blood clots? Over time, the treatments interfere with your metabolism and foul things up so badly that they can become worse than the clot itself.
Dr. Gold:
Here’s something remarkable about the human body: It has its own built-in system for dissolving blood clots.
When a blood vessel is injured, your body forms a clot to stop the bleeding. Once that clot has done its job, your body begins breaking it down through a natural process called fibrinolysis. Think of it as a cleanup crew, constantly working alongside your clotting system to maintain a delicate balance.
Your everyday habits can influence that balance.
Regular movement keeps blood flowing, particularly through the legs, where dangerous clots often develop. Maintaining a healthy weight helps reduce inflammation and improves the body’s ability to regulate clotting. A diet rich in whole, minimally processed foods, avoiding sugar and seed oils, supports healthy blood vessels and metabolism., Stopping smoking and limiting alcohol protects the delicate lining of your blood vessels.
These habits help create conditions in which dangerous clots are less likely to form.
Now consider what blood thinners actually do.
Despite their name, they don’t literally thin your blood. And most don’t dissolve existing clots. Instead, they interfere with the clotting process, preventing clots from growing or new ones from forming while your body’s natural cleanup system gets to work.
But that protection comes with a price. Blood clotting is an essential defense against hemorrhage when injured. Warfarin interferes with vitamin K, a nutrient involved in blood clotting (K1) and bone health (K2). It requires regular blood tests, interacts with certain foods and medications, and long-term use has been associated with calcium accumulating in blood vessels, potentially making them stiffer. Overdosage isn’t rare, and even therapeutic levels can cause severe bleeding.
Newer medications, such as apixaban (Eliquis), have fewer dietary restrictions and generally don’t require routine clotting tests. But they still carry bleeding risks.
Most importantly, these medications don’t correct what made the blood prone to clotting in the first place.
More than 150 years ago, German physician Rudolf Virchow identified three conditions that make dangerous clots more likely: sluggish blood flow, damage to blood vessels, and blood that’s unusually prone to clotting. These three mechanisms are called Virchow’s triad.
Notice how everyday habits can contribute to all three. Sitting for hours slows circulation. Smoking damages blood vessels. Excess body fat, insulin resistance, and chronic inflammation can shift the body’s chemistry toward clot formation.
Of course, not every blood clot is caused by lifestyle. Surgery, cancer, inherited clotting disorders, Covid-19 and Covid shots, and other conditions can also increase risk.
But many of the factors that encourage clot formation are within our control. Losing excess weight, moving regularly, quitting smoking, and improving metabolic health can help reduce that risk, even when other factors are present.
That doesn’t make medication unnecessary. A deep-vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism can be life-threatening, and anticoagulants can be essential. But medication manages symptoms. Your body is the cure.
Question:
What are some foods and supplements to consume for someone who has recently been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease? And can this disease be reversed or stopped in its tracks?
Dr. Gold:
Yes, cardiovascular disease can be slowed, sometimes stopped from progressing, and in certain cases even partially reversed. And what you eat can make a real difference.
Your arteries aren’t just passive pipes that gradually clog with age. They’re living tissue that responds to your diet, physical activity, metabolic health, and other habits.
See our discussion above about blood clots. Many heart attacks occur when plaque inside a coronary artery ruptures, triggering a clot that suddenly blocks blood flow to the heart.
But what damages those arteries in the first place?
Four key contributors are chronic inflammation, damage to the delicate inner lining of blood vessels (endothelial dysfunction), insulin resistance, and oxidative stress, cellular damage caused by excess harmful molecules.
Cigarette smoke, air pollution, excessive alcohol consumption, and chronic stress can worsen cardiovascular health. Extreme emotional stress can even trigger broken heart syndrome, a temporary weakening of the heart. Certain medications, including some common oral contraceptives and hormone therapies, also increase clotting risk.
The encouraging part is that many of the factors damaging your heart and blood vessels are within your power to change.
Focus on nutrient-dense foods: eggs, grass-fed meat, organ meats, wild-caught fatty fish, vegetables, and extra-virgin olive oil (Note: Many brands of olive oil are adulterated with seed oils. Buy from a trusted source. Coconut oil, lard, and tallow are excellent cooking fats). Reduce refined carbohydrates, added sugars, seed oils, and ultra-processed foods. Intermittent fasting helps manage weight and metabolic health, which can prevent and in some cases even reverse heart disease.
Movement matters enormously. Walking, swimming, cycling, and resistance training improve circulation, blood pressure, and blood vessel function. Exercise should be tailored to your condition, particularly after a recent diagnosis.
What about supplements? Omega-3s can help lower elevated triglycerides, while magnesium and potassium support normal heart rhythm and blood pressure regulation. Coenzyme Q10 is crucial for mitochondrial energy production and is depleted in those taking statins.
The goal isn’t simply to treat a blocked artery. It’s to understand what’s damaging the artery in the first place, and change the conditions that allow that damage to continue.
Question:
Would love your opinion of the mandatory flu shot for employees of a hospital that is contracted with Medicare. Secondly, does the flu shot actually help patients?
Dr. Gold:
In April 2020, I wrote an op-ed titled Freedom, Not Feardom, warning Americans against surrendering their freedom out of fear of a virus that posed roughly the same risk as the flu. Seasonal influenza carries an estimated mortality risk of 0.0019%.
Now, if we were dealing with smallpox, which historically killed roughly 30% of those infected, we might have a different conversation about extraordinary public health measures.Even then, we’d need to establish that the vaccine was genuinely safe and effective.
But today’s injections are fundamentally different from the smallpox vaccines at the center of the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld a vaccination mandate. Mortality from smallpox had declined precipitously before widespread vaccination, from improved diet and hygiene.
Back then, a vaccine was defined as a treatment that prevented disease. But that’s not how today’s shots are defined. In 2018, the CDC changed the definition of “vaccine” to mean something that produces immunity. In 2021, it changed the wording again, replacing “immunity” with the vague term “protection.” Today’s shots are different than the smallpox vaccine in 1905, and Jacobson doesn’t give anyone the right to mandate them.
Americans surrendered their freedom over SARS-CoV-2 for the promise of safety. They paid an enormous price in liberty, and they didn’t get safety.
Your freedom is infinitely more valuable than questionable protection from a shot. Hospitals that impose flu shot mandates raise the same fundamental questions about bodily autonomy and medical freedom as those that imposed COVID shot mandates.
To this day, America’s Frontline Doctors is fighting for healthcare workers who lost their jobs because they stood up for their religious convictions and medical freedom.
But does the flu shot actually help patients? Influenza vaccine efficacy is claimed to be 40% for preventing influenza. But that is a relative number; the absolute risk reduction is barely 1%. In fact, data show you are 27% more likely to get the flu after a flu shot. Flu shots also increase susceptibility to other infections, with a 440% higher chance of contracting other respiratory viruses, which can be dangerous in elderly patients and patients with comorbidities.
Medical freedom doesn’t become less important because a treatment is called a vaccine.
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