Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of youf're the Cure. I'm Dr. Ben Edwards. Got a great show today. Have two repeat guests, Dr. Hans Vinck and then Bob Long. We're going to be talking about the glycocalyx. If that word is new to you, and it probably is, then hang on because you're going to learn some amazing stuff today. And it kind of goes with what we've been talking about the past few weeks with Dr. Peter McCullough and then last week with Summer Powers, a nurse practitioner from Georgia Mississ, Alabama. I'm sorry, Summer, but Summer's working with the Microvascular Research Foundation. If you did not hear last week's episode and her testimony of being damaged by the Spike protein, I would highly encourage you to go listen to that part of the way that Spike protein damages us. And guys, Spike protein, such a new phenomenon. We're still learning a lot. So a lot to know. A lot of unchartered territory. A lot of pioneering researchers and physicians and clinicians out there trying to figure this thing out and help people and help their symptoms. So we don't have it all figured out, but we do know that Spike protein can damage the inner lining of your blood vessels. The microcirculation. In particular the tiny, tiny little blood vessels called capillaries. And micro, just the tiniest blood vessels. That's where the oxygen nutrient exchange happens.
And the efficiency of that exchange is highly dependent upon the health of that blood vessel. In particular the wall where things have to move through. And even more specifically the inner lining. I caught this slick, silky, slick or smooth should be little layer called the glycocalyx. And we're going to talk more about that today. But that Spike protein can damage that glycocalyx, that inner lining, and not only damage, it can actually kind of shred it to the point it creates clots. Microclo.
So this will be a great show today to kind of follow up from last week's show. And actually, guys, we have a camera now. We'll talk about that later too, where we can measure, get a objective measurement from a sublingual camera. That's a high powered zoom on it and some really cool computer software to interpret those videos of your capillary blood flow. We'll get into that in a minute too. And there's a really cool supplement that helps heal that inner lining. And y' all know me, I'd say you can't supplement your way to health. You need to move, you need sunshine, you need real food, cut the process stuff all the things we know that damages the glycocalyx. Smoking is a big one. Stress is a big one. So do all that, all the diet and lifestyle stuff that we preach ad nauseam. But sometimes, especially in a pinch and when you're on your journey to get healthy, these supplements can be absolutely life saving. So we're going to talk about that too, before I bring my guest in. One more piece that's going to become apparent in our discussion today is how heart attacks the number one killer in America is heart disease. Guys, I just want to pull from a few studies real quick because this notion that heart attacks are coming just from high cholesterol. Here's a study. This is from 2019 February 7th Open Access Journal the the title of the study Total Cholesterol and All cause mortality by Sex and Age. A prospective COHORT study among 12.8 million adults. That that's a lot.
And in this study.
Let me actually pull it up real quick here.
Sorry, should have had this more prepared.
Here it is.
In the current study, total cholesterol levels of 210 to 249 were associated with the lowest mortality that would be classified as high cholesterol on your standard Quest Lab panel. Guys, that 12 million cohort study found that those with the quote unquote high cholesterol actually live the longest. Here's from Lancet 2001 cholesterol and all cause mortality in elderly people from the Honolulu Heart Program, a cohort study. I'm quoting from the discussion of that study. Our data accord with previous findings of increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol, increased death, increased mortality if your cholesterol is too low. That was Lancet 2001. Here's Annals of Nutrition Metabolism 2009. The title of the study Dietary Fat and Coronary Heart Disease Summary of evidence from Prospective Cohort and Randomized Control trials.
Quote Intake of total fat was not associated with coronary events or mortality.
Intake of saturated fat was not significantly associated with coronary events or mortality.
Fatal heart disease was not reduced by low fat diets or replacing saturated animal fats with polyunsaturated vegetable fats, I.e. seed oils.
Next study. American Journal Clinical Nutrition 2010. A large meta analysis prospective studies involving over 350,000 participants found no association between saturated fat and heart disease.
Next one open heart 2015. That's a journal open heart 2015 title. Evidence from randomized controlled trials did not support the introduction of dietary fat guidelines in 1977 and 1983. That's when the low fat was recommendations came out, guys. A systemic review and meta analysis. Quote the present review concludes that dietary advice not merely needs review, it should not have been introduced. And they're talking about the low fat dietary advice. That was Open Heart 2015 getting a little more current. British Medical Journal Open 2016 name of the study Lack of association or an inverse association between low density lipoprotein cholesterol, that's ldl, and mortality in the elderly. A systemic review Conclusion Quote since elderly people with high LDL live as long or longer than those with low ldl, our analysis provides reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis.
Two more real quick guys and then we'll jump in with Hans and Bob.
The Journal of American College of Cardiology August of 2020.
This is the title of the article Saturated Fats and Health A Reassessment and Proposal for Food Based Recommendations.
This is the Journal of the American College of Cardiology from August of 20.
Conclusion Quote several foods relatively rich in saturated fatty acids such as whole fat, dairy, dark chocolate and unprocessed meat are not associated with increased cardiovascular disease. End quote. And the final study. If saturated fat and high cholesterol cause heart attack, guys, then statins, the pharmaceutical that lowers cholesterol, we should see a large drop in heart attack and all cause mortality if the statins and the cholesterol hypothesis were true. This is JAMA March 14, 2022 title evaluating the association between LDL cholesterol reduction and relative and absolute effects of statin therapy. A systemic review and meta analysis.
This meta analysis looked at 21 randomized control trials and examined the efficacy of statins in reducing total mortality and cardiovascular outcome.
Conclusion Absolute risk reduction for all cause mortality 0.8%.
Myocardial infarction, that's heart attacks, absolute risk reduction 1.3% and stroke absolute risk reduction 0.4%. Okay, guys, the reason I've spent eight minutes now of this interview going through these studies is because this is one of the biggest, biggest misunderstandings.
So many people have come to our office worried about their high cholesterol. What they need to be worried about is it inflamed cholesterol or not? And you can do that test. We do that test. If you get a blood panel from us for your cholesterol in the medical membership or on the wellness side, guys, you can get this through your Wellness Navigator. We look at LDL particle size. Is it big, fluffy, not inflamed LDL or small dense pro inflammatory ldl?
You need to Know this, you don't need to just get on a statin to lower your cholesterol because I just quoted from all these studies that tell you that is not the cause of heart attacks. So drum roll please. What is the cause of heart attacks? And Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, in his book the Clot Thickens, goes over all the data I just went over and then more and his conclusion is it's blood clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. And I concur with Dr. Malcolm Kendrick and I interviewed him May of 2023. Go back on the archive page on our website under resources and podcasts and find that and listen to it.
What Dr. Kendrick barely mentions is where the blood clot comes from. And that's what we're going to talk about today. It's clear it's blood clots that are causing a myocardial infarct. But why is the body making a clot?
And if you just think common sense for a minute, you know where clots are made externally, you can see if you cut your finger, this skin, if it's a paper cut, you're not going to worry about it because your body's going to make a clot and you'll clot that cut and you'll put a scab on it and then you'll put new skin on it and you'll be good to go. You don't worry about it.
Well, your inner skin, the skin inside your blood vessels, it can basically be paper cutted, if that's a word. It can be damaged and that will initiate a clotting cascade. The glycocalyx is where the action is at, guys.
If your glycocalyx is not healthy, you're going to be prone to all kinds of diseases. We're going to let Dr. Hans Vinck and Bob Long explain that further. Guys, welcome to the show. Thank you for being patient. While I had to drill down into some of these false or not false, full understanding of heart disease and other things. But thank you for joining us today.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Ben. That was an excellent overview. That was a great setup for what we're going to talk about today.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Well, great. I hope it was and didn't bore you too much. But Bob, let's start with you. So guys, we've got Dr. Hans Vink, researcher, Ph.D. and then Bob Long, I would say CEO, entrepreneur, businessman. But Bob, I'll let you kind of share more of who you are, where you came from. Why would you be on a podcast, you know, talking about scientific Dr. Y things if you're a businessman.
And then we'll. We'll move to Dr. Vinc and go deeper into the Glycocalyx. But please, let's just introduce yourself to the audience, share your testimony.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Thanks. So, as you mentioned, I'm Bob Long. I'm the CEO and co founder of the Glycocalyx Research Institute and Glycocheck, which is the imaging device that you talked about. And so my journey on this pathway started in kind of an unusual way, started almost 20 years ago when I was, as you mentioned, a businessman. And I was in charge of a worldwide organization, the sales and marketing teams. And so I was setting up was a company that did home automation and control. So we were empowering and doing lifestyle of the rich and famous houses all over the world.
And so consequently, I traveled a lot and worked myself very hard. And in that course of that time, I learned that I developed type 2 diabetes. And at that time, I'm 6:1. And at that time, I weighed about probably between 265 and 275 pounds.
And so I live in a little town in Alpine, Utah. It's called Alpine, and it's literally right up against the mountain. So where my house sits is about 4,400 square feet. And literally right behind my house are mountains that go up above 10,000ft. I could go up and hike right up in those trails. And so as I started to. As I was active and I started hiking around, I noticed that I started regularly getting angina or I'd get a tightness in my chest.
And so when I went into my physical to my personal physician, who's a neighbor of mine, I said, hey, look, when I start hiking or doing stuff, anything that I exert myself, I get this tightness in my chest. And so he said, oh, well, you probably have a blockage in one of your large arteries. And even though you haven't had a heart attack, you're probably at high risk for a heart attack. So he immediately called one of his good friends who was a cardiologist, and he sent me down that morning to the regional medical center.
So I went down, got examined by the cardiologist, and he was actually there in the cath lab going in and putting stents in in patients.
And so he's. They examined me, they said, no, you don't have any signs of a heart attack, but the likelihood, the reason you have that angina is probably because you've got a blockage in one of your large arteries. So what we really need to do to prevent you having a heart attack is we need to go in. We're going to go in your groin with a little camera. We're going to go up in and we'll be able to see if you've got a blockage and if you do, will put a stent in which will open up that artery and that will make it so you don't have that.
[00:14:12] Speaker C: Tightness in your chest.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: So that's what I expected to hear when I went down there that morning. But I said, okay, what choice do I have?
And so I waited. I was the last person to go that day. It was about 7 o' clock at night. So I'd been waiting around about six or seven hours just sitting there in my gown.
And so I went in, they did the procedure.
And then the cardiologist. You're not totally out of it when they do it. They come back in. And then they shared the results with my wife and I. And this is what the cardiologist told me. He said, I've got good news and I've got bad news. I said, well, okay, give me the good news first.
And he goes, well, good news, you didn't have any blockages.
We didn't have to put a stent in. Your arteries are fine.
And I said, well, what's the bad news? And he goes, we don't really know what's wrong with you. We don't know why you have angina.
And I said, okay, so what do you recommend? And so he sat down and he wrote out probably five or six prescriptions.
And he said, you know, I recommend you start exercising more, that you lose some weight and then come back and see us in six months and we'll do a stress EKG and check out and see how you're doing.
And I said, well, how long will I need to take these meds? And he said, oh, the rest of your life.
And so at that time, we'd actually just sold that company that I was working for. So I was figuring out, what am I going to do with my next adventure in life.
And I went home and I started thinking about what had I had just experienced.
And the more I thought about it, I probably had a goofy reaction compared to most people, but it kind of made me mad. And I wasn't mad at the cardiologist, what I was mad about, because he was just doing what he thought was best and what he was trained to do. What I was mad about was that they didn't know what was wrong with me. And so that Caused me to think, okay, if this is happening to me, this has got to be happening to thousands of people around the world every day. And this is the best that medical science has to offer right now. And as I said, that was at that point, that was about 16 or 17 years ago.
And so, because I had time and I had made a good exit from that company, I had time and money. And so I decided, I'm going to figure out what's happening to Bob. What's wrong with Bob, because nobody could tell me. And so by accident, I was introduced by a friend of mine to the concept of the endothelial glycocalyx.
And when he first said glycocalyx, I go, the what? He said, have you ever heard of the glycocalyx? And I said, no. In fact, when I actually wrote it down, so I could say it phonetically as glycocalyx, because it's a hard word to say if you. Doesn't roll off your tongue easily.
And then what I learned is that the glycocalyx. And I'll let Hans describe it better, but I learned it's this protective coating that lines your. It's just turns out I learned it was the largest systemic organ in your body. It lines all of your vascular system. And if you were to line up your capillary network that Ben talked about, it's over 60,000 miles in length, and that's what breaks down first.
And so when I first started on this journey, I thought it was an artery health problem, because I thought that's what I. Everybody was focused on arteries at that time. The whole focus is on heart attack, strokes. It's an artery health problem. And that's what I thought the problem was. So the first product I ever created was called Arterasil. And I created that because my idea was I'll seal the capillaries and arteries to protect them from what Ben was describing.
And then as I started to do research, I found a remote scientist in the Netherlands. His name was Dr. Hans Vinck.
And I started reading all of his science. And this was back in 2010 or so, so 15 years ago.
And what I learned is I learned what the glycocalyx was in detail. I learned that he and his scientific team were the first group in the world that got live images of what the glycocalyx looked like and that he'd spent by. At that point in time, he'd spent almost 25 years, first of all, figuring out that there was a glycocalyx proven to the world that it was there.
And then he and his research team figured out, well, why did God put it there in the first place? What's it doing the body and what's its function? So I read all of his papers and then I became convinced that the glycocalyx was real. And so he was on a path of discovery of the glycocalyx.
And I also learned that he was developing a device that could measure the glycocalyx.
And so we were on parallel pathways. I was on a pathway. I got the idea, what if I could create an all natural dietary supplement, if I could find the plants in nature that God put on the earth that could heal and restore that glycocalyx, I could reverse all of the things that happened that we'll talk about more in our call today. And so I hired some biochemists, went to work and had been to started developing products.
And so I called up Dr. Vink and I said, hey, or actually one of my scientists was going to France. So I had him stop in and visit Hans in the Netherlands.
And they look, they got tested with the glyco check device, which is the device that Ben has. And then they told him that their boss wanted to come over and meet Hans. Would he be willing to entertain a meeting with me? And he said, absolutely. So I flew over and by then I'd had my first product out and had been taking it for a while.
And what I wanted to do is I wanted to meet Hans. I had some questions about the glycocalyx, but what I really wanted to find out, I wanted to get tested with the glycocheck and find out if I was on the right path of discovery on what I was doing to develop a product to restore the vascular system in the body. And so we met the first day, he answered a lot of my questions. And then at the end of the day I said, well, one of the big reasons I came is because I wanted to get tested. And so he said, okay, great.
And he explained to me how the test worked, that it's a video microscope camera. We'll put it under your tongue, we'll get videos, we'll analyze those with our algorithms, and then we'll be able to tell how thick your glycocalyx is. And that's kind of a window into what the inflammation is like in your body. So he said, you know, you're a big guy. You Americans like your hamburgers and fries and cokes, so don't Be surprised if you don't get a good score. He said, and here he says, let me demo. So he tested himself, and he got his score, and he said, yep, I've got a healthy glycocalyx. And he showed me how it worked.
And he said, so, you know, don't be disappointed if your score's not as good as mine. So he tested me, and then it takes a few minutes for the score to calculate. And then there's another guy there with him named Peter. And they started talking in Dutch, and I said, whoa, I don't understand what you guys are saying. I don't speak Dutch. So was it good or was it bad? And he said, well, let's test you one more time.
So they tested me again, and same thing. So then I said, well, did I pass or did I fail?
And he said, I am a little confused.
I didn't expect you to have a good score. Your score's better than mine.
In fact, your score might be one of the best ones of anybody that I've measured.
And I said, well, I made a joke. I said, I cheat because I hadn't told him that I developed this first supplement and that I'd been taking it, in fact, for four or five days before I went there. I'd like quadruple dosed because I wanted to really see if it worked, because I didn't know what the dose level was at that point. So I had to load it up that morning. I think I took 10 pills.
So. And so I said I'd cheat. And he goes. He goes, what do you mean you cheat? And I said, well, I didn't tell you this yet, but I. And I didn't tell you because I wanted to get measured first and see what your glyco check said and see if you could tell if what my score was. I said, I cheat because I've been working the last two years on developing a product that specifically addresses repairing the glycocalyx. And.
And so I think I'm on the right track.
And then Hans got really quiet because during the course of that day, he had shared with me all the research he'd done up to there. And he just showed me some reports that. Done in the ICU with that camera that you've got, Ben. They can tell with 100 accuracy who's going to live or die based on how thick that glycocalyx is. They can even identify it now in patients when they come into the emergency room and identifies those that have a high likelihood of developing Sepsis very quickly. And so we agreed at that point in time, so what the reason Hans, and Hans got emotional and what he said is he says, bob, I've spent the last 25 years of my life, I first had to convince the world that there was a glycocalyx. Now they all know there's a glycocalyx, or a lot of people do, at least in the research community. But everybody asked me the same question, so what do you do about it? And he said, I work with a lot of drug companies, we develop drugs. In fact, I've even told some drug companies that some of the drugs they do actually break down the glycocalyx.
But he said, I, I didn't ever imagine that somebody. He said, I always knew somebody would develop a product, but I never in my mind imagined that you could do it with natural ingredients from plants.
And so he said, bob, I think you've discovered the so what? And the so what was how do we fix it? And so that was about many years ago. So that day we formed a strong relationship. I first, I bought three of the first glycocheck devices that ever existed, used them in my research of developing products, hired Hans as a consultant. We eventually formed our own company together and we've been working together for many years now. And so that's how I came to be involved in this. And we'll talk more about what we do. But it's really become my life mission to change the trajectory of world health. Because when you understand what the glycocalyx is and that it's the beginning of the whole inflammatory response and what drives most conditions and diseases in the body, it creates a whole different concept in your mind. And that's why I've dedicated everything that I've been doing the last many years working with Hans to furthering the science and the innovations that we come up with.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: Hey everybody, quick break from the show. I've got something really special to share with you. I'm so excited to introduce you're the Cure, a self paced nine module online video program we've been prayerfully and passionately building here at Veritas. And this isn't just another wellness program. It's a movement of truth, transformation and hope. And I truly believe it has the power to change your mind, your life. It's designed to help you uncover the root causes of what you're facing and walk in true healing. I'll be guiding you along with other members of the Veritas team as we return to God's original design for your health. Through simple, powerful tools focused on nutrition, hydration, movement, and peace, you'll gain clarity, confidence, and lasting transformation. The journey is yours to take, because the truth is, you are the cure. Head over to veritas wellnessmember.com to get access today. Become a Veritas Wellness member now and get $100 off the program.
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Yeah.
Well, thank you, Bob. That's an amazing story. And just thank you for your work and dedication. Because, guys, if you think about it, we'll get into this more specifically with. With Dr. Hollins Ving. But if we're talking about 60,000 miles. Is that what you said, Bob? Or 6,000, 60,000 miles?
[00:27:55] Speaker B: If you take the capillaries, which is, you know, those are 4, 5, and 6 microns in size. And people, you know, they don't. It's hard to fathom that in your little body there's 60,000 miles of capillaries. So one day Hans and I were trying to say, okay, well, if you were to lay all of that out square footage wise, what would that surface area be? And we estimated it, it'd be probably right around 7,000 square feet. And that's the area where blood flows in your body. And so if you stop and think about what we're talking about is the most essential thing in your body, and that's the.
The delivery system of how blood flows and supports every organ, tissue, muscle, everything that happens in your body is dependent on blood flow.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's where I was going with this guy. So regardless of fill in the blank disease process, you can almost be guaranteed there's going to be a lack of oxygenation, lack of nutrition, the inflammatory process is there. So if you have an unhealthy glycocalyx, potentially it can be involved with just about every disease process.
But Dr. Hans Vinck, welcome. Thank you for being with us. And kind of same question. How. How'd you get from where you were to where you are? How did you discover the glycocalyx and just kind of give your. Your testimony of, you know, how you come into play with this whole story with the glycocalyx?
[00:29:30] Speaker D: Well, thank you so much, Ben. It's real pleasure to be here again with you.
I would like to circle back where you started on your discussions with Dr. Kendrick.
As it happens, I, you know, a few weeks ago, I did read his book for the first time on the clot thickens.
And you know, he's very clear. He's all that no blood clots are causing a lot of the cardiovascular issues. But I didn't expect that. He actually mentioned glycocalyx.
So if you address the question, why do blood clots stick to the wall, you start mentioning glycolic. He shows on page 89, nice picture of glycocalyx that my team made a couple of decades ago.
And at the end of the book, or like page 259, if I remember correctly, he said, what can we do to prevent those blood clots from happening? And he goes on saying, we need to repair our glycocalyx. So I guess you're all on the same page for me how I got studying this, you have to go back when people, scientists other than medical people, like engineers, started looking with big microscopes at those micro vessels where all the nutrient transport happens. And the moment I started doing this in the 1960s, 1970s, getting real video images of, of red cells flowing through those small capillary blood vessels, the first thing they noticed, and that created a lot of discussions, is there appears to be very little blood volume in those small blood vessels. If you look at individual red blood cells and you count how many are present in those capillaries and you try to estimate what the volume fraction of red blood cells is in the blood in those micro vessels, their estimates were that red cells only occupy about 5% or 10% of the volume of those small blood vessels.
Now, if you just as a comparison, if you go to your physician, they take a blood sample from a large vein.
Blood basically consists of red blood cells, small particles where hemoglobin bites oxygen, and it's about 50% of your blood volume. The other 50% is transparent salt solution called plasma. So if you spin it down in the centrifuge, half of your tube is red blood cells and 50% is plasma.
Well, that's 10 times higher than those estimates from the microvasculature. Only 5% or 10% of the blood appears to be filled with red blood cells. So that triggered a big discussion.
What happens is blood really diluted tenfold and red cells go somewhere else, or are we miss no misestimating red cell content. And there's something else inside those tiny micro vessels that take up a lot of volume and there's very little volume available for blood to flow through.
And that's pretty much When I entered that FIELD in the 1980s, I started working with my mentor called Brian Doling in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He was one of those leading micro vascular scientists at that time. And I started using his microscopes, looking at those tiny micro vessels. And one thing that he did do just before I entered his lab, he made very tiny needles, micropipettes, small enough to puncture individual capillary blood vessels. So those are tiny, tiny blood vessels, so small the red cells have to go in one by one and really be square squeeze to get in. So he made tiny micropipets, tips smaller than three or four microns in diameter, and he could actually collect blood flowing through those capillaries, individual capillaries.
And if you. If you take that blood sample from an individual capillary, if you spin it down again in the centrifuge, then it showed again, 50 red blood cells and 50% plasma. But if you took a picture, a photographic picture from a capillary in live tissue, there still were very few red cells present. But at the same time, we learned there's only very little plasma present.
And a lot of the volume inside those tubes was filled with something else, something transparent and very difficult to see. So he, at that time, hypothesized that something else was inside those capillary tubes with the volume that's the same as blood volume, or 20, twice or three times more than blood volume, and thereby limiting access of blood inside those capillaries. So the blood content itself would not be diluted, but very little blood volume would be able to flow through those capillaries. But something else was taking a lot of space.
And he was ridiculed at the time because nobody thought anything else than blood would be inside those tiny blood vessels.
The whole approach was more from an engineering approach, that blood vessels were like rigid glass tubes and nothing was supposed to stick on the wall of those tubes. But he hypothesized maybe something else is inside there and looking at other tissues, like if you touch the surface of your eye or you have the skin of a fish, for instance, it all feels very slippery.
And the reason it feels slippery is that pretty much any surface of any living tissue that's exposed to an external environment is protected by this slippery coating of what they call the dead time, like slimy coating or mucopolysaccharides, which turns about the same material as glycocalyx, is made of polysaccharides like hyaluronic acid, heparin, like molecules like heparin sulfates. He hypothesized that maybe also the inside of your blood vessel tubes, the lining, the inner lining is made of endothelial cells, might be covered by this slimy mucopolysaccharide matrix occupying a lot of volume, thereby artificially lowering red cell content. So that's when I entered that field of research. And my challenge was to find evidence that really something is sticking inside those small blood vessels. That took me a long time.
So I started injecting all kinds of dye label proteins to see if something would stick to the wall as evidence that there is something sticking to the wall.
And for two years I completely failed showing that anything stick to the wall. But what I did realize, at some point, if I look at the capillary before I injected anything, then indeed there was only very few red blood cells in the capillary.
Then I injected the dye and turned on a light source to see where the dye was sticking or not. And there was a very bright light to turn on to visualize those dye labeled molecules. And a minute later I turned the light source off and looked at the capillary again. And then I realized that, you know, comparing the before and after turning on the light, the rest of content tripled, almost quadrupled within a minute.
And actually only, you know, only the center part of the vessel was exposed to the light. So you had part of the capillary, you know, proximal and distal of that area that exposed to light. In those proximal and distal areas, red cell content was still low. So the blood content didn't change, only in the area that exposed the high intensity light. Suddenly there were three times or more red cells present per length of capillary. So that showed us if glycocalyx was in there, then if it would take up volume. Whatever we did with the light source, we killed it. So we paid more close attention to what happened as soon as we turned on the light.
Then we realized if you carefully how red cell flowing through a capillary, even though they have to be squeezed through, they never touch the wall. There's always a significant gap between the center of the vessel where red cells are flowing together with plasma. And there's about a 1 micron gap separating the luminal part where blood flows from the endothelial surface that makes up the wall. And if you do the math, if you have a 5 micron diameter capillary with a micron border zone on the surface of the wall on either side, no volume of micro vessels goes by the square of the diameter.
So you Know, the anatomical diameter would be 5 squared is 25. But the actually blood perfuse diameter was not 5 microns, but only 3 microns, because on either side is a micron of space where blood wouldn't flow. With 3 micron is 9. So only 9 out of 25 is blood perfused. In a healthy resting capillary, that means that 16 out of 25 is occupied by something else. It turns out it's occupied by this transparent gel that turns out to be crucial for vascular health, called glycocalyx. So there's twice as many glycocalyx volume in a capillary compared to blood volume. And it also explains why blood volume can change so rapidly upon, let's say, metabolic activity. If you start exercising or after a meal when glucose goes up or insulin goes up, look at those capillaries. And suddenly, almost instantly, there's three times as much blood volume in your capillaries. And many more capillaries suddenly show up being blood perfused.
And after you recover from your exercise, that goes back to lower red cell content. So glycocalyx not only occupies a lot of volume in these small capillaries, but also it's very dynamic and adjusts to metabolic needs. So it controls how efficient your microvascular system can direct blood flow and blood volume towards tissue cells, depending on which organ needs it at any time, but only transiently. So most of the time, glycocalyx sits there inside your vessels, protecting your endothelium from direct contact with flowing cells like red cells or blood platelets or inflammatory cells, or prevents leakage of larger molecules like cholesterol.
But sometimes, when you need that volume to improve your exchange capacity of nutrients, glycocase comes more permeable, allows blood volume to enter that space, and helps you to transport glucose and other nutritions to your tissue, and more oxygen when necessary, but also only transiently. But that exposure should not take more like half an hour, an hour. If it takes longer than an hour, then risks start increasing of clotting or loss of capillaries, edema formation, all the downside effects of a more permeable glycochemic. So that first observation, and that was about 30 years ago, now, like the mid-1990s, really put glycocalyx on the map. So finally, we by, by measuring that gap between, you know, the luminous red cells are flowing and the surface of the endothelium, see how you can manipulate that by damaging your glycocalyx for the first time, people Start supporting the whole glycocalyx concept, but still was indirect. It didn't have a picture of glycocalyx, just lack of access of red blood cells to the endothelium.
And then I started working with one of my students called Bernard Vandenberg, who still is in active glycocalyx research. And his mission was to improve electron microscopic techniques to really make a much higher magnification and resolution, make a real picture, a positive picture of a stained and preserved glycocalyx. And took him almost four years to make one picture of glycocalyx. Because it's very fragile, it doesn't take up a lot of volume. And most of the volume of glycocalyx is actually made up by water bound to proteins that bind to the negative charges in glycocalyx. So 99% of the volume of glycocalyx is water.
Well, to take a picture with an electron microscope, one of the first steps to treat your tissue sample is to dehydrate that tissue sample. You have to take out the water before you can take an image. But if you take out the water of your tissue sample, glycocalyx disappears. It vanishes. So you have no picture. So we had a few tricks necessary to stabilize and stain those polysaccharides of glycocalyx before you take out the water.
Then you can make a picture. And so early 2000s, he was finally able to make that picture. And that's the same picture that Dr. Kendrick also showed in his book. If you google glycocalyx, try to find pictures. That's the most widely used glycocalyx picture available right now. And that really convinced people there is something inside those vessels. And not only your micro vessels, also your larger vessels. Obviously, all your vessels are coated with a protective glycocalyx coating and keeps your vessels healthy. And over the following decades, some people started accepting there was a glycocalyx, and we had tools now to break it down with the light, diet treatment or specific enzymes. People could study what the consequences are of breaking down that glycocalyx. Pretty much anything that you already mentioned, Ben.
Preventing blood clotting, preventing inflammatory cells to stick to the vessel wall and causing inflammation.
Preventing leakage of cholesterol into the vessel wall, causing atherosclerosis, control of endothelial production of nitric oxide, and control of blood flow and preventing hypertension, preventing leakage of fluids and edema. Everything you can think of that's related to the function of the vessel wall endothelium turns out to be mediated by that glycocalyx.
There's tons of paper studied showing that now and also with the glycogen device that we developed later.
So I don't think there's a lot of discussion right now whether glycocalyx is important to keep your blood vessels healthy.
And then when I ran out of excuses not to take this serious from an academic research lab perspective, I saw the need to translate that academic, big microscope kind of research into something more usable to look at healthy individuals and patients in the real world.
And then we developed the Glycogen system, which is a small handheld microscope to measure the health of your glycocalyx by, you know, put the camera in your mouth that you have. You've worked with a little bit.
And then we started doing that in like 2008, 2009.
And that was pretty much when Bob started getting interested in glycochemics. He. He realized I was developing the glycogen system, and I was traveling the country back in the Netherlands and measuring people's glycocalyx microvascular health. And obviously people would ask them, what can I do to improve the health of my glycocalyx? And like you, I said, no, do what people tell you to do. You know, exercise more, watch your diet, stop smoking, control your blood sugar, all the general health advice. But, you know, everybody knows someone that doesn't do that and still lives healthy to become 100 years old. So there's always why. For me, I could probably drink and eat as much as I want and don't need exercise, and I'll be okay. But measuring with the glycogen device, their health, the microvasculature, they needed more than just a general advice. And luckily for me, that's when I got Bob's call.
2011 or 12.
And from that point on, we worked together to improve the formula for the therapeutic.
And over the last years, we've done a lot of clinical trials now, well, scientifically based studies on different patient groups to see if we repair your glycocalyx with a supplement. Can we also help make patients better restore organ function and really help people to live a healthier life?
[00:45:16] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. And maybe we can highlight a couple of those clinical applications of where y' all have seen end organ damage be reversed or improved. But I just want to summarize real quick because that was a great, great explanation. But, you know, for the audience, it might have Got lost in some of that, guys, kind of like I said at the top of the show, basically you can think of this glycocalyx is like a slick inner lining, and it's 99 water, actually, Han said. And it has a negative charge to it. So just imagine this little pipe, little capillary with. With this nice, watery, slick, slippery layer on the inside with the negative charge. Think of two magnets, negative to negative, they repel.
So things flowing through that blood vessel can. Won't scrape the inner line of your blood vessel wall and cause the damage.
You may have heard about, you know, heart disease or coronary heart attacks can be associated with heavy metals or dental bacteria or microplastics. Recently read a study on that, how microplastics are found in the plaque of the coronary artery blockage. But all these different things flowing through the blood vessel, if you had a healthy glycocalyx with a negative charge to it, all that heavy metal bacteria, microplastic, whatever, should just keep flowing right on down and not have an opportunity to damage that blood vessel and initiate that whole clotting cascade that Dr. Malcolm Kendrick talks about. Guys. So just want to kind of summarize that. It's incredible, this glycocalyx. And you can get a lot done by keeping that healthy. But maybe. Hans, could you talk about one or two studies? I don't know whether it'd be chronic kidney disease or if there's any coronary studies or eye disease or long Covid.
Just some clinical applications.
[00:47:08] Speaker D: Yeah, a lot is going on, Ben, So it would take more time than we have to talk about all of them. I think that the. The few that I want to highlight is studies on diabetes and kidney disease.
So diabetes has been a long interest of ours to see whether the cardiovascular complications that people see in diabetes, including kidney disease, are they glycocalyx related?
There's a lot of data showing now in the early stages, people starting becoming diabetic and their blood glucose levels are rising and their insulin levels are rising. That has a clear damaging impact on your glycocalyx.
And one of the consequences is if you go to the kidney, you also have specialized capillaries in your kidney that take care of the filtration function of the kidney. So those capillaries are called glomerular capillaries, and they're specialized. They have big openings in the endothelium that allow a lot of fluid to be filtered and. And to take out the toxins and produce urine and for a long, long Time. Because of these large openings in the endothelial cells of the kidney capillaries, people didn't consider the endothelium as an important barrier to protect protein loss. If you have early said kidney disease, you see a lot of protein showing up in the urine, and the protein is lost from your vascular space.
But for a long, long time, the kidney specialist didn't consider your kidney capillary endothelium as a barrier preventing that protein loss because of these big openings for the fluid filtration.
Well, that turned around when we realized that those big holes in your endothelium are actually not holes. They are filled with glycocalyx.
So glycocalyx is highly permeable for water. A lot of the fluid filtration can happen in those kidney capillaries, but you don't lose proteins like albumin, because there's glycocalyx that prevent that loss. And as soon as you're exposed to high glucose or high insulin, like in diabetes, that also damage your glycocalyx in your kidney capillaries, you don't then start losing albumin protein from blood plasma through those endothelial cells, and that triggers a cascade that causes kidney failure. So keeping your kidney capillaries healthy also will help you to preserve or restore kidney function.
And one of the studies that we did in many different locations is repairing the glycocalyx in people with diabetes and in impaired kidney function.
And one of the amazing findings that we do find is not only can you slow down the breakdown of your glycocalyx in kidney patients or people with diabetes, but also if you look at kidney function, if you restore microvascular health, you also see an improvement of kidney function. So more of your kidney capillaries are preserved.
You improve filtration capacity in the kidneys. And actually, so kidney function not necessarily declines constantly when you're exposed to risk factors. If you improve the health of your microvasculature, you can also improve kidney function. That's one of the very promising findings that we have and keep on studying.
And the other study that I would like to highlight as you started out with is Covid. We do know that the spike protein binds to the endothelium to a receptor called the ACE2 or angiotensin converting enzyme 2. And that receptor is a small receptor on the endothelium. And like all the other receptors that are important for blood clotting and inflammation, usually that's down deep, hidden on the bottom of your glycocalyx so you have a thick glycocalyx that covers your endothelium and there are all kinds of receptors on the membrane of the endothelium that are not exposed to flowing blood and doesn't bind to the virus or the blood platelets or do inflammatory cells. But in individuals that are already at higher risk because of a compromised glycocalyx, their endothelium is more exposed and higher risk of binding of blood platelets or leukocytes or the spike protein to the endothelium. And when that happens, it activates your endothelium and it sheds your glycocalyx and downstream of that event triggers a lot of the cardiovascular complications as a result of damaging your glycocalyx.
And then in some individuals. So we measured now glycocalyx damage in COVID patients and really sick COVID patients in the icu. One of the consequences is of those really sick COVID patients in the ICU that are on the mechanical ventilator.
If you damage your glycocalyx, you destroy many of your capillaries.
So we've done studies showing that you lose about 90% or more of your small capillaries in most of your organs when you're really sick of COVID Well, you can understand if you lose 90% of your capillaries in your kidney or your brain or your heart, it's almost impossible to get enough nutrients to your organ cells and it's very high likelihood that those organs will shut down and cause all kinds of complications.
But in addition to that acute damage, we also realize that some people that are exposed to Covid and they don't really have to get really, really sick, but after they recover, they still have all kinds of secondary complications. They're tired, they cannot focus very well, their exercise performance is way down, they don't really function as they used to do.
So we did some follow up studies on long haul COVID patients and realized that even after a mild exposure infection by the COVID virus, some people lose more than 50% of their microvasculature and there's no trend of repair by their bodies itself. Even after two years, there's no improvement of that damaged glycocalyx and microvasculature.
So we were very interested to see if we start treating them with additional support with the glycocal therapeutic, if we could help these individuals. And the first study just finished with a group that we work with in Greece, in Europe, indeed showing that we can improve microvascular health within A few months of starting treatment with the Glycogex therapeutic. In addition to improve microvasculature, also large vessel health. If you look at large vessel stiffness, for instance, which is a very good indicator of cardiovascular risk, we see a significant improvement of large vessel stiffness. And on top of that, we saw a clear improvement of heart function, of coronary flow reserve.
So, yes, there is significant support and clear evidence that if you improve your glycocalyx, you can improve vascular health, both large vessels and your microvasculature. And if you do that, also, organ function will improve. So I think we can help a lot of people by repairing their glycocalyx and different patient groups improve their organ health.
[00:54:29] Speaker A: Okay, great.
We've got a few minutes. Eight, eight or ten minutes left, maybe. Could we talk about the actual glyco check machine?
You know, just imagine a patient sitting in the room and you're, you're trying to explain the camera and even how to place it. Because I'm going to use this podcast as actually part of the training for the, the clients that are going to come in to be measured. But maybe just explain a little bit about what the camera's doing and what the software is doing to analyze those images.
[00:55:01] Speaker D: It's super simple, Ben. It's a small handheld camera that you put in your mouth, and there's a green light on the tip of the camera lens.
And the reason your blood has red color is red blood cells. They absorb green light.
So they don't reflect green light. They only reflect the other wavelength, including red light. So that's why they look red. So if you green light, you put it on the bottom of your mouth, the light scatters around, is absorbed in your red blood cells, and the light does not absorb this bounce back into the camera. So your tissue looks white, and everywhere red blood cells are, it looks dark. So you actually see with the microscope camera, you see red blood cells flowing through your capillaries on the bottom of your mouth. And it turns out now wherever you measure either the bottom of your mouth or on your eye or armpit or any other surface tissue that's accessible to put the camera on, it's all one big network of cardiovascular system. And if you are being exposed to risk, you'll see breakdown of your capillary and glycocalyx sublingual, but also another tissue. So it's just an easy place to measure.
So what we do, basically we measure two things. We count the number of capillaries because if you're exposed to risk factors. You damage your capillaries and the number will go down. And by monitoring how red cells are flowing through individual capillaries, whether they can get close to the wall or not, that's a measure for glycocalyx health. So we measure how deep red cells can penetrate into glycocalyx. We call that the profuse boundary region.
So the deeper the red cells penetrate into glycocalyx, the bigger that profuse boundary region, the more damage of your glycocalyx. And then we combine your number of capillaries with the level of damage of your glycochelics to present a microvascular health score, and the higher, the better.
So that gives people an almost instant assessment of their microvascular and glycocalyx health and also allows them to monitor that whatever they're trying to do to stay healthy or improve their health, including the Revasca glycogen supplement, whether it's effective for them or whether they need to double up the dose. And at the same time, monitor glycocalyx health and microvascular health and then compare that how. How well they're doing if they're recovering from. From a disease or in general, feel more fit and more focused.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And what are some of the important things for the client or patient to remember prior to the scan as far as fasting, Hydration, stress, coffee, stuff like that?
[00:57:35] Speaker D: You want to add some of that to that discussion, Bob?
[00:57:38] Speaker C: So that's an important thing, because I've probably tested more people than anybody in the world, and the biggest thing that I think that makes the biggest difference, hydration is important.
I would recommend that you don't drink any alcohol 24 hours in advance.
Fasting for at least six to eight hours is important because, as Hans mentioned earlier, that's when you eat, then the way the nutrients are absorbed is through your bloodstream. That's how they're delivered through the capillary network.
And so your capillaries or your glycocalyx in those capillaries becomes more permeable.
And so that's how the nutrients get through the glycocalyx to get absorbed out into the tissue and muscles and support your organs and everything in your body.
In fact, the first study that I ever did with Hans was many years ago, and because I wanted to see what the effect of eating was. So the first study we did, we recruited healthy subjects, and then we put them on the same diet for about two, two weeks. So they all got the same diet and Then we gave them a dietary challenge.
And so we got their baseline scores for two weeks before we did the test.
And then on the day of the test, in the morning, we gave them a high fat, high sugar diet. And so the diet I picked that was easy for us to get is we gave them McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheese, a large French fry, and a large Coke.
And then we tracked them about every two hours over the course of the next 20 hours or so. And so what we saw is we saw immediate drops in the thickness of their glycocalyx. And that made sense because the nutrients were being absorbed. But what we also noticed there was a difference in the people that we tested.
Some people could clear that diet faster than other people.
Some people, it took maybe 10 or 12 hours for the effects of that high fat, high sugar meal to dissipate. And so that's why the fasting element is super important. So when they come into your office, Ben, it's really important when you're trying to get a baseline score, if you can try to test them at the same time, kind of metabolic rate every time, it's going to eliminate some of the variability that you might see.
Right?
[01:00:27] Speaker A: So basically this, this will establish a good baseline. If they're able to come in in the morning, fasting, plenty of hydration, no alcohol in 24 hours, that'll give you a good baseline. Obviously, after a meal, you're going to see changes immediately after the meal, but we want that baseline, so that's really good. And, guys, we are going to open this up soon.
We'll put an announcement out in the newsletter with all the details, or you can email the clinic. And we'll be getting those details soon so we can start scanning. People, we just have a couple minutes. Either one of y', all, Bob or Hans, I want to talk just briefly about Revasca and for my audience. Y' all know me, I'm all about diet and lifestyle and get real food and get sunshine and grounding and movement and good structured water into you, because that structured water makes, you know, we want to keep that glycocalyx structured or negative charge. So that's always a foundation. But there is supplemental plant nutrients, you know, power packed into this supplement.
And especially if you've been a standard American for a while or if you're symptomatic, high blood pressure, angina, kidney disease, long Covid, lots of other things you may want to explore, additional things, meaning supplementation. So could y' all speak to that a little bit? I know it's probably proprietary as far as ingredients maybe. But just talk a little bit about the supplement rvasca.
[01:01:52] Speaker C: Sure, I could do that.
That's been my Quest for about 18 years now. So Vasca is our third generation product and it's the most powerful product to date. And so what we found and tested are ingredients that are found in nature.
And we've tested, tested those and done lots of studies on them. But the, what the ingredients really do is the first thing that they do is they immediately go out and restore those holes in the glycocalyx. So your example of that slick surface.
[01:02:27] Speaker B: That you gave Ben.
[01:02:28] Speaker C: I used the first example I ever told people when I first started explaining this is I called, I said it was Teflon. Like that's a good example. People know Teflon frying pans. If you use a metal spatula and scratch them, then food starts to stick. Well, that's kind of how the glycocalyx is. But then the more I started to understand it, I realized it's really more like Gore Tex, meaning that you can wear a Gore Tex jacket. It repels the rain and everything, but it lets air and stuff through. And so I help. The glycocalyx is essential. That thick glycocalyx is essential to repel all the things we've been talking about. And so some of the compounds specifically target and rebuild the glycocalyx. And because they're absorbed in the gut and get into the bloodstream, that happens almost immediately. So it's automatically going out and it's repaving and recoding that glycocalyx systemically through your body.
The next thing that we include in there would be antioxidants. So everybody knows, or you probably preach that oxidative stress is bad, but I always say, okay, well why is oxidative stress bad? Oxy oxidative stress is bad because that's part of what tears down the glycocalyx. And so we introduce super polyphenols and ingredients that specifically restore the antioxidants that your body produces naturally. And those antioxidants are actually stored, stored in that glycocalyx gel matrix that we've been talking about today.
And so we boost that. Another thing that we do is you've probably talked on your shore where we can come back and talk about the importance of nitric oxide production.
Nitric oxide production is produced in your primary. A large part of it's in your capillary network as the red blood cells flow through it stimulates part of the glycocalyx and triggers the endothelial cells to produce nitric oxide. That's super important because that's what regulates blood pressure, that's what keeps your vessels elastic, prevents them from becoming hardened, etc.
Another thing that we do is we prevent the breakdown with the polyphenols and we restore the glycocalyx.
And then the last thing that we do is we also I guess do a couple of other things.
One of the ingredients has a super immune factor in that it helps stop the things that are breaking down the glycocalyx, for example, Covid viruses or other toxins that people are exposed to. So we're really with the formula. It's really specialized in that it rebuilds the glycocalyx matrix, we stop the breakdown and then we provide the body the nutrients that it needs that you don't get in your diet in any other way.
And they're super concentrated in high extract levels to make that glycocalyx work. And so one thing I just add on that device you've got in your office and that you're going to find real interesting as you start testing your patients is you're going to be able to see all those patients that had Covid. It's going to immediately identify the level or degree of breakdown that Covid caused to their microcirculation.
So we test all people all the time and we see that they have very limited 4, 5 and 6 micron vessels which are the true capillaries. Then when we talk to them, we can identify that maybe they had Lyme disease or they had, they did have Covid, et cetera. So hope that answers your question.
[01:06:28] Speaker A: Yes, it does. Thank you. And for the audience, for the listeners out there, we will be measuring this glycocalyx with the glyco check camera that Hans was talking about.
We'll be sending out a notice in our newsletter soon. Check. Open up that scheduling or you can always contact the clinic infoeritasmedical.com but and we'll, we'll be happy to scan both our members and the general public too. You don't have to be a member of our clinic. We'll be happy to scan anybody. And then the product, third generation product, Revasca Re Vasca. And we've got that available in our store here locally, but also on our website for our members.
Um, so y' all can check that out.
Okay. Awesome. Dr. Hans Vink and Bob Long, what a amazing journey. Y' all have been on in countless lives. You're touching through your dedication to restoring the glycocalyx. What's the best way for people to learn more? Maybe see that picture Hans Yalls website or just to learn more about what we've talked about today, I could say, or.
[01:07:37] Speaker B: Go ahead, Hans.
[01:07:38] Speaker D: Well, I'll just say probably the website is the best place to go. There's a lot of information the glycocalyx.com it's a lot of information on the background of the glycogen device and it's also a sub page that shows all the science papers that people are interested and also a lot of information on the Rovasco supplement.
[01:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's over.
[01:07:57] Speaker C: We published over 150 peer reviewed scientific papers with academic research hospitals all over the world. Those are there on a wide range.
[01:08:07] Speaker B: Of conditions and diseases.
[01:08:09] Speaker C: Another thing if they want to take a deeper dive into the topics we talked about today is they could go to our YouTube channel. It's the future of vascular health.
So that's on either iTunes, Spotify or YouTube. And we have whole segments on heart disease where we go into great detail about what you talked about, what causes a heart attack, what causes hypertension, why do men and women have different present differently with heart attacks. We go into great detail on kidney disease, what causes that. We go into great detail on diabetes, the different types of diabetes.
And then we go into a great deal about COVID also. So those are some of the areas that your audience might find helpful that they can listen to.
[01:08:58] Speaker A: Awesome. Great guys. So glycocalyx.com g l y c o c a l y x.com Dr. Hans Vink, Bob Long, thank you very much for joining us today. Been very enlightening and encouraging. Thank you all for coming on the show.
Okay. All right everybody, that's another episode of you're the cure. I'm Dr. Ben Edwards. This will be on all the podcast platforms, YouTube, our website, Veritas Web, wellnessmember. Com. We'll see you next week with another great show.
[01:09:30] Speaker D: Bye Bye.
