Quantified Health, Wellness & Aging

Quantified Health, Wellness & Aging


IHDA’ Ivor Cummins – an engineer’s guide to staying alive for longer & preventing disease

September 12, 2018

Read the transcript

In this third episode, Ivor Cummins, Chief Program Manager of Irish Heart Disease Awareness (IHDA), shares why as a top class engineer he’s been decoding the causes of human chronic disease and obesity. He relates why orthodox healthcare is unnecessarily putting our health and lives at risk. He imparts what we can do ourselves to predict and prevent modern disease.

Topics we discussed in this episode

Ivor’s blood chemistry showing high serum ferritin, Gamma-Glutamyl Transferase (GGT) and cholesterol
Ivor’s inability to get answers about the root cause of the high markers, nor any quantification of any increased morbidity or mortality
His search for answers and the answer itself
His serendipitous discovery that the risk markers used by orthodox healthcare are weak let alone optimal, even deeply misleading
Better risk markers for morbidity and mortality prediction
Serendipitously meeting David Bobbett who also had an axe to grind with orthodox healthcare after he discovered using his own efforts that he was very high risk, after being told he was low risk by healthcare
The use of generic risk factor algorithms by orthodox healthcare and why they are not good enough
Medications are often a very weak intervention e.g. little effect on all-cause mortality
Correct diet and lifestyle is a more powerful intervention as it addresses the root cause
Dietary root causes - primarily refined sugars, refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils (the three building blocks of manufactured “food like” products)
Mixture of refined carbohydrates and fats is the least optimum for longevity and healthspan
There is no more important factor in weight loss and longevity than your insulin status
The bar where orthodox healthcare puts diabetes and diabetic physiology is very late in the diabetic journey, whereas it could be caught 15 years earlier
The majority of the American adult population have diabetic physiology; the majority share this single metabolic disease
Most doctors are not aware of insulin resistance outside the context of diabetes nor aware of insulin as a disease cause, only a medication
Diabetic physiology is linked to fatty liver, obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, many cancers; in fact all modern chronic diseases
Orthodox healthcare is using glucose to determine diabetic status, whereas it should be using insulin, particularly post-prandial insulin
Use of HOMA calculation as a cheap yet better measure of diabetic physiology
Use of Kraft-Assay as the gold standard to measure of diabetic physiology
Total cholesterol is a very poor risk marker
LDL, the “bad” cholesterol is a very poor independent risk marker
High resolution LDL analysis (LIPOPRINT/NMR)
Bypassing fuzzy risk markers and guesses by using the Coronary Calcium Score (CAC) to see the disease directly
The four types of people - it’s the metabolically unhealthy, thin outside, fat inside (TOFI) at the four who are most risk
The orthodox intervention, low fat diets and vegetable oils, will probably just hasten your demise.
Nutritional guidelines have been based upon junk science and have only exacerbated chronic disease and obesity

Show links

Irish Heart Disease Awareness (IHDA) Website
Jeffry Gerber, MD Website
Ivor Cummins Website
Eat Rich, Live Long: Mastering the Low-Carb & Keto Spectrum for Weight Loss and Longevity Book
David Bobbett on Independent.ie Rich List Web Page
Coronary Calcium Score Web Page
How Could a fit 51-year-old Have a 25pc Chance of a Massive Heart Attack Within a Year? Article
Atherosclerosis Wikipedia Entry
Framingham Risk Score Wikipedia Entry