Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:00

Welcome back to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is the podcast where we highlight the Trailblazers, reimagining what true health looks like through functional care, lived experience, and systems level insight. Today I'm joined by Dr. Akil Taher, a remarkable physician, a septuagenarian athlete, marathoner, mountaineer, and a heart disease survivor who transformed his health and his mission after undergoing bypass surgery at the age of 61. Now he's a global advocate for lifestyle medicine and a powerful voice for the under-discussed LP Little A test, which offers critical insights into inherited cardiovascular disease. So with that, I'd like to welcome you to the show, Arkil, and thank you very much for joining us.

Dr Akil Taher: 0:40

Thank you. Thank you, Andrew, for having me.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:44

So I wonder if you'd mind just showing a little bit about your journey in terms of how you've ended up doing what you currently do, and perhaps talk us a little bit about what happened after your surgery and how it changed the way that you think about medicine.

Dr Akil Taher: 0:58

Before that, Andrew, let me just say that I wear three different hats. My first hat is a resurgent physician, meaning that I leverage medical science as well as lifestyle medicine to treat the cause of chronic diseases before it has happened rather than the consequence after it has happened. That's my first hat. My second hat is I'm a heart disease survivor. So I've been in their shoes and I know exactly what they're going through. So to speak, I'm on both sides of the stethoscope as a doctor and as a patient. And finally, as you pointed out, I'm a septuaginarian athlete. And I believe that and a strong proponent of plant-based diet, and I believe that the plant-based nutrition has helped me tremendously, not only in my performance time, but my recovery time and all that is required to be an active athlete.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 2:10

Well, thank you very much for that context. I think it's highly relevant what we're talking about today. But I like the fact you've been on both sides of the stethoscope. It really adds richness to the conversation because you really understand the patient perspective. But perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about your journey.

Dr Akil Taher: 2:25

Okay, so what happened is I moved to the United States rather late in my 40s. So I had a lot of catching up to do. And so, so to speak, to achieve that American dream. And so I worked hard long hours, paying very little attention to my health, my family, and my friends. So besides that, I did not realize that I spent a better better part of my adult life indulging into rich, unhealthy foods. So at one time I was called a seafood eater, S E E, because I ate everything at sight. And trust me, those were the days when the pharmaceutical companies took you out. I'm not ashamed to say that. But that was what I did. If I did not work hard enough, then or eat what I was doing, then I would lie on the couch for hours together, and I had no understanding or meaning of what was exercise. Especially, Andrew, people, Indians, the first generation, they really came around here without knowing what exercise was. Possibly I stand corrected. I did exercise my eye muscles watching runners in the park or my hand muscles holding the remote to change the TV channels. And besides that, so till the age of 61, I created my own unhealthy lifestyle. And so I was drawn to these foods. It became a kind of uh kind of an addiction. So I had to have these foods to get my daily high. And so, in addition to facing unfab, I in addition, I faced a lot of unfavorable genetics. Just last year I came to know that I have a high LP little A, lipoprotein A. I also, I also have a Wolf-Parkinson White syndrome. To your listeners, it may sound like a horror movie, but it's of course a conduction defect, uh, an accessory pathway that can lead to uh heartbeats, rapid heartbeats. And so my family history is also very challenging. My mother and sister died of heart disease at a young age of 63. Uh, and my brother succumbed to stroke at the age of 52, and my one, the last living brother that I have now, all my family is gone, has pulmonary fibrosis. So I was in a way, there was a dichotomy of my understanding. I thought, who cares? I have a bad genetics, I'm gonna die anyway. Let me lead the life I'm leading. But in the back of my mind, I said, whatever it is, so again I had a type A personality, Andrew. In a way that it was either my way or the highway, and that created a lot of stress too. All these things created a tremendous amount of stress that I could not handle, and so at a young age of 54, partly because of the LPA, partly because of my lifestyle, heart disease came knocking at that age, and I wasn't surprised, but I was scared because I'd lost control, and that was my forte control. So I thought that I could handle this, but I could not. I thought medical science will get me through, but all they did was say you need stents. So coming to think of it right now, my when this when they put in stents, my my plaques were 98 to 99 percent, and they were so hard that they had to use a uh razor tip uh blade to shave the plaques, and in the process, I got a cardiac arrest. So they had to shock me for the listeners, they had to shock me to get my heart beating again. Now, with this, probably people are thinking my my family thought I would change my lifestyle, but I did not. I continued my erratic lifestyle the way I did. You know, in a way I felt I was supposed to be a doctor, and now I've turned into a patient. I could not accept that, and so I withdrew from life and I became severely depressed, sitting for long hours looking vacantly, sobbing, uh, throwing things around to cover up the anger and the grief I felt, and all this kind of went on for a period of five years, and people don't realize this that you know sometimes after having a life uh disease or or a kind of a thing that I had, uh, people have a lot of despair and loneliness after that. And so this continued for five long years, and this kind of created a lot of mental agony as well as emotional agony. So now physical symptoms started coming in. I mean, the pneumonias and the bronchitis every single season, and then you had your sinus infections and your hemorrhoids, and then I had the infamous diverticulitis that perforated twice. And so my surgeon, a friend of mine, says, Akiel, if I don't take you down and operate on you, you may not survive. So I I decided against that and then went on for five long years as erratic way till I was back. This time my stance failed. So I was back into the hospital, and as they were wheeling me into surgery, I don't know what came over me. I just blurted out to the nurses around that I would do a half a marathon in a year's time if all went well. Of course, they humored me and they said, Yeah, yeah, doc, that's great, you're gonna do it. And to this day, Andrew, I don't know why I said that, but I believe I had only two choices left. One was to carry on this slow, um this slow life of agony, misery, uh, or to make a conscious decision of how to lead my life with passion, purpose, and positivity. That stuck there. And so when I got out of my surgery, I did not take a single pain medication. The excruciating pain that you have when they open your chest was nothing compared to the five years of agony, emotional agony I've gone through. This is very difficult for people to believe this. But this was in a way a happy moment, was in a happy place. Uh and and and so I I started, I was on the treadmill on the third day. So I went on and I had promised the nurses, so I took up running. And to me, this is the word that I've coined that running to me became meditation in motion. I don't like running with people, I like running alone. And so I and a guy who has not even done half a kilometer in his life, so I had to walk, I had to learn like how babies learn how to walk, and then to jog and run. And so in seven months' time, now I I changed my diet too, but a herbivore diet. I did have chicken and all that, but I started eating better, I started uh exercising, I started uh meditation, yoga, I started uh sky breathing, um, breathing exercises. And so in seven months, my wife and I went to uh Nashville in Tennessee, and I did my first half marathon. It took me four grueling hours, but my bruised heart had not failed me. It carried me over the finish line, and I was thrilled. I was like on top of Mount Everest. And then, you know, sometimes people don't understand this, that I must be having symptoms in my 25s and 30s, not realizing it because of that LP little age. There must be some kind of atherosclerosis that did not allow me to do what other people did. When I came to America, my sister-in-law, my brother, they would all be jogging in the park, and I would be walking behind and wondering what is going on. So it's like a blind person when you give them eyesight, he says, Oh my god, this tree looks lovely. We don't look at trees. So to me, it was like, boy, this is something great. Physically, they transformed me. The emotional and mental transformation came on later on. So I I did that thing, and then within a year after my surgery, within four months after my half marathon, I went to Mount Kalash in China, in Tibet, China, and climbed that 19,000 that you can circumvent over there. And I was great. I mean, they asked me, they said, What are you doing? It's only one year. Where is a doctor's certificate and a cardiologist and this and that? But I managed to sort of get through, and they insisted I should have oxygen. But you see, this is this is what I'm telling people that you don't have to go back to where you were. You've got to start a new life the way you want to be. So I did not use any oxygen. And from that moment onwards, everything was good. I then did Mount Kilimanjaro and jumped out of planes and did 100-mile bike ride. Uh, to bring an important point over here, I did two hundred-mile bike rides. The first I did on a carnivore diet, herbivore. And it took me uh five days after the 100-mile bike ride to recuperate. When I did it on a whole food plant-based diet, and Andrew, I'm not joking, this is the truth. I went on a bike ride in gale force winds, extremely low temperatures. In fact, they cut off a part of it. It took us nine long hours to finish the 100-mile bike ride. And my town is six hours away. So we went, had a nice plant-based diet, and I told my partner trainer, let's go back to my small town, Gadston in Alabama. And we drove six hours over to Gadston. In between, I get a call from my clinic. Hey doc, we don't have a doctor working on Sunday tomorrow. Can you come in? I went in. And I did my 10-hour shift after that without betting an eye. That this wasn't a plant-based, a whole food plant-based diet. People say you require animal protein, and no, you don't. No, you don't. You get enough protein in your uh plant-based diet. So here is a story that I did all these things, but Andrew, I still at times would my diabetic litis would flare up, still get sinus congestions. And I wanted, I started looking into things. How can I heal the body without solely relying on medicines or invasive surgery? So I started reading, reading my talking to my colleagues, Neil Bernard and uh Elstein and others, looking at scientific journals, plant-based uh journals. And the more I read, the more I realized there was something here. And that is when I came across the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, most important being nutrition, which is a cornerstone, complemented by exercise, sleep, handling of stress, avoiding substance abuse, and having a robust social support. And when I when I started this, I started doing each chapter and learning about each pillar. And so I made it a point that when I give my talks, like I'm going to Sedona now and then I'm going to uh uh uh Chicago, I talk about the six pillars. I take one pillar and talk to people about sleep. I take one pillar about exercise and kinesiology and talk about that. So the six pillars have become an extremely important in my life, which has given me today what I have achieved. Again, I'm a work in in progress. I have skeletons in my so I am not saying that I am oh great, I'm superb. No, I have problems. I have problems of sleep. I sometimes get caught up when I'm with people eating sometimes the wrong type of food, but it doesn't bother me anymore. That in a nutshell is what my transformation was.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:34

Thank you. What an inspiring and quite extraordinary story in how you turn those health challenges and to really propel yourself into new heights of personal health. Quite remarkable. I'm really quite inspired. So now you're um speaking, you're writing, and you're advocating on heart health and lifestyle change, and you talked about your six pillars and the talks that you do. If you could just distill it down, what's the core message that you're trying to get across to people?

Dr Akil Taher: 19:01

See, as an author and a heart healthy speaker, I'm trying to spread the message of living a heart-healthy lifestyle, backed by evidence and science, and driven by my personal experience as a recovered heart patient. As a research and physician, I'm trying to do treat the chronic diseases. And as a septuaginarian athlete, as a plant-based proponent, I'm I've benefited and I want people to benefit from this. Number two, I always believe that adversity can be your best friend or your worst enemy. The first five years after my stance, adversity became my worst enemy. After my surgery, adversity became my best friend. I knew what to Do and that is why I tell this to people. Number two is adventure can hurt you, but monotony can kill you. Now, I don't mean adventure going on mountains and doing hundred-mile bike rides, but adventure is a metaphor, it can be anything. Learning something new. In the COVID period, I started doing gardening, which I'm not too good at, and cooking, which I'm absolutely terrible. But by the way, I have a cook and uh shop and cook show right now. So uh I do that. And so to me, it is so important that that you can do certain things like learning how to play chess or mahjong or something that does not become monotony because monotony leads to static this thing, and then you start getting depressed and you don't know what to do, especially in old age. And finally, I tell people that age is not a limiting factor in changing anyone's lifestyle, it's not a limiting factor. And finally, I would like to say that uh in a way uh to my patients, older patients, I say you cannot go back and change the beginning. But you can start where you are and change the ending, so do not let your past dictate your future. I have done it at the age of 61. A lot of people have done it uh earlier, a lot of people have done it at the age of 1780. Olga Katalko, I don't know if you heard of her, a tremendous lady who got uh some 70 gold medals at the age of 90. So age is not a limiting factor. And learn, and learn sometimes uh it is uh resilience. Don't try and change everything in what you can. Oh, I want a new knee, I want a new hip, I want this, I want that. No. Learn to live with it. You you have certain things that are not working as you age. See, and so to me, it is very important that conventional medicine focuses on treating things, right? Managing numbers. So I'm trying to, what was I doing? I was managing numbers, blood sugar, cholesterol numbers, hemoglobin A and C, pushing pills and procedures for hypertension, I would give antihypertension, insomnia, sleep aids. So, in a way, what would happen? There's so many stents and bypass surgeries done in the USA, I don't know about the UK, which are unnecessary. Absolutely unnecessary. And then nutrition is medicine. Of course, we do uh we don't emphasize in training, we mention it, but not as a central part of treatment. We're not taught. My I with zero hours, my son, who's a doctor here in Atlanta, five hours in four in four years, and now it is mandatory to have 20 hours, but what is 20 hours? And so uh we also as conventional medicine we over-emphasize on genetics that is 10 to 20 percent of your health outcome, and that too can be changed by epigenetics, which is the expression of the genes, and finally, if uh in a way, if you look at it, uh we always feel that age is something uh inevitable, that chronic disease is an inevitable part of aging. We believe that. And what conventional medicine has done increases increases your lifespan, but not your health span. So in America, I can tell you, I don't know about other countries, America. Most of the people, the last 20 years of their lives, are miserable. That is what I'm trying to get at. People have to die, everybody has to die. I have to die, but I don't want it to be my fault.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 25:00

Thank you. So, what reactions have you seen from your peers in traditional medicine as you've shifted your approach quite radically, actually?

Dr Akil Taher: 25:10

It's very difficult. It's very difficult. Just now, just yesterday, one of my patients came to me. I do telemedicine, and she turned around and she said that doc, I heard your because I have a uh podcast on YouTube about LP little A. And I asked my doctor, uh, can you please do my LP little A? First, she said was what is LP little A? Number two, she says, You don't need it. Now she has had a family history of people dying at a young age of strokes and heart disease. And she was told this. I had to tell my own cardiologist after my cholesterol was not going down, do my LP little air, please. Uh and and then most of them, and I should not say most of them, but the basic thing in America is that you are treat your your reimbursement is on procedures, on the treating the disease. So, to them, if they are not going to do procedures like stance, cardiologist, or a cardioporacic surgeon about surgeries, they are not going to get reimbursed the way they are getting reimbursed now. So, so I have to uh we are very few, Andrew, people, doctors like us thinking are not in large numbers, but we are the people who got to carry on this message. So if I have one-to-one, I have cardiology doctors, cardiologists in my audience when I give talks, and I take questions from them, that we need to change their mindset. We are not saying, I'm not saying that conventional medicine is not required. If somebody is having chest pain, I'm not going to ask that person to have a carrot stick in his mouth. Of course, there is a place, but but not the way for chronic diseases. Because I tell them that talk to me when I when I talk to physicians in conventional medicine, what is chronic disease? Chronic disease is a few things: your inflammation, your oxidation, your disturbance of your gut bacteria, overstimulation of your sympathetic nervous system. And the last is all this creates your immunity to go down. And your telomeres go down because of this. So I explained to them that look, we can do it in 21 days, get a diabetes. Why are you saying that you've got to live with it? Telling the patient. But it's uh it's an uphill task.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 28:32

So you've talked about LPA testing as being a major blind spot in conventional care. And I know this is a huge topic, but can you, in a nutshell, explain why it's so important?

Dr Akil Taher: 28:44

You know, number one, it in a nutshell, it is only 1% of the doctors are actually testing it, and only 1.2%, I believe, are people in the US who have been tested. Uh, it should be mandatory, like in certain European countries, not in the UK, it is everybody gets tested. Everybody should get tested. The thing is that this is genetics. So one test is all that is required. If you're negative, you're home-free. If you're positive, we can do a couple of things. But being genetic, and no let them understand it's 20% of the population have this very high. And in the black Americans in the US with African descent, it's one, that means one in three. In South Asians like me, we are one in four. So general population is one into five. Now people turn around and say, what is LPA doc? Well, LPA is your fat particle. It's like your bad cholesterol, the LDL. But LDL has epoprotein B, a protein that both of them have. LP little A and LDL. Or what LP little A has an extra protein, epolipoprotein A, which causes it to become much more inflammatory, much more sticky, much more clock forming, so that it can cause a higher degree of uh heart disease, strokes, and bowl problems, aortic ball. So I was diagnosed last year at the age of 76, and I have aortic stenosis too, because of the calcification of the aorta, which is a gateway where the blood flows through the oxygenated blood flows through different parts of the body, and if that gets stenosed and narrowed down and calcified, it causes heart failure. So certain people in the community should ask for it. Everybody should get it done, but certain people should ask for it. Who? People who have got a family history or a personal history of premature heart disease. That can be either strokes, uh, heart attacks, uh, peripheral arterial disease. Number two, people who have got a high cholesterol that does not come down, familial hypercholesterolemia, those people. Number three, like I said, South Asians and African Americans. Number four, manopausal women. That's the only, there are only a few times that you have to do this test again. Manopausal women have a higher, much higher LP little A than their counterparts males of the same age. And so it's a very simple test, less than costing less than half a gas of tank. So, and but FDA has approved it over here. So people should ask for it. And if you ask for it, ask not for milligrams per deciliter, ask for nanomoles. Because nanomoles uh actually uh not only find the amount you have, but the size of the LP, LP little A particles. But this is a hidden risk. And like people tell me, what happens if I have LP little A positive? What do I do? Is there any treatment? See, general exercise and eating healthy does not decrease your LP little A. But what you can do is there are two, there are in fact three things. Epophyresis is one treatment which is extremely expensive, and it is like your kidney dialysis. That's the only treatment FTA approves. But you also have your uh C CSK9 inhibitors, the uh Rapatha, those ones can reduce it by 20 to 30 percent. But our FTA does not approve it, it is only approved for people who got very high LDLs that do not come down. So, in a way, if you got high LP little A, luckier to be also having high LDL because then you can get CHK9 inhibitors so that you can get your LPA LDL down and LPA down. That's what happened to me. I had high cholesterol and a high LP little A. And finally, it can come to people who have normal cholesterol. They cannot get the uh repatha shots, the cholesterol bursting shots, you know, that bring down cholesterol. Uh, and the uh yeah, that's number two. And your only other thing is to wait for the new drugs which are coming out, and they should be coming out in 2026 ending or 2027, by Novartis, um, Ilai Lilly, and uh there's one other company, I don't remember the name, they're coming out with drugs which can lower LP little A by 98%. But whether it translates into less heart attacks and strokes, that is what we are waiting for. So all you have to do is LPA, and for people who don't remember, because a lay person will say, Oh, I forgot what the doc said, LPA. So I always tell people let's please ask. LPA. So let's please ask. Ask who? Ask your doctors, ask your friends, ask your family, because people who should be getting tested. Another thing is if I am positive, all my cascade checkups should be done. That means my brothers, my sisters, my children, my uh father, my mother, everybody has to be tested because it's genetic. Now I was positive. My son is positive, but very little on the cusp. My daughter is extremely positive. So all you have to do is ask. Ask people, keep asking. I say, go out. If you're walking on the road, tap a guy and say, Have you got your LP a little done? To that extent, I'm because then you can wait for the new drugs, and what you can do in the meantime is to be more aggressive of the other factors that can cause a heart disease, meaning your your cholesterol levels should be checked, your exercise, your meditation, your uh sleep levels, all the six pillars of lifestyle medicine should be more aggressive because this is an independent risk factor. So LP little A is a must for everyone at least once. And why doctors, why is it not being done? Because we have never uh taught in medicine, we are not aware of it. It was not something that we are taught in medical schools. And number two is because we don't have a specific drug now to treat it. Doctors are not, it's it doctors say it's not actionable. And then you find that it is not in the cholesterol panel, the regular cholesterol panel. What doctors do? They write cholesterol panel, but they don't remember LP Lily. So they don't write for it. So it is incumbent upon patients to ask their doctors.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 36:53

Got it. So do you think we're making progress in preventative cardiology, or are we still too reliant on medication first approaches? Beg your pardon, come again, please. I'm saying, do you think we're uh making progress in preventative cardiology, or are we still too reliant on medications?

Dr Akil Taher: 37:11

I think uh we are too reliant on medications because um of the pressure with the pharmaceutical companies. I'm not saying that it is required, but if your chronic diseases, the first thing is that you can undo it. So if you've got somebody walking with diabetes, just out of the blue, no sign, symptoms, comes to your clinic and you see 250 milligrams per deciliter, that's what we go by in the US. And so you immediately say, Oh my god, you've got to be on this and this medication and that medication and come back and see me in three months and please exercise and reduce your weight. That's all we say. So I think we are we are required, medications are required in certain conditions, but we are overprescribing.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 38:08

Thank you. So thinking about the three hats that you wear, what would you say is going particularly well for you right now across those three different hats? In terms of your lifestyle medicine, the sporting accolades, and also the um speaking and the research?

Dr Akil Taher: 38:26

I think I think the accolades is not important. It is just uh not my story in that in that sense, but I'm definitely very uh it's important to me that I teach doctors as well as patients to own your health. To be, we've got to be working together with patients. So to me, uh not just prescribing and telling the patient what to do, but let's talk about it. What do you think? Because each person is different. You go and tell a person, don't do this, don't do that. But have you ever figured out that what situation, lifestyle does he have? How can you improve that lifestyle that he is leading in? I say, okay, I uh exercise three miles a day and I uh sleep seven to nine hours. But what is that person, what situation he is, what is the best that he can do for his own health? That is very important to me. And I find that when you tell even even your your own family, some of them don't want to listen. But because we are caught up in the Situation. For example, I know for a fact that drinking does not do anything for your health health. Now, when people have asked me this, I have told them, I'm not being judgmental. You go to a wedding and you take a toast. By all means, I'm not stopping that. When I'm talking about regular drinking, that two drinks a day for males and one drink for and that is hogwash. You don't do that because it's definitely proven, especially for breast cancer and alcohol. So that to me is the most important thing. And uh number two is in a way, I'm I shouldn't be saying this, but in a way, it is good that I had the heart disease, so I know what to tell my patients. And unless and until a patient has a heart attack and has got residual problems, congestive heart failure and all that, please, I otherwise you can ditch that prescription that was given to older heart disease patients and start doing things again with uh uh caveat that please ask your own doctors before doing anything that I say I'm only telling you my experiences and experiences of my friends, family, and my patients.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 41:36

And what's the um the biggest challenge in trying to get your message across? I mean, is it time access to platforms, or is there any other things which limit your ability to spread the good word?

Dr Akil Taher: 41:46

Of course. The biggest thing is look what happened to the um uh our uh um uh healthy eating pyramid that came out. I mean, this is a disaster. There are positive points, whole foods, avoidance of processed, ultra-processed foods, less sugar, that's great. But you can't turn around and say saturated fat. You can't turn around and say that lard or things like this, butter should be your this is this to me is you're not fighting and you're doing a dual battle. You're not only trying to help your patients by telling them the right thing, but you're fighting the dairy industry and the meat industry and other industries. Because I'm quite sure I wrote a very nice piece on this uh in uh on LinkedIn. I wrote that piece, and one of the persons wrote that Dr. Teyer, this has got nothing to do with health, this has got all to do with the industries. But I am looking at a positive side, at least the whole food has come into play, at least the processed foods have come into play. So those are the challenges now. When you say whole milk, and sometimes saying raw milk, I mean this is introduced back into our uh schools, and I've given talks on uh on uh dairy. Come on, everybody knows that your estrogen levels and the prostate cancers, there is a certain amount of truth in that. And you can't, you can't. You you got your uh proteins, uh, casein, and and and and the and the milk that you are getting in the United States on the shelf on in the food markets over here is full of antibiotics, full of estrogen, and full of other other things which are not required. So, in if you are telling me you're going to keep a cow in the backyard and feed that grass, then that is debatable. But if you tell me you're going to drink organic milk over the shelf, that is again not possible.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 44:32

So if you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in how your message is received or supported, what would that be?

Dr Akil Taher: 44:41

I think you know, people should, each one should try to figure out what is the best way after listening to your talks, my talks, other people's important plan base or other others who uh come to your show, is what is it that I can do to help myself in the given circumstances that I'm in. So uh I just I just think follow the six pillars, and then the seventh pillar is laugh loud, live large, and enjoy yourself.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 45:35

Great advice. So is there any do you have a team behind you? Because obviously you do a lot. You um with your lifestyle medicine, your speaking, your engagements, and then you obviously spend a lot of time in your sports and your exercise. Do you have a team behind you to help you coordinate speaking and content and media?

Dr Akil Taher: 45:52

No, I only have my marketing director. She's the only person. I do uh once a month I do talks on chronic disease. Once a month I do shop and cook with the doc. Now, here is a funny part of the whole thing is that I uh am miserable at actually taking things. You know, this turns out okay, but the way I do it, because I just do I'm not a gourmet food or gourmet cook, just everyday food. And I'm showing my behind and I'm dropping the forks and I'm doing everything. And uh so that is another show that is already I've done for the last four or five months. Uh, I've started um uh Walk with the Dog, which is all over the country. Do you all have it in UK? Walk with a Dog. I do that uh second Saturday every month, and I do it with another doctor. So what we do is we take a group of people for the first five to seven minutes, we give a health topic, and then we walk for about two miles or so. And so we do walk with the dog. My book has come out in the last three years, doing very well, open heart. And uh I just yesterday uh got it in the first chapter translated into Chinese, Hindi, and uh I don't remember the third language. And so that is another project of mine now, because you have 1.3 billion people in India, 1.4, and 1.2 in China. If I can translate this book into those languages and send it out, that would be great. And uh finally I go on my speaking tours. Uh anything that I make, Andrew, goes towards charity. Book sales, I don't monetize. I did come to London uh last year and gave a talk to the general public over there. If you ever want me to come and you have a group of people, I would be very happy to do it.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 48:10

Thank you. And we'll also promote your book on the bio page for the podcast. Anything we can do to help um get it out, to get the message out there. So, what's next for you? I mean, do you have any particular plans for the next six to twelve months? Is it more of the same, or have you got any projects or platforms you're excited about?

Dr Akil Taher: 48:28

Good you asked then. I have my um script written of my book to be made into a docudrama. And I'm looking uh forward to uh people who would be interested in taking it to the next level. So uh that is after this, I'm going to be with my uh marketing director and the person who has written the script. Uh I'm going to be with them to see where we are at this point in time. So if you know anybody who would be interested, in fact, what I'll do is I will give your email address to my marketing director. She'll be able to give you more things about it than I'm doing right now.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 49:19

Thank you. Anything we can do to help promote, I'm very, very happy to do that. So on that note, Achil, I would really like to thank you for this conversation, this podcast appearance. It's been absolutely fantastic. I think your story and voice are exactly what people need to hear as we shift the health conversation from crisis management to prevention and vitality. So many thanks for joining me. Really appreciate your time this afternoon.

Dr Akil Taher: 49:42

Thank you so much. Appreciate being here.