Reversing High Blood Pressure in 2 Weeks!

How I Reversed a 71-year-old diabetic’s high blood pressure so quickly

Hypertension affects more than 30% of adults worldwide, 1.28 billion aged 30-79.

Nearly 50% of adults in the U.S. have high blood pressure, ~116 million people. 

46% of adults with hypertension are unaware they have it.
Only 42% are diagnosed and treated. 

High blood pressure is a major cause of premature death worldwide.

My Birthday, the Gift of Life

I just turned 55 today!

When I was hospitalized at 14 and unable to move due to an autoimmune disease, I thought that if I lived to 40, that would be a long time. I am grateful for the many years I've spent on this amazing planet with so many amazing people, and for a lifetime of both deeply hard trials and heavenly joys.

Since I discovered that my heart arteries were clogged with plaques, the greatest being a 77% blockage, I feel blessed to know this fact. Otherwise, I would have assumed I was healthy. Since then, I've radically changed my lifestyle to heal my disease. I've had the great blessing of gaining some medical knowledge, being educated and trained as a medical doctor, and for the past two decades, learning about food and nutrition, exercise physiology, and health.

I thank the Lord for all, my family and friends, my work colleagues and all those I have had the great pleasure of crossing paths with in this vast universe. And to all of you who may be reading my thoughts right now — thank you so much.

Once I understood how to reverse my own clogged arteries, having seen evidence in a short span of three months, I started to think of who else I could help that would also be in jeopardy of a heart attack.

Rapid Reversal of Disease Is Possible

If a bone fracture can heal in a few months, why can’t most diseases, which are just fractures of a bodily system?

Dr. Kevin Ham

How long do you think it would take to reverse diabetes?

How about high blood pressure?

High cholesterol?

Obesity?

Compared to reversing clogged heart arteries, I thought the above were 'easy' and 'theoretically' possible within a month, knowing full well that it typically takes years to decades to develop.

But each of these diseases and symptoms is quite common nowadays. A century ago, they were rare. Dr. William Osler, a prominent physician who practiced in Toronto, Washington and London, had not seen a heart attack during his lifetime. The first published case of a heart attack in the US was reported by Dr. James Herrick in 1912.

I thought of many people. Fred was top of mind. He is a family church friend I have known for over 50 years, and I knew he had diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and was overweight. He also had the risk factor of age, being 71 years old. I had seen so many friends have heart attacks in their 60s and 70s, and some perished as a result. I felt a strong responsibility to see if I could help Fred. He had a high likelihood of a heart attack or major health event within the next three to five years, imho.

So I asked him if he was willing to try to reverse his diabetes. In theory, I believed I could help him reverse his diabetes as quickly as one week if I went to the theorized extreme, but natural measures. I felt very confident that with a simpler reverse protocol for diabetes, his disease would reverse within two months and certainly under three months.

I had already had my own personal experience of reducing my high LDL cholesterol by 50% in just five weeks. So reducing his cholesterol, I figured, was a given.

What I was uncertain about was how long it would take to reduce his blood pressure.

A Decade of Disease Gone in 2 Weeks?

A miracle is when life returns. A greater miracle is when it happens suddenly.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Fred has had diabetes, associated high blood pressure and high cholesterol for over six years. His diseases progressed, and what started as one medication has grown to six medications:

• 2 for diabetes

• 2 for high blood pressure

• 1 for high LDL cholesterol

I wanted to ensure that Fred's mindset was ready to undergo a lifestyle change involving a targeted diet and exercise. Simple in principle, but unless his mindset was determined, it would not work in execution. It's not that we don't know what we should do; it's more that we don't act on what we know deep inside. We often avoid, ignore, or even run away from what our body is telling us.

I told him that the first week would be the hardest and that the rest of the first month would get easier, but would still be challenging. Reversing his diseases would require targeted therapy. I gave him an example of a very tough disease to treat: cancer. We take that very seriously, and people undergo chemotherapy that sometimes makes hair fall out, and the treatment itself can be quite toxic. We do surgery and Radiation, which is a significant risk factor itself for cancer. But we want to eradicate every last cancer cell, so we go to extremes. In comparison, the reversal protocol would be much easier and faster, but still needed to be very targeted to eliminate the root causes of his diseases.

I said that the hardest thing would be his mindset and his decision to become healthy.

Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and obesity are when one's metabolism has been backed up like a traffic jam on a highway, which eventually starts overflowing into the smaller side streets. The traffic continues to pile up without proper outlets. The organs get overloaded with stored energy in the form of glycogen and fat.

Once the jams or blockages are cleared, then traffic can start moving and repairing the downstream effects of the clog. I like to refer to these as the CONSTRAINTS. You might call it the biggest Bottlenecks, where flow is blocked and backs up everything else.

The question for each of these conditions is:

What is the Constraint or Big Bottleneck that must be cleared?

The Bottleneck (Constraint) in High Blood Pressure

The highways of life twist and turn to deliver life and take away the waste.

Dr. Kevin Ham

I didn't want to tackle Fred's blood pressure first. I wanted to tackle possible clogged arteries, which would be a risk factor for heart attack and stroke. Diabetes and high blood pressure are significant risk factors for this, but since I knew how to lower his risk of heart attack and high LDL cholesterol, I thought we should tackle that first before turning to his diabetes and high blood pressure.

I already knew the answer for diabetes because many doctors have shown that even severe diabetes can be reversed in as little as a week, sometimes a month or two and certainly within six months.

With high blood pressure, I was seeing firsthand how difficult it was for my 90-year-old father to come down from a crazy high 220/120 bp. He got as low as 165/80 naturally, but then started adding salt to his water after watching a YouTube video that said it would make him healthier.

Researching my last newsletter on Nitric Oxide—the gas that expands blood vessels to relax—I began to understand that this chemical compound was so fundamental to the health of blood vessels and would naturally help alleviate the problem of high blood pressure.

That resolved one of the constraints. The other was the calcified plaque in the walls of the vessels, which makes it harder for the blood vessels to dilate fully. I already knew how to do this with my reversing plaque protocol. But I figured it would take 3-6 months for Fred.

Since we already know how to revive the endothelial cells of our blood vessels so that they can once again produce a lot of nitric oxide and also support it by chewing leafy greens, I knew it would just be a matter of time for Fred's blood pressure to decline, but what I was astonished by is just how fast this worked. So fast in fact, that I was caught off guard when Fred's blood pressure crashed to a dangerous low level on day 10 of my reversal protocol.

Since we were monitoring blood glucose with a continuous glucose monitor and I assumed it would take 3 months to correct his high blood pressure, I only found out about his low blood pressure on day 12, when he said he was feeling dizzy and light-headed for two days. He said his bp was low. I asked how low. 

72/45 yesterday and today.

Are you sure? That is too low. There must be something wrong with your bp machine. Let's go check. He showed me his daily bp readings.

Could it be? This was a potential emergency. His low BP could cause a heart attack if he had significant blockages, like me, since it was too sudden a drop. 

I told him to:

• Hold and stop his two blood pressure medications.

• Drink double the amount of water and 

• Add a pinch of mineral salt to it to raise his blood volume.

I called him the next morning. His bp was still too low. 73/43!

I told him to add more salt to his water. By 4:30 p.m., his blood pressure had risen. 87/52. Better.

I then told him to stop taking his combo bp/diabetes medication until his bp got up to 100/70.

Despite being off all of his bp meds, his bp is still too low.

How is this possible, I thought? 

What is happening in his body that it's normalized so quickly? I had not been taught that this was possible.

Just like my doctor friends said, it was impossible to reverse coronary plaque.

Could years of high blood pressure reverse in just ten days and 3 bp meds be discontinued and instead of high bp, be too low?

This was so interesting and amazing and I started to think about what was happening.

His diabetic medication that stimulated his pancreas to release insulin, regardless of glucose level, could be preventing a major strategy of the reverse protocol.

Normally, when glucose levels rise in the blood, the pancreas releases insulin to store the glucose as glycogen or fat in the liver, pancreas, muscles, and tissues.

When glucose levels are high, insulin levels also increase. This prevents stored glycogen or fat from breaking down and being used by your body, even when glucose levels are low.

So, this diabetic medication that stimulates the pancreas to release insulin twice a day is like a traffic cop that stops the cars from moving, even if the highway is clear.

While this diabetic drug can lower glucose, I thought from first principles that the benefit from breaking down stored glycogen and stored fat would be so much greater than just trying to lower glucose levels in the blood.

By lowering insulin, it opened the floodgates for the body's normal metabolism to start healing rapidly. As insulin decreased, it allowed the body to function properly, and the other blood pressure medications were now too strong, as the 'traffic cop' that held up insulin, which blocked the metabolism of stored fat and energy, was removed. Sodium was now flowing more freely out of the kidneys, and fat and glycogen were being broken down, further lowering insulin levels, which were then utilized for energy.

3 Meals a Day: Two are with Targeted Foods

Do we live to eat or eat to live? is a profound question we must ponder every time we put something in our mouth.

Dr. Kevin Ham

I had told Fred that he would eat three meals a day within an eight-hour period. That left 16 hours for his body to rest metabolically, storing energy, and then use the excess energy it had stored.

Two of his meals were going to be foods that were targeted to healing his endothelium, reversing cholesterol out of his tissues back to his liver, which can make all the cholesterol his body and cells need independent of dietary cholesterol, and to restore his metabolic hormones like insulin, glucagon etc and the organs that produce and store fat and energy like his liver and pancreas.

His third meal was going to be his fat: the fat stored in his liver, his pancreas, and his adipose tissues. The organ fat, also known as visceral fat, causes the most harm, as it prevents the organs from functioning properly. A fatty liver. A fatty pancreas. A fatty abdomen. The fat that is visible on the outside is also part of that third meal. Our goal is to reduce visceral fat so that the metabolic organs can function healthily.

Do you know how much energy this fat contains? I asked him.

When I ride my bike from Vancouver to Whistler, 122 km (70 miles) up hills and mountains (2000m), I burn 3000 kilocalories. A pound of fat has about 3500 kcal of energy. Therefore, a person with 30 pounds of fat has approximately 100,000 kcal of stored energy. Think of it like atomic energy in one atom.

And the energy from fat produces 2-3x more energy than glucose. I like to think of fat as electric energy and glucose as gas energy. Our bodies are like a hybrid engine but most people only use glucose for energy.

I asked Fred, "Are you willing to do this for the next month and even for the next 3 months? After healing and reversal, I have a sustained diet that is easier than the reversal diet." A cancer patient isn't given chemotherapy, surgery and Radiation after a cure. But they should eat well to prevent the conditions that gave rise to that first cancer cell and make their immune system strong to prevent and kill any future cancer cells.

Healing Blood Vessels

Do we live to eat or eat to live? is a profound question we must ponder every time we put something in our mouth.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Fred's blood pressure, off 2.5 blood pressure medications and off 1.5 diabetic medications (one of these meds treats both diabetes and blood pressure), is still low at 114/61, even with increased hydration.

It demonstrates that the body has remarkable resilience and healing power when the major bottlenecks are removed.

Like a fractured leg that is walked on doesn't heal, blood vessels, damaged livers, and pancreas do not heal properly if you continue eating the foods that harm them. You must cast them off to allow the body to heal.

Then, like a fractured leg that heals in 6 to 10 weeks, your fractured blood vessels and organs can heal.

It's that simple. The body rejuvenates. We know this as every cell rejuvenates and recycles. Your health can be restored as it does. And when your body is damaged, your entire body tries to heal that damage. However, if the bottleneck worsens and the traffic continues to back up, the body has a tough time keeping up with the damage and cannot repair it.

We call this damage' inflammation' or 'oxidative damage'. This creates metabolic dysfunction, meaning that food cannot be converted into energy efficiently and hormones become imbalanced. Blood vessels are no longer dilating and expanding to accommodate increased blood flow. So more pressure is needed to push blood through the tighter openings of the arteries. And the damage is typically greatest where there are intersections, which are where the arteries branch and divide. These are called bifurcations. This is where many of my heart blockages are, especially my 77% blockage, right at the opening of the first diagonal branch of my left coronary artery.

Reversal Protocol for Blood Pressure

Just like you need to enter the numbers on a doorpad in the right order to unlock, you need to do right things in the right order to reverse disease.

Dr. Kevin Ham

The overlap between my heart plaque reversal protocol and the blood pressure management protocol is significant because they share very similar root causes.

So my reversal protocol for high blood pressure is straightforward because it is simply just three things.

1. Cast the damaged area from anything that can damage it further.

   1. Protect the damaged area from all foods, toxins, and inflammation.

      1. Foods made with oils, especially heated oils

      2. Foods with high glycemic index and load

2. Give your body (specifically, your blood) the targeted nutrients it needs to deliver these essential nutrients, helping to heal your damaged areas more effectively and efficiently.

   1. Repair endothelial cells and increase nitric oxide.

3. Focus on multiple pathways to achieve this, such as targeted combination therapy, especially those focused on relieving the most significant bottlenecks. My reverse protocol focuses on the top three:

   1. Diet #1 (I believe this to be the biggest factor--up to 80%)

      1. Food targeted at healing the blood vessel endothelium

   2. Exercise #2 (I believe this to be ~10%)

   3. Rest #3 - For metabolic diseases like diabetes, rest means abstaining from eating, also known as fasting. I believe this to be 15%.

   4. Sleep #4 - Some might consider this a subset of rest. I am weak in this area, and I am thinking the first principles of sleep as my fourth strategy for healing.

   5. Genetics #5 - It's challenging to make significant changes to genetics. Still, since epigenetics is the expression of the genetic code, which is influenced by mindset and environment, there are some minor gains to be had through lifestyle.
      

Drugs vs Lifestyle

Let’s compare how drugs treat blood pressure and how well it lowers blood pressure vs foods, exercise and rest.

Blood Pressure Reversal Principles

General principles for blood pressure.

1. Lower insulin which means lower glucose levels. 

1. Cut back on refined sugars. 

1. This is sugar, 

2. White flour, any desserts, pasta, breads made with white flour. 

3. White rice (most don’t know this is refined sugars). 

4. Foods that have high glycemic index should be eaten with caution and if you must eat them, to be at the end of your meal.

2. I believe 100% whole grain, especially fermented or soaked whole grain like sourdough bread and pasta is ok. Fred eats lots of whole grains still. 

1. If I was focused on healing his diabetes faster, I would reduce some of his whole grains, but macros are not the driving bottleneck for metabolic disease. It’s more the quality of the foods and how it is eaten. Eg. chewed vs duration of feeding period vs lack of certain micronutrients, which is the problem of processed foods, where you eventually become deficient in some or many macro nutrients which are essential for metabolism.

2. Heal the inner lining of your blood vessels (endothelium) so they can expand

1. Increase nitric oxide by chewing leafy greens in all your meals. 

2. Eat fruit and foods that protect your endothelial cells from damage. Eg. pomegranate, beets, berries (all types - organic), natto, all kinds of beans, apples

3. Get more blood flowing through all your blood vessels = exercise. Get your heart rate up to 80% of your max heart rate. Eg. 220 - your age. For Fred, that is 220-71 = 149 beats per minute. Walking up a hill will get you there. Highly advise 20-30 minute post meal exercise.

4. Let your glucose metabolism rest by limiting food to a smaller window.

1. This is called intermittent fasting. Eg. eat meals in 8 hour window leaves 16 hour rest or fast

2. If you have some or too many fat stores, then consider one of your meals to be your own body fat, and allow your body to break down this stored glycogen and fat into ‘fat energy’ called ketones. This will happen more if you have a longer intermittent fasting window.

Reflection

Just like you need to enter the numbers on a doorpad in the right order to unlock, you need to do right things in the right order to reverse disease.

Dr. Kevin Ham

How much suffering and disease can be cured and prevented so simply, so profoundly and so amazingly!

I am shocked, delighted and hopeful for so many who suffer from disease.

Life-Changing Question

Do you eat to live or live to eat?

I used to eat to live. Taste and experience were very important to me. While I still love tasty food, I now live to eat and eat for health.

I wanted to do a newsletter on Reversing Diabetes but I think I wish to speak about the Power of the Mind next.

Next week—

The Power of the Mind

How placebo and nocebo are very real in health and in business.

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

Grief & Love

Love empties and fills your heart

Grief

Grief is to the measure of the love you have in your heart.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Kona, our adorable, loving puppy, looked longingly at me for a pet on the head. It was one of the highlights of my day to pet her on the head. That evening, it was just her and me. I pet her a little longer before I prepared to head to a church meeting last Wednesday.

When I arrived at church, I saw a text on my phone from my daughter. “I’m so sorry everyone. Kona was hit by a car. She didn’t make it. I’m so sorry.” My heart stopped. What? Stunned, I called my daughter. She was too upset to talk, just tears.

Then, photos of Kona were shared by the kids.

O My Heart

Oh this ache in my heart, inexpressible and irremovable!

Dr. Kevin Ham

When I saw Enoki, our older dog, the next morning, I could not help the tears bottled up in my heart to rush out as I held him tight, saying, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Enoki.” When I let the two dogs out of their room, Kona would immediately be kissing and playing with Enoki and eagerly awaiting our morning walk.

That morning walk was very different. When I saw Kona’s leash at the door, tears welled up again. When Enoki pooped, I thought, I would give anything to be able to pick up Kona’s poop again. I had vowed that when we first got Enoki, I would never walk him and especially never pick up his poop. And here I was … wishing I could pick up poop. When I got home, I had to write the inexpressible feelings in my heart, and so while I was planning to write about Reversing Diabetes this week, I decided to write about what is in my heart to help my heart heal from the sudden loss and void left by our puppy. 

How can a puppy fill a part of our hearts so much? This is what amazed me most.

Pride

The swell of pride is the invisible water that floods our hearts and spills over into our lives, as we feel that we have risen high above the world and others.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Right before I left the house, I looked at all that I have been blessed with and felt such overwhelming gratitude to God for such wonderful blessings. I looked to the heavens and prayed silently, “God, all that I have has come from You, and all that I have is for You. Thank you. Let me honour You and praise You for the days You give me on this amazing Earth.”

Reflecting on the past week, I realized that at that moment, the above prayer was in my heart. I had felt like I had reached a great pinnacle in my life: my heart was open, full of joy, love, and peace, open to whatever God would send my way. I have pondered, if while I felt I was at my humblest moment in life, when I prayed to God at that time, when God looked into my heart, did He see selfish pride? I had been reading and studying how even the good Kings of Judah lifted their hearts in pride before both men and God and fell deep into sin, disease, war or death. I wondered how a king so blessed could suddenly fall.

Before destruction a man's heart is haughty,
But humility comes before honor.

Proverbs 18:12

Right after I read the text, my first response was a curse word, which I hardly ever say, and my fists slamming against the countertop, asking, “Why?” Part denial and disbelief, part shock, and part anger. Grief had started to pierce my heart. Was I proud and haughty in my heart or was I humble? What does it mean to be humble?

Love

Without love, the world stops spinning and my heart stops beating.

Dr. Kevin Ham

The greatest humility is the heart that is in love. For love, what would you do for someone you love? What would you not do? Paul writes of this perfect love. It is often recited at weddings. 

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

Love never ends. But the things and people we love … they will come to an end someday. The love never ends, but the object of our love can and will. In that moment of loss of love, an emptiness, a hole that feels like a black hole, draws in every emotion of your humanity into that void.

Filling that void is the wound from the piercing revelation of the sword that the thing you loved or the person you have been so accustomed to in your life is now gone.

There is sage advice to live each day like it’s your last day. YOLO (You Only Live Once). I’ve also heard that you should treat each person as if it's the last time you might see them again. Just imagine if we were able to live with this heart.

I reflected on my grief. For instance, when I lose material things I love, or when I lose large sums of money, versus when I lose people I love, like my mother, my relatives, my friends. The closer and deeper the love is, the more the grief. To remind ourselves of our loved ones, we set up memorials and images. And if we are fearful, we bury everything so that we are not reminded of the deep loves of our lives.

Express Your Heart

While the feelings of the heart are inexpressible, they still need to be pumped out as they wallow around in your heart.

Dr. Kevin Ham

I like to process my feelings and my thoughts by writing. And so I wrote that next morning with tears streaming down my face. I’d like to share it with you.

Grief & Love

To Kona, our beloved puppy, whose love and joy were boundless.

Love is boundless, yet it lives within the many fragmented chambers of our hearts.

When we see the wholesome and limitless love of God reflected in people, pets, and nature, our hearts cannot help but open wide to receive it endlessly.

Grief is always in proportion to love. Its depth only matches the depth of the love that carved it into our hearts.

The measure of grief, when turned inside out, becomes gratitude — for the time we shared with those we loved, for the memories that remain, and for the wish that we had more time together. Such love fuels our hearts for the rest of our days.

Grief arrives in stages: shock and disbelief, anger and regret, sadness and loss. Then it turns outward into affection for those still around us, followed by gratitude for what we once had — and what we still hold now.

In grief, we feel powerless. Loss robs us of control, leaving us overwhelmed. Memories return in waves — sometimes we hold them tighter, other times they slip beyond our reach.

We search for reason, purpose, and meaning. Sometimes answers stay hidden. Sometimes they spark new life, birthing new purpose from pain.

One must let the heart grieve and express. That is why we hold ceremonies — not only for closure, but also to honour love and to release grief.

In this life, loss is inevitable. It is what makes each moment so precious. Every day is a gift — even a day of sorrow, for only hearts that truly know grief can fully see and embrace joy.

As Proverbs reminds us:

“Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.” 

Mercy is love. Mercy is compassion.

A dear friend, Dr. Azra Raza, told me that in Islam, the death of a beloved animal spares its owner from a greater misfortune. My neighbour Tamara said the same; in Russia and Ukraine, the death of one’s animal means she spared us from some bad event.

I thought of the animal sacrificed to clothe Adam and Eve with garments of skin to spare them from death, and of the lambs that died for the sake of people’s sins. And then, with tears streaming down my face, I thought of the greatest sacrifice of all:

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” — John 1:29

In this short time we have on earth, grief itself becomes the vessel that holds our deepest love, dreams, and compassion. When we reflect, we find this reservoir of love is boundless. It is with this heart that we must continue each day — with gratitude, with love, with joy.

For it is truly better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

We will forever miss you, Kona. We will forever love you and remember you. Each day, we will carry the love you gave us, and we will love others as you loved us.

In much love is much grief.

In much grief is much wisdom.

In much wisdom is much life.

From your beloved Ham Family

Reflection

Grief allows you to pour out your heart in love and gratitude, after the inflamed wounds of disbelief, anger, and regrets calm down in your heart.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Losing Kona so young has broken my heart — not only for me, but for my children who lost their special joy. Kona was not just a pet. She was family.

I even saw tears streaming down my 90-year-old father’s face. Kona had also touched his heart deeply. She was so small, but her heart and energy were boundless.

I kept remembering what Azra and Tamara told me. Then, the shortest verse in the Bible struck me anew:

“Jesus wept.”

The Son of God moved with compassion at the death of Lazarus and the grief of his family. Compassion for the poor, the sick, the blind, the widows, and the outcast. Compassion even for Jerusalem itself, which would reject him and have him nailed to the cross:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Including mine.

As I think of Kona, I remember how she loved to chase cars. We always held her back on her leash, but that day she was free. A white Range Rover sped past, and she ran in front of it…

Was she sparing us from some greater harm? Perhaps. The thought brings a little comfort. In that moment, I also realized how often I, too, have rushed headlong toward danger.

Just days earlier, on September 6, I had foolishly ridden the Whistler Gran Fondo — 122 km with 2,000m of elevation — through wildfire smoke measuring 73 ppm. Advisories warned against even light outdoor activity, yet I rode on, knowing my heart vessel is 77% blocked, my heart beating and circulating this smoky air for just over four hours. I told myself I was being careful, holding back, but in truth, I was being reckless.

I was humbled. What I thought was a strength was actually a weakness. What I thought was wisdom was actually folly.

And so I resolve to walk by faith, not by sight.

“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. Even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

If God does not forget the sparrows, He surely knows how much Kona meant to us. And though we may not understand why now, there must be a greater purpose we do not yet see.

Kona has left a void in our hearts. It will take time to grieve and heal. I pray God will fill that space with His own joy, wisdom and love, uniting us as one heart, one mind, one body — and drawing us closer to Him.

God, have mercy on her soul. And have mercy on ours, too.

Ceremonies

Ceremonies allow you to move to the next phase of your life either as a foundation, a step, or to allow you to move on and reflect upon and honour what you are leaving behind, without being held back.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Ceremony to process grief and love is also important. It is the reason why we have engagements, weddings, graduations and funerals. Think about the ceremonies you have in your life. With each ceremony, you leave something behind while entering a new phase of your life. That gap is the wilderness that you must traverse to the next journey of your life.

We will have a memorial so that our family can express the grief and love in our hearts this Saturday.

Life-Changing Question

Who should you be grateful for today and each coming day?

Let them know by a hug, a phone call, a text, an email today.

Next week—

Reversing Diabetes in 3 months

Diabetes is even easier to reverse than heart disease.

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

The Healing Power of Food: Nitric Oxide

Reversal: How I Reversed My Clogged Arteries in 3 Months

You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Genesis 2:15

But the woman looked upon its fruit and saw that it was 

1. Good for food 

2. A delight to the eyes and

3. To be desired to make one wise.

In our world today, so many of our so-called foods are processed, genetically modified and polluted with herbicides and pesticides. These foods eventually cause disease as they are toxic to our bodies. These foods are decorated and marketed to be a delight to our eyes, they look like delicious foods and give one enjoyment, status and belonging. They are convenient, cheap, accessible and fast. But also right beside this tree of knowledge of good and evil that brought death was the tree of life.

I asked my 71 year old church friend, “Fred, what caused your diabetes?” He looked a little perplexed. I said, “The answer is quite simple.” He then clued in and replied, “Oh, sugary foods.” What kind of sugary foods? White rice, white flour - processed of its bran covering (fibre), oils and many vitamins. Added refined sugars as well as sweeteners. Also, most desserts, fried foods, heated oils, and sugary drinks. The simple answer: Food caused his diabetes.

We face the same choice that Adam and Eve faced in Eden daily and the cells in our bodies record these decisions over decades and manifest as disease.

Nitric Oxide: The Spark of Life

Oxygen is life-giving. Nitric oxide rejuvenates.

Maimonides

In the 1970s, vascular scientists noticed that when the endothelium, the one-cell lining of the blood vessels, was intact, the arteries relaxed. Remove or damage the endothelium, and the vessels hardened in spasm. Something invisible was being released by the endothelial cells. They named this unidentified compound, EDRF - endothelium-derived relaxing factor.

Ferid Murad — 1977: Showed that nitrovasodilators (e.g., nitroglycerin) release nitric oxide, activating guanylate cyclase and relaxing smooth muscle, relieving chest pain. NobelPrize.org

Robert F. Furchgott — 1980: Discovered a mysterious substance which he named endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF) was made by endothelial cells.

Louis J. Ignarro — 1986: Deduced that EDRF is nitric oxide, at that time considered a toxic gas that came from car exhausts, a smog pollutant, and an unstable chemical that lasted only seconds. 

In 1998, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to these three: Murad, Furchgott, and Ignarro, for the discovery of nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.

Nitric oxide relaxes arteries, lowers blood pressure, prevents clotting, calms inflammation and signals endothelial repair. It’s your own body’s spark of life. It is produced in the blood vessels, brain cells and the skin.

When someone has chest pain from a blocked artery, they can spray nitroglycerin under their tongue and get relief as it turns into nitric oxide in the heart and expands the vessels. Ironically, Alfred Nobel made a fortune with the nitroglycerin used to make dynamite. However, dynamite was not only used for his original intent for mining and railroads, but also in war and destruction. He became known as the merchant of death. 

Lauder Brunton, a distinguished British physician, had found in 1867 that nitrates were effective in relieving pains in angina pectoris. When Nobel’s physicians recommended nitroglycerine as a remedy for his heart pain (angina) in 1890, he declined it, most likely as he believed the industrial nitroglycerin he was working with was causing his headaches.. 

In order to leave a good legacy, he bequeathed his fortune to fund the Nobel Prizes in 1895 and one of those prizes was to be in Physiology or Medicine. He passed away a year later from a hemorrhagic stroke at age 63.

Nitric Oxide: The Fork in the Road

The body has its miracle gas but the fork can supply it with a dietary backup system.

Dr. Kevin Ham

This nitric oxide is produced in the body but it also has its backup supply from the diet. The power of nitric oxide is its ability to do many things but in particular to widen the highways and roads to deliver the life-giving blood you have, which consists of not only red blood cells but also your white blood cells which make up your immune system as well as platelets, nutrients and hormones. If the highways are constricted like a traffic jam, the delivery trucks, emergency services cannot get to every cell in your body. Only one cell or one organ needs to be compromised to affect one’s health.

1. The Internal Pathway

The body converts the amino acid, L-arginine into nitric oxide through an enzyme in the endothelial cells, eNOS (endothelial nitric oxide synthase).

This enzyme is stimulated by:

1. Shear stress from exercise: High intensity interval training (HIIT), and deep nasal breathing

2. Antioxidants called polyphenols: Found in berries, cocoa, green tea, red wine

3. L-citrulline and L-arginine.  Watermelon, legumes (beans) and nuts

4. Omega 3s. Fish, algae

5. Sleep. Nighttime nitric oxide pulses

eNOS is inhibited by:

1. Smoking

2. Diabetes

3. Oils and Lipid Peroxidation. Heated and processed oils (fried foods) oxidize lipids, which damage endothelial membranes, consume NO and destabilize eNOS

4. Glycation (from high sugar). High glucose glycosylates proteins to create advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), which damage endothelial cells and create oxidative stress

5. Oxidative stress. Free radicals, processed meats, excess fat especially visceral fat around the organs, heavy metals, high blood pressure, make eNOS produce superoxide instead of nitric oxide, causing further damage. This is called eNOS uncoupling. eNOS under oxidative stress becomes harmful rather than helpful.

6. Aging. eNOS activity declines with age

7. Inflammation

When your body is in a state of inflammation, (measured by such blood markers as hsCRP, homocysteine and in the heart, myeloperoxidase and Lp-PLA2), instead of making nitric oxide, eNOS makes super oxide which creates a vicious cycle of endothelial damage. 

So first thing is to focus on getting your inflammatory markers down by eliminating the foods and environment that cause the above lipid peroxidation, glycation, oxidative stress and inflammation and replace them with foods, exercise and rest (including sleep) that can restore an anti-inflammatory body chemistry that can heal the endothelial cells.

So largely lifestyle habits in diet, exercise and sleep regulate good nitric oxide production that allows blood vessels to expand and allow your life-giving blood to flow with its delivery trucks of oxygen and nutrients and garbage trucks to take away your metabolic waste products.

2. The Diet Pathway

The diet pathway bypasses damaged endothelium. It’s like a jumpstart charge to a battery (eNOS) that is low in energy. It’s especially important in diabetes and cardiovascular disease when eNOS is impaired. It’s a 5 step process.

Step 1: Eating Foods Rich in Nitrates (NO₃⁻)

• Where from? Leafy greens (spinach, arugula, lettuce), beets, celery, and other vegetables.

• How much? 300 mg of nitrate in one meal seems to be the threshold to create enough nitric oxide effect (see below for list of nitrate-rich foods)

• What happens? Dietary nitrate is absorbed from the gut into the bloodstream → plasma nitrate levels rise.

• Inhibitors: Low-vegetable diets, high processed foods, and cooking/boiling (can leach out nitrates).

I try to eat salad greens in every meal, even putting arugula toppings on my sourdough bread, and my steel-cut oatmeal as nitric oxide is provided for about 90 minutes after chewing these leaves thoroughly.

Step 2: Concentration in Salivary Glands

• About 25% of circulating nitrate is actively taken up by the salivary glands.

• Salivary glands concentrate nitrate 10× higher than plasma in blood.

• Inhibitors: Dehydration (reduces saliva flow), certain drugs (e.g., proton pump inhibitors may alter salivary nitrate handling).

This highly concentrated nitrate is slowly released by the salivary glands into your saliva for the next 90 minutes. Just consider the steady stream of nitric oxide coursing from mouth to blood to cells. This is the difference between chewing your veggies and just blending them and drinking it without mixing with your saliva. Also by chewing you increase the blood flow to your head and brain.

Step 3: Reduction to Nitrite (NO₂⁻) by Oral Bacteria

• In the mouth, commensal anaerobic bacteria (on tongue and in crypts) reduce nitrate → nitrite.

• This is essential: humans don’t have the enzyme for this conversion — we rely on bacteria.

• Inhibitors:

• Antibacterial mouthwash (kills bacteria that perform this step).

• Chlorinated water (tap water) can reduce bacterial activity.

• Poor oral microbiome health (antibiotics, lack of diversity).

• Some toothpastes alter the oral bacteria

Again chewing here allows the bacteria to break down the nitrates in your veggies into nitrites which can then be turned into nitric oxide in the stomach below.

Step 4: Swallowing Nitrite & Stomach Conversion

• Saliva rich in nitrite is swallowed.

• In the acidic stomach, nitrite → nitric oxide (NO) + other reactive nitrogen species.

• This NO diffuses locally (helping with gut defense) and into circulation.

• Inhibitors:

• Low stomach acid (hypochlorhydria, PPIs) → less conversion to NO.

• Alkaline antacids.

• Proton pump inhibitor drugs for ulcers

Step 5: Circulation and Tissue Conversion

• Remaining plasma nitrite can be converted to NO in tissues, especially low-oxygen environments (like exercising muscle, ischemic heart tissue).

• This provides a “backup system” for NO when oxygen or eNOS is limited.

• Inhibitors: Oxidative stress rapidly degrades NO, smoking (scavenges NO), high-fat processed diets (increase superoxide).

Exercise enhances nitrite conversion to nitric oxide in tissues due to lower oxygenation as you exercise, which then expands your blood vessels for more blood and oxygen as you breathe faster and blood circulates more thoroughly in the muscles that require oxygen and nutrients to produce energy.

Highest Nitrate Foods

Foods targeted for heart health must be chewed and digested as nature intended.

Dr. Kevin Ham

How Long Dietary Nitrate Powers NO

• 15–30 minutes after eating a nitrate-rich meal (e.g., beet juice or leafy greens), plasma nitrate levels start rising.

• Within ~1–3 hours, plasma nitrates and nitrites peak significantly. In one beet juice study, nitrates rose about 6-fold; nitrites 4-fold.

• The half-life of elevated plasma nitrates is 5–10 hours, meaning enhanced NO availability persists over several hours. MDPI

Approximately 25% of plasma nitrate is recycled via the salivary glands, becoming up to 10× concentrated in saliva versus plasma. Oral bacteria then reduce it to nitrite, which converts to NO in the stomach.

Food as Medicine

Food is not merely pleasure, hobby or calories.
Food is chemistry. Food is pharmacology. Food is medicine.

So not only blood vessel rejuvenation but also a symphony of foods work together to lower all the various offenders that produce disease. Reminder from last week’s Reversing heart disease protocol.

• Pomegranate juice: reduced carotid IMT by 30% in one year

• Garlic (aged extract): lowered coronary plaque volume by 8% in diabetics over 12 months

• Oats & flaxseed: soluble fiber binding cholesterol, lowering LDL, calming inflammation

• Berries: antioxidants halting LDL oxidation

• Natto & vitamin K2: pulling calcium out of arteries and back into bone

• Leafy greens & beets: nitrate reservoirs for nitric oxide

Each food targets a different mechanism.
Together, they form a multi-targeted cocktail without side effects.

Drugs vs Foods

We mold clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes it useful.

Laozi, Tao Te Ching 11

Drugs

• Statins: LDL ↓50%, plaque regression ~1% after 2 yrs (ASTEROID).

• PCSK9 inhibitors + statins: LDL ↓60%, plaque regression ~1% in 18 mo (GLAGOV).

Foods

• Lifestyle (Ornish): LDL ↓37%, angiographic regression in 1 yr, sustained for 5 yrs.

• Esselstyn: LDL <80 mg/dL (↓60-70%), total cholesterol <150 mg/dL, disease arrested or reversed, 95% no recurrent events.

Triple Therapy Reversal (Food, Exercise, Fasting)

• My results: LDL ↓ 64% in 12 weeks (168 → 61); CIMT reversal 1.8mm to 0.86mm (full reversal in carotids in 3 months)

Drugs change numbers. Food, exercise, and fasting heal the system.

The Stomach Constraint

Every system has a bottleneck. In business, it’s production capacity. In the body, it’s the size of the stomach and the amount of blood to supply nutrients and remove metabolic waste.

You can only eat so much. Every bite displaces another.
Why fill the stomach with endothelial toxins — refined oils, sugary desserts — when the same constraint could be used for healing foods?

The stomach becomes the site of choice. The constraint forces a decision: the Tree of Life or the toxic fruit.

Do We Eat for Taste or for Health?

We’ve been conditioned to desire to eat food that is marketed as delicious, for taste. To try food as an experience by visiting top reviewed restaurants, with Michelin stars or rave reviews by food critics. To enjoy the convenience of simple, fast, cheap crunchy, sugary delight in fast foods.

It is perhaps only our parents who emphasize that we should eat for health, but for the most part this sage advice is ignored but their words may echo in our hearts when we receive the diagnosis of a disease.

What do you eat for?

For taste and pleasure or perhaps status and experience?

Or for life and health?

If both could be true, even better.
I am working with artisans and food companies to create wholesome, healthy, tasty, pleasure-filled experiences. Check out 123dough.com and 123dough.ca  (but we have yet a long way to go to reach our ideal vision).

Reflection

The whole is a symphony of parts that all work together in a rhythm that is marvelous and profound.

Dr. Kevin Ham

How can such simple foods with no ingredient labels cure our number one disease killers, if we replace the foods that industry promotes by enticing marketing, accessibility, speed and cost but very low quality?

Life-Changing Question

What nitrate rich foods can you add daily to each meal and replace with foods that causes inflammation?

Literally can be life-saving in a matter of years.

Next week—

Reversing Diabetes in 3 months

Diabetes is even easier to reverse than heart disease.

Appendix

Foods that have high nitrates.

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The Shock of Death

How I Reversed My Clogged Arteries in 3 Months

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

King David Psalm 90:12

My friend Rob Thompson, 58, passed away suddenly from a heart attack while on his elliptical trainer at home in San Francisco on February 10, 2025. His wife, a physician, asked everyone at his memorial on March 9 to get a Calcium CT heart scan. I got mine done on May 5, 2025. A few days later, I looked at my results. A shocking score of 500 indicated severe atherosclerosis, clogging of my heart arteries. On June 17, I underwent a Cleerly CT angiogram, which revealed multi-vessel plaques obstructing multiple vessels: 77%, 55%, 45%, 29%, 25%, and many others. This was absolutely shocking to me because just earlier this year, I felt great. I thought I was in the best shape of my life, and my heart was in excellent shape.

Death by heart disease is the #1 killer in North America and #1 globally. Cancer is fast rising to eclipse it in developed nations. 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will get this disease. 

Heart disease will manifest in males starting at age 40 and heart attacks in the early 60s.

Females will manifest heart disease in their 50s and heart attacks in their early 70s due to the protective effects of estrogen and menstruation. This disease will affect you or someone you know and may already be occurring silently within you. The first appearance for those who harbour this disease is death by heart attack.

Making a Life Decision to Change

No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.

Maimonides

The morning after I read my results, on May 9, I started on a 10% low-fat vegan diet, eliminating all oils, nuts, and any vegetables high in saturated fats like avocados and coconuts.

On August 19, I did a CT Heartflow to measure the blood flow of my coronary arteries as well as my 3-month bloodwork. I also had a Carotid Intima Media Test (CIMT) to assess the thickness of my carotid arteries in my neck, which serves as an indirect measure of plaque. A year prior, my right carotid had a thickness of 1.8mm and my left 1.6mm. This indicated severe atherosclerosis, worse than that of a normal 85-year-old. The ultrasound tech told me I had a lot of plaque, more than normal, but I didn't take it too seriously.

The day before the CIMT, I did a modified exercise stress test for athletes at UBC Sports Cardiology. The last three minutes of the 12-minute period were extremely hard. I do weekly 80 km bike rides up hills and mountains, and gran fondos of 122 km from Vancouver to Whistler at average speeds of 31 km/hr, and yet I was surprised how hard the last minute of this stress test was. My cardiologist said I passed, and he cleared me for no limits on exercise. Whew! I had no symptoms at all from my clogged arteries… yet. I kept him for an extra half hour, peppering him with questions and sharing my hypothesis on how to reverse all plaque, including my 77% blockage.

Full Reversal of My Plaques

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.

Ezekiel 36:26

I received the results of my CIMT, which showed 0.86mm in my right carotid and 0.83mm in my left, with no plaque visible. This is high normal for a 55-year-old, which is how old I will be in just 3 weeks. So, a drastic decrease in vascular age from worse than an 85-year-old to normal for a 55-year-old in just three months! And no plaque visualized!

Even the best studies with high-dose statins show only 0.01mm to 0.03mm changes in 12 to 36 months. These drug studies are among the few that achieved a slight reversal, in the hundredths of mm, a reversal that most studies fail to demonstrate, even when comparing to controls that show a 0.01 to 0.03mm increase in thickness per year. 

Pomegranate juice, in a small study of 10 non-randomized people vs control, however, showed a remarkable 13-30% decrease in thickness in 12 to 36 months, whereas controls increased 9% in thickness. It also decreases systolic blood pressure by 8 mmHg. How is it possible that pomegranate juice can reverse atherosclerosis better than even the best drugs?

The Power of Healing Food

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

Hippocrates

I realized the answer with my first hypothesis that drugs manage symptoms and numbers, but do not do much to treat root causes and tap the healing power of the human body and immune system. I began by postulating from fundamental health and body principles how to enable the body to heal itself, much like a fractured bone, which can heal in just 6 to 12 weeks, provided it is in a cast and, in the case of a compound fracture, supported by pins and screws. The cast and pins don't heal; they only prevent further damage so that the body can heal the fracture. So I set about pondering what the cast for my fractured arteries and my fractured retina. I was diagnosed with wet macular degeneration in May 2020, which I believe to have common root causes with my heart vessel disease. 

If I set the right cast for my blood vessels and optimized my lifestyle, that is my diet, exercise, fasting and sleep, I could achieve amazing healing in just a few months and certainly under a year. So while I am amazed and delighted at my almost miraculous CIMT results, I am not too surprised.

Amazing Blood (Results)

For the life of the flesh is in the blood.

Leviticus 17:11

Then I received my bloodwork. I had already remarkably halved my LDL cholesterol from May at 168 mg/dL (4.34mM) to 84 (2.17mM) in just five weeks and then 75 (1.9mM) in 8 weeks. Now it has declined to just 61 (1.58mM) in 3 months, a 64% decrease! My goal is to get it to the low 40s by year's end so my HDL can pull lipids out of my plaque to reduce them in size, including the calcified plaques.

My other hypothesis was that if I were to have a higher level of HDL (the lipoprotein that carries cholesterol from tissues and arteries back to the liver) than LDL (the lipoprotein that carries cholesterol from the liver to tissues and arteries), then HDL would pull the lipids and cholesterol from my arterial plaque.

My LDL was 168 and HDL 60 just three months ago and now my HDL was stable at 62 and my LDL had dropped to 61.HDL was now higher than LDL. Wow! 

This would mean that instead of adding to my existing plaques by LDL, the HDL would now export cholesterol out of my plaques to reduce them. I knew this was possible because my friend Raz has an astonishingly high HDL of 129 and LDL of 84. He increased his HDL by 30 in just a couple of months by fasting three days twice over a 5 week period and walking and swimming daily. I was now in plaque regression chemistry. Now my exercise regimen and weekly fasting strategy will work even better.

A few more specific markers for heart disease are Apolipoprotein B (ApoB) which measures this protein in all lipids that can induce atherosclerotic plaque and lipoprotein a (lpa), which is mostly determined by genetics and not modifiable by diet and lifestyle.

My ApoB dropped from 75 to 45 (40% decrease) and my lipoprotein a dropped from 40 to 25, an astounding 37.5% decrease in just two months! These results astounded me. They confirmed that these were better than a high-dose statin drug that all my doctor friends advised me to go on right away. 

And lp(a) is not supposed to be modifiable by lifestyle, and even niacin and the most potent targeted drugs reduce this modestly in the 10-20% range, but they have side effects. My only side effect was that I lost 12 pounds in 3 months. In the past week, I ate double portions and gained back 5 pounds. I went from 146 lbs to 133.4 lbs and am now at 138 lbs. I am fitter, stronger and now 'clearer' than three months prior. 

I am greatly looking forward to my results in the next three months. Studies show that the most amazing results are frontloaded in the beginning and then improvements decline, but I am thinking that now that my body chemistry is cholesterol efflux from my plaques, I will continue to get great results in the coming year. 

I am fully expecting 100% blood flow in all my coronaries within two years. Now, I am even wondering if I can heal my wet macular degeneration and perhaps even my tinnitus (ringing in the ears), which I am postulating is an issue due to atherosclerosis in the vessels going to the ear. The smaller the blood vessel, the greater the impact plaques will have.

Size and Shape Matters For Life

We mold clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes it useful.

Laozi, Tao Te Ching 11

Carotid arteries in the neck are 6-7mm.

Coronary arteries are 3-4 mm, and smaller branches are 1.5-3 mm. 

My biggest block in my diagonal artery is 2.5-3mm, so quite large and prominent for a branch. CT shows it is actually larger than my left anterior descending artery, which is one of the three big coronary arteries. So the 77% obstruction in my diagonal is very significant!

The carotids can heal faster due to the laminar shear stress from exercise when the conditions are right to reduce plaque (low LDL, low apoB, low lp(a) and high HDL). They are larger and straighter. I think of it like pressure washing my clogged arteries, which will revive the inner lining of my arteries, the endothelial cells, to produce nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is the magical gas that dilates and strengthens the arterial walls. I deduced that my optimal heart rate to induce such pulsatile intermittent (1-5 minutes) laminar shear stress to activate the endothelial cells is 130-160 beats per minute (bpm).

So, when I exercise now, I do high-intensity interval training, repeating this 10-20 times. This involves 3-5 minutes of high intensity, followed by a period of rest when I let my heart rate drop back to 100 for a few minutes, and then repeat. It's like water chipping away at rock. I have 300 cubic metres of plaque, comprising 200 cubic metres of hard calcified plaque, which is safer as it won't burst and cause heart attacks, and 100 cubic metres of soft lipid plaque, which is easier to remove.

The worst kind of plaque is low attenuation plaque, which causes heart attacks when it bursts and clots the entire vessel. I only have 0.1% of this risky plaque, so I exercise very prescriptively to remove all the dangerous and soft plaque. That would reduce 33% of my plaque. This reduction yields greater blood flow because the soft plaques sit within the lumen of the vessel, whereas most of the calcified hard plaque is located in the wall of the blood vessel and does not obstruct the lumen. The volume area increase for blood flow is exponential as I reduce the soft plaque.

Doing the Impossible

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Once I have accomplished this, I will think from first principles about how to possibly reduce the calcified plaques, which everyone is telling me is impossible. I am asking God for wisdom in this. I believe this is possible when I think about bones becoming osteoporotic via osteoclasts, so why not calcified plaques that generally shouldn't be there but formed to protect us from harm when the endothelial cells of our blood vessels were damaged due to oxidized, inflammatory foods, heated oils, high blood pressure, smoking, alcohol, stress, etc. I believe a combination of high HDL and low LDL with high natural Vitamin K2 (takes calcium out of tissues and into bones and teeth) from foods like natto and frequent laminar sheer stress plus autophagy via fasting could possibly do it. Let's see in the coming year or two.

It's incredible to me that what took decades to build up and make plaque can be reversed by food, exercise and fasting in a matter of months to years.

Heal Thyself Physician

The best physician is also a philosopher.

Galen

I am an avid reader of the Bible. These days, I am reading the books of Kings and Chronicles. One king, King Asa, was a very great and good king, but late in the 39th year of his reign of Judah, he had a severe disease in his feet. "Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians." Then he died in the 41st year of his reign. I pondered this. How much must he have suffered. How much he must have relied on the physicians. But he did not enquire or seek the Lord in his illness. I am a physician myself. The proverb, "Heal thyself, physician," comes to mind. Can I heal myself? Can drugs heal me? Can a stent heal me? These will delay or slow down the progress of the disease or give me more years but they will not heal me. 

All of my physician friends were saying what I contemplated doing was impossible. One older doctor friend, Dr. Barron, out of genuine concern, came to convince me to get a stent, just as he had, and go on statins and baby aspirin. I presented him with my CIMT and CT Heart Flow results, which showed 0.75 effective blood flow in my 77% obstructed Diagonal branch. Additionally, I highlighted the significant decreases in my lipids and low inflammatory markers, including an hsCRP of 0.2 and all other cardiac-specific inflammation markers, all of which were remarkably low. 

I had decided when I received my diagnosis that I would dedicate my heart to seek the Lord's wisdom and His guidance in all things and glorify the Lord with all my healings.

When he saw my remarkable results and progress in just three months, he said he would like to learn more and do what I am doing.

Healing Myself to Heal Others

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Rumi

I have a 90-year-old father with high blood pressure: 180/80. A year ago when I measured it, it was 220/120, a hypertensive emergency. I asked him what he was eating and drinking, and found out he was adding a tablespoon of salt to his water 4-5 times a day. I wondered whether I should bring him to the ER or get a prescription right away. 

I decided to remove the salt from his drinks first and monitor him. It came down over the next month to 170/85. I then asked him to skip a meal in the morning, as he had gained a lot of weight, particularly around his abdomen. He was perhaps 30 pounds over ideal weight. He lost about 16 pounds. But his blood pressure remained high. I got my brother to bring him to his doctor to get a prescription for hypertension, but he has been resistant. He is about to start a new bp med. 

I asked him if he wanted to try my healing reversal protocol, but my prescription is food, exercise and fasting. I explained to him the principles of how food can not only reduce blood pressure but also heal the blood vessels to naturally expand again. Exercise would enhance this, and fasting would accelerate this. 

I explained why fasting, starting with limiting the same meals within a time window of 8 hours, will have the same effects as a BP drug, which is what he had. 

He had a stroke in 2014, which left his right side paralyzed for a month. I found two food supplements that were miraculously able to help him regain 80% of his mobility. The rehab doctor said that this was impossible, and he was a miracle: green tea tablets and Smooth (omega 3s from anchovies and sardines). 

So I knew he had blood vessel disease, and high blood pressure was a byproduct of a malfunctioning endothelial cell layer. Now that he is 90, his blood vessels are like steel pipes and are unable to dilate effectively. BP meds are not going to be able to cure his high blood pressure and underlying root causes.

Simple Healing Meals

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

I gave him my morning breakfast of steel-cut oatmeal with chia seeds, ground flax seeds, berries, natto, some greens, beans, fermented black garlic, all neatly displayed on top like dressings. I also added some seaweed (nori) that had no oil or salt. I added some aurum mineral salt. This is my advanced breakfast. 

The easy breakfast version would be:

• Steel-cut oatmeal (boil under low heat for 20 minutes) topped with 

  • 1 tablespoon of chia seeds and 1 tablespoon of ground flax seeds

  • Berries (blueberries, strawberries, blackberries) / sliced apples/grapes

  • Greens such as arugula or salad mix

  • Pinch of quality mineral salt

He mixed it up, ate, and said he could eat this for breakfast. The taste was decent. The berries give it that flavour. I also added 5 tablets which contain spirulina, chlorella (algae) and green tea powder, which can reduce LDL by 20% and the steelcut oatmeal with chia/flax another 20% plus the greens, beans and berries another 10%. That's how I cut my LDL in half in 5 weeks, and ten of those days I was travelling in Korea when I couldn't fully adhere to my prescribed food diet. 

Then I gave him the choice: my food diet prescription or the new blood pressure medication. He had a dry cough as a side effect of his first ACE inhibitor BP med. He chose my food diet. So I gave him half a grapefruit. 

Consuming one red grapefruit daily can decrease LDL levels by up to 20% (with caution when taken with statins, as it increases the statin's duration in the body) and triglycerides by 17% over 30 days in patients with hyperlipidemia. White/blond grapefruit had half these results, so opt for red, whole, organic grapefruits. I eat half to one a day.

Then a cup of green tea, then 50 ml of pomegranate juice (later I will either add beet juice or beetroot powder to accelerate lowering of his bp).

On my biking days, I add 2-3 slices of ancient grain sourdough bread topped with balsamic vinegar, sliced apples and salad greens, like open-faced sandwiches.

My lunches are:

• Salad greens, topped with 

• Berries, apples or oranges

• Beans (lentils, black, kidney) for protein or

• Chilli with beans

• + Sourdough bread with balsamic vinegar.

My dinners are:

• Whole-grain pastas (no white flour) with low-fat tomato sauce or

• Whole rice (brown rice) (no white rice) with

• Variety of vegetables

• Fermented foods

• Variety of fruit

• Variety of beans

It's so simple that I can even make my own meals.

I'm also going to help Fred, a 71-year-old church friend, reverse his long-standing diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and obesity, which requires multiple drugs. I believe I can help reverse all his comorbid diseases in three months, and it might take longer, by six months. I have been simplifying my Heart Reversal Protocol to make it easier to implement, as my version is the Advanced Protocol. I am excited to start experimenting to see such results in others. I believe both my 90-year-old father and Fred are at high risk for a cardiovascular event in the next 3-5 years, so I want to help reverse their diseases.

Reflection

Have you pondered the wisdom of medicine that prescribes medication to fix your symptoms and labs, but not the root causes?

Dr. Kevin Ham

Why do people develop insulin resistance and eventually diabetes as they get into their twilight years, when this disease was almost non-existent when our food supply was more 'normal'?

The same goes for atherosclerotic heart disease, autoimmune disease, cancers and allergies.

Life-Changing Question

What disease might be silent inside of me before it becomes outwardly apparent?

If modern day disease is chronic and only manifests itself when it clogs arteries 70% or more, or when it is over a billion cells (0.5 cm on CT scans) for cancer, shouldn't we examine what we eat, how we eat, how we move and exercise and how we give our bodies rest through not eating all the time, having peace of mind and good sleep?

Next week—

Why Triple Therapy of Food, Exercise and Fasting (Rest) Resets You Rapidly

How to change your health paradigm through health principles

See you next Thursday!

Appendix

Foods that decrease LDL cholesterol.

Imagine just having 10 of these in your meals. That would be 50-60% reduction in LDL.

The other side of the coin is that you get efficient healing if you remove the foods that increased your LDL in the first place. Ie. heated oils, transfats, refined sugars, any foods that spike your blood glucose, too much saturated fats, unfiltered coffee…

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The Mind of AI

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

B.F. Skinner (psychologist, 1960s, on automation and memory)

We know we have five physical senses of the body: Sight, smell, hear, taste, touch and feel.

But what of the senses of our mind and the senses of our spirit?

I was often confused as to what my mind was. The psyche. The soul. 

Later, one of my mentors outlined that the mind consisted of six major faculties.

1. Memory

2. Reason

3. Perception

4. Imagination

5. Intuition

6. Will

He said that if we focused on each of these and developed them, we would have very powerful minds. I have been focusing a lot of my time on these six faculties of the mind and also on what I deem as the seven faculties of the spirit.

Humans have dominated the world of nature due to our powerful minds and powerful spirits, but now we have developeda technology that is surpassing us in each of these faculties one by one and by great leaps and bounds.

We call this AI. And AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, is an intelligence that surpasses us in all of these faculties in all categories and in all subjects. Many believe this is not a question of if, but of when.

AI has already surpassed us in memory, is quickly advancing in reasoning and perception and excelling in quantum leaps in imagination and creativity. Its intuition is much weaker, and its will is still bound by human programming and guardrails. Many are concerned that it will eventually develop its own will and determine a dystopian future, using all its destructive capabilities to rid the world of humanity's malicious and fallible intent.

The End Has Already Been Prophesied

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

Stephen Hawking (2014)

Since 2000, I have been pondering when this age of AI would come as I watched the internet boom and bust and left my medical profession to focus on becoming an Internet entrepreneur. I spent the past 25 years watching the Internet, mobile and blockchain (crypto/Bitcoin) revolutions form and burgeon. With the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, I knew the time had come for AI to take off.

In 2007, I placed a $6 million bet on semantic search, but it was much too early. We were trying to teach computers to 'understand' meaning, not just match keywords and allow people to program visually without code. The vision was right, but the timing was too early, as the computing power was too small, slow, and too expensive.

In 2016, I decided to give AI another try, this time in the form of a mobile piano teaching app. It could perceive your notes, reason about mistakes, and turn the pages of the music as you played, highlighting each piano note as it heard. Still, it was a little too early again. One of our interns, Aidan Gomez, is now CEO of Cohere, a company valued at $6.8 billion.

In 2018, I asked myself, which companies would be central to the development of AI? What microchip company? Intel, ARM, AMD, Nvidia? I knew that the AI revolution would be powered not just by ideas, but by computational power. In other words, microchips and AI software, followed by AI hardware, such as robots, vehicles, appliances, and consumer products. I decided it would most likely be NVIDIA due to their GPUs (graphic processing units), which were already big in gaming and mining, the most popular application being blockchain crypto Ethereum, and were being used by AI, such as OpenAI, which would debut ChatGPT just four years later in 2022. I sold 80% of my Google stock, which had grown in value after I placed a $10,000 bet on NVIDIA in 2006. This investment, which had 20x'd in 12 years, was now reinvested in NVIDIA, yielding a 30x return in just 7 years. So, my $10,000 in 2006 has grown 600 times in 19 years, to roughly $6 million. It was more about placing a bet on my first principle thinking in investments than about my desire to make a lot of money.

In 2024, I founded How.com with my co-founder Aytunc Ozturk. I owned all these valuable domains and had many friends who owned valuable domains, but these assets were sitting idle on pay-per-click advertising pages. It was like seeing waterfront properties with nothing but little sheds on them. We prototyped one of my domains How.com, with AI and I invited 100 of my friends to invest in it. 80% were on board, and we raised $8M with $2M in warrants. We then entered into deals with our domain investors to prototype and develop their most valuable domain properties using our AI infrastructure. This resulted in the development of Email.com, Face.com, Songs.com, Notebook.com, and Queen.com. We are creating an AI ecosystem, a network community of skyscraper intelligence on the prime real estate of the Internet.

How did I know about AI 25 years ago? 

I'm an avid reader of the Bible and in the book of Daniel and Revelation, it speaks of the coming end of the world, even though it was written thousands of years ago. I knew that there would be digital currency aka blockchain = crypto currency. But blockchain is also a platform upon which trusted secure transactions can be built upon. And the concept of an image speaking alluding to AI is prominent as well, where souls are bought and sold.  

“Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.”
Revelation 13:16–17

The Exponential Growth of AI

Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to the Singularity.

Ray Kurzweil (futurist, author of The Singularity is Near)

When you build a house or a product, it's said that you can't have high quality, speed, and low cost. You have to choose two, but you must sacrifice one of them. However, with AI, quality and speed are increasing exponentially, while costs are declining profoundly.

Compute power: doubling every five months or 4x per year. This means it will be 1024x in five years from now.

Costs have fallen 280x in two years. Hardware costs are declining at a rate of 30% annually, and efficiency is increasing by 40%. The rise of competition and the race to achieve AGI by companies and countries has led to massive investments and intense competition, resulting in competitive pricing.

Quality: Benchmark leaps are staggering. Coding, reasoning and multimodal scores double or triple in a year. The neural network is akin to a massive brain, with information being fed into it and its capabilities massively expanding with computing power as the industry grows and competes. It's demanded by the global populations and companies feed it endlessly and develop it.

Over the next five years, the exponential growth of AI will transform every industry, company, person, occupation, and the way we learn and do things. Most digital workflows will be AI-augmented or replaced by AI. In ten years, intelligent agents will run entire business units autonomously, as well as autonomous machines like vehicles, robots and devices.

Jobs: Destruction vs Creation

AI is creative destruction. It will transform industries, countries and people.

Displacement: Knowledge industries, clerical, routine and entry-level analytical roles are most vulnerable.

Creation: new fields of AI trainers, data curators, robotics engineers and human-AI managers.

By 2030, estimates show that +170 million jobs will be created versus -92 million jobs lost, resulting in a more productive workforce.

The danger is not job loss, but falling behind without reskilling and failing to leverage AI to enhance research and productivity.

I leverage AI a lot. I find that I need to think more to assign tasks to AI on my behalf, and then I can have a conversation with it to discern what is true, possible, or false.

The World Transformed

AI is the new electricity.

Andrew Ng (Google Brain, Coursera, Baidu)

Tesla touts that robots will be the most significant industry. Greater than the iPhone, which catapulted Apple to the #2 company behind NVIDIA. Tesla is a trillion-dollar company right now. It could be worth $10 trillion or more in the next ten years if it takes a lion's share of the robot industry. First deployed in industry, companies, and personal households. They will have AI inside, and this AI is like a nervous system that powers the hardware to be stronger, faster, and cheaper - again, the three levers that make it exponential and useful to the world and people. As more mass-scale developments occur, such as with the automobile and the mobile phone, costs decrease, allowing every household to own one or two, or even a handful, just as we have with cars. 100 years ago, only the wealthy could afford a car, but Ford democratized that. Tesla democratized the electric vehicle. They aim to create and democratize the robot.

Autonomous vehicles will transform transportation and logistics, along with shipping, just as Uber did, but on a much grander scale. Waymo, run by Google, logs 250,000 paid driverless rides per week. Baidu's Apollo Go did 2.2 million driverless rides last quarter.

ChatGPT had 1 million users in 5 days after it was launched in November 2022. Today, it has 700 million weekly active users. It is the #1 app worldwide. It's only a matter of time; it has 1 billion daily active users, and then 2B and growing.

There are its competitors who are trying to follow quickly. Google's Gemini, whose engine is quite good, and which Elon Musk predicts will most likely win in AI. Anthropic by Claude and backed by Amazon, Microsoft, which owns a good stake in OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Meta. And of course, Elon Musk's xAI, who is the most brilliant of our age. He built a 100,000 AI server farm in 19 days. This typically takes 3 to 5 years. The CEO of NVIDIA, Jensson Huang, says this is impossible and that only one person on our planet could do something like this. He has two other AI companies: Tesla, which is an AI car company, and SpaceX, where its rockets utilize AI.

But the real cold war of our time is which country will build the AI that everyone uses. US or China? In China, Alibaba, Deepseek, Baidu, and Bytedance (the owner of TikTok) are all vying to catch up, and they are moving quickly. The US has been trying to slow them down by not allowing them to buy the best AI chips from NVIDIA, but they are resourceful and, with slightly slower AI chips and with much lesser costs, they are innovative and leaping forward despite these speedbumps.

The world will become like the world of The Jetsons in due time.

How You can Leverage AI

We must develop AI with a sense of humility, knowing it can uncover patterns invisible to us, yet also mislead us if we treat it as omniscient.

Fei-Fei Li (Stanford, pioneer of computer vision)

Imagine what it would be like when AGI becomes accessible, and you have access to it. It will be more intelligent than all the world's combined doctors, lawyers, accountants, business consultants, psychologists, counsellors, and so on. How will you leverage this access?

Now (next 6 months):

• Automate your tasks: research, organization, clerical and administrative tasks, translations, consultations.

• Automate your front office: leverage AI for efficient intake, onboarding, and customer support.

• Accelerate creative production: writing, ideation, production, such as writing drafts, proposals, transforming your business, ads, videos, and landing pages at 10x speed

• Capture your proprietary data: this becomes your moat

Next (6-24 months):

• Build AI-native product features for yourself or your company using AI, as it can now code, design, and market, and is improving rapidly.

• Pilot physical autonomy (logistics, mobility)

• Reskill yourself and your team from task-doers to AI supervisors of AI agents/apps.

Later (2-5 years):

• Run multi-agent workflows as "AI departments"

• Leverage edge AI everywhere that is latency-free, private, and on-device)

• Establish governance as AGI levels emerge

Reflection

As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.

John McCarthy (Father of AI, coined the term “Artificial Intelligence,” 1956)

I've been investing in AI for nearly two decades- sometimes too early, sometimes just right. AI is now mastering the six senses of the mind. The question is no longer if, but when.

The winners will be those who leverage AI and act early, build moats and reskill quickly.

And the true gift is that leveraging AI will enhance your and your team's productivity 10x, 100x, or more. This time can be used to develop your own faculties of the mind, such as memorizing, reasoning, perceiving, imagining, intuiting, and developing your own will.

And also to focus on the seven faculties of the spirit that are the source of a person's being and power, and focus on the long-term, purpose, meaning and love.

Life-Changing Question

Circumstances and events are the outward expressions of inward thoughts and aspirations.

James Allen - The Mastery of Destiny, 1909

With AGI approaching,

Am I using AI to amplify my humanity - or am I letting it replace it by relegating the faculties of my mind without thought to AI?

That one question reframes everything:

• Memory: Am I outsourcing my memory to machines, or using AI to remember better and free my mind for wisdom?

• Perception: Am I letting algorithms shape what I see, or am I leveraging AI to perceive hidden patterns and truth?

• Reason: Am I trusting AI to think for me, or partnering with it to expand my reasoning?

• Imagination: Am I passively consuming AI creations, or using it to multiply my creative reach?

• Intuition: Am I dulling my own instincts, or sharpening them with AI as a second lens?

• Will: Am I surrendering autonomy to machines, or directing AI with human purpose and conviction?

Next week—

My Remarkable Heart Disease Results in Just 3 Months

How I went from a vascular age worse than a 85 year old to a normal 55 year old in just three months

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

The Jewel of Serenity: A Legacy of Wisdom

You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.

James Allen - From Passion to Peace, 1910

In 1903, James Allen published As a Man Thinketh, a short book on Thought and its effect on life that has transformed millions of lives for over a century.

I used to listen to the last chapter, Serenity, recited by my mentor Bob Proctor, every single day.

Then, on a call with Bob, he challenged me to write down Serenity for 90 days in a row.

At first, I was perplexed. Why spend all that time (it takes around 20 minutes) writing it when I could listen to it in 3 minutes? It's only 7 paragraphs long.

Bob's answer was profound:

"Because writing activates all parts of you - your body, thoughts, emotions and spirit."

That truth struck me, and I said, "Yes, I will do it."

He asked me to let him know how it changed my life after I completed the task.

By day 45, I had the passage memorized as I wrote it. From then on, every morning I recited it aloud as I wrote it. I then asked my executive team to do the same. We had lots of internal issues. Some grasped it. Others did not. My older brother said he could not possibly memorize it in a million years. I then asked him to recite it 100 times a day. First, I told him to just recite the first sentence 100 times, record it, and send it to me daily until he had memorized the first sentence. 

"Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom." Imagine him reciting that 100 times a day. Then moving on to the second sentence, "It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control," and doing this until he completed the chapter--even if it were to take him a million years. The recording was eventually so large he couldn't text it to me. He knew Serenity very well by the end of this exercise. I had another person on our team who also said the same, saying he had dyslexia. I gave him the same task. He was also able to memorize it.

On that call with Bob, he had actually quoted the second sentence of Serenity but I didn't recognize it. I realized then that memorizing or listening was not akin to understanding and seeing and so I tried to connect every sentence and word in Serenity to my life and the world.

My other great mentor Mr. Yoo said it's not that we can't memorize, it's the belief that we can't and the lack of attempting to do so. He said if someone swore at you, you would not forget. Leave the same impression on the things you wish to memorize.

At strategy meetings, I'd ask a random person to recite the first sentence, and then we recite it as we go around the room. This became our creed, especially when the storms of business hit, and instead of panic, we met them with calmness.

Treasures from Serenity

“The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good.”

“Keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought. In the bark of your soul reclines the commanding master; He does but sleep. Wake him.”

“Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.”

As A Man Thinketh in His Heart So He Is

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.

James Allen - The Path of Prosperity, 1907

The Serenity chapter is the crown jewel of the book, but the whole book As a Man Thinketh is a gem. James Allen took a proverb from the wisest king in history, King Solomon, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is" (Proverbs 23:7) and wrote an entire book based on this proverb.

I urge you to read, reread and perhaps even memorize and live it. It will be life-changing. I guarantee you, just as Bob knew it for me. Here are a few key lessons and big points from each chapter, along with an unforgettable quote you can memorize.

1. Thought and Character

• You are what you think — character is Thought made visible.

• Noble thoughts build strength; base thoughts weaken.

• Thoughts cannot be hidden; they shape destiny.

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

2. Effect of Thought on Circumstances

• Circumstances don't create the person; they reveal him.

• The outer world mirrors the inner world.

• Change your thoughts, and you change your life.

“Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”

3. Effect of Thought on Health and the Body

• The body obeys the mind.

• Disease and health both have roots in Thought.

• Cheerful, pure thinking preserves vitality.

“The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed.”

4. Thought and Purpose

• Thought without purpose leads nowhere.

• Purpose provides direction, focus, and discipline.

• To succeed, you must sacrifice drifting.

“Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment.”

5. The Thought-Factor in Achievement

• Achievement is born in Thought.

• Victories are mental before they are visible.

• Dreamers are the builders of progress.

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.”

6. Visions and Ideals

• Cherished ideals shape destiny.

• Vision lifts or drags us depending on its height.

• Ideals fuel progress and reform.

“The dreamers are the saviors of the world.”

7. Serenity

• Calmness is the crown of self-mastery.

• Serenity earns trust and respect.

• The serene person steadies others in life's storms.

“Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.”

Epilogue

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.

James Allen - Byways of Blessedness, 1904

Earl Nightingale — often called the father of personal growth — always listed As a Man Thinketh among the top three books he recommended.

In 1956, he recorded The Strangest Secret, which went on to sell over a million copies and became the first spoken-word recording to earn a Gold Record. It ignited the modern personal development movement.

Earl mentored Bob Proctor.

And Bob mentored me.

On February 1, I completed my 90th day of writing Serenity. I thought about calling Bob, or sending him a note of thanks. Instead, I told myself: why not go for 100 days?

But on February 3, 2022, I received the news: Bob Proctor had passed away in his late 80s.

I was crushed. I never got to thank him.

So I'll say it here:

Thank you, Bob. And thank you, Earl. May you both rest in heaven.

Reflection

Calmness, gentleness, self-possession, sweetness of spirit, are the beautiful fruits of self-conquest.

James Allen - Above Life’s Turmoil, 1910

The true legacy of wisdom isn't just in the words written on a page — it's in the lives they transform. What began with James Allen's pen in 1903 was carried by Earl Nightingale's voice in 1956, passed through Bob Proctor's mentorship until 2022, and now lives on in the practices we choose each day.

Wisdom multiplies when we don't just consume it — but embody it.

If self-control, anger, and emotional volatility reside in you, will you write out Serenity every day for 90 days in a row? Will you commit it to memory and practice it as you live in this turbulent, tempest-tossed world?

Life-Changing Questions

Circumstances and events are the outward expressions of inward thoughts and aspirations.

James Allen - The Mastery of Destiny, 1909

If my thoughts today are quietly shaping my character, my circumstances, my health, my achievements, and my destiny…

1. What one thought will I choose to live out my future?

2. What one thought will I let go of to let go of my past?

Next week—

Knowing in a world of infinite data and noise

How to keep thinking while leveraging AI

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

The 7-Self Framework: From Inputs to Outputs

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

Joseph Campbell

I often wondered how great people became great. Abraham Lincoln, despite his difficult youth and many political failures, demonstrated wisdom during the Great Civil War. I read biographies, books on how to be great, and how to be successful. Rockefeller, Disney, Jobs, Frankl, Campbell, Covey, and my favourite, the Bible, which depicts so many great men and women. 

I believe 7 to be a very significant number. Our lives are depicted in stages of 7 years. A person of 70 years has typically gone through 10 stages of life. Some merely physical, others journey through the soul and some rarely journey these stages through the spirit. 

But in general, there are the seven stages of self, the soul, that we go through, and I have thought and pondered a lot on what these seven stages might be, as I have now lived almost 55 years, nearly eight stages. There are more as we seek to live a wholly transformational life. We see this in nature with seeds becoming plants and trees. Eggs become caterpillars and then transform into butterflies. Humans, too, must transform into the depths of their soul and spirit.

Last time, we looked at the three core inputs that shape your self: self-perception, self-talk, and self-environment. We also looked at the three outputs everyone seeks: Self-confidence, self-actualization and self-transcendence.

But how do we get from these three inputs to these three outputs? How do we transform influence into identity and identity into impact?

We move through the 7-Self Framework- a tapestry of threads that weave your inner transformation.

Your 7 Selves: A Transformational Journey

Each self-journey is a thread in your being that weaves a multi-dimensional you.

1 Self-Awareness

You must know where you are before you can choose where to go.

Joseph Campbell

Self-Awareness: To see yourself so clearly that you no longer live by default but by intention and design. This is your inner mirror. Awareness is the light and self-reflection that breaks the cycle of unconscious living.

Practice: Track your patterns, habits. Journal your triggers. Build consciousness and awareness.

2 Self-Honesty

What is to give light must endure burning.

Viktor Frankl

Self-Honesty: Speak to yourself the candid truth so you can stop pretending and start transforming. It’s having the courage to speak the truth to yourself. Growth begins with unfiltered truth.

Practice: Name one truth you are avoiding and write why it matters now.

3 Self-Acceptance

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Viktor Frankl

Self-Acceptance: Accept yourself as you fully are with grace and compassion instead of criticism and insults. Let go of your past and start anew where you are right now.

Practice: Starting anew and whisper to your heart, “This is where I begin.” And commit to you.

4 Self-Discipline

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Stephen Covey

Self-Discipline: Build a structure for yourself so that your vision has a vehicle to drive in. Discipline is how you build trust with your future self by committing to yourself and keeping your promise.

Practice: Choose and commit to one non-negotiable keystone habit- and honour it daily. This allows you to respect yourself as you do the thing you promised yourself.

5 Self-Compassion

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

Self-Compassion: Embrace all your imperfections and love yourself with each of these. Forgive yourself and do not disqualify yourself because of them. Compassion softens the sharp edges of transformation..

Practice: Forgive yourself for one regret- and reframe it as a teacher going forward. Embrace it. It’s your judo move, turning weakness into strength.

6 Self-Giving

The more one forgets himself- by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love- the more human he is.

Viktor Frankl

Self-Giving: Shift your focus from self to others. You begin to live from abundance, not scarcity.

Practice: Serve someone today without seeking credit or recognition.

7 Self-Renewal

Sharpen the saw.

Stephen Covey

Self-Renewal: Return to your core so you don’t lose yourself in your service. You protect the well so the water never runs dry.

Practice: Schedule in your calendar a weekly reset-renewal ritual for body, mind and spirit. A time for solitude, review and rejuvenation. The deeper into yourself you go, the better. Fasting helps you in this journey. This is the reason many spiritual faiths have days or times of fasting, so you can go beyond your physical self into your soul and spiritual self.

Life-Changing Question

In the final analysis, the question is not what we expect from life, but what life expects from us.

Viktor Frankl

What am I becoming through how I live today? 

• What will I be like in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years if I live like this?

Final Thought

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Abraham Maslow

The 7-Self Framework is not about achievement or performance. It’s about full alignment between your spirit, soul, body and life.

When your inner self is strong, your outer impact becomes effortless.

Start with your core roots.

Live through each of your Selves above.

And you’ll grow and transform into the person who doesn’t just rise, but lifts others up with you.

Next week—

Stillness Within: Practicing Serenity in a World of Noise

How Practicing Serenity helped me go from Anger to Peace

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

Live or Die? That is My Question

Our outward appearance can only hint at the true inner state of our heart. Knowing yourself from the inside to the outside requires wisdom, prudence, discernment and grace.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Just three months ago, I thought to myself, ‘I am in the best shape of my life. My heart is so fit and strong.’ My resting heart rate of 42 and an even lower heart rate at sleep of 31 was astonishing to me. I was struck by how little my heart had to pump to supply blood flow from head to feet. Blood pressure 105/60. My max heart rate of 195 and able to withstand average heart rates of 172 for 2 hours 38 minutes during a cycling event, and a VO2 Max in the 50s, put me in the top percentile, one of the best indicators of longevity. With 12% body fat and an active cycling lifestyle and an ancestral diet, I felt and looked cardiovascularly strong, fit and healthy.

After Anita, a medical doctor and wife of my late dear friend Rob Thompson, who passed away of a sudden heart attack earlier this year on February 10th, asked everyone at his celebration of life to get a calcium heart scan, I became aware of the silently growing disease in my heart vessels. A calcium score of 500 indicated major calcified coronary disease on May 5, 2025. I received a CT Angiogram on June 17, which showed blockages in every vessel, with the most severe being a blockage in the first diagonal branch (D1) of my left anterior descending artery. A 55% blockage in my ramus intermedius, a rare branch off the left main coronary artery, that overlapped somewhat with my D1. Then several moderate blockages of 45%, 29%, 28% and many more mild obstructions under 20%. Health can only be as strong as our biggest constraint, and in my case it is my 77% blockage. To put it into perspective, one major blockage can lead to a heart attack and potentially sudden death.

This is an in-depth digest of my monthly heart journey. I pray that it helps save many lives, prevents unnecessary heart attacks and the progression of heart disease. May you take this to heart.

Patient and Medical Doctor

I’ve been blessed with a medical education and also multiple diseases so I can walk the journey of life understanding human suffering and grace, disease and relief, staring death in the face of life as both patient and doctor.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Every year, the US shows us a picture of the grim realities of heart disease.

805,000 heart attacks occur each year

605,000 are first-time heart attacks

356,000 people die from sudden cardiac arrest with minimal or no prior warning.

The average age of heart attacks in men is 65, and in women, it is 72. Women follow men by 7 years due to the protective effects of estrogen and menses. But women have a higher mortality rate of 70% from their first heart attack.

I have been duly warned and made aware that this could be me. Unaware, I could likely die of a heart attack by 65, conceivably on a hard climb while biking.

So, when did this disease start in my heart? I knew in medical school, after reading the Korean War Study on American soldiers, average age 22, that 70% of them had atherosclerosis on autopsy. I guessed that in my mid-20s, I had about 50% blockages, but later in life, I assumed my improved diet and active lifestyle would keep that all at bay. I had no risk factors other than a high LDL cholesterol of 168. I never smoked, my blood pressure was good, I had no family history, no diabetes, was lean and fit, and was not sedentary. My recent inflammation markers hsCRP (0.25) and Homocysteinewere low. I felt great and so healthy.

What I am not sure about is how much of my atherosclerosis has progressed over my life or whether it is getting worse, stable or better, but even though the numbers do not look good, I now have a baseline to measure and improve from.

My Mission: To Reverse Heart Disease

My mission: to reverse my severe blockages to 0 or no significance so I am not constrained by any plaques that can potentially rupture to cause a heart attack or impact coronary blood flow. 

Then help others become aware if they have any heart disease and how to reverse any blockages through lifestyle changes. I feel like I’ve been born to do this, and feel very grateful and blessed for this opportunity.  I decided to become a doctor at age 14 because an autoimmune disease hospitalized me. I dreamed of helping people afflicted with pain and suffering from disease. I could not help my own mother for her own autoimmune disease as a son or a doctor, nor from her demise from cancer. But I know I can help people with macular degeneration to stave off blindness and those with heart disease, high blood pressure or diabetes from ever succumbing life to them. I dream of helping prevent and relieve pain and suffering from cancer, which is the deadliest of killers.

My Cholesterol Cut in Half

Never underestimate the power of food and the resilience of the human body to heal and become whole again. We only need to know the simple path to life.

Viktor Frankl

For years, my LDL cholesterol was 168 mg/dL (4.34 mM). Someone with my level of heart disease should have a value under 80 mg/dL (2.0 mM). I knew my doctors would highly suggest the standard of care of a statin (cholesterol-lowering med) plus baby aspirin.

I had read Dr. Esselstyn’s book, “Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease,” over 10 years ago, so I knew that there was a diet that could reverse 100% blocked arteries in under 3 years. It seemed extreme, but his patients were patients with severe heart disease, many resistant to standard of care therapies, including bypasses, stents and medications. 

I determined, after staring at my calcium score, to start the next morning on the Esselstyn diet, a radical whole food plant-based diet that was low fat, restricting all oils, fats, animal foods, fish, dairy, eggs, nuts, most seeds and even avocados to reduce dietary fat to 10% of calories. I wrote my plan the next morning for my next six months--the remainder of 2025. If I could half my LDL within 6 months to 80 mg/dL (2.0 mM), then half it again to 40 mg/dL (1.0 mM) within one year, I would be on the path to reverse my plaques.

I told my plan to Anita, and she, being a doctor, said I would need a high-dose statin, and diet wouldn’t do. My doctor friends were very concerned and suggested I get a stent. I see a sports cardiologist August 18 with a scheduled stress test. I suspect I will pass that, but I surmised that if I don’t, I would consider a stent. But my mindset is to resolve my disease by the first principles of health. With a stent, it will get clogged in 10-15 years, and I have been blessed with the mind to research and figure out the disease process and pathophysiology, with a degree in Biochemistry and medicine.

On June 17, I went to San Francisco and did a full-body assessment at Human Longevity, Inc. My heart MRI and heart echocardiogram were normal. My CT Angiogram of the heart revealed all my blockages. My calcium score was 475. It could be a difference in the machine but my May 5 calcium score was 505.

But what shocked me most was my cholesterol numbers!

My LDL cholesterol had dropped from 168 to 84. I was so excited. I had anticipated my dietary strategy to take 6 months to reach this level, but it dropped by 50% in just 5 weeks. Wow! And ten of those days were travel days where I had some ‘cheat meals’.

My total cholesterol of 158 was now lower than my LDL a month ago. Astounding! I was worried about my lipoprotein a level, which lifestyle changes cannot modify, but that was low at 40, and my apoB was reasonable at 75. Ideally, I want this below 55 to reverse plaque. I knew at that moment that it was possible for me now. Tears of joy like victory resounded in my heart! Esselstyn was right. He was the head of the Cleveland Clinic in the 1980s and is still active at age 92. He was a cardiac surgeon, and as I listened to dozens of interviews by him, I grasped all the mechanisms, health principles and reasons he spoke about, and I did my own research daily. I have many more strategies to reverse my heart disease, and I’m thinking through each one before experimenting, trying to figure out how to measure its effect going forward.

My target LDL is to be in the 40s by the end of the year. I will do monthly lipid blood tests to monitor. My two-month LDL is about 75, as my doctor only got me a total cholesterol, HDL and non-HDL level. I am going to take matters into my own hands and get full lipid profiles like the one above each month. LDL at 80 stabilizes heart disease, and below that, soft plaques get remodelled and resorbed. My goal is to get a HDL higher than LDL. My friend Raz has already accomplished this with a HDL of 129 and LDL of 84. And I plan on reviving the health of my endothelial cells, the inner lining of my blood vessels.

I had let my medical license lapse in 2015, because I was so busy with my entrepreneurial pursuits, but I am going to apply to reobtain my medical license. I plan to do health more as philanthropy rather than as a livelihood, as I’ve been blessed beyond measure by God and those around me. Thank you dearly!

Eyes are Getting Better Too

When your heart is pure, your sight is clear.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Two Sundays ago, I was listening to a sermon, and usually I have a hard time seeing the small print on the screen. But this time, it was clear and vivid, and I was so amazed that I closed one eye, then the other, to check if it was one or both eyes. Clear. I was so excited again. I wasn’t even thinking about my eyes. I then did a home eye test and found both eyes at 20/16. I learned also that my retinal pigment epithelium had drastically decreased in thickness due to my two years of receiving eye anti-VEGF injections in 2020-2022. I stopped the eye med injections over two years ago, thankfully. My good left eye RPE was only 153 now and no wonder my visual acuity is affected. I had felt the world looked less technicolour and muted. But now things look much more vivid, colourful and clear. I started thinking about what caused my macular degeneration, and I started studying the layers and cells of the retina, Bruch’s membrane and vascular layers. I then had a hypothesis. The same process that caused disease in my eyes was also happening in my carotid arteries and my heart vessels, and likely my hearing vessels.

Could I also possibly stabilize or reverse my eye and neck vessels with my heart protocol?

My Fractured Bone Analogy: How a Fractured Heart Heals Like a Broken Bone

A fractured heart can become whole again.

Dr. Kevin Ham

When you break a bone, you don’t walk on it, nor do you medicate endlessly. You immobilize it with a cast, remove any more insult or damage to the injured area, give it rest for your body to heal, nourish it and then rehabilitate it back to strength. But with the heart, that is not the current standard of care. Medicine ignores solving the root causes and tells us to pop a statin and baby aspirin until stents and bypasses are required.

The arterial wall- the endothelium- heals in much the same way as a fractured bone, in principle.

1. You stop any and all insults to the endothelial cells.

2. You protect the vessel.

3. You give it the necessary nutrition, time and conditions to regenerate.

4. You rehabilitate the bone, muscles and blood flow.

And that’s what I’ve done with my C.A.S.T. Protocol.

The HAM Heart Protocol: A 10-Step Science-Backed Healing Blueprint

The body follows the natural laws of health and breaking from these results in progressive disorder and disease. We have built a civilization of immense health debt, repayable but not through mere drugs that treat only the outward symptoms but only by treating and removing the root causes.

Dr. Kevin Ham

C.A.S.T. = My healing cast for the heart

C = Cut all oils and inflammation

• No added oils

• No processed fats

• Whole foods only - extreme version is Esselstyn diet

• Reduces endothelial damage and inflammation

A = Achieve LDL <50 mg/dL, HDL>60 mg/dL (LDL/HDL < 1)

• Removes the root cause of plaque progression

• Mimics lifelong low LDL found in native populations with no heart disease, and also cholesterol levels in teens and 20s

• Sleep > 7 hours daily. Restores hormonal balance, reduces CRP, and promotes nighttime endothelial healing and rejuvenation. Deep sleep of 1 hour and core sleep of 4 hours makes me feel 100% REM might be 2 hours.

S = Strategic Nutrition

• Whole foods, high fibre, high antioxidants

• Essential nutrition to help reverse atherosclerosis that has been scientifically proven with consideration of models based on first principles of health that can be further tested and proven

• Reverses atherosclerosis by reducing oxidized LDL and improving nitric oxide, which expands blood vessels

T = Time-restricted Fasting and Training

• High intensity interval Training (HIIT) + Zone 3 fitness for shear stress and metabolic flexibility, collateral circulation improvement with plaque remodeling and increase HDL, lower LDL, VLDL and triglycerides and increase eNOS (more nitric oxide) and endothelial health, increases VO2max (oxygen utilization)

  • physical therapy for the heart vessels

• 24 hour weekly and 72 hour monthly fasts to lower inflammation and promote autophagy, to resorb plaque

  • lowers insulin, triglycerides, LDL

  • autophagy cleans up cancer cells, damaged cells (aka plaques)

  • Increases HDL

  • This is like rest and sleep and rejuvenation for the arteries

I’ll outline the 10-Step Heart Protocol more later when I am certain of reversal rather than just lower LDL levels.

Triple Strategy maybe even Handful Strategy

Heart vessels are complex and the center of human life. Why not approach a multi-prong lifestyle cure for not only arresting progress of heart disease but to actually reverse and cure it for all blood vessels?

Dr. Kevin Ham

I thought, “Why just have one strategy? Why not employ a Force Multiplier, like they do in cancer therapy: Chemotherapy (often triple chemo strategy), Radiation and Surgery, aka poison/burn/slash. Or in warfare, strike by air, navy, and ground at once.”

I surmised that I would need something that would act like the osteoclasts that drive osteoporosis, where my immune system would go and remodel my calcified plaques and resorb them by taking the calcium and lipids out. There are macrophages in the heart that can do this, but they need to be incited to do so. Calcification is an overly protective mechanism in the face of continuing damage to the endothelial vessels of the heart, eye, brain to reduce the risk of rupture and subsequent death. What could do this, short of injecting osteoclasts into the heart vessels?

Fasting is one mechanism in which to induce autophagy along with utilizing our more efficient fat energy system, which less than 10% seem to have the ability to do well, as most people are glucose dependent, giving rise to a cancerous environment, as cancer cells can only use glucose for energy, but not fat. 

Vitamin K2, along with HDL, might also help, as Vitamin K2 keeps calcium out of soft tissues like the arterial walls and into bone and teeth. HDL carries cholesterol from the blood to the liver.

So my Triple Strategy is:

1. Healing diet protocol

2. Exercise protocol

3. Fasting protocol

4. Thinking about how to implement my 4th strategy for the Sleep protocol.

Top 3 Heart Superfoods to Reverse Plaque

Reverse soft plaques first, then attack the more difficult seemingly impossible calcified hard plaques.

Dr. Kevin Ham

There are three types of plaque: Unstable, soft and hard.

Unstable plaques cause 70% of heart attacks, otherwise known as Low Attenuated Plaque (LAP), as they can rupture into the lumen of the artery and cause a full blockage of the artery, resulting in a heart attack. These plaques are typically smaller and rupture without warning. 

Plaques that are calcified and obstructing the artery, while limiting blood flow, typically do not rupture and present warning signs like angina (chest pain) or shortness of breath on exertion.

In six months, I can reduce the volume of my soft plaque and focus heavily on this.

Here are my Top 3 Heart Superfoods that have the power to reduce soft plaques:

1. Pomegranate juice. Just 50 ml per day can reduce up to 36% of carotid plaques. Easily measured via CIMT ultrasound of the carotids.

2. High dose EPA of 4g/day. This is an omega-3 fatty acid that is important in the cell membrane of the endothelial cells, as well as reducing inflammation and helping endothelial cells produce nitric oxide, which helps expand the blood vessels. This is recognized in traditional medicine, and you can get a prescription for it.

3. Natto contains high amounts of Vitamin K2 and contains a significant amount of nattokinase. 6000 to 12000 FU (fibrinogen units) can reduce plaques in the carotids up to 30%. I am eating natto twice a day and also plan to supplement with nattokinase to get to 12,000 FU. Vit K2 amounts from natto twice a day are ~500 mcg.

Notables:

1. Red Grapefruit. Once a day. Be careful if you are taking statins or medications, as grapefruit affects the liver enzymes and can alter medication dosages.

2. ? Vitamin C high dose plus lysine and proline. Will explain the proposed mechanisms after I do more research.

My Next Month

It’s my ‘rest two weeks’ as I return from Korea today, having done my weekly fasts and I only did strength training with weights (squats, leg extensions, leg press, bench press). I did a colonoscopy to rule out the #1 cancer, Colon cancer. No polyps. Just three diverticuli in my right colon. Whew!

Labs:

• Aug 18: Exercise stress test

• Aug 19: CT Heart Flow to measure blood flow obstruction in my main heart vessels to see how much my plaques affect blood flow. I assume I have a lot of natural bypasses in the form of collateral blood flow due to my decades of cycling, but this will tell me for sure.

• Aug 19: CIMT to measure carotid intima-media thickness (carotid plaque in the neck)

• Aug 19: Monthly lipid panel

Lifestyle Prescription:

• Fast:

  • 29 hour fast on the plane ride back home tomorrow

  • 72h fast a week after my Sept gran Fondo 

• Exercise:

  • Train for my 140 km Gran Fondo next Saturday with a block of solid riding (490 km in 11 days including 4 rest day)

  • Continue 2.5 week block exercise training of 600 km Aug 18 - Sep 3 for Whistler Gran Fondo: 122 km with 2000m elevation September 6

• Diet:

  • Add 4g EPA to my lifestyle modification

  • Add nattokinase supplementation

• Sleep:

  • Try and sleep 7 hours+. Go to bed by 11:30 pm latest.

Life Questions

I have a few friends who did full-body physicals this summer. My dear friend found a small brain aneurysm and is pre-diabetic, although she seems so healthy. Another found three colon polyps, with one large one that needs a referral. Another friend had eight colonic polyps removed. I’m convinced that anyone eating the western diet of processed foods has some degree of atherosclerosis and metabolic syndrome (eg. insulin resistance that can lead to diabetes and other metabolic diseases).

1. What silent disease has started to take root in your body that you might be unaware of?

2. What baseline tests can you do to catch it early and be aware of it, especially if you are in your 40s or older?

I’ll check back in with an update on my heart journey next month. In the meantime…

Next week: The 7-Self Framework: the Transformational Journey of Self

From Self-Perception to Self-Transcendence

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

What Shapes the Self?

Our soul is not reflected through our body without deep intention. Let your soul be master of your body and do not let your body be your master.

Dr. Kevin Ham

The road to self-confidence, self-actualization and self-transcendence, the Fruits of Self, come from three Self Inputs, the Roots of Self.

Every self is shaped by three foundational inputs. I lacked these three self inputs and only saw myself through the lenses of others’ and my environment. I was the second shortest in my grade, a minority, feeble-minded although bright, and didn’t have any dreams or purpose in my life. That started to change when I started asking myself important questions about life and my role in it. It changed even more when I made my misfortunes take on meaning and purpose. When I was bedridden in the hospital with an autoimmune disease, I decided that I was going to be a doctor of medicine to help other unfortunate people like myself.

These three Self Inputs started to reveal the deep core of my soul and spirit in my diseased and weak body.

Self-Perception

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

Joseph Campbell

Self-perception is how you view yourself. It is the story you believe about yourself and it dictates how high you dream, how deeply you love and how boldly you live.

Where Negative Self-Perception Comes From:

Most of your negative self-perception comes from:

1. Childhood labels, experiences, especially traumatizing ones and early conditioning. These play in repeating patterns both silently and actively with dependency, neediness, blaming, complaining, excusing, compromising with situations and peoples.

2. Unresolved failures mistaken as identity. Failures do not equal who you are. They are a byproduct or process on the way to learning and figuring you out. With every failure a seed of growth can be planted and redemption and wisdom gained. Edison said he failed 10,000 times before he could find the way to invent the light bulb.

You should ask yourself some important questions about your Self-Perception and understand the deep fundamental truths about yourself.

1. Do I align with my potential or with my past? In other words, do I constrain myself because of my past or can I have limitless possibilities because of my future?

2. What truth about myself do I believe? What lie about myself can I live with?

Practices:

1. Clarify who you are and who you wish to become. Write a “Who I Am Becoming” vision statement.

2. Reframe your past, good and bad, including the hardest failures, as preparation, learning rather than disqualification and unworthiness. Be honest with yourself.
   

Self-Talk

Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

Viktor Frankl

Your self-talk is the words you speak about yourself and believe. What you say, you reinforce. These repeated words then become your self-identity, which dictates how you think, speak and behave. This is then reflected into your outer world.

Negative self-talk comes from unclosed loops and perceived gaps between your present critical self and your future aspired self as well as what others tell you about these seemingly large gaps.

1. The criticisms from your esteemed ones, authority figures or peers echoing in your head like a perpetual pinball machine.

2. Subconscious repetition of old emotional scripts and trauma that has not healed.

You should ask yourself:

1. What stories am I repeating and living that no longer serve me?

2. How would I speak to myself if I truly believed I was becoming who I was meant to be?

The purpose of questions is to explore, to provide clarity and hopefully define you, your true deeper self more fully.

Practices:

1. Begin each day with a truth-based affirmation about yourself. All things are relative and there are only levels in every direction.

2. Interrupt internal criticism with compassion, clarity and curiosity. Explore its deep roots and see if you transform or transplant them into healthy soil for purpose or meaning or learning.

Self-Environment

We must let go of the life we have planned so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

Your environment is not neutral. It either nurtures your self-actualization to become who you are or normalizes your excuses and binds you to your past, preventing your future.

Your negative self-environment comes from staying in environments out of habit, familiarity rather than alignment to your purpose. It is the city or country you grew up in, your friend groups, your families, your language, your customs. It is also bound by your cultural, familial, religious and social systems that resist non-conformity, that do not let your soul stand out as unique.

You should ask yourself:

1. Who consistently reinforces my highest identity?

2. What do I need to step away from in order to be freely me?

Practices:

1. Deeply curate your content, community and commitments. This is 80% elimination and 20% addition.

2. Design your mental, physical and relational space to support your future self.

Roots to Fruits

You alone determine and establish your roots. And your roots determine the fruits you share with the world.

Dr. Kevin Ham

When your three Self Inputs (Roots) align:

1. Clear Self-Perception

2. Consistent and authentic Self-Talk

3. Supportive Self-Environment

The three Self Outputs become your Fruits:

1. Self-Confidence

2. Self-Actualization

3. Self-Transcendence

One Life-Changing Question

In the final analysis, the question is not what we expect from life, but what life expects from us.

Viktor Frankl

What does the future You expect you to allow in today?

Final Thought

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey

Dr. Kevin Ham

You don’t just shape your habits. You shape your Self and your Self will shape the world you touch. Shine and Smile.

Choose your three Self Inputs with deep intention.

Next week: The 7-Self Framework: the Transformational Journey of Self

From Self-Perception to Self-Transcendence

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

From Self-Actualization to Self-Transcendence

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Viktor Frankl

Last week, we explored the top of Maslow’s pyramid to Self-Actualization — becoming your highest self. But later in life, Maslow realized that there was a level even higher, broader and deeper to your soul and that is Self-Transcendence.

You don’t become your highest and best self on this earth until you give your self-actualized self away to others.

It’s not the next step or level after success, but it is the purpose for your success and self-actualization. It’s not the mountaintop. It’s the mirror.

That’s why so many people who climb the summit of success to self-actualization only have a brief glimpse of victory and celebration before they feel empty, down and alone on this summit as the celebration fades.

The mirror of transcendence reflects who you are — not when you look into it, but when others are changed by what they see in you.

Self-actualization is your calling. Self-transcendence is your contribution, your gift to the world.

Begin with the End in Mind

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Albert Einstein

Everyone sets personal goals, but wisdom says to begin with legacy. Ask not “What do I want?” but “Who do I want to become for the sake of others?”

When you begin with who you want to serve, everything you do and build is sacred and purposeful.

Self-transcendence doesn’t diminish you or your dreams. It highly amplifies them. It gives your growth and success meaning beyond just you and your name.

The Three Lenses of Self-Transcendence

Maslow: The Final Step Most Miss

Transcenders are consciously motivated by values which transcend their own self.

Abraham Maslow

Maslow describes the highest level of self as Self-Transcendence: “the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature and to the cosmos.”

This is when we:

1. Seek truth, beauty, and righteousness not for status or personal gain, but because they are fundamental values

2. Serve without recognition

3. Align with something larger than ourselves

It’s about giving and serving on your way down from the summit of success.

Frankl: Meaning Through Others

Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself.

Viktor Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”

In the holocaust camps of WWII, Frankl found that survival often depended not on strength, but on purpose.

People transcended this personal suffering and hell by living for:

1. The person they loved

2. A mission they needed to complete

3. A vision that outlived pain and perhaps incorporated this pain into the marrow of their souls to give it meaning and purpose

You transcend by offering your pain, not but hiding or running away from it.

Campbell: The Hero Returns to Give Wisdom

The hero’s journey ends when the hero returns to serve.

The Hero’s 12 Step Journey ends when he returns to the Ordinary World from which he came, transformed by an insight in the New World and offers this wisdom to his Ordinary World. He returns not to claim victory or to take, but to share. Not to shine, but to reflect and uplift.

You become the medicine you needed and offer it freely to all those who need it.

My Moments of Transcendence

It only takes a moment of insight into yourself to transform you.

Dr. Kevin Ham

The Hill For Elliott

As my good friend Elliott lay dying from sarcoma at age 28, I decided to do a charity ride to conquer cancer, a two-day ride with each day 100 km. That was in 2008. I was very afraid of the hills on that ride and I had this insight that this fear paled in comparison to the hill that Elliott had to climb due to his cancer. So each pedal up that hill was symbolic of the fight each cancer victim had to take where the summit was likely death. Now I embrace each hill climb in honour and in memory of Elliott, my mother and everyone who has and is fighting this fight to conquer cancer. I am helping my good friend Dr. Azra Raza with her life mission of preventing, detecting and eradicating this vicious self-immortalized cell we call cancer.

Practices to Awaken Transcendence

1. Begin every day and meeting with Gratitude

• My team meetings start this way. It opens the heart.

2. Give Without Credit

• True giving leaves no mark

3. Ask Who, not What

• Who can I serve today?

4. Let Pain Become Your Path

• Embrace it and transform it with meaning

5. Build What Will Outlast You

• Principles, wisdom, systems, people. Seed the future now.

Life Questions:

Answer these questions and write them down.

1. Am I living to be seen- or to serve?

2. What pain in my story could become someone else’s hope?

3. What would it look like to live as a mirror and not as a monument?

Final Thought

“Self-Actualization says to become your best self. Self-Transcendence say to give your best self to others.”

Dr. Kevin Ham

Your light was not meant to be buried deep in you. It was meant to shine through you to others.

The mirror of transcendence is clearest when someone else sees themselves more clearly because of how you lived.

Next week: The Three Core Inputs That Shape Your Self — Self-perception, self-talk and self-environment.

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

The Paradox of the Pyramid

Begin with the end in mind.

Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)

To Begin with the End in Mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you're going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.

Begin with the End in Mind" is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.

At the top of Abraham Maslow’s Pyramid of the Hierarchy of Needs sits Self-Actualization, the end point we all strive for.

We often think that self-actualization is the world’s image of success, whether that world be your family, your friends, your peers, your workplace, your community or the media. Those are self-imposed expectations based on other’s conformed ideas of success.

Do we really strive to self-actualize and burst out of the seeds planted in our hearts, nurtured by plowing of the heart through the valleys of hardship, sorrow, and despair polarized by the heights of joy, recognition and pleasure?

But if you begin with self-actualization as the end in mind, you start on your journey to self-reflection, self-discovery and self-awareness.

This is what I started to realize in my 20s and became ever so aware in my 30s. All my years of darkness, hardships, sufferings, trials and tribulations were the cocoon that fostered the seeds deep in my heart to sprout and bear fruit in this world.

The End starts when you have a dream, a vision of what you want to do with your life, no matter how unseemly grand or small your vision may be. You can become that self-actualized person now as you need to first create the mental image of yourself and then the physical creation of yourself will come in due time.

I saw a grand vision, mission, values for myself that were somewhat clear but also somewhat vague. It was hazy but I started to take a step in that general direction. I have a much clearer vision and mission of my life now as I reflect on my many foolish missteps and mistakes.

The 3 Models of Self-Actualization

I realized I only have a relatively short time on this earth. How could I live and fulfill my dreams? So I asked, I searched, I knocked diligently upon this question for decades. I have read and been inspired by these three powerful models and contemplated how I could apply them in my heart and in my actions.

Maslow: Self-Actualization Through Growth

What a man can be, he must be.

Abraham Maslow

At the bottom of the pyramid, Maslow postulated that you need to fulfill your basic needs in succession, like food, safety, love and belonging, esteem before self-actualization. But later, Maslow revised his model when he realized that self-actualizing people often grow before their lower needs are fully met. Why is this?

How many stories have you heard of those without such basic needs rise up and grow up despite those deficiencies to do things that seemed unlikely or even impossible?

They saw a vision or a mission of who they could become in that moment they stepped forward into that void between lack and fullness. A purpose beyond just themselves. A vision of how they could transform themselves, like the caterpillar embracing its own cocoon to later emerge as the butterfly.

Your Hero’s Journey: Self-Actualization Through Trials

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

Joseph Campbell

In his book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” written in 1949, Joseph Campbell inspired George Lucas to write the trilogy Star Wars. Campbell saw that the principles of life in religion, myths and legends all had a common journey for the Hero.

He outlined 12 Stages of a Hero’s Journey, which can further be simplified to 3 broader Stages. He saw these as the transformation of the ordinary person into that extraordinary hero.

1. The Call - an invitation in your ordinary world calling you on a journey

2. The Trial - crossing the threshold into a new world of uncertainty, loss and fear

3. The Return - wisdom brought to others as you have a transformation from the inside out

Self-actualization does not happen in your ordinary life. It’s when you hear the calling in your heart to cross the threshold into the unknown, into the deep, into that dark cave you fear. Remember Luke Skywalker as he accepts his call to join the Rebels, as he faces Darth Vader in Yoda’s World first in a dream and then battles him losing his arm? He had to lose himself spiritually then physically in order to be reborn, resurrected, transformed.

This is the wilderness journey of Moses by himself for 40 years and later with his 600,000+ people from Egypt to Israel together.

This is Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness and being tempted three times by the devil in private and then carrying his cross and being crucified to it in public.

Note: You are that hero. Go find your journey.

Viktor Frankl: Self-Actualization Through Meaning

Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.

Viktor Frankl

If you have not yet read Frankl’s book, “A Man’s Search For Meaning,” make it one of your top books to read this summer. Frankl details his life in the Holocaust camp and what he saw. He was a psychiatrist, but on his arrival to Auschwitz, he was stripped bare of all that he was, all that he and instead of Dr. Frankl, was given a number for his name.

“I can see beyond the misery of the situation to the potential for discovering a meaning behind it, and thus to turn an apparently meaningless suffering into a genuine human achievement. I am convinced that, in the final analysis, there is no situation that does not contain within it the seed of meaning. To a great extent, this conviction is the basis of Logotherapy.”

Frankl saw that those who had meaning despite the torture, depravity and horror of the concentration camps, increased the chances of one’s survival. So he saw who he would become because of his experience and gave and encouraged others with what little he had in the camp. One morsel of bread daily.

Meaning gave him strength and hope. He believed that each person is the only one who could decide about the meaning of their life and that he has to take responsibility for creating and deciding his own personal unique meaning. S/he can also decide the meaning of a situation individual is the only one to decide about the meaning of their life and that the individual has to take responsibility for creating and deciding its unique meaning. The ability to decide the meaning of a situation has the power to create a positive outcome from the worst of situations. The worse the situation, the more profound the meaning and personal transformation.

How to Start Self-Actualizing Now

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1. Aspire Your Full Potential now

• Write out your Self-actualization Identity Statement:
  I am a person who is _________ (write out at least 3 or more things you aspire to be and do).

• Tape it to your bathroom mirror or by your bedside to read each morning and evening. Memorize it.

2. Align With Your Full Identity

• Think and Act from this identity today

• Don’t wait until you are ready or confident.

• Start with one thought and action that reflects who you are actualizing.

3. Actualize

• Notice in the word actualize is the word act.

• Thoughts become actions. Actions become words. These become your character.

Life Questions:

Answer these questions and write them down.

1. What identity do I want to start self-actualizing now?

2. What is preventing me or constraining me from starting now?

• Solve that obstacle or constraint

Final Thought

Start today with who you wish to become. Embrace hardship, failures, obstacles, fear and make them the fallowed ground to plant the seeds of your heart.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Next week: Back to How to be Self-Transcendent: How Serving Others Transforms You to Your Highest Self

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

My Heart Is Clogged 77%! And You?

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

King Solomon Proverbs 4:23

A Korean War study examined the coronary arteries of American soldiers who had died in their 20s and found that 70% of them had atherosclerosis, with 5% having up to 90% narrowing of the arteries. 

The Law of 70s

• <70% obstruction doesn't give symptoms of chest pain (angina), shortness of breath or fatigue. Most likely will have a negative stress test with <70% obstruction.

• 70% of heart attacks happen to those with normal LDL cholesterol levels.

• 70% of heart attacks are caused by early smaller soft plaques in the coronary arteries rather than the older morecalcified obstructive plaques.

My friend Rob Thompson had died suddenly of a heart attack at just 58 years old on February 10, 2025. He was fit, strong and great. His arteries were later found to be clogged 90% in the Left Anterior Descending (LAD) coronary artery, also known as the 'widow maker', and 80% in the Right Coronary Artery (RCA), a >70% chance of sudden death. At his memorial, his wife Anita, an internal medicine physician, advised everyone to get a calcium heart scan. So I did. My calcium score in my heart vessels was 500, extremely high. Only 10% of people my age have a higher score.

A few weeks ago, I went to San Francisco to get a CT Angiogram that shows the types of plaques (soft, mixed or calcified) and degree of obstructions in my coronary vessels.

I have triple vessel disease in all the main highways of the heart.

• 77% blockage in D1, the first diagonal branch of the LAD

• 48% blockage in the RCA

• 55% blockage in RI, branch off the Left Circumflex Artery

I've likely had these plaques progress over 30 years, with much slower progression as I improved my lifestyle over the past 20 years, and especially over the past 5 years. But the danger of a heart attack is likely not from these blockages.

70% of heart attacks occur from plaques that are more newly formed, that are not calcified. These can rupture, like a pimple, and their content can lead to a blood clot that suddenly fully obstructs the heart vessel. In these cases, a stent is life-saving as it allows blood to flow. In stable obstructions, with adequate coronary blood flow, a stent may not be as useful long term as stents have side effects.

I've been doing extensive research on how to arrest and reverse the plaques. It is possible. Many studies show not only arrest but reversal. A new drug, a PCSK9 inhibitor that reduces LDL to very low levels, has shown the reversal of plaques. I think I will be an expert on the heart over the next few years. Although I am a n=1, meaning one test subject who plans to conduct numerous experiments and data collection via blood and imaging studies, my goal is to stabilize and reverse as much as possible any and all blockages.

I believe I have developed a lot of collateral vessels below the obstruction that have allowed me to bike without any symptoms. The human body adapting to disease is amazing. 

Five Principles of Healing

This solidifies more than ever for me the five principles for healing.

1. Prevent the cause(s)

2. Remove the cause(s)

3. Add the cure(s)

4. Be clear and stay clear

5. Understand and educate the mechanisms to others after results are clear

A New Life Mission

Reverse Heart Disease

When I was 14, I lay in the hospital bed, unable to move, unable to eat, hooked up to an IV for weeks with severe joint pain. I remember wondering if I would live and what was happening to me. I asked the universe these questions. I didn't believe in God at that time. I decided if I were to live, I would become a medical doctor. I recovered from my autoimmune disease, but while my mission to become a medical doctor remained, my lifestyle habits did not change and were very unhealthy, full of junk food and 4-6 hour sleep days.

Now, as I reflect, turning 55, I am very grateful for these past 54+ years. I am grateful for each day. I am grateful to Rob Thompson, my dear friend, without whom I would not have gotten a calcium heart scan and would not have known about my own severe heart obstructions. I am grateful to God for a new life mission to live a better and healthier lifestyle that can arrest and reverse heart disease. I am grateful to all the scientists and doctors who have spent their lives in this endeavour and shown what is possible.

I've narrowed my list down to what is actionable for me. I want to document my heart journey once each month, not only for my own records, but also in the hope that it might help save someone's life now and in the future. Heart disease, along with cancer, is the #1 killer in North America. Heart disease claimed 680,981 people in 2023, and cancer, 613,352 in the US. I'm working with Dr. Azra Raza, a good friend and an even better oncologist and cancer researcher who has found the first cell that leads to cancer. She's found a likely cure.

Most of my doctors are highly suggesting I go on a high-dose statin and baby aspirin. I am considering foods that can achieve the same effect to reduce LDL from 162 to 70 within six months. I started on the Esselstyn diet a month ago. I'll monitor my blood work monthly. I have high iron and giving blood helps reduce iron levels which are oxidative. I'll have a carotid intima-media thickness test (CIMT) every 3 months to measure plaque in my carotid arteries, where I already have documented plaques of 1.6mm and 1.9mm (<1.5mm ok) in July 2024. I'll repeat my CT calcium score and CT angiogram in a year.

My Ham Diet for Heart Disease Reversal:

My eye diet has allowed me to forego my monthly paid for $4000 Eyelea shot in each eye for wet macular degeneration, a major cause of blindness, for two years. My ophthalmologist was very concerned about even stopping them monthly initially, but I had stabilized my eyes through diet and exercise over the past five years since I first had my right eye distorted vision in May 2020, and now it seems stable and clear. I believe this eye diet of removing all seed oils, heated oils (no fried foods), refined sugars (baked goods and desserts but now also removing white flour and white rice and added natural sugars like maple syrup but allowing a teaspoon of honey with a meal), and almost all processed foods from my diet has also helped my heart these past five years.

I have reread Dr. Esselstyn's book, Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease. I am very motivated to do my best to follow his diet prescription while stacking other proven methods for lowering oxidized LDL and reversing coronary plaque. I've uncovered dozens, but I am starting with the top ten I can follow. I also plan to continue my high-intensity interval training, but reduce the intensity to Zone 3 (FTP) and some Zone 4 (VO2max) and stay out of Zone 5 (anaerobic). I will also do 24-hour fasts weekly and a 72-hour fast monthly to reset my metabolism and enhance autophagy (the process of removing toxins, weak cells, and cancer cells).

I'll update my heart journey in a month! 

If you are over 40, please get a baseline calcium heart scan and carotid CIMT to rule out severe heart disease—less than $200 USD in the US and $700 in Canada.

May you live long and prosper and be in good health.

Life Question:

How healthy is your heart?

Lifespan is how long you live.

• Healthspan is how long you are healthy.

• Make your healthspan as long as your lifespan.

• Despite my max heart rate being able to reach 195 and I am able to be in zone 4 heart rate (172 bpm) for over 2.5 hours, my arteries are clogged. My resting heart rate is 40 bpm as I am very fit. My VO2Max is over 50. Yet I am at high risk for a heart attack. I look very fit on the outside. I have started doing weights to reduce the decline in my muscles and bones, as the rate of decline accelerates after age 55.

• What I desire in addition to being fit and strong is to be clear in body, mind and spirit now. I'm focused on my three biggest constraints: my heart, then my eyes, then my sleep.

See you next week! Back to business.

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

What are you really worth?

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent

Eleanor Roosevelt

I used to think I was worthless and on the verge of committing suicide as a teenager. Then I asked myself, what would my mother think and feel if I were to do so? That gave me a realization that although my mother was very hard on me, she loved me and would feel devastated. I would ruin her life and most likely shock all of my younger brothers and family. I couldn't do that to them, so I decided to continue living and striving for them.

But I thought to myself, is life worth it?

What determines the worth of a thing and, better yet, a person?

If your self-confidence is derived from your sense of belief in yourself, your self-worth is derived from your feeling of Love for yourself.

What determines worth and value?

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King Jr.

I spent seven years buying, selling, and leasing premium domains. We spent millions and millions of dollars. Yet some of them are priceless, even though we acquired them at a considerable financial expense.

When I thought about the value of a person, I wondered, what is an eye worth? A kidney? A heart? A brain? The value of each part but also the value of the mind, the spirit as well as the body?

For things, we determine value by one of the following:

1. Market value - what others will pay

2. Replacement value - irreplaceable uniqueness gives more value. Eg. a Davinci Mona Lisa painting.

3. Sentimental value - what meaning, purpose and feeling it gives you

4. Utility value - what it does for you

5. Sacrificial value - what you are willing to sacrifice for it, especially used in the Bible to show the value of a person's life. Eg. sacrificial lamb or scapegoat.

In the past, people bought and sold enslaved people based on their utility value. Now, we pay people for their time and the value they provide. People have come to determine their self-worth by how much they earn, their net worth, and the possessions they have acquired.

But is value externally driven like that of goods, or should value be determined by what's inside?

My mentor's daughter, Heather Harnett, had mentioned to me that the company she was working for was worth over 3 billion dollars. I told her she was worth much more than that. I then asked an audience, how much would you sell your child for? A million, a billion? How much are they worth? Sometimes, we forget just how rich we really are when we take a survey of who we are and who we have around us, warts and all.

The 3 Factors That Determine Self-Esteem

You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

Rumi

1. Temporal Self-worth

• Past self: How you view your history, failures, achievements, and growth

• Present self: Current self-acceptance, authenticity and living your values today

• Future self: Your hope, confidence in your ability to grow and believing you deserve honour, Love and grace

2. Source of Validation

• Internal Foundation: Your character, values, integrity and growth

• External Foundation: Marked by your possessions, status, achievements, and others' opinions

3. Transcendent Purpose

• With a higher being who has unconditional divine Love, eternal worth and a personal relationship for a purpose greater than oneself that is full of Love, abundance and generosity

• Without transcendence: relegated to an ego-driven life, scarcity mindset and self-preservation mode

The 10 Commandments can be summarized into two principles:

1. Love your God with all your heart, soul, and might

2. Love your neighbour as yourself

Here, the standard is how much you love yourself, which then dictates how much you can love God and the people around you.

Jesus issued a new commandment, "Love one another as I have loved you." The new standard Jesus set was in how much He loved you. He was willing to leave His heavenly kingdom to come as a man on this earth and sacrifice Himself for you in order to make all your sins disappear through His forgiveness. His Love was expressed as Him sacrificing His life and fully forgiving despite no work on our part. That standard of Love He set as how we should love one another. It's an almost impossible standard. We might love like this for our loved ones, our children, but everyone?

So, how is our self-esteem rooted in Love? What kind of Love?

Loves That Determine Self-Esteem

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Oscar Wilde

Self-esteem is rooted in the different types of Love you have experienced and internalized within your heart.

I realized the great sacrifices my parents made for my siblings and me were their expressions of Love. When I realized the great sacrifice Jesus made for me in order to liberate me from my sins while yet holding me to a greater divine standard, I felt an overwhelming love and sense of worth because the Creator loved me unconditionally. When I received Love from my wife, family and children, I experienced a love that was personal, deep and unconditional.

1. Divine Love: Unconditional Love that is boundless, eternal and glorious.

2. Parental Love: First experience of sacrificial Love despite many imperfections.

3. Family Love: Love with rivalry for place, attention and validation.

4. Teacher & Mentors: The Love and belief they have in you and your potential.

5. Friends: Love that is accepting, making you feel a sense of belonging and mutual support.

6. Enemies: The opportunity to practice unconditional Love and forgiveness while also honouring yourself.

The Revelations of Self-Esteem

1. Self-esteem becomes unshakeable when it is rooted in divine Love and human Love instead of performance, possessions or praise.

2. Scarcity transforms into abundance when your comparison to others doesn't undermine your worth, their successes and well-being.

3. Love flows freely and generously when you are rich in Love.

Life Question:

What are you really worth?

You are not your possessions. You are not your body. You are not externalities. You are not others' opinion.

• Reflect on who you truly are and who you want to be

• Reflect on your dreams

• Reflect on how much you love yourself or not and see if you can truly love yourself

• Reflect upon a higher being and a higher purpose than what you imagine and dream for yourself

When I conduct this audit of myself, I feel I cannot put a huge number on it because even among my possessions, there are some that I would not sell at any price. Why would I then sell myself short? The laws of need sometimes elevator us down rapidly to a lack of self-worth and desperation out of a need for food, essential goods, shelter and Love.

Next week:
Self-actualizing Who You Really Are

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

Do you have what it takes to live your dreams?

Self-Confidence is so fundamental to you flourishing, yet it is the most misunderstood aspect of personal growth.

Dr. Kevin Ham

When I was young, I lacked a great deal of self-confidence. When teams were being picked, I was often the last one selected. I was short. I was quiet. Deep inside, I hoped that I would get picked early and be recognized as someone worthy of being part of their team. As I grew older, I decided to strive harder than anyone to develop the skills necessary to be a valuable team member. My mother invoked her dreams of playing the piano on me, but for me, such a solitary endeavour was not my dream. Instead, my dream was to make one of the high school sports teams. I tried out for the volleyball team. Despite being one of the shortest, I was pretty good, but I got cut. I didn't even try out for the basketball team. 

In my final year of high school, I decided I would try out for the soccer team. During the summer, I would practice doing 100 kick-ups every day, ensuring that the ball never hit the ground with each foot. Then, I would practice hitting each corner of the goalpost ten times. I got very good at kickups and shooting. I gave it my all. Guess what? I made the cut! Even though I was mainly a benchwarmer, that was the beginning of my understanding of what it took to be self-confident.

Over these five decades, as I have developed myself, I have grown from nothing to 'me'. Weak in mind to strong. Physically weak to very fit. I have observed the inputs that lead to the Seven Pillars of Self and the Three Self Outputsthat have shaped who I am today. I want to write about these in the hopes that they help you develop yourself into the person you dream and aspire to be.

Self-Confidence is not Pride or Arrogance

Pride goes before destruction and a fall before a haughty spirit.

King Solomon

A fall from a great height hits hard. The higher you go in life, the greater the fall. True self-confidence is founded on humility and wisdom. 

Humility is knowing who you are and in a spirit of serving and honouring others while still honouring yourself. God loves a humble and contrite heart.

Wisdom is discerning good and evil and knowing what to think, say and act, to who, when and where and understanding the depths and breadths of the circumstances and people.

Pride and arrogance stem from a heightened sense of self at the expense of others, characterized by self-interest and a lack of empathy for others, leading one to believe they are superior to others. It is self-serving, built upon the desire for power, status, control and recognition. It seeks gain rather than to give and serve.

Your 3 Self Outputs

You only reap what you put in and process with time, thought and action.

Dr. Kevin Ham

As you develop the Seven Pillars of Self, you will experience Three Self Outputs.

1. Self-Confidence

2. Self-Esteem

3. Self-Actualization

As I contemplated what I wanted to do in life, I also considered who I wanted to be. At the age of 14, I knew I wanted to be a medical doctor. At age 21 I knew and believed I would be a part of the Internet revolution. I dreamed of making some epic movies in my 50s to 70s. But these are things I wanted to do. Who did I want to be? I wanted to be a man of God. I wanted to be a good father, a good son, a good husband, a good friend, a good entrepreneur, a good doctor, a good philanthropist. I wanted to be an inspirational visionary, giving much more than I received. I wanted to have a wise and understanding heart, one that praises and glorifies God. And if I dared and God granted me such blessings to be not only good but also great as a human being and also in each endeavour I dreamt of doing. This has been my prayer. I have failed often, but each time I reflected and have been humbled by my shortcomings and looked to God and wisdom to lift me upagain.

I realized that self-confidence came from just a few things. But first, I realized what came before self-confidence.

3 Impostors of Self

Being untrue to your heart makes living a shadow of darkness.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Your life is a constant ping-pong match of self-doubt, self-lack, and self-criticism between your present being and the ideal being in your heart. 

1. Self-Doubt

Until you have a good sense of who you are, you will have self-doubt. Everyone around is telling you who you should be, how you should be and what you should be doing. This can be internalized as criticism that confuses your heart about who you truly are and who you should blossom into. Thus, the great oracle wisely asks you to "Know Thyself." Until you are comfortable knowing who you are, warts and all, in spirit, mind and body, you will have varying degrees of self-doubt. Who are you? And you are not just your body. You are in your body.

1. Self-Lack

You came into this world empty-handed. You will leave empty-handed. What you lack does not define you, but most of the time, we view ourselves from the point of lack, of scarcity rather than as possessing all that we need. It is hard to believe in yourself if you view yourself as lacking in what you require. I knew I was going to be a doctor. If I had viewedthis from a point of lack, I surely would have given up easily. I failed the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) twice. I failed to get into medical school right after I finished university. Eventually, during my medical interviews, my dreams and confidence in being a great doctor shone through. Where did this come from? I believed I was going to be a great doctor. The energy that emanated was palpable, and I was finally admitted into medical school.

You are not lacking. You may lack the resources, the money, the skills, the network, but you can gain those things in due time. King David said, "The Lord is my Shepherd; I have no lack." (Psalm 23:1.) See yourself with all the gifts and abundance within you, just waiting to be actualized. One day, it will be… if you believe you do not lack.

1. Self-Criticism

Who are you to do that which you dream of? You don't have what it takes. You are not good enough. This self-talk, this self-criticism, where does it come from? Impostor syndrome. The inauthenticity of being leads to self-criticism. When you see a seed, do you see the tree? When you see a caterpillar, do you see the butterfly? Imagine doubting the two.

Imagine criticizing the seed and telling it that it will never become a tree. Imagine criticizing the caterpillar and telling it that it will never become a butterfly. When you compare your current being to that which you dream and aspire to become, what does the process look like? What does that transformation look like? What does that cocoon look like? And when you tell others your dreams of becoming your dream self, what do they say? Do they criticize, in the same vein, comparing your present state (that of a caterpillar) to your dream state (that of a butterfly.) It may be logical, but logic does not actualize dreams. Belief and being do.

Acknowledge who you are now. Accept yourself. But strive to be the being in your heart and your spirit. Develop the discipline and belief to become that person who you aspire to be. Every thought, word, and action tips the scale in favour of the present and future self. Each day is a new day to start again. We do go around life in circles.

While we might deeply care about what others think, both praise and criticism, it is often best to take it in, reflect upon and discard that which is not edifying or useful to you. I often discard 80% of the feedback from others after deeply reflecting upon them and examining my heart. If valid, I take it to heart.

3 Step Self-Confidence Builder

There are many systems proposed to build your self-confidence, like the great Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, King Solomon, and Marcus Aurelius' Stoic principles. 

Dale Carnegie

1. Do the thing which you fear.

2. Shift focus from self to being interested in others.

3. Over-practice and over-prepare

4. Smile, use people's names, and practice being present.

5. Turn criticism into fuel, not fire.

6. Live with gratitude and enthusiasm.

Napoleon Hill

"I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my definite purpose in life. Therefore, I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment..." 

1. Definite chief aim (Desire)

2. Belief in yourself and your outcome (Faith)

3. Autosuggestion (Repetition of Belief). Speak your goal aloud daily.

4. Specialized knowledge (Skill building by practicing)

5. Persistence

6. Mastermind Alliance with like-minded people

Marcus Aurelius

1. Control what you can. Release what you can't.

2. Align your actions with your virtues.

3. Ignore praise and criticism. Follow your heart.

I focus on just three practices. This has been my self-confidence practice since Grade 10 when I had a deathly fear of speaking to girls. My first step was to look them in the eyes and say 'Hi,' then listen to them. I was so surprised when most looked away. This was a big realization that self-confidence is adding drops of water to a bucket and it will soon fill to the brim and overflow if I do the three practices below. The most important is #3, then #2, and then #1. Spirit, then mind, then body.

Self-Confidence Trinity

1. Make eye contact, smile and listen. (body)

   See if you can maintain eye contact longer than the other person. In due time, you will be able to. Don't forget to smile. If someone is smiling, you cannot help but smile. Smiling is contagious. Since I have such a big mouth, my smile stretches wide. Then my heart starts to smile. I recall a time when I was having a bad day, and a stranger simply smiled at me; it had a profound impact on me. I felt like my burden just melted away.

   Think and practice. (mind)

   Think deeper, with your heart. Dream. Practice more. Rehearse and act until it is you. I practised my medical interview for years in my head and in front of a mirror. The more you practice, the shorter and more impactful your delivery becomes. Lincoln's Gettysburg address. It's just two minutes long. Wow.

   Do your best to serve. (spirit)

   Your best is all you can do. Give it your all. All your thoughts, all your energy, all your actions. What more can you ask of yourself? And each time, you will get better. It is the law of growth.

Life Question:

How self-confident are you on a scale of 1-10?

• How self-confident do you aspire to be in 3 months, 6 months, one year, and two years? 

• Write a score down and evaluate yourself every 3 months.

Next week:
Self-esteem: Why do icons feel empty when they reach the pinnacle of success?

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

Things Determining the Size of Your Wealth

How much do you really want?

Every order of magnitude of wealth starts with an order of magnitude of thinking, planning and praying.

In a world of 8 billion people, how many billionaires are there?

The US leads with 902 billionaires, followed by China with 516, India with 205, Germany with 171, Russia with 141, and Canada with 76 billionaires. The top 6 countries accounted for 66% of the 3,028 billionaires worldwide in 2011.

15 billionaires have 100B+ (0.5%)

257 billionaires have 10B+ (8.5%)

2756 billionaires 1B+ (90%)

—-----------------------------------------------------------

Total 3028 billionaires of 8 billion (0.00004%)

29,350 centimillionaires 100M+ (0.0004%)

Based on the above pattern, how many people worth $10M+ are there in the world?

If you guessed 300,000, that would be an excellent guess--add a zero.

The estimated number of high net worth individuals (HNWI) above $10M+ is 2.3 million (0.03%.)

And the number of millionaires is around 60 million people worldwide (0.75%)

613 million adults hold a net worth between $100,000 and $1 million. (7.7%)

So, less than 1% of the world's population are millionaires, and less than 0.03% are decamillionaires, centimillionaires, and billionaires. 

This data suggests that it is incredibly challenging to become extremely wealthy. And it's unconventional, as 99% of the world will not become millionaires and beyond. And as wealth increases, it becomes more and more challenging to add that order of magnitude (another 0) to your wealth.

But How Do You Become Wealthy?

Wealth is mostly in your heart, then your head, then in your wallet and then given to others.

Dr. Kevin Ham

As I review the billionaire list, I don't see many people who have achieved this status by winning the lottery. Most of them either inherited wealth (10%), are self-made (61%) or a combination of both. Many deca and centi billionaires are tech moguls. They excelled in one or a few areas and scaled their success globally. Tesla, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Oracle, LVMH, Berkshire Hathaway, Google, Zara, Microsoft, Walmart, and Bloomberg are examples of how thecentibillionaires made their fortunes.

They rode on a wave of a revolution that scaled. They were leaders and typically pioneers. Google was the 21st search engine, but they did it better than anyone else before them. Then, they compounded their lead by controlling the mobile OS (acquiring Android in 2005), becoming the dominant browser via Chrome, and striking a deal with Apple to power their search (they pay Apple $20 billion each year to be Apple's default mobile search engine).

If you keep going down the list of billionaires, you can see that they were focused on typically one area and built an ecosystem or supply chain around it.

What do Walmart or Costco create? The products they sell are those of other manufacturers, but they have developed a supply chain and logistical system that is accessible and offers volume-priced discounts, leveraging economies of scale. Walmart started in middle America, in small towns, and then expanded into the big cities. Amazon started with a long tail of books and an unlimited, searchable inventory, which made it the world's largest bookstore. It then replicated this model across every other category and leveraged its cloud computing business to build a logistical infrastructure that served its stores and customers.

All of this is fractal, meaning the patterns at the highest level are mirrored at the lower levels, but just on a smaller scale and also at the higher levels at a larger scale.

It's easy to predict who will 10x to the trillionaire level.

I believe that each of these individuals had a handful of things in common:

1. They thought, dreamed, planned and executed BIG. John Doerr of Sequoia Capital, a Venture capitalist, asked the Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, how big they thought they would be when they were interviewing them. Page responded, "10 Billion." John thought they meant market value, but when they said $10B in annual revenue, John nearly fell out of his seat.

2. They were bold and contrarian. They knew that the current way of things was limited and that there was a much better way to do it. Most will not agree with them initially. Everyone thought AirBNB was a stupid idea that would fail. Why would anyone want to rent out their room or house to a stranger?

3. They had an insight based on little data but could intuit and see the future. The Kodak moment when phones would replace digital cameras gave rise to Instagram.

4. They saw the revolution that would displace the current lifestyle. Ford saw that the automobile was not just something for the elite but could be democratized for all people within a decade. Bill Gates envisioned a future where every house would have a computer, and software would power them all.

5. They had self-confidence, self-belief in themselves and their mission. Many of them believed they would impact the world or had a greater mission and ambition, such as Elon Musk's desire to go to Mars. Jeff Bezos started Amazon because he wanted to go to outer space as well.

6. They believed in the long-term viability of what they were doing. Rockefeller bought the shares of those who thought each crisis they faced would be the demise of Standard Oil. Rockefeller believed he would become the wealthiest man in the world and that there was always a way to prevail and serve the world.

7. They served a large number of people and enterprises with their mission, products, and services. In return, they were rewarded with more than they gave or contributed. 

8. They leveraged network effects by creating relationship networks, customer networks, business networks, logistics networks, and technology networks, among others.

How to Add a Zero or More to Your Net Worth

The dollar figures are the output. The input is how many people you dream of helping in a way that is better, cheaper and/or faster than what exists today.

Dr. Kevin Ham

If you dream of making $100,000 a year, you'll likely make that +/- 20%.

If you dream of making $1 million a year, you'll likely make that +/- 50%.

If you dream of making $10 million a year, you'll likely make that +/- 80%.

If you dream of making $100 million a year, you'll likely make that +/- 90%.

If you dream of making $1 billion a year, you'll likely make that +/- 95%.

When Brin and Page first started Google (initially named BackRub), it was the 21st search engine, and they envisioned $10 billion in annual revenues. Why? How did they come up with that number? They created the website PageRank, which ranked websites based on the number of sites linking to them (Backlinks) and then prioritized them further based on their authority, as determined by these backlinks. They didn't develop a revenue model for five years. Still, they improved the pay-per-click model that Yahoo had by considering how best to benefit advertisers, searchers, and themselves in a model that improved relevance for searchers and lowered costs for advertisers. What if they had only thought small and envisioned themselves making $1 million a year? Would they think of a model that scaled? Perhaps. Would they have raised as much money?

BTW, Google is the misspelling of 'googol', which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. This was the amount of information they wanted to rank and give search results for users. They thought big even when they were little. They conceptualized a server model, a ranking model and business model that scaled from small to large.

I believe Ford, Bezos, Disney, Jobs, Musk, and Zuckerberg all thought in the billions, what tech calls a unicorn company, when they started when it was just an idea, or there was a moment when they thought "BIG."

Your ceiling is the limit you place on your ideas, your dreams, your work, and your habits. You are that in being and what you are in being then has the potential to be realized in the physical world. The spiritual and mental world manifest into the physical world.

So, ask yourself, at what level do you dream of earning? 50k, 100k, 1m, 10m, 100m, 1b, 10b, 100b? And whatever level it is, you need to think, plan and execute at that level. To reach each of those levels, you need to be in sync with the same frequency of being, thinking, planning and executing.

As a reference, 22% of Canadians and 13% of Americans earn $ 100,000 or more. Approximately 1% of Americans earn $1 million or more per year.

People who earn a million dollars or more annually typically do so from high-paying professions, such as investment banking, law, insurance, engineering, business entrepreneurship, and investments, including stocks, real estate, and accredited investing.

The AI Revolution

The dollar figures are the output. The input is how many people you dream of helping in a way that is better, cheaper and/or faster than what exists today.

Dr. Kevin Ham

We've had the computer revolution, the Internet revolution, the social media revolution, the mobile revolution, blockchain (Bitcoin et al),  and now entering the AI revolution. Soon to follow will be the quantum computing revolution, the robotic revolution, the cyborg revolution, the space revolution, the virtual and augmented reality revolution etc.

The speed at which AI is growing is exponential across all three axes of speed, quality, and cost decrease. Compute power is expected to 4x each year which computes to 1000x in five years.

To put that into perspective, if AI's speed is currently at 0.1, then in five years, its speed will be at 100. Today's AI is super slow to what will come. AI's costs will decrease by at least 99% every year. Imagine how cheap it will be in five years. Its quality will increase more than its speed as it is a neural network, like our brain. The network effects of all the connections will be profound, just like human intelligence, except AI will get faster, cheaper, better 24/7 as long as we have the servers. Still, ultimately this reasoning and memory can stand alone in a phone or connected to our brains. We plug into the 'matrix' for tapping into the big neural networks that become specialized for different functions.

The value will be both at the systems level but also at the application level. Companies will be worth $10 trillion, $20 trillion, and $30 trillion, which is 10 times the current value of Microsoft and NVIDIA. That means a $10B company, with a multiple of 10x, earning a billion dollars a year, would be only 0.03% of a $ 30T company. These huge companies will be disrupting and acquiring 1T plus companies and ignoring the $10B companies, as they would be too small to matter to them. So, what applications can you build in the AI era where you can build a 'moat' of specialized, differentiated features for that industry or group of users?

This would be fractal in theory and application to $100B, $10B, $1B, $100M, $10M, and $1M applications.

I believe that in the future, those who can develop the skillset to conceptualize and build products and applications leveraging AI will be the new entrepreneurs of the future. There are yet companies and applications to build that endure, just like the web, mobile and blockchain applications we have seen.

That also creates investment opportunities. Who invested in Bitcoin or the Top 10 cryptos like Ethereum, Cardano, Ripple, and Solana when they were pennies, dimes, dollars, or $100? Who invested in AI before ChatGPT debuted?

I've observed the rise of email, the Internet, and these revolutions, as well as the dot com crash, and I feel that the AI revolution is the biggest opportunity of our lifetime. I have been blessed with foresight and intuition by acquiring virtual real estate on the Internet and premium domain names that I can now leverage with AI. I've also invested in cryptocurrency, NVIDIA in 2018, and AI last year. I started investing in AI in 2007 and 2016. I was too early, but I recognized it was coming in 2018. In 2023, I was trying to find my sweet spot, and in 2024, I decided to plunge in and start conceptualizing and building applications with my teams.

If you are young, start learning how to build AI agents and applications. If you are older, consider how to leverage AI for investments, your own business, and your job to become more productive and efficient. But at the same time, figure out how to embrace your human nature and not lose your intelligence and heart.

Life Question:

What do you aspire to do in the next year and next ten years for your financial health?

• The more focused you are, the more likely you are to execute that dream.

• The more networked your ideas, the more powerful it becomes.

• The more detailed your plans, the better you can execute on them.

• The faster you execute and get feedback, the faster you learn and iterate on your plans and products/services.

Next week:
How You Can Develop Your Self-Confidence to Succeed

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

Things That Determine Your Wealth

What does your wealth consist of?

What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

Book of Matthew

Who ever desired poverty? How many people desire wealth? Why do I desire wealth? How much is enough? These are fundamental questions concerning wealth.

There is the wealth of a person. I believe it resides in their heart. You can immediately sense the energy of a wealthy person. Most wealthy people did not start with money or may not have much money when you meet them. You just feel their inner being radiate energy, ambition, dreams and focus.

Even when a person is born into wealth, if they don’t have this wealthy heart and mindset, they will have a hard time retaining that wealth.

Where does this source of wealth come from?

Desire comes from a deep seated lack

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not lack.

King David

King David suffered a lot, a fugitive of his own country, with his own king seeking to kill him, fearful of the power David had. Eventually David became King, but then his child Absalom tried to kill him for the throne. Can you imagine? Yet, he said he did not lack. What would life be like if you had and felt no lack?

If you lack the basic necessities of life- oxygen, water, food, clothing, shelter, money, you will greatly desire them. It is the primal motivation for survival.

Once you have enough of these necessities, your thirst and appetite for them is quenched, all except possibly the desire for more money. Do you desire more oxygen, water, food, clothing or shelter than you need? Ask yourself why?

Money is the currency that allows you to exchange it for other things you may desire. In the past, this was livestock that represented wealth, then metal coins, then paper coins and now digital currency such as bitcoin and ethereum.

So the desire for money stems from its ability to acquire other things. The question is how many things do you need?

Wealth comes from a deep rooted mission

Your why is your north star.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Things just represent something for you. It’s not the thing you want, but what that thing means to you. Every time you desire something, ask yourself why and what it means to you.

There is a powerful driving force inside a person who sets out to be wealthy. A self-belief in both their desire to become wealthy and them becoming wealthy. It typically isn’t a question of if but a question of when and how.

But what is the purpose of becoming wealthy? It stems from a dream or mission to do something bigger than yourself. Perhaps its roots sprang from being scorned as a poor person like Rockefeller was when he was asked to leave his classroom, when the group photo was being taken or not seeing one’s own family not having enough to eat or seeing their church always being in need of money to do its missions. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos built their companies so that they could be stepping stones to venture into space in their lifetimes. Mine is to build a health and wellness centre, make some movies and do health and missions philanthropically.

What’s your life mission? If you don’t have one, you do have one but just haven’t discovered it yet.

Things May Matter but People Matter More

Without money, the currency of the world, it is hard to live. We need money to buy things like food, clothing, shelter, cars, plane tickets, hotel rooms etc.

But what if you were the only person left in the world? What would your life be like? What would your wish be?

There is a deep seated desire to matter to people, especially to the people closest to us. It may be your parents, your spouse, your family, your friends, your peers, or your nation. At the heart of this need is the desire to love and be loved. This transcends all things. Transcendence is to matter much to those around us and giving more than taking.

A person who is surrounded by love has the greatest wealth.

You Matter Much

There is a finality to life. We know our end, just not how, when, where, and why. As we live, we become very unique individuals. No other person in the world or in history can ever compare to you. You are unique. And with this uniqueness, you are part of the fabric of society and history. You’ve made good and poor impressions on people and the world as you observe and interact with it. But the question I’d like to ask of you is, “What is your full potential, and how can you realize more or all of it?

Life Question:

What is your life mission and values?

• Write down three of your life values

• Write down your life mission

• Post these on your bathroom mirror and read it morning and evening

Next week:
Things Determining The Size of Your Wealth

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

Things That Prevent Your Wealth

Is your relationship with money healthy?

Every person should be wealthy, but only a small percentage are truly wealthy.

I wondered why, as I read about billionaires in Fortune magazine, there are so few truly wealthy people. In 2000, there were 6 billion people in the world, yet only 587 billionaires. Today, there are over five times that number (3028 billionaires), though the population has only grown to a little over 8 billion people.

I predicted in 2000 that many of the wealthiest people would be tech entrepreneurs. There will also be a time when there will be more billionaires from China than the US in the next 50 years. Soon, there will be the world's first trillionaire, most likely Elon Musk, in the 2030s. And there will be companies worth tens of trillions as AI is leveraged for exponential growth, quality, and cost reduction.

I believe that the bifurcation of wealth will become even more pronounced as technology continues to disrupt the world at ever-increasing rates. Even existing tech companies will get disrupted by new technologies and networks.

How do you measure wealth?

Wealth is supplied by attitude but the world measures wealth in dollars. Attitude is the input and dollars are just the output.

Dr. Kevin Ham

People tend to value things very differently. I refer to this as the standards of value. Many people inherit wealth. However, great wealth often comes from startup entrepreneurs who grow something of great value from nothing. 0 to 1. Alchemy. Startups.

John D. Rockefeller was thrilled to be included in his school class photo. He imagined how he would smile, his posture, and the pure joy of later showing his class photo to his parents. Then the photographer asked the teacher to remove him from the group, as his clothes were too shabby. 

John was fuming inside but quietly left his class and watched as the photographer proceeded to take the class photo. Right then, he made it his life promise to become the wealthiest man in the world. He did not blame his poor family or even the photographer for this circumstance. This grave insult was the spark that burnt the deep-seated desire to acquire great wealth more than anyone in the world.

As I read this, tears fell from my eyes for this poor little John, who had his heart pierced by the knife of the photographer's request to eliminate John from the class photo. That photo was a reminder for John never to let others take his dignity or identity away from him ever again. He cherished that photo into his old age, falling short by just two years of his goal to live to 100.

He valued himself greatly from that moment, seeing himself of such great wealth and great worth, even though he was still poor in other's eyes.

I had a similar moment as I was trying to grow my business in 2000; I wanted to partner with a local computer company to help me obtain domain names. The CEO of a large tech company was interested in helping me, but he had his own ideas about which domain names to acquire. I wanted generic keywords. He wanted brand names like redhat.com, pinkhat.com. He yelled profanities (F#**) that if he didn't make millions of dollars, he'd..! I decided I would never work with anyone like that and chose to go my own way. 

I prayed to God, saying that since I didn't know anything about business if He would grant me wisdom in business, I would glorify Him because it would be all His doing.

If you don't value yourself greatly, how can you dream great dreams, and how can you believe you can accomplish them greatly?

Money is the root of all evils

Most people run away from opportunities for wealth even though they may desire wealth because they do not recognize wealth comes disguised as great hardship

Dr. Kevin Ham

There is a verse in the Bible that says that money is the root of all evils. Many people are content to be poor or struggle in life, believing that this is a more noble pursuit than accumulating wealth and contributing it to society and others.

But many people gloss over the words, the love of money and see the word money. It is the love of money that is the root of all evils. When money becomes your idol, it violates the Creator. And in business, who is the Creator but you? When you worship money, you become a servant of money, and it masters you. Money must be your servant and not your master.

I told a university student that if he understood this one principle and made money as your servant so that it would serve you, you can't help but be wealthy.

Money must be circulated

He who scatters gathers all the more. He who waters will himself be watered.

There is another vital principle in life: The life of the flesh is in the blood. In the life of the business, what is like blood? Blood must flow for life. What must flow for a business? Money. That's why it's called Cash flows. Money must come in, go through the business and go out. We pay taxes to the government, we pay for our daily living, and we pay tithes and donations to non-profits. This circulates money beyond yourself to your family, community, country and globally.

Money must have a definite goal

Money without a goal is like shooting blindly at no target.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Making money for the sake of money will either result in it being stored and rotten or spent recklessly for pleasure and luxury without good measure. People who win lotteries typically lose all their winnings. People who gain money quickly often struggle to preserve or grow it. People who acquire money immorally or illegally will ultimately face dire consequences. The scales of justice eventually balance.

When you have a definite goal for money, it aligns with your life force. When you have a goal for money, money naturally also becomes your servant, as the goal is its master. The money circulates to fulfill your goal. You fulfill the previous principles by giving money its master goal. The greatest goal for money is to serve others rather than yourself. The greater that goal, the more powerful money can be made or raised.

Life Question:

How much money do you need to serve your goals?

I’ve made more than I bargained for so I must donate it for great purposes in saving lives.

Dr. Kevin Ham

• I have yet to meet many people who lived and practised the wealth principles above concerning money.

Next week:
What level of wealth do you want?

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

Is Your Heart filled with Gold or Is It Clogged?

This could save your life, or your parents or a loved one.

Is Heart Disease Stalking You?

Your heart needs to be open, for from it comes the source of life, your blood.

Just a few weeks ago, I completed my weekly 75 km ride with a hard 23-minute effort in a three-hour ride. I felt strong and fit. 200-watt average, and I thought that at my age of soon-to-be-55 years, I was in the best cardio fitness of my life.

My goal is to increase my VO2Max because it's one of the best predictors of longevity. Then, keep it up until my 80s with 30-minute high-intensity interval bike rides three times a week.

My dearly departed friend Rob Thompson died of a sudden heart attack at age 58 on Feb 10, 2025. His wife, Anita, a physician, implored their 1000s of friends at his celebration of life to get a calcium heart scan. So I got one a couple of weeks ago. My friend Jesse said he was 100% sure I would get a great result. I wasn't so sure, as I ate junk food and fried foods for decades until my mid-30s.

A score of 0 is excellent. My wife delightfully got that 0 score. Me? I was expecting a score of around 200-300--moderate atherosclerosis. I was somewhat shocked to see a score of 500, which signals possible severe atherosclerosis. This score places me in the top 90% percentile for my age group, requiring further investigation to see how much my coronary arteries are clogged.

Your Arteries Start Developing Plaque in Your 20s

The flow of life is impeded by processed foods, stress and lack of sleep.

Dr. Kevin Ham

A Korean War study examined the coronary arteries of 300 American soldiers who had died in their 20s and found that 77% had visible signs of coronary atherosclerosis (plaque buildup in arteries) and 45% had moderate to severe narrowing (≥50% luminal stenosis) in at least one major coronary artery. The soldiers were, young (early 20s), lean, physically fit and had no known symptoms of heart disease. I had a hunch from this study that the sins of my dietary past would be hard to erase. Last year, my neck arteries and carotids showed mild atherosclerosis, so I expected the same in my heart.

When I saw my score of 500, I thought the worst-case scenario was my arteries being clogged by 80%+. But logically, this made little sense to me as I had no chest pain or shortness of breath, even when riding with the fastest bike riders in the city or with pro riders. Could my arteries be that blocked? Did my atherosclerotic plaques calcify because they were older?

Here’s what I learned.

1. Hard calcified plaques don't cause heart attacks, even though they may narrow arteries.

2. Soft uncalcified plaques, which aren't detected on calcium heart scans, can cause heart attacks as they rupture into the blood stream, blocking blood flow.

3. A rate of calcification and soft plaque formation greater than 15% signals a high risk of a cardiac event in the next five years.

4. A calcium heart scan has the radiation equivalent of a year's worth of background radiation.

5. Women have less atherosclerosis and lag behind men by 7 to 10 years due to the protective effects of estrogen and menstruation.

6. Women need to be careful after 50 or when they are post-menopause because estrogen declines significantly, and they lose the protective effects.

Due to my eye condition (wet macular degeneration), which is also likely caused by the same atherosclerotic process, I've cut out almost all processed foods, heated oils, fried foods and most refined sugars. But my diet is high fat, up to 40% fat, as I drink kefir, lattes, butter, liver, fish eggs, meats, eggs, etc. My LDL is slightly elevated ("bad") but my HDL is high ("good"). My blood results are good in all other areas except that I have slightly elevated iron, which I can lower simply by donating blood.

How Much Am I Clogged? And You?

We’re all clogged somewhere because of our past. Why don’t we fix that?

Source: Kauvery Hospital

While my calcium score is pretty high, logically, with my VO2Max being high, I'd be very surprised if my coronary arteries were clogged more than 30%. However, this follows the theory of constraint—where is the most constricted area? If only one area is clogged heavily, I need to modify my lifestyle even more drastically.

I keep thinking of Rob. If only he had a calcium heart scan earlier, he would have found out his LAD was 90% clogged and his RCA 80%, giving him a risk of >70% sudden death. His gift to me may reveal issues with my coronary arteries..

I was riding my bike with my daughter, and for the first time in years, I put on my heart rate monitor. As we rode up the hill, I asked how high her heart rate was. 130. Mine was 100. At 12% grade and a harder effort, hers was 180 and mine 130. I then did my own hard max effort for a minute to see how high my heart rate would go. 220 minus your age is a standard max heart rate. My heart rate climbed slowly and steadily to 171. I pushed it harder, and it hovered there. I relaxed and then, after 30 seconds, went hard again to see … 170.

I think my arteries are under 50% clogged, but I will take it easy until I get a CT angiogram, which will disclose the degree of blockage.

Just like Rob's wife, I ask that you get a baseline calcium heart scan if you are older than 40. You can get one for as little as $100-$200 in the US. I had to pay $700 CAD for mine. I plan to buy a CT scanner one day and offer it for $100 CAD, and I hope to save or prolong many lives in Canada on behalf of Rob's legacy.

How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease

Not too many doctors will advise you about diet. Doctors aren’t taught food and nutrition, only diagnosis and medical treatments.

Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease. Figure 1. Coronary angiograms of the distal left anterior descending artery before (left image) and after (right image) 32 months of a plant-based diet without cholesterol-lowering medication showed profound improvement. 

In 2012, I was praying to God to reveal to me how to cure heart disease. I often liked to hang out at Regent Bible College bookstore, and as I was browsing the Specials Table, I saw a cover call to me, "Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease." What was a health book doing at a Bible bookstore, I wondered.

As I flipped through it, I looked at before and after CT angiograms of a clogged coronary artery having complete reversal in an unstentable area of the LAD. I was shocked. I never heard of clogged arteries being reversed.

The author was Dr. Caldwelll Esselstyn, who was head of the Cleveland Clinic, one of the top medical clinics in America. He was a cardiac surgeon who studied a group of 24 patients with advanced coronary artery disease. These patients could barely walk to his office without stopping for a rest.

He devised a strict low-fat (only 10%), whole food and plant-based diet based on medical studies that would keep LDL cholesterol lower than 70 (1.4 in CAD measurements). He believed that at these low levels, atherosclerosis could not take place. He followed these patients for over 12 years. At the end of the study, none of the 18 patients who followed the diet had further cardiac events (no heart attacks, strokes or deaths). The six patients who did not adhere to the diet had a combined total of 13 cardiac events among them.

When I saw my score of 500, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to measure my own progress over the next year based on diet. I decided I would follow this essentially vegan diet, minus meat, fish, dairy, eggs, nuts, avocados, and all oils for a 10% fat diet. It will be tough for me, but I only have one body and have always wanted to test this because I had assumed I had blockage myself. I will do annual calcium scans and CT Angiograms.

The other diet I want to test is Dr. William Davis's diet, which is a gluten-free, whole food diet that removes processed foods. You can eat meat, eggs, fish, vegetables, and fruits. A low-carb diet. He is a cardiologist but was getting metabolic syndrome (prediabetes, high blood pressure, 'wheat' belly). His thesis is that modern wheat and refined wheat (white bread) causes the formation of many small-sized LDLs, which readily oxidize and form foam cells when the inner lining of the blood vessels are injured by heated oils and refined sugars (processed foods and fried foods).

You can read his book Wheat Belly.  He suggest that ancient grains and sourdough fermented breads are likely fine. He's prevented the progression of heart disease in 80% of his patients. He claims to have solved the 20% who were refractory by helping restore their gut microbiome and getting rid of SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth), ensuring the thyroid is normal and no problems with gums or teeth. Ensure good levels of your Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Iodine, Magnesium, and omega 3s (EPA/DHA). Take a high-quality multivitamin. 

Caveat Emptor

We ask patients who have chest pain what their last meal was. If it was KFC or fast food, the odds of it being a heart attack were quite high. My friend had a 'silent' heart attack with some mild symptoms. She had to have four stents in four of her coronary vessels. Early 50s. I asked her what she had before her heart attack. Five Guys.

China has 11,600 KFCs, increasing by 1350 per year, while the US has 4200. I predict the incidence of heart disease and cancer will rise rapidly in urban China and surpass the US.

If you are addicted to smoking or the Western Diet or have metabolic disease, the solution is simple, but doing it is hard because your dietary and exercise lifestyle have become a habit.

For this, I recommend two books, Atomic Habits and The Compound Effect. A third, if you really like habit-transforming books, is The Slight Edge. Start with Atomic Habits by creating a system and the tiniest version of the habit you would like to do.

Make hard decisions and lifestyle changes now so your life is healthier and easier later. Or, adopt an easy lifestyle now, and it will be hard physically and mentally later.

I pray and hope that this is helpful to you or someone in your circle. Share it with your family and friends and perhaps you too can save a life.

May you live long and prosper.

Life Question:

How long do you want to live and what can you do to make that possible?

I asked a crowd ‘Who wants to live to 100 years?’ and hardly anyone raised their hands. I then asked, how about a healthy 100 years and almost everyone raised their hands.

Dr. Kevin Ham

• I do wish to live to 108. Robert Marchand, who set all the world records on the bike for 90 years and older, passed away recently at 109. He's my 'physical' role model.

• When I saw my score of 500, I thought maybe I should be content with living an average age of 78. But now I'm determined to help many others because of my own health scare, and I pray that God blesses me with a long life so that I can do more good in the world.

• Each day is a bonus day for me since I never expected to live past 40 years when I was younger.

• Thank you, Lord. Thank you, family. Thank you, everyone, for making life interesting and worthwhile.

Next week:
Another health newsletter or a Wealth Series?  

1. Health on the heart or preventing cancer risk

2. Investing for the long term or 

3. How I think the world will change because of AI and how it might disrupt you and how you might leverage it in your life and at work. 

Please let me know.

I really enjoy receiving feedback. I will do my best to reply.

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

Why Most People Never Finish Like the Tortoise

Settling for average or good prevents your Magnum Opus, your great work.

What have you started in the past year, and what have you finished? I buy so many books. I scan the table of contents, read the first few pages, then the last few pages, and then decide if I want to read the middle. Most of the time, my books sit in my library unread.

I'm a great starter, but I am primarily motivated to finish what I start when I begin with the end in mind--one of Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Do you have a GPS destination when you start something, or is it an adventure with an unknown destination?

Your New Year’s Resolution

Only 8% complete their New Year’s resolutions.

23% quit in the first week.

43% quit by the first month.

80% quit by the end of February.

But why such a low completion rate?

Top 7 Reasons People Fail to Complete their Goals

1. Vague Goals. "I want to lose weight." But it's not specific enough, and no plan has been developed or contemplated. No timeline, success metrics, fail safes, or accountability if not adhered to. Eg. I want to lose 15 pounds by the end of the year. 1 pound per month by changing my eating habits (specific plan) and exercising (specific plan with goals). I will recruit a buddy or join a club to help me achieve my goals. If I don't, I will …

2. No Identity Shift. Instead of "I will run a marathon," shift your identity to "I'm a runner who never misses my runs." I used to be scared to ride my bike up mountains, but I shifted my thoughts to being a person who will attack the mountains and be a hill climber in ten years.

3. Too Much Too Quickly. The weekend warrior mentality results in burnout. Slow and steady wins the race. Start small and increase slowly over time. I tried to do 80 pullups a day. My shoulder got injured, and I had to take a break for three months. Now, I just increase one pullup every month, up to 15/day. My end goal is 10/day at 100 years old so I can hold my grandchildren.

4. Lack of a system. Willpower and motivation will wane over time. To measure my fitness, I set up a key event, like a Gran Fondo every September. I also set monthly and weekly goals.

5. An all-or-nothing Mentality. Rather than calling it quits if I miss a workout or a week, I give myself some guidelines, like not missing two in a row. Progress is more important than perfection.

6. No Accountability. Who do you have a social contract with to complete your goal?

7. No Purpose. No Why. Instead of losing 15 pounds, I want to live long enough to lift each of my grandchildren.

Lack of Drive to the Finish

If you don't know the finish line or your purpose for your project, your business, or your life, how will you know where you are in that journey?

Aesop tells the fable of the tortoise who wins the race by plodding along slowly but consistently to the finish while the hare sprints ahead but then takes a nap before the finish. I've adopted the tortoise as my model. Tortoises live long, up to almost 200 years, but walk ever so slowly. They are able to traverse both land and water. They have a protective shield.  The hare breeds rapidly but lives a short life of under a decade. The hare is naturally fast, but in this fable, it is not disciplined. The adage, slow and steady wins the race.

Most people settle for average or good enough to fit in, to conform and belong. The outliers seek to change their world for the better, to make a dent in their world. We all grew up with this dream of happily ever after, to be someone worthy of ourselves, our parents, and our peers, but years of being told to fit in have educated us to conform and be just like everyone else.

Do you have a dream?

Having a dream is big. Starting that dream is even bigger. Completing that dream is a dream.

Dr. Kevin Ham

The ant is another creature from which I learn lessons. The wise King Solomon asked us to look at the ant, consider its ways, and be wise. The ant has no commander, overseer, or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. Otherwise, poverty will come upon you like a thief. 

Ants also work individually but in unison. It's a marvel to see how well and hard they work collectively. 

But life is more than food or finances. What is the dream in your heart that you will diligently work for like the ant? Are you actively thinking, praying, planning, living your dream?

Life Question:

What big dream have you yet to start and yet to finish?

Finish the dream you have yet to start or did in part.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Life is precious. Each day is a gift, an opportunity to start once again on the dreams in your heart.

Next week:
I had planned to start a series on wealth but I just had a calcium heart scan, and the result came back very high (which is not good) so now I'm contemplating doing a health series instead.

With my eye, the risk was just blindness. With my heart, it could be early death. 

Please let me know if you prefer a health series or a wealth series.

See you next Thursday!

Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.

How to Master Anything in Life

To master anything, find the master who can teach you. Don’t chase shortcuts.

We are all apprentices, but with focus and intention, we can become masters of any domain. 

Some people are highly gifted, but that gift will lay dormant without focus and intention. 

A teenager, newly landed in Philadelphia, joined the summer basketball league and finished the season with zero points. His father, Joe, had played in the NBA. He was distraught and disappointed, thinking he let his father down. His father told him that he was proud of whether he scored 60 points or zero. But this teenager aimed to score 60 points one day. So, he started planning and practicing every aspect of his game--from footwork to foul shots, dribbling to jump shots.

The next season, he scored some, and by the second year, he climbed to the upper ranks of the league. He practiced daily and multiple times a day to improve and excel. In a few short years, he was one of the best-ranked basketball players in the country. He was the youngest to be drafted to the NBA at 18. Chappeau (hats off) to you, Kobe, as they say in the biking world.

THE EXCUSES:

But that’s Kobe. He was special. Not me.

Any two individuals’ DNA is 99.9% identical. What separates the great is the intentional focused actions to activate our genes.

Dr. Kevin Ham

Epigenetics is the physical manifestation of the DNA in our genes. While our DNA does not change, our mindset and actions can activate or deactivate genes into proteins, which changes our physical, mental, and, I believe, spiritual being. 

There are also neural pathways and blood pathways that are built with all three parts of our being. In the mind, we call this neuroplasticity. In computer science, we call these neural networks. 

What if Kobe didn’t practice every day? What if he practiced a few times a week like everyone else? He wouldn’t have activated his genes and his neuroplasticity. 

Before any actions, our world is a world of thoughts. 

Positive vs. negative, certainty vs. uncertainty, confidence vs. doubt, faith vs. fear.

What kind of mindset do you think Kobe had? Positive or negative, confidence or doubt? It is unlikely Kobe would have made it to the NBA if his thought world was not positive and hopeful.

It’s too hard: So start with just one a day.

I started doing pull-ups daily and biking daily for a ‘season,’ sometimes years, and I quickly realized that if I did one thing daily, I would become top 10% of the world, top 10% in my community, top 10% of my age group or top 10% of my potential. I can do 15 pull-ups daily right now. I can do 50-diamond pushups with ease. I can ride 100 km a day for a week. How? Because I started with one pull-up and one ride a day and did it consistently over time.

But consistency is not enough. There must be an intention to improve and fulfill your potential.

I’ve been driving for 40 years, but I don’t feel like I am a great driver because I drive without the intention of getting any better, whereas a race car driver is very focused on driving better and faster.

But I am too old or too weak

The greatest reason to exercise is when you are weak, so you can be strong. But most people use weakness or age as an excuse to not exercise at all.

Dr. Kevin Ham

My father had a major stroke in 2014, at age 78, that left the right side of his body paralyzed for a month. I had lost hope. He had lost hope. I gave him pure extract green tea tablets and a capsule of omega 3s daily. He was admitted to a rehab centre. He started moving his right knee so slightly that it was hard to notice. By three months, he was limping. By five months he was walking 80%. His rehab doctor said it was a miracle.

But during COVID, he lay in bed all day and lost a lot of muscle (Sarcopenia) and mobility. This year, on his 89th birthday, he could barely walk. He was so unsteady on his feet that he had fallen twice on the way to my car. So I showed him the muscle graph.

The rate of muscle decline increases after menopause and andropause in one’s early 50s and then further at 75. To combat that, he had to exercise daily, every hour. He started by squeezing one of those hand grips for a few months and noticed his right grip strength became stronger. 

I then asked him to do 20 squats each hour five times a day for a total of 100 squats a day. He was soon doing 200 squats a day and then 300. Then, he started to kneel on the ground and move his body up and down from the floor 100, then 200 times a day. Why? He had a day where he had fallen and couldn’t get up for four hours and was ‘rescued’ when my sister came home. He was determined to be able to get up if he fell again. Now, he can go from lying on the floor to getting on his knees and getting up. He is motivated by the law of muscles I showed him below. Muscles can’t help but get stronger with resistance. I told him astronauts couldn’t walk when they came back to Earth because they had no gravity (or resistance) in space.

You can be as fit at 80 as when you were 55 if you actively exercise!

10 Levels of Mastery

In Judo, there are 7 levels one must pass to go from a white belt to a black belt. But did you know there are 10 degrees of black belts? Getting a black belt is like a medical doctor getting his medical degree. It is just the beginning, and to be a master, you must go through nine more degrees of mastery. 

Define the ten levels of mastery you want in anything you really wish to do. I became a master of domains, but I stopped at level 5 after 7 years. Imagine if I continued for another 18 years until now. I started biking again in 2008 and have kept it up and increased my intensity and consistency. As a result, I’m definitely in the top 10%, probably the top 1% for my age group. 

MrBEAST’s Mastery of Youtube: 340 million subscribers

Mr Beast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, started posting YouTube videos in 2010 at the age of 11 to show the unboxing of his Christmas gifts to his grandparents. Just look at his yearly subscribers and growth. Wow.

2012: 22 subscribers
2013: 612 subscribers
2014: 1,604 subscribers
2015: 15,429 subscribers
2016: 460,551 subscribers
2017: 2,009,414 subscribers
2018: 13,322,625 subscribers
2019: 28,417,290 subscribers
2020: 49,540,718 subscribers
2021: 87,033,676 subscribers
2022: 125,377,344 subscribers
2023: 224,698,814 subscribers
2024: 340,691,570 subscribers

MrBeast has repeatedly shared three major principles that helped him grow into the biggest YouTube creator in the world:

1. Obsess Over Mastery

   MrBeast treated YouTube like a science, studying thumbnails and titles and watching time for hours daily with a mastermind group. His growth came from relentlessly analyzing what worked and constantly improving every detail over a decade.

2. Reinvest Back In

   He reinvested nearly all his earnings back into his videos, making each one bigger, more viral, and more valuable.

3. Make the First 30 Seconds Irresistible

   MrBeast optimized every opening to immediately hook viewers with suspense, surprise, or a massive prize.

When you look at the curve above, you start to take a long, consistent view of mastery. You start to think in years, five years, and decades.

Life Question:

What do you want to master?

It starts with an idea. Then a decision. Then a commitment. Then an action plan. Then repeated action. Then intensified action. With persistence and focus.

Dr. Kevin Ham

• Simple in theory. Hard in practice.

• Practice, practice, practice daily.

Next week:
Why Most People Never Finish Like the Tortoise

Settling for average or good prevents your Magnum Opus, your great work.

See you next Thursday!

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