Ep. 8: Top 5 Heart Health & Longevity Strategies for 2025 — with Dr. Regina Druz, MD, MBA, FACC, FMCP-M, integrative cardiologist

As 2024 draws to a close, Dr. Regina Druz steps back from the science for a more personal episode — her favorite of the year — to share the top five things she’s carrying into 2025 for heart health and longevity. After a year of significant personal health challenges, her list starts not with a gadget or a supplement but with grace, gratitude, and a mindset reset: the recognition that there is no magic bullet, and that the real agent of change is you. From there she gets practical, walking through the tools she actually uses — investing in metabolic health, deciding with data, and mastering the “three S’s” of stress, sleep, and supplement stewardship — and previews what’s coming at Holistic Heart Centers in 2025.

Watch on YouTube: A video version of this episode is available on the Own Your Heart Health YouTube channel. Subscribe to be notified of new episodes.

Episode Chapters

[00:00] Introduction: Looking Back on 2024
[02:15] #1: Give Yourself Grace & Gratitude
[05:15] #2: The Mindset Reset — There Is No Magic Bullet
[12:15] #3: Invest in Metabolic Health
[17:30] #4: Decide With Data
[24:00] #5: The Three S’s — Stress & Sleep
[28:15] Supplement Stewardship: The Third S
[37:00] Bringing the Top 5 to Life in 2025
[42:00] Closing: Happy New Year & an Invitation
[45:30] For Clinicians: Practice Power Hour

Transcript

[00:00] Introduction: Looking Back on 2024

Dr. Regina Druz (00:00): Welcome to Own Your Heart Health. I’m Dr. Regina Druz, your holistic cardiologist. This week we’ll dive into common heart health concerns, uncovering root causes and unpacking scientific discoveries and controversies. The information provided does not constitute medical advice. Please contact your healthcare practitioner before making any changes that may impact your health.

Dr. Regina Druz (00:30): Hello, everyone. This is probably my favorite episode of 2024, because today I want to reflect on what we learned this year — what I learned personally and working with my patients at Holistic Heart Centers — and translate it into the top five things you can do in 2025 for heart health and longevity. There may well be a top six for 2026, but whatever’s on your mind as you think about the year ahead, December is a season to reconnect: with yourself, your family, and your friends, and to reflect on the events of 2024. I’ll share my five, how they came about, and maybe they’ll resonate with you. Drop me a comment on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook — I’d love to hear your top five, and what was most impactful for you this year.

[02:15] #1: Give Yourself Grace & Gratitude

Dr. Regina Druz (02:15): Number one for me was learning to give myself grace and to be grateful for everything I have. 2024 was a year of significant health challenges that I overcame — and we’ll talk more about that in 2025 — but I’m enormously grateful for how things turned out. Every day I start by being grateful and giving myself grace for showing up, for being there for my family and my patients. I have a little gratitude corner in my office — if you’re watching on YouTube you can see it, with photos of my family and memorable moments — and every morning before work I stop there and reflect on all the wonderful things already in my life. That resets me; it gives me my foundation. Some people keep a gratitude journal; others, like me, simply give gratitude in their thoughts — use whatever strategy works for you.

Dr. Regina Druz (04:15): Grace toward yourself is the recognition that you are human and vulnerable — not a machine. You have to give yourself a pass, even when something didn’t go right; it’s a learning opportunity. We learn from our mistakes and from our accomplishments, and sometimes the smallest, nearly invisible thing — the one no one else would notice — took the biggest effort, and that tiny incremental step can open the door to an entirely new trajectory. So give yourself grace, be curious, and accept yourself as you are as you move into 2025.

[05:15] #2: The Mindset Reset — There Is No Magic Bullet

Dr. Regina Druz (05:15): Number two is what I call the mindset reset, and it may not be what you think. There is no magic when it comes to changing the trajectory of your health. I’m sorry to say it — and if you believe in magic, wonderful, so do I in certain ways — but no outside agent will do it for you: not supplements, peptides, bio-regulators, advanced blood work, genetic analysis, or epigenetics. I’m a hardcore scientist who loves all of these things and uses them daily to shift my patients’ health trajectories. What I’ve learned is that they are not magic bullets. The real magic happens when patients — when we as human beings — take accountability, stay coachable, remain consistent, and follow through. That magic comes from connection, collaboration, and partnership. The supplement or the blood work is just a tool that helps an accountable, determined person unlock their own magic.

Dr. Regina Druz (07:30): So the mindset reset is understanding that the magic lives in you. If you want to shift your heart health, overall health, and longevity in 2025, it won’t come from a single intervention — it will come from you understanding what you need to do, committing to a path of transformation, and holding yourself accountable. This is what we see in clinical medicine: the patients who succeed are the ones who take accountability, stick around, and do the work — even though, because we deal with complex biological systems, not everything works out. There is rarely a single thing that radically shifts your health in a positive direction, though unfortunately plenty of things can shift it the other way. If you’re waiting for one intervention to transform your health, reset your mind: the agent of change is you, and the intervention is just what helps you unlock that power.

Dr. Regina Druz (09:30): I recently watched a documentary about Christopher Reeve, famous for playing Superman, who suffered a tragic, life-changing accident in the prime of his life. He said something profound: when he played Superman, the definition of a hero was an extraordinary person who can do extraordinary things. But after his accident, meeting many others affected as he was, he came to understand that the real heroes are ordinary people who overcome extraordinary circumstances. Whatever your extraordinary circumstances are, the mindset reset is knowing that the magic to overcome them is inside you. That’s your kryptonite — except this kryptonite lives within, and it’s a source of strength.

Dr. Regina Druz (11:00): Hi everyone, it’s Dr. Regina. I know there are contradictory opinions about nutrition for heart health and longevity — the discussion gets heated and confusing. Some push low-fat, low-cholesterol; others are fans of ketogenic diets; and there are many voices urging vegan or vegetarian eating. To cut through the clutter, my team and I created Holistic Heart University: on-demand courses, nutrition and lifestyle resources, and supplement guidance to make healthy choices for your heart easier to understand. I’m especially proud of our open office hours and the Q&A feature where you can put us in the hot seat. Head to the show notes for the link and use promo code OWNER20 for 20% off our annual subscription. I’ll see you in office hours.

[12:15] #3: Invest in Metabolic Health

Dr. Regina Druz (12:15): Now, I’m a hardcore scientist — and also what I’d call a gadget girl. If you’re listening on audio, this is a point where you might switch to YouTube, because the next few things get more visual and sciencey. We’ve covered gratitude, grace, and the mindset reset — my top two, and the things that helped me shift my own health trajectory and that I see shift my patients’ trajectories every day. Now let’s talk about the tools in my top five for 2025 that you can use once you have that foundation.

Dr. Regina Druz (13:30): Number three is invest in metabolic health. At Holistic Heart Centers, and personally, I use a little device called the Lumen — it looks like a big e-cigarette; you exhale into it for a few seconds. It measures the CO2 in your breath and, through a connected app using artificial intelligence and machine learning, tells you in the moment whether you’re burning carbohydrates, fats, or both. As you gather data points, you get an increasingly personalized prescription for improving your metabolic health. In 2025 we’ll talk in depth about what metabolic health and metabolic flexibility mean, the metabolic rigidity we so often see in middle age and beyond, and why reversing it matters — because the cardiometabolic connection is strong and impactful across all types of heart disease, not just coronary disease but also structural disease like heart failure and electrical disturbances like arrhythmias.

Dr. Regina Druz (15:45): Some links are well known — obesity has a very negative impact on the cardiovascular system, including the heart muscle itself. In 2025 we’ll bring a course on heart and obesity for our professional affiliates, run open office hours for established patients, and launch our first group program: a cardiometabolic program using the Lumen and other tools to help participants regain control and become metabolically flexible. Investing in metabolic health is a true priority, because it’s linked to cardiac health, brain health, cancer risk, musculoskeletal wellness, dementia, and essentially every chronic disease — even diseases not directly tied to cardiometabolic parameters tend to alter them. That’s number three.

[17:30] #4: Decide With Data

Dr. Regina Druz (17:30): Number four I call decide with data. As a scientist, I want objective information — measurements and outcomes — so that when I work on myself or with patients, we don’t just talk about how someone feels; we have objective measures of whether their health is shifting in the right direction. The Lumen is part of that data stream, but consider one of the most common issues adults face: elevated blood pressure. Many people check it only sporadically — they go in for a physical and are suddenly told their pressure is high and that they should start medication. We see many patients in exactly that situation who say they don’t want medication and don’t believe they truly have high blood pressure. If you’ve followed the show, you know one of our earlier Rapid Response episodes covered exactly how much weight loss — and what kind — is needed to reverse blood pressure. But without data, we have no visibility into what’s actually shaping your heart health.

Dr. Regina Druz (19:30): With blood pressure, the data is easy to get. I use a Withings monitor — they make medical-grade devices and an unusually elegant cuff — and we feed that information into our algorithms to understand where a patient’s health trajectory is heading. In 2025 we’ll devote episodes to how to properly take your blood pressure, what the numbers mean, and what to do if a doctor told you your pressure is elevated. A quick recommendation: if you were told in 2024 — in urgent care, a doctor’s office, anywhere — that your blood pressure was high, note that roughly 130/80 is the usual cutoff, though we diagnose hypertension from multiple readings, not a single one. You may have white-coat hypertension, where pressure rises in a medical setting but is lower at home. This is where data rules.

Dr. Regina Druz (21:30): Beyond blood pressure, we use data decisions for body composition analysis. In all our weight-loss programs we track not just the number on the scale but body composition, because body composition is key to cardiometabolic health — so you can see how it all connects. Deciding with data is powerful because it brings multiple variables together, and that’s our number four, tightly connected to number three, metabolic health.

Dr. Regina Druz (23:00): Hi everyone, it’s Dr. Regina. Many of my colleagues and I are seeing patients arrive with self-ordered blood tests. When this trend started, I thought it would help — who doesn’t want more access to their health data? But too often self-ordered labs lead to more confusion and frustration: patients come in with a pile of results and are no better off. That’s why we created HeartWell Toolkits — a curated collection of at-home blood and genetic markers focused on heart and brain health that gives you the data you need to make informed, actionable decisions. You can order them at the shop on holisticheartcenters.com — the link is in the show notes. Use code TESTING10 for 10% off and free shipping.

[24:00] #5: The Three S’s — Stress & Sleep

Dr. Regina Druz (24:00): Number five is a broader category I call the three S’s: stress, sleep, and supplements. It’s number five for me, but it may be number one for you. Many people have serious sleep issues, especially in winter in northern climates, when days get shorter, sunlight is reduced, and daylight-saving changes disrupt our circadian rhythm. That sleep disruption increases the stress load on our bodies and minds. Our entire biology is attuned to day and night — the circadian rhythm — and when it’s fractured, whether by the season, by staying up too late, or by night-shift work, it raises your stress load, which in turn worsens the disruption and your cardiometabolic health. It’s all connected, so it’s critical to know your sleep and stress parameters.

Dr. Regina Druz (26:00): The encouraging news is that we can now easily measure both stress and sleep. I use an Oura Ring — I have no relationship with the company; I’m just an end user — and I like it because it reports useful information: my resilience, my stress exposure through the day, and my sleep and recovery. Over time it learns your patterns and tells you when to start winding down and when to go to bed. Do I always follow it? No — but I know where I stand and I make the effort. When I follow it for meaningful stretches, I see it favorably affect my cardiometabolic health: because I decide with data and track my body composition, I can see that when I’m better aligned with my stress resilience and sleep needs, I gain muscle and lose internal fat. Stress exposure, stress resilience, and sleep are critical parameters — two of the three S’s.

[28:15] Supplement Stewardship: The Third S

Dr. Regina Druz (28:15): The remaining S is supplements, and what I want to talk about is something I call supplement stewardship. It’s been on the periphery for some time, and in 2025 we’ll dig through it. I’ll share what I’ve seen in a few individuals who reached out to us — most recently a prospective patient who was using 50 supplements per day. Stop and think about that: 50 supplements a day. At Holistic Heart Centers we have a rule that patients don’t use more than 10 supplements a day — and even that is a lot. We can’t mandate what people take, but it would be almost unheard of for me to recommend more than 10. In general we emphasize supplement deprescribing and de-escalation. This particular patient was spending about $1,500 a month on supplements.

Dr. Regina Druz (30:00): While that’s relatively rare, it isn’t our first such patient. One of the first things I often do is take patients off most of their supplements and let them wash out, so we can understand the underlying physiology and biochemistry without it being masked. Supplements can be impactful when someone is changing their health trajectory — and because we decide with data, we can measure how impactful they’ve actually been within a comprehensive cardiovascular regimen, whether a patient is trying to reduce or eliminate medications like statins or blood-pressure drugs, become more metabolically flexible, or shift their biological-age and longevity parameters. (If biological aging is top of mind, I’d point you to the previous episode, where I discussed how it’s measured and revealed my own results with Ryan Smith of TruDiagnostic.)

Dr. Regina Druz (31:45): There’s no reason to take buckets of supplements a day. It isn’t warranted by any outcomes we know of, and it can be harmful — because spending so much of your resources, energy, and money on supplements usually means you’re not doing something else. There’s an opportunity cost: often it means the diet or lifestyle plan isn’t dialed in, and instead of a pill for an ill, people reach for a supplement for a test result or a finding. That’s not what supplement stewardship is about. So in 2025, take a critical look: are you overusing some things, underusing others, or taking things whose effect you can’t even tell?

Dr. Regina Druz (33:30): To help, Holistic Heart University includes a community open to both patients and professionals, with a Heart Health and Wellness membership for anyone wanting to up-level their heart health — you don’t have to be a doctor or nurse, just someone who wants to be an educated consumer of integrative cardiology. In January 2025 we’ll open our first course in that membership, Heart Supplements, going step by step through commonly used heart supplements and the ones I use less often — what’s been published, how reliable and impactful it is, and, crucially, our own clinical notes: what we have and haven’t seen in our patients. We’ll present de-identified cases so you can learn why a supplement was recommended and whether it actually worked, or whether it’s mostly internet hype. The links will be in the show notes.

[37:00] Bringing the Top 5 to Life in 2025

Dr. Regina Druz (37:00): So, to recap, my top five for 2025 are: grace and gratitude; the mindset reset; invest in metabolic health; decide with data; and the three S’s — stress, sleep, and supplements. How will we bring these to life at Holistic Heart Centers? Through Holistic Heart University, where existing patients have courses on metabolic health and flexibility, including ones using the Lumen and the other digital biomarkers we rely on across our programs. We’ve also introduced open office hours where any patient can drop in virtually to speak with our team, and we bring the pearls we learn into those sessions — for example, in January we’ll start a series to help patients with a fasting-mimicking diet, a powerful tool for reshaping metabolic health.

Dr. Regina Druz (39:00): Because we decide with data, in 2025 we’ll provide each patient with reports that let them map their health-transformation journey in objective terms, not just by how they feel — and I’ll present mine first, here on the podcast, so you can see what it’s about. We’ll also run programs that help patients use devices to shift their stress exposure, build stress resilience, improve sleep, and normalize circadian rhythm. We’ll explore tools like HeartMath, designed to improve heart coherence — we’ll explain what heart coherence actually is — and look at vagus-nerve stimulation and how to modulate your vagal response for relaxation and rejuvenation. Combined with data-driven decisions and the digital biomarkers we use, this is how we’ll advise patients on their best course for supplements, peptides, and bio-regulators. And as much as you may think you know the common heart-health supplements, the Heart Supplements course will change some minds.

[42:00] Closing: Happy New Year & an Invitation

Dr. Regina Druz (42:00): Those are my top five for 2025, and I hope at least some resonate with you. I’d love to hear yours — do mine resonate, and is there anything you think I missed? We could talk about heart health and longevity for days, and we often do, but this top five is meant to give you direction and a sense of where we’re heading. Drop a comment on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube so I can learn which resonated and what else would be helpful from a heart-health and longevity perspective.

Dr. Regina Druz (43:30): A reminder that we have many resources at Holistic Heart University, and stay tuned for our group program, launching mid-to-late January 2025. The first cohort will be small — about 10 patients — and I have a surprise for the first five who step into that first-ever group. If you’d like to know what it is and consider joining, comment on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube and I’ll share it with you. With that, I wish all of you a fantastic and blessed 2025. Personally, 2024 brought many trying experiences, and with the help of my family and friends I overcame some low points and reached some of my highest heights, professionally and personally. I wish you the same — a year of peace and joy, and the strength of an ordinary person with the kryptonite to overcome extraordinary circumstances. Keep being grateful, graceful, and unlocking the magic of health transformation that I know you all have. Happy New Year 2025.

[45:30] For Clinicians: Practice Power Hour

Dr. Regina Druz (45:30): Hi to all the professionals listening today. If you’re thinking of launching a cardiometabolic or integrative cardiology program in your practice, we can help. Holistic Heart Centers helps physicians in practice expand into hybrid or concierge services — head to the show notes and click the application link; your intro call is entirely free. Ready to schedule a practice review? Use code DOC10 for 10% off our Practice Power Hour, a 60-minute coaching session; the link is in the show notes. Thank you for tuning in to Own Your Heart Health with Dr. Regina Druz. This podcast is powered by Holistic Heart Centers. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review us on your favorite platform, and visit holisticheartcenters.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel. See you next week.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Dr. Druz’s top 5 priorities for heart health and longevity in 2025?

In this year-end reflection, Dr. Regina Druz shares five priorities. (1) Grace and gratitude — treating yourself as a human being, not a machine, and starting each day from a place of thankfulness. (2) A mindset reset — accepting that there is no magic bullet and that the real agent of change is you, with tools and interventions serving only to support an accountable, consistent effort. (3) Invest in metabolic health — because cardiometabolic health underlies nearly every chronic disease. (4) Decide with data — using objective measurements like blood pressure and body composition rather than relying on how you feel. (5) The three S’s — stress, sleep, and supplement stewardship. The first two are foundational mindset shifts; the last three are practical, tool-supported habits. As always, this is educational content, not personalized medical advice.

What is metabolic flexibility, and why does it matter for the heart?

Metabolic flexibility is your body’s ability to efficiently switch between burning carbohydrates and fats for fuel depending on what’s available and what you need. Many people in middle age and beyond develop metabolic rigidity — a reduced ability to make that switch — which is closely tied to cardiometabolic dysfunction. Dr. Druz explains that the connection between metabolism and heart disease is strong and broad, affecting not only coronary artery disease but also structural heart disease like heart failure and electrical problems like arrhythmias, as well as brain health and many other chronic conditions. Tools such as breath-based metabolic measurement (she uses a device called the Lumen) can estimate which fuel you’re burning and help personalize diet and lifestyle changes. Improving metabolic health is framed as one of the highest-leverage investments you can make for your heart, ideally guided by a clinician.

What is “supplement stewardship,” and how many supplements is too many?

Supplement stewardship is the practice of using supplements thoughtfully and sparingly rather than accumulating them. Dr. Druz describes encountering a prospective patient taking 50 supplements a day at a cost of about $1,500 a month — and notes that Holistic Heart Centers generally recommends no more than 10, with an emphasis on deprescribing and de-escalation. A common first step is to take patients off most supplements and let them wash out, so the underlying physiology can be assessed without interference. The concern isn’t only cost: over-supplementation carries an opportunity cost, often signaling that diet, sleep, or lifestyle issues haven’t been addressed and that people are using “a supplement for a finding” instead of fixing root causes. The takeaway is to review your supplements critically with a qualified clinician — identifying what you may be overusing, underusing, or taking with no discernible benefit.

How can tracking data like blood pressure, sleep, and stress improve heart health?

Dr. Druz’s “decide with data” principle is that objective measurements reveal what’s actually shaping your health, rather than relying on how you feel. For blood pressure, home monitoring (she uses a medical-grade Withings cuff) can clarify whether elevated office readings reflect true hypertension or white-coat hypertension, where pressure rises only in a medical setting. Body-composition tracking matters more than the scale alone, because it ties directly to cardiometabolic health. Wearables such as the Oura Ring can quantify sleep, recovery, stress exposure, and resilience, and over time reveal personalized patterns — Dr. Druz notes that when she aligns her habits with her sleep and stress data, she sees real gains in muscle and reductions in internal fat. The goal is to combine these objective signals to guide and verify whether your interventions are working. Always interpret personal data alongside your own physician, especially with diagnosed conditions.

Show Notes & Resources

Host: Dr. Regina Druz, MD, FACC

Dr. Regina Druz is a board-certified holistic cardiologist and the founder of Holistic Heart Centers. She blends conventional cardiology with integrative, root-cause medicine, with a focus on cardiometabolic health, personalized prevention, and cardiovascular longevity. Her practice runs cardiometabolic programs that track body composition and digital biomarkers to help patients shift their health trajectories, and she is the host of Own Your Heart Health and the creator of Holistic Heart University and the HeartWell Toolkits.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Holistic Heart University — on-demand courses, the Heart Health & Wellness membership, and the Heart Supplements course (use code OWNER20 for 20% off an annual subscription)
HeartWell Toolkits — at-home heart and brain health lab panels (use code TESTING10 for 10% off and free shipping)
Previous episode — biological age and DNA methylation testing with Ryan Smith of TruDiagnostic
Earlier Rapid Response episode — how much weight loss is needed to lower blood pressure
Lumen — breath-based metabolic measurement device (carbohydrate vs. fat burning)
Withings — medical-grade home blood-pressure monitors
Oura Ring — wearable for sleep, recovery, stress exposure, and resilience
HeartMath — heart-coherence training; plus vagus-nerve modulation for relaxation and recovery
For clinicians: Practice Power Hour coaching with Holistic Heart Centers (use code DOC10 for 10% off)

Holistic Heart Centers

holisticheartcenters.com
HeartWell.ai — AI-powered cardiovascular risk assessment
Address: 55 Bryant Avenue, Suite #6, Roslyn, NY 11576
Phone: 877-511-5166
YouTube: @reginadruzmd
Instagram: @dr.reginadruz
Podcast: Own Your Heart Health — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms

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