Heart health for stupid people

4. October 2007 William Davis (3)
I'm kidding.

What I'm referring to is the incredibly lame information I come across that passes as "heart health" on the internet, magazines, and other media. Just to keep abreast of what is being said, I subscribe to multiple newsletters and magazines and I witness the sorts of advice offered to the reading public.

A recent long-winded article on a popular website listed the "exciting" strategies available for a healthy heart:

Eat healthy--by eating a "balanced" diet low in saturated fat

Don't smoke

Exercise

Don't ignore chest pain symptoms or breathlessness

Know your numbers! meaning your cholesterol numbers. "If your cholesterol is high, you may need to speak to your doctor about medication to reduce it."


Surely they must all believe we're stupid. Otherwise, why would they repeat the same obvious information over and over again? Quit smoking? Gee, you think so?

How about some real heart healthy advice:

Get a heart scan--since we have to accept that cholesterol values are a miserable failure in detecting hidden heart disease. So is waiting for symptoms to appear.

If you have any measure of coronary plaque, ask your doctor to assess lipoproteins, not lipids (cholesterol).

Take fish oil for omega-3 fatty acids--At a dose of 1000 mg or more of EPA + DHA, heart attack risk is reduced by at least 28%.

Eliminate wheat and other processed carbohydrates --Small LDL has emerged as the number one cause of coronary plaque, not high cholesterol from saturated fat.

Get vitamin D assessed--The effects are huge--HUGE. There's already a study in a kidney disease population that showed a substantial reduction in mortality with vitamin D supplementation. More data are coming, including our own.


That's a start--truly effective, practical heart healthy strategies that go way beyond the conventional bland advice.


Copyright 2007 William Davis, MD

Money, money, money, money

3. October 2007 William Davis (3)
I've been asked the question numerous times:

Why aren't heart scans more popular?

First, let me qualify by saying that heart scan have indeed grown in popularity over the past decade. I think the real question is:

Given the enormous usefulness of CT heart scanning to detect hidden, asymptomatic coronary atherosclerotic plaque, why haven't they more readily been incorporated into conventional medical practice?

That's easy: There's no money in it.


Say, for instance, your doctor orders a heart scan and somehow receives a $1000 for the test. Scan centers would be scanning 100 people a day, falling over themselves to do scans.

This would be similar to a heart catheterization. Order a catheterization, do 30 minutes of work, and get $1000. Or, order a nuclear stress test. Depending on how its done and where, $1800-4000 is paid by the insurer.

Order a CT heart scan and how much is paid to the doctor? Usually nothing. At most, a nominal fee might be paid if the doctor reads the scan.

With heart scans, there simply is no big payoff.

We learned the implications of this situation 10 years ago when I was trying to help my friend, Steve Burlingame, the owner of Milwaukee Heart Scan. (I am NOT and NEVER WAS an owner.) Steve was trying to let everybody know about this great new $2 million dollar heart scan device in the Milwaukee area.

The first few years were tough for Steve: Carrying the substantial expense of this device while doctors essentially gave the technology the cold shoulder. It simply did not fit into the financial equation. Why change the way things were, particularly when there was virtually no financial reason to do so? To counter this, Milwaukee Heart Scan followed the model many other scan centers have followed and marketed directly to the public.

I see this as yet another example of why people need to take control of health care away from doctors and hospitals, the current controllers of the system who are providing a disservice to the public they are supposed to be serving. These institutions, for the most part, serve their self-serving financial interests, not your health interests. It's the same equation that drives food manufacturers to make more and more processed carbohydrate foods that they sell for substantial markups, not green peppers and cucumbers that make little money.

I regard heart scans as among the greatest self-empowering tools in health ever conceived. It was that way in 1997; it remains that way in 2007.

The many faces of LDL

3. October 2007 William Davis (13)
Ginnie came in for an opinion about her heart scan score of 393. At age 57, this put her in the 99th percentile, a high score.

As usual, we did a lipoprotein analysis by NMR (Liposcience). Some numbers:

LDL cholesterol: 96 mg/dl
This value puts Ginnie's LDL in the most favorable 25% in the country.


LDL particle number: 2140 nmol/l
This value is in the worst 25% of the country and is the equivalent of an LDL cholesterol of 214 mg/dl (take off the zero).

In addition, over 90% of Ginnie's LDL particles fell into the small class.

Had we run some other values, how would they have turned out? These are my estimates (since we didn't actually run them in Ginnie), but having run side-by-side numbers in past, reasonable estimates would have put:

Apoprotein B somewhere in the 120 to 140 mg/dl range

Direct LDL 100-130 mg/dl range.


In other words, conventional calculated LDL is the least reliable of all the ways of examining low-density lipoprotein.

It can also go the other way: High calculated LDL, low LDL particle number or ApoB or direct LDL. And, indeed, these other measures have proven superior in their ability to predict "events" like heart attack over conventional calculated LDL.

Unfortunately, relying on conventional LDL is like a broken speedometer on your car. You really can't gauge accurately how fast you're going; sometimes you could be way off. While insurance companies and many physicians still continue to balk at this argument, the data have already been generated that show that lipoprotein analysis (my bias is NMR) is not just superior, but enormously superior for accuracy and event prediction.

In addition, lipoprotein analysis has proven a crucial tool that accounts for our extraordinary success in reducing and controlling CT heart scan scores in the Track Your Plaque program. I doubt that we could have achieved the same level of success using conventional lipids.

I'm also aware of the logistical difficulties obtaining lipoprotein testing in a world enthusiastically supportive of hospital procedures and smugly ignorant of superior prevention tools like lipoprotein analysis. I've learned just how difficult it can be in our Track Your Plaque Member Forum; I've also learned about some strategies for obtaining these tests that I hadn't been aware of, thanks to the resourcefulness of our Members.

We will be working on some solutions in the coming months.


Copyright 2007 William Davis, MD

What does "Success" mean in the Track Your Plaque program?

2. October 2007 William Davis (11)
Say you begin with a CT heart scan score of 400.

You correct your lipoprotein pattterns, take fish oil, correct 25-OH-vitamin D3 to 50 ng/ml, correct your other hidden patterns, follow a diet suited to your patterns.

One year later, you get another heart scan. What score would constitute "success"?

With all of our recent talk about record-setting reductions in heart scan scores, is it really necessary to drop your score that much to succeed?

For instance, is our latest record-setting 63% drop in score better than "only" a 10% drop in score? Both represent reversal of coronary plaque. Both signify huge reductions in risk for plaque rupture, or heart attack.

You can read about how we view the various forms of success in the program by reading our latest Track Your Plaque Special Report, Winning Your Personal War with Heart Disease: The Track Your Plaque 5 Stages of Success.

We are making the Report available to everyone. Just go to the www.cureality.com homepage.

Is health the absence of disease?

30. September 2007 William Davis (2)
It sounds like a word game, but is health the absence of disease?

In other words, if you're not sick, you must be well. If you don't have cancer, heart disease (overtly, that is, like angina and heart attack), the flu, diarrhea, fevers, pain someplace . . . well then, you must be well.

Of course, most of us would disagree. You can be quite unhealthy yet have no overt, explicit disease. Yet this is the philosophy followed in conventional medicine when it comes to many aspects of health.

With regards to heart disease, if you have no chest pain or breathlessness, you don't have heart disease. "Oh, all right, we'll perform a stress test to be sure." Track Your Plaque followers, as well as former President Bill Clinton, recognize the enormous pitfalls of this approach: It fails to identify the vast majority of hidden heart disease. In heart disease, the apparent lack of overt, sympatomatic "disease" does NOT equal the true absence of disease, even life-threatening.

How about nutritional supplements? Vitamin D is a perfect example. Blood levels of vitamin D of 10 ng/ml--profound deficiency--are common, yet people feel fine. Beneath the surface, blood sugar rises because of poor insulin response, hidden inflammatory responses are magnified, HDL is lower and triglycerides are higher, coronary plaque grows at an accelerated rate, colon cancer activity is heightened . . . Though you feel fine.

Can an abnormal "endothelial response" be present while you feel fine? You bet it can. This refers to the abnormal constrictive behavior of arteries that is present in many people who have hidden coronary plaque or risk for coronary plaque, but is entirely beneath consciousness.

How about a triglyceride level of 200 mg/dl, fatally high from the Track Your Plaque experience? (We aim for <60 mg/dl.) This is typical in people who follow the diets endorsed by agencies like the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, organizations too eager to keep the money flowing from corporate sponsors and thereby offer us their advice based more on politics and less on health. Triglyceride levels of 200 mg/dl cause no symptoms.


At so many levels, the absence of disease is NOT the same as health. Health is something that is expressed by, yes, feeling good, but it's also measured by so many other factors hidden beneath the surface. An annual physical is one lame effort to address this aspect of "health." But it needs to go farther, much farther.

Heart scan, lipoprotein testing, vitamin D blood level--those are the basic requirements to go beyond the shortsighted practice of the conventional approach in the world of heart disease.

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

30. September 2007 William Davis (8)




Take a look at the list of ingredients in Cocoa Puffs: corn, sugar, corn syrup--all high glycemic index foods.

In other words, Cocoa Puffs is the physiologic equivalent of pure table sugar. Sure, it comes packaged with this wacky bird and the back of the box usually has fun games and offers. There's also the clever, fast-paced TV commercials to remind you of how fun Cocoa Puffs can be.


What is the actual consequence of a breakfast of a food like Cocoa Puffs in a cup of skim milk? That's easy: A big surge in insulin and blood sugar (from the corn and sugar), a drop in HDL cholesterol, surge in triglycerides (from the sugar and sugar-equivalents), increase in small LDL. Beyond this, you raise blood pressure and experience an insatiable increase in appetite. Then you get fat.

Obviously, none of this is desirable. Then why does the American Heart Association allow its Heart CheckMark endorsement on the package?

The Heart Association is trapped in 1982. Low-fat was in, saturated fat was the sole enemy of heart disease.

In 1982, the evils of small LDL, for instance, were unappreciated. LDL cholesterol was LDL cholesterol--all of it was bad and saturated fats seem to raise LDL. But the story has evolved enormously since then: LDL is not all the same. Small LDL is among the principal culprits in heart disease, the same small LDL hugely magnified by Cocoa Puffs and other similar products that fill 70% of supermarket shelves.

The American Heart Association needs to get with the times. The conversation on healthy diets has progressed considerably. Yet garbage foods that wreak havoc on health like Cocoa Puffs continue to be endorsed by an organization that still carries substantial clout with the American consumer.

My advice: Until they change their tune, anything that carries the endorsement of the American Heart Association should be eliminated from your diet.

Further validation of the Track Your Plaque 60:60:60 targets

29. September 2007 William Davis (3)
The latest analysis of the data from Treat to New Targets (TNT) Trial shows that higher HDL cholesterol values are associated with reduced risk of heart attack, even in those with low LDL cholesterol values.

This counters the argument that some have made that, if a person takes a statin drug, raising HDL adds no additional benefit.

In the 9770-participant trial (randomized, double-blind), participants were given atorvastatin (Lipitor®) 10 mg or 80 mg per day. The study was sponsored by Pfizer, the manufacturer of Lipitor®. All participants were survivors of heart attacks, significant coronary disease by heart catheterization, or had previously undergone coronary angioplasty, stent placement, or bypass surgery—a high-risk group.

At the third month of enrollment, lipid (cholesterol panel) values were obtained and used as the basis for analysis. Participants on 80 mg atorvastatin achieved an average LDL cholesterol (Friedewald) of 77 mg/dl; participants taking 10 mg achieved a level of 101 mg/dl. Using these values, 8.7% of participants taking the higher dose of drug experienced an event, compared to 10.9% on the lower dose (which the investigators called a 22% relative reduction).

However, when the groups were re-analyzed by HDL cholesterol levels, higher HDLs remained predictive of less heart attack and other events, with the group having the highest HDL of =55 mg/dl experiencing 25% less events. Most interestingly, this effect was upheld even in participants with very low LDL cholesterols of <70 mg/dl.

I'm always a bit leery of drug company-sponsored studies, especially ones in which virtually all the participants tolerated a drug like Lipitor 80 mg, a dose in my experience that is very poorly tolerated for more than a few months. (Muscle aches are, in my experience, inevitable. I do not even recommend this dose.) In other words, the data are, in that respect, too good to believe.

Anyway, despite my reservations about these big money studies, there was nothing to gain from the HDL observation. (Of course, at one time, there would have been, given Pfizer's efforts to commercialize the now-kaput torcetrapib, scrapped because of excess mortality in phase II trials.)

Thankfully, there's other data that likewise suggest that the higher the HDL, the better. Yet more validation for the Track Your Plaque lipid targets of LDL 60 mg/dl, triglycerides 60 mg/dl or less, HDL 60 mg/dl or greater.



Copyright 2007 William Davis,MD

My sister called today . . .

28. September 2007 William Davis (5)
My younger sister, aged 48 years (sorry, sis), called this morning.

"I'm going to my doctor today. What labs should I tell him to draw?" she asked.

"Why do you have to tell him? Can't you just ask him what he thinks should be drawn?"

"No," she said. "He just draws what I tell him to."


Maybe my sister is bossier than most. But I've heard this from many patients, as well. They go to their primary care physician and end up requesting this or that test. Sometimes their doctor complies. Often, they resist and refuse to do so.

I've heard many complaints from patients about doctors refusing to order even fairly benign tests like a vitamin D blood level or lipoproteins, even a C-reactive protein.

The number of these sorts of complaints seems to be growing. Ten years ago, it rarely happened. Today, I hear this nearly every day.

I think it is symptomatic of the growing discontent we all have with the status quo in healthcare. We are all expected to submit to the paternalistic, what-can-you-possibly-know mentality that still rules the day in medical offices. Only 40-50 years ago, if you wanted to look at a medical book, you'd have to ask the librarian for special permission so that they could make sure you weren't just a pervert trying to look at naked bodies. Today, every manner of medical and health information can be found online. Quite a contrast.

We are entering a new age, one in which people are far better informed, have surfed the internet and read media reports on health topics, have been exposed to drug company advertising, and know a fair amount about nutritional supplements. I think the system needs to change to accommodate this rapidly growing hyper-knowledgeable society.

In past, when a health problem turned up, you'd turn to your doctor first. I predict that,in the next few years, we will use the doctor as a place of last resort, the person we turn to when all else has failed, after you've exhausted your information sources.

I hope that the Track Your Plaque process will become one of the engines of change, an information resource that provides empowering tools that don't replace your doctor, but provide many information tools that are superior and may minimize your reliance on a health care provider.


Copyright 2007 William Davis, MD

Failure to diagnose

27. September 2007 William Davis (6)
I picked up a hospital publication today. Featured prominently on the cover was a glossy photo of an attorney and his wife, both smiling.

The headline: "Atorney grateful for the lifesaving work of the ______ Hospital."

The story detailed the near-tragic story of how this 59-year old man was exercising at his local gym, only to lose consciousness after stepping off one of the exercise machines. Bystanders--hospital employees, as luck would have it--checked the man's pulse: none. They performed CPR. Ambulance called, blah blah blah.

Severe coronary disease discovered, extensive atherosclerotic plaque in all three coronary arteries, a 12-inch chest incision later and he and his wife are eternally grateful for the fine work done at X hospital. And so they should be for a job well done.

But wait a minute. After the urgent hospital dust settled, did anyone ask the one crucial question: Why wasn't this man's far-advanced heart disease identified? Why did he have to die and be resuscitated before his disease was recognized?

If this man was an indigent, homeless alcoholic . . . well, perhaps it would be no surprise. Health is neglected in this population. But a successful attorney?

Detecting hidden coronary atherosclerotic plaque simply isn't that tough. In Milwaukee, $199 would have diagnosed his disease unequivocally.

Unfortunately, we still have to set off drumrolls and crash cymbals to even begin to get the attention of the practicing physicians around us who continue to fail to diagnose hidden coronary disease. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear if this man had a $4000 nuclear stress recently that was normal. Why would a nuclear stress test be normal? Easy: Wrong test.

The hidden message: The failure to diagnose paid somebody and some hospital over $100,000. So, why bother detecting disease before the payoff?

The profit motive in all this is all too obvious. The only other explanation is the enormous, repetitive, and systematic stupidity of the conventional approach to heart disease detection. You have the solution, at least for you and the people around you, in a CT heart scan and in the Track Your Plaque program.


Copyright 2007 William Davis, MD

Interview with world heart scan authority, Dr. John Rumberger

26. September 2007 William Davis (1)











Dr. John Rumberger has, from its start, been a good friend of the Track Your Plaque program.

We are very proud to have his friendship. Dr. Rumberger is not only a world-renowned scientist in the world of cardiac imaging and heart scanning, but also a humanitarian and gentleman. From the very first day I met Dr. Rumberger many years ago, when he answered my many silly and naive questions about heart scans, I came to appreciate his deep and genuine interest in improving the world of heart disease detection.

I tracked Dr. Rumberger down from his busy schedule, now on a new project at the Princeton Longevity Center in Princeton, New Jersey.




TYP: Dr. Rumberger, we understand that your career has taken a new direction. Can you tell us about your current project?

Dr. Rumberger: I have not really taken a new direction, but further expanded on my opportunities.

I remain Medical Director of PrevaHealth Wellness Diagnostic Center (formerly Healthwise) in Columbus, Ohio. At that center, we see patients referred by their doctors for further refinement in cardiac risk stratification using heart and body scanning. However, by only doing scans alone there are limited opportunities for me to react in a meaningful way with the individual patients and thus I miss opportunities to do direct one-on-one teaching.

Currently, I spend most of my time in Princeton, NJ as Director of Cardiac Imaging for the Princeton Longevity Center. At the PLC, we perform comprehensive medical examinations along with screening CT scans, blood work, fitness and diet consultation to affect a more thorough one-on-one experience. Each patient then receives a comprehensive de-briefing.

In addition, since I have been involved with cardiac CT for now nearly 24 years, the PLC also affords me an opportunity to develop a CT coronary angiography training program for cardiologists and radiologists (www.cardiaccta.us). Together, these new efforts are merely an extension of my interests in prevention, patient care, and teaching.



TYP: Based on your book, The Way Diet, we understand that you advocate gravitating away from processed foods and incorporating more nuts, monounsaturated oils, lean proteins like fish, and a reduction in processed carbohydrates. You’ve also been a proponent of the Mediterranean diet that demonstrated a dramatic reduction in cardiovascular events in the Lyon Heart Study.

Has your philosophy or practice regarding nutritional strategies evolved or changed in any way since your book was published?

Dr. Rumberger: No, the strategies put forward in The Way Diet have, if anything, been reinforced by further and further research in selecting foods that are naturally high in anti-oxidants with lean sources of protein and reduced intake of processed sugar-containing preparations. The book, however, is what I call a ‘philosophy’ book which looks at three major aspects: proper diet, adequate exercise, and stress management. I also include some recipes which follow the dietary plans, but are done using ingredients that are commonly found in the average home.



TYP: We regard you as the source of much of the wisdom in heart scanning as the basis for early heart disease detection. Much of the original and subsequent scientific data, in fact, bears your name. Can you touch on some of the new directions your research has taken over the past couple of years?

Dr. Rumberger: We have come a long way from the beginning and there is a long way to go to get this incorporated into routine preventive care in the United States.

The most recent research has provided not so much more information as continuing to reinforce the old research. As I always say: if your research continues to show the same thing, then maybe there is a clear pattern here! The biggest challenge is getting this message into the mainstream and also trying to get cardiologists (and internists and, in fact, the general public) away from ‘stenosis’ detection to define the real cause of heart attacks (plaque) and into ‘plaque detection.’ This is where basic heart scanning has the greatest potential to reduce the expanding burden of heart disease.

You may be aware of our SHAPE initiave in which an international group of cardiologists and scientists have advocated getting a heart scan FIRST and then, if abnormal, checking your cholesterol values; rather than using cholesterol (which is valuable, but highly variable in predictive power) to determine who needs medications or further testing. The heart scan can define the current level of plaque and THEN you can determine what to do about it. [See the Track Your Plaque report on the release of the Shape Guidelines at SHAPE Guidelines]



TYP: We understand that you are performing CT coronary angiography in your center. What are your thoughts on the role of CTA in 1) screening for coronary disease, and 2) its role in the diagnostic process?

Dr. Rumberger: CT coronary angiography (CTA) is an incredible method to really define the extent of disease, beyond just coronary calcium. Its role is most appropriate in ruling OUT a significant ‘stenosis’ while really defining the absence or presence (and thus ‘how much’) of plaque. It is the ultimate ‘plaque detector’. CTA is best used in patients who have some symptoms, but in whom the clinician feels may NOT have clear cardiac chest pain. By risk-stratifying using CTA, we also gain information about heart size, heart function, whether there is prior heart damage, as well as other important information. This then becomes a very universal means to risk-stratifying individuals.



TYP: Thanks for your wonderful insights, Dr. Rumberger! We look forward to hearing about your future projects and research directions.





About John Rumberger, PhD, MD:
Dr. Rumberger is among the world's leading authorities on cardiac and vascular imaging using EBT and CT Scanning. Dr. Rumberger was among the first to pioneer the use of new CT technologies for heart scanning. He currently serves as Director of Cardiac Imaging at the Princeton Longevity Center, Princeton, NJ.

Dr. Rumberger is formerly Professor of Medicine and Consultant in the Department of Cardiovascular Diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Rumberger received his doctorate in engineering from The Ohio State University in 1976 and graduated from the University of Miami School of Medicine in 1978.

During his over 20 year career as a clinician, educator, and researcher, Dr. Rumberger has published nearly 500 scientific papers and book chapters. He has lectured worldwide on EBT, early heart disease diagnosis, and wellness. He is an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and a Founding Member of the International Society of Atherosclerosis Imaging. Dr Rumberger is an active Reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association, Archives of Internal Medicine, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Can natural treatments "cure" or "treat" any disease?

30. August 2006 William Davis (0)
According to current FDA policy, the answer is a flat "NO!"

No natural treatment, whether it be fish oil (as a nutritional supplement), l-arginine, vitamin D, magnesium, various flavonoids like theaflavin or resveratrol, can be declared to treat or cure any disease. That's why you see the evasive and vague wording on nutritional supplements, nutraceuticals, and various foods, like "Supports heart health" or "Supports healthy cholesterol". Claiming, for instance, that taking 6000 mg per day of a standard OTC fish will reduce triglycerides and stating so on the label of a supplement is unlawful and prosecutable.

Think what you will of Mr. Kevin Trudeau (author of Natural Cures They Don't Want You to Know About"): visionary, consumer advocate, David vs. the Goliath of the FDA and "Big Pharma", or huckster, scam artist, and one-time felon. But Trudeau got it right on one important issue: The FDA dictates what claims can be made to treat disease. On one of his ubiquitous informercials, Trudeau states:


"...the way the system works today, you have the Food and Drug Administration—the FDA, and you have the drug industry. They really work in tandem. Unfortunately, there’s an unholy alliance there. People don’t know that the majority of commissioners of the FDA, which allegedly regulates the drug industry, and the food industry—Food and Drug Administration, the commissioners of the FDA—the majority of them—go to work directly for the drug companies upon leaving the FDA and are paid millions and millions and millions of dollars. Now in any other format, that would be called bribery; that would be called a conflict of interest; that would be called payoffs. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. So what has occurred is the Food and Drug Administration is really working in tandem with the drug industry to protect their profits. Example: The Food and Drug Administration says that only a drug can diagnose, prevent, or cure any disease."


He goes on to say that

"...the Food and Drug Administration says only a drug--nothing else--can cure, prevent, or diagnose a disease. Therefore the Food and Drug Administration continues to call more and more and more things diseases. Therefore they eliminate all-natural remedies. No one can say what a natural remedy can do if it’s been classified as a disease. So Attention Deficit Disorder is now a disease. Therefore only a drug can cure, prevent, or diagnose it. Cancer is a disease. Acid reflux is now a disease. Obesity is now a disease."

(PLEASE do not construe this as an endorsement of Mr. Trudeau's overall opinions. But I do think he's right on this one point.)

The stated purpose of this restrictive policy is to protect the public. Indeed, in years past before protective legislation, ineffective and even poisonous products were commonly sold as therapeutic treatments. (Remember cocaine and morphine in cold remedies? Lead and other toxic agents were also common.) Unfortunately, a huge gap has emerged as clinical data accumulates that support the efficacy of nutritional treatments and other non-traditional methods to treat or alleviate diseases. Any disease, or anything construed as disease as Trudeau points out, can onlybe treated by a drug.

In the FDA's defense, they have made slow progress in allowing "claims" of benefits for several supplements and food substances, such as the beta-glucan of oat products, soy protein, and most recently barley (for cholesterol reduction). The scrutiny is quite thorough and the wording of the policy is quite specific. Regarding oat products, for instance, the policy states:

"FDA concluded that the beta-glucan soluble fiber of whole oats is the primary component responsible for the total and LDL blood cholesterol-lowering effects of diets that contain these whole oat-containing foods at appropriate levels. This conclusion is based on review of scientific evidence indicating a relationship between the soluble fiber in these whole oat-containing foods and a reduction in the
risk of coronary heart disease.

Food products eligible to bear the health claim include oat bran and rolled oats, such as oatmeal, and whole oat flour...To qualify for the health claim, the whole oat-containing food must provide at least 0.75 grams of soluble fiber per
serving. The amount of soluble fiber needed for an effect on cholesterol levels is about 3 grams per day."

(Source: FDA Talk Paper which can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/ANSWERS/ANS00782.html.)

In light of the boom in nutritional and non-traditional research that validate or refute efficacy, is such a policy still necessary? Or does it inhibit the open dissemination of information and result in a extraordinary monopolization of health treatment for the drug companies?

This debate will likely rage for the next two or more decades, particularly as drug companies are increasingly viewed as profit-seeking enterprises and more validation is gained by non-drug treatments.

For the moment, don't dismiss a "treatment" because it doesn't come by prescription. But don't reject a drugjust because it is a prescription. We need to strike a healthy, rational balance somewhere in between.

Can procedures alone keep you alive?

29. August 2006 William Davis (0)
My days in the hospital remind me of what heart disease can be like when no preventive efforts are taken--what it used to be like even with my patients before taking a vigorous approach to prevention (though over 12 years ago).

Several cardiologists in my hospital, for instance, express skepticism that heart disease prevention works at all. Yes, they know about the statin cholesterol drug trials. But they claim that, given their experience with the power of coronary disease to overpower an individual's control, statin drugs are just "fluff". Coronary disease is a powerful process that can only begin to be harnessed with major procedures, i.e., a mechanical approach.

So these cardiologists routinely have their patients in the hospital, often once a year, sometimes more, for heart catheterization and "fixing" whatever requires fixing: balloon angioplasty, stents, various forms of atherectomy. Year in, year out, these patients return for their "maintenance" procedures. Their cardiologists maintain that this approach works. The patients go on eating what they like, taking little or no nutritional supplements, and medications prescribed by their primary care physicians for blood pressure, etc. But no real effort towards heart disease prevention beyond these minimal steps.

Can this work? Very little at-home, preventive efforts, but periodic "maintenance" procedures?

It can, perhaps, for a relatively short time of a few years, maybe up to 10 years. But it crumbles after this. The disease eventaully overwhelms the cardiologist's ability to stent or balloon this or that, since it has progressed and plaque has growth diffusely the entire period that maintenance procedures have been performed. In addition, acute illness still occurs with some frequency--in other words, plaque rupture is not affected just because there's a stent in the artery upstream or downstream.

Not to mention this can be misery on you and your life, with risk incurred during each procedure. It's also terribly expensive, with hospitalization easily costing $25,000-$50,000 or more each time. (Compare that to a $250 or so CT heart scan.)


As people become more aware of the potential tools for prevention of heart disease, fewer are willing to submit to the archaic and barbaric practice of "maintenance" heart procedures in lieu of prevention. But it still goes on. If you, or anybody you know, are on this pointless and doomed path, find a new doctor.




Bloodletting, another antiquated health practice

Support your local hospital: HAVE A HEART ATTACK!

25. August 2006 William Davis (0)
I'm kidding, of course. But, in your hospital's secret agenda, that's not too far from the truth. Catastrophes lead to hospital procedures, which then yields major revenues.

Prevention, on the other hand, yields nothing for your hospital. No $8,000 to $12,000 for heart catheterization, several thousand more for a stent, $60,000-plus for a bypass, $25,000 or more for a defibrillator. In other words, prevention of heart attack and all its consequences deprive your hospital of a goldmine of revenue.

The doctors are all too often conspirators. I heard of yet another graphic example today. A man I didn't know called me out of the blue with a question. "I had a heart scan and I had a 'score' that I was told meant a moderate quantity of plaque in my arteries, a score of 157. My doctor said to ignore it. But I got another scan a year later and my score was 178. So I told this to my doctor and he said, 'Let's get you into the hospital. We'll set up a catheterization and then you'll get bypassed.' Of course, I was completely thrown off balance by this. Here I was thinking that the heart scan was showing that my prevention program needed improvement. But my doctor was talking about bypass surgery. Can you help? Does this sound right?"

No, this is absolutely not right. It's another tragedy like the many I hear about every day. Heart scans are, in fact, wonderfully helpful tools for prevention. This man was right: he felt great and the heart scan simply uncovered hidden plaque that should have triggered a conversation on how to prevent it from getting worse. But the doctor took it as a license to hustle the patient into the hospital. Ka-ching!

This sort of blatant money-generating behavior is far from rare. Don't become another victim of the cardiovascular money-making machine. Be alert, be skeptical, and question why. Of course, there are plenty of times when major heart procedures are necessary. But always insist on knowing the rationale behind such decisions, whether it's you or a loved one.

Hospitals contain experts in ILLNESS

25. August 2006 William Davis (0)
Hospitals contain many experts in sickness. This seems obvious. But walk down the hallways of any hospital, and you'll quickly be convinced that hospitals contain almost no experts in health.

People (hospital staff, that is, not the patients) in hospitals are especially good at identifying and treating disease. They lack knowledge of health.

If your nurse is 100 lbs overweight and struggles to walk down the hall because of arthritis in both knees, would you entrust her with health advice?

If your doctor sits down in the cafeteria and eats his lunch of a ham sandwich with cheese on a bun, fried onion rings, and a milkshake and pastry, can you believe that he/she possesses any insight into health and nutrition?

If your physical therapist or cardiac rehabilitation counselor struggles nearly as much as you while climbing a single flight of stairs, can you accept their advice on how to regain your stamina and use exerise to full health advantage?

The answer to all these questions is, of course, no. Hospital staff are generally expert at dressing surgical wounds, stopping bleeding, identifying infections, and providing the support services for surgical and diagnostic procedures. In contrast, they are generally miserable at conveying genuine health advice. They certainly fall short in being examples of health themselves.

To hospitals and their staff, health is a temporary situation that persists only until you become ill. Illness is an inevitability in the hospital staff mindset. Health is a temporary state in between illnesses.

We need to shake off this perverse mentality. Health is the state of life that should dominate our practices and philosophies. Illness via the occasional catastrophe, e.g., broken leg from skiing, car accident, etc., is the province of hospitals. We should gravitate towards this philosphy and away from the over-reliance on hospitals that has come to dominate our present perceptions of health. Hospitals are not glamorous. They are, for the most part, profit-seeking businesses intent on portraying themselves as champions of health.

When I walk down the halls of hospitals, I am shocked and ashamed at the extraordinary examples of ill-health presented by hospital staff. Yet they falsely paint themselves as experts in both illness and health. Don't believe it for a second.

Are there still unexplored causes of heart disease?

23. August 2006 William Davis (0)
I met a woman today. She had her first heart attack at age 37. She just had her 2nd heart attack this morning, at age 40.

Several issues are surprising about her story. First, she's pre-menopausal. Heart attacks before menopause are unusual. We'll occasionally see women have a heart attack before or during menopausal years only if they're heavy smokers and/or they have had diabetes (either type I or type II) for many years. But this young woman had neither. She is slender and has never smoked.

Even more surprising are her basic lipid values: LDL cholesterol 35 mg/dl, HDL 150 mg/dl, triglycerides 317 mg/dl. This is a very unusual pattern.

Unfortunately, this is all developing acutely in the hospital. (I've just met her today--she's not a Track Your Plaquer!) Lipoprotein analysis would be extremely interesting. In particular, I'd like to see whether she has any other markers besides elevated triglycerides of a "post-prandial" abnormality, i.e., persistence of abnormal particles after eating. The high triglycerides make this quite likely.

If this proves true, the omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil will be a lifesaving treatment for her, since they dramatically reduce both triglycerides as well as persistent postprandial particles like intermediate-density lipoprotein (IDL). (Track Your Plaque Members: See the Special Report on Postprandial Abnormalities on the present home page at www.cureality.com for a more in-depth discussion of this fascinating collection of patterns that is just started to be explored.)

In the real world, especially acute care medicine, there's always a kicker: she speaks no English. Unfortunately, communicating the intricacies of a powerful program like ours that aims to identify all causes of heart disease, then corrects then and aims for coronary plaque regression, is difficult if not impossible.

I also do occasionally worry that, given this woman's extraordinary risk at a young age, and overall very unusual lipid patterns (HDL 150?!), if there are causes presently beyond our reach. We have to make use of the tools available to us for now.

Everything causes heart attack!

22. August 2006 William Davis (1)
The media are presently gushing about a recent study that associates caffeine intake with heart attack.

CBS News: That cup of coffee you're craving might not be such a good idea. Research in the September issue of Epidemiology suggests coffee can trigger a heart attack within an hour in some people.


Some reporters and their quoted sources are musing about whether it's the caffeine, cream vs. other whiteners, time of day, interaction with other risk factors, etc.

My advice: Get a grip! How many relatively benign, every day factors in life can be blamed for dire health risks?

The problem with many of these studies is that they are cross-sectional. They do not enroll participants, then "treat" with coffee (or other substance in question) vs. placebo. In other words, it is not a randomized trial, the sort of trial necessary to prove a hypothesis. That's all that can be generated by a study like this one: a hypothesis.

Perhaps there's a bit of warning for the person with uncorrected lipids and lipoproteins, has no idea that they have extensive coronary plaque because they've never had a heart scan, and have a slovenly lifestyle. Maybe that person might have exaggerated risk from a cup of coffee.

But for us, involved and intensively addressing all causes of coronary plaque to the point of stabilizing or reducing it, coffee is likely a non-issue.

For more conversation on coffee and this report, go to the www.cureality.com home page.

Excessive Heart Procedures Makes New York Times Headline

18. August 2006 William Davis (0)

One example of flagrant cardiac procedure excess has made New York Times headlines:


Heart Procedure Is Off the Charts in an Ohio City
The number of angioplasties performed in Elyria is so high that Medicare is starting to ask questions.

(The full article can be accessed through the New York Times website at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/business/18stent.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=b81be5f43f98a99b&hp&ex=1155960000&partner=homepage)



Cardiologists in little Elyria, Ohio, about a 30-minute drive west of Cleveland, do more coronary angioplasties and insert more stents than any other location in the U.S.--four times more than the national average, three times more than the Cleveland average. They perform even more than the recently-indicted cardiologist in Louisiana, who performed twice the national average of procedures.


The Times article, part of a series about financial incentives in medical care, provides a responsible and incredibly balanced report on the situation in Elyria. I have to give them credit, because from the eyes of a colleague (myself), this looks like blatant and extreme profiteering: "cathing for dollars".

I find it outrageous that this group of cardiologists claims that they have some special insight into heart care that justifies this extraordinary reliance on heart procedures. There's bound to be variation in practice patterns, but this is so outside the norm that I believe criminal behavior will be exposed. In fact, I believe that even the "norm", or average, rate of procedures is also excessive.

This is symptomatic of the perverse equation in heart disease care. If there's money to be made in major heart procedures, who wants to bother with prevention? Programs like the Track Your Plaque program present real potential to stop coronary heart disease in its tracks for many, if not most, participants--but don't expect to hear about it from your cardiologist. Don't expect to hear about it from the increasingly hospital-employed primary care physician.

Hopefully, media exposure like that in the New York Times is just the beginning of a public re-analysis of not only what's wrong with medicine today, but recognition of the tremendous power in preventive strategies when everyone stops being so enamored with hospital-based procedures. CT-based heart scanning that ignites your heart disease prevention program is your way to dodge the mainstream obsession with procedures.

More on "Bio-identical hormones" and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

18. August 2006 William Davis (0)
In October 2005, Wyeth petitioned the FDA, requesting that it completely ban the bioidentical alternatives that women have been using in ever-increasing numbers to achieve optimal hormone balance. With bioidentical replacement therapy clearly reducing its market share, Wyeth asked the FDA to outlaw all compounded bioidentical hormone formulations that compete with its own discredited drugs. If Wyeth is successful, then menopausal women will have no choice other than to take potentially life-threatening hormone drugs or to forgo hormone replacement therapy altogether, thus enduring the physically and emotionally debilitating effects of menopause-induced hormone depletion.

Dave Tuttle
Life Extension Magazine
August, 2006



For more commentary on Wyeth Pharmaceutical's outrageous and brazen petition to the FDA to bar prescription "bio-identical" hormones, i.e., hormones that are identical to natural human forms, read Life Extension's article, Health Freedom Under Attack!
Drugmaker Seeks to Deny Access to Bioidentical Hormones




This well-researched article is in the August, 2006 issue of Life Extension Magazine. The article can also be accessed online at http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2006/aug2006_cover_attack_01.htm

or go to www.lef.org and click on the August, 2006 issue.

The author, Dave Tuttle, details the baseless arguments raised by Wyeth, a pathetic and amazingly selfish act in the name of protecting profits for Premarin, their prescription agent. It's bad enough to be selling this worthless drug. It's even worse--criminal, in my mind--to try to stamp out our right to have a physician write a prescription for a pharmacy to mix up hormones identical to that humans produce, individualized to our needs.

If you are as angry about this as I am, please go to the Life Extension online reprint that provides access to the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists website to send the FDA an e-mail describing your opinion, or go to www.iacprx.org.

How accurate is LDL cholesterol?

17. August 2006 William Davis (0)
Watch TV and you'd get the impression that the world revolves around LDL cholesterol: Commercials for Lipitor, Zetia, Vytorin, etc., all drugs to reduce cholesterol (total and LDL). Your doctor looks first and often only at LDL cholesterol.

If there's so much attention paid to LDL, how accurate is it? 100%? 90%? 80%?

Well, it varies widely. Occasionally, it's truly accurate, but most of the time it's miserably inaccurate . Every single day, I see people with LDL cholesterols that underestimates true (measured) LDL by 40%, 50%, and even over 100%. In other words, LDL cholesterol might be 120 mg/dl by the conventional method, but the genuine measured value might be 160 mg/dl, or even 240 mg/dl. It can be that far off--and it's not rare.

The converse can occasionally be true, though rarely in my experience: that conventional LDL overestimates true LDL. I saw someone in the office today like this, with a conventional LDL of 142 mg/dl but a true measured LDL of 115 mg/dl. I may see one or two more people like this the rest of this year.




Why is LDL so inaccurate? Several reasons:

--LDL in most labs is calculated, not measured. The "Friedewald calculation" derives LDL by substracting HDL and triglycerides (divided by 5) from total cholesterol. The higher triglycerides are, especially above 150 mg/dl, the more inaccurate the calculation becomes. As HDL drops below 50 mg/dl, this also introduces greater and greater inaccuracy.

--LDL particles vary in size. A more accurate representation and measure of LDL's dangers are therefore found in measures of LDL particle number , rather than a weight-based measure or calculation. LDL particle number can be measure as just that, LDL particle number (NMR), or as apoprotein B, the protein in LDL that occurs one apoB per LDL.

I liken conventionally calculated LDL cholesterol to a broken speedometer. You simply won't have an accurate measure of how fast you're going, though you may have a ballpark sense. But try telling that to the state patrol.

Or, as a cardiologist colleague said to me in a similar conversation about LDL: "Well, it's better than nothing!"

The lesson: If you're interested in plaque control, and control or reduction of heart scan score, you need a measured LDL, preferably LDL particle number by NMR or an apoprotein B. Another option is "direct" LDL.

Green tea: friend or faux?

15. August 2006 William Davis (0)
The www.HealthCastle.com website is a helpful website on healthy eating that sends out a free newsletter. The content is all produced by licensed dietitions and nutritionists. Although I don't agree with everything said on the site, there's still some good information.

I'm a fan of green tea. Although I believe the effects are relatively modest (weight reduction, cholesterol reduction, anti-oxidation, etc., with theaflavin and/or green tea as a beverage,) they alerted me to the fact that the Lipton Green Tea product is one you should steer clear of. Here are their comments:



"More like Soft drink than Green Tea!With 200 calories, 13 teaspoons of added sugar and a long list of artificial ingredients, Lipton Iced Green Tea is more like a bottle of soft drink than tea, in our opinion."


The Lipton website lists the ingredients:

Water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, green tea, sodium hexametaphosphate, ascorbic acid (to protect flavor), honey, natural flavors, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate (preserves freshness), potassium sorbate (preserves freshness), calcium disodium edta (to protect flavor), caramel color, tallow 5, blue1.

An 8 oz serving yields 21 grams of sugar. If you drink the full 20 oz. bottle (not hard to do!), that yields 52.5 grams of sugar! You will also notice that the second ingredient listed after water is high fructose corn syrup. This ingredient, you may recall, causes triglycerides to skyrocket, causes an insatiable sweet tooth, and is a probable contributor to obesity and diabetes.

In their defense, the Lipton people do also offer a sugar-free alternative without the excessive sweeteners and empty calories.

Do the Lipton products offer the same kind of benefits from green tea catechins (flavonoids) offered by freshly brewed teas? This product has not been formally tested by an independent lab to my knowledge, though, in general, commercially prepared and bottled teas tend to have dramatically less catechin/flavonoid content compared to brewed. (The USDA website provides access to an extraordinary collection of flavonoid food content at their USDA Database for the Flavonoid Content of Selected Foods - 2003. You'll find it at http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=6231.)

I think the HealthCastle people got it right: Brew your own, making sure to steep for at least 3 minutes. Alternatively, a green tea or theaflavin supplement provides many of the benefits. (Theaflavin has been used in trials at doses of 375 to 900 mg per day.) An in-depth report on green tea will be coming in a future Special Report on the www.cureality.com Membership website.

Cholesterol effects of carbohydrates

24. March 2009 William Davis (31)
Let's take a hypothetical person, say, a 50-year old male. 5 ft 10 inches, 160 lbs, BMI 23.0. He's slender and in good health.

Our hypothetical man eats a simple diet of vegetables, some fruit, nuts, and meats but avoids processed industrial foods. By macronutrient composition, his diet is approximately 30% protein, 40-50% fat, 20-30% carbohydrate. His starting lipid panel:

Total cholesterol 149 mg/dl
LDL cholesterol 80 mg/dl
HDL 60 mg/dl
Triglycerides 45 mg/dl

His starting lipids are quite favorable (though I don't often see this kind of starting panel nowadays except in athletes). We begin here because this hypothetical man is going to serve as our test subject.

We ask our hypothetical man to load his diet up on "healthy whole grains." He complies by eating whole grain cereals for breakfast, whole wheat toast; sandwiches made with whole grain bread; dinners of whole wheat pasta; snacks of granola bars, whole wheat pretzels and crackers.

Three months later, his lipids show:

Total cholesterol 175 mg/dl
LDL cholesterol 130 mg/dl
HDL 45 mg/dl
Triglycerides 150 mg/dl


You can see that LDL cholesterol has increased, HDL has dropped, and triglycerides have increased. This wave of change is the hallmark of carbohydrate excess, but more specifically of overreliance on wheat products. Beyond his lipid panel, the man has gained 10 lbs, all concentrated in a soft roll around his abdomen, his blood sugar is now in the "borderline range" of between 110 and 126 mg/dl, i.e., pre-diabetic.

If we were to examine this man's advanced lipoproteins (e.g., NMR from Liposcience, or VAP from Atherotech), we would see that there has been an explosive increase in small LDL particles, along with a shift of large HDL to small, and the appearance of multiple abnormal classes of particles called VLDL and IDL (signalling abnormally slowed clearance of dietary by-products from the blood).

Familiar scenario? The "after-carbohydrate" situation is the rule among the people who I first meet who claim to be eating a "healthy" diet, though their patterns are usually much worse, with higher LDL, lower HDL, and much higher triglycerides, an exaggeration of our hypothetical man's abnormalities.

What if our hypothetical man now goes to his conventionally thinking (read "taught medicine by the pharmaceutical industry") physician? What will likely be the advice he receives? Reduce his saturated fat intake, eat plenty of healthy whole grains, take a statin drug.

Although my illustrative man is hypothetical, I've seen this scenario play out many thousands of times. It happens in real life all the time. It is predictable, it is highly manipulable. Sadly, it is rarely recognized for what it is: the result of excess carbohydrates, or what I call "Carbohydrate Intolerance Syndrome."

The misinterpretation of this condition has created 1) an epidemic of diabetes and pre-diabetes, 2) a nation of frustrated obese Americans, 3) a $27 billion per year statin industry, 4) another growth opportunity for the drug industry in diabetes drugs.

Wheat Belly Revisited

23. March 2009 William Davis (24)
Do you have a wheat belly?

When I first coined this phrase back in July, 2007, I had witnessed the phenomenal health effects of wheat elimination in several hundred patients.

In the nearly two years that have passed since my original post, I have witnessed hundreds more people who have done the same: eliminate pretzels, crackers, breads of all sorts, bagels, pasta, muffins, waffles, pancakes, etc.

If anything, I am convinced now more than ever that wheat is among the most destructive foods in the human diet. At least 70% of people who eliminate wheat from their diet obtain at least one, if not several, substantial health benefits.

Now, if I were trying to sell you something, say, an alternative to wheat, then you should be skeptical. If I tell you that drug or nutritional supplement X is great and you should take it, only to follow it with a sales pitch, you should be skeptical.

What am I selling? Nothing. I gain nothing by telling everyone to avoid wheat. In fact, I wish it wasn't true. Wheat foods taste good. Wheat flour makes great comfort foods. In years past, I spent many hours sitting at the bagel shop reviewing papers over a cup of coffee and a bagel. No longer.

So here, back by popular demand, the original Wheat Belly post:



Wheat Belly

You've heard of "beer bellies," the protuberant, sagging abdomen of someone who drinks excessive quantities of beer.

How about "wheat belly"?

That's the same protuberant, sagging abdomen that develops when you overindulge in processed wheat products like pretzels, crackers, breads, waffles, pancakes, breakfast cereals and pasta.



(By the way, this image, borrowed from the wonderful people at Wikipedia, is that of a teenager, who supplied a photo of himself.)

It represents the excessive visceral fat that laces the intestines and triggers a drop in HDL, rise in triglycerides, inflames small LDL particles, C-reactive protein, raises blood sugar, raises blood pressure, creates poor insulin responsiveness, etc.

How common is it? Just look around you and you'll quickly recognize it in dozens or hundreds of people in the next few minutes. It's everywhere.

Wheat bellies are created and propagated by the sea of mis-information that is delivered to your door every day by food manufacturers. It's the same campaign of mis-information that caused the wife of a patient of mine who was in the hospital (one of my rare hospitalizations) to balk in disbelief when I told her that her husband's 18 lb weight gain over the past 6 months was due to the Shredded Wheat Cereal for breakfast, turkey sandwiches for lunch, and whole wheat pasta for dinner.

"But that's what they told us to eat after Dan left the hospital after his last stent!"

Dan, at 260 lbs with a typical wheat belly, had small LDL, low HDL, high triglycerides, etc.

I hold the food companies responsible for this state of affairs, selling foods that are clearly causing enormous weight gain nationwide. Unfortunately, the idiocy that emits from Nabisco, Kraft, and Post (AKA Philip Morris); General Mills; Kelloggs; and their kind is aided and abetted by organizations like the American Heart Association, with the AHA stamp of approval on Cocoa Puffs, Cookie Crisp Cereal, and Berry Kix; and the American Diabetes Association, whose number one corporate sponsor is Cadbury Schweppes, the biggest soft drink and candy manufacturer in the world.

As I've said many times before, if you don't believe it, try this experiment: Eliminate all forms of wheat for a 4 week period--no breakfast cereals, no breads of any sort, no pasta, no crackers, no pretzels, etc. Instead, increase your vegetables, healthy oils, lean proteins (raw nuts, seeds, lean red meats, chicken, fish, turkey, eggs, Egg Beaters, low-fat yogurt and cottage cheese), fruits. Of course, avoid fruit drinks, candy, and other garbage foods, even if they're wheat-free.

Most people will report that a cloud has been lifted from their brains. Thinking is clearer, you have more energy, you don't poop out in the afternoon, you sleep more deeply, some rashes disappear. You will also notice that hunger ratchets down substantially. Most people lose the insatiable hunger pangs that occur 2-3 hours after a wheat-containing meal. Instead, hunger is a soft signal that gently prods you that it's time to consider eating again.

You will also make considerable gains towards gaining control over your risk for heart disease and your heart scan score, a crucial step in the Track Your Plaque program.

Thank you, Crestor

20. March 2009 William Davis (9)
I'm sure everyone by now has seen the Crestor ads run by drugmaker, AstraZeneca. TV ads, magazine ads, and the Crestor website all echoing the same message:

"While I was busy building my life, something else was busy building in my arteries: dangerous plaque."

While previous drug trials with Mevacor, Pravachol, Zocor, and Lipitor have focused mostly on examining whether the drugs reduced incidence of cardiovascular events, Crestor studies have also focused on effects on atherosclerotic plaque volume. The best example is the ASTEROID trial that demonstrated approximately 7% reduction in plaque volume by intracoronary ultrasound.

So the AstraZeneca decision makers took the leap from cholesterol reduction to plaque reduction.

I'm sure this switch wasn't taken lightly, but was the topic of discussion at many meetings before the decision to make plaque reduction the focus of hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising. After all, billions of dollars are at stake in this bloated statin market.

Ordinarily, I couldn't care less about how the drug manufacturers conduct their advertising campaigns. But this one I paid attention to because the Crestor ads are helping fuel a new way of thinking about coronary heart disease: It's not about the cholesterol; it's about the atherosclerotic plaque that accumulates in arteries.

It's not cholesterol that grows, limits coronary blood flow, and causes angina. It's not cholesterol that "ruptures" its internal contents to the surface within the interior of the blood vessel and causes blood clot and heart attack. It's not cholesterol that fragments from the carotid arteries and showers debris to the brain, causing stroke. It's all plaque.

I took the same leap years ago, though not backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing money. When I first called my book Track Your Plaque, some of the feedback I got from editors included comments like "I thought this was a book about teeth!" Even now, the word "plaque" in the book title and website is responsible for confusion.

But AstraZeneca is helping me clear up the confusion. As the word plaque gains hold in public consciousness, it will become increasingly clear that cholesterol reduction is not what we're after. We are looking for reduction of plaque.

If you are trying to develop an effective means to reduce or reverse coronary heart disease, then there are two simple equations to keep in mind:


Plaque = coronary heart disease

Cholesterol ? coronary heart disease


Plaque is the disease, cholesterol is not. Cholesterol is simply a crude risk for plaque.

While I'm no friend to the drug industry nor to AstraZeneca, some good will come of their efforts.

Supermarkets and buggy whips

17. March 2009 William Davis (17)
Will supermarkets eventually phase out, joining the history books as a phenomenon of the past? Or are supermarkets here to stay, an emblem of the industrialization of our food--easy access to foods that are convenient, suit the undiscriminating masses, stripped of nutritional value despite the prominent health claim on the package front?

Anna left an insightful comment on the last Heart Scan Blog post, Sterols should be outlawed, along with some useful advice on how to avoid this trap for poor health called a supermarket:


I rarely shop in regular supermarkets anymore (farm subscription for veggies, meat bought in bulk for the freezer, eggs from a local individual, fish from a fish market, freshly roasted coffee from a local coffee place, etc.). What little else I need comes from quirky Trader Joe's (dark chocolate!), the fish market, farmer's markets, a small natural foods store, or mail order.

When I do need to go into one of the many huge supermarkets near me, not being a regular shopper there, I never know where anything is, so I have to ramble a bit around the aisles before I find what I'm looking for (and I almost always can grab a hand basket, instead of a trolley cart).

It's almost like being on another planet! There's always so many new products (most of them I hesitate to even call food). It's really a shock to the senses now to see how much stuff supermarkets sell that I wouldn't even pick up to read the label, let alone put in a cart or want to taste. I'm not even tempted by 99% of the tasting samples handed out by the sweet senior ladies in at Costco anymore (only thing I remember tasting at Costco in at least 6 mos was the Kerrygold Irish cheese, because I know their cows have pasture access and it's real food).

What's really shocking to me is how large some sections of the markets have become in recent years. While Americans got larger, so did some sections of the supermarket (hint - good idea to limit the consumption of products from those areas). Meat and seafood counters have shrunk, though. Produce areas seem to be about the same size as always (but more of it is pre-prepped and RTE in packaging.

But the chilled juice section is h-u-g-e! And no, I don't think there is a Florida orange grove behind the cases. Come on, how much juice do people need? Juice glasses used to be teeny tiny, for a good reason. To me it looks like a long wall stocked full of sugar water. Avoiding that section will put a nice dent in the grocery expenses.

The yogurt case is also e-n-o-r-m-o-u-s! Your 115 yo Bulgarian "grandmother" wouldn't know what to make of all these "pseudo-yogurts"! Chock full of every possible variety, but very little fit to eat. The only yogurts I'll look at are made with plain whole milk, without added gums, emulsifiers, or non-fat milk solids, and live cultures (I mostly buy yogurt now and then to refresh my starter culture at home). I can flavor them at home if needed. The sterols are showing up in processed yogurts, too, along with patented new strains of probiotic cultures (I'll stick to my old fashioned, but time-proven homemade lacto-cultured veggies and yogurt instead).

I found the same "cooler spread" in the butter & "spread" section. The spread options were just grotesque sounding. Actually, the butter options weren't much better, as many were blended with other ingredients to increase spreadability, reduce calories or cholesterol/saturated fat, etc. A few plain butters were enhanced with "butter flavor" - say what? And on no package could it be determined if the butter came from cows that were naturally fed on pasture or on grain in confined pens.


Well said, Anna.

There's a huge supermarket about 1 mile away from my house similar to the one Anna describes with aisle after aisle of eye-catching cellophane-wrapped foods. I go there about every 3 or 4 months, and then I only go to get something I need in a pinch. Every time I go, I too am reminded just how many products there are that look more like junk food than real food.

But there's no real money in real food. Who gets rich off of selling green peppers, tomatoes, and eggs?

Supermarkets sell these modern industrial foods because people buy it: Look around you. You don't get to be a 250 lb 5 ft 2 inch-woman by eating too many cucumbers.

Like Anna, I drive an additional several miles to Trader Joes', buy at farmers' markets whenever possible, buy some odds and ends like wine and cheese and raw nuts at specialty stores. I grow my own basil in a big pot I keep in the kitchen and we are just about to start turning over the soil in the back yard for our vegetable garden. I don't need nor do I miss having the choice among 40 different chips, 25 brands of ready-made microwavable dinners, an entire aisle of breakfast cereasl (all of which are virtually the same with different names and labels), or 75 varieties of salad dressing.

The supermarket for me--and I hope for many of you--has become a place rarely frequented, and only for the odd forgotten item. Oh, I forgot the dog chewies the grocery does have--my dogs love them. So perhaps they are good for something after all.

Sterols should be outlawed

14. March 2009 William Davis (10)
While sterols occur naturally in small quantities in food (nuts, vegetables, oils), food manufacturers are adding them to processed foods in order to earn a "heart healthy" claim.

The FDA approved a cholesterol-reducing indication for sterols , the American Heart Association recommends 200 mg per day as part of its Therapeutic Lifestyle Change diet, and WebMD gushes about the LDL-reducing benefits of sterols added to foods.


Sterols--the same substance that, when absorbed to high levels into the blood in a genetic disorder called "sitosterolemia"--causes extravagant atherosclerosis in young people.

The case against sterols, studies documenting its coronary disease- and valve disease-promoting effects, is building:

Higher blood levels of sterols increase cardiovascular events:
Plasma sitosterol elevations are associated with an increased incidence of coronary events in men: results of a nested case-control analysis of the Prospective Cardiovascular Münster (PROCAM) study.

Sterols can be recovered from diseased aortic valves:
Accumulation of cholesterol precursors and plant sterols in human stenotic aortic valves.

Sterols are incorporated into carotid atherosclerotic plaque:
Plant sterols in serum and in atherosclerotic plaques of patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy.




Though the data are mixed:

Moderately elevated plant sterol levels are associated with reduced cardiovascular risk--the LASA study.

No association between plasma levels of plant sterols and atherosclerosis in mice and men.




The food industry has vigorously pursued the sterol-as-heart-healthy strategy, based on studies conclusively demonstrating LDL-reducing effects. But do sterols that gain entry into the blood increase atherosclerosis regardless of LDL reduction? That's the huge unanswered question.

Despite the uncertainties, the list of sterol-supplemented foods is expanding rapidly:




Each Nature Valley Healthy Heart Bar contains 400 mg sterols.












HeartWise orange juice contains 1000 mg sterols per 8 oz serving.













Promise SuperShots contains 400 mg sterols per container.














Corozonas has an entire line of chips that contain added sterols, 400 mg per 1 oz serving.














MonaVie Acai juice, "Pulse," contains 400 mg sterols per 2 oz serving.














Kardea olive oil has 500 mg sterols per 14 gram serving.










WebMD has a table that they say can help you choose "foods" that are sterol-rich.

In my view, sterols should not have been approved without more extensive safety data. Just as Vioxx's potential for increasing heart attack did not become apparent until after FDA approval and widespread use, I fear the same may be ahead for sterols: dissemination throughout the processed food supply, people using large, unnatural quantities from multiple products, eventually . . . increased heart attacks, strokes, aortic valve disease.

Until there is clarification on this issue, I would urge everyone to avoid sterol-added "heart healthy" products.


Some more info on sterols in a previous Heart Scan Blog post: Are sterols the new trans fat? .

Texas today, tomorrow . . . the world?

10. March 2009 William Davis (0)
Texas state representative, Rene Oliveira, has introduced legislation that mandates heart scans for adults in the state of Texas.

Rep. Oliveira

A press release from the SHAPE Society ( Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication) reads:

Assessment of heart attack risk on the basis of traditional risk factors alone such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure and so forth, while useful, misses many who are at high risk and also incorrectly flags some for high risk who are in fact at very low risk of near term heart attack; on the other hand detection of atherosclerosis by non-invasive imaging, as suggested by the SHAPE group, accurately identifies plaque and improves the ability to identify at-risk individuals who could benefit from aggressive preventive intervention while sparing low-risk subjects from unnecessary aggressive medical therapy," said Dr. P.K. Shah, Director of Cardiology at Cedars Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, a leading member of the SHAPE Task Force who is also an active member of the American Heart Association. "Sadly, these vulnerable patients go undetected until struck by a heart attack, because insurance companies don't cover the newer heart attack screening imaging tests."


Rep. Oliveira, whose coronary disease was first uncovered by a heart scan and prompted a bypass operation, states:

"It is about time that we cover preventive screening for the number one killer in Texas, and take action to reduce healthcare costs through preventive healthcare. Right now, we are extending the lives of those who can afford the procedure while hundreds of thousands of Texans with hidden heart disease go undetected because of antiquated thinking. The time has come for this change."


Is this what we've come to? Since practicing physicians are either so entranced by the drug and procedural solutions to heart disease, do we need to resort to heart scan by legislation?

It does indeed appear that we've come to this point. Should this trend catch on, it will surely mean an upfront increase in healthcare costs to cover the expense of heart scans. But in the long run, it will mean reduction in healthcare costs--dramatic reduction--if heart scans prompt effective preventive action.

What your doctor doesn't know about heart disease

9. March 2009 William Davis (12)
What causes coronary heart disease or coronary atherosclerotic plaque, this thing that we track with heart scans?

Well, here are a few little-publicized facts about heart disease that you are unlikely to hear from your When's-the-next-stent? cardiologist or the What is there besides statins? primary care doctor.

(Since everybody knows that smoking is a modifiable risk for heart disease that can be readily identified, let's focus on the blood tests that reveal heart disease causes.)


What's the number one most common cause for heart disease?

Small LDL particles. The proliferation and popularity of the snack food/processed food culture, compounded with the "eat more healthy whole grain " propaganda has launched small LDL solidly to first place as the most common reason to have heart attacks, stents, and bypass. All that advice to increase your "healthy whole grain" intake? It increases heart attack risk.


What's the number one most aggressive cause for heart disease?

That's lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a). It's certainly not high cholesterol, though the drug industry loves that you think that. We could argue over whether smoking is more aggressive, but the two are pretty darned close. Combine the two--Lp(a) in a smoker--and the combination is an explosively powerful trigger for heart disease and stroke.


What's the number two cause for heart disease?

After small LDL comes low HDL cholesterol. Ask anyone who has had a heart attack: What was your cholesterol panel like? 9 out of 10 will say "My LDL cholesterol was 135 mg/dl" while knowing little or nothing about HDL, which is commonly in the 30-42 mg/dl range--sufficient to contribute to heart disease risk considerably.


Can "normal" thyroid hormone tests still contribute to heart disease?

Yes. Hypothyroidism is an exceptionally powerful risk factor for heart disease. Many people have been told that their thyroid tests are "normal," when in reality risk for heart disease may be as much as tripled from low thyroid with thyroid blood tests in the "normal" range.


Does a "balanced, healthy diet" prevent heart disease?

No, it does not. In fact, the modern notion of a "balanced, healthy diet" increases risk for heart disease. Of course, the dangers of such diets vary, depending on how you define it. If it's the diet advocated by the USDA Food Pyramid, then it is an enormously destructive diet that causes your health to careen towards both diabetes and heart disease. The American Heart Association TLC diet is little better.


Does eating fish twice a month reduce heart attack risk?

Yes, it does--but just barely. Unfortunately, large studies that show that eating fish as infrequently as twice per month reduce risk for dying from heart attack have led some authorities to suggest that's all you need to do. What they fail to understand is that the benefit is dose-dependent--the greater the intake of omega-3 fatty acids, the greater the benefit (within reason, of course). So, while the effect can be detected by eating fish twice per month, it doesn't mean that full benefits are achieved with this "dose." Full benefits are obtained by mimicking the omega-3 intake of the Japanese.


Do nutritional supplements reduce risk for heart attack?

If you are referring to vitamin D, then, yes, nutritional supplements reduce risk for heart attack . . . enormously. We need more data to validate this phenomenon, though epidemiologic observations strongly bear this out, including the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, the Framingham Heart Study and NHANES, all of which demonstrate a graded effect: the lower the vitamin D blood level, the greater the risk for heart attack.

Over the years, we've experienced more than our share of disappointments in nutritional supplements for heart disease, including vitamin E and B vitamins to reduce homocysteine. But I believe that nothing approaches the solid feel of vitamin D--no other nutritional supplement raises HDL, reduces triglycerides, reduces blood sugar, enhances insulin responses, reduces the inflammatory C-reactive protein, reduces blood pressure like vitamin D. Vitamin D is here to stay--and I'm very grateful.

And don't forget omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, yet another supplement with unquestioned benefits for reduction of heart attack and death from heart attack.


Why didn't your doctor counsel you on the importance of these issues?

The primary reasons your doctor didn't tell you any of the above:

1) He/she has been persuaded that only drugs are of any real use in health. Nutritional supplements? Hah!

2) Neither the number one cause of heart disease in the U.S.--small LDL particles--nor the most aggressive cause for heart disease--Lp(a)--are corrected by patent-protectable, high profit pharmaceutical agents promoted to your doctor. Instead, these abnormalities can be corrected inexpensively, without prescription. That means no expensive commercials, no media spots, no write-ups in magazines.

3) Your doctor's business is to treat crisis: sore throat, broken ankle, lung tumor, heart attack. Prevent heart disease 10 or 20 years before it shows itself? Heck, no (unless the marketing pull of the drug industry is involved, of course).


It's best that you bear in mind: What your doctor doesn't know can kill you.

Thank you, Dr. Eades

6. March 2009 William Davis (7)

Thanks to some readers of The Heart Scan Blog, I've become acquainted with Dr. Michael Eades' wonderful blog, Health and Nutrition by Dr. Michael R. Eades, MD.

Dr. Eades is co-author (with his wife, Mary Dan Eades, MD) of Protein Power

In one of his conversations, I stumbled on this exchange between Dr. Eades and one of his readers:



Reader: Regarding EBT scans, I looked up the topic on Google and read an informative 5-page article: EBT (Ultrafast CT) Scans - Godsend, or Scam? Dr. Fogoros says that false positives (where the EBT shows the presence of calcium, but the patient has little coronary artery blockage) occur about 50 percent of the time. The next step, if the EBT is positive, is to do a heart catherterization to find out whether there actually is coronary artery blockage. So the odds are that I’d have to worry!

Dr. Michael Eades: The info you got from Google is one of the reasons one shouldn’t get medical information online. As far as I’m concerned the EBT is the BEST way to determine the presence of plaque. If you have a positive calcium score, you have plaque, and there’s an end on’t (as Samuel Johnson would say). Now you may have a low calcium score for your age or you may have a calcium score that doesn’t change, which means you have stable plaque, but if you have a positive calcium score, you have some amount of plaque in your coronary arteries.

And whoever says that the next step to take if you receive a positive calcium score is a coronary artery cath is a real moron. That’s probably the last thing you would want to do if you are asymptomatic. All the cath procedure does is shows whether or not you have a blockage - you can have huge amounts of plaque (which are a disaster waiting to happen) and have a normal cardiac cath.

If you want to get a little more information on the validity of EBT than what you find on Google, take a look at Dr. Davis’ blog or get a copy of his book: Track Your Plaque. I’m not crazy about all of Dr. Davis’ dietary recommendations because he comes to diet from a different perspective than I, but the EBT info in his book is terrific.

Cheers–

Dr. Eades "gets" it. He understands that quantification of coronary plaque is a tool for prevention, not something to be subverted into the service of procedures for the financial benefit of my colleagues.

And I think that he is absolutely correct on the diet discussed in Track Your Plaque--it's due for a revision. I wrote the book in 2003, while we were still locked into the low-fat mindset. Much has changed.

Since then, our enormous experience in metabolic manipulation and lipoprotein analysis has shown that there is a far better way to correct the causes of coronary plaque and seizing hold of heart scan scores. In particular, the explosion of small LDL has prompted major changes in the diet, specifically removal of wheat and cornstarch, the foods that trigger small LDL particles.

(I am still in the midst of negotiations for release of a bigger and better Track Your Plaque II. In the meantime, Track Your Plaque Members can refer to the New Track Your Plaque Diet, Parts I, II, and III.)

Can millet make you diabetic?

5. March 2009 William Davis (10)















If wheat is so bad, what about all the other grains?

First of all, I demonize wheat because of its top-of-the-list role in triggering:

--Appetite--Wheat increases hunger dramatically
--Insulin
--Blood sugar--Wheat is worse than table sugar in triggering a rapid, large rise in blood sugar
--Triglycerides
--Small LDL particles--the number one cause for heart disease in the U.S.
--Reduced HDL
--Diabetes
--Autoimmune diseases--Most notably celiac disease and thyroiditis.

Most other "healthy, whole grains" aren't quite as bad. It's a matter of degree.

Millet, quinoa, oats, sorghum, bulghur, spelt, barley, cornmeal--While they don't trigger appetite nor autoimmune diseases like wheat does (oat can in some people), they still pose a significant carbohydrate load sufficient to generate the other phenomena like excessive insulin and blood sugar responses. The grams of carbohydrate of these grains are virtually identical to wheat: 43.5 grams per 1/2 cup (uncooked). The exceptions are barley, which is especially loaded with carbohydrates: 104 grams per 1/2 cup, while oats are lower: 33 g per 1/2 cup.

It's all a matter of degree. Some people who are exceptionally carbohydrate-sensitive (like me) can have diabetic blood sugars with just slow-cooked oatmeal or quinoa. Others aren't quite so sensitive and can get away with eating them.

People with high blood sugars (100 mg/dl or greater) can be very sensitive to the blood sugar effects of these grain carbohydrates. The best marker of all are small LDL particles measured on a lipoprotein panel, such as NMR. Small LDL particles are exquisitely sensitive to your carbohydrate intake: small LDL gets worse with excessive sensitivity to grain carbohydrates, gets better with reduction or elimination.

Flagrant small LDL, in combination with low HDL, high triglycerides, and pre-diabetic or diabetic patterns all develop from carbohydrate indulgence, along with "wheat belly."

Don't believe it? The prove it to yourself: Go to Walmart and buy an inexpensive glucose meter and check your blood sugar one hour after eating. You can gauge the health of these foods by observing the blood sugar increases. (Small LDL closely parallels blood sugar rises.)

The grain that fails to trigger any of these abnormal patterns? Flaxseed. Flaxseed is entirely protein, fiber, and healthy oils, with virtually no digestible starches. In fact, flaxseed is one of the few foods that reduces the quantity of small LDL particles.

Are you a tree?

5. March 2009 William Davis (6)
I assume you answered no. Then why would you consider taking the plant form of vitamin D (ergocalciferol)? That's the prescription form of vitamin D, often dispensed as 50,000 unit tablets.

There's nothing wrong with plants. Some of my favorite foods are plants, full of nutritional value.

Then why shouldn't vitamin D2 from plants be every bit as good as the human form of vitamin D?

I believe the issue boils down to taking hormones from non-human sources. (Remember: Vitamin D is a hormone, a very powerful one at that.) Plants can be wonderful sources of flavonoids, fibers, protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, and other healthy components. But hormones?

There are other examples of non-human hormones being given to humans with undesirable or unpredictable effects:

--Xenoestrogens, phytoestrogens, and non-human mammalian estrogens--While non-human estrogens may partially mimic human estrogens, they can also block estrogen effects, or exert altogether novel effects. Non-human mammalian estrogens like Premarin can exert very peculiar (side-)effects, despite their role as prescription estrogen supplementation in humans.

--Progestins--The synthetic versions of human progesterone, like their non-human estrogen counterparts, exert weird effects that are a world apart from real progesterone.

--Sterols--Similar in structure to human cholesterol (while not a hormone, a building block for hormones), sterols have been used to reduce intestinal cholesterol absorption. However, if sterols are absorbed into the blood, they can enormously accelerate growth of atherosclerotic plaque.

--Anabolic steroids--These modifications of the testosterone molecule build muscle, but also cause liver cancer, kidney failure, violent behavior, suicide and homicidal behavior. That's not normal.

Outside of a pharmacologic effect (e.g., prednisone in place of human cortisol), there is no reason to take a non-human hormone in place of a human hormone. For that same reason, there is NO reason to take plant vitamin D2 (prescription or over-the-counter) in place of human vitamin D3.

If the non-human hormone is identical to the human form, then there is no difficulty. The best example of this are thyroid hormones from pigs. That's what Armour Thyroid is, a thyroid hormone replacement that works wonderfully well.

You will notice that virtually all of the examples of non-human hormones substituted for human hormones share one common motivation: profit. Synthetic or modified versions are more readily patent-protectable, unlike their natural counterparts which are not.

Vitamin D2 is an anemic facsimile of the real human hormone, vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Stay away from it.