Wheat-free pumpkin bread

25. December 2010 William Davis (5)
Try this recipe for a wheat-free, gluten-free yet healthy "bread." Unlike many gluten-free foods that send blood sugar skyward, this will not.

Ingredients:
2 cups ground almond meal (Buy it from Trader Joe's--70% cheaper than other grocery stores.)
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1/2 cup sour cream (full-fat, of course)
15 oz canned pumpkin (Trader Joe's is bisphenol A-free)
2 medium to large eggs
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
4 tablespoons butter, melted
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg or allspice
Dash of salt
Choice of non-nutritive sweetener (I used 3 teaspoons Trader Joe's stevia extract powder, the one mixed with lactose. Two tablespoons of Truvia, 1/2 teaspoon of the more concentrated stevia extract, or 1/2 cup Splenda are other choices. You can taste the mixed batter to gauge sweetness if in doubt.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease baking pan (e.g., 10 x 6 inch). The pan should be big enough so that the mix will not be more than 2 inches deep, else it will require much longer to bake. (If you have only smaller pans, you will need to cook longer while the pan is covered with aluminum foil.)

Mix all ingredients thoroughly in large bowl. Pour mix into greased baking pan.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for additional 30 minutes or until inserted toothpick or knife comes out dry.

Serve with cream cheese or as is.

(I'd have some pictures, but the kids and I ate it up before I thought to take any photographs.)

Vitamin D: Deficiency vs optimum level

19. December 2010 William Davis (20)
Dr. James Dowd of the Vitamin D Cure posted his insightful comments regarding the Institute of Medicine's inane evaluation of vitamin D.

Dr. Dowd hits a bullseye with this remark:

The IOM is focusing on deficiency when it should be focusing on optimal health values for vitamin D. The scientific community continues to argue about the lower limit of normal when we now have definitive pathologic data showing that an optimal vitamin D level is at or above 30 ng/mL. Moreover, if no credible toxicity has been reported for vitamin D levels below 200 ng/mL, why are we obsessing over whether our vitamin D level should be 20 ng/mL or 30 ng/mL?

Yes, indeed. Have no doubts: Vitamin D deficiency is among the greatest public health problems of our age; correction of vitamin D (using the human form of vitamin D, i.e., D3 or cholecalciferol, not the invertebrate or plant form, D2 or ergocalciferol) is among the most powerful health solutions.

I have seen everything from relief from winter "blues," to reversal of arthritis, to stopping the progression of aortic valve disease, to partial reversal of dementia by achieving 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels of 50 ng/ml or greater. (I aim for 60-70 ng/ml.)

The IOM's definition of vitamin D adequacy rests on what level of 25-hydroxy vitamin D reverses hyperparathyroidism (high PTH levels) and rickets. Surely there is more to health than that.

Dr. Dowd and vocal vitamin D advocate, Dr. John Cannell, continue to champion the vitamin D cause that, like many health issues, conradicts the "wisdom" of official organizations like the IOM.

Large LDL counts, too

15. December 2010 William Davis (0)
Chad is a 43-year old father of five kids.

Earlier this year, he developed chest pain that got worse and worse. He ended up with a total of five stents in all three coronary arteries. After a devastating experience with Lipitor that resulted from a ruptured tendon, he came to me for an option.

Chad's lipoproteins:

Slow Burn works

14. December 2010 William Davis (55)
I have been impressed with the results I've been obtaining with Fred Hahn's Slow Burn strength training technique.

Because I have limited time to hang around the gym, any technique that provides outsized results in a limited amount of time, I have to admit, appeals to me. In past, I'd be lucky to squeeze in one or two strength training sessions per week, devoting the rest of the time to biking outdoors, biking on a sedentary bike (while playing XBox), jogging, or doing strenuous yard work like digging trenches and planting shrubs.

Over the years, I've gradually lost muscle, since the strength training effort suffered with my time limitations.

So Fred's time-efficient Slow Burn idea struck a chord. Having now done it with some regularity, usually 1-2 times per week since mid-September, I have gradually added back visible muscle. My Slow Burn workouts, involving 8-10 different movements, seem to have restored the muscle I've lost, with a very modest time effort.

It took a little getting used to. After Fred showed me how to do the movements--slow motion movement in both the "positive" and "negative" directions, with smooth, non-jerking transitions, one set per muscle group, each taken to muscle exhaustion--it left me unusually tired and sore the next day. This surprised me, given the limited time involved. Breathing is also very important; the usual exhale-during-the-positive, inhale-during-the-negative pattern is replaced by breathing freely during the entire set. I didn't get this at first and ended up with headaches that got worse with each set. Breathing freely relieved me from the effect.

I have strength trained since I was around 15 years old. Back in the early 1970s, I had about 2000 lbs of barbells and dumbbells in my garage in New Jersey, while also driving back and forth to the Morristown, NJ, YMCA to train with friends. The Slow Burn movements forced me to break habits established over nearly 40 years of conventional strength training.

I've also played around with mixing conventional movements with Slow Burn movements to keep it fresh. This also seems to work.

If you're interested in giving it a try, here's an animation that demonstrates what Slow Burn movements look like. Fred has also produced an excellent 3-DVD set of videos that more fully describe the practice.

Do your part to save on healthcare costs

13. December 2010 William Davis (37)
While many of the factors that drive the relentless increase in health care costs are beyond individual control, you are still able to exert personal influence over costs. Just as in political elections, your one vote alone may not count; it's the collective effort of many people who share similar opinions that results in real change.

I just got the new monthly premium for my high-deductible health insurance: Up $300 per month, putting my family's total premium over $2000 per month---for four healthy people. (My son fractured his wrist playing high school hockey earlier this year; that may explain at least some of the increase.)

I'm going to shop around for a better deal. However, shopping is likely to only stall the process. It will not address the systemic problems with healthcare that continue to drive premiums up and up and up.

So what can you do to help keep costs down? Here are a few thoughts:

Never accept a prescription for fish oil, i.e., Lovaza. Just buy far less costly over-the-counter fish oil. I treat complex hyperlipidemias, including familial hypertriglyceridemia, ever day. I NEVER use prescription fish oil. A typical 4 capsule per day Lovaza prescription adds around $280 to $520 per month to overall health costs (though your direct out-of-pocket costs may be less, since you shove the costs onto others in your plan).

Never accept a prescription for vitamin D. Prescription vitamin D is the mushroom or invertebrate form anyway. Just buy the human (cholecalciferol, D3) form from your health food store or "big box" store. They yield consistent increases in 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels, superior to the prescription form. And they're wonderfully inexpensive.

Eliminate wheat from your diet. If there is a dietary strategy that yields unexpected and outsized benefits across a wide spectrum of health, it's elimination of this thing we're sold called "wheat," you know, the genetically-transformed, high-yield dwarf mutant that now represents 99% of all wheat sold. Blood sugar drops, pre-diabetics become non-prediabetics, diabetics reduce need for medication or become non-diabetic, cholesterol values plummet, arthritis improves, acid reflux and irritable bowel symptoms improve or disappear, just to mention a few. Wheat elimination alone, I believe, would result in incalculable savings in both healthcare costs and lives saved.

Be sure to obtain iodine. In the fuss to cut salt use, everyone forgot about iodine. Lack of iodine leads to thyroid disease, usually hypothyroidism, that, in turn, causes cholesterol values to increase, weight to increase, and heart disease risk to double, triple, or quadruple. Iodine supplementation is easy and wonderfully inexpensive.

Over time, I hope that all of us can help develop the effort to self-direct more and more of our own health. Our Track Your Plaque program has shown me that, not only can people take the initiative to direct aspects of their own health, they can do it better than 99% of doctors.  

I'm sure there are many, many other ways to help reduce costs. Any suggestions?

Fish oil: What's the difference?

10. December 2010 William Davis (27)
Ultra-purified, pharmaceutical grade, molecularly distilled. Over-the-counter vs. prescription. Gelcap, liquid, emulsion.

There's a mind-boggling variety of choices in fish oil today. A visit to any health food store, or any "big box" store for that matter, will yield at least several, if not dozens, of choices, all with varying and often extravagant claims of purity and potency.

So what's the real story?

Given the analyses conducted over the years, along with my experience with dozens of different preparations, I believe that several conclusions can be reached about fish oil:

Fish oil is free of contamination with mercury, dioxin, PCBs, or furans. To my knowledge, only one fish oil preparation has been found to have a slight excess of PCBs. (This is different from cod liver oil that has been found by one source to have a slight excess of PCBs.)

Oxidative breakdown products differ among the various brands. Consumer Lab (http://www.consumerlab.org/), for instance, has found that several widely available brands of fish oil contained excessive oxidative breakdown products (TOTOX). You can perform you own simple test of oxidative breakdown products: Sniff it. Your fish oil should pass the "sniff test." High quality fish oil should smell non-fishy to lightly fishy. Rancid fish oil with excessive quantities of oxidative breakdown products will smell nasty fishy.

FDA approval does not necessarily mean greater potency, purity, or effectiveness. It just means that somebody assembled the hundreds of millions of dollars to obtain FDA approval, followed by lots of marketing savvy to squash the competition.

This means that there are a number of excellent fish oil products available. My favorites are the liquid fish oils from Pharmax, Nordic Naturals, and Barleans. Capsules from Carlson, PharmaNutrients, and Fisol have also performed consistently. The "big box" capsules from Sam's Club and Costco have also performed well and are wonderfully affordable.

Wheat-free pie crust

9. December 2010 William Davis (17)
I've been working on wheat-free yet healthy recipes these past two months.

You can buy wheat-free, gluten-free foods at the store, of course. But the majority of these products are unhealthy because cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch, or tapioca starch are commonly used in place of wheat. Recall that these are among the few foods that increase blood glucose higher than even wheat.

Here's a simple recipe for wheat-free pie crust that works best for cheesecake, pumpkin pie, and cream pies, but not for berry or other fruit pies like apple.

You will need:
?
1½ cups ground pecans
6 tablespoons melted butter?or melted coconut oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract?
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 medium egg
2 tablespoons Truvia™ or ½ teaspoon stevia extract or ½ cup Splenda®

Mix all ingredients thoroughly in bowl. Pour mixture into pie pan and press onto bottom and sides.

Fill pie crust with desired filling. You can fill it with your favorite cheesecake recipe (e.g., Neufchatel or cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, vanilla, and stevia; add pumpkin for pumpkin cheesecake) and bake, usually at 350 degrees F for one hour. 

Yes, the butter provokes insulin and artificial sweeteners can trigger appetite. But, for the holidays, a slice or two of pie made with this crust will not increase blood sugar nor trigger the uncontrolled impulse eating that wheat crust will trigger.

Have a cookie

9. December 2010 William Davis (0)
Here's a great insight dating all the way back to 1966 from one of the early explorations in lipoproteins from the National Institutes of Health lab of Levy, Lees, and Fredrickson:

The nature of pre-beta (very low density) lipoproteins

The subject is a 19 year old female (among the total of 11 in the this small, diet-controlled study) who was first fed a low-carbohydrate (50 grams per day), low-cholesterol diet; followed by a high-carbohydrate (500 grams per day), low-fat (5 grams per day) diet.






To B or not to B

5. December 2010 William Davis (11)
Apoprotein B (apo B) is the principle protein that resides in LDL particles along with other proteins, phospholipids, triglycerides, and, of course, cholesterol.

There's a curious thing about apo B. Just like one child per family in China or one television per household in 1950s America, there is only one apo B for every LDL particle.

So measuring apo B, in effect, provides a virtual count of LDL particles. (Actually, VLDL particles, the first lipoprotein to emerge from the liver, also have one apo B per particle but LDL particles far outnumber VLDL particles.) While apo B structure can show limited structural variation from individual to individual, the effect on measured apo B is negligible.

One apo B per LDL particle . . . no more, no less. What about the other components of LDL particles?

The other components of LDL particles are a different story. Cholesterol and triglycerides in LDL particles vary substantially. Diet has profound effects on cholesterol and triglyceride content of LDL particles. A diet rich in carbohydrates, for instance, increases triglycerides in LDL particles while reducing cholesterol. This means that measuring cholesterol in the LDL fraction will be misleading, since cholesterol will be falsely low. LDL cholesterol is therefore a flawed means to assess the behavior and composition of LDL particles. In particular, when LDL particles become enriched in triglycerides, they go through a process that transforms them into small LDL particles, the variety most likely to cause atherosclerosis.

In other words, when the worst situation of all--an abnormal abundance of small LDL particles develops--it is usually not signalled by high LDL cholesterol.

Because apo B is not sensitive to the composition of LDL particles--high cholesterol, low cholesterol, high triglycerides, etc.--it is a superior method to characterize LDL particles. While apo B doesn't tell you whether LDL particles are big, small, or in between, it provides a count of particles that is far more helpful than measuring this deeply flawed thing called "LDL cholesterol."

(Even better: Count LDL particles and measure LDL size, since size gives us insight into sensitivity to oxidation, glycation, adhesiveness, ability to trigger inflammatory pathways via monocyte chemoattractant protein, various interleukins, tunor necrosis factor and others. This is why cholesterol panels should go the way of tie dye shirts and 8-track tapes: They are hopelessly, miserably, and irretrievably inaccurate. Cholesterol panels should be replaced by either apoprotein B or lipoprotein measures.)

Stents, defibrillators, and other profit-making opportunities

16. April 2006 William Davis (2)
As a practicing cardiologst, every day I receive a dozen or more magazines or newspapers targeting practicing physicians, not to mention the hundreds of letters, postcards, invitations to "talks", etc. that I receive. All of these materials share one common goal: To get the practicing cardiologist/physician to insert more of a manufacturer's stents, defibrillators, prescribe more of their drugs, etc.

This is a highly effective and profitable area. Pfizer's Lipitor, for instance, generated $12.2 billion just last year alone. This kind of money will fund an extraordinary amount of marketing.

I'm on the www.heart.org mailing list, a website for cardiologists. I'd estimate that 90% or more of their content is device-related: discussions of situations in which to insert stents, the expanding world of implantable devices, the ups and downs of various drugs. Rarely are discussions of healthy lifestyles, exercise, nutritional supplements, part of the dialogue.

How can you protect yourself from the brainwashed physician, flooded with visions of all the devices he can put in you, all the drugs that can "cure" your disease? Simple: information. Be better informed. Ask pointed questions. The idiotic lay press tells you to ask a doctor about his education. That's not generally the problem. Some of the best educated doc's I know are also the most flagrantly guilty of profiteering medicine.

Ask your doctor about his/her philosphy about the use of medications, devices, etc. If their word is God, take it or leave it, run the other way.

Will radiation kill you?

16. April 2006 William Davis (4)
Several people have asked me lately if radiation is truly dangerous. These conversations were sparked by an editorial comment made on a column I wrote for Life Extension Magazine's April, 2006 issue on "Three ways to detect hidden heart disease".

Among the methods that were discussed in this piece was, of course, CT heart scanning. Anyone who is involved with CT heart scans Quickly recognizes the spectacular power of this test to uncover hidden, unsuspected heart disease, literally within seconds. In 2006, there's really nothing like it for the every day person to have hidden heart disease detected and precisely quantified.

Yet, the "rebuttal" to my article claimed that the broad use of heart scans was only my personal view and that, in truth, radiation kills people.

NONSENSE! If an ovarian cancer is discovered by a CT scan of the abdomen, is that unwise use of radiation? If pneumonia or lung cancer is discovered on a chest x-ray with minimal radiation exposure, have we performed a disservice. Of course not. In fact, these are often lifesaving applications of radiation.

Can radiation be used unwisely with excessive exposure? Of course. The 64 slice CT angiograms are just an example of this. Dr. Mehmet Oz announced on Oprah recently that this was a test to be used for broad screening of women for heart disease. This is wrong. The radiation required for a full 64 slice CT angiogram test is truly excessive for a screening application. You wouln't want to get breast cancer from your mammogram, would you? The radiation from a 64-slice CT angiogram is similar to that of a heart catheterization in the hospital--too much for screening. This is not to be confused with a CT heart scan for a calcium score performed on a 64 slice device. I think this can be performed with acceptable radiation exposure.

Think about what would happen, for instance, if you had your heart disease undetected, had a heart attack, and went to the hospital? During your hospitalization, you'd likely get five chest x-rays, a heart catheterization, perhaps one or more nuclear imaging tests, maybe even a full CT scan (with far more radiation than a screening heart scan). The amount of radiation of a heart scan is trivial compared to what you obtain in a hospital.

So take it all in perspective. The low level of radiation required for a simple heart scan (not an angiogram) does not by itself substantially add to your lifetime risk of radiation exposure. It may, in fact, save your life or reduce your life long exposure to radiation.

Are you using bogus supplements?

16. April 2006 William Davis (0)
I consider nutritional supplements an important, many times a critical,part of a coronary plaque control program.

But use the wrong brand or use it in the wrong way, and you can obtain no benefit. Occasionally, you can even suffer adverse effects.

Take coenzyme Q10, for instance. (Track Your Plaque Members: A full, in-depth Special Report on coenzyme Q10 will be on the website in the next couple of weeks.) Take the wrong brand to minimize the likelihood of statin-related muscle aches, and you may find taking Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor, etc. intolerable or impossible. However, take a 100 mg preparation from a trusted manufacturer in an oil-based capsule, and you are far more likely to avoid the inevitable muscle aches. (Though, of course, consult with your doctor, for all it's worth, if you develop muscle aches on any of these prescription agents.)

Unfortunately, you and I often don't truly know for a fact if a bottle from the shelf of a health food store or drugstore is accurately labeled, pure, free of contaminants, and efficacious.

One really great service for people serious about supplements is the www.consumerlab.com website. They are a membership website (with dues very reasonable) started by a physician interested in ensuring supplement quality. Consumer Lab tests nutritional supplements to determine whether it 1) contains what the label claims, and 2) is free of contamination. (I have no reason to pitch this or any other site; it's just a great service.) They recently found a supplement with Dr. Andrew Weil's name on it to have excess quantities of lead!

What Consumer Lab does not do is determine efficacy. In other words, they do a responsible job of reporting on what clinical studies have been performed to support the use of a specific supplement. However, true claims of efficacy of supplement X to treat symptom or disease Y can only come with FDA approval. Supplements rarely will be put through the financial rigors of this process.

If you're not a serious supplement user, but just need a reliable source, we've had good experiences with:

--GNC--the national chain
--Vitamin Shoppe--also a national chain
--www.lifeextension.com or www.lef.org--A great and low-priced source, but they do charge a $75 annual membership that comes with a subscription to their magazine, Life Extension (which I frequently write for) and several free supplements that you may or may not need. Again, I'm not pitching them; they are simply a good source.
--Solgar--a major manufacturer
--Vitamin World
--Nature's Bounty
--Sundown

There are many others, as well. Unfortunately, it's only the occasional manufacturer or distributor that permits unnacceptable contamination with lead or other poisons, or inaccurately labels their supplement (e.g., contains 1000 mg of glucosamine when it really contains 200 mg). I have not come across any manufacturer/distributor who has systemtically marketed uniformly bad products.

It really helps to have someone to lean on

16. April 2006 William Davis (0)
Among my patients are several husband and wife teams, both of whom have heart disease by some measure. Several couples, for instance, consist of a huband who's received a stent, survived a heart attack, or has some other scar of the conventional approach. The wives generally have a substantial heart scan score in the several hundred range.

There are a few couples for which the roles are reversed: wife with bypass, heart attack, etc. and husband with a substantial quantity of coronary plaque by CT heart scan.

From them all, however, I've learned the power of teamwork. When both wife and husband (or even "significant other") are committed to the effort of controlling or reversing heart disease risk, the likelihood of success is magnified many-fold. Everything is easier: shopping for and choosing foods, incorporating supplements in the budget, taking vacations with a healthy focus, following through and sticking with your program.

Several of the couples have succeeded in obtaining regression of plaque for both man and woman. Both have reduced their heart scan scores and, as a result, dramatically reduced the potential for future heart attack and procedures.

Unfortunately, I will also see the opposite situation: One spouse committed to the program but the other indifferent. They may say such things as "You can't control what happens in the future." Or, "There's no way you can get rid of risk for heart disease. My doctor says it's hereditary." Or, "I've eaten this way since I was a kid. I'm not changing now for you or for anybody else."

Such negative commentary can't help but erode your commitment to health. Most of us recognize these sorts of comments as self-fulfulling and self-defeating.

What should you do if you have an unsupportive partner? Not easy. But it really can help to seek out a supportive partner, whether it's a friend, relative, or other significant person in your life. Of course, not everybody can find such a person. Perhaps that's another way our program can help.

I'd like to hear from anyone who does obtain substantial support of someone close, or if you are struggling to do so.

Five foods that can booby trap your heart disease prevention program

14. April 2006 William Davis (0)
There are several foods that commonly come up on people's lists of habitual foods that are truly undesirable for a heart disease prevention program. Curiously, people choose these foods because of the mis-perception that they are healthy. My patients are often shocked when I tell them that they are not healthy and are, in fact, detrimental to their program.

I'm not talking about foods that are obviously unhealthy. You know these: fried foods, greasy cheeseburgers, French fries, bacon, sausage, etc. Nearly everyone knows that the high saturated fat content, low fiber, and low nutritional value of these foods are behind heart disease, hypertension, and a variety of cancers.

I'm talking about foods that people say they eat because they view them as healthy--but they're not.

Here's the list:

1) Low-fat or non-fat salad dressings--Virtually all brands we've examined have high-fructose corn syrup as one the main ingredients. What does high fructose corn syrup do? Triggers sugar cravings, makes your triglycerides skyrocket (causing formation of abnormal lipoproteins like small LDL), and causes diabetes. The average American now ingests nearly 80 lbs of this evil sweetener per year. You're far better off with olive, canol, grapeseed, or flaxseed based salad dressings.

2) Breakfast cereals--If you've been following these discussions, you know that the majority of breakfast cereals are sugar. They may not actually contain sugar, but they contain ingredients that are converted to sugar in your body. They may be cleverly disguised as healthy--Raisin Bran, Shredded Wheat, etc.

3) Pretzels--"A low-fat snack". That's right. A low-fat snack that raises blood sugar like eating table sugar from the bowl.

4) Margarine--Forget this silly argument about which is worse, butter or margarine. Which is worse, strychnine or lead? Both are poisons to the human body. Who cares which is worse? Fortunately, there are now healthy "margarines" like Smart Balance and Benecol that lack the saturated fat or hydrogenated fat of either.

4) Bananas--Bananas are not all that intrinsically unhealthy. The problem is that people will say to me, "Oh sure, I eat fruit. Two bananas a day." What I hear is "I don't really eat fruit with high nutrient value, fiber, and reduced sugar release. I reach for only bananas which yield extreme sugar rises in my blood and are low fiber." Aren't they high in potassium? Yes, but there are better sources. Cut back if you are a banana freak.


Why the mis-perceptions? A holdover from the low-fat diet days and marketing from food manufacturers are the principal reasons. Of course, foods are meant to be enjoyed, but be informed about it. Choose foods for the right reasons, not because of some cleverly-crafted marketing campaign.

Breakfast of champions?

12. April 2006 William Davis (1)
I spend time every day educating or reminding patients that breakfast cereals are not health foods.

I see jaws drop in shock when I tell them that, in my opinion and despite the marketing claims, Cheerios, Raisin Bran, Shredded Wheat, and the like do not yield health benefits. In fact, they do the the opposite: dramatically raise blood sugar and trigger an adverse cascade of events that eventually leads to diabetes and heart disease.

Why the health claims in advertising? Because these products contain insoluble fiber, the sort that makes your bowels regular. Yes, your bowels are important to health, too. But the benefits end there.

Breakfast cereals are a highly refined, processed food that are not good for your plaque control program. What they are is a highly profitable, multi-billion dollar business, deeply entrenched in American culture ("They'rrrre grrrrrreat!"--Tony the Tiger; "There's a whole scoop of raisins in every box of Post Raisin Bran!" Bet you remember them all.)

I find it particularly upsetting when I see the stamp of approval from the American Heart Association on some products. Gee, if the Heart Association says it's good for you, it must be true! Don't you believe it. The American Heart Association relies on corporate donations, just like any other charity.

If you must eat breakfast cereals, refer to www.glycemicindex.com for a full database of glycemic indexes. You can look up a specific product and it will list its glycemic index, or sugar-releasing properties. You should try to keep glycemic index of the foods you choose below 50.

For a revealing discussion of the influence of food marketers on our perceptions of food, see Track Your Plaque nutrition expert, Gay Riley's discussion The Marketing of Food and Diets in America at her website, www.netnutritionist.com.

In heart disease prevention, shoot for perfection

12. April 2006 William Davis (0)
It really struck me today that it's the people who've chosen to compromise their prevention program who end up with trouble--heart procedures, heart attack, even heart failure.

Take Bob, for example. Bob is 73 years old and had a bypass operation in 2000. The procedure went well and Bob enjoyed 6 years of seemingly trouble-free life. Bob had a seriously low HDL cholesterol for which he as taken a modest dose of niacin, but was unwilling to do much more. His HDL cholesterol was thererefore "stalled" at around 40 mg. (We aim for 60 mg or greater.) We talked repeatedly about the options for increasing HDL but Bob was content with his results. After all, since his bypass operation, he'd felt well and could do all he wanted without physical limitation.

But Bob underwent a stress test for surveillance purposes (which we routinely do 5 or more years after bypass surgery). The test was markedly abnormal with two major areas of poor blood flow to his heart (signalling potential heart attack in future). Bob ended up getting 5 stents to salvage two bypass grafts, both of which showed signs of substantial degeneration.

I've seen this scenario repeatedly: A person is unwilling to go the extra mile to obtain perfection in lipid/lipoprotein patterns, lifestyle changes, and taking the basic, required supplements. Compromises eventually catch up to you in the form of another heart attack, more procedures, heart failure, physical disability, even death.

The message: Don't draw compromises in heart disease prevention. Coronary plaque is a chronic process. It will take advantage of you if you ever let your guard down.

The epidemic of small LDL

11. April 2006 William Davis (0)
Of the patients I saw in my office yesterday, virtually EVERYONE had small LDL.

Small LDL is emerging as an extraordinarily prevalent lipoprotein pattern that drives coronary plaque growth. Previous estimates have put small LDL as affecting only 20-30% of people with coronary disease. However, in my experience in the last few years, I would estimate that greater than 80% of people with measurable coronary plaque have small LDL.

If you have a heart scan score >zero, chances are you have it, too.

I call small LDL a "modern" disease because it has skyrocketed in prevalence recently because of the great surge in inactivity in Americans.

When's the last time you walked to the grocery store and back, lugging two bags of groceries? How many years has it been since you've push-mowed your lawn? All the small conveniences of life have permeated further and further into our activities. Most of us spend the great majority of our day right where you are now--on your duff.

On the bright side, small LDL in most people is reducable by simply getting up and going. But the old teaching of 30 minutes of activity per day is now outdated. This was true when the other hours of your life included physical activities, like housework or a moderately active job. However, if the other 23 1/2 hours of your day are sedentary, then 30 minutes a day won't do it. An hour or more of activity, whether exercise or physical labor of some variety will get you better small LDL-suppressing results.

For most people with small LDL, fish oil and niacin are also necessary to fully suppress small LDL to the Track Your Plaque goal of <10 mg/dl.

A great discussion on vitamin D

10. April 2006 William Davis (0)
If you need better convincing that vitamin D is among the most underappreciated but crucial vitamins for health, see Russell Martin's review of vitamin D and its role in cancer prevention. You'll find it in March, 2006 Life Extension Magazine or their www.LEF.org website at:

http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=1308&query=vitamin%20d&hiword=VITAM%20VITAMER%20VITAMERS%20VITAMI%20VITAMINA%20VITAMINAS%20VITAMINC%20VITAMIND%20VITAMINE%20VITAMINEN%20VITAMINES%20VITAMINIC%20VITAMINK%20VITAMINS%20d%20vitamin%20

Our preliminary experience over the past year suggests that vitamin D may be the crucial missing link in many people's plaque control program. We've had a handful of people who, despite an otherwise perfect program (LDL<60, HDL>60, etc.; vigorous exercise, healthy food selection, etc.--I mean perfect)continued to show plaque growth. The rate of growth was slower than the natural expected rate of 30% per year, but still frightening rates of 14-18% per year--until we added vitamin D. All of a sudden, we saw dramatic regression of 7-25% in 6 months to a year.

This does not mean that vitamin D all by itself regresses plaque. I believe it means that vitamin D exerts a "permissive" effect, allowing all the other treatments (fish oil, LDL reduction, HDL raising, correction of small LDL, etc.) to exert their full benefit. So please don't stop everything and just take D. This will not work. However, adding vitamin D to your program on top of the basic Track Your Plaque approach--that's the best way I know of.

MSNBC Report: We need more heart procedures!

10. April 2006 William Davis (0)
A recent headline from MSNBC by Robert Bazell reads:

NEW YORK - Angioplasty, bypass surgery and cholesterol-lowering medications are among the many interventions that have brought a sharp decrease in heart disease deaths in recent years. But, as Dr. Sharon Hayes of the Mayo Clinic points out, there is one big problem.

“The death rates in women have not declined as much as they have in men,” she says.

The piece goes on to suggest that women are getting short-ended in the diagnosis of heart symptoms and heart attack. The solution: More testing to assess the need for procedures like bypass.

This is typical of the device and medication-dominated media consciousness: More procedures, more medication, more devices. Who's paying for advertising, after all? The money at stake is huge. But is this what you want?

Don't be swayed by media reporters with limited understanding of the real issues (at best), consciousness of who's paying for advertising (at worst). Yes, heart disese is often underestimated or misdiagnosed in women. The answer is better detection earlier in life followed by efforts to halt the process--effective, safe treatments for people's benefit, not just profit.