Blood sugar lessons from a Type I diabetic

23. July 2008 William Davis (15)

A friend of mine is a Type I, or childhood onset, diabetic. He's had it for nearly 50 years, since age 6. He's also in the health industry and is a good observer of detail.

He made the following interesting comments to me recently when talking about the effects of various foods on blood sugar:

"When I eat normally, like some vegetables or salad and meat, I dose up to 10 units of insulin to control my blood sugar.

"If I eat a turkey sandwich on two slices of whole wheat, I usually dose 15 units. The bread makes my blood sugar go to 300 if I don't.

"If I eat a Cousins's Sub [a local submarine sandwich chain], I dose 15 units. The bread really makes my blood sugar go up.

"I can only eat a Quarter Pound from McDonald's once a year, because it make my blood sugar go nuts. I dose 15-20 units before having it, and I feel like crap for two days afterwards.

"If I eat Mexican food, I have to dose 15-20 units. For some reason, it's gotten worse over the years, and I need to dose higher and higher.

"Chinese food is the absolute worst. I dose 20-25 units before eating Chinese. I'll often have to dose more afterwards, because my blood sugar goes so berserk."

Nothing beats the real-world observations on the impact of various foods on blood sugar than the observations of people with Type I diabetes. All the insulin they get is in a syringe. Dosing needs to match intake.

Personally, though I love the taste of Americanized Chinese food, I've always been suspicious of what exactly goes into these dishes. But I was unaware of the blood sugar implications.

The impact of Mexican I believe can be attributed to the cornstarch used in the tacos and tortillas, though I also wonder if there are other starches being snuck in, as well.

Lessons about omega-3s from Japan

23. July 2008 William Davis (7)

Image courtesy of apc33.

Japan provides a useful "laboratory" for studying the effect of a culture that relies heavily on eating fish.

The JELIS Trial, the topic of a previous Heart Scan Blog post, showed that supplementation with the single omega-3 fatty acid, EPA, 1800 mg per day (the equivalent of 10 capsules of 'standard' fish oil that contains 180 mg per day of EPA, 120 mg of DHA) significantly reduced heart attack in a Japanese population. Interestingly, this benefit was additive to the already substantial intake of omega-3 fatty acids among the general Japanese population, a population with a fraction of the heart attacks found in western populations like the U.S. (approximately 3% over 5 years in Japanese compared to several-fold higher in a comparable American group).

While there may be genetic and other cultural and lifestyle reasons behind the dramatically reduced cardiovascular risk in Japanese, it is undeniably at least partially due to the increased intake of omega-3 fatty acids from fish. Incidentally, the purported benefits of omega-3 fatty acids provide a vigorous counter-argument to the idea that all humans should be vegetarians.

Anyway, if we were to take some lessons from the Japanese and their greater habitual intake of omega-3 fatty acids from fish, they might include:

--Rural and coastal Japanese are the sub-populations with the highest reliance on fish, about a quarter-pound a day. (Gives new meaning to the idea of a "Quarter Pounder," doesn't it?) This is at least five-times greater than the intake of an average American.

--Likewise, the blood level of omega-3s in the blood of Japanese is 5-fold higher than in Americans.

--The average intake of omega-3s (EPA + DHA) among a broadly-selected population of Japanese is 850 mg per day (320 mg EPA; 520 mg DHA). Intake ranges from 300 mg per day all the way up to 3100 mg per day.

--Greater omega-3 intake (EPA + DHA) is associated with lesser carotid intimal-medial thickness, an index of body-wide atherosclerosis.

--Japanese have far less heart attack and stroke despite greater prevalence of smoking (nearly half of Japanese) and drinking.

--Total fat intake (percent of calories) is nearly identical between Americans and Japanese. It's the proportion of fat calories from omega-3 that is greater, the proportion of omega-6 that is less in Japanese.

The Japanese eat their fish in ways that we do not: As sashimi (raw, as with sushi in its various forms like Nigiri and Chirashi); fried in tempura; shaved, dried fish sprinkled on about anything you can imagine (it's not as bad as it sounds); as a snack, as in dried cuttlefish (which you can purchase in packages as a portable, sweetened fish that you eat on-the-run--I know it sounds awful, but don't poke fun at it until you've tried it); in "soups" with soba noodles. Fish is commonly consumed with rice and soy sauce, as well as other soy-based foods, such as tofu, miso (soy bean paste), or natto.

I believe that there are some lessons to take from the Japanese and their fish-consuming habits:

1) An omega-3 fatty acid intake of at least 1000 mg per day yields measurable cardiovascular benefits.

2) Despite the fears over mercury and pesticide residues in fish, this seems to not have played out to be a real-life effect in the Japanese, who consume five-fold greater quantities of fish.

3) My mother was right after all when she encouraged us to eat more fish.

DIRECT Study result: Low-carb, Mediterranean diets win weight-loss battle

19. July 2008 William Davis (14)

Drs. Iris Shai and colleagues released results of a new Israeli study, the Dietary Intervention Randomized Controlled Trial (DIRECT) Trial, that compared three different diet strategies. Of those tested, a low-carbohydrate diet was most successful at achieving weight loss.

You can find the full-text of the study on the New England Journal of Medicine website.

322 participants followed one of three diets over two year period. Compared head-to-head, the (mean) weight loss in each group was:

• 2.9 kg (6.4 lbs) for the low-fat group
• 4.4 kg (9.7 lbs) for the Mediterranean-diet group
• 4.7 kg (10.3 lbs) for the low-carbohydrate group

(Average age 52 years at start; average body-mass index, or BMI, 31.)

The conclusion was that the low-carb diet performed the best, with 60% greater weight loss, with the Mediterranean diet a close second.

The diets

The low-fat diet was based on the American Heart Association diet, with 30% of calories from fat (10% from saturated fat) and food choices weighted towards low-fat grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes and limited additional fats, sweets, and high-fat snacks; calorie intake of 1500 kcal per day for women and 1800 kcal per day for men was encouraged.

The Mediterranean diet was a moderate-fat diet rich in vegetables, with reduced red meat, and poultry and fish replacing beef and lamb. Total calories from fat of 35% per day or less was the goal, with most fat calories from olive oil and a handful of nuts. Like the low-fat program, calories were limited to 1500 kcal per day for women, 1800 kcal per day for men.

The low-carbohydrate diet was patterned after the popular Atkins’ program, with 8% participants achieving the ketosis that Dr. Atkins’ advocated as evidence that a fat-burning metabolism was activated, rather than sugar-burning as fuel. For the 2-month “induction phase,” 20 grams of carbohydrates per day was set as the goal, followed by 120 grams per day once the weight goal was achieved. Unlike the other two diets, calories, protein and fat were unlimited.

Weight loss, lipids, inflammation

You can see from the weight loss graph that the low-carb approach exerted the most dramatic initial weight loss. Interestingly, much of the weight-loss benefit was lost as the carbohydrate intake increased, by study design, back to 120 mg per day. However, the other two diet approaches showed similar phenomena of “giving back” some of the initial weight loss.

The low-carbohydrate diet exerted the greatest change in cholesterol, or lipid, panels: increased HDL 8.4 mg/dl vs. 6.3 mg/dl on low-fat; the triglyceride response was the most dramatic, with a reduction of 23.7 mg/dl vs. 3.7 mg/dl on low-fat. Interestingly, the LDL cholesterol-reducing effect of all three diets was modest, with the most reduction achieved by the Mediteranean diet.

The inflammatory measure, C-reactive protein (CRP), was reduced most effectively by the low-carb and Mediterranean diets, least by the low-fat diet. HbA1c, a measure of long-term blood sugar, dropped significantly more on the low-carb diet.

When the final dietary composition was examined, interestingly, there really were only modest differences among the three diets, with 8% less calories from carbs, 8% greater calories from fat, comparing low-carb to low-fat, with Mediterranean intermediate.

Taken at face value, this useful exercise quite clearly shows that, from the perspective of weight loss and correction of metabolic parameters like triglycerides, HDL,CRP, and blood sugar, low-carbohydrate wins hands down, with Mediterranean diet a close second.

It also suggests that a return to a carbohydrate intake of 120 mg/day allows a partial return of initial weight lost, as well as deterioration of metabolic parameters after the initial positive changes.

Although the study has already received some criticism for such potential flaws as the modest number of Atkins’ followers achieving ketosis (8%), suggesting lax adherence, and the reintroduction of the 120 mg/day carbohydrate advice, I can suspect that these may have been compromises drawn to satisfy some Institutional Review Board. (Whenever a study is going to be conducted involving human subjects, a study needs to pass through the review of an Institutional Review Board, or IRB. IRB’s, while charged to protect human subjects from experimental abuses, also tend to be painfully conservative and will block a study or demand changes even if they are not dangerous, but just veer too far off the mainstream.)

However, several unanswered questions remain:

1) How would the diets have compared if the carbohydrate restriction were continued for a longer period, or even indefinitely? (The divergences would likely have been dramatic.)
2) Will low-carb exert the same cardiovascular event reduction that the Mediterranean approach has shown in the Lyon study and others?
3) Are there effects on health outside of the measures followed that differ among the three diets, such as cancer? (I doubt it, especially given the modest real differences over time. But this will be the objection raised by various "official" organizations.)

I would further propose that:

Low-fat diets are dead

The AHA will cling to their version of low-fat diet, based on difficulty in changing course for any large, consensus-driven organization, not to mention the substantial ($100’s of millions) revenues derived from endorsing low-fat manufactured products. The AHA will also point to the lack of difference in LDL cholesterol among the three, since they cannot get beyond the fact that there’s more to coronary risk—a lot more—than LDL.

Off-the-shelf diets achieve off-the-shelf results

If you just need a T-shirt, a medium might fit fine. But if you’d like a nicely fitting suit or dress, then tailoring to your individual proportions is needed. When aiming towards maximizing benefits on lipoproteins and coronary risk, none of these diets achieve the kinds of changes we often need for coronary plaque reversal, as in the Track Your Plaque program. That requires making dietary changes that exert maximal effects on lipoprotein patterns.

Do I sell heart scans?

18. July 2008 William Davis (12)

I came across a criticism of the Track Your Plaque program recently that suggested that it was nothing more than a program to sell CT heart scans.

Huh?

I suppose if you say that the Track Your Plaque program is nothing more than a way to sell heart disease prevention, omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, vitamin D, better nutrition, and better identification of causes of heart disease . . . well, I believe that would be true.

But is the program a "front" to sell heart scans?

No, it is not, nor has it ever been.

I've heard about these peculiar suspicions about the program before. Though I've never taken them seriously, let me clear up any lingering uncertainty:

--I have no relationship with any heart scan center, scanning facility, or hospital other than to interpret heart scans.

I do not own a scanner, I have no financial interest in a scanner or scanning center, nor have I ever had any interest. I also have no plans to do so in the future. Let business people in the imaging business do that. I want no part of it. I have seen what these people go through and, frankly, I want no part of it, nor do I want the appearance that I am advocating scans to make money. I'm accused of trying to make money from scans even when I do not have any financial interest!

--I do not sell heart scans or imaging packages, nor have I ever done so.

You can't buy a scan through Track Your Plaque, The Heart Scan Blog, or through me. To me, heart scans are simply a measuring tool to identify the extent of coronary plaque, as well as a tracking tool to follow its course. Without it, there would be no Track Your Plaque. But there is also no alternative. The closest alternative would be carotid intimal-medial thickness, a technique, while useful, is a distant second choice to indirectly gauge coronary plaque by examining the thickness of the carotid lining (not carotid plaque). Perhaps in 10 years, a better measure to gauge and track coronary plaque will emerge that has superior aspects over CT heart scanning. If reasonable, safe, accessible, and quantitative, then Track Your Plaque may adopt that technology as its measuring tool.

Track Your Plaque is not about heart scanning; Track Your Plaque is about measuring and tracking plaque that, in 2008, is still best accomplished with CT heart scans.

--I make loads of money from heart scans and Track Your Plaque.

Yeah, right.

Track Your Plaque is a volunteer venture for my team; none of us get paid a penny for doing all we do, including me. We charge a membership fee on the website (somewhere around $6-7 a month) to pay our expenses, such as code writing for our proprietary software (much of it remains under development), printing costs, modest legal costs, the costs of doing business (e.g., accountant). Despite the fact that Track Your Plaque and the Heart Scan Blog occupies a substantial part of the day of the Track Your Plaque team, none of us are reimbursed for our time. I do believe, however, that this concept is so enormously powerful that it will, someday, pay us all enough to allow us to devote more time and effort to it.

Personally, I can't wait to devote more time and effort to this concept that is simple, logical, and effective. More research is needed, more development is needed, more discussion is needed. Right now, it is all accomplished outside of our busy schedules, including my full-time cardiology practice. I continue to have 7 am procedures, middle-of-the-night calls, weekend hospital rounds and emergencies (though virtually none of these are the patients involved in prevention, but the "other" people: atrial fibrillation, elderly heart failure patients, rhythm disorders, cardiomyopathies, pulmonary hypertension, peripheral vascular disease, the non-compliant).

--The book, Track Your Plaque, is a gimmick to sell you a heart scan.

No, it's a program that relies on this technology. But there's no special deal, no discounts, no steering to heart scan centers that I have a special arrangement with. No such thing exists, nor has there ever been such an arrangement.

I've heard it all. Early on, when I was helping my friend, Steve Burlingame and his wife, Nancy, set up Milwaukee Heart Scan, I helped by providing medical oversite, education of physicians and public, and interpreting heart scans. After all, in the "early days," nobody knew anything about heart scans. It was a long, hard climb against ignorance, habit, entrenched thinking, stubbornness, and stupidity. I've been paid next to nothing for all this. I told Steve long ago that, given the extraordinary expenses of maintaining an independent scanning center, that he should first pay his expenses, pay his technologists, receptionists, and nurse, pay himself, then pay me for reading scans if he had any money left over. Most of the time, Steve had nothing left over and I was paid nothing.

So, while some of my colleagues were assuming that I was rolling in money from "promoting" heart scans, the reality was that I was doing nearly everything for free. (It certainly wasn't the high life I was living; I don't drive a Mercedes, take fancy vacations, none of that. In fact, I work about 51 weeks a year.)

Why do I do this if it doesn't yield a big flow of money? Because I believe in it as a superior path to the conventional. If I were simply interested in making more money--I wouldn't do it. I would simply do what all my cardiology colleagues are doing: more heart catheterizations, more angioplasties and stents, learning how to do carotid stents, iliac stents, peripheral angioplasty, renal stents, acquiring the skills to put in defibrillators, new device insertion like umbrellas in the interatrial septum, etc. There's plenty more money in that. It's also not that hard. I know, because that is my background: high-risk cardiac interventions. That's what I was trained to do, that's what I did from a number years, until I started to see that this was nothing more than "putting out fires" in people who became increasingly ill and reliant on bail-out procedures. It makes lots of money, but it is also fundamentally wrong.

So, no, I do not sell heart scans, nor is the Track Your Plaque program or The Heart Scan Blog meant to promote heart scans except as a tool for tracking this disease.

That's it, pure and simple.

Plaque is the new cholesterol

17. July 2008 William Davis (3)

Which is more important: cholesterol or coronary plaque?

Ask what Dr. Michael Eades' calls "statinators," and you will likely receive a befuddled look. Or, you might receive comments like "Measuring plaque has never been shown to reduce mortality."

While risk factors for heart disease are important, no doubt (my office practice is about half lipid consultation and complex hyperlipidemia management), for many they have become an end in themselves. In other words, LDL cholesterol in particular dominates thinking so much that it has caused many to exclude the fact that plaque---coronary atherosclerotic plaque---is the disease itself.

Dozens of studies, from the St. Francis Heart Study to the 25,000-participant UCLA registry, to the recently-released MESA database (ethic differences, women, as well as superiority to carotid measures) have repeatedly shown that heart scan scores (coronary artery calcium scores) are superior to conventional risk factors (usually via the Framingham risk score) for predicting future heart attack and other events. And the differences are not minor incremental differences. The predictive power of plaque measurement via heart scanning is multiples better: 4 times, 10 times, 20 times or more in various subgroups.

Much of what we do in medicine is not based on long-term studies of outcome, pitting some diagnostic measure or treatment against placebo. It is already standard practice to measure plaque via heart catheterization, crudely via stress testing, and increasingly popular CT coronary angiography. None of these methods have been subjected to studies comparing testing vs. not testing in a large population, followed by some program of prevention to assess differences in mortality, heart attack, and other events.

Why should heart scan be held to such a standard?

Dr. Scott Grundy, lipid guru and one of the experts who sat on the Adult Treatment Panel-II for lipid management guidelines, recently stated [emphasis added]:

"Imaging has at least 3 virtues. It individualizes risk assessment beyond use of age, which is a less reliable surrogate for atherosclerosis burden; it provides an integrated assessment of the lifetime exposure to risk factors; and it identifies individuals who are susceptible to developing atherosclerosis beyond established risk factors. Also of importance, in the absence of detectable atherosclerosis, short-term risk appears to be very low."

Well said, and from a vocal statinator, to boot.

Sadly, Dr. Grundy goes on to say how plaque imaging can serve to better determine who will benefit from statin drug use.

Of course, you and I know that there is far more to reduction of cardiovascular risk applied to a framework of serial plaque quantification ("tracking plaque"!) than statin drugs. I doubt that a man as intelligent as Dr. Grundy truly believes this. I suspect that he is simply stating what he knows what will be published without resistance in the standard medical literature, trying to achieve a modest incremental success just by raising consciousness about heart scanning and plaque imaging: first things first.

Maybe next will be a plaque-tracking, or even a plaque-reducing, mainstream conversation, just like the one we've been conducting for the past four years.

Track Your Plaque success story blows it

17. July 2008 William Davis (3)

Joe was a Track Your Plaque Success Story. With a starting heart scan score of 278, he dropped it 12 months later to 264, a 5% reduction. Though not a huge reduction, Joe's risk for a heart attack or other coronary event was virtually zero. I was very proud of Joe.

Among the culprit lipoprotein patterns that caused Joe's plaque was lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a). Niacin was therefore crucial to his program. It was among the principal reasons he dropped his heart scan score and reduced his risk for heart attack so dramatically.

Since he retired, Joe has been freewheeling around the country, traveling and having a great time. He consequently stopped thinking about his heart disease and Lp(a). He also tired of the occasional hot flushes he'd experienced with niacin. Though the flushes were promptly aborted by drinking two glasses of water, he simply didn't want to be bothered.

So when Joe saw this interesting and tantalizing "flush-free niacin" on the store shelf, he grabbed it.

Joe came back to the office. His blood pressure was 190/94, so high that he was having occasional chest pains from it (which can happen when something called "left ventricular diastolic dysfunction" develops from hypertension). His lipoprotein patterns were terrible, including a big upward jump in Lp(a) and drop in HDL. So I asked him to have another heart scan right away: Score 371, a 40% increase. In other words, his program went down the toilet.

Why?

Simple: Flush-free niacin. I've said it before (No flush = No effect and No flush niacin kills) and I'll say it again:

Flush-free or No-flush niacin is a complete, unadulterated, completely ineffective SCAM.

Flush-free or no-flush niacin is not a substitute for niacin. Joe is yet another example of how dangerous this scam can be. It turned one of our great success stories into a failure.

Please, please, please do not fall for this misleading and potentially dangerous scam product. While the product itself is not intrinsically dangerous, it denies you the benefits of the real thing: niacin.

Thankfully, the mistake in Joe's program was caught before a heart attack or other catastrophe. He did manage to pass a stress test, though with a flagrantly out-of-control blood pressure response. We'll get him back on track--but with niacin, the real thing.

Dr. Cannell comments on vitamin D lab tests

14. July 2008 William Davis (9)

As always, Dr. John Cannell of The Vitamin D Council continues to teach us new lessons about vitamin D.

Apparently, Dr. Cannell is swamped with the attention that vitamin D is drawing, largely due to his efforts to publicize the enormous deficiency of Americans and his great talent for articulating the science. The most current newsletter, while a bit haphazard, makes some excellent new points that I reprint here.

(I did not reprint his conversation about "any form of vitamin D" being acceptable. My experience differs: In nearly 1000 patients who have taken vitamin D supplements, my experience is that most tablet forms are inconsistently absorbed, sometimes not absorbed at all. I therefore advocate only use of gelcaps or liquids. I'm told by members of Track Your Plaque, however, that they are witnessing reliable increases in blood levels of vitamin D by taking the powdered form of Bio Tech Pharmacal's product.)

Does it matter what reference lab my doctor uses?

Yes, it might make a huge difference. A number of methods exist to measure 25(OH)D in commercial labs. The two most common are mass spectrometry and a chemiluminescence method, LIAISON. The first, mass spectrometry, is highly accurate in the hands of experienced technicians given enough time to do the test properly. However, in the hands of a normally trained technician at a commercial reference lab overwhelmed with 25(OH)D tests, it may give falsely elevated readings, that is, it tells you are OK when in fact you are vitamin D deficient. The second method, chemiluminescence, LIAISON, was recently developed and is the most accurate of the screening, high throughput, methods; LabCorp uses it. Quest Diagnostics reference lab uses mass spec. Again, both Quest and LabCorp are overwhelmed by 25(OH)D requests. The problem is that the faster the technicians do the mass spec test, the more inaccurate it is likely to be. If your 25(OH)D blood test says "Quest Diagnostics" on the top, do not believe you have an adequate level (> 50 ng/ml). You may or may not; the test may be falsely elevated. Let me give you Cureality | Real People Seeking Real Cures

Kitchen sink approach for Lp(a)

29. August 2008 William Davis (12)

Lipoprotein(a), Lp(a), can be a tough nut to crack.

Having struggled and wrestled with this genetic pattern for the last 12 years or so in hundreds of patients, I have gained great respect for this difficult to control pattern.

I regard lipoprotein(a) as the number one most aggressive cause for heart disease and coronary plaque known. It can account for heart attacks in men in their 40s, women in their 50s. It can cause heart disease and heart attacks in even the ultra-fit like marathon runners. It accounts for both excessive coronary risk and misleading cholesterol values in slender, healthy-appearing people.

Niacin is the number one treatment choice for Lp(a), followed by testosterone for men, estrogens (preferably human, not horse or other non-human mammal) for women. I then often resort to DHEA, along with adjunctive nutritional agents like raw almonds, ground flaxseed, and others.

Our most recent addition to the Lp(a) treatment list is high-dose fish oil, which appears to exert a significant effect in about 40% of people with Lp(a).

Even with this multi-agent approach, not everybody gains control over Lp(a).

That makes me wonder if someone has Lp(a) at a substantial level of, say, 200 nmol/L or 70 mg/dl (values can differ tremendously, depending on the method of measurement), should we throw everything but the kitchen sink at Lp(a) from the start? Right now, by adding an agent one at a time, it often takes two years to gain control over Lp(a) (if we are going to get it at all).

While many people might find this unpalatable and overwhelming from the starting gate of their program, I do believe it may be a strategy we should consider adopting for full and more immediate plaque control in the Track Your Plaque program. Something to chew on.

Clearly, we need better answers for Lp(a). A "kitchen sink," full-frontal assault might be a way to gain faster control, though not necessarily a superior approach with regards to efficacy and potency.

There are a number of unique, potentially effective therapies for Lp(a) that are worth examining. Given the difficulty of performing clinical trials with non-drug agents (largely a lack of financial support, since nobody gets a financial return with non-patent-protectable agents), I am anxious to put these potential treatments to a test in the Track Your Plaque program Virtual Clinical Trail (VCT). The VCT gives us a quick and relatively easy method to test various potential treatments, with feedback generated in months, rather than years.

Any suggestions on promising agents to test? Of course, they must be widely available nutritional agents, not drugs.

Making Dr. Friedewald an honest man

28. August 2008 William Davis (3)

Colleen started with the usual discrepancy between conventional calculated LDL cholesterol of 121 mg/dl and the far more accurate LDL particle number (NMR) of 1927 nmol/L.

Those of you following this conversation or our many conversations on the Track Your Plaque Forum know that a useful and highly reliable rule-of-thumb for converting NMR LDL particle number to LDL is to drop the last digit: 1927 nmol/L becomes 192 mg/dl. (This is, admitttedly, arrived at empirically, not by design. However, it has held up through thousands of NMR analyses and plays out reasonably when you compare distributions of Friedewald LDL and LDL particle number on a population basis.)

In other words, by this simple manipulation, Colleen's Friedewald calculated LDL is off by 58%. This is very common, a phenomenon I witness several times every day.

By LDL particle size, 75% of all Colleen's LDL particle were abnormally small (small LDL particle number 1440 nmol/L). This is a moderately severe small LDL tendency.

So we took all the steps for reduction of small LDL/LDL, including elimination of wheat and cornstarch, exercise, weight loss (which happens inevitably when wheat and cornstarch are eliminated), fish oil, vitamin D, etc.

Another NMR lipoprotein panel showed an LDL particle number of 882 nmol/L and a Friedewald calculated LDL of 87 mg/dl. Using our rule-of-thumb, LDL by particle number is virtually the same as the calculated LDL. This time, small LDL numbered only 237 nmol/L, or 26.8% of the total, a marked reduction.

Isn't that interesting? As small LDL is corrected, the crude Friedwald calculated LDL approximates the more accurate LDL particle number.

It assumes that accuracy of the Friedewald calculation may be more likely to occur as LDL size approaches normal. However, when LDL size is abnormally small--a condition shared by at least 70% of people with coronary heart disease--then the Friedewald LDL becomes increasingly inaccurate.

The opposite can also happen: When all or nearly all LDL particles are large, Friedewald calculated LDL can markedly overestimate LDL particle number. Yesterday, for instance, a patient had a Friedewald calculated LDL of 183 mg/dl, but an NMR particle number of 1110 nmol/L--drop the zero . . . LDL 110 mg/dl. This woman was advised to take a statin drug by her primary care physician, based on the Friedewald LDL. Instead, she proved to have a far lower LDL. She would not have benefitted from taking a statin drug.

As I've warned many times before: Beware the Friedewald calculated LDL.

Some basic vitamin D issues

24. August 2008 William Davis (7)

The last post on vitamin D raised a number of basic questions among readers. So let me discuss some of these questions one by one. All of them raise important issues surrounding the practical aspects of managing vitamin D in your health.

Anne said:

I think it is important to stress that vitamin D supplementation needs to be continued long term.

I have met too many people who have been prescribed 50,000 IU of D2 for 8-12 weeks and then told to stop because their 23(OH)D went over 30ng/ml. I know one person who's doctor stopped and started the D2 3 times.

Thanks for pointing that out, Anne. Excellent point. I also see doctors do this with statin drugs: start it, check a LDL level which is lower, then think that you're done and stop the drug. What the heck are they thinking?

If vitamin D is not being produced by sun exposure and not obtainable through diet, continued supplementation is necessary, essentially for life.

Twinb asked:

How often you think Vit. D levels should be tested after the initial test is done, especially if the levels are drastically low?

We have used every 6 months in the office. Ideally, levels are in mid-summer and mid- to-late winter in order to gauge the extremes of your seasonal fluctuations. While most adults over 40 fail to fluctuate more than 10 ng/ml in the Wisconsin climate (and this summer, after an initial rainy season early, has been flawlessly bright and sunny, in the high-70s and 80s every single day for months), an occasional person fluctuates more widely. The only way to judge is to check a blood level.

Rich said:

Vitamin D dosage effects appear to be quite idiosyncratic.

Yes, indeed it is. Despite using crude rules-of-thumb, like taking 1000 units of vitamin D per 10 ng/ml desired (a rule I learned from Dr. John Cannell, which he offered fully aware of its inaccuracy), many people will surprise you and have levels that make no sense. Testing is crucial to know your vitamin D level.

Richard asked: Where do we get enough vitamin D wihout worring about laboratory tests?

Well, the entire point of the post was that you absolutely, positively cannot just take vitamin D blindly at any dose and hope that your level is ideal, no more than you can blindly take a dose of thyroid and know you have achieved normal thyroid levels. In my view, vitamin D blood levels are an absolute.

Another simple issue: Don't be afraid of vitamin D. It is, in all practicality, no more dangerous than getting a dark tan. (But, as many of you realize, getting a tan is no assurance of raising vitamin D if you are over 40 years old.)

Wouldn't it be great if someone developed a do-it-yourself-at-home skin test for vitamin D? I know of no effort to develop this, but it would be a huge advantage for all of us.

“How much vitamin D should I take?”

22. August 2008 William Davis (17)

It’s probably the number one most common question I get today:

“How much vitamin D should I take?”

Like asking for investing advice, there are no shortage of people willing to provide answers, most of them plain wrong.

The media are quick to offer advice like “Take the recommended daily allowance of 400 units per day,” or “Some experts say that intake of vitamin D should be higher, as high as 2000 units per day.” Or “Be sure to get your 15 minutes of midday sun.”

Utter nonsense.

The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine has been struggling with this question, also. They have an impossible job: Draft broad pronouncements on requirements for various nutrients by recommending Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) for all Americans. The Food and Nutrition Board has tried to factor in individual variation by breaking vitamin D requirements down by age and sex, but what amounts to a one-size-fits-nearly-all approach.

Much of the uncertainty over dosing stems from the fact that vitamin D should not be called a “vitamin.” Vitamins are nutrients obtained from foods. But, outside of oily fish, you'll find very little naturally-occurring vitamin D in food. (Even in fish, there is generally no more than 400 units per 4 oz. serving.) Sure, there’s 20 units in an egg yolk and you can activate the vitamin D in a shiitake mushroom by exposing it to ultraviolet radiation. Dairy products like milk (usually) contain vitamin D because the USDA mandates it. But food sources hardly help at all unless you’re an infant or small child.

It all makes sense when vitamin D is viewed as a hormone, a steroid hormone, not a vitamin. Vitamin-no, steroid hormone-D exerts potent effects in tiny quantities with hormone-like action in cells, including activation of nuclear receptors.

It is the only hormone that is meant to be activated by sun exposure of the skin, not obtained through diet. But the ability to activate D is lost by the majority of us by age 40 and even a dark tan is no assurance that sufficient skin prohormone D activation has taken place.

As with any other hormone, such as thyroid, parathyroid, or growth hormones, dose needs to be individualized.

Imagine you developed a severely low thyroid condition that resulted in 30 lbs of weight gain, lose your hair, legs swell, and heart disease explodes. Would you accept that you should take the same dose of thyroid hormone as every other man or woman your age, regardless of your body size, proportion of body fat, metabolism, genetics, race, dietary habits, and other factors that influence thyroid hormone levels? Of course you wouldn’t.

Then why would anyone insist that vitamin D be applied in a one-size-fits-all fashion? (There’s another world in which a one-size-fits-all approach to hormone replacement has been widely applied, that of female estrogen replacement. In conventional practice, there’s no effort to identify need, estrogen-progesterone interactions, nor assess the adequacy of dose, not to mention the perverse non-human preparation used.)

With thyroid hormone, ideal replacement dose of hormone ranges widely from one person to another. Some people require 25 mcg per day of T4; others require 800% greater doses. Many require T3, but not everybody.

Likewise, vitamin D requirements can range widely. I have used anywhere from 1000 units per day, all the way up to 16,000 units per day before desirable blood levels were achieved.

Vitamin D dose needs to be individualized. Factors that influence vitamin D need include body size and percent body fat (both of which increase need substantially); sex (males require, on average, 1000 units per day more than females); age (older need more); skin color (darker-skinned races require more, fairer-skinned races less); and other factors that remain ill-defined.

But these are “rules” often broken. My office experience with vitamin D now numbers nearly 1000 patients. The average female dose is 4000-5000 units per day, average male dose 6000 units per day to achieve a blood level of 60-70 ng/ml, though there are frequent exceptions. I’ve had 98 lb women who require 12,000 units, 300 lb men who require 1000 units, 21-year olds who require 10,000 units. (Of course, this is a Wisconsin experience. However, regional differences in dosing needs diminish as we age, since less and less vitamin D activation occurs.)

Let me reiterate: Steroid hormone-vitamin D dose needs to be individualized.

There’s only one way to individualize your need for vitamin D and thereby determine your dose: Measure a blood level.

Nobody can gauge your vitamin D need by looking at you, by your skin color, size, or other simple measurement like weight or body fat. A vitamin D blood level needs to be measured specifically-period.

Unfortunately, many people balk at this, claiming either that it’s too much bother or that their doctor refused to measure it.

I would rank normalizing steroid hormone-vitamin D as among the most important things you can do for your health. It should never be too much bother. And if your doctor refuses to at least discuss why he/she won’t measure it, then it’s time for a new doctor.

If you’re worried about adding to rising healthcare costs by adding yet another blood test, think of the money saved by sparing you from a future of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, etc. The cost of a vitamin D blood test is relatively trivial (around $40-50, a fraction of the cost of a one month supply of a drug for diabetes.)

So how much vitamin D should you take? Enough to raise your blood level of 25-hydroxy vitamin D to normal. (We aim for a normal level of 60-70 ng/ml.)

You probably don't take enough fish oil

20. August 2008 William Davis (17)

The results of the recent Heart Scan Blog survey in response to the question: MY DAILY DOSE OF EPA + DHA FROM FISH OIL IS revealed:

Zero--I don't take any
17 (7%) of respondents

Less than 1000 mg per day
24 (10%) of respondents

1000-2000 mg per day
91 (38%) of respondents

2000-3000 mg per day
44 (18%) of respondents

3000-4000 mg per day
40 (16%) of respondents

More than 4000 mg per day
20 (8%) of respondents

Based on the above results, I would say that only a minority of respondents are taking an ideal dose of omega-3 fatty acids. Nearly all of us should consider taking more.

Benefits of omega-3 fatty acids (EPA + DHA) from fish oil begin around a dose of 840 mg per day, according to the GISSI Prevenzione Trial of 1999, an 11,000-participant trial. This dose also corresponds to a quantity of omega-3s that have been shown to raise EPA + DHA blood levels and thereby reduce the notoriously high AA:EPA ratio of Americans.

But what dose is sufficient? What dose is ideal?

Well, the answer to a great degree depends on what you are taking the fish oil for. If being taken to reduce triglycerides and triglyceride-containing lipoproteins, like VLDL and the after-eating (postprandial) IDL, then a higher dose will be necessary. (Triglyceride reduction for the genetically-determined very high triglyceride level of familial hypertriglyceridemia is the FDA-approved indication for prescription Lovaza.)

If you are taking fish oil for treatment of ADHD, depression, or bipolar illness, very high doses are often necessary.

But how about maximal reduction of cardiovascular risk and for control or reversal of atherosclerotic plaque?

This conversation is still evolving. But we can learn some important lessons from three populations of the world that are vigorous consumers of fish:

--The Inuits (aka Eskimos) of Greenland and northern Canada
--The Japanese
--The Bantus of Tanzania who live along Nyasa Lake

All three indigenous populations have several-fold greater intakes of fish and omega-3 fatty acids, have higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids, and have enjoyed reduced cardiovascular events, reduced atherosclerotic plaque, or improvement in various surrogates of cardiovascular risk (e.g., Lp(a)).

The most recent addition to this conversation is the ERA JUMP Study, discussed in a previous Heart Scan Blog post. In ERA JUMP, despite being heavy smokers and having other markers for greater risk for heart disease, Japanese men living in Japan had markedly less carotid and coronary plaque, as compared to Caucasian men living in PIttsburgh or Hawaiian men of Japanese descent. The difference appeared to be attributable to serum levels of omega-3 fatty acids.

I believe that the trend is here is to increase the amount of omega-3 fatty acids that most of us take. In the Track Your Plaque program, we have been advocating a rock-bottom starting dose of EPA + DHA of 1200 mg per day. However, I believe that this is due for a change.

We will be increasing the minimum dose for plaque regression and control. Please attend our Webinar this evening for a full, in-depth discussion of the rationale behind this important change.

As always, let me remind you that I am not selling, nor ever have sold, fish oil supplements. If I advocate a specific dose, a higher dose, I do so based on my interpretation of the data and experience with patients, not because I am interested in selling brand X of fish oil.

Vitamin D and HDL

19. August 2008 William Davis (23)

Despite the paucity of scientific documentation of this phenomenon, I am continuing to witness extraordinary increases in HDL cholesterol levels with vitamin D supplementation.

I've touched on the interaction of vitamin D supplementation with HDL in The Heart Scan Blog previously:

Vitamin D: Treatment for metabolic syndrome?

HDL for Dummies

At first, I thought it was attributable to other factors. In real life, most people don't modify one factor at a time. They reduce
processed carbohydrates/eliminate wheat and cornstarch, lose weight, add or increase omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, begin niacin, increase exercise and physical activity. All these efforts also impact on HDL.

Among the many things I do, I consult on complex lipid (cholesterol) disorders (complex hyperlipidemias) in my office. A substantial number of these people carry a diagnosis of hypoalphalipoproteinemia, a mouthful that simply means these people are unable to manufacture much apoprotein A1, the principal protein of HDL cholesterol particles. As a result, people with hypoalphalipoproteinemia have HDL cholesterol levels in the neighborhood of 20-30 mg/dl--very low. They are also at high risk for heart disease and stroke.

Encourage these people to exercise, attain ideal weight, eliminate wheat and cornstarch: HDL increases 5 mg/dl or so.

Add niacin, HDL increases another 5-10 mg/dl.

Perhaps we're now sitting somewhere around an HDL of 35-40 mg/dl--better, but hardly great.

Add vitamin D to achieve our target serum level . . . HDL jumps to 50, 60, 70, even 90 mg/dl.

The first few times this occurred, I thought it was an error or fluke. But now that I've witnessed this effect many dozens of time, I am convinced that it is real. Just today, I saw a 40-year old man whose starting HDL was 25 mg/dl increase to 87 mg/dl.

Responses like this are supposed to be impossible. Before vitamin D, I had never witnessed increases of this magnitude.

Not all therapies for raising HDL raise the important large (also known as HDL2b) fraction. With lipoprotein analyses, it appears that is principally the large fraction of HDL that rises with vitamin D supplementation.

Why? How?

That I can't tell you. But for those of you struggling with low HDL cholesterols despite your best efforts, vitamin D can make a world of difference.

An interesting corollary: If super-high HDL cholesterols are associated with extreme longevity, as they are with centenarians, does raising HDL to extraordinary levels with vitamin D lead to longer, healthier life, all the way up to age 110 years?

Again, no answers, but an interesting thought. And one I'd bet on. (And I'm not selling vitamin D.)

Weight loss and blood pressure

15. August 2008 William Davis (6)

Here's another thought with regards to time issues with weight loss: reductions in blood pressure (BP).

The previous post talked about how triglycerides initially go up, sometimes way up, when weight drops, only to be followed months later by substantial drops. HDL initially drops in response to the triglyceride fluctuations, only to be followed by a rise.

Blood pressure also shows a curious pattern that is largely dependent on age.

Say someone in their 20s or 30s, for instance, loses 30 lbs (through elimination of wheat and cornstarch, say). BP usually drops within a few weeks, perhaps a month or two at most.

How about someone in their 70s? Say a substantial amount of weight is lost, say 50 lbs over 6 months. BP does indeed drop, but it may require 6 months or longer after weight plateaus for the full effects of BP-reduction to be fully expressed. But it will eventually drop.

Why the age-dependent difference?

It relates to the capacity of arteries to remain flexible and distensible. Over the years, cross-linking of collagen (a structural protein), glycation (glucose molecules attaching to proteins), loss of endothelial responsiveness to generate artery-dilating substances like nitric oxide, and arterial atherosclerotic plaque all all up to making older arteries less able to "relax" and BP to drop.

But given time and the proper effort, BP will eventually drop. Awareness of this time effect can help most people decide better when medications are necessary or if weight loss alone is sufficient to reach BP goals.

"I lost 30 lbs and my triglycerides went . . . up?"

13. August 2008 William Davis (6)

Brad needed to lose weight.

At 6 ft tall, he began the program at 291 lbs, easily 80 lbs overweight. He wore virtually all of it in his belly.

He had laboratory numbers to match: HDL 33 mg/dl, triglycerides 225 mg/dl, LDL (calculated) 144 mg/dl, blood sugar 122 mg/dl (fasting--clearly "pre-diabetic"), c-reactive protein 3.0 mg/dl. Among his lipoprotein abnormalities: small LDL representing 80% of all LDL (no surprise).

Readers of The Heart Scan Blog know that these are the patterns of the carbohydrate-indulgent. I asked Brad to eliminate all wheat flour products, all foods made with cornstarch, and follow a diet rich in healthy oils, raw nuts, vegetables, and lean meats.

Brad returned for a discussion about follow-up basic lipids (cholesterol) values four months later--31 lbs lighter, most of it clearly lost from his abdomen. He claimed he felt more energetic and clear-headed than he had in years.

His lipid panel: HDL 34 mg/dl, LDL 122 mg/dl, triglycerides 295 mg/dl. Brad's smile dissolved. "How could that happen? You said losing weight would make my HDL go up and my triglycerides go down!"

Yes, I had said that. But I was oversimplifying.

The truth is that, when there is weight loss, especially profound weight loss like Brad experienced eliminating wheat and cornstarch products, there is mobilization of fat stores. Fat is stored energy. Energy is stored as . . . triglycerides.

So when there is substantial weight loss, there is a flood of triglycerides in the blood, and triglyceride levels in the midst of weight loss can commonly jump up, not uncommonly to the 200-300+ mg/dl range. When triglycerides go up, there is also a drop in HDL (triglycerides interact with HDL particles, modify their structure and make them more readily destroyed, thereby dropping blood levels). Occasionally, substantial weight loss like Brad experienced will drop HDL really low, as low as the 20's.

Once weight stabilizes, this effect can last up to 2 months before correcting. Only then will triglycerides drop and HDL rise. The rise in HDL occurs even more slowly, requiring several more months to plateau.

In other words, weight loss like Brad's causes triglycerides to increase and HDL to decrease, to be followed later by a drop in triglycerides and a rise in HDL.

I know of no way to block this phenomenon. And perhaps we shouldn't, since this is how fat stores are mobilized and "burned off." Fish oil does blunt the triglyceride rise (perhaps through activation of lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme responsible for clearance of triglycerides), but doesn't eliminate it.

I call these changes "transitional" changes in lipids.

Patience pays. A few more months from now, Brad's numbers will be much happier, as will Brad.

Divorce court for the doctor-patient relationship?

10. August 2008 William Davis (4)

The doctor-patient relationship has gone sour.

This probably comes as no surprise to most of you, particularly if you've been following conversations here in The Heart Scan Blog:

Who is your doctor? discussing the emergence of the physician-as-hospital-employee phenomenon that causes your doctor to become the de facto portal (seller?) of hospital services to you, a model fraught with conflicts of interest.