Wheat-free pumpkin bread

25. diciembre 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. diciembre 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. diciembre 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. diciembre 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. diciembre 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. diciembre 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. diciembre 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. diciembre 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. diciembre 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.)
All posts by william-davis

A new Track Your Plaque record: 63% reduction

14. July 2007 William Davis (3)
Stress can booby-trap the best efforts at reducing your CT heart scan score.

But Amy, our newest Track Your Plaque record holder, defied the effects of an overwhelmingly life stress to drop her heart scan score from 117 to 43--an amazing 63% reduction.

Amy beat our previous record holder, Neal, who achieved a 51% reduction. Though Neal had dropped his score from 339 to 161, a drop of 178 and more than Amy's 74 point drop, on a percentage basis Amy holds the record.

I'm also especially gratified that a woman now holds our record. I'm uncertain why, but the ladies have been shy and the men remain the dominant and vocal participants in our program. Speak up, ladies!

Amy's complete story can be found in our latest Track Your Plaque Newsletter to be released later this week, as well as an upcoming feature on the www.cureality.com website. (We've got to toot our horn about successes like this!)

The Ornish diet made me fat

13. July 2007 William Davis (16)
I got that kind of question today that tempts me to roll my eyes and say, "Not again!"

"If I want to reverse my heart scan score, should I do the Ornish diet?" You know, the one by Dr. Dean Ornish: Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversal of Heart Disease.

I personally followed the Ornish program way back in the early 1990s. I reduced fat intake of all sorts to <10% of calories; eliminated all fish and meats, vegetable oils, and nuts; ate vegetables and fruits; and upped my reliance on whole grains. I used many of his recipes. I exercised by running 5 miles per day. (Far more than I do now!) I avoided sweets like candies and fruit juices.

What happened?

I gained 31 lbs, going from 155 to 186 lbs (I'm 5 ft 8 inches tall), my abdomen developed that loose, fleshy look, hanging over my beltline. My HDL plummeted to 28 mg/dl, triglycerides skyrocketed to 336 mg/dl, and I developed a severe small LDL pattern. I experienced a mental fogginess every afternoon. I felt tired and crabby much of the time. I sometimes struggled to suppress an irrational anger and frustration over the silliest things. I required huge amounts of coffee just to function day to day.

Hundreds of my patients suffered similar phenomena.

Few of us wear bell-bottomed jeans, tie-dyed t-shirts, or say "groovy". Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in is an "oldie", it's no longer cool to hold your index and middle fingers up in the "V" sign of peace. Even Ladybird Johnson has passed.

So should go the misadventures of the ultra low-fat diet, as articulated by Dr. Ornish. His day came and went. We learned from our mistakes. Now let's do something better.

Keep your eyes open for the New Track Your Plaque Diet.

Do lower heart scan scores grow faster?

11. July 2007 William Davis (0)
If Mary's heart scan score increases from 2 to 4 in one year, it represents a 100% increase in score.

If Jane's heart scan score increases from 1002 to 1004 over the same period, it represents <1% increase, even though the true growth is the same: 2 points.

This quirk of arithmetic needs to be factored in whenever you and your doctor try to puzzle out the meaning of an increasing CT heart scan score. Lower numbers, particularly those <100, can grow at seemingly much faster rates if viewed by percent per year increase. If no effort is taken to stop the growth in your coronary plaque, then scores of 10, 20, 30, or the like can easily grow 50-100% per year.

In contrast, scores of 1000, 1500, and 2000 tend to grow at "slower" rates of 20% or so per year without corrective efforts, even though the absolute growth may be substantial. (Obviously, this bit of confusion can be best eliminated by reducing your heart scan score, but it doesn't always work out that way.)

If we were all adept at advanced math, we should probably rely on logarithmic measures of plaque increase, rather than percent increase. Or, you can just keep in mind that the rate of plaque growth must always be viewed in the context of the absolute score.

Mr. Salazar: Check your Lp(a)

9. July 2007 William Davis (8)
Marathon star Alberto Salazar was just released from the hospital following a heart attack and a heart catheterization that led to a stent. The MSNBC version of the report can be viewed at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19653682/.

At 48 years old and holder of several American records for marathon times, Salazar's story is eerily reminiscent of Jim Fixx, who died at age 52 after writing a bestselling book, The Complete Book of Running. Thankfully, Salazar's story has a happier ending.

Fixx died at a time when prevention of heart disease was quite primitive. Lipoprotein analysis was not broadly available to the public, CT heart scans had not yet been invented. Even statin drugs were just a gleam in the pharmaceutical industry's eye.

But not so with Salazar. This Cuban-born marathoner experienced his heart attack at at a time when enormously useful steps can be taken to 1) document the extent of disease with a CT heart scan (the presence of a stent just means that one artery can't be "scored"), and 2) identify the causes of his disease.

I suspect that the fact that yet another marathoner in the limelight will once again prompt the (likely non-sensical) conversation about long-distance running and the increased risk of heart disease. Unfortunately, I fear that the real cause will be left unidentfied and untreated: Lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a).

It's almost certain that Fixx had Lp(a), given the fact that his dad had a heart attack at age 35. Running simply postponed the untreated inevitable.

I hope Mr. Salazar is surrounded by doctors who have his true interests in mind (not just procedural excitement) and ask the crucial question: Why?

The answer is almost certain to be Lp(a).

Heart Scan Curiosities #8: Fat heart

8. July 2007 William Davis (2)
Here's a curious incidental finding on a heart scan: an unusual fat accumulation around the heart.



The arrows point to an unusually large accumulation of fat tissue on either side of the heart. This man was mildly but not excessively overweight at 5 ft 10 inches and 201 lbs.

I know of no specific implications of this curiosity. It makes me wonder if he was very obese at one time and has since lost the weight.

Chocolate and blood pressure

7. July 2007 William Davis (1)
A recent very detailed and clean study on the effects of a small serving of dark chocolate on blood pressure was just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

I was going to do a little Blogging on this interesting study but I read the Fanatic Cook's wonderfully insightful comments. I'd direct you to her discussion, instead: A small daily dose of dark chocalate lowers blood pressure at http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/. I couldn't have said it any better.

By the way, the authors of the study had no financial ties to the chocolate or cocoa industry. Refreshing.

Does prevention save money?

7. July 2007 William Davis (2)
Prevention and reversal of heart disease are undoubtedly preferable to the current crash and repair model currently followed by doctors and hospital, the model that has created an enormous medical device industry to support it.

But does it save money? This debate often boils down to a metric of "lives saved per $100,000". Thus, the statin drugs (of course) have been subjected to such analyses and have been shown to be "cost-effective."

But how does a powerful heart disease prevention and reversal program like Track Your Plaque compare to the current crash and repair procedural approach to heart disease? This is a very difficult analysis, one that is subject to enormous variation, depending on the population studied and the prevalence of disease, the local practice habits (e.g., in the northwest Cleveland suburb of Lorain, virtually everybody going to the hospital for any heart problem gets one or several heart catheterizations), and other factors.

There's also the difficulty of what should constitute a prevention program. Is it like that used in the COURAGE Trial of "optimal medical therapy" that included nitroglycerin, aspirin, a beta blocker, and statin drug (which we regard as a laughably silly approach), or one like Track Your Plaque in which we try to correct the causes of heart disease, not just palliate (BandAid) them? Costs vary. The "optimal medical therapy" is very costly due to its reliance on medications to treat symptoms. Our program is somewhat costly because of the reliance on a CT heart scan and lipoprotein analysis (though, in the long perspective, our costs are modest).

We asked this question and came up with a lengthy analysis. Bottom line: Following the Track Your Plaque program saves enormous sums of money. Because of the complexity of the analysis, which is theoretical and not a real-world test, we confined our analysis to men in the 40-59 year old age group. If this group alone were to subscribe to a intensive but rational program of prevention like Track Your Plaque, over $20 billion dollars per year would be saved.

If the analysis were extended to women of all ages and men older than 59, the numbers would balloon to many more tens of billions of dollars. Such a savings wouldn't cure the healthcare system's growing financial crisis, but it sure would be a big help. Sort of like converting to a hydrid car--you don't eliminate the need for gas, but you'll save a lot in fuel costs.

The Track Your Plaque approach makes sense because it is, bar none, the most powerful approach to gaining hold of heart disease risk available. But it also makes sense from a financial standpoint. Now, if we can only convince the hospitals, the $30 million annual salary device manufacturer CEO, and my procedure-crazy colleagues that this way makes more sense.

Watch for our analysis on an upcoming Track Your Plaque Special Report.

Where should fiber come from?

7. July 2007 William Davis (1)
Ray had the usual protuberant belly overhanging his beltline of someone who was over-reliant on processed starches, particularly wheat.

After all, he ran a sandwich bakery. He sheepishly admitted that he ate the products of his own production line every day while at work, even bringing a few sandwiches home.

At 5 ft 10 inches, 201 lbs, he wasn't terribly overweight, but all the excess was in his beltline. He had the lipoproteins to match: HDL 38 mg/dl, triglycerides 180 mg/dl, 83% of all LDL particles were small, excess VLDL and IDL. Blood pressure: 140/88. Blood sugar: 112 mg/dl.

With a CT heart scan score of 698, Ray had some work to do.

Among the strategies we discussed was a need to dramatically reduce, perhaps eliminate, wheat products and other high-glycemic index foods.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Besides the inconsistency with his business, he was puzzled on what foods were edible for his pattern. We discussed how he could easily replace his reliance on wheat and breads with more vegetables, more fruits, more lean proteins, and more healthy oils.

"But I won't get any fiber!" he declared. That was why he tried to choose whole wheat bread for his sandwiches.

This is a common concern when we discuss how grains, particuarly wheat, need to be sharply reduced. In the most recent edition of his Paleo Diet Newsletter, Dr. Loren Cordain has laid out a wonderful graph that beautifully illustrates the issue:




(From The Paleo Diet Newsletter at http://www.thepaleodiet.com/newsletter/back_issues.shtml)


In other words, reducing or eliminating "fiber-rich" grains and replacing their calories dramatically increases fiber content of your diet.

For Ray, whose livelihood depends on promoting and perpetuating the use of wheat breads, it will be tough to keep him on the right track. My prediction: the results he will see will be substantial and it will become difficult to return to eating his own products.

There's no doubt that this concept can be economically disruptive for many people, including Ray. It's a tough situation we've created: a huge industrial complex based on growing grains and wheat, processing it into breakfast cereals, bagels, pretzels, crackers, and sandwiches. But it has also contributed to the epidemic of obesity and the patterns that people like Ray have.

But the startling fact remains: If replaced with vegetables and fruits, reducing grains increases the fiber content of your diet, and not jsut a little bit, but enormously. If green peppers and spinach had brand names like "Fiber One" and "Smart Start" along with flashy boxes, then maybe it would be an easier concept to grasp.

To sign up for Dr. Cordain's wonderfully informative newsletter, go to http://www.thepaleodiet.com/newsletter/back_issues.shtml.

The Detection Gap

5. July 2007 William Davis (3)
You've heard of the Generation Gap, the Income Gap, the Technology Gap, the Gender Gap, and the Achievement Gap.

How about the Detection Gap?

Haven't heard of it? That's the gap between coronary heart disease detected by conventional methods widely practiced in the community and the real prevalence of the disease.

The standard approach to coronary heart disease detection is a relatively simple formula. One of three things are sought:

1) Symptoms of heart disease like chest pain or breathlessness.
2) An abnormal EKG or abnormal stress test.
3) A catastrophe like heart attack or sudden cardiac death.

By this equation, the American Heart Association (AHA) estimates that 36% of American men and women have coronary disease.

However, we say the number is more like 48%. That's the number we arrive at when we ask: How many men and women have CT heart scan scores above zero?

The difference is the Detection Gap. Though only around 12%, it amounts to millions of people. The problem is that, by the conventional approach to detection of heart disease, you often don't know you have it until you're lying on a hospital gurney being wheeled off to a major procedure. Or your friends, family or neighbors find your body.

If heart disease is detected by a CT heart scan, it tends to be early, before catastrophe strikes. You can use tools like niacin, vitamin D, flaxseed, etc., all the components of the Track Your Plaque approach.

If heart disease is detected by waiting for the appearance of symptoms, then a stress test (usually nuclear) is followed by a heart catheterization, stents, bypass, etc. So there's more than a Detection Gap. There's also a difference in the sorts of therapies chosen. There's certainly a difference in cost.

In my view, there is no rational reason not to close the Detection Gap. While CT heart scan scores aren't perfect, they're damn close. The Detection Gap could be closed to around 2%. We'd also save billions of dollars.

Apoprotein B on VAP

3. July 2007 William Davis (3)
We've just received an announcement that, if your Vertical Auto Profile lipoprotein test (Atherotech) is provided through the national Quest laboratories (a large national laboratory company), they will include an apoprotein B.

This represents an improvement over the previous "direct LDL," a measured LDL cholesterol. Recall that standard lipid panels obtained in hospitals and doctors' offices is a calculated LDL, based on the 40-some year old Friedewald calculation. In my view, the Friedewald calculated LDL is a dinosaur that is virtually useless and needs to be retired.

Direct, or measured, LDL is a slight improvement. It removes some of the inaccuracy introduced by the assumptions built into the calculated value.

Apoprotein B (also called apoprotein B100) is yet another improvement. Apo B's have been available for years, but was not provided on the VAP. The Atherotech people have done a good job of making VAP more broadly available through "drawing stations" and proponents like Life Extension. Adding an ApoB is a favorable development, since it incorporates the risk of other ApoB-containing particles, like VLDL, IDL, and Lp(a). Several studies like the Quebec Cardiovascular Study have shown that ApoB is a superior predictor of heart disease compared to calculated LDL.

I still believe that the gold standard for assessing risk from an LDL standpoint is the LDL particle number along with the other measures provided by the NMR assay (Liposcience). However, the addition of the ApoB to VAP adds greater confidence to the measures provided by this technique. Those of you who rely on the VAP assay provided by Quest for your Track Your Plaque program for control of CT heart scan scores therefore have access to this improved panel.