A Track Your Plaque member, Eugene, brought this fascinating story to my attention.
Eugene has two nephews, identical twins aged 35 years. Despite their similar personalities and appearances, somehow these two drifted apart in weight with Steve outweighing Alfred by 30 lbs.
Eugene explains:
These guy's are big not, but overly fat. Just big. One is about 30 lbs heaver than the other. They live 2 blocks apart, they ate the same (together) meal the night before the blood work. Their mother is a type 2 diabetic with a heart condition. Steve does not eat as well as his twin, junk food and a lot of processed starches.
Their results:
LDL-Particle number
Alfred 900
Steve 2256
Small LDL-P
Alfred 400
Steve 1639
HDL-C
Alfred 44
Steve 36
Triglycerides
Alfred 85
Steve 355
Metabolic Syn.
Alfred no
Steve yes
Glucose
Fasting
Alfred 93
Steve 112
1hour
Alfred 134
Steve 206
2 hour
Alfred 105
Steve 172
Identical twins begin with the very same genetic background. As these two graphically illustrate, weight can have a profound influence in the genetically susceptible.
LDL particle number alone is 250% greater in the heavier twin. The dreaded small LDL particle is over 400% worse! Look also at the dramatic differences in blood sugar.
If you ever had any doubts about the importance of excess weight and nutrition, just remind yourself of this fascinating illustration.
Thanks, Eugene.
a TV ad for Ford that says they make the best cars in the U.S., do you immediately run out and put a For Sale sign on your GM car and buy a Ford? No, of course not. You recognize the ad for what it is: marketing. It may be true, but a TV commercial is not enough to convince you.
Then why would an ad promising extraordinary cures for cancer or heart disease convince you that this is true? It should not. Marketing ads should only serve to alert you to the
possibility of value or benefit, but should never--
never--stand alone as proof. Take marketing for what it is: marketing of a product or service, not a scientific report, not a factual report, not news.
Marketing is advertising. Period.
Several facts on erectile dysfunction and coronary plaque:
If you have erectile dysfunction, there's at least a 50% chance you also have coronary plaque.
If you have coronary plaque by a CT heart scan, there's a 50% chance you have erectile dysfunction.
If you have symptomatic coronary disease (chest pains, breathlessness, prior heart attack), there's a 90% chance you also have erectile dysfunction.
Coronary disease is characterized by a dysfunctional state of the "endothelium", or inner lining of the coronary arteries. Erectile dysfunction is characterized by dysfunction of the endothelium of the penile circulation. Same phenomenon, different territories. (There are other differences, of course, but the two conditions share this fundamental phenomenon.)
If you have any doubts about the physiologic effects of the supplement, l-arginine, just give it a try if you have erectile dysfunction. The erection enhancing effects alone should convince you that a genuine artery-dilating effect is exerted by this very powerful nutritional supplement.
If l-arginine fails by itself to restore full erectile capacity, there are additional strategies, both nutritional and medical, that you can consider.
Our newest Track Your Plaque Special Report on erectile dysfunction is coming out any day now.
As a sequel to my last post, just how often can we blame an isolated high LDL cholesterol as the cause of coronary plaque and a heart scan score?
In other words, how often does someone prove to have only LDL cholesterol as the cause of a heart scan score . . . and nothing else? No low HDL, small LDL, lipoprotein(a), a post-prandial (after-eating) intermediate-density lipoprotein, inflammatory responses, phospholipase A2, high triglycerides, vitamin D deficiency, etc.
Rarely. In fact, I can truly count the number of people who have only LDL cholesterol as their sole cause of coronary atherosclerotic plaque on one hand. It is really an infrequent situation.
Far more commonly, people have 5, 6, 7 or more reasons for coronary plaque.
Thus, the idea that a statin drug to reduce LDL will cure heart disease is completely folly. It does happen--but rarely. I think I've seen it happen twice. Much more commonly, a program that addresses all the causes of coronary plaque yields far superior benefits.
In my view, an effort to identify all the causes is relatively easy, makes far better sense, and provides you much greater assurance that you will succeed in conquering heart disease and removing its evil influence from your life.
Judging from the conversations I hear from colleagues, what I hear from the media, and drug company advertising, you'd think that heart disease has one cause--a deficiency of statin drugs.
As their thinking goes, if you have coronary disease, you need a statin drug (Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor, pravachol, etc.). If you have progressive coronary disease, you need more statin drug. If you have a heart attack while on a statin drug, you need even more statin drug.
Some "experts" have even proposed that we do away with LDL cholesterol and we just give everybody a statin drug at high doses.
Does this make any sense to you?
Doesn't it make better sense that if someone has progressive heart disease or heart attack while on a statin drug, then target the other causes largely unaffected by a statin drug? Perhaps if LDL cholesterol remains high on the statin drug, then a higher dose is justified. But more often than not, it's not a high LDL on statin drugs that responsible, it's other causes. And there's many of them: low HDL, VLDL, IDL, Lp(a), deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids, inflammatory processes, vitamin D deficiency, among others. (An important exception to this is when the conventional calculated LDL substantially underestimates true LDL as measured by LDL particle number by NMR, apoprotein B, or 'direct' LDL.)
Imagine someone has pneumonia. After 2 weeks of antibiotics, they are only partly better. The solution: a higher dose of the same antibiotic--but never question if it was the right antibiotic in the first place. That's what is going on in heart disease.
The doctors have been brainwashed into believing this $22 billion dollar per year bit of propaganda. The drug companies actively try to recruit the public into believing the same. Don't fall for it.
The statin drugs do indeed have a role. But they are not the complete answer. More of the same when disease progresses makes no sense at all.
I often get questions about the mercury content in fish oil. I've even had patients come to the office saying their primary care doctor told them to stop fish oil to avoid mercury poisoning.
Manufacturers of fish oil also make claims that this product or that ("super-concentrated", "pharmaceutical grade", "purified", etc.) is purer or less contaminated than competitors' products. The manufacturers of the "drug" Omacor, or prescription fish oil, have added to the confusion by suggesting that their product is the most pure of all, since it is the most concentrated of any fish oil preparation (900 mg EPA+DHA per capsule). They claim that "OMACOR is naturally derived through a unique, patented process that creates a highly concentrated, highly purified prescription medicine. By prescribing OMACOR® (omega-3-acid ethyl esters), a prescription omega-3, your doctor is giving you a concentrated and reliable omega-3. Each OMACOR capsule contains 90% omega-3 acids (84% EPA/DHA*). Nonprescription omega-3 dietary supplements typically contain only 13%-63% EPA/DHA."
How much truth is there in these concerns?
Let's go to the data published by the USDA, FDA, and several independent studies. Let's add to that the independent (and therefore presumably unbiased) analyses provided by Consumer Reports and Consumer Labs (www.consumerlab.com). How much mercury has been found in fish oil supplements?
None.
This is different from the mercury content of whole fish that you eat. Predatory fish that are at the top of the food chain and consume other fish and thereby concentrate organic methyl mercury, the toxic form of mercury. Thus, shark, swordfish, and King mackerel are higher in mercury than sardines, herring, and salmon.
The mercury content of fish oil capsules have little to do with the method of processing and much more with the animal source of oil. Fish oil is generally obtained from sardines, salmon, and cod, all low in mercury. Fish oil capsules are not prepared from swordfish or shark.
Thus, concerns about mercury from fish oil--regardless of brand--are generally unfounded, according to the best information we have. Eating whole fish--now that's another story for another time. But you and I can take our fish oil to reduce triglycerides, VLDL, IDL, small LDL, and heart attack risk without worrying about mercury.