Does staying up late make you fat? 3. March 2009 William Davis (5) Lack of sleep makes you crabby. But can staying up late make you fat? Or diabetic? Or increase heart disease risk? Can forcing your body to ignore its evolutionarily-programmed day-night/sleep-wakefulness cycle also distort health, even when sleep is adequate?Yet another study adds to the growing clinical literature documenting the lack of sleep, or, in this case, the "violation" of circadian rhythms that occurs with unpredictable or shifting sleep patterns.In this small study of 10 men and women, forcing them to sleep on an unnatural 28-hour per "day" schedule, causing a dyssynchrony with natural day-night cycles, yielded increased glucose (blood sugar) levels, poor response to insulin, increased blood pressure. It also led to a decrease in leptin levels, a phenomenon that can trigger increased appetite. Such circadian misalignment was meant to recreate the distorted day-night cycles of shift workers, a group that is unusually prone to diabetes and heart disease. This study further confirms that there are indeed unhealthy physiologic consequences of defying normal day-night sleep cycles. This study suggests that, not only is sufficient sleep important for health, but the predictability and concordance with normal circadian cycles is also important. Add to this previous studies demonstrating an association with sleep deprivation and low HDL/high triglycerides (Kaneita Y, et al 2008) and increased likelihood of having a positive heart scan (coronary calcium) score (King All posts by william-davis Toggle navigation Home Blog Home Archive Join Now Log in Summer in Wisconsin 25. September 2007 William Davis (10) It's been a glorious summer in Wisconsin. For weeks straight, we've enjoyed bright, sunny days with temperatures in the 70s and 80s. Even now, in late September, our windows are wide open and the days are warm and sunny. Yesterday, it was 84 degrees. Yes, it did rain for a stretch of about 10 days in August, but for the most part it has been a wonderfully sunny summer. So it struck Andy as a big surprise when we checked his 25-OH-vitamin D3 blood level: 15 ng/ml--severe deficiency. "I don't get it. I'm outside almost every day. Look at me! How do you think I got this tan?"Indeed, Andy sported a nice dark tan over exposed areas. In fact, Andy was among the dozen or so people this month with deficiencies of this magnitude. Deficiency is not the exception; it is the rule. Of course, if Andy's blood level is at the level of severe deficiency in September, he will only trend lower over the next few weeks and months. He would likely have shown vitamin D blood levels of <10 ng/ml by January--profound deficiency. With deficiency of this severity, Andy has been exposing himself to risk for prostate and colon cancer, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, low HDL, higher triglycerides, higher blood sugars, higher C-reactive protein, osteoporosis, arthritis . . .Correcting the deficiency is easy. But, as you can see, getting sun is not always the answer. Even with an active, outdoor lifestyle and a tan, Andy still remained significantly deficient. Oral replacement with vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol, is an absolute necessity. Wacky statin effects 23. September 2007 William Davis (18) In general, I try to exhaust possibilities before resorting to the statin drugs. But we still do use them, both in general practice and the Track Your Plaque program. There are indeed a number of ways to reduce, minimize, or eliminate the need for these drugs. For instance, if your LDL is 150 mg/dl but comprised of 90% small particles, then a reduction in wheat and other high-glycemic index foods, weight loss, fish oil, and niacin can yield big drops in LDL. But sometimes we need them. Say LDL is 225 mg/dl and is a mix of large and small. Exercise, weight loss, niacin, oat bran, ground flaxseed, Benecol, etc. and LDL: 198 mg/dl. Alright, that's when statins may be unavoidable. There's also many people who are not as motivated as all of us trying to reverse heart disease. Some just want the easy way out. Statins do indeed provide that option in some people. So in truth, we end up using these drugs fairly regularly. How common are muscle aches and fatigue? In my experience, they are universal . If taken long enough, or if high doses are used, muscle complaints are inevitable. Most of the time, thankfully, they're modest and often relieved with a change in drug or with coenzyme Q10 supplementation. But there's more to statin side effects than muscle aches. Among the wacky effects that I have witnessed with statin drugs:--Insomnia-especially with simvastatin (Zocor and Vytorin). Insomnia can be quite severe, in fact, with difficulty sleeping more than 3-4 hours a night. --Bone aches--I don't know why this happens, unless it's somehow related to muscle aches. I've seen this with all the statins, but more commonly with Crestor.--Memory impairment--a la Dr. Duane Graveline's wacky book, Lipitor: Thief of Memory. I've seen this with Lipitor, though it's uncommon, and less commonly with simvastatin (Zocor, Vytorin).--Diarrhea--More common with Zetia and Vytorin (which contains Zetia), because of the inhibition of bile acid reabsorption. --Migraine headaches--This I certainly do not understand, but the cause-effect relationship is undoubtedly true in an occasional person. --Low libido--In men more than women, though it may be more due to men being more willing to admit to it. --Increased appetite--Rare, though I've seen dramatic instances. --Tinnitus--Ringing in the ears. I've only seen it with Lipitor and Zocor. In their defense (and in general I am no defender of the drug manufacturers), most people do fine with statin drugs, though the majority do eventually require coenzyme Q10 in my experience. By the way, coenzyme Q10 can be an indispensable aid to help tolerate statin agents. I'd love to hear about your wacky experiences. Track Your Plaque goes global 21. September 2007 William Davis (3) I don't use this space to toot my horn (at least I don't too often), but we were looking at the listings of our viewers and members. I was surprised to learn that we now have Track Your Plaque followers in 15 different countries around the world!We have members from Europe including England, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. We have members from as far away as South Africa, Australia, India, Singapore, Thailand, and China. I see the entire Track Your Plaque process as a grand experiment. Never before in history has a system of health been delivered via a communication medium like the web. The internet provides more interactivity than television, it's more fluid than a book, it's more dynamic and evolves more rapidly than a face-to-face interaction. While we cannot be hands-on over the internet, we can still deliver all the crucial information and, hopefully, the knowledge on how to get it done. Track Your Plaque is part of an even grander experiment: The movement to shift control over health away from the medical system, doctors, and hospitals and back to individuals. When you think about it, the idea that "health" (more acurately sickness) should be managed by people and institutions (e.g., hospitals and insurance companies) outside of the individual is a 20th century concept. I predict that this notion will also become a relic of the 20th century. Someday, we will look back and laugh at the folly of the 20th century style of paternalistic health care. Perhaps it was a necessary step in the sequence to transform health to a better system that returns control to the individual. But it's clearly time for a change. Track Your Plaque is an example of the extraordinary power that can be taken by a lone individual with only minimal assistance of a health care provider. I see Track Your Plaque members who understand heart disease (at least the coronary disease aspect) far better than 95% of my cardiology colleagues, 100% of my internal medicine and family practice colleagues. Physicians maintain a role, but their role has shrunk and receded. They should be facilitators of success in health, educators, a resource to turn to when we need help. It's not that way today. It will be in 50 years. But, right now, we can get started on this wonderfully self-empowering--liberating-- movement by participating in this global experiment known as Track Your Plaque, the program with the goofy name that has the potential to usurp and unravel this enormous institutionalized system of health care the world has created. Go to your corners 20. September 2007 William Davis (4) There's a heated debate being waged on the Heart Hawk Blog Dr. Melissa Walton-Shirley authored an editorial entitled It Should Be the Right of All Americans to Have Primary Percutaneous-Based Intervention for Acute Coronary Syndrome . Heart Hawk's response: Dr. Walton-Shirley feels the best use of time, talent, and money is to build more cath labs and train more people in how to use them so that IF you have a heart attack, you stand a better chance of being pulled back from the brink of death. Unfortunately, you have to first let people get so sick that they are about to die. My position is to use those same resources to prevent such disasters from happening in the first place. Take your pick. You cannot spend the money twice. I am no stranger to "direct angioplasty," meaning performing immediate coronary angioplasty (with stenting) for heart attack. Since 1990, I have personally performed hundreds, perhaps over a thousand of these procedures, particularly when I was younger and my practice was procedurally-focused. But, after a few years, I quickly recognized the futility of this approach. Yes, you might have aborted a heart attack ,perhaps even saved a life at the brink of death. But wouldn't it have been better to have prevented the entire episode in the first place? In my mind, putting a cath lab on every corner, as Dr. Walton-Shirley suggests, is like having a fire truck on every street to prevent a house from burning down. It's an enormously expensive proposition that provides no incentive to prevent fires. Why not spend the money on preventing the fires? Expanding access to cath lab procedures is putting the fox in the henhouse. Procedures yield money--big money--for hospitals and cardiologists. Guess what happens when you build facilities that exceed the need? Yes--the number of procedures grows, whether or not they were needed.In my view, Dr. Shirley-Walton's opinions are symptomatic of the profit-driven, procedurally-focused quick-fixes that divert money that would be far better spent on effective dissemination of preventive practices. When niacin doesn't work 20. September 2007 William Davis (7) Dan had the usual collection of metabolic syndrome lipoprotein abnormalities: low HDL of 28 mg/dl, triglycerides 280 mg/dl, 90% of his LDL particles were small. Along with elimination of wheat and junk foods, exercise, and fish oil, I asked Dan to add niacin. I usually ask people to buy SloNiacin and begin at 500 mg per day with dinner, increased to 1000 mg per day at dinner after 4 weeks. Dan came back several months later. His lab results: HDL 40 mg/dl, triglycerides 76 mg/dl. (We didn't repeat the full lipoprotein analysis, so no small LDL value was available.) Better, though still some room for improvement. I urged Dan to stick to his program, lose some more weight off his 260 lb frame, exercise, be strict about the wheat products. Dan returned another few months later. Lab results: HDL 29 mg/dl, triglycerides 130 mg/dl. Dan had lost another 8 lbs and was reasonably compliant with his diet. What's going on here? Why would he backtrack on HDL and triglycerides despite sticking to his program? I asked Dan where he purchased his niacin. "I got it from Sam's Club. The pharmacist said to try this 'no-flush' kind so the hot flush wouldn't bother me."Aha! It's no wonder. "No-flush" niacin, or inositol hexaniacinate, is an outright scam. It has virtually no effect on lipids or lipoproteins in humans. It's therefore no surprise that, by replacing real niacin with the no-flush variety, Dan's blood patterns began to revert back to their original state.Let me be straight on this: No-flush niacin is a scam. It does not work: it does not raise HDL, reduce triglycerides, nor reduce small LDL. It's expensive, too, far more expensive than the real thing. It has no business being sold by stores like Sam's Club or your health food store. SloNiacin (Upsher Smith) has become our preferred preparation. (I obtain no compensation of any sort for saying so.) We buy it at Walgreen's. Niacin and blood sugar 19. September 2007 William Davis (14) We've been engaging in a conversation on the Track Your Plaque Forum on whether niacin raises blood sugar. Yes, it does. In the vast majority of instances, however, the rise is trivial and without consequence. Typically, someone will start with a borderline elevated blood sugar of, say, 108 mg/dl. Niacin, 1000 mg per day, then raises blood sugar to 112 mg/dl. This small increase does not oblige any specific action, nor does it pose any excess risk. Blood sugars in the normal range of <100 mg/dl tend not to show this effect. Higher blood sugars, e.g., 130 mg/dl, may show a more exagerrated effect but it is also rarely of great consequence. People who take medications for adult type II diabetes, or people with childhood-onset, type I diabetes will also experience rises in blood sugar. This is a somewhat largervis (17) Can including wheat in your diet create hell on earth? Was The Inferno nothing more than Danté’s prediction for the state of the U.S. diet circa 2009? I’m kidding on The Inferno allusion, but the American diet nonetheless sure does create an inferno of unhealthy phenomena. If we define hell on earth as constant, nagging pain and discomfort; energy depleted sufficient to impair daily function; chronic bloating and diarrhea; leg swelling, peculiar rashes; progression of a multitude of diseases ranging from annoying all the way to fatal . . . well, that’s a pretty bleak picture. I have indeed witnessed it all. Inclusion of wheat products in the human diet in many (not all--I'd estimate 70% of people) yields devastating health effects. In a few, it shortens life. In the majority, it leads to a slow, miserable hell of inflammatory diseases like arthritis, coronary disease, and cancer.I have also witnessed dramatic reversal of these phenomena with complete removal of wheat from the diet. (For clarity, I am not only referring to gluten sensitivity, the immune reaction gone haywire that plagues people with celiac disease. Celiac disease is indeed another variety of wheat-induced hell on earth, but there’s far more to it than that.) Among the effects I’ve seen with wheat removal: --Increased clarity of thought—I can vouch for this effect personally. Focus, concentration, the capacity for prolonged application of effort is restored with elimination of wheat. --ADHD—Marked improvement in attention deficit disorder can occur in children and adults with this focus-depriving condition. Elimination of sugars and cornstarch may be necessary for full effect. While it doesn’t seem to work in everybody, the effect is powerful enough?and the implications so profound?that it is worthy of consideration in any child with this condition.--Improved bowel health?Many people plagued by chronic bloating, diarrhea, and urgency experience complete relief. In its most extreme form, it is expressed as celiac disease. But there are a larger number of people who do not have celiac who are plagued by this lesser form of intestinal intolerance. --Weight loss?Patients have told me that they were actually frightened when they eliminated wheat, meaning weight dropped so rapidly that they thought something was wrong. Nothing is wrong. The weight loss simply represents the removal of this bizarre, unphysiologic trigger of appetite, blood sugar, insulin, and weight gain. Relevant to heart health, wheat elimination effects include: --LDL cholesterol reduction?Yes, I know that it’s not what the “official” agencies say. “Reduce fat, reduce saturated fat and cholesterol will drop.” That’s barely true; reductions of saturated fat reduce LDL cholesterol, but rarely more than 20 mg/dl. In contrast, elimination of wheat yields LDL reductions of 40, 50, even 100 mg/dl. And the type of LDL reduced is the small particle variety, the kind mostly likely to lead to heart disease. (Cutting fat generally reduces large LDL, the more benign form.)--Triglyceride reduction?Triglyceride reductions of 50, 100, even 1000 mg/dl can be achieved with elimination of wheat (though elimination of cornstarch, sugars, and other processed carbohydrates may be necessary for full benefit). --HDL increase?A variable response, but increase of 5-10 mg/dl are common. --Reduced inflammation?This phenomenon expresses itself in a number of ways, including dramatic reductions of the common inflammatory marker, c-reactive protein. While the media focuses on the JUPITER trial of rosuvastatin’s (Crestor) ability to reduce CRP 50-60%, wheat elimination can easily match this?without drugs.What's more, you just feel better. Less commonly, I've seen arthritis (both common osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis), skin rashes, and sleep disorders improve. I've had pre-diabetics become non-pre-diabetics, diabetics become non-diabetics. It's not so much whether that food is carbohydrate-rich or protein-rich. It really comes down to calories, a very simple message.'— Dr. Frank SacksWhile some advocate the notion that only calories count and diet composition makes no difference, I offer this possibility: Whether or not weight is lost by diet, there can be enormous health effects independent of weight based on the composition of diet. Inclusion or exclusion of wheat is one such crucial factor. Image courtesy Wikipedia, The Eighth Circle of Hell. Unique vitamin D observations 21. February 2009 William Davis (47) It seems not a single day passes that I don’t learn something new about this unique hormone (mis)named “vitamin D.” From its humble beginnings recognized only as the factor responsible for bone maturation (with deficiency leading to childhood rickets), vitamin D now commands a recognized role in almost every conceivable aspect of health and disease. Among the unique observations I’ve made over the past several years, having corrected vitamin D in well over 1000 people: --Ankylosing spondylitis—This fairly rare genetic disease programs a peculiar solidification of the spinal column that leads to disabling restriction of spinal mobility, accompanied by incapacitating pain. A physician came to my office after reading my Life Extension summary of vitamin D’s cardiovascular benefits, After reading it, he put himself on vitamin D 10,000 units per day and verified “therapeutic” levels with a blood test. He came to my office (he requested a consultation) and proudly showed me his near-normal spine flexibility that, until approximately 2 months earlier, had left him rigid and unable to even tie his shoes. He also reported that the chronic pain that had left him completely dependent on anti-inflammatory agents and narcotics was nearly entirely gone. --Aortic valve disease—The list of people with either aortic valve stenosis (stiffness) or insufficiency (leakiness) that develops later in life (not congenitally deformed or bicuspid aortic valves) continues to grow. Not everyone responds, but some of the cases I’ve seen have been nothing short of miraculous. One man had severe aortic valve insufficiency (severe leakiness). After one year of vitamin D, 8000 units per day that yielded a blood level of 67 ng/ml, the insufficiency was down to a minimal level. Before vitamin D, I had never witnessed “spontaneous” reversal of aortic valve disease before. --Chest pain—Not the chest pain of heart disease, but a chronic gnawing, toothache-like pain in the sternum that is relieved within days of initiating vitamin D. I don’t know precisely why this happens, but I speculate that, with vitamin D deficiency, there is disordered calcium metabolism, and perhaps the sternal pain represents cellular (osteoclastic) activity that is eroding sternal calcium for the purpose of maintaining blood calcium, since intestinal absorption of calcium is poor. Replace vitamin D and the abnormal calcium uptake ceases. Just my guess. --Relief from claustrophobia—This one has me stumped. But one man’s vivid description of his previously terrifying experiences in elevators and other enclosed spaces, now entirely gone raises some fascinating questions. For instance, how much psychological disease is nothing more than the expression of disordered metabolism from vitamin D deficiency? --Immunity from viral infections--I first learned of this association from Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council (www.vitamindcouncil.com). Dr. Cannell recounts his experience with the 2006 flu epidemic in the hospital in northern California, where he is a psychiatrist charged with the health of 200 inpatients held in closed wards. While the flu spread like wildfire to the patients in all the other wards, the 200 patients in Dr. Cannell’s ward failed to contract a single episode of flu while taking 2000 units of vitamin D per day. I was a little skeptical at first, having been disappointed by the failure of several nutritional agents like zinc, vitamin C (perhaps, at best, a minimal effect). Now, three years into my vitamin D experience, I am absolutely convinced that Dr. Cannells’ early observation was correct: Vitamin D enhances immunity enormously. Not only have I personally not had a virus in several years, the majority of my staff and patients have been happily free of viral infections. There have been a few, to be sure. But the usual winters of hacking, coughing, and sneezing in the office have become largely a memory. It is a rare person who comes to the office with viral symptoms. With new lessons being learned every day, it is inevitable that other fascinating new vitamin D observations have yet to be made. Dr. Michael Eades on the Paleolithic diet 18. February 2009 William Davis (16) Dr. Michael Eades has posted an absolutely spectacular commentary on the Paleolithic diet concept: Rapid health improvements with a Paleolithic dietThe post was prompted by publication of a study that tried to recreate a Paleolithic-like diet experience over a brief study period:Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet.Dr. Eades discussion is wonderfully insightful and comprehensive and there's little to say to improve on his discussion. I'd make one small point: From what I see in my experience, the improvements in lipid patterns seen in the brief period of this study are very likely to have been primarily due to the removal of wheat. Followers of this blog know that wheat elimination is among the most powerful cholesterol-reducing strategies available. What vitamin D form? 15. February 2009 William Davis (36) In response to questions regarding why don't vitamin D tablets work, here are my observations. When I first started correcting vitamin D levels around 3 1/2 years ago, people would begin with starting 25-hydroxy vitamin D blood levels of around 20 ng/ml. Taking, say, 6000 units vitamin D as tablets over 3 months yielded blood levels of 24-30 ng/ml. Taking 6000 units in an oil-based form, and blood levels would commonly be 60-70 ng/ml. In other words, tablets are very poorly absorbed. I also saw very erratic absorption with tablets, with tremendous variation in blood levels. I witnessed this effect many times. I finally began telling patients to avoid the tablets altogether. It's simply not worth it. Taking dose X of tablets, you cannot predict what the blood level of vitamin D will be. Now, you can sometimes make the tablets get absorbed by either taking with a teaspoon of oil (e.g., olive, flaxseed) or taking with an oil-rich meal. However, I am uncertain just how consistent the absorption is under these circumstances, not having done this enough times to know. Oil-filled gelcaps are no more expensive than tablets (or perhaps a dollar more). Health food store employees and pharmacists don't know this. I have had many patients come to the office claiming they changed to tablets because that's all their health food store or pharmacy carried and the person behind the counter assured them it was the same. Blood level of vitamin D to confirm: right back down to the starting level or near it--little or no absorption. The only way to know whether a preparation is absorbed is to check a blood level. But, in my experience, having checked vitamin D blood levels thousands of times, gelcaps never fail; tablets fail over 80% of the time. Vitamin D for the pharmaceutically challenged 14. February 2009 William Davis (20) Most Heart Scan Blog readers already know: Your doctor has been brainwashed by the pharmaceutical industry. Your doctor more than likely has spent the better part of his or her career in the Guantanamo Bay of healthcare, water-boarded by seductive sales representatives, enticed with promises of fame and riches, threatened with ostracism from the clubby internal halls of healthcare if--gasp!--he or she didn't subscribe to the "rule" that only drugs are good, anything else is bad. The same FDA-approval-is-necessary-to-be-good brand of nonsense is gaining popularity among my colleagues who, having caught some mention (on the Today Show, Oprah, or similar source of medical information), hope to join the vitamin D hoopla.People will proudly declare that they are taking a high dose of vitamin D: 50,000 units once per week. No. They are taking a barely useful form: D2, ergocalciferol. Studies examining the reliability of the D2 form differ: There's the Heaney study suggesting that D2 is less effective than D3: Vitamin D2 is much less effective than vitamin D3 in humansThen there's the Holick study showing they are equivalent:Vitamin D2 is as effective as vitamin D3 in maintaining circulating concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D.My experience is more in line with the Heaney study: Little or no real effect with D2. One particularly illustrative case I witnessed was a woman who was mistakenly prescribed D2 at 50,000 units per day. She told me that she'd been taking it for a year. I fully expected to see clear-cut signs of toxicity (e.g., high blood calcium levels). Curiously, she showed no signs of toxicity. Nor did she show any vitamin D at all in her blood: 25-hydroxy D level of zero--literally zero.I've witnessed similar phenomena several times: plenty of vitamin D2 . . . very little vitamin D in the blood. All in all, I suppose that D2 is better than No-D at all. But you are far better off joining the ranks of the pharmaceutically challenged and go with the stuff that really works: D3. D3, or cholecalciferol, yields confident increases in blood levels. It is inexpensive, safe, and an exact copy of the human form of vitamin D. (Of course, gelcap or drops only, NEVER tablets.) There is absolute NO reason to take vitamin D2, the form that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, the facsimile plant form issued by the drug industry. Why don't stents prevent heart attack? 12. February 2009 William Davis (11) No study has ever documented that stents prevent future heart attack. But, in day-to-day practice, stents are frequently implanted for just this reason. A little clarification. Stents do prevent heart attack--if the heart attack is already underway, either as an "acute myocardial infarction" or "unstable angina." In other words, a plaque in a coronary artery can rupture just like a little volcano. Rather than spewing lava, the underlying plaque contents--fibrous tissue, inflammatory cells, cholesterol crystals, fatty material, debris--are exposed to flowing blood and trigger spasm of the artery and blood clot formation. A ruptured plaque is typically found in people who go to the emergency room with severe chest pain or have difficulty breathing. A heart catheterization is performed, a severe (e.g., 90-100%--completely closed) is found. A stent in this situation is of clear-cut benefit. What is not clearly beneficial is someone with no symptoms, symptoms only with physical activity that has been present for at least several months, or someone with a high heart scan score and no symptoms. In these circumstances, stent implantation does not reduce risk for future heart attack. Why?Take a look at this angiogram of a right coronary artery. You can seen plaque all along the artery (represented by areas that appear pinched off. There are at least 4 visible.) Putting one 15 millimeter stent in the artery will only affect the area of artery stented. (Stents vary in length, but typically are 12-18 millimeters in length.) The right coronary artery is about 10 times or more this length. There are also two other arteries of similar length. A stent at one location will do nothing to affect the potential for rupture in any of the other plaque-laden areas. Say a stent is implanted in the "worst" blockage in this right coronary artery, the plaque located at around 9 o'clock. What about all the other plaques? They can still rupture. Why not put in many stents, say, 4 or 5, and stent all the visible plaques? Two reasons: 1) Plaque you can't even see on an angiogram can still rupture, and 2) it is very costly (easily $30,000 at the very least), 3) incurs greater procedural risk, and 4) messes up the artery for future procedures, since a steel-lined artery that develops more disease in future will be more difficult to re-implant stents, bypass, or perform other procedural manipulations. The point: Putting in stents does not reduce potential for plaque rupture in the entire artery. What can prevent plaque rupture? That's the whole point of following an effective prevention program: prevent plaque rupture. (Of course, this discussion cannot encompass the wide variety of potential situations that may cause your doctor to individualize your approach. Nonetheless, when advised to have an elective heart procedure, a healthy dose of skepticism and is clearly a good practice.) Top image courtesy National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. << Older posts Newer posts >> Newer posts12...464748495051525354...123124Older posts
Summer in Wisconsin 25. September 2007 William Davis (10) It's been a glorious summer in Wisconsin. For weeks straight, we've enjoyed bright, sunny days with temperatures in the 70s and 80s. Even now, in late September, our windows are wide open and the days are warm and sunny. Yesterday, it was 84 degrees. Yes, it did rain for a stretch of about 10 days in August, but for the most part it has been a wonderfully sunny summer. So it struck Andy as a big surprise when we checked his 25-OH-vitamin D3 blood level: 15 ng/ml--severe deficiency. "I don't get it. I'm outside almost every day. Look at me! How do you think I got this tan?"Indeed, Andy sported a nice dark tan over exposed areas. In fact, Andy was among the dozen or so people this month with deficiencies of this magnitude. Deficiency is not the exception; it is the rule. Of course, if Andy's blood level is at the level of severe deficiency in September, he will only trend lower over the next few weeks and months. He would likely have shown vitamin D blood levels of <10 ng/ml by January--profound deficiency. With deficiency of this severity, Andy has been exposing himself to risk for prostate and colon cancer, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, low HDL, higher triglycerides, higher blood sugars, higher C-reactive protein, osteoporosis, arthritis . . .Correcting the deficiency is easy. But, as you can see, getting sun is not always the answer. Even with an active, outdoor lifestyle and a tan, Andy still remained significantly deficient. Oral replacement with vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol, is an absolute necessity.
Wacky statin effects 23. September 2007 William Davis (18) In general, I try to exhaust possibilities before resorting to the statin drugs. But we still do use them, both in general practice and the Track Your Plaque program. There are indeed a number of ways to reduce, minimize, or eliminate the need for these drugs. For instance, if your LDL is 150 mg/dl but comprised of 90% small particles, then a reduction in wheat and other high-glycemic index foods, weight loss, fish oil, and niacin can yield big drops in LDL. But sometimes we need them. Say LDL is 225 mg/dl and is a mix of large and small. Exercise, weight loss, niacin, oat bran, ground flaxseed, Benecol, etc. and LDL: 198 mg/dl. Alright, that's when statins may be unavoidable. There's also many people who are not as motivated as all of us trying to reverse heart disease. Some just want the easy way out. Statins do indeed provide that option in some people. So in truth, we end up using these drugs fairly regularly. How common are muscle aches and fatigue? In my experience, they are universal . If taken long enough, or if high doses are used, muscle complaints are inevitable. Most of the time, thankfully, they're modest and often relieved with a change in drug or with coenzyme Q10 supplementation. But there's more to statin side effects than muscle aches. Among the wacky effects that I have witnessed with statin drugs:--Insomnia-especially with simvastatin (Zocor and Vytorin). Insomnia can be quite severe, in fact, with difficulty sleeping more than 3-4 hours a night. --Bone aches--I don't know why this happens, unless it's somehow related to muscle aches. I've seen this with all the statins, but more commonly with Crestor.--Memory impairment--a la Dr. Duane Graveline's wacky book, Lipitor: Thief of Memory. I've seen this with Lipitor, though it's uncommon, and less commonly with simvastatin (Zocor, Vytorin).--Diarrhea--More common with Zetia and Vytorin (which contains Zetia), because of the inhibition of bile acid reabsorption. --Migraine headaches--This I certainly do not understand, but the cause-effect relationship is undoubtedly true in an occasional person. --Low libido--In men more than women, though it may be more due to men being more willing to admit to it. --Increased appetite--Rare, though I've seen dramatic instances. --Tinnitus--Ringing in the ears. I've only seen it with Lipitor and Zocor. In their defense (and in general I am no defender of the drug manufacturers), most people do fine with statin drugs, though the majority do eventually require coenzyme Q10 in my experience. By the way, coenzyme Q10 can be an indispensable aid to help tolerate statin agents. I'd love to hear about your wacky experiences.
Track Your Plaque goes global 21. September 2007 William Davis (3) I don't use this space to toot my horn (at least I don't too often), but we were looking at the listings of our viewers and members. I was surprised to learn that we now have Track Your Plaque followers in 15 different countries around the world!We have members from Europe including England, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. We have members from as far away as South Africa, Australia, India, Singapore, Thailand, and China. I see the entire Track Your Plaque process as a grand experiment. Never before in history has a system of health been delivered via a communication medium like the web. The internet provides more interactivity than television, it's more fluid than a book, it's more dynamic and evolves more rapidly than a face-to-face interaction. While we cannot be hands-on over the internet, we can still deliver all the crucial information and, hopefully, the knowledge on how to get it done. Track Your Plaque is part of an even grander experiment: The movement to shift control over health away from the medical system, doctors, and hospitals and back to individuals. When you think about it, the idea that "health" (more acurately sickness) should be managed by people and institutions (e.g., hospitals and insurance companies) outside of the individual is a 20th century concept. I predict that this notion will also become a relic of the 20th century. Someday, we will look back and laugh at the folly of the 20th century style of paternalistic health care. Perhaps it was a necessary step in the sequence to transform health to a better system that returns control to the individual. But it's clearly time for a change. Track Your Plaque is an example of the extraordinary power that can be taken by a lone individual with only minimal assistance of a health care provider. I see Track Your Plaque members who understand heart disease (at least the coronary disease aspect) far better than 95% of my cardiology colleagues, 100% of my internal medicine and family practice colleagues. Physicians maintain a role, but their role has shrunk and receded. They should be facilitators of success in health, educators, a resource to turn to when we need help. It's not that way today. It will be in 50 years. But, right now, we can get started on this wonderfully self-empowering--liberating-- movement by participating in this global experiment known as Track Your Plaque, the program with the goofy name that has the potential to usurp and unravel this enormous institutionalized system of health care the world has created.
Go to your corners 20. September 2007 William Davis (4) There's a heated debate being waged on the Heart Hawk Blog Dr. Melissa Walton-Shirley authored an editorial entitled It Should Be the Right of All Americans to Have Primary Percutaneous-Based Intervention for Acute Coronary Syndrome . Heart Hawk's response: Dr. Walton-Shirley feels the best use of time, talent, and money is to build more cath labs and train more people in how to use them so that IF you have a heart attack, you stand a better chance of being pulled back from the brink of death. Unfortunately, you have to first let people get so sick that they are about to die. My position is to use those same resources to prevent such disasters from happening in the first place. Take your pick. You cannot spend the money twice. I am no stranger to "direct angioplasty," meaning performing immediate coronary angioplasty (with stenting) for heart attack. Since 1990, I have personally performed hundreds, perhaps over a thousand of these procedures, particularly when I was younger and my practice was procedurally-focused. But, after a few years, I quickly recognized the futility of this approach. Yes, you might have aborted a heart attack ,perhaps even saved a life at the brink of death. But wouldn't it have been better to have prevented the entire episode in the first place? In my mind, putting a cath lab on every corner, as Dr. Walton-Shirley suggests, is like having a fire truck on every street to prevent a house from burning down. It's an enormously expensive proposition that provides no incentive to prevent fires. Why not spend the money on preventing the fires? Expanding access to cath lab procedures is putting the fox in the henhouse. Procedures yield money--big money--for hospitals and cardiologists. Guess what happens when you build facilities that exceed the need? Yes--the number of procedures grows, whether or not they were needed.In my view, Dr. Shirley-Walton's opinions are symptomatic of the profit-driven, procedurally-focused quick-fixes that divert money that would be far better spent on effective dissemination of preventive practices.
When niacin doesn't work 20. September 2007 William Davis (7) Dan had the usual collection of metabolic syndrome lipoprotein abnormalities: low HDL of 28 mg/dl, triglycerides 280 mg/dl, 90% of his LDL particles were small. Along with elimination of wheat and junk foods, exercise, and fish oil, I asked Dan to add niacin. I usually ask people to buy SloNiacin and begin at 500 mg per day with dinner, increased to 1000 mg per day at dinner after 4 weeks. Dan came back several months later. His lab results: HDL 40 mg/dl, triglycerides 76 mg/dl. (We didn't repeat the full lipoprotein analysis, so no small LDL value was available.) Better, though still some room for improvement. I urged Dan to stick to his program, lose some more weight off his 260 lb frame, exercise, be strict about the wheat products. Dan returned another few months later. Lab results: HDL 29 mg/dl, triglycerides 130 mg/dl. Dan had lost another 8 lbs and was reasonably compliant with his diet. What's going on here? Why would he backtrack on HDL and triglycerides despite sticking to his program? I asked Dan where he purchased his niacin. "I got it from Sam's Club. The pharmacist said to try this 'no-flush' kind so the hot flush wouldn't bother me."Aha! It's no wonder. "No-flush" niacin, or inositol hexaniacinate, is an outright scam. It has virtually no effect on lipids or lipoproteins in humans. It's therefore no surprise that, by replacing real niacin with the no-flush variety, Dan's blood patterns began to revert back to their original state.Let me be straight on this: No-flush niacin is a scam. It does not work: it does not raise HDL, reduce triglycerides, nor reduce small LDL. It's expensive, too, far more expensive than the real thing. It has no business being sold by stores like Sam's Club or your health food store. SloNiacin (Upsher Smith) has become our preferred preparation. (I obtain no compensation of any sort for saying so.) We buy it at Walgreen's.
Niacin and blood sugar 19. September 2007 William Davis (14) We've been engaging in a conversation on the Track Your Plaque Forum on whether niacin raises blood sugar. Yes, it does. In the vast majority of instances, however, the rise is trivial and without consequence. Typically, someone will start with a borderline elevated blood sugar of, say, 108 mg/dl. Niacin, 1000 mg per day, then raises blood sugar to 112 mg/dl. This small increase does not oblige any specific action, nor does it pose any excess risk. Blood sugars in the normal range of <100 mg/dl tend not to show this effect. Higher blood sugars, e.g., 130 mg/dl, may show a more exagerrated effect but it is also rarely of great consequence. People who take medications for adult type II diabetes, or people with childhood-onset, type I diabetes will also experience rises in blood sugar. This is a somewhat largervis (17)
Unique vitamin D observations 21. February 2009 William Davis (47) It seems not a single day passes that I don’t learn something new about this unique hormone (mis)named “vitamin D.” From its humble beginnings recognized only as the factor responsible for bone maturation (with deficiency leading to childhood rickets), vitamin D now commands a recognized role in almost every conceivable aspect of health and disease. Among the unique observations I’ve made over the past several years, having corrected vitamin D in well over 1000 people: --Ankylosing spondylitis—This fairly rare genetic disease programs a peculiar solidification of the spinal column that leads to disabling restriction of spinal mobility, accompanied by incapacitating pain. A physician came to my office after reading my Life Extension summary of vitamin D’s cardiovascular benefits, After reading it, he put himself on vitamin D 10,000 units per day and verified “therapeutic” levels with a blood test. He came to my office (he requested a consultation) and proudly showed me his near-normal spine flexibility that, until approximately 2 months earlier, had left him rigid and unable to even tie his shoes. He also reported that the chronic pain that had left him completely dependent on anti-inflammatory agents and narcotics was nearly entirely gone. --Aortic valve disease—The list of people with either aortic valve stenosis (stiffness) or insufficiency (leakiness) that develops later in life (not congenitally deformed or bicuspid aortic valves) continues to grow. Not everyone responds, but some of the cases I’ve seen have been nothing short of miraculous. One man had severe aortic valve insufficiency (severe leakiness). After one year of vitamin D, 8000 units per day that yielded a blood level of 67 ng/ml, the insufficiency was down to a minimal level. Before vitamin D, I had never witnessed “spontaneous” reversal of aortic valve disease before. --Chest pain—Not the chest pain of heart disease, but a chronic gnawing, toothache-like pain in the sternum that is relieved within days of initiating vitamin D. I don’t know precisely why this happens, but I speculate that, with vitamin D deficiency, there is disordered calcium metabolism, and perhaps the sternal pain represents cellular (osteoclastic) activity that is eroding sternal calcium for the purpose of maintaining blood calcium, since intestinal absorption of calcium is poor. Replace vitamin D and the abnormal calcium uptake ceases. Just my guess. --Relief from claustrophobia—This one has me stumped. But one man’s vivid description of his previously terrifying experiences in elevators and other enclosed spaces, now entirely gone raises some fascinating questions. For instance, how much psychological disease is nothing more than the expression of disordered metabolism from vitamin D deficiency? --Immunity from viral infections--I first learned of this association from Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council (www.vitamindcouncil.com). Dr. Cannell recounts his experience with the 2006 flu epidemic in the hospital in northern California, where he is a psychiatrist charged with the health of 200 inpatients held in closed wards. While the flu spread like wildfire to the patients in all the other wards, the 200 patients in Dr. Cannell’s ward failed to contract a single episode of flu while taking 2000 units of vitamin D per day. I was a little skeptical at first, having been disappointed by the failure of several nutritional agents like zinc, vitamin C (perhaps, at best, a minimal effect). Now, three years into my vitamin D experience, I am absolutely convinced that Dr. Cannells’ early observation was correct: Vitamin D enhances immunity enormously. Not only have I personally not had a virus in several years, the majority of my staff and patients have been happily free of viral infections. There have been a few, to be sure. But the usual winters of hacking, coughing, and sneezing in the office have become largely a memory. It is a rare person who comes to the office with viral symptoms. With new lessons being learned every day, it is inevitable that other fascinating new vitamin D observations have yet to be made.
Dr. Michael Eades on the Paleolithic diet 18. February 2009 William Davis (16) Dr. Michael Eades has posted an absolutely spectacular commentary on the Paleolithic diet concept: Rapid health improvements with a Paleolithic dietThe post was prompted by publication of a study that tried to recreate a Paleolithic-like diet experience over a brief study period:Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet.Dr. Eades discussion is wonderfully insightful and comprehensive and there's little to say to improve on his discussion. I'd make one small point: From what I see in my experience, the improvements in lipid patterns seen in the brief period of this study are very likely to have been primarily due to the removal of wheat. Followers of this blog know that wheat elimination is among the most powerful cholesterol-reducing strategies available.
What vitamin D form? 15. February 2009 William Davis (36) In response to questions regarding why don't vitamin D tablets work, here are my observations. When I first started correcting vitamin D levels around 3 1/2 years ago, people would begin with starting 25-hydroxy vitamin D blood levels of around 20 ng/ml. Taking, say, 6000 units vitamin D as tablets over 3 months yielded blood levels of 24-30 ng/ml. Taking 6000 units in an oil-based form, and blood levels would commonly be 60-70 ng/ml. In other words, tablets are very poorly absorbed. I also saw very erratic absorption with tablets, with tremendous variation in blood levels. I witnessed this effect many times. I finally began telling patients to avoid the tablets altogether. It's simply not worth it. Taking dose X of tablets, you cannot predict what the blood level of vitamin D will be. Now, you can sometimes make the tablets get absorbed by either taking with a teaspoon of oil (e.g., olive, flaxseed) or taking with an oil-rich meal. However, I am uncertain just how consistent the absorption is under these circumstances, not having done this enough times to know. Oil-filled gelcaps are no more expensive than tablets (or perhaps a dollar more). Health food store employees and pharmacists don't know this. I have had many patients come to the office claiming they changed to tablets because that's all their health food store or pharmacy carried and the person behind the counter assured them it was the same. Blood level of vitamin D to confirm: right back down to the starting level or near it--little or no absorption. The only way to know whether a preparation is absorbed is to check a blood level. But, in my experience, having checked vitamin D blood levels thousands of times, gelcaps never fail; tablets fail over 80% of the time.
Vitamin D for the pharmaceutically challenged 14. February 2009 William Davis (20) Most Heart Scan Blog readers already know: Your doctor has been brainwashed by the pharmaceutical industry. Your doctor more than likely has spent the better part of his or her career in the Guantanamo Bay of healthcare, water-boarded by seductive sales representatives, enticed with promises of fame and riches, threatened with ostracism from the clubby internal halls of healthcare if--gasp!--he or she didn't subscribe to the "rule" that only drugs are good, anything else is bad. The same FDA-approval-is-necessary-to-be-good brand of nonsense is gaining popularity among my colleagues who, having caught some mention (on the Today Show, Oprah, or similar source of medical information), hope to join the vitamin D hoopla.People will proudly declare that they are taking a high dose of vitamin D: 50,000 units once per week. No. They are taking a barely useful form: D2, ergocalciferol. Studies examining the reliability of the D2 form differ: There's the Heaney study suggesting that D2 is less effective than D3: Vitamin D2 is much less effective than vitamin D3 in humansThen there's the Holick study showing they are equivalent:Vitamin D2 is as effective as vitamin D3 in maintaining circulating concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D.My experience is more in line with the Heaney study: Little or no real effect with D2. One particularly illustrative case I witnessed was a woman who was mistakenly prescribed D2 at 50,000 units per day. She told me that she'd been taking it for a year. I fully expected to see clear-cut signs of toxicity (e.g., high blood calcium levels). Curiously, she showed no signs of toxicity. Nor did she show any vitamin D at all in her blood: 25-hydroxy D level of zero--literally zero.I've witnessed similar phenomena several times: plenty of vitamin D2 . . . very little vitamin D in the blood. All in all, I suppose that D2 is better than No-D at all. But you are far better off joining the ranks of the pharmaceutically challenged and go with the stuff that really works: D3. D3, or cholecalciferol, yields confident increases in blood levels. It is inexpensive, safe, and an exact copy of the human form of vitamin D. (Of course, gelcap or drops only, NEVER tablets.) There is absolute NO reason to take vitamin D2, the form that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, the facsimile plant form issued by the drug industry.
Why don't stents prevent heart attack? 12. February 2009 William Davis (11) No study has ever documented that stents prevent future heart attack. But, in day-to-day practice, stents are frequently implanted for just this reason. A little clarification. Stents do prevent heart attack--if the heart attack is already underway, either as an "acute myocardial infarction" or "unstable angina." In other words, a plaque in a coronary artery can rupture just like a little volcano. Rather than spewing lava, the underlying plaque contents--fibrous tissue, inflammatory cells, cholesterol crystals, fatty material, debris--are exposed to flowing blood and trigger spasm of the artery and blood clot formation. A ruptured plaque is typically found in people who go to the emergency room with severe chest pain or have difficulty breathing. A heart catheterization is performed, a severe (e.g., 90-100%--completely closed) is found. A stent in this situation is of clear-cut benefit. What is not clearly beneficial is someone with no symptoms, symptoms only with physical activity that has been present for at least several months, or someone with a high heart scan score and no symptoms. In these circumstances, stent implantation does not reduce risk for future heart attack. Why?Take a look at this angiogram of a right coronary artery. You can seen plaque all along the artery (represented by areas that appear pinched off. There are at least 4 visible.) Putting one 15 millimeter stent in the artery will only affect the area of artery stented. (Stents vary in length, but typically are 12-18 millimeters in length.) The right coronary artery is about 10 times or more this length. There are also two other arteries of similar length. A stent at one location will do nothing to affect the potential for rupture in any of the other plaque-laden areas. Say a stent is implanted in the "worst" blockage in this right coronary artery, the plaque located at around 9 o'clock. What about all the other plaques? They can still rupture. Why not put in many stents, say, 4 or 5, and stent all the visible plaques? Two reasons: 1) Plaque you can't even see on an angiogram can still rupture, and 2) it is very costly (easily $30,000 at the very least), 3) incurs greater procedural risk, and 4) messes up the artery for future procedures, since a steel-lined artery that develops more disease in future will be more difficult to re-implant stents, bypass, or perform other procedural manipulations. The point: Putting in stents does not reduce potential for plaque rupture in the entire artery. What can prevent plaque rupture? That's the whole point of following an effective prevention program: prevent plaque rupture. (Of course, this discussion cannot encompass the wide variety of potential situations that may cause your doctor to individualize your approach. Nonetheless, when advised to have an elective heart procedure, a healthy dose of skepticism and is clearly a good practice.) Top image courtesy National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.