Family lessons 17. January 2010 William Davis (4) Lou was recovering from his 3rd bypass operation. This third go-round left him weaker, slower, less quick on the rebound. In fact, he was lucky to have survived. At 71 years old, Lou went a good 15 years since his second bypass, another 10 years prior to his first bypass at age 46. In the days immediately following Lou's bypass, I had a chance to talk to his son, who stayed at his Dad's bedside while Lou struggled through post-op recovery. "Did your Dad tell you about why this has happened, what caused his heart disease?" I asked. "Sort of. He just said I should get checked," Lou's son, Aaron, replied. "Did he mention the lipoprotein(a) pattern he has?" "No. He never mentioned anything like that. He just said to get checked."That's how it gets played out more often than not: Mom or Dad has a heart attack, stents, or (3rd) bypass, the children are told to get checked. Getting "checked" assumes that the doctor knows what to check for. In Lou's case, the reason why he was in the hospital getting his 3rd (and final) bypass was lipoprotein(a), along with genetically-determined small LDL particles, low HDL, a postprandial (after-eating) disorder, hypertension, and borderline diabetes, not to mention vitamin D deficiency, omega-3 fatty acid deficiency, and marginal thyroid function. (Lou, a retired city employee, had showed only marginal interest in correcting these patterns. While he accepted medications, he proved unwilling to engage in the diet and nutritional supplement strategies required to correct his patterns.) So Lou's 3rd bypass operation provided a moment of reflection for Aaron to ask: "Could I share the fate of my Dad?" With Lou's combination of genetic patterns, there was at least a 75% likelihood that he did. Sadly, going to his doctor would likely yield little more than a cholesterol panel, a question about smoking, and a prescription for Lipitor. Just getting "checked" would be, more than likely, a recipe for disaster for Aaron: heart disease in his 40s or 50s. That's why you need to take control over this sad state of affairs and ask--no, insist--that an effort be made to determine whether you might share your parents' fate.
All posts by william-davis Toggle navigation Home Blog Home Archive Join Now Log in In heart disease prevention, shoot for perfection 12. April 2006 William Davis (0) It really struck me today that it's the people who've chosen to compromise their prevention program who end up with trouble--heart procedures, heart attack, even heart failure.Take Bob, for example. Bob is 73 years old and had a bypass operation in 2000. The procedure went well and Bob enjoyed 6 years of seemingly trouble-free life. Bob had a seriously low HDL cholesterol for which he as taken a modest dose of niacin, but was unwilling to do much more. His HDL cholesterol was thererefore "stalled" at around 40 mg. (We aim for 60 mg or greater.) We talked repeatedly about the options for increasing HDL but Bob was content with his results. After all, since his bypass operation, he'd felt well and could do all he wanted without physical limitation. But Bob underwent a stress test for surveillance purposes (which we routinely do 5 or more years after bypass surgery). The test was markedly abnormal with two major areas of poor blood flow to his heart (signalling potential heart attack in future). Bob ended up getting 5 stents to salvage two bypass grafts, both of which showed signs of substantial degeneration.I've seen this scenario repeatedly: A person is unwilling to go the extra mile to obtain perfection in lipid/lipoprotein patterns, lifestyle changes, and taking the basic, required supplements. Compromises eventually catch up to you in the form of another heart attack, more procedures, heart failure, physical disability, even death. The message: Don't draw compromises in heart disease prevention. Coronary plaque is a chronic process. It will take advantage of you if you ever let your guard down. The epidemic of small LDL 11. April 2006 William Davis (0) Of the patients I saw in my office yesterday, virtually EVERYONE had small LDL. Small LDL is emerging as an extraordinarily prevalent lipoprotein pattern that drives coronary plaque growth. Previous estimates have put small LDL as affecting only 20-30% of people with coronary disease. However, in my experience in the last few years, I would estimate that greater than 80% of people with measurable coronary plaque have small LDL.If you have a heart scan score >zero, chances are you have it, too.I call small LDL a "modern" disease because it has skyrocketed in prevalence recently because of the great surge in inactivity in Americans. When's the last time you walked to the grocery store and back, lugging two bags of groceries? How many years has it been since you've push-mowed your lawn? All the small conveniences of life have permeated further and further into our activities. Most of us spend the great majority of our day right where you are now--on your duff. On the bright side, small LDL in most people is reducable by simply getting up and going. But the old teaching of 30 minutes of activity per day is now outdated. This was true when the other hours of your life included physical activities, like housework or a moderately active job. However, if the other 23 1/2 hours of your day are sedentary, then 30 minutes a day won't do it. An hour or more of activity, whether exercise or physical labor of some variety will get you better small LDL-suppressing results. For most people with small LDL, fish oil and niacin are also necessary to fully suppress small LDL to the Track Your Plaque goal of <10 mg/dl. A great discussion on vitamin D 10. April 2006 William Davis (0) If you need better convincing that vitamin D is among the most underappreciated but crucial vitamins for health, see Russell Martin's review of vitamin D and its role in cancer prevention. You'll find it in March, 2006 Life Extension Magazine or their www.LEF.org website at:http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=1308&query=vitamin%20d&hiword=VITAM%20VITAMER%20VITAMERS%20VITAMI%20VITAMINA%20VITAMINAS%20VITAMINC%20VITAMIND%20VITAMINE%20VITAMINEN%20VITAMINES%20VITAMINIC%20VITAMINK%20VITAMINS%20d%20vitamin%20Our preliminary experience over the past year suggests that vitamin D may be the crucial missing link in many people's plaque control program. We've had a handful of people who, despite an otherwise perfect program (LDL<60, HDL>60, etc.; vigorous exercise, healthy food selection, etc.--I mean perfect)continued to show plaque growth. The rate of growth was slower than the natural expected rate of 30% per year, but still frightening rates of 14-18% per year--until we added vitamin D. All of a sudden, we saw dramatic regression of 7-25% in 6 months to a year. This does not mean that vitamin D all by itself regresses plaque. I believe it means that vitamin D exerts a "permissive" effect, allowing all the other treatments (fish oil, LDL reduction, HDL raising, correction of small LDL, etc.) to exert their full benefit. So please don't stop everything and just take D. This will not work. However, adding vitamin D to your program on top of the basic Track Your Plaque approach--that's the best way I know of. MSNBC Report: We need more heart procedures! 10. April 2006 William Davis (0) A recent headline from MSNBC by Robert Bazell reads:NEW YORK - Angioplasty, bypass surgery and cholesterol-lowering medications are among the many interventions that have brought a sharp decrease in heart disease deaths in recent years. But, as Dr. Sharon Hayes of the Mayo Clinic points out, there is one big problem. “The death rates in women have not declined as much as they have in men,” she says.The piece goes on to suggest that women are getting short-ended in the diagnosis of heart symptoms and heart attack. The solution: More testing to assess the need for procedures like bypass. This is typical of the device and medication-dominated media consciousness: More procedures, more medication, more devices. Who's paying for advertising, after all? The money at stake is huge. But is this what you want? Don't be swayed by media reporters with limited understanding of the real issues (at best), consciousness of who's paying for advertising (at worst). Yes, heart disese is often underestimated or misdiagnosed in women. The answer is better detection earlier in life followed by efforts to halt the process--effective, safe treatments for people's benefit, not just profit. What role cholesterol medication? 10. April 2006 William Davis (0) A frequent conversation point among my patients, as well as participants in the www.cureality.com program, is "Are cholesterol medications really necessary?"No, they are not. What IS necessary is to correct all manifest and hidden causes of coronary plaque. Among these causes, in my view, is LDL cholesterol of 60 mg/dl or greater. There are many other causes of coronary plaque--e.g., small LDL particles, unrecognized hypertension, Lp(a), hidden diabetic patterns, etc.--but reducing LDL to 60 mg is still an important part of a plaque-reversing effort. Insofar as we wish to get LDL to this goal, the statin cholesterol drugs like Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor, etc. may play a role. However, they should only be considered after a full effort dietary program is pursued. Don't follow the American Heart Association's diet unless you want to fail. It's nonsense. For a more detailed discussion of how to use nutrition and nutritional supplements to reduce LDL cholesterol, go to www.lef.org, the website for the Life Extension Foundation. I wrote an article for their magazine called "Cholesterol and Statin Drugs: Separating Hype from Reality". You'll find the article at http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=1295&query=davis%20cholesterol%20natural&hiword=CHOLESTEROLA%20CHOLESTEROLS%20DAVI%20DAVID%20DAVIE%20DAVIES%20DAVIN%20DAVIO%20DAVISON%20DAVISS%20DAVIT%20NATURALBASED%20NATURALES%20NATURALIZED%20NATURALLY%20NATURALS%20NATURE%20NATURES%20cholesterol%20davis%20natural%20.)Can your plaque-reversal efforts succeed without statin drugs? It depends on your causes. For instance, someone with small LDL and Lp(a) only may do great on our basic program and then add niacin. Unfortunately, another person with a starting LDL cholesterol of 240 mg/dl--sky high--will have more success with these drugs. Believe me, I am no blind supporter of drug companies and their flagrantly profit-seeking practices which, in my view, are cut-throat, shoving anyone and anything out of their way to increase profits and market share. I share many of Dr. Dave Warnarowski's views on how vicious their tactics can be; see his recent Blog post at http://www.drdavesbest.com/blog/ called "I smell a rat". Nonetheless, the deep and well-funded research of the pharmaceutical industry does yield some useful tools. You don't have to love the insect exterminator, but if your house is being eaten by termites, his services can be useful. Same thing with these drugs. Useful--not the complete answer, not even close, but nonetheless useful in the right situations. Sometimes antibiotics are necessary, even life saving. That's how cholesterol drugs are, too.Take it all in the proper perspective. Your goal is not cholesterol reduction, per se, but plaque control, preferably reversal. Supplement Mania! 9. April 2006 William Davis (3) Ever hear of "polypharmacy"? That's when someone takes too many medicines. People will have lists of 15-20 prescription medicines, for instance, with crazy interactions and oodles of side-effects.Well, how about "poly-supplments"? That's when someone takes a large number of nutritional supplements.Let me tell you about a 45 year old man I met.In an effort to rid himself of risk for heart disease that he felt was likely shared with his family (brother and father diagnosed with heart attacks in their late 40s), Steve followed a program of nutritional supplementation. You name it, he took it: hawthorne, anti-oxidant mixtures, vitamins C, E, B-complex, saw palmetto, 7-keto DHEA, velvet deer antler, gingko biloba, policosanol, chronium picolinate, green tea, pine bark extract, St. John's Wort, CoEnzyme Q10, papain and other digestive enzymes...He became a distributor for a nutritional supplement company to allow him to afford his own extraordinary program.To satisfy himself that he had indeed "cured" himself of heart disease, he got himself a CT heart scan. His score: 470, in th 99th percentile. Steve's heart attack risk based on this score was around 10% per year. High risk, no question.For weeks after his scan, Steve admitted walking around in a daze, not knowing what to do. Years of telling himself that he had effectively dealt with his heart disease risk, now all down the drain.When we met, I persuaded him that to think that this collection of supplements would reverse heart disease was magical thinking. We trimmed his list down to the essentials and got him on the right track.Heart disease is controllable and reversible, but not this way. Don't fool yourself into thinking that some collection of supplements will be enough to stamp out your heart disease risk. Just like taking an antibiotic when you don't have an infection achieves nothing, so does taking the wrong supplements. What does heart scanning mean to you? 8. April 2006 William Davis (0) CT heart scans can mean different things to different people.What does a heart scan mean to you? There are several possibilities:1) A way of reducing uncertainty in your future.2) A tool to crystallize your commitment to health.3) A device to help you track how successful your heart disease prevention program is. 4) A trick to get you in the hospital. 5) A moneymaking tool for unscrupulous physicians hoping to profit from "downstream" testing, particularly heart catheterizations. Like anything, heart scans can be used for both good and evil. How can you be sure that your heart scan is put to proper use--for your benefit and not someone else's profit? Simple: Get educated. Understand the issues, be armed with informed questions. If, for instance, you're a 55-year old female with a heart scan score of 90, active without symptoms, and you're told to have a heart catheterization right off the bat---run the other way. This is bad advice. A heart procedure like catheterization at this score in an asymptomatic woman is very rarely necessary. That decision can only be made after a step-by-step series of decisions are made by a truly interested, unbiased party. (A stress test is almost always required in this situation before the decision can be made to proceed with a catheterization.) Unfortunately, in 2006, getting unbiased advice from your doctor is still a struggle. That's why we started Track Your Plaque---unbiased information, uncolored by drug or device company support, with an interest in the trut past.14. I used to have problems with getting the “shakes” if I had gone more than a couple of hours without eating. It was as if I was suffering from low blood sugar. I would even be afraid that I would pass out. Now all I feel is hunger. I can go all day without eating and never feel in danger of losing consciousness. Today is Thursday. This past Monday my wife and I were eating out and I ordered a burger without a bun. What I didn’t realize was that the burger would arrive covered in onion rings. I knocked the mountain of onion rings onto the plate but there were still a couple that were embedded in the cheese. I decided, what the hell, a couple of onion rings shouldn’t make that much of a difference. I will not make that mistake again anytime soon. Within 30 minutes I felt like there was a steel spike going through my left eye socket. I don’t remember ever being in that much pain. My sinuses were exploding. This morning, as I write this, I still feel the vestiges of that pain. Just enough that I know it is there. But after two and a half days, I am at least able to function again. I owe you a debt of gratitude. You may have just saved my life. In the very least you have given me the means to improve my life in ways that I never thought possible. Thank you so much,Michael B.Now, if wheat exposure can do that in Michael, what damage can it do in other people? Personally, I previously experienced many of the same symptoms that Michael suffered, all gone with wheat elimination. My advice: If you have any inkling that you might have a wheat sensitivity, make a New Year's resolution to stay wheat-free for 4 weeks and see whether you can feel any difference. Not everybody will, but many will be telling us about the dramatic health turnarounds they experienced. Lipoprotein lipase and you 30. December 2009 William Davis (0) Lipoprotein lipase can make the difference between having heart disease and not having it. Having sky-high triglycerides or normal triglycerides. It can mean dinner hanging around for over 12 hours in the bloodstream, rather than the usual 4-6 hours. If you take niacin, you must exercise 30. December 2009 William Davis (23) We use a lot of niacin in the Track Your Plaque program. Niacin:--Increases HDL and shifts HDL towards the large, protective fraction--Reduces small LDL--In fact, niacin is the best treatment we have to reduce small LDL after wheat elimination and carbohydrate reduction.--Reduces fasting and postprandial (after-eating) triglycerides--Reduces heart attack risk by 20-28%--even as a sole agent. But . . . niacin also triggers higher blood sugar because it partially blocks the effects of insulin (insulin "resistance").While the net effect of niacin remains positive, the provocation of insulin resistance is not such a good thing. Can it be minimized or eliminated? Yes, through exercise. Here's one interesting observation in obese (BMI 34.0), sedentary men given placebo, exercise, niacin (1500 mg Niaspan, once per day), or niacin + exercise: From Plaisance et al 2008. Blood was drawn following a high-fat meal challenge. (Yes, a high-fat challenge, not a carbohydrate challenge. In this study, there were only 17 grams carbohydrates in the test meal, but 100 grams fat. More on this in future.) Exercise consisted of walking for 50 minutes at a moderate pace one hour prior to the meal challenge.You can see from the graph that exercise partially corrected the increased insulin level provoked by niacin. Judging from this and other studies, exercise can help minimize the insulin-blocking effects of niacin. It doesn't take much, just moderate exercise for at least 30 minutes. Adequate sleep can also help, since sleep deprivation is a potent trigger for insulin resistance, only worsened in the presence of niacin. Vitamin D supplementation to achieve desirable blood levels (which I define as 60-70 ng/ml) is also an effective means to minimize this effect. << Older posts Newer posts >> Newer posts12...282930313233343536...121122Older posts
In heart disease prevention, shoot for perfection 12. April 2006 William Davis (0) It really struck me today that it's the people who've chosen to compromise their prevention program who end up with trouble--heart procedures, heart attack, even heart failure.Take Bob, for example. Bob is 73 years old and had a bypass operation in 2000. The procedure went well and Bob enjoyed 6 years of seemingly trouble-free life. Bob had a seriously low HDL cholesterol for which he as taken a modest dose of niacin, but was unwilling to do much more. His HDL cholesterol was thererefore "stalled" at around 40 mg. (We aim for 60 mg or greater.) We talked repeatedly about the options for increasing HDL but Bob was content with his results. After all, since his bypass operation, he'd felt well and could do all he wanted without physical limitation. But Bob underwent a stress test for surveillance purposes (which we routinely do 5 or more years after bypass surgery). The test was markedly abnormal with two major areas of poor blood flow to his heart (signalling potential heart attack in future). Bob ended up getting 5 stents to salvage two bypass grafts, both of which showed signs of substantial degeneration.I've seen this scenario repeatedly: A person is unwilling to go the extra mile to obtain perfection in lipid/lipoprotein patterns, lifestyle changes, and taking the basic, required supplements. Compromises eventually catch up to you in the form of another heart attack, more procedures, heart failure, physical disability, even death. The message: Don't draw compromises in heart disease prevention. Coronary plaque is a chronic process. It will take advantage of you if you ever let your guard down.
The epidemic of small LDL 11. April 2006 William Davis (0) Of the patients I saw in my office yesterday, virtually EVERYONE had small LDL. Small LDL is emerging as an extraordinarily prevalent lipoprotein pattern that drives coronary plaque growth. Previous estimates have put small LDL as affecting only 20-30% of people with coronary disease. However, in my experience in the last few years, I would estimate that greater than 80% of people with measurable coronary plaque have small LDL.If you have a heart scan score >zero, chances are you have it, too.I call small LDL a "modern" disease because it has skyrocketed in prevalence recently because of the great surge in inactivity in Americans. When's the last time you walked to the grocery store and back, lugging two bags of groceries? How many years has it been since you've push-mowed your lawn? All the small conveniences of life have permeated further and further into our activities. Most of us spend the great majority of our day right where you are now--on your duff. On the bright side, small LDL in most people is reducable by simply getting up and going. But the old teaching of 30 minutes of activity per day is now outdated. This was true when the other hours of your life included physical activities, like housework or a moderately active job. However, if the other 23 1/2 hours of your day are sedentary, then 30 minutes a day won't do it. An hour or more of activity, whether exercise or physical labor of some variety will get you better small LDL-suppressing results. For most people with small LDL, fish oil and niacin are also necessary to fully suppress small LDL to the Track Your Plaque goal of <10 mg/dl.
A great discussion on vitamin D 10. April 2006 William Davis (0) If you need better convincing that vitamin D is among the most underappreciated but crucial vitamins for health, see Russell Martin's review of vitamin D and its role in cancer prevention. You'll find it in March, 2006 Life Extension Magazine or their www.LEF.org website at:http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=1308&query=vitamin%20d&hiword=VITAM%20VITAMER%20VITAMERS%20VITAMI%20VITAMINA%20VITAMINAS%20VITAMINC%20VITAMIND%20VITAMINE%20VITAMINEN%20VITAMINES%20VITAMINIC%20VITAMINK%20VITAMINS%20d%20vitamin%20Our preliminary experience over the past year suggests that vitamin D may be the crucial missing link in many people's plaque control program. We've had a handful of people who, despite an otherwise perfect program (LDL<60, HDL>60, etc.; vigorous exercise, healthy food selection, etc.--I mean perfect)continued to show plaque growth. The rate of growth was slower than the natural expected rate of 30% per year, but still frightening rates of 14-18% per year--until we added vitamin D. All of a sudden, we saw dramatic regression of 7-25% in 6 months to a year. This does not mean that vitamin D all by itself regresses plaque. I believe it means that vitamin D exerts a "permissive" effect, allowing all the other treatments (fish oil, LDL reduction, HDL raising, correction of small LDL, etc.) to exert their full benefit. So please don't stop everything and just take D. This will not work. However, adding vitamin D to your program on top of the basic Track Your Plaque approach--that's the best way I know of.
MSNBC Report: We need more heart procedures! 10. April 2006 William Davis (0) A recent headline from MSNBC by Robert Bazell reads:NEW YORK - Angioplasty, bypass surgery and cholesterol-lowering medications are among the many interventions that have brought a sharp decrease in heart disease deaths in recent years. But, as Dr. Sharon Hayes of the Mayo Clinic points out, there is one big problem. “The death rates in women have not declined as much as they have in men,” she says.The piece goes on to suggest that women are getting short-ended in the diagnosis of heart symptoms and heart attack. The solution: More testing to assess the need for procedures like bypass. This is typical of the device and medication-dominated media consciousness: More procedures, more medication, more devices. Who's paying for advertising, after all? The money at stake is huge. But is this what you want? Don't be swayed by media reporters with limited understanding of the real issues (at best), consciousness of who's paying for advertising (at worst). Yes, heart disese is often underestimated or misdiagnosed in women. The answer is better detection earlier in life followed by efforts to halt the process--effective, safe treatments for people's benefit, not just profit.
What role cholesterol medication? 10. April 2006 William Davis (0) A frequent conversation point among my patients, as well as participants in the www.cureality.com program, is "Are cholesterol medications really necessary?"No, they are not. What IS necessary is to correct all manifest and hidden causes of coronary plaque. Among these causes, in my view, is LDL cholesterol of 60 mg/dl or greater. There are many other causes of coronary plaque--e.g., small LDL particles, unrecognized hypertension, Lp(a), hidden diabetic patterns, etc.--but reducing LDL to 60 mg is still an important part of a plaque-reversing effort. Insofar as we wish to get LDL to this goal, the statin cholesterol drugs like Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor, etc. may play a role. However, they should only be considered after a full effort dietary program is pursued. Don't follow the American Heart Association's diet unless you want to fail. It's nonsense. For a more detailed discussion of how to use nutrition and nutritional supplements to reduce LDL cholesterol, go to www.lef.org, the website for the Life Extension Foundation. I wrote an article for their magazine called "Cholesterol and Statin Drugs: Separating Hype from Reality". You'll find the article at http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=1295&query=davis%20cholesterol%20natural&hiword=CHOLESTEROLA%20CHOLESTEROLS%20DAVI%20DAVID%20DAVIE%20DAVIES%20DAVIN%20DAVIO%20DAVISON%20DAVISS%20DAVIT%20NATURALBASED%20NATURALES%20NATURALIZED%20NATURALLY%20NATURALS%20NATURE%20NATURES%20cholesterol%20davis%20natural%20.)Can your plaque-reversal efforts succeed without statin drugs? It depends on your causes. For instance, someone with small LDL and Lp(a) only may do great on our basic program and then add niacin. Unfortunately, another person with a starting LDL cholesterol of 240 mg/dl--sky high--will have more success with these drugs. Believe me, I am no blind supporter of drug companies and their flagrantly profit-seeking practices which, in my view, are cut-throat, shoving anyone and anything out of their way to increase profits and market share. I share many of Dr. Dave Warnarowski's views on how vicious their tactics can be; see his recent Blog post at http://www.drdavesbest.com/blog/ called "I smell a rat". Nonetheless, the deep and well-funded research of the pharmaceutical industry does yield some useful tools. You don't have to love the insect exterminator, but if your house is being eaten by termites, his services can be useful. Same thing with these drugs. Useful--not the complete answer, not even close, but nonetheless useful in the right situations. Sometimes antibiotics are necessary, even life saving. That's how cholesterol drugs are, too.Take it all in the proper perspective. Your goal is not cholesterol reduction, per se, but plaque control, preferably reversal.
Supplement Mania! 9. April 2006 William Davis (3) Ever hear of "polypharmacy"? That's when someone takes too many medicines. People will have lists of 15-20 prescription medicines, for instance, with crazy interactions and oodles of side-effects.Well, how about "poly-supplments"? That's when someone takes a large number of nutritional supplements.Let me tell you about a 45 year old man I met.In an effort to rid himself of risk for heart disease that he felt was likely shared with his family (brother and father diagnosed with heart attacks in their late 40s), Steve followed a program of nutritional supplementation. You name it, he took it: hawthorne, anti-oxidant mixtures, vitamins C, E, B-complex, saw palmetto, 7-keto DHEA, velvet deer antler, gingko biloba, policosanol, chronium picolinate, green tea, pine bark extract, St. John's Wort, CoEnzyme Q10, papain and other digestive enzymes...He became a distributor for a nutritional supplement company to allow him to afford his own extraordinary program.To satisfy himself that he had indeed "cured" himself of heart disease, he got himself a CT heart scan. His score: 470, in th 99th percentile. Steve's heart attack risk based on this score was around 10% per year. High risk, no question.For weeks after his scan, Steve admitted walking around in a daze, not knowing what to do. Years of telling himself that he had effectively dealt with his heart disease risk, now all down the drain.When we met, I persuaded him that to think that this collection of supplements would reverse heart disease was magical thinking. We trimmed his list down to the essentials and got him on the right track.Heart disease is controllable and reversible, but not this way. Don't fool yourself into thinking that some collection of supplements will be enough to stamp out your heart disease risk. Just like taking an antibiotic when you don't have an infection achieves nothing, so does taking the wrong supplements.
What does heart scanning mean to you? 8. April 2006 William Davis (0) CT heart scans can mean different things to different people.What does a heart scan mean to you? There are several possibilities:1) A way of reducing uncertainty in your future.2) A tool to crystallize your commitment to health.3) A device to help you track how successful your heart disease prevention program is. 4) A trick to get you in the hospital. 5) A moneymaking tool for unscrupulous physicians hoping to profit from "downstream" testing, particularly heart catheterizations. Like anything, heart scans can be used for both good and evil. How can you be sure that your heart scan is put to proper use--for your benefit and not someone else's profit? Simple: Get educated. Understand the issues, be armed with informed questions. If, for instance, you're a 55-year old female with a heart scan score of 90, active without symptoms, and you're told to have a heart catheterization right off the bat---run the other way. This is bad advice. A heart procedure like catheterization at this score in an asymptomatic woman is very rarely necessary. That decision can only be made after a step-by-step series of decisions are made by a truly interested, unbiased party. (A stress test is almost always required in this situation before the decision can be made to proceed with a catheterization.) Unfortunately, in 2006, getting unbiased advice from your doctor is still a struggle. That's why we started Track Your Plaque---unbiased information, uncolored by drug or device company support, with an interest in the trut past.14. I used to have problems with getting the “shakes” if I had gone more than a couple of hours without eating. It was as if I was suffering from low blood sugar. I would even be afraid that I would pass out. Now all I feel is hunger. I can go all day without eating and never feel in danger of losing consciousness. Today is Thursday. This past Monday my wife and I were eating out and I ordered a burger without a bun. What I didn’t realize was that the burger would arrive covered in onion rings. I knocked the mountain of onion rings onto the plate but there were still a couple that were embedded in the cheese. I decided, what the hell, a couple of onion rings shouldn’t make that much of a difference. I will not make that mistake again anytime soon. Within 30 minutes I felt like there was a steel spike going through my left eye socket. I don’t remember ever being in that much pain. My sinuses were exploding. This morning, as I write this, I still feel the vestiges of that pain. Just enough that I know it is there. But after two and a half days, I am at least able to function again. I owe you a debt of gratitude. You may have just saved my life. In the very least you have given me the means to improve my life in ways that I never thought possible. Thank you so much,Michael B.Now, if wheat exposure can do that in Michael, what damage can it do in other people? Personally, I previously experienced many of the same symptoms that Michael suffered, all gone with wheat elimination. My advice: If you have any inkling that you might have a wheat sensitivity, make a New Year's resolution to stay wheat-free for 4 weeks and see whether you can feel any difference. Not everybody will, but many will be telling us about the dramatic health turnarounds they experienced.
Lipoprotein lipase and you 30. December 2009 William Davis (0) Lipoprotein lipase can make the difference between having heart disease and not having it. Having sky-high triglycerides or normal triglycerides. It can mean dinner hanging around for over 12 hours in the bloodstream, rather than the usual 4-6 hours.
If you take niacin, you must exercise 30. December 2009 William Davis (23) We use a lot of niacin in the Track Your Plaque program. Niacin:--Increases HDL and shifts HDL towards the large, protective fraction--Reduces small LDL--In fact, niacin is the best treatment we have to reduce small LDL after wheat elimination and carbohydrate reduction.--Reduces fasting and postprandial (after-eating) triglycerides--Reduces heart attack risk by 20-28%--even as a sole agent. But . . . niacin also triggers higher blood sugar because it partially blocks the effects of insulin (insulin "resistance").While the net effect of niacin remains positive, the provocation of insulin resistance is not such a good thing. Can it be minimized or eliminated? Yes, through exercise. Here's one interesting observation in obese (BMI 34.0), sedentary men given placebo, exercise, niacin (1500 mg Niaspan, once per day), or niacin + exercise: From Plaisance et al 2008. Blood was drawn following a high-fat meal challenge. (Yes, a high-fat challenge, not a carbohydrate challenge. In this study, there were only 17 grams carbohydrates in the test meal, but 100 grams fat. More on this in future.) Exercise consisted of walking for 50 minutes at a moderate pace one hour prior to the meal challenge.You can see from the graph that exercise partially corrected the increased insulin level provoked by niacin. Judging from this and other studies, exercise can help minimize the insulin-blocking effects of niacin. It doesn't take much, just moderate exercise for at least 30 minutes. Adequate sleep can also help, since sleep deprivation is a potent trigger for insulin resistance, only worsened in the presence of niacin. Vitamin D supplementation to achieve desirable blood levels (which I define as 60-70 ng/ml) is also an effective means to minimize this effect.