Let me paint a picture:

A 78-year old woman, tired and bent. She's lost an inch and a half of her original height because of collapse of several vertebra in her spine over the years, leaving her with a "dowager's hump," a stooped position that many older women assume with advanced osteoporosis. It's also left her with chronic back pain.

(Image courtesy of National Library of Medicine)

This poor woman also has arthritis in her knees, hips, and spine. All three locations add to her pain.

She also has hypertension, a high blood sugar approaching diabetes, and distortions of cholesterol values, including a low HDL and high triglycerides.

Look inside: On a simple x-ray, we see that the bones of her body are unusually transparent, with just a thin rim of bone at the outer edges, depleted of calcium. Weight-bearing bones like the spine, hips, and knees have eroded and collapsed.

On an echocardiogram of her heart (ultrasound), she has dense calcium surrounding her mitral valve ("mitral anular calcium"), a finding that rarely impairs the valve itself but is a marker for heightened potential for heart attack and other adverse events. Her aortic valve, another of the four heart valves, is also loaded with calcium. In the aortic valve, unlike the mitral valve, the collection of calcium makes the valve struggle to open, causing a murmur. The valve is rigid and can barely open to less than half of its original opening width.

If a heart scan were performed, we'd see the coronary calcification, along with calcification of the aorta, and the mitral and aortic valves.

Obviously, it's not a pretty picture. It is, however, a typical snapshot of an average 78-year old woman, or any other elderly man or woman, for that matter.

This collection of arthritis, osteoporosis, coronary and valve calcification, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol patterns, and pain is not unusual by any stretch. Perhaps you even recognize someone you know in this description. Perhaps it's you.

Look at this list again. Does it seem familiar? I'd say that the common factor that ties these seemingly unrelated conditions together is chronic and severe deficiency of vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency leads to arthritis, osteoporosis, coronary and valve calcification, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol patterns, and pain.

Should we go so far as to proclaim that aging, or at least many of the undesirable phenomena of aging, are really just manifestations of vitamin D deficiency? I would propose that much of aging is really deficiency of vitamin D, chronic and severe, in its end stages.

My colleagues might propose a 30- or 40-year long randomized trial, one designed to test whether vitamin D or placebo makes any difference.

Can you wait?

Here's a fascinating e-mail we received recently. It came from a man in Hawaii who dropped his heart scan score a modest amount, but did it in two months using fasting. He also has the advantage of access to the Holistica Hawaii scan center with our friend, Dr. Roger White. His experience is so fascinating that we asked for his permission to reprint his story which he did enthusiastically.

So here is Don's story:

I am a 61 year old male with a history of heart disease in my family. My maternal grandfather, for instance, died at age 39 of a
heart attack and my mother died of a stroke. There are other instances in my family as well.

I, personally, before going to Holistica had had three heart procedures; one radio catheter ablation for WPW Syndrome, and two radio catheter ablations for atrial fibrilations. After suffering with WPW for over 30 years and A-Fibs for about a year, those issues seem to be behind me fortunately.

Three or four months back, however, I was suffering from shortness of breath and slight chest pains when doing the uphill part of a 5 mile walk that I do almost every day. My wife had had a coronary heart scan several years back at Holistica so that's how I knew about it.

I had a scan done on October 4th this year. The scan did show fairly
advanced plaque build up; my total coronary plague burden was
312.9. The day following the scan I felt absolutely terrible; lightheaded, weak, much like feeling you were at death's door.

I had read a book a number of years back about therapeutic fasting
(water only) called "Fasting and Eating for Health" by Dr. Joel
Furhman.

According to his book, one on the areas where he consistently has dramatic and quick results with fasting is with reducing arterial plaque. Based on how badly I was feeling at the time, I decided to start an immediate fast. Within just the first 24 hours, the relief was dramatic and amazing. I continued the water only fast for 3 weeks.

Yesterday, December 1st I went in for another cardio scan instead of the coronary angiogram that I had previously been scheduled for. I could tell they were a little confused why I was doing that but went ahead and did another coronary EBT scan.

When I went in for the doctor consultation, Dr. McGriff said, "OK, exactly what is it you've done since last time." In less than two months, my coronary plaque burden had dropped to 296.2. That's a 6% reduction in less than 2 months. Had I gone back in for the second scan right after my 3 week fast then it probably would have a 6%
reduction in less than a month.

Frankly, based on how good I've been feeling (I'm even thinking of
getting back into jogging instead of walking), I was surprised it was
only 6%. Based on the common experience, however, that it sometimes
takes a year or two to just stabilize your plaque increase, much less
actually start losing it, the doctor was truly startled and
surprised. He said he had never seen such a sudden reduction as that
before!

We are still going to proceed with the coronary angiogram and I
intend to apply what I find in your book but I thought you might be interested in these results since I've never heard or read of anyone actually measuring the effectiveness of a fast with before and after EBT Scans.

I admire your direction and work focusing on prevention instead of catastrophic management like most doctors. Dr. Fuhrman is very much the same with the greatest attention on prevention so if you haven't heard of his book you might be interested. Especially interesting regarding this particular issue is Chapter 5 entitled, "The Road Back to a Healthy Heart-the Natural Way."

I can personally verify everything he has said about the fasting procedure itself from start to finish. I consider his book the Bible about fasting. As I mentioned, given your similar direction in medicine, I thought I would bring my personal experience on the matter to your attention for your consideration. Maybe in a future edition of your book, you might want to include some information on fasting.

Anyhow, I hope you will find this helpful. Any other questions,
don't hesitate to e-mail back. Please keep up your good work and
thanks for what your doing!

Yours truly,

Don P.
Honolulu, Hawaii

Isn't that great?

Now, in all honesty, a change of 6% could conceivably be within the margin of error for heart scanning. (Although several studies from a number of years ago suggested that variation in heart scan scoring was about 10%, sometimes more, in my experience, on EBT devices like the one Don used, variation is <5% at this score range.) Genuine regression would probably be better documented by yet another scan down the road. If the trend is consistent, then it is probably real.

Nonetheless, Don's story may support we've been saying for some time: Fasting is a rapid method to gain control over plaque--but I didn't know it might be that quick! Perhaps Don is a living example of what I've called "instant" heart disease reversal.

Don is potentially off to a good start. But, unless he can periodically repeat his fast, he will still have to engage in a program that allows continuing control over coronary plaque in between fasts. Also, fasting cannot address issues like vitamin D deficiency, lipoprotein(a), and any residual lipid/lipoprotein issues. But I am continually impressed with the power of fasting to "jump start" a program of heart disease reversal.

It would be a fascinating study to perform, with serial heart scans within brief periods of weeks or months to gauge rapid response. However, we need to keep in mind that as wonderful as heart scans are, they do involve modest radiation exposure.

It might be interesting in future to add a fasting "arm" to the virtual clinical trial. That might yield some great insights.

Copyright 2007 William Davis,MD

This continues a series I've begun recently that discusses studies that have emerged over the past 10 years relevant to heart scan scoring and reversal of coronary atherosclerotic plaque.

The St. Francis Heart Study from St. Francis Hospital, Roslyn, New York, was released in 2005. This was yet another study that set out to determine whether Lipitor exerted a slowing effect on coronary calcium scores. This time, Lipitor (atorvastatin), 20 mg per day, was combined with vitamin C 1 g daily, and vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) 1,000 U daily, vs. placebo. A total of 1,005 asymptomatic men and women, age 50 to 70 years, with coronary calcium scores 80th percentile or higher for age and gender
participated in the study.

After four years, heart scan scores in the placebo group increased 73%, compared to 81% in the treatment group. Statistically, the cocktail of drug, vitamins C and E had no effect on heart scan scores.

Other findings included:

--Participants experiencing heart attack and other events during the study showed greater progression of scores than those not experiencing heart attack: score increase of 256 vs. increase of 120.

--While treatment did not reduce the number of heart attacks and events overall, participants with starting heart scan scores >400 did show a benefit: 8.7% with events on treatment (20 of 229) vs. 15.0% with placebo (36 of 240).

(Note what is missing from the treatment regimen: efforts to raise HDL (starting average HDL 51 mg/dl); reduce triglycerides (starting average 140 mg/dl); identify those whose LDL was false elevated by lipoprotein(a); omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil; correction of other factors like vitamin D deficiency.)

Are we pretty in agreement that just taking Lipitor and following an American Heart Association low-fat diet is an unsatisfactory answer to gain control over coronary plaque growth? No slowing of heart scan score growth seen in the St. Francis Heart Study and similar studies is consistent with the 25-30% reductions in heart attack witnessed in large clinical trials. Yes, heart attack and related events are reduced, but not eliminated--not even close.

And when you think about it, it should come as no surprise that the simple strategy studied in the St. Francis Heart Study failed to completely control plaque growth. Lipitor and statin drugs exert no effect on small LDL particles, barely raise HDL cholesterol at all, and have no effect on Lp(a), factors that increase heart scan scores substantially.

Though these discussions have frightened some people because of the suggestion that increasing heart scan scores are inevitable and unavoidable, they shouldn't. It really should not be at all shocking to learn that taking one drug all by itself should cure coronary heart disease.

Instead, findings like those of the St. Francis study should cause us to ask: What could be done better? How can we better impact on heart scan scores and how can we further reduce heart attack, particularly in people with higher heart scan scores?

My answer has been the Track Your Plaque program, a comprehensive effort to 1) address all causes of coronary plaque, and then 2) correct all the causes.

End-stage vitamin D deficiency

"Instant" reversal with fasting?

Study review: yet another Lipitor study