All posts by william-davis

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%20

Our 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 truth.

Coronary disease is drying up!

7. April 2006 William Davis (1)

I had an interesting conversation with a device representative this morning. He was a sales representative for a major medical manufacturer of stents, defibrillators, and other such devices for heart disease.

Since I'm still involved with hospital heart care and cardiac catheterization laboratories, this representative asked me if I was interested in getting involved with some of the new cardiac devices making it to market over the next year or two. "The coronary market is drying up, what with coated stents and such. We've got to find new profit sources."

Well, doesn't that sum it up? If you haven't already had this epiphany, here it is:

HEART DISEASE IS A PROFITABLE BUSINESS!

Why else can hospitals afford billboards, $10 million dollar annual ad campaigns, etc.? They do it for PROFIT. Likewise, device and drug manufacturers see the tremendous profit in heart disease.

The representative's comments about the market "drying up" simply means that the use of coated stents has cut back on the need for repeat procedures. It does NOT mean that coronary disease is on the way out. On the contrary, for the people and institutions who stand to profit from heart care, there's lots of opportunity.

Track Your Plaque is trying to battle this trend. Heart disease should NOT be profitable. For the vast majority of us, it is a preventable process, much like house fires and dental cavities.

Mammogram for your heart

6. April 2006 William Davis (0)

With the booming popularity of "64-slice CT scans", there's a lot of mis-information about what these tests provide.

These tests are essentially heart scans with added x-ray dye injected to see the insides of the arteries. However, to accomplish this, a large quantity of radiation is required. In addition, the test is not quantitative, that is, it is not a precise measure that can be repeated year after year.

It is okay to have a 64-slice CT coronary angiogram. It is NOT okay to have one every year. That's too much radiation. However, a heart scan can be repeated every year, if necessary, to track progression or regression. Once stabilization (zero change) or reduction is achieved, then you're done (unless your life takes a major change, like a 20 lb weight gain).

The tried-and-true CT heart scan is the gold standard--easy, inexpensive, precise, and repeatable. Not true for 64-slice angiograms.

Is your doctor using "leeches"?

4. April 2006 William Davis (0)

What if you went to your doctor for a problem and he/she promptly placed leeches on your body?

Yeccchhhh! Would you go back? I'd bet that you'd run the other way as fast as your bleeding legs could take you. Outdated health practices like "bleeding" are outdated for good reason.

Then why would you allow your doctor to approach your heart disease prevention program by checking cholesterol and then waiting for symptoms to appear? That miserable approach leads to tragedy and death all too often--ask Bill Clinton! He might as well have had leeches!

Don't allow your doctor's ignorance or disinterest impede your prevention program. Get your coronary plaque measured, then attack it from all sides by knowing all causes, hidden and obvious. That's why Track Your Plaque is such an effective program.

I often wonder why more doctors aren't using this unbelievably powerful approach to deal with heart disease. But when I see colleagues implanting stents, defibrillators, and the like for many thousands of dollars per patient, the answers are obvious. Given a choice of a rational, effective program of prevention that pays the doctor a few hundred dollars for his time, versus $2000 to $10,000 for a procedure, you can see that the temptation is irresistible for many physicians.

For the sake of convenience: Commercial sources of prebiotic fibers

3. 五月 2015 William Davis (0)

Our efforts to obtain prebiotic fibers/resistant starches, as discussed in the Cureality Digestive Health Track, to cultivate healthy bowel flora means recreating the eating behavior of primitive humans who dug in the dirt with sticks and bone fragments for underground roots and tubers, behaviors you can still observe in extant hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Hadza and Yanomamo. But, because this practice is inconvenient for us modern folk accustomed to sleek grocery stores, because many of us live in climates where the ground is frozen much of the year, and because we lack the wisdom passed from generation to generation that helps identify which roots and tubers are safe to eat and which are not, we rely on modern equivalents of primitive sources. Thus, green, unripe bananas, raw potatoes and other such fiber sources in the Cureality lifestyle.

There is therefore no need to purchase prebiotic fibers outside of your daily effort at including an unripe green banana, say, or inulin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS), or small servings of legumes as a means of cultivating healthy bowel flora. These are powerful strategies that change the number and species of bowel flora over time, thereby leading to beneficial health effects that include reduced blood sugar and blood pressure, reduction in triglycerides, reduced anxiety and improved sleep, and reduced colon cancer risk.

HOWEVER, convenience can be a struggle. Traveling by plane, for example, makes lugging around green bananas or raw potatoes inconvenient. Inulin and FOS already come as powders or capsules and they are among the options for a convenient, portable prebiotic fiber strategy. But there are others that can be purchased. This is a more costly way to get your prebiotic fibers and you do not need to purchase these products in order to succeed in your bowel flora management program. These products are therefore listed strictly as a strategy for convenience.

Most perspectives on the quality of human bowel flora composition suggest that diversity is an important feature, i.e., the greater the number of species, the better the health of the host. There may therefore be advantage in varying your prebiotic routine, e.g., green banana on Monday, inulin on Tuesday, PGX (below) on Wednesday, etc. Beyond providing convenience, these products may introduce an added level of diversity, as well.

Among the preparations available to us that can be used as prebiotic fibers:

PGX

While it is billed as a weight management and blood sugar-reducing product, the naturally occurring fiber--α-D-glucurono-α-D-manno-β-D-manno- β-D-gluco, α-L-gulurono-β-D mannurono, β-D-gluco-β- D-mannan--in PGX also exerts prebiotic effects (evidenced by increased fecal butyrate, the beneficial end-product of bacterial metabolism). PGX is available as capsules or granules. It also seems to exert prebiotic effects at lower doses than other prebiotic fibers. While I usually advise reaching 20 grams per day of fiber, PGX appears to exert substantial effects at a daily dose of half that quantity. As with all prebiotic fibers, it is best to build up slowly over weeks, e.g., start at 1.5 grams twice per day. It is also best taken in two or three divided doses. (Avoid the PGX bars, as they are too carb-rich for those of us trying to achieve ideal metaobolic health.)

Prebiotin

A combination of inulin and FOS available as powders and in portable Stick Pacs (2 gram and 4 gram packs). This preparation is quite costly, however, given the generally low cost of purchasing chicory inulin and FOS separately.

Acacia

Acacia fiber is another form of prebiotic fiber. RenewLife and NOW are two reputable brands.

Isomalto-oligosaccharides

This fiber is used in Quest bars and in Paleo Protein Bars. With Quest bars, choose the flavors without sucralose, since it has been associated with undesirable changes in bowel flora.

There you go. It means that there are fewer and fewer reasons to not purposefully cultivate healthy bowel flora and obtain all the wonderful health benefits of doing so, from reduced blood pressure, to reduced triglycerides, to deeper sleep.

Disclaimer: I am not compensated in any way by discussing these products.

How Not To Have An Autoimmune Condition

20. 四月 2015 William Davis (0)

Autoimmune conditions are becoming increasingly common. Estimates vary, but it appears that at least 8-9% of the population in North America and Western Europe have one of these conditions, with The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association estimating that it’s even higher at 14% of the population.

The 200 or so autoimmune diseases that afflict modern people are conditions that involve an abnormal immune response directed against one or more organs of the body. If the misguided attack is against the thyroid gland, it can result in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. If it is directed against pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin, it can result in type 1 diabetes or latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA). If it involves tissue encasing joints (synovium) like the fingers or wrists, it can result in rheumatoid arthritis. It if involves the liver, it can result in autoimmune hepatitis, and so on. Nearly every organ of the body can be the target of such a misguided immune response.

While it requires a genetic predisposition towards autoimmunity that we have no control over (e.g., the HLA-B27 gene for ankylosing spondylitis), there are numerous environmental triggers of these diseases that we can do something about. Identifying and correcting these factors stacks the odds in your favor of reducing autoimmune inflammation, swelling, pain, organ dysfunction, and can even reverse an autoimmune condition altogether.

Among the most important factors to correct in order to minimize or reverse autoimmunity are:

Wheat and grain elimination

If you are reading this, you likely already know that the gliadin protein of wheat and related proteins in other grains (especially the secalin of rye, the hordein of barley, zein of corn, perhaps the avenin of oats) initiate the intestinal “leakiness” that begins the autoimmune process, an effect that occurs in over 90% of people who consume wheat and grains. The flood of foreign peptides/proteins, bacterial lipopolysaccharide, and grain proteins themselves cause immune responses to be launched against these foreign factors. If, for instance, an autoimmune response is triggered against wheat gliadin, the same antibodies can be aimed at the synapsin protein of the central nervous system/brain, resulting in dementia or cerebellar ataxia (destruction of the cerebellum resulting in incoordination and loss of bladder and bowel control). Wheat and grain elimination is by far the most important item on this list to reverse autoimmunity.

Correct vitamin D deficiency

It is clear that, across a spectrum of autoimmune diseases, vitamin D deficiency serves a permissive, not necessarily causative, role in allowing an autoimmune process to proceed. It is clear, for instance, that autoimmune conditions such as type 1 diabetes in children, rheumatoid arthritis, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis are more common in those with low vitamin D status, much less common in those with higher vitamin D levels. For this and other reasons, I aim to achieve a blood level of 25-hydroxy vitamin D level of 60-70 ng/ml, a level that usually requires around 4000-8000 units per day of D3 (cholecalciferol) in gelcap or liquid form (never tablet due to poor or erratic absorption). In view of the serious nature of autoimmune diseases, it is well worth tracking occasional blood levels.

Supplement omega-3 fatty acids

While omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA, from fish oil have proven only modestly helpful by themselves, when cast onto the background of wheat/grain elimination and vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids compound anti-inflammatory benefits, such as those exerted via cyclooxygenase-2. This requires a daily EPA + DHA dose of around 3600 mg per day, divided in two. Don’t confuse EPA and DHA omega-3s with linolenic acid, another form of omega-3 obtained from meats, flaxseed, chia, and walnuts that does not not yield the same benefits. Nor can you use krill oil with its relatively trivial content of omega-3s.

Eliminate dairy

This is true in North America and most of Western Europe, less true in New Zealand and Australia. Autoimmunity can be triggered by the casein beta A1 form of casein widely expressed in dairy products, but not by casein beta A2 and other forms. Because it is so prevalent in North America and Western Europe, the most confident way to avoid this immunogenic form of casein is to avoid dairy altogether. You might be able to consume cheese, given the fermentation process that alters proteins and sugar, but that has not been fully explored.

Cultivate healthy bowel flora

People with autoimmune conditions have massively screwed up bowel flora with reduced species diversity and dominance of unhealthy species. We restore a healthier anti-inflammatory panel of bacterial species by “seeding” the colon with high-potency probiotics, then nourishing them with prebiotic fibers/resistant starches, a collection of strategies summarized in the Cureality Digestive Health discussions. People sometimes view bowel flora management as optional, just “fluff”–it is anything but. Properly managing bowel flora can be a make-it-or-break-it advantage; don’t neglect it.

There you go: a basic list to get started on if your interest is to begin a process of unraveling the processes of autoimmunity. In some conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and polymyalgia rheumatica, full recovery is possible. In other conditions, such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and the pancreatic beta cell destruction leading to type 1 diabetes, reversing the autoimmune inflammation does not restore organ function: hypothyroidism results after thyroiditis quiets down and type 1 diabetes and need for insulin persists after pancreatic beta cell damage. But note that the most powerful risk factor for an autoimmune disease is another autoimmune disease–this is why so many people have more than one autoimmune condition. People with Hashimoto’s, for instance, can develop rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis. So the above menu is still worth following even if you cannot hope for full organ recovery

Five Powerful Ways to Reduce Blood Sugar

4. 四月 2015 William Davis (0)

Left to conventional advice on diet and you will, more than likely, succumb to type 2 diabetes sooner or later. Follow your doctor’s advice to cut fat and eat more “healthy whole grains” and oral diabetes medication and insulin are almost certainly in your future. Despite this, had this scenario played out, you would be accused of laziness and gluttony, a weak specimen of human being who just gave into excess.

If you turn elsewhere for advice, however, and ignore the awful advice from “official” sources with cozy relationships with Big Pharma, you can reduce blood sugars sufficient to never become diabetic or to reverse an established diagnosis, and you can create a powerful collection of strategies that handily trump the worthless advice being passed off by the USDA, American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, or the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Among the most powerful and effective strategies to reduce blood sugar:

1) Eat no wheat nor grains

Recall that amylopectin A, the complex carbohydrate of grains, is highly digestible, unlike most of the other components of the seeds of grasses AKA “grains,” subject to digestion by the enzyme, amylase, in saliva and stomach. This explains why, ounce for ounce, grains raise blood sugar higher than table sugar. Eat no grains = remove the exceptional glycemic potential of amylopectin A.

2) Add no sugars, avoid high-fructose corn syrup

This should be pretty obvious, but note that the majority of processed foods contain sweeteners such as sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup, tailored to please the increased desire for sweetness among grain-consuming people. While fructose does not raise blood sugar acutely, it does so in delayed fashion, along with triggering other metabolic distortions such as increased triglycerides and fatty liver.

3) Vitamin D

Because vitamin D restores the body’s normal responsiveness to insulin, getting vitamin D right helps reduce blood sugar naturally while providing a range of other health benefits.

4) Restore bowel flora

As cultivation of several Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria species in bowel flora yields fatty acids that restore insulin responsiveness, this leads to reductions in blood sugar over time. Minus the bowel flora-disrupting effects of grains and sugars, a purposeful program of bowel flora restoration is required (discussed at length in the Cureality Digestive Health section.)

5) Exercise

Blood sugar is reduced during and immediately following exercise, with the effect continuing for many hours afterwards, even into the next day.

Note that, aside from exercise, none of these powerful strategies are advocated by the American Diabetes Association or any other “official” agency purporting to provide dietary advice. As is happening more and more often as the tide of health information rises and is accessible to all, the best advice on health does not come from such agencies nor from your doctor but from your efforts to better understand the truths in health. This is our core mission in Cureality. A nice side benefit: information from Cureality is not accompanied by advertisements from Merck, Pfizer, Kelloggs, Kraft, or Cadbury Schweppes.

Cureality App Review: Breathe Sync

7. 三月 2015 William Davis (0)

Biofeedback is a wonderful, natural way to gain control over multiple physiological phenomena, a means of tapping into your body’s internal resources. You can, for instance, use biofeedback to reduce anxiety, heart rate, and blood pressure, and achieve a sense of well-being that does not involve drugs, side-effects, or even much cost.

Biofeedback simply means that you are tracking some observable physiologic phenomenon—heart rate, skin temperature, blood pressure—and trying to consciously access control over it. One very successful method is that of bringing the beat-to-beat variation in heart rate into synchrony with the respiratory cycle. In day-to-day life, the heart beat is usually completely out of sync with respiration. Bring it into synchrony and interesting things happen: you experience a feeling of peace and calm, while many healthy phenomena develop.

A company called HeartMath has applied this principle through their personal computer-driven device that plugs into the USB port of your computer and monitors your heart rate with a device clipped on your earlobe. You then regulate breathing and follow the instructions provided and feedback is obtained on whether you are achieving synchrony, or what they call “coherence.” As the user becomes more effective in achieving coherence over time, positive physiological and emotional effects develop. HeartMath has been shown, for instance, to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure, morning cortisol levels (a stress hormone), and helps people deal with chronic pain. Downside of the HeartMath process: a $249 price tag for the earlobe-USB device.

But this is the age of emerging smartphone apps, including those applied to health. Smartphone apps are perfect for health monitoring. They are especially changing how we engage in biofeedback. An app called Breathe Sync is available that tracks heart rate using the camera’s flash on the phone. By tracking heart rate and providing visual instruction on breathing pattern, the program generates a Wellness Quotient, WQ, similar to HeartMath’s coherence scoring system. Difference: Breathe Sync is portable and a heck of a lot less costly. I paid $9.99, more than I’ve paid for any other mainstream smartphone application, but a bargain compared to the HeartMath device cost.

One glitch is that you need to not be running any other programs in the background, such as your GPS, else you will have pauses in the Breathe Sync program, negating the value of your WQ. Beyond this, the app functions reliably and can help you achieve the health goals of biofeedback with so much less hassle and greater effectiveness than the older methods.

If you are looking for a biofeedback system that provides advantage in gaining control over metabolic health, while also providing a wonderful method of relaxation, Breathe Sync, I believe, is the go-to app right now.

Amber’s Top 35 Health and Fitness Tips

7. 十一月 2014 Amber B (0)

This year I joined the 35 club! And in honor of being fabulous and 35, I want to share 35 health and fitness tips with you!

1. Foam rolling is for everyone and should be done daily.
2. Cold showers are the best way to wake up and burn more body fat.
3. Stop locking your knees. This will lead to lower back pain.
4. Avoid eating gluten at all costs.
5. Breath deep so that you can feel the sides or your lower back expand.
6. Swing a kettlebell for a stronger and great looking backside.
7. Fat is where it’s at! Enjoy butter, ghee, coconut oil, palm oil, duck fat and many other fabulous saturated fats.
8. Don’t let your grip strength fade with age. Farmer carries, kettlebells and hanging from a bar will help with that.
9. Runners, keep your long runs slow and easy and keep your interval runs hard. Don’t fall in the chronic cardio range.
10. Drink high quality spring or reverse osmosis water.
11. Use high quality sea salt season food and as a mineral supplement.
12. Work your squat so that your butt can get down to the ground. Can you sit in this position? How long?
13. Lift heavy weights! We were made for manual work,. Simulate heavy labor in the weight room.
14. Meditate daily. If you don’t go within, you will go with out. We need quiet restorative time to balance the stress in our life.
15. Stand up and move for 10 minutes for every hour your sit at your computer.
16. Eat a variety of whole, real foods.
17. Sleep 7 to 9 hours every night.
18. Pull ups are my favorite exercise. Get a home pull up bar to practice.
19. Get out and spend a few minutes in nature. Appreciate the world around you while taking in fresh air and natural beauty.
20. We all need to pull more in our workouts. Add more pulling movements horizontally and vertically.
21. Surround yourself with health minded people.
22. Keep your room dark for deep sound sleep. A sleep mask is great for that!
23. Use chemical free cosmetics. Your skin is the largest organ of your body and all chemicals will absorb into your blood stream.
24. Unilateral movements will help improve symmetrical strength.
25. Become more playful. We take life too seriously, becoming stress and overwhelmed. How can you play, smile and laugh more often?
26. Choose foods that have one ingredient. Keep your diet simple and clean.
27. Keep your joints mobile as you age. Do exercises that take joints through a full range of motion.
28. Go to sleep no later than 10:30pm. This allows your body and brain to repair through the night.
29. Take care of your health and needs before others. This allows you to be the best spouse, parent, coworker, and person on the planet.
30. Always start your daily with a high fat, high protein meal. This will encourage less sugar cravings later in the day.
31. Approach the day with positive thinking! Stinkin’ thinkin’ only leads to more stress and frustration.
32. You are never “too old” to do something. Stay young at heart and keep fitness a priority as the years go by.
33. Dream big and go for it.
34. Lift weights 2 to 4 times every week. Strong is the new sexy.
35. Love. Love yourself unconditionally. Love your life and live it to the fullest. Love others compassionately.

Amber B.
Cureality Exercise and Fitness Coach

To Change, You Need to Get Uncomfortable

25. 九月 2014 Amber B (0)

Sitting on the couch is comfortable. Going through the drive thru to pick up dinner is comfortable. But when you notice that you’re out-of-shape, tired, sick and your clothes no longer fit, you realize that what makes you comfortable is not in align with what would make you happy.

You want to see something different when you look in the mirror. You want to fit into a certain size of jeans or just experience your day with more energy and excitement. The current condition of your life causes you pain, be it physical, mental or emotional. To escape the pain you are feeling, you know that you need to make changes to your habits that keep you stuck in your current state. But why is it so hard to make the changes you know that will help you achieve what you want?

I want to lose weight but….

I want a six pack but…

I want more energy but….

The statement that follows the “but” is often a situation or habit you are comfortable with. You want to lose weight but don’t have time to cook healthy meals. So it’s much more comfortable to go through the drive thru instead of trying some new recipes. New habits often require a learning curve and a bit of extra time in the beginning. It also takes courage and energy to establish new routines or seek out help.

Setting out to achieve your goals requires change. Making changes to establish new habits that support your goals and dreams can be uncomfortable. Life, as you know it, will be different. Knowing that fact can be scary, but so can staying in your current condition. So I’m asking you to take a risk and get uncomfortable so that you can achieve your goals.

Realize that it takes 21 days to develop a new habit. I believe it takes triple that amount of time to really make a new habit stick for the long haul. So for 21 days, you’ll experience some discomfort while you make changes to your old routine and habits. Depending on what you are changing, discomfort could mean feeling tired, moody, or even withdrawal symptoms. However, the longer you stick to your new habits the less uncomfortable you start to feel. The first week is always the worst, but then it gets easier.

Making it through the uncomfortable times requires staying focused on your goals and not caving to your immediate feelings or desires. I encourage clients to focus on why their goals important to them. This reason or burning desire to change will help when old habits, cravings, or situations call you back to your old ways.
Use a tracking and a reward system to stay on track. Grab a calendar, journal or index card to check off or note your daily successes. Shoot for consistency and not perfection when trying to make changes. I encourage my clients to use the 90/10 principle of change and apply that to their goal tracking system. New clothes, a massage, or a day me-retreat are just a few examples of rewards you can use to sticking to your tracking system. Pick something that really gets you excited.

Getting support system in place can help you feel more comfortable with being uncomfortable. Hiring a coach, joining an online support group, or recruiting family and friends can be very helpful when making big changes. With a support system in place you are not alone in your discomfort. You’re network is there for you to reach out for help, knowledge, accountability or camaraderie when you feel frustrated and isolated.

I’ve helped hundreds of people change their bodies, health and lives of the eleven years I’ve worked as a trainer and coach. I know it’s hard, but I also know that if they can do it, so can you. You just need to step outside of your comfort zone and take a risk. Don’t let fear create uncomfortable feelings that keep you stuck in your old ways. Take that first step and enjoy the journey of reaching your goals and dreams.

Amber Budahn, B.S., CSCS, ACE PT, USATF 1, CHEK HLC 1, REIKI 1
Cureality Exercise Specialist

The 3 Best Grain Free Food Swaps to Boost Fat Burning

25. 九月 2014 Lisa G (0)

You can join others enjoying substantial improvements in their health, energy and pant size by making a few key, delicious substitutions to your eating habits. This is possible with the Cureality nutrition approach, which rejects the idea that grains should form the cornerstone of the human diet.

Grain products, which are seeds of grasses, are incompatible with human digestion. Contrary to what we have been told for years, eating healthy whole grain is not the answer to whittle away our waists. Consumption of all grain-based carbohydrates results in increased production of the fat storage hormone insulin. Increased insulin levels create the perfect recipe for weight gain. By swapping out high carbohydrate grain foods that cause spikes in insulin with much lower carbohydrate foods, insulin release is subdued and allows the body to release fat.

1. Swap wheat-based flour with almond flour/meal

One of the most dubious grain offenders is modern wheat. Replace wheat flour with naturally wheat-free, lower carbohydrate almond flour.
Almond flour contains a mere 12 net carbs per cup (carbohydrate minus the fiber) with 50% more filling protein than all-purpose flour.
Almond flour and almond meal also offer vitamin E, an important antioxidant to support immune function.

2. Swap potatoes and rice for cauliflower

Replace high carb potatoes and pasta with vitamin C packed cauliflower, which has an inconsequential 3 carbs per cup.
Try this food swap: blend raw cauliflower in food processor to make “rice”. (A hand held grater can also be used). Sautee the “riced” cauliflower in olive or coconut oil for 5 minutes with seasoning to taste.
Another food swap: enjoy mashed cauliflower in place of potatoes. Cook cauliflower. Place in food processor with ½ a stick organic, grass-fed butter, ½ a package full-fat cream cheese and blend until smooth. Add optional minced garlic, chives or other herbs such as rosemary.

3. Swap pasta for shirataki noodles and zucchini

Swap out carb-rich white pasta containing 43 carbs per cup with Shirataki noodles that contain a few carbs per package. Shirataki noodles are made from konjac or yam root and are found in refrigerated section of supermarkets.
Another swap: zucchini contains about 4 carbs per cup. Make your own grain free, low-carb noodles from zucchini using a julienne peeler, mandolin or one of the various noodle tools on the market.

Lisa Grudzielanek, MS,RDN,CD,CDE
Cureality Nutrition Specialist

Not so fast. Don’t make this mistake when going gluten free!

25. 九月 2014 Lisa G (0)

Beginning last month, the Food and Drug Administration began implementing its definition of “gluten-free” on packaged food labels. The FDA determined that packaged food labeled gluten free (or similar claims such as "free of gluten") cannot contain more than 20 parts per million of gluten.

It has been years in the making for the FDA to define what “gluten free” means and hold food manufactures accountable, with respect to food labeling. However, the story does not end there.

Yes, finding gluten-free food, that is now properly labeled, has become easier. So much so the market for gluten-free foods tops $6 billion last year. However, finding truly healthy, commercially prepared, grain-free foods is still challenging.

A very common mistake made when jumping into the gluten-free lifestyle is piling everything labeled gluten-free in the shopping cart. We don’t want to replace a problem: wheat, with another problem: gluten free products.

Typically gluten free products are made with rice flour (and brown rice flour), tapioca starch, cornstarch, and potato flour. Of the few foods that raise blood sugar higher than wheat, these dried, powdered starches top the list.

They provide a large surface area for digestion, thereby leading to sky-high blood sugar and all the consequences such as diabetes, hypertension, cataracts, arthritis, and heart disease. These products should be consumed very rarely consumed, if at all. As Dr. Davis has stated, “100% gluten-free usually means 100% awful!”

There is an ugly side to the gluten-free boom taking place. The Cureality approach to wellness recommends selecting gluten-free products wisely. Do not making this misguided mistake and instead aim for elimination of ALL grains, as all seeds of grasses are related to wheat and therefore overlap in many effects.

Lisa Grudzielanek MS, RDN, CD, CDE
Cureality Health & Nutrition Coach

3 Foods to Add to Your Next Grocery List

25. 九月 2014 Lisa G (0)

Looking for some new foods to add to your diet? Look no further. Reach for these three mealtime superstars to encourage a leaner, healthier body.

Microgreens

Microgreens are simply the shoots of salad greens and herbs that are harvested just after the first leaves have developed, or in about 2 weeks. Microgreen are not sprouts. Sprouts are germinated, in other words, sprouted seeds produced entirely in water. Microgreens are grown in soil, thereby absorbing the nutrients from the soil.

The nutritional profile of each microgreen depends greatly on the type of microgreen you are eating. Researchers found red cabbage microgreens had 40 times more vitamin E and six times more vitamin C than mature red cabbage. Cilantro microgreens had three times more beta-carotene than mature cilantro.

A few popular varieties of microgreens are arugula, kale, radish, pea, and watercress. Flavor can vary from mild to a more intense or spicy mix depending on the microgreens. They can be added to salads, soup, omelets, stir fry and in place of lettuce.

Cacao Powder

Cocoa and cacao are close enough in flavor not to make any difference. However, raw cacao powder has 3.6 times the antioxidant activity of roasted cocoa powder. In short, raw cacao powder is definitely the healthiest, most beneficial of the powders, followed by 100% unsweetened cocoa.

Cacao has more antioxidant flavonoids than blueberries, red wine and black and green teas. Cacao is one of the highest sources of magnesium, a great source of iron and vitamin C, as well as a good source of fiber for healthy bowel function.
Add cacao powder to milk for chocolate milk or real hot chocolate. Consider adding to coffee for a little mocha magic or sprinkle on berries and yogurt.

Shallots

Shallots have a better nutrition profile than onions. On a weight per weight basis, they have more anti-oxidants, minerals, and vitamins than onions. Shallots have a milder, less pungent taste than onions, so people who do not care for onions may enjoy shallots.

Like onions, sulfur compounds in shallot are necessary for liver detoxification pathways. The sulfur compound, allicin has been shown to be beneficial in reducing cholesterol. Allicin is also noted to have anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal activities.

Diced then up and add to salads, on top of a bun less hamburger, soups, stews, or sauces. Toss in an omelet or sauté to enhance a piece of chicken or steak, really the possibilities are endless.

Lisa Grudzielanek,MS,RDN,CD,CDE
Cureality Nutrition & Health Coach

3 Band Exercises for Great Glutes

15. 八月 2014 Amber B (0)

Bands and buns are a great combination. (When I talk about glutes or a butt, I use the word buns) When it comes to sculpting better buns, grab a band. Bands are great for home workouts, at gym or when you travel. Check out these 3 amazing exercises that will have your buns burning.

Band Step Out

Grab a band and place it under the arch of each foot. Then cross the band and rest your hands in your hip sockets. The exercise starts with your feet hip width apart and weight in the heels. Slightly bend the knees and step your right foot out to the side. Step back in so that your foot is back in the starting position. With each step, make sure your toes point straight ahead. The tighter you pull the band, the more resistance you will have. You will feel this exercise on the outside of your hips.

Start with one set of 15 repetitions with each foot. Work on increasing to 25 repetitions on each side and doing two to three sets.

Band Kick Back

This exercise is performed in the quadruped position with your knees under hips and hands under your shoulders. Take the loop end of the band and put it around your right foot and place the two handles or ends of the band under your hands. Without moving your body, kick your right leg straight back. Return to the starting quadruped position. Adjust the tension of the band to increase or decrease the difficulty of this exercise.

Start with one set of 10 repetitions with each foot. Work on increasing to 20 repetitions on each side and doing two to three sets.

Band Resisted Hip Bridge

Start lying on your back with feet hip distance apart and knees bent at about a 45-degree angle. Adjust your hips to a neutral position to alleviate any arching in your lower back. Place the band across your hipbones. Hold the band down with hands along the sides of your body. Contract your abs and squeeze your glutes to lift your hips up off the ground. Stop when your thighs, hips and stomach are in a straight line. Lower you hips back down to the ground.

Start with one set of 15 repetitions. Work on increasing to 25 repetitions and doing two to three. Another variation of this exercise is to hold the hip bridge position. Start with a 30 second hold and work up to holding for 60 seconds.

All posts by william-davis

The processed food battlefield

31. July 2007 William Davis (4)

If you have any remaining doubts that the processed food industry is a cutthroat, go-for-the-jugular, organized effort to extract every possible penny from your pocket, even at the expense of health, take a gander at a quote from Marion Nestle's wonderful book, Food Politics.

In Nestle's description on how food conglomerate, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), conspired to fix prices on some basic agricultural compounds, she quotes an ADM executive captured on videotape and presented in court:

"We have a saying at this company . . . our competitors are our friends and our customers are our enemies."

In other words, ADM's competitors help establish what prices should be charged for basic foodstuffs, while its customers are the ones to do battle with.

Food is a necessary commodity. You and I only need so much of it. So how does a 40 billion dollar food manufacturer extract greater and greater profits and grow their market? Motivate people to eat more. It's that simple.

Eat less? Are you kidding? Eat spinach, green peppers, beets, and other low-margin products? Get real.

Why not take 8 cents worth of wheat flour, add some sugar, food coloring, and some other enticing flavorings like high fructose corn syrup? Put it all in a cleverly illustrated package, maybe even develop an entire story line about the product, complete with clever slogans and songs and . . . ouila! You now have a food that sells for many, many times its intrinsic value.

How to make the health nuts happy? Easy: Add some fiber. Now it's healthy! And it's now part of a "balanced diet".

What if it's full of corn starch, wheat flour, and sugar of the sort that make HDL cholesterols plummet, fan the flames of small LDL, increase inflammatory measures like C-reactive protein, push people closer and closer to diabetes, and make them fat? Then be sure it's low in saturated fat! It might even qualify as "Heart Healthy" by the American Heart Association!

Processed foods have no role in the Track Your Plaque program. If you want to see your CT heart scan score skyrocket, go to your grocery store and stray into the aisles outside of the produce aisle.

But stick to the produce aisle and watch your wallet grow, your health improve, your appetite shrink, all while food processor profits plummet.

Heart Scan debate

29. July 2007 William Davis (4)

A few years back when the book form of Track Your Plaque was first released, I did a bunch of radio and interviews to raise awareness of the book and of CT heart scanning in general.

I'd forgotten about this interview I did for National Public Radio (NPR), in which I debate Dr. Graboys from Harvard. Though I've had this debate countless other times, usually on a less formal basis, I didn't know what to expect at the start of the interview. After all, I knew of Dr. Graboys' reputation as a respected Harvard cardiologist. So I was expecting that at least he would argue that, being relatively new at the time, CT heart scanning was largely unproven in large clinical trials. (This was not entirely true then, however, as at least 1000 trials had already been performed, many of them involving thousands of participants. However, despite that much validation, the concept of CT heart scanning had still not entered the consciousness of most practicing physicians. After all, heart scanning is not part of the "crash and repair" equation that most have invested their career in.)

Heart Hawk re-discovered the debate, still on the NPR website. So here it is. When I re-listened to the debate, I was surprised at how little Dr. Graboys had to offer. He argues that examining left ventricular function should suffice as an important measure of mortality. In other words, if you have experienced a drop in the strength of heart muscle, that can be used to stratify your risk of death.

I tried to convey to the audience (NOT convince Dr. Graboys to believe, as most of my colleagues are stubbornly adherent to their way of thinking until someone tosses a big carrot in front of them) that CT heart scanning provides a means to detect coronary atherosclerosis years, even decades, before questions of mortality (death) became necessary. Heart scanning identifies disease in its early stages so that a program of prevention can be followed and tracked.

Dr. Graboys expressed concern that heart scanning devices could be mis-used to increase hospital procedures. He's absolutely right here. By that same line of thinking, say your crooked auto mechanic on the corner scams most of his customers by doing unnecessary car repairs. Does this mean that we should ban all auto mechanics from repairing cars? I hope not. I believe it does mean that we should all be educated on distinguishing scams from an honest businessman.

Same with heart scans. The key is not to ban heart scanning. We should try to educate the public and physicians to prevent these sorts of scams and decisions based on ignorance from occurring.

Nonetheless, make your own judgments.

CLICK HERE to listen (this is a .ram file so you will need the free RealPlayer to play)

Break the addiction

28. July 2007 William Davis (8)

"But, doc, I can't lose my cereal! Pretzels--you've got to be kidding me! I eat 'em every night! I can't do it. I'll be hungry all the time!"

This is a discussion I have every day. The usual suspect: A 50-some year old with HDL in the 30s or 40s, small LDL, borderline high blood sugar approaching the pre-diabetic cut-off, highish blood pressure, excess tummy. They usually struggle with energy, feelings of sleepiness, use lots of caffeine to stay alert even in the middle of the day after a sufficient night's sleep.

Not as obvious as the tremulous, pinopint-pupil drug addict, but I recognize it nonetheless: The processed food addict.

Breaking this addiction can be as difficult for some people as breaking a smoking addiction. Instead of nicotine cravings, they get insatiable hunger. Just 3 or 4 hours without their processed food "fix," and they are ravenous to satiate their impulse. Most give in and go right back to the vicious cycle.

But break the cycle--eliminate processed foods like breakfast cereals, whole wheat crackers, pretzels, cookies, granola bars, fruit drinks, low-fat salad dressings, bran muffins . . .70+% of the foods in your supermarket---and you will make an interesting discovery:

You no longer crave these foods.

Just think about it: The addictive properties of processed foods are a food manufacturer's dream. What other product besides cigarettes has an addictive quality that ensures you come back for more... and more and more.

It it just too creepy that much of the processed food industry is, in reality, owned by the tobacco industry (Altria, previously known as Phillip Morris) and RJ Reynolds. Perhaps that is the modus operandi of these corporations: Identify products that have an edge, foods or other products that possess an addictive quality. This is not true of cucumbers, for instance. What a lousy investment a cucumber grower would make!

Be smarter than Phillip Morris. Outsmart the people looking to empty your pocket and corrupt your health. Break the addiction.

Hang around the produce aisle of your grocery and use the farmer's market or your local equivalent. Look for locally grown foods. Try to keep your food as unprocessed as possible.

You will be impressed with the results.

Are we done here?

27. July 2007 William Davis (4)

Les' doctor consulted me because his CT heart scan score had increased 40% from 893 to 1259 over 18 months.

Judging by his appearance, Les was a 59-year old guy trapped somewhere in the 1980s. The only reason he'd undergone two heart scans was from the prompting of his wife, who was quite savvy.

Among the steps we took was to have Les undergo a stress test. I explained to Les and his wife that stress tests are effective tests of coronary blood flow, but not of plaque. Therefore, there was somewhere around a 25-35% likelihood of an abnormality that suggested poor flow in one or more portions of the heart.

Les passed his stress test easily. A bricklayer, Les was accustomed to heavy physical effort. "Are we done here, doc?" Les asked. Les' wife raised her eyebrows but, to her credit, kept quiet. She'd obviously been here before.

I explained to Les that having normal coronary blood flow was just one aspect of the issue.

"But I don't need a stent, right? I don't need a bypass. I already take Vytorin. So I need a cheeseburger once in a while. So what! Who doesn't? What else is there?"

I continued. "Les, with a normal stress test, there's no denying you still have lots of plaque in your heart's arteries. The risk to you is that one of these plaques will 'rupture,' sort of like a little volcano erupting. Of course, it's not lava that flies out, but the internal contents of plaque. When that happens and the contents of plaque get exposed to blood flowing by, a blood clot forms. That's a heart attack.

"With a 40% increase in your score over 18 months, you are, in fact, at substantial risk for such a plaque rupture. Unless you're fond of hospitals and the thought of heart procedures, then we need to address that part of the issue."

So it went. Step by step, with the quiet, strong support of Les' wife, we uncovered 7 additional causes of his heart disease. It wasn't the easiest process for us, but we did manage to educate Les on the simple steps he needed to take to 1) correct the causes of his coronary plaque, 2) how to use foods and stop fanning the flames of his plaque, and 3) how to live with this nasty specter hanging over him.

Now, if we could only transform Les into an optimist . . .

Wheat belly

23. July 2007 William Davis (31)

You've heard of "beer bellies," the protuberant, sagging abdomen of someone who drinks excessive quantities of beer.

How about "wheat belly"?

That's the same protuberant, sagging abdomen that develops when you overindulge in processed wheat products like pretzels, crackers, breads, waffles, pancakes, breakfast cereals and pasta.

(By the way, this image, borrowed from the wonderful people at Wikipedia, is that of a teenager, who supplied a photo of himself.)

It represents the excessive visceral fat that laces the intestines and triggers a drop in HDL, rise in triglycerides, inflames small LDL particles, C-reactive protein, raises blood sugar, raises blood pressure, creates poor insulin responsiveness, etc.

How common is it? Just look around you and you'll quickly recognize it in dozens or hundreds of people in the next few minutes. It's everywhere.

Wheat bellies are created and propagated by the sea of mis-information that is delivered to your door every day by food manufacturers. It's the same campaign of mis-information that caused the wife of a patient of mine who was in the hospital (one of my rare hospitalizations) to balk in disbelief when I told her that her husband's 18 lb weight gain over the past 6 months was due to the Shredded Wheat Cereal for breakfast, turkey sandwiches for lunch, and whole wheat pasta for dinner.

"But that's what they told us to eat after Dan left the hospital after his last stent!"

Dan, at 260 lbs with a typical wheat belly, had small LDL, low HDL, high triglycerides, etc.

I hold the food companies responsible for this state of affairs, selling foods that are clearly causing enormous weight gain nationwide. Unfortunately, the idiocy that emits from Nabisco, Kraft, and Post (AKA Philip Morris); General Mills; Kelloggs; and their kind is aided and abetted by organizations like the American Heart Association, with the AHA stamp of approval on Cocoa Puffs, Cookie Crisp Cereal, and Berry Kix; and the American Diabetes Association, whose number one corporate sponsor is Cadbury Schweppes, the biggest soft drink and candy manufacturer in the world.

As I've said many times before, if you don't believe it, try this experiment: Eliminate all forms of wheat for a 4 week period--no breakfast cereals, no breads of any sort, no pasta, no crackers, no pretzels, etc. Instead, increase your vegetables, healthy oils, lean proteins (raw nuts, seeds, lean red meats, chicken, fish, turkey, eggs, Egg Beaters, low-fat yogurt and cottage cheese), fruits. Of course, avoid fruit drinks, candy, and other garbage foods, even if they're wheat-free.

Most people will report that a cloud has been lifted from their brains. Thinking is clearer, you have more energy, you don't poop out in the afternoon, you sleep more deeply, some rashes disappear. You will also notice that hunger ratchets down substantially. Most people lose the insatiable hunger pangs that occur 2-3 hours after a wheat-containing meal. Instead, hunger is a soft signal that gently prods you that it's time to consider eating again.

You will also make considerable gains towards gaining control over your risk for heart disease and your heart scan score, a crucial step in the Track Your Plaque program.

If health won't motivate them, maybe money will

23. July 2007 William Davis (0)

As part of our ongoing effort to educate everyone about the value of heart scans and how they can serve to start a program of heart disease prevention (or elimination), we occasionally distribute press releases on one facet of this discussion or another.

Here's the one we released on our Cost Calculator, the one we developed that showed that $20 billion would be saved annually just by applying the program to men, ages 40-59.

Accurate Detection and Prevention of Heart Disease Can Reduce Healthcare Costs, According to New Cost Analysis

A new cost analysis developed by cardiologist Dr. William Davis and his colleagues suggests that healthcare costs can be reduced by billions of dollars with the application of a simple program for heart disease detection and prevention.

Milwaukee, WI (PRWEB) July 23, 2007 -- Billions of dollars in healthcare could be saved every year by applying a simple program of heart disease detection and prevention on a wide scale in the U.S., suggests a new cost analysis developed by cardiologist Dr. William Davis and colleagues. Davis and his colleagues are the developers of the Track Your Plaque program for heart disease detection and prevention.

In the next 24 hours, 10,000 major heart procedures will be performed in hospitals across the U.S. The tab for this bill will top $400 billion in 2007 alone, nearly twice the sum spent on the war on cancer.

As costs escalate at an alarming rate, tools for prevention of disease are also advancing. While drugs like Lipitor® make headlines and dominate direct-to-consumer TV ads, a quiet revolution is taking place among physicians and the public eager to find better answers, some of which also pose opportunities for stretching the healthcare dollar.

“We’re essentially throwing away billions of dollars each and every year by ignoring the savings power of preventive strategies for heart disease,” proclaims Davis, a Milwaukee cardiologist. Davis is author of several books on heart disease detection and prevention, has been a vocal advocate for preventive strategies and is founder of www.cureality.com.

Davis and his colleagues developed a cost model to predict how much money could be saved by the adoption of new preventive strategies on a broad scale in the U.S. “The cost savings are startling. If males in the 40–59-year-old age group, for instance, were to undergo a simple CT heart scan for early detection of coronary heart disease, followed by a purposeful yet focused program of prevention using widely available tools, our cost model shows that we would save the American public over $20 billion annually. Extending this calculation to the broader population would multiply savings several-fold.”

Heart care is already the single largest healthcare category in the U.S. As costs go up by double-digit percentages, fewer people can afford healthcare. Those who can afford it spend an increasingly greater portion of their disposable income to maintain it. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality predicts that, at the current rate of growth, healthcare costs will balloon to absorb 20 percent of American Gross Domestic Product (GDP), about $4 trillion, in the next 10 years.

Davis points out that reducing the annual U.S. expenditure for heart disease by 20 to 30 percent could save between $80 and $120 billion each year. That marginal savings exceeds the sum the U.S. spends on the domestic war on terror.

Davis and his group have dubbed the conventional procedure-based approach to heart disease management the “crash and repair model” because of its focus on urgent procedural intervention that takes place in hospitals.

The crash and repair model is costly. According to the American Heart Association, a heart catheterization (performed 3,553 times per day, seven days a week) costs an average of $24,893; a coronary bypass operation (performed 1,170 times every day, seven days a week) costs an average of $67,823 (hospital costs, 2004, the latest year for which data are available). These figures don’t incorporate long-term costs incurred in the years following the procedure or time lost from work.

The relatively high payment to physicians and hospitals for performing high-tech heart procedures provides a disincentive to redirect patients to a less costly prevention model. The exceptional costs of high-tech, high-ticket heart procedures would become increasingly unnecessary if better heart disease preventive practices were delivered on a broad scale. “Like seatbelts, preventive measures for heart disease are more cost effective and extract a far lower toll in human suffering than the ‘crash and repair’ approach. Our cost calculations bear out the enormous savings possible. In fact, all of the tools necessary to deliver a method of early heart disease detection and prevention are already available throughout the U.S. We’ve just got to encourage physicians and the public to take advantage of them.”

The cost calculator program can be found at http://cureality.com/library/fl_hh005bankrupt.asp on the cureality.com Web site.

Track Your Plaque is an informational and educational Web site devoted to showing people how CT heart scans can be used as a starting point for a program of heart disease prevention and reversal.

What role calcium supplements?

22. July 2007 William Davis (8)

A frequent question in the Track Your Plaque program is whether taking calcium supplements to reduce risk for osteoporosis adds to calcium in arteries and raises CT heart scan scores.

No, calcium supplementation does not add to coronary calcium. Thankfully, there is some wisdom to calcium metabolism. Calcium deposition or resorption is under independent local control in bone, as it is in the artery wall. Taking calcium has no effect on calcium deposition in your coronary arteries.

However, there's a lot more to it. Taking calcium has only a modest effect on bone health. Most women can only hope to slow or stop calcium loss from bone by taking calcium supplements. Calcium supplements do not increase bone calcium. The reason why calcium supplementation works at all is, when calcium is absorbed into the blood, it provides a feedback signal to the parathyroid gland to shut down parathyroid hormone production, the hormone responsible for extracting calcium from bone. But the calcium itself does not end up deposited in bone.

Likewise, calcium supplements have essentially no effect on the artery wall. But vitamin D controls calcium absorption and, curiously, appears to exert a dramatic effect on calcium depostion in coronary arteries. In fact, I would credit vitamin D as among the most important factors in regulating arterial health that I've encountered in a long time.

Thus, bone health and arterial health do indeed intersect via calcium, but not through calcium supplements. Instead, the control exerted by vitamin D connects the seemingly unconnected processes.

Vitamin K2 provides another unexpected juxtaposition of the two processes. Deficiency of K2, which is proving to be a lot more common than previously thought, permits an enzyme in bone to exert unrestrained calcium extraction. Deficiency of K2 in artery walls allow another enzyme to deposit calcium and grow plaque without restraint. Yet another intersection between bone health and coronary health that involves calcium, but as a passive participant.

Stay tuned for a comprehensive Track Your Plaque Special Report on these topics coming in the next couple of weeks. I'm very excited about the emerging appreciation of calcium as an active ingredient in plaque, not a dumb, passive marker as previously thought. Vitamins D3 and K2 are among the keys to this phenomenon.

"Heart scans" are not always heart scans

18. July 2007 William Davis (6)

Beware of the media reports now being issued that warn that "CT heart scans" pose a risk for cancer.

One report can be viewed at
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20070717/ct-heart-scan-radiation-cancer-risk.

This was triggered by a Columbia University study of risk for cancer based on the dose of radiation used in CT coronary angiograms. Theoretically, exposure to the radiation dose of CT coronary angiography can raise risk for cancer by 1 in 143 women if radiated in their 20s just from that single exposure.

If you've been following the Track Your Plaque discussion, as well as my diatribes in the Heart Scan Blog, you know that the media got it all wrong. The "heart scans" they are referring to are not the same as the heart scans that we discuss for the Track Your Plaque program.

A conventional heart scan (of the sort we refer to) exposes the recipient to 4 chest x-rays of radiation if an EBT device is used, around 8-10 chest x-rays of radiation if a 64-slice CT scanner is used. For the quality of information we obtain from these screening heart scans, we feel that it's an acceptable exposure.

The "heart scan" this study and subsequent reports refer to is not truly a screening heart scan, but a CT coronary angiogram, or CTA. CTAs are performed on the same CT or EBT devices, but involve far more radiation. CTA exposes the recipient to about 100 chest x-rays of radiation on a 64-slice device (more or less, depending on the way it is performed.) Just a couple of years ago, some centers were performing CTA on 16-slice devices, a practice I and the Track Your Plaque program vocally opposed, since up to 400 chest-rays of radiation were required! I even called a number of centers advising them that they were putting the public in jeopardy. CTAs also require injection of x-ray dye, just like any conventional angiogram.

CTA on 64-slice CT scanners require the same radiation exposure as a conventional heart catheterization, an issue glossed over in most conversations. In other words, the test that many of my colleageus so casually recommend poses a similar risk.

The message: the test I advocate for screening for coronary heart disease is a CT or EBT heart scan, not a CT coronary angiogram. CTA is a useful test and will get better and better as the engineers discover ways to reduce radiation exposure. But, in 2007, CTA is a diagnostic device, not a screening device. If you require an abdominal CT scan because your doctor suspects pancreatic cancer, or a CT scan of the brain because you might have a life-threatening aneurysm causing double-vision or seizures, it would be silly to not undergo the scan because of long-term and theoretical cancer risk.

But undergoing a CT coronary angiogram for screening purposes is ridiculous with present technology. I've said it before and I will say it--shout it--again:

CT coronary angiograms are not screening procedures; they are diagnostic procedures that should be taken seriously and do indeed pose measurable risk for cancer, a risk that is presently unacceptable for a screening test.

You wouldn't undergo a mammogram to screen for breast cancer if it exposed you to 100 chest x-rays of radiation, would you? Screening tests should be safe, reliable, accurate, and inexpensive. CT coronary angiography is none of these things. Genuine heart scans--the kind the Track Your Plaque program talks about and relies on--is all of those things.

Heavy traffic and heart scans

17. July 2007 William Davis (4)

A German study just reported in Circulation showed a graded response of EBT heart scan scores and proximity to traffic.

Living 50 meters (around 150 feet) from traffic increased the likelihood of a higher coronary calcium score by 63% compared to those living 200 meters (around 600 feet or two football fields) away from traffic.

A sample news story can be found at http://healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=606431.

The German investigators speculated that either the heightened exposure to exhaust fumes and/or the increased stress triggered by the constant noise might be the culprits behind the phenomenon.

I think the study is interesting in a number of ways from the Track Your Plaque viewpoint:

--Sometimes, there are factors that extend beyond lipoproteins, vitamin D restoration, optimism vs. pessimism, etc. that influence heart scan scoring. Are these factors powerful enough to overcome the adverse effects of traffic or other environmental effects? Can your proximity to traffic make or break your heart scan score-controlling efforts? This remains to be established.

--How much of a role does the stress issue play? Is this just a variation of the optimism vs. pessimism theme? I know when I'm in traffic in a car or on a bicycle, it often feels like I am at the mercy of hordes of people in a hurry, the soccer Moms on cell phones, applying makeup and eating, the hormonal teenager, the occasional drunk. Living in the midst of it must be demoralizing, a sense that you are lost in a sea of uncaring humanity stripped of individuality. When I look outside my den window right now, I see the lawn that I cut and water and the flowers and evergreen trees I've planted over the years. It provides a sense of life, belonging, and earth. What if instead I saw anonymous cars buzzing by, dozens of unfamiliar faces every minute, none of which plays any palpable role in my life?

--This simple observation will add to the healthy-consciousness and Green movements, since it is just one more piece of evidence that congestion and urbanization do indeed take their toll. In an obtuse way, I think this is one step closer to increasing disillusionment over the "over-processing" of human experience: processed foods, depersonalization and alienation in neighborhoods and homes, the dissolution of the American family.

Lastly, notice how the conversation about CT (in this case, EBT) heart scanning has seamlessly worked its way into conversation? Just ten years ago, a long-winded explanation would have been required in press reports on just what CT heart scanning was. Now, the information is presented and--well, we all know what heart scanning is, right?

A small study but one that comes at an important time. Good things will come from this one study. It will work its way into discussions about where to locate schools, how to situate homes in relation to heavy traffic, it will help "legitimize" this wonderful tool called heart scanning. How many medical tests beyond blood work can be easily performed in 4500 study participants?

I always like to take some simple observation and see how it fits into developing trends. Few studies or other human-generated experiences by themselves change the world. Instead, it happens in little incremental bits and pieces.

Digging for the truth

15. July 2007 William Davis (9)

I remain continually amazed how difficult it can be to gain an understanding of what is true and what is not true. I am particularly worried about the messages provided by agencies that stand to make enormous gains by persuading us to believe their version of the "truth".

For a moment, let's strip away the charitable covers of some financially-motivated organizations and see what they really look like:

Hospitals: The dream of hospitals is to shift the proportion of patients towards those with the most profitable diseases in well-insured patients. Heart disease is among the best paying diseases. HOSPITALS WANT YOU TO HAVE HEART DISEASE.

Doctors: Many (though not all) want to deal with diseases that pay well. Implanting a stent can pay several thousand dollars. Putting in a defibrillator can likewise pay handsomely, even better than stents. DOCTORS WANT TO STEER YOU TOWARDS PROCEDURES THAT REIMBURSE GENEROUSLY. Talk is cheap and pays poorly. Heart scans? Useless, since they're cheap. CT angiography? Now we're talking! $1800 dollars is a lot more interesting than $200 or so for a simple heart scan. CT angiograms also lead to catheterization, stents, hospitalizations.

Drug manufacturers: The holy grail for drug manufacturers is a chronic condition that is present in large numbers of people. An antibiotic, for instance, is a drug manufacturers waste of time: Short courses of treatment in relatively few people. Cholesterol drugs, blood pressure drugs, drugs to modify personality or some aspect of behavior--these you take for years, decades, or a lifetime, and millions are persuaded they need them. DRUG COMPANIES WANT CHRONIC CONDITIONS (WHETHER OR NOT THEY'RE DISEASES) IN PEOPLE WHO SURVIVE FOR A LONG TIME, NOT SICK PEOPLE.

Supplement manufacturers: What don't we need in the eyes of sellers of nutritional supplement? While a program like Track Your Plaque makes liberal use of supplements in a focused and, I believe, rational way, supplement sellers want you to take dozens or preparations of dubious value: milk thistle, hawthorne, ribose, hoodia, silymarin, hydroxycitric acid . . . Unlike the larger ambitions and bigger money of the pharmaceutical industry, the supplement industry is often driven by the momentary craze and the quick payoff. THE SUPPLEMENT INDUSTRY IS LOOKING FOR SUCKERS.

Food manufacturers: The holy grail for the food industry are foods that have high markups, are convenient (e.g., eaten right out of the box or package), and are purchased repeatedly. Even better, if a health claim can be added, it can ride the current wave of the public's health consciousness. Thus, Cocoa Puffs can be labeled "Heart Healthy". How about foods that have addictive potential and virtually ensure repeat sales? Eat some and you want more within 2-4 hours! As nutritionist Marion Nestle says, the mantra of the foods industry is "Eat More". It is my firm conviction that the epidemic of obesity in the U.S. is not due to laziness, video games, and computers. It is the fault of food manufacturers. FOOD MANUFACTURERS WANT US FAT AND HUNGRY AND WANT US TO STAY THAT WAY. What pays better, a 110 lb vegetarian woman who shops at the farmer's market and buys locally produced foods, or the 260 lb glutenous and always-hungry woman who fills her supermarket shopping cart with 15 cents worth of flour and sugar priced at $4.59 (cleverly disguised as a healthy breakfast cereal), instant mixes, convenient meals, energy bars, and chips?

Government agencies: User fees for the FDA paid by drug companies have caused the FDA to be beholden to drug company pressures. The USDA, charged with crafting the food pyramid, was created to support the farm industry and distributors of their products, not to disseminate public health. The food pyramid is the watered down end result of food industry lobbying and threats, not the scientific advice of nutritionists. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES SERVE INDUSTRY FIRST, THE PUBLIC SECOND.

Health websites: Read popular websites like WebMD for information and the conversation quickly steers towards drugs. "Natural treatments for cholesterol" talks about reducing saturated fat and then gushes about the wonders of statin drugs. Guess where 80% of WebMD's revenues come from? Yup, the drug industry. The same goes for many magazines, TV shows, and other media. MEDIA IS OFTEN THE TOOL OF BIG INDUSTRY.

I'm sounding like a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that I am, but I am skeptical of the messages we often receive from the media, advertisements, news reports, websites, etc. It's left to you and me to use our judgment and decide what is truth and what is someone's version of a message crafted towards their hidden agenda.

I am hoping that the real truth will grow through a wiki-like phenomena driven and supervised by a collective knowledge that we all contribute towards. That will happen, most likely, on the internet. Just as Wikipedia overtook the revered Encylopedia Britannica in the blink of an eye at far less cost yet with greater depth and equivalent accuracy, so will it happen in health information. I'm uncertain of the eventual form this health-wiki will take, but it will shatter many smug and deeply-entrenched powers that at present continue to profit from mis-information.

All posts by william-davis

Heart disease reversal is getting easier and easier

28. April 2006 William Davis (0)

I've recently observed that more and more of our patients on the Track Your Plaque program seem to be stopping or reducing their heart scan scores. And they're doing it faster, in less time, and with larger drops in score.

I'm not entirely sure why the sudden surge in success. However, I do wonder if adding therapeutic levels of vitamin D--at least in our generally sun-deprived Wisconsin participants--is responsible. However, we've also gotten a lot smarter on how to correct the parameters that seems to have outsized effects on plaque growth, especially small LDL.

Yesterday alone, we had two people we added to our list of successes. One, an attorney, stopped his score in one year, with no change (compared to the expected increase of 30%). Another, a woman from the northeast, dropped her score 10% in one year. Her story is remarkable for beginning at a score >1000. In general, the higher your starting score, the longer it takes to stop or reduce it.

These are just two examples. It seems to be happening at an accelerating pace.

I can only hope that our surge in success (not 100%--yet!) will continue. But, every week, we're adding more and more people to our list of success stories.

A used car lot on every street corner

28. April 2006 William Davis (0)

Imagine that, every day, a parade of used-car salesmen knock on your front door to sell you a special "deal". Day in, day out they knock, expecting you to hear about their offers openly.

Is there any doubt about their intentions or motives? Of course not. They're just trying to profit from selling you a car.

That's how it is in a medical office nowadays. Drug representatives, 5, 6, or more each and every day, promoting drugs. Except that the profits from drugs are far greater than a used automobile, and there's a third party involved in the transaction: you.

Today, a pushy representative came to my office. My staff and I tried to tell him that I was not interested in speaking to him. But he proved such a nuisance that I finally came out to tell him that I objected to the idea of drug reps just hanging around trying to hawk their wares.

He blurted, "Doctor, do you have patients with angina? Our new drug, ranolazine, is perfect. Forget about nitroglycerin, beta blockers, and all that. Here's the latest study proving it's better." He tried to shove a reprint of the study at me.

Getting to the bottom line, I asked, "What does it cost the patient?"

"Well, the co-pay is between $40 and $60. We're not yet well covered by insurance, so it'll cost patients around $200 a month."

Need I say more? Here's a drug that does little more than help relieve anginal chest pains. It doesn't reverse coronary plaque. It won't avoid heart attack, death, or procedures. It just modestly cuts back on the frequency of chest pain. And all for the cost of a single heart scan--a heart scan that could have prevented the entire cascade of symptoms/procedures/medication/hospitalization etc.

Hospitals, drug companies, medical device manufacturers. They're all businesses that thrive on your doctor's failure to detect and control your coronary plaque. Sometimes, even your doctor is part of this conspiracy to squeeze dollars out of human disease. Don't fall for it.

Heart disease reversal at age 77

28. April 2006 William Davis (0)

I met Agnes 18 months ago after she underwent a heart scan that revealed a scary score of over 1100. Although in her mid-70s, this was still a very high score. (Recall that a score this high carries a risk for heart attack and death of 25% per year.) Poor Agnes was a wreck over this unexpected result. "I can't sleep, I can't stop thinking about it!"

She'd undergone the scan because her 44-year old son had a heart scan score of 2200! Unfortunately, he ended up with a bypass operation for very severe disease.

Despite having been seeing a cardiologist in Boston for the last 8 years for a murmur, we uncovered multiple hidden lipoprotein patterns, many of which she shared with her son. Her most notable abnormalities were a low HDL and small LDL. Nearly 100% of all LDL particles were, in fact, small. This pattern also caused her LDL cholesterol to be underestimated by over 40%.

18 months on the Track Your Plaque program and Agnes came into town to get a repeat scan. Her score was 10.2% lower. She'd learned to live with the idea that she had hidden heart disease missed by her doctor and cardiologist for many years. But knowledge of the substantial reversal she'd achieved in the 18 months on the program gave Agnes tremendous peace of mind.

Agnes left the office with a big smile.

If you need a reason to quit smoking...

26. April 2006 William Davis (0)

If you've read Track Your Plaque, you already know my feelings about smoking and coronary plaque. Smoke, and you will lose the battle for control over coronary plaque growth--it will grow and grow until catastrophe strikes.

Nonetheless, this is not sufficiently motivating for some people.

If you need more motivation to quit smoking, just take a look at your heart scan sometime, accompanied by either one of the doctors or technicians at the scan center you choose. After you've had an opportunity to look at your coronary arteries, take a look at the lungs. The heart is in the middle and the lungs are the two large black areas on either side of the heart. (They're not really black; that's just the way the images are color-coded.)

Smokers will see large cavities in their lungs--literally, half-inch to one-inch wide holes that contain only air. Many of them. These represent remnants of lung tissue, digested away and now useless from the damage incurred through smoking.

Non-smokers should see uniform lung tissue without such cavities.

What surprised me early on in my heart scan experience was how little smoking exposure was required to generate these cavities. A 40-year old, for instance, who smoked a half-pack per day for 10 years would have them. Heavier smokers, of course, showed far more extensive cavities.

Officially, these cavities are called "emphysematous blebs", meaning the scars of the lung disease, emphysema.

When I've pointed out these cavities or emphysematous blebs to patients, 9 out of 10 times they immediately become non-smokers. Commonly, they'd exclaim, "I had no idea I was really damaging my lungs!" Most admitted that they were awaiting some bona fide evidence that they were truly doing some harm to their bodies. Well, that's it.

Give it a try if you're struggling.

Vitamin D for winter blues?

25. April 2006 William Davis (0)

Winter is now over and spring is in the air, even in Wisconsin.

In this part of the country, winter blues are commonplace. Sometimes called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) when it's severe enough to cause functional impairment, feelings of fatigue, lack of motivation, or the blues are very frequent when days are short and sunlight is in short supply.

I've been seeing many people in the last several weeks who were advised to add vitamin D to their program last fall. Christopher's experience was typical.

"You know, since you told me to take vitamin D, I didn't get sad and tired like I do every winter. This is the first time I can remember that happening. I didn't sleep as much and I didn't get that feeling of always being overwhelmed."

I've felt it myself this past winter. I think there's some real truth to this effect.

Dr. Bruce Hollis has published a small experience in treating people with SAD with vitamin D and showed measurable improvement in depression. (One recent study in older women failed to show any effect, however, when small doses of vitamin D of 800 units were administered. In my experience, this dose doesn't even come close to normalizing blood vitamin D levels.)

The best source for in-depth information on vitamin D is Dr. John Cannell's website, www.vitaminDcouncil.com. If you've read Dr. Cannell's discussion on the Track Your Plaque website, you know that he is an articulate spokesman for the benefits of vitamin D replacement. He also persuasively argues that vitamin D deficiency is rampant in northern climates and in people who don't get frequent sun exposure. Interestingly, we now have two studies of populations in Florida and one in Hawaii, both of which showed substantial percentages of people even in these tropical climates to be deficient in vitamin D (around 50% in Hawaii and 30% in Florida).

The dose we've used with much success is 2000 units per day in females, 3000 units per day in males. This yields normal blood levels of around 50 ng/dl in around 80-90% of people. Occasional people will require more, some less. The best way to do it is to check a baseline blood level and a level on therapy to determine the adequacy of your dose.

Dr. Cannell will tell you that it's very important to have your doctor check the right test: 25-OH-vitamin D3, not 1,25-diOH-vitamin D3. These are two very different tests of two different compounds.

In the Track Your Plaque program, we use vitamin D to reduce pre-diabetic tendencies, reduce blood pressure (vitamin D is an inhibitor of the pressure-raising hormone renin), shut down inflammation, and gain better control over coronary plaque (mechanism uncertain). In the process, you will sharply reduce risk of osteoporosis, colon and prostate cancer.

And maybe you'll be brighter when the winter blues come around again.

$4 per gallon gas is good for your health!

24. April 2006 William Davis (0)

Gasoline is now approaching $4 per gallon in some parts of the U.S. But there's a silver lining in this dark cloud. In fact, I see this as a positive for your health.

How can higher gas prices possbily be good for health?

Imagine this trend continues: Fuel prices climb higher and higher. Driving your car will become increasingly more costly. What will be the fall-out?

Well, there will be a number of implications. But among the developments will be a broad impetus towards rejecting fuel-based sources of transportation. This may come as a shock to you, but humans legs were meant for walking!

Remember way back when, Mom would say "We need some milk"? In 1953, you wouldn't get in your car and zip to and from the supermarket. Instead, you would walk a quarter-mile, half-mile or more to the store. And you would carry your bags back. You might walk a mile or two to school and back. In 2006, this seems incomprehensible.

Higher fuel prices will prompt a gradual return to 1953--As transportation costs climb, your town may try and make it easier to walk as an alternative means of getting places.
Imagine that it was easy to walk three blocks to the grocery store, produce stand, work or school, walk along pleasant paths on the weekend, stroll to the home of friends. Drive or walk? Leave the car in the garage and save you and your family hundreds of dollars a month in gas bills.

In a few years, given the current fuel cost trends, there won't be a choice. But it will be in your favor for health.

Another Ornish casualty

23. April 2006 William Davis (0)

Barry's lipoproteins were nearly all corrected to perfection: LDL 64 mg, HDL 57 mg, triglycerides 45 mg. He was approaching the Track Your Plaque goal of 60/60/60, the levels we find tip the scales heavily in your favor for achieving plaque reversal.

But one problem still prominently persisted: small LDL. Of Barry's 64 mg of total LSL, 90% of his LDL were small.

Barry was already on niacin (Slo-Niacin; Upsher Smith)1000 mg per day and fish oil, 4000 mg per day, both of which contribute to correction of this pattern. He had added occasional raw almonds and oat bran to his daily habits, both of which also help suppress small LDL. "I thought you told me that small LDL should go away if I did all this!" he lamented in frustration.

We probed Barry's diet choices more closely. "I eat really healthy foods, just like an Ornish program." Uh oh.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"For breakfast, I have two slices of whole wheat toast--no butter or margarine, of course! I'll have Shredded Wheat with skim milk. That's it. My typical lunch is low-fat turkey--no mayonnaise!--on whole wheat. I'll add some low-fat whole wheat crackers or pretzels. That's pretty much my habit."

"How about dinner?"

"Dinner varies a lot. I'll usually have a low-fat meat like chicken or turkey, never beef, a vegetable, and a potato. I love rolls but I try to make them whole wheat. I don't use gravy. I love ice cream, so I've been having low-fat frozen yogurt instead. I guess that's about it."

Barry had indeed been counseled on how we approach nutrition. We, of course, do not endorse the low-fat approach of the Ornish program. Low saturated and hydrogenated fat, yes, but not the super-strict low-fat, "all fat is bad" approach of Dr. Dean Ornish.

Barry's diet is typical of someone on a low-fat restriction. When I asked him why he was eating this way, he admitted that he'd seen Dr. Ornish on a TV program in which he persuasively proclaimed that he reversed heart disease in his patients over the past nearly 20 years using this low-fat approach.

That explained it. Barry's nearly pure carbohydrate diet was triggering high blood sugar responses after meals, causing his insulin to skyrocket and magnifying the small LDL pattern.

I advised Barry to dramatically reduce his carbohydates like breads, pretzels, low-fat yogurt, crackers, etc. Instead, he could increase his lean proteins like eggs, egg whites, Egg Beaters, raw nuts and seeds, low-fat (yes, low-fat!) dairy products like yogurt and cottage cheese (both high protein), and healthy oils.

I've seen this happen with many people over the years: A severe low-fat restriction becomes a high-carbohydate diet. It's not uncommon for many people to have more than 70% of calories from carbohydrates on these programs.

The low-fat approach worked in the era of high-fat diets in the 1980s. In 2006, where convenience foods made with carbohydrates, especially wheat, predominate and pack 80% of supermarket shelves, low-fat is now a distorted nutritional mistake that leads to problems like Barry's uncontrolled small LDL, and often pre-diabetic or overt diabetes.

Should you take Plavix?

22. April 2006 William Davis (2)

A question I get fairly frequently nowadays is, "Should I take Plavix?"

For the few of you who've managed to miss the mass advertising campaign for this drug on TV, USA Today, etc., Plavix is a platelet-blocking drug, known chemically as clopidogrel, that "thins" the blood and helps prevent blood clot formation in coronary arteries and carotid arteries, thus potentially reducing heart attack and stroke risk.

What if you have a heart scan score of, say, 450--should you take Plavix?

In general, no. First of all, aspirin and Plavix (generally taken together, since the effect of Plavix is incremental to that of aspirin) only block blood clot formation. They have no effect whatsoever on the rate of plaque growth. Aspirin and Plavix will neither slow it or increase it.

What they do is when a plaque ruptures like a little volcano and exposes its internal contents (inflammatory cells, fat, etc.--like a raw wound), a blood clot forms on top of the ruptured surface. If the clot is big enough, it can occlude the vessel and causes heart attack. Or, if it's a carotid artery, debris from the clot can break off and find its way headward to the artery controlling your speech or memory center. Aspirin and Plavix simply help inhibit clot formation once a plaque ruptures. That's it.

Interestingly, if you view any of Sanofi Aventis' commercials for Plavix, you'd think they came up with a cure for heart disease. It ain't true.

When is Plavix helpful? It's clearly an advantage after someone receives a coronary stent, drug-coated or uncoated;, after coronary bypass, particularly if certain metal punch devices are used to create the grafts in the aorta; and during and after heart attack. These are all situations in which blood clot formation is a forceful process. Blocking it helps.

In general, in asymptomatic people with positive heart scan scores at any level, we do not recommend taking Plavix. The Plavix people are extremely aggressive pushing their drug (hang around any medical office and see!) and, I believe, have gone overboard in promoting its benefits. Rarely, in someone with a very high heart scan score, say 2000 or more, we'll use Plavix for a period of a few months until lipids/lipoproteins and other risk measures are addressed, just as an added safety measure. But, in general, the great majority of people with some heart scan score or another do not receive it and I don't believe that they should.

As always, look beyond the marketing. The purpose of marketing is to increase profits, not to educate.

Dr. Ornish goofed

21. April 2006 William Davis (1)

"I don't think I need the Track Your Plaque program. I've been doing the Ornish program, so I think that my plaque has already regressed."

So proclaimed Bruce, a recent patient I saw in consultation. Having suffered a heart attack three years earlier, he was thoroughly convinced that he was now cured following the Ornish program.

Indeed, back in the 1980s, many of us existed on greasy, high-fat diets of cheeseburgers, French fries, fried chicken, plenty of butter or margarine, mayonnaise, and the like.

Along came Dr. Dean Ornish, who wrote a book called "Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery". This book struck a chord during this era and has been a hot-seller ever since it was published.

Does it work? In my experience, no, it does not.

Dr. Ornish claimed that sharply curtailing fat intake reverses heart disease. Closer to the truth is that, in people who start with high fat intakes, a low-fat restriction is indeed an improvement. This will lead to a modest improvement in blood flow in the coronary arteries due to a phenomenon called "endothelial dysfunction." This means that arteries will dilate modestly when specific changes are made. Thus, you will see minimal improvements in the measures he used (stress testing with nuclear imaging.)

What it does not mean is that plaque has regressed, certainly not "reversed".

In fact, our experience (over 10 years ago, when we first used the Ornish approach) was that the majaority of people did worse on this low-fat program: HDL dropped, triglycerides increased, blood sugar increased, inflammatory measures like C-reactive protein increased. Some people even magnified diabetic or pre-diabetic patterns.

It's almost certain that Bruce has not reversed his coronary plaque. In fact, I would bet that his plaque has grown substantially. Bruce started three years earlier from a diet high in unhealthy fats. If the expected rate of coronary plaque growth is 30% per year, perhaps he slowed it--to 20% or so. Since he didn't have a heart scan score at the time of his heart attack, we'll never know if he truly did reduce the quantity of coronary plaque he had.

But when I met him on his Ornish program, Bruce showed disturbing patterns that included an HDL cholesterol of 38 mg, 70% of all LDL particles were small, triglycerides measured 209 mg, and C-reactive protein was high at 2.8 mg/l. In other words, Bruce's plaque causes were far from corrected. Perhaps they were worse.

The Ornish program, despite it's ambitious claims, has outlived its usefulness. In 2006, it is an antiquated relic of a time past when lifestyle habits and technology were different.

Warning: This product may contain wheat!

20. April 2006 William Davis (0)

Jerry experienced a peculiar sensation in his chest one evening while watching TV with his wife and kids. He squirmed in his chair and experienced a little breathelessness. But he kept it to himself and didn't say anything to his wife.

Fortunately, the feeling passed. But it concerned Jerry enough that he called a local heart scan center and scheduled a CT heart scan.* Minutes later, Jerry had a heart scan score of 112. At 46 years old, this placed him in the 90th percentile compared to other men in his age group.

Jerry came to my office for consultation. Among the first steps we took was to perform lipoprotein testing. Jerry showed striking abnormalities that included an HDL cholesterol of 38 mg, triglycerides of 210 mg, an unimpressive LDL of 133 mg but comprised of 99% small LDL, and excessive IDL (meaning that he was unable to clear dietary fats after eating).

At 5 feet 10 inches, Jerry weighed 190 lbs. He showed a slight excess bulge at the tummy, but hardly obese.

Jerry's history was remarkable, however, for the amount of carbohydrates he ate. "I'm addicted to bread. I love it! If I smell a loaf of fresh baked bread, I sometimes eat the whole loaf!"

Jerry also admitted to over-indulging in bagels (whole wheat), pretzels, low-fat snack chips, Raisin Bran cereal, Cheerios, and noodles. In fact, many days he'd have 5 or 6 servings of any of these foods. He also complained of an extraordinary amount of bowel gas and cramping. "Sometimes, I'm afraid to go to a group function. I might embarass myself."

I suggested an experiment: For a 4 week period, completely eliminate wheat-containing products--breads, pretzels, breakfast cereals, pasta, etc. In their place, increase intake of protein foods like eggs, raw almonds and walnuts, low-fat yogurt, cottage cheese, chicken, fish, and use healthy oils (olive, canola, grapeseed, flaxseed) more liberally.

Just four weeks later, Jerry came to the office a new man: 8 lbs lighter, brighter, with bursts of energy he hadn't had in years. And no gas!

Lesson: Wheat-based carbohydrates can be the culprit behind many lipoprotein patterns, especially low HDL, high triglycerides, small LDL, and others. Wheat can also be responsible for a myriad of abdominal symptoms, even joint pains and rashes. In its most extreme form, it's called "celiac disease". But experiences like Jerry's are quite common--not as obvious and dramatic as full-blown celliac disease, but smouldering and destructive, nonetheless.

Track Your Plaque expert, Dr. Loren Cordain of Colorado State University, tells us that, in his reconstruction of the history of human illness, there was an extraodinary surge in disease just about the time when humans began cultivating wheat around 8000 B.C. (Track Your Plaque members: Read Dr. Cordain's fascinating interview at http://www.cureality.com/library/fl_04-005cordaininterview.asp.)

Do you need to eliminate wheat products entirely from your diet? It's something to think about, particularly if you share any of the difficulties that Jerry had.

*In general, I do not recommend heart scanning as a self-prescribed tool for chest pain or other symptoms. Symptoms should always be discussed with your doctor.