The Consumer Lab findings would explain the enormous variation in LDL-reducing effect of various red yeast rice products. In my experience, some work and reduce LDL 40 mg/dl or so, some fail to reduce LDL at all, others generate a modest effect, e.g., 5-10 mg/dl LDL reduction.
In effect, red yeast rice IS a statin drug, albeit a highly variable and weak one. Although readers of The Heart Scan Blog know that I am a big fan of nutritional supplements and self-empowerment in health, I am a bigger fan of truth. I despise B--- S---- of the sort that emits from some nutritional supplement manufacturers and drug companies.
I am puzzled by much of the public's readiness to embrace a statin drug if it comes from a supplement company while avoiding it if it comes from a drug manufacturer. Personally, I do not like the drug industry, their questionable (at best) ethics, their aggressive marketing tactics, their sleazy sales people.
But, in this instance, if a statin effect is desired, I'd reach for generic lovastatin before I purchased red yeast rice. The Consumer Lab report tells us that red yeast rice IS essentially a statin drug, an inconsistent one that often contains a potential toxin.
A 72-year old woman came to my office after a complicated hospital stay (unrelated to heart disease). She'd undergone a CT coronary angiogram and heart scan as part of a pre-operative evaluation prior to a surgery for a non-heart related condition.
The heart scan portion of the test (I was impressed they even did this) yielded a heart scan score of 212. The CT coronary angiogram portion of the test revealed a 50% blockage in one artery, a lesser blockage in one other artery.
The cardiologist consulting on the case advised her that the amount of coronary disease detected was insufficient to pose risk during her surgical procedure. He also advised her that she had "an average amount of disease for age." He thought that nothing further was necessary since she was "average."
Say what?
What if I told you that you have an average amount of cancer for your age? After all, cancers become more common the older we get. Who would find that acceptable?
Then why should ANY amount of coronary atherosclerotic plaque be "acceptable for age"? Coronary plaque is a degenerative disease that poses risk for rupture. While it is indeed common, by no means should it be acceptable.
I would bet that this same cardiologist would be from the same school of thought that would be eager to advise heart catheterization, stent, and other procedures--revenue-generating procedures--should she have a heart attack appropriate for age.
I wish that I could tell you that this silly comment was provided by some peculiar, "everyone-knows-he's-crazy" doctor. But it was not. It was a solidly mainstream physician. He pooh-poohs nutrition, laughs when asked about nutritional supplements, thinks anyone complaining about symptoms less than a full-blown heart attack is a baby. He is respected by the primary care physicians, lectures on the advantages of prescription medications. In short, he is your typical conventional cardiologist.
This is the way they think. I know, because I was one of them. Thankfully, something banged me upside my head one day (my Mother's sudden cardiac death) and tipped me off to the painful irony of the conventional approach to heart disease.
There is NO amount of coronary disease appropriate for age. This notion is a remnant of the paternalistic, "I-know-better-than-you" attitude of the last century of medicine.
A reader of The Heart Scan Blog and member of the Track Your Plaque program posted this comment on The Heart.org:
*The facts speak for themselves.*
Dr. William Davis and Dr. William Blanchet, your patients thank you for the low cost PREVENTIVE care you prescribe. The published facts speak for themselves. It is indeed a sad state of affairs, that the larger cardiology community does not take the time to research the data and results you have been reporting. Unfortunately it is the patients who are the victims of the mainstream, inappropriate, treatment protocols, as evidenced with the ongoing high rate of CV death rate.
I am dumbfounded by the lack of open-minded inquisitive curiosity to thoroughly research your claims by many/most cardiologists. Understood, we are all busy, but that is no excuse to stick with practices that do not result in major breakthrough improvements in patient outcomes.
Then again, we are all humans, and when "we" are convinced that "our" approach is correct, "we" tend to conveniently ignore any evidence to the contrary. "We" like to believe "we" have been right all along.
A very insightful book, recently published, says it all in its title: "Mistakes were made (but not by me)."
From the intensity of the comments on this topic, it is clear that we are in the middle of a battlefield. It is to be hoped that the facts will become visible before too much smoke obscures the field, and before the patients are all dead.
George Orwell said it correctly, back in 1946:
“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, imprudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality usually on a battlefield.”
And, after several posts that preventive care with EBT would be too costly.....
*Heroic*
Prevention is what matters, but it is not very heroic. A hospital that advertises the highest volumes in heart bypasses and other heart "repair" procedures, sounds to many like a go-to place when one gets into trouble with one's heart.
Cardiologists who perform impressive surgical procedures are heroes. Not unlike fire-fighters. We celebrate them (deservedly!) for rescues and life saving heroic actions.
We tend to not pay much attention to the folks that work hard to minimize risk of calamities in the first place.
Similarly, we recently learned that it is too costly to build schools that are earthquake resistant in China. Parents had to look at their children's bodies, crushed.
Is it too graphic to imagine 20,000 American bodies, who died of heart disease, piled up on a field?
What will it take before we make prevention our first priority?
AL, Ann Arbor, Michigan
The reader also tells me that, prompted by his father's death from heart attack while following conventional advice after heart catheterization, he has lost 50 lbs and corrected his lipid patterns on the Track Your Plaque program. The reader is currently struggling with full correction of his severe small LDL pattern and is following some of the advice we discussed on our webinar recently.
Another Heart Scan Blog reader, Stan the Heretic, posted this quote from scientist, Max Planck, in his comment:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - M. Planck
(Max Planck was a German physicist who developed quantum theory, a disruptive set of ideas that supplanted other explanations of energy mechanics of the day.)
I fear that may prove to be the case for heart disease. The revenue-generating formula for heart disease management that dominates practice in cardiovascular medicine today is so deeply ingrained into the thinking and revenue expectations of practicing cardiologists that a preventive or reversal approach just won't cut it--even if it is vastly superior.
That's why it is important for you to take control yourself. You will be the one who obtains and applies the information that saves your life or the lives of those around you. It is, in all likelihood, NOT your doctor who will save your life, but YOU.
War in Iraq a growing success: 20,000 Americans now dead!
If a newspaper ran that headline, we would all be outraged, and rightly so. Deaths in war are a tragedy. They are not something we celebrate.
Then why do we hear hospitals boasting about the number of bypass operations performed every year, number of heart catheterizations performed, number of heart attacks treated?
"_______ Hospital breaks 1000-heart bypass per year milestone"
"We treat more heart attacks than other other hospital in the state!"
"More people come to ________ Hospital than any other in the region!"
I hear this stuff on the radio, on TV, see it in newspapers and magazines, even on highway billboards every single day in Milwaukee.
Heart procedures, like deaths in war, are casualties of health.
They are not successes (though, of course, you can have a "successful" bypass). I see most procedures as a failure of prevention.
Death from heart attack is a failure of prevention. Tim Russert's death was a (unnecessary) failure of prevention. But so are bypass surgery, stents, and the like.
Such is the perverse state of affairs in hospitals and health: They celebrate illness. They glamorize it with ads displaying high-tech equipment, efficient staff in scrubs, "caring and friendly staff." But it is illness they are celebrating. Why? Because it has become a business necessity, a necessary strategy to remain competitive and profitable in the business called "healthcare" that makes money from treating people. The biggest return is from major procedures like bypass operations.
Every success in prevention denies the hospital an $80,000+ opportunity. You'll never hear that advertised.