I'll supply the tar if you supply the feathers 30. November 2009 William Davis (13) The results of the latest Heart Scan Blog poll are in. DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER PHARMACEUTICAL ADVERTISING HAS:Increased public awareness of medical conditions and their treatment 19 (11%) Has had little overall effect on health and healthcare 29 (18%) Needlessly increased healthcare costs 81 (50%) Further empowered the revenue-obsessed pharmaceutical industry 130 (81%) Clearly, there's a lot of negative sentiment against direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising. It looks as if a small minority believe that good has come from DTC advertising, judging by the meager 11% who voted for increased awareness. In fact, the poll results are heavily weighed towards the negative: 50% voted for "needlessly increased healthcare costs," while an astounding 81% voted for "empowered the revenue-obsessed pharmaceutical industry." It is, indeed, an odd situation: Pharmaceutical agents available only by prescription being hyped directly to the consumer. Personally, I would vote for choices 1,3, and 4. While awareness has increased, it has come with a hefty price, not all of it well spent. I believe the pharmaceutical industry still adheres to the rule that, for every $1 spent on advertising, $4 is made in revenue. They are, in effect, printing money.
What goes up can't come down 28. November 2009 William Davis (13) According to conventional wisdom, heart scan scores cannot be reduced. In other words, say you begin Toggle navigation Home Blog Home 归档 Join Now 登录 Boy, was I wrong! 1. 八月 2006 William Davis (0) Around 10 years ago, I was talking to a balloon and stent manufacturer's representative, who was raving about some new device that was due for release to the market. Back then, the sky seemed the limit to cardiac device manufacturers, who were falling over themselves scrambling to design and market the next new device. The angioplasty market then had ballooned (no pun intended) from nothing to a multi-billion dollar industry. Stents were just getting underway but clearly had potential for being at least as large. But this was a time when preventive therapies were also beginning to get quite powerful. We had just gotten started doing CT heart scans and were excited about the possibilities, statin drugs were gaining evidence through clinical trials, and the power of many nutritional supplements was finally achieving validation. We were even learning the error of our prior low-fat ways. So I broadly pronounced to the enthusiastic product representative, "In 10 years, balloons, angioplasty, and stents will occupy this little corner of cardiac care because prevention will have become so powerful. We won't talk about heart procedures. We'll talk about coronary plaque regression!"I even advised the representative that he should consider a career change in anticipation of the coming wave of preventive strategies. Was I ever wrong. Despite the power of heart disease prevention--which is indeed true--cardiac device and procedure technology has boomed, both in popularity as well as in revenue success. Device manufacturing and sales are hugely successful. Implanting devices into people is a hugely profitable enterprise. Since my ill-timed comments to the salesman, Boston Scientific, a major manufacturer of stents and other cardiac devices, reported revenues of $6.2 billiondollars in 2005, a 12% increase over the prior year. Medtronic reported 2005 revenues of $11.3 billion, growing at 15% per year. Clearly, cardiac procedures are still quite popular--and profitable.My timing was off, but not for long. The huge crest of change in preventive therapies is upon us. That's the premise behind the Track Your Plaque concept: heart disease prevention can't be found in a hospital, is not supported by cardiac device manufacturers, and is not being advocated by most cardiologists or primary care physicians. Yet the tools are getting better and better every day. Those of you who succeed in halting or reducing your heart scan score are extremely unlikely to add to Boston Scientific's or Medtronic's revenues. Help me spread the word. Diet Newsletter on the closely related issue, meal timing and frequency:We are currently in the process of compiling meal times and patterns in the worlds historically studied hunter-gatherers. If any single picture is beginning to emerge, it clearly is not three meals per day plus snacking ala the typical U.S. grazing pattern. Here are a few examples:--The Ingalik Hunter Gatherers of Interior Alaska: 'As has been made clear, the principal meal and sometimes the only one of the day is eaten in the evening.' --The Guayaki (Ache) Hunter Gatherers of Paraguay: 'It seems, however, that the evening meal is the most consistent of the day. This is understandable, since the day is generally spent hunting for food that will be eaten in the evening." --The Kung Hunter Gatherers of Botswana. "Members move out of camp each day individually or in small groups to work through the surrounding range and return in the evening to pool the collected resources for the evening meal." --Hawaiians, Tahitians, Fijians and other Oceanic peoples (pre-westernization). 'Typically, meals, as defined by Westerners, were consumed once or twice a day. . . Oliver (1989) described the main meal, usually freshly cooked, as generally eaten in the late afternoon after the day’s work was over." The most consistent daily eating pattern that is beginning to emerge from the ethnographic literature in hunter-gatherers is that of a large single meal which was consumed in the late afternoon or evening. A midday meal or lunch was rarely or never consumed and a small breakfast (consisting of the remainders of the previous evening meal) was sometimes eaten. Some snacking may have occurred during daily gathering, however the bulk of the daily calories were taken in the late afternoon or evening. This pattern of eating could be described as intermittent fasting relative to the typical Western pattern, particularly when daily gathering or hunting were unsuccessful or marginal. There is wisdom in the ways of our hunter gatherer ancestors, and perhaps it is time to re-think three squares a day.In other words, the notion of "grazing," or eating small meals or snacks throughout the day, is an unnatural situation. It is directly contrary to the evolutionarily more appropriate large meal followed by periods of no eating or small occasional meals. I stress this point because I see that the notion of grazing has seized hold of many people's thinking. In my view, grazing is a destructive practice that is self-indulgent, unnecessary, and simply fulfills the perverse non-stop hunger impulse fueled by modern carbohydrate foods. Eliminate wheat, cornstarch, and sugars and you will find that grazing is a repulsive impulse that equates with gorging. The full-text of the Paleo Diet Newsletter can be obtained through www.ThePaleoDiet.com. You can also read and/or subscribe to the new Paleo Diet Blog, just launched in November, 2009. Angioplasty Special: Get it while it's hot! 21. November 2009 William Davis (6) Graphic courtesy Parsemus Foundation Even mummies do it 20. November 2009 William Davis (16) Lady Rai, nursemaid to Queen Nefertari of Egypt, died in 1530 BC, somewhere between the age of 30 and 40 years. Her mummy is preserved in the Egyptian National museum of Antiquities in Cairo. A CT scan of her thoracic aorta revealed calcium, representing aortic atherosclerosis, reported by Allam et al (including my friend from The Wisconsin Heart Hospital, Dr. Sam Wann, who provided me a blow-by-blow tale of this really fascinating project). Ladi Rai and 14 other Egyptian mummies were found to have vascular calcification of a total of 22 mummies scanned. (The hearts of the mummies were too degenerated to make out any coronary calcium.)But why would people of that age have developed atherosclerosis? The authors of the study comment that "Our findings that atherosclerosis was not infrequent among middle-aged and older ancient Egyptians of high social status challenges the view that it is a disease of modern humans. . . Although ancient Egyptians did not smoke tobacco or eat processed food or presumably lead sedentary lives, they were not hunter-gatherers. [Emphasis mine.] Agriculture was well established in ancient Egypt and meat consumption appers to have been common among those of high social status."Fascinating. But I don't think that I'd blame meat consumption. Egyptians were also known to have cultivated grains, including wheat, and frequently consumed such sweet delicacies as dates and figs. Egyptians were also apparently beer drinkers. Unfortunately, no beer steins were seen in any of the scans. Life Extension article on iodine 17. November 2009 William Davis (25) Here's a link to my recent article in Life Extension Magazine on iodine: Halt on Salt Sparks Iodine Deficiency Iodized salt, a concept introduced into the U.S. by the FDA in 1924, slowly eliminated goiter (enlarged thyroid glands), along with an enormous amount of thyroid disease, heart attack, mental impairment, and death. The simple addition of iodine to salt ensured that salt-using Americans obtained enough iodine sufficient to not have a goiter. Now that the FDA, goiters long forgotten from their memories, urges Americans to reduce salt, what has happened to our iodine? I talk at length about this issue in the Life Extension article. The healthiest people are the most iodine deficient 16. November 2009 William Davis (19) Here's an informal observation. The healthiest people are the most iodine deficient. The healthier you are, the more likely you are to:--Avoid junk foods--30% of which have some iodine from salt--Avoid overuse of iodized salt--Exercise--Sweating causes large losses of iodine.So the healthy-eating, exercising person is the one most likely to show iodine deficiency: gradually enlarged thyroid gland (in the neck), declining thyroid function. Over time, if iodine deficiency persists, excessive sensitivity to iodine develops, as well as abnormal thyroid conditions like overactive nodules. Even subtle levels of thyroid dysfunction act as a potent coronary risk factor. It's the score, stupid 14. November 2009 William Davis (4) Sal has had 3 heart scans. (He was not on the Track Your Plaque program.) His scores:March, 2006: 439April, 2007: 573October, 2009: 799Presented with the 39% increase from April, 2007 to October, 2009, Sal's doctor responded, "I don't understand. Your LDL cholesterol is fine." This is the sort of drug-driven, cholesterol-minded thinking that characterizes 90% of primary care and cardiologists' practices: "Cholesterol is fine; therefore, you must be fine, too." No. Absolutely not. The data are clear: Heart scan scores that continue to increase at this rate predict high risk for cardiovascular events. Unfortunately, when my colleagues hear this, they respond by scheduling a heart catheterization to prevent heart attack--a practice that has never been shown to be effective and, in my view, constitutes malpractice (i.e., performing heart procedures in people with no symptoms and with either no stress test or a normal stress test). It's the score, stupid! It's not the LDL cholesterol. Pay attention to the increasing heart scan score and you will know that the disease is progressing at an alarming rate. Accepting this fact will set you and your doctor on the track to ask "Why?"That's when you start to uncover all the dozens of other reasons that plaque can grow that have nothing to do with LDL cholesterol or statin drugs. << Older posts Newer posts >> Newer posts12...303132333435363738...121122Older posts i class="PagerLink">124之前的文章
Boy, was I wrong! 1. 八月 2006 William Davis (0) Around 10 years ago, I was talking to a balloon and stent manufacturer's representative, who was raving about some new device that was due for release to the market. Back then, the sky seemed the limit to cardiac device manufacturers, who were falling over themselves scrambling to design and market the next new device. The angioplasty market then had ballooned (no pun intended) from nothing to a multi-billion dollar industry. Stents were just getting underway but clearly had potential for being at least as large. But this was a time when preventive therapies were also beginning to get quite powerful. We had just gotten started doing CT heart scans and were excited about the possibilities, statin drugs were gaining evidence through clinical trials, and the power of many nutritional supplements was finally achieving validation. We were even learning the error of our prior low-fat ways. So I broadly pronounced to the enthusiastic product representative, "In 10 years, balloons, angioplasty, and stents will occupy this little corner of cardiac care because prevention will have become so powerful. We won't talk about heart procedures. We'll talk about coronary plaque regression!"I even advised the representative that he should consider a career change in anticipation of the coming wave of preventive strategies. Was I ever wrong. Despite the power of heart disease prevention--which is indeed true--cardiac device and procedure technology has boomed, both in popularity as well as in revenue success. Device manufacturing and sales are hugely successful. Implanting devices into people is a hugely profitable enterprise. Since my ill-timed comments to the salesman, Boston Scientific, a major manufacturer of stents and other cardiac devices, reported revenues of $6.2 billiondollars in 2005, a 12% increase over the prior year. Medtronic reported 2005 revenues of $11.3 billion, growing at 15% per year. Clearly, cardiac procedures are still quite popular--and profitable.My timing was off, but not for long. The huge crest of change in preventive therapies is upon us. That's the premise behind the Track Your Plaque concept: heart disease prevention can't be found in a hospital, is not supported by cardiac device manufacturers, and is not being advocated by most cardiologists or primary care physicians. Yet the tools are getting better and better every day. Those of you who succeed in halting or reducing your heart scan score are extremely unlikely to add to Boston Scientific's or Medtronic's revenues. Help me spread the word. Diet Newsletter on the closely related issue, meal timing and frequency:We are currently in the process of compiling meal times and patterns in the worlds historically studied hunter-gatherers. If any single picture is beginning to emerge, it clearly is not three meals per day plus snacking ala the typical U.S. grazing pattern. Here are a few examples:--The Ingalik Hunter Gatherers of Interior Alaska: 'As has been made clear, the principal meal and sometimes the only one of the day is eaten in the evening.' --The Guayaki (Ache) Hunter Gatherers of Paraguay: 'It seems, however, that the evening meal is the most consistent of the day. This is understandable, since the day is generally spent hunting for food that will be eaten in the evening." --The Kung Hunter Gatherers of Botswana. "Members move out of camp each day individually or in small groups to work through the surrounding range and return in the evening to pool the collected resources for the evening meal." --Hawaiians, Tahitians, Fijians and other Oceanic peoples (pre-westernization). 'Typically, meals, as defined by Westerners, were consumed once or twice a day. . . Oliver (1989) described the main meal, usually freshly cooked, as generally eaten in the late afternoon after the day’s work was over." The most consistent daily eating pattern that is beginning to emerge from the ethnographic literature in hunter-gatherers is that of a large single meal which was consumed in the late afternoon or evening. A midday meal or lunch was rarely or never consumed and a small breakfast (consisting of the remainders of the previous evening meal) was sometimes eaten. Some snacking may have occurred during daily gathering, however the bulk of the daily calories were taken in the late afternoon or evening. This pattern of eating could be described as intermittent fasting relative to the typical Western pattern, particularly when daily gathering or hunting were unsuccessful or marginal. There is wisdom in the ways of our hunter gatherer ancestors, and perhaps it is time to re-think three squares a day.In other words, the notion of "grazing," or eating small meals or snacks throughout the day, is an unnatural situation. It is directly contrary to the evolutionarily more appropriate large meal followed by periods of no eating or small occasional meals. I stress this point because I see that the notion of grazing has seized hold of many people's thinking. In my view, grazing is a destructive practice that is self-indulgent, unnecessary, and simply fulfills the perverse non-stop hunger impulse fueled by modern carbohydrate foods. Eliminate wheat, cornstarch, and sugars and you will find that grazing is a repulsive impulse that equates with gorging. The full-text of the Paleo Diet Newsletter can be obtained through www.ThePaleoDiet.com. You can also read and/or subscribe to the new Paleo Diet Blog, just launched in November, 2009.
Angioplasty Special: Get it while it's hot! 21. November 2009 William Davis (6) Graphic courtesy Parsemus Foundation
Even mummies do it 20. November 2009 William Davis (16) Lady Rai, nursemaid to Queen Nefertari of Egypt, died in 1530 BC, somewhere between the age of 30 and 40 years. Her mummy is preserved in the Egyptian National museum of Antiquities in Cairo. A CT scan of her thoracic aorta revealed calcium, representing aortic atherosclerosis, reported by Allam et al (including my friend from The Wisconsin Heart Hospital, Dr. Sam Wann, who provided me a blow-by-blow tale of this really fascinating project). Ladi Rai and 14 other Egyptian mummies were found to have vascular calcification of a total of 22 mummies scanned. (The hearts of the mummies were too degenerated to make out any coronary calcium.)But why would people of that age have developed atherosclerosis? The authors of the study comment that "Our findings that atherosclerosis was not infrequent among middle-aged and older ancient Egyptians of high social status challenges the view that it is a disease of modern humans. . . Although ancient Egyptians did not smoke tobacco or eat processed food or presumably lead sedentary lives, they were not hunter-gatherers. [Emphasis mine.] Agriculture was well established in ancient Egypt and meat consumption appers to have been common among those of high social status."Fascinating. But I don't think that I'd blame meat consumption. Egyptians were also known to have cultivated grains, including wheat, and frequently consumed such sweet delicacies as dates and figs. Egyptians were also apparently beer drinkers. Unfortunately, no beer steins were seen in any of the scans.
Life Extension article on iodine 17. November 2009 William Davis (25) Here's a link to my recent article in Life Extension Magazine on iodine: Halt on Salt Sparks Iodine Deficiency Iodized salt, a concept introduced into the U.S. by the FDA in 1924, slowly eliminated goiter (enlarged thyroid glands), along with an enormous amount of thyroid disease, heart attack, mental impairment, and death. The simple addition of iodine to salt ensured that salt-using Americans obtained enough iodine sufficient to not have a goiter. Now that the FDA, goiters long forgotten from their memories, urges Americans to reduce salt, what has happened to our iodine? I talk at length about this issue in the Life Extension article.
The healthiest people are the most iodine deficient 16. November 2009 William Davis (19) Here's an informal observation. The healthiest people are the most iodine deficient. The healthier you are, the more likely you are to:--Avoid junk foods--30% of which have some iodine from salt--Avoid overuse of iodized salt--Exercise--Sweating causes large losses of iodine.So the healthy-eating, exercising person is the one most likely to show iodine deficiency: gradually enlarged thyroid gland (in the neck), declining thyroid function. Over time, if iodine deficiency persists, excessive sensitivity to iodine develops, as well as abnormal thyroid conditions like overactive nodules. Even subtle levels of thyroid dysfunction act as a potent coronary risk factor.
It's the score, stupid 14. November 2009 William Davis (4) Sal has had 3 heart scans. (He was not on the Track Your Plaque program.) His scores:March, 2006: 439April, 2007: 573October, 2009: 799Presented with the 39% increase from April, 2007 to October, 2009, Sal's doctor responded, "I don't understand. Your LDL cholesterol is fine." This is the sort of drug-driven, cholesterol-minded thinking that characterizes 90% of primary care and cardiologists' practices: "Cholesterol is fine; therefore, you must be fine, too." No. Absolutely not. The data are clear: Heart scan scores that continue to increase at this rate predict high risk for cardiovascular events. Unfortunately, when my colleagues hear this, they respond by scheduling a heart catheterization to prevent heart attack--a practice that has never been shown to be effective and, in my view, constitutes malpractice (i.e., performing heart procedures in people with no symptoms and with either no stress test or a normal stress test). It's the score, stupid! It's not the LDL cholesterol. Pay attention to the increasing heart scan score and you will know that the disease is progressing at an alarming rate. Accepting this fact will set you and your doctor on the track to ask "Why?"That's when you start to uncover all the dozens of other reasons that plaque can grow that have nothing to do with LDL cholesterol or statin drugs.