d LDL, and non-HDL. (We'll cover this issue much more extensively in an upcoming report on the www.cureality.com website in an extensive Special Report.)
I read about 40 heart scans this morning. In the stack was a 41-year old man with a heart scan score of 841.
That's terribly high for anyone, let alone a 41-year old person. He's lucky to find out about this before catastrophe strikes.
People like this worry me. In general, we advise men to consider a heart scan age 40 and older; women 50 and older. If there's anything exceptional about your family history or your own history, then you might notch these numbers down another 5-10 years. For instance, if your Dad had a heart attack at age 43, you might consider a scan at age 35. Or, if you've had diabetes for several years and you're a 42-year old woman, you might think about a scan. (Men tend to develop measurable plaque by heart scans 10 years before women.)
There are no hard and fast rules. It's unusual for a male to have a score >0 before age 40. Likewise, it's very uncommon for a woman to have a score >0 before age 50. But there are occasional exceptions--but they can be very important exceptions.
Our 41-year old man with the score of 841, for instance, probably had a high score since his mid-30s. I've seen several women without any obvious risk factors with scores in the several hundred range in their early 40s.
My rule: When in doubt, opt for safety. Every day, I still read about people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s dying of heart attacks. It shouldn't happen.
When in doubt, get the heart scan. The most you'll lose is the cost of the scan and a modest exposure to radiation. If your score is zero, you know you're safe for the next 5 or more years. But if you have an exceptional score at a young age, take preventive action.
Track Your Plaque is just one facet of the broad and powerful emerging wave of self-empowerment in health.
Hospitals, drug and device manufacturers, and the medical establishment don't like this idea. People managing their own health? That's ridiculous! Dangerous! But mostly unprofitable.
Self-empowerment means having easy access to simple, safe, and inexpensive diagnostic tests like heart scans, carotid scans, bone densitometry (for osteoporosis), cholesterol tests, abdominal ultrasound, even brain scans (e.g., CT or MRI) for people with a family history of brain aneurysm.
Opponents of this idea worry about the "false-positives" that come about with broad testing, i.e, detection of abnormalities that are artifactual. Our experience is that false-positives are only an occasional problem with any test. Instead, we find that most people have many true-positives. In CT heart scanning, for example, we find many unsuspected enlarged aortas (potential future aneurysms), valve disorders, and aortic calcium. These are all important in a preventive program. Unfortunately, your doctor's definition of false-positive often means that no corrective procedure or operation is required.
Other evidence that self-empowerment in health is growing:
--The nutritional supplement movement. What better example of power in managing your own health is there than the fabulous array of nutritional supplements available?
--Medications moving to over-the-counter status. Gradually, more and more medications are trickling into availability for you to obtain without a doctor's prescription.
--What I call "retail imaging", i.e. screening ultrasound, heart scans, full body scans, etc. that are available in most states without a doctor's order.
--The Internet. The rapidity and depth of information available on the Internet today is mind-boggling. It will fuel the self-empowerment movement by providing sophisticated information to the health care consumer previously available only through your physician.
--High-deductible health insurance plans. If health care consumers will bear more and more of the costs of health care, they will seize greater responsibility for early identification and prevention to minimize long-term costs.
There are more. But the movement is powerful and broad--and unstoppable. Let the establishment with vested interests in preserving the status quo fuss and complain, just like horse and buggy manufacturers did in the early 1900's when the autmobile came along.
