The Track Your Plaque “Rule of 60” 6. November 2006 William Davis (0) The Track Your Plaque recommended targets for conventional lipids (i.e., LDL, HDL, triglycerides) are LDL 60 mg/dl, HDL 60 mg/dl, and triglycerides 60 mg/dl: 60-60-60. Not only is this set of values easy to remember—60-60-60—but is grounded in science and the results of clinical trials.LDL 60 mg/dlThe LDL target is based on experiences such as that of the Reversal Trial, the PROVE-IT Trial, and the Asteroid Trial, all of which showed that LDL cholesterol values in the range of 60 mg/dl dramatically enhance the likelihood of stopping plaque growth or achieving regression, reducing risk of heart attack more than more lenient LDL targets. HDL 60 mg/dlAchieving HDL cholesterol of 60 mg/dl is not as well grounded as LDL targets, mostly because increasing HDL is more difficult. There’s also no tremendously profitable way to raise HDL, as there is for reducing LDL (statin drugs). But epidemiologic observations strongly suggest that HDL of 60 mg/dl provides maximum control over both coronary plaque growth, as well as slashing rates of heart attack. Numerous smaller trials have borne this phenomenon out. Triglycerides 60 mg/dlTriglycerides of 60 mg/dl is based principally on studies that have shown a virtual elimination of abnormal lipoproteins, especially small LDL, when this value is achieved. Reduction of triglycerides is an effective means to reduce hidden lipoproteins like small LDL and VLDL. Triglycerides in the conventionally acceptable range of 100-150 mg/dl can be associated with dramatic abnormalities of lipoproteins. Thus, the Track Your Plaque “Rule of 60”. In our day to day experience of trying to stamp out plaque growth from its terrifyingly rapid 30% per year, or reversing it—-dropping your heart scan score—-the Rule of 60 has held up time and again. Getting your lipids to 60 mg/dl does not guarantee that plaque growth stops, but it appears to be a necessary requirement that tips the scales heavily in your favor. Those of you who’ve discussed lipid targets with your doctor will quickly recognize that the Track Your Plaque targets appear laughably ambitious, perhaps unn Toggle navigation Home Blog Home Archive Join Now Log in Addictive Foods 25. June 2007 William Davis (3) Kraft Foods, Inc. is manufacturer of Kool Aid, Oscar Mayer, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Velveeta, Honey Maid Grahams, and hundreds of other processed food products. Post cereals also falls under the umbrella of Kraft with products like Raisin Bran, Post Toasties, and Fruity Pebbles. Annual revenues in 2006 for Kraft: $34.4 billion. A big operation with enormous influence over our eating habits. Nabisco is manufacturer of Oreos, Ritz Crackers, Chips Ahoy and many others. Like Kraft/Post, it is also a big player. While Nabisco was owned for several years by tobacco giant RJ Reynolds, in 2000 it was acquired by Philip Morris, another big tobacco manufacturer. More recently in Spring, 2007, Philip Morris (now called Altria--you'd change your name, too, if it was synonymous with dirt) spun off its Kraft subsidiary for a big profit. However, the management structures remain intertwined. In other words, despite the shuffling of shares, the two industries, big tobacco and big food, are in many respects one and the same. Is it any surprise that the same industry that made billions of dollars pushing addictive nicotine products responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is now intimately involved with addictive products produced and marketed by the processed food industry? If you believe that food manufacturers are innocently and honestly conducting their businesses, simply think back to the testimony provided in front of Congress during the tobacco industry hearings. Broad deception, concealed truths, and outright lies were commonplace. There was no conscience involved. This was about money--and lots of it. Why should the processed food industry, intimate with the tobacco industry, be any different? If you want control over heart disease and your heart scan score, buy produce and buy local. Spend your time in the produce aisle, not the cereal or chip aisle. Unprocessed food, unadorned by bright labels, cartoon animals, American Heart Association endorsements, that's what we should seek. Heart Scan Curiosities #7 only with your doctor's supervision due to liver effects.--Testosterone for males. We use topical testosterone from Women's International Pharmacy in Madison, Wisconson. Prescription patches like Testim are also effective. --Estrogen for females. This is less "clean" than testosterone, introducing questions about endometrial and breast cancer risk, but it is a choice.--DHEA--A small effect but every little bit can help. We use 25-50 mg per day, depending on blood levels and only if you're 45 years old or older. --l-carnitine--In my experience, a small effect. It requires 2000 mg per day, which is expensive. Sometimes, an expected large effect develops, so it's worth a try if it fits in your budget. --Fibrates--These are the drugs Tricor and Lopid. I don't like these agents very much because I think they're weak, including the effect on Lp(a) reduction. But they are choices for you and your doctor. Lastly, you can simply be guided by your heart scan score. For example, if Tom's initial heart scan score is 200, and he continues his current program and one year later his score is 300, then alternative treatments are worth considering. But what if Tom's score is 189--he's regressed his coronary plaque. Then, who cares what his Lp(a) is? Another issue to keep in mind is that, in the presence of Lp(a), keeping LDL to very low numbers (e.g., 60 mg/dl) may added value in preventing coronary plaque growth. Trapped in a low-fat world 1. November 2006 William Davis (2) If you would like to...--Reduce (good) HDL--Raise triglycerides, sometimes by hundreds of points--Raise blood sugar into the pre-diabetic range--Raise blood pressure --Accelerate coronary plaque growththen go on a low-fat diet like the one promoted by long-time super low-fat advocate, Dr. Dean Ornish. Every day I have to educate patients that a low-fat diet as advocated by Dr. Ornish is a destructive, counter-productive process that makes coronary plaque grow and increases your heart scan score. If you want to gain control over coronary plaque, do not follow the Ornish program or anything resembling it. The Ornish program is a dead end. Instead, the crucial components of a healthy diet for plaque control are:--Low saturated and hydrogenated fat, but not low all fats. --High monounsaturated and omega-3 fats--Low glycemic index (i.e., slow sugar release)--High fiberThat simple. An excellent program to put these limits to practical use is the South Beach Diet. Or, follow the more detailed guidelines on the Track Your Plaque website (open content section). Blame the niacin 31. October 2006 William Davis (7) Despite the fact that niacin is:1) A vitamin--vitamin B32) One of the oldest cholesterol-reducing agents around with a long-standing track record of effectiveness and safety3) Available as a prescription drug as well as a variety of "nutritional supplements"most physicians remains shockingly unaware of its benefits, effects, and side-effects. Most, in fact, are either ignorant or frightened of advising their patients on niacin use. As a result, I commonly have to tell my patients to resume the niacin that their primary care physician has (wrongly) stopped because of itchy feet, grumpiness, groin rash, urinary tract infections, nightmares, diarrhea, hair loss, runny nose, etc. All of these are REAL reasons doctors have advised patients to stop niacin (though none were actually due to niacin). Is niacin really that troublesome? No, it's not. In fact, if used properly, it's among the most effective and safe tools available for correction of low HDL, small LDL and other triglyceride-containing lipoproteins, lipoprotein(a), and dramatic reduction of heart attack risk. If added to a statin agent, the heart attack risk reduction can approach 90%.Statins are just too easy for doctors to prescribe. Niacin, on the other hand, requires a good 15-20 minutes to describe how to use it. It could generate an occasional phone call from a patient who struggles with the annoying but largely harmless and temporary "hot-flush" feeling, a lot like a hot blush. Given a choice, most doctors would simply choose not to be bothered. For this reason, I'll commonly see many, many people with uncorrected low HDLs and other patterns. Have a serious discussion and press for confident answers if you find your doctor reflexively telling you that the wart on your thumb should be blamed on niacin. Here are the steps we advise that really make taking niacin easy and tolerable:1) Take with dinner. 2) Take with 2 extra glasses of water. If you experience the hot-flush later on, drink an additional 2 8-12 oz glasses of water i.e., a total of 16-24 oz). Extra hydration is extremely effective for blocking the hot-flush.3) Take a 325 mg, uncoated aspirin. This is only necessary in the beginning or with any increase in dose, rarely chronically for any length of time. This is not to say that there aren't occasional people who are truly and genuinely intolerant to niacin. It does happen. But those people are a small minority, less than 5% of people in my experience. Niacin is far more effective and safe than most physicians would have you believe. Eat fish three times a day 29. October 2006 William Davis (1) Patients commonly ask, "Why can't I get vitamin D from food? I drink milk and eat fish." They're absolutely right: both vitamin D and some oily fish contain vitamin D. However, it's a matter of quantity. An 8 oz. glass of milk contains 100 units of vitamin D (at least it's supposed to; this is not always true). A serving of oily fish like salmon or herring may contain up to 400 units. Thus, if you ate fish three times a day like the Eskimos or the Inuit, you might obtain sufficient vitamin D to prevent the broad and alarming spectrum of phenomena associated with deficiency.I suspect that most people don't want to eat fish three times a day, nor drink the 20 to 50 glasses of milk per day that would be required to obtain a truly healthy quantity of vitamin D. The vocal and outspoken Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council (www.vitamindcouncil.com) has written eloquently on the potential relationship between influenza and vitamin D deficiency. He and his co-authors on a recently published paper point out that the peculiar and unexplained seasonality of influenza corresponds to vitamin D levels. Read his eloquent discussion in Medical News Today at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=51913. In the article, Dr. Cannell explains:"The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our diet. If we don't expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements...Today, most humans only make about a thousand units of vitamin D a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderly or African Americans, make much less than that. How much did humans normally make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summer sun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into the circulation of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units, that's the single most important fact about vitamin D. Compare that to the 100 units you get from a glass of milk, or the several hundred daily units the U.S. government recommend as “Adequate Intake.” It's what we call an “order of magnitude” difference."Humans evolved naked in sub-equatorial Africa, where the sun shines directly overhead much of the year and where our species must have obtained tens of thousands of units of vitamin D every day, in spite of our skin developing heavy melanin concentrations (racial pigmentation) for protecting the deeper layers of the skin. Even after humans migrated to temperate latitudes, where our skin rapidly lightened to allow for more rapid vitamin D production, humans worked outdoors. However, in the last three hundred years, we began to work indoors; in the last one hundred years, we began to travel inside cars; in the last several decades, we began to lather on sunblock and consciously avoid sunlight. All of these things lower vitamin D blood levels. The inescapable conclusion is that vitamin D levels in modern humans are not just low - they are aberrantly low." Like Dr. Cannell, I am absolutely convinced that vitamin D deficiency plays an important role in a number of illnesses, including coronary disease. The more we mind our patients/participants vitamin D status (blood levels of 25-OH-vitamin D3), the more easily we gain control over LDL cholesterol, pre-diabetic patterns, blood pressure, blood sugar, and coronary plaque. In fact, I am becoming rapidly convinced that vitamin D deficiency is an extremely important coronary risk factor.Because I live in Wisconsin (bbrrrrr!) where seeing the sun is a cause for celebration and sun exposure is possible three months a year, I take 6000 units per day vitamin D. This is the amount necessary to raise my blood levels into the true, physiologic range of 50-70 ng/ml. My wife takes 2000 units per day, and each of my kids takes 1000 units per day, though I believe that my 14-year old son (my size now) should take more. We'll judge by blood levels.If there is a little-known secret to reducing heart scan scores, vitamin D is that "secret". To read more from Dr. Cannell or to subscribe to his free and very informative newsletter, go to Vitamin D Council What if I had a cure for coronary disease? 29. October 2006 William Davis (0) If I had a cure for coronary disease, what would it look like? What would constitute cure? Would you recognize it if I showed it to you? In the strictest sense, "cure" means an absolute elimination of any sign of coronary plaque, as well as elimination of any and all dangers associated with coronary disease. It would also mean elimination of the factors that created coronary atherosclerotic plaque in the first place. In a more practical sense, you could argue that "cure" means a reduction of the amount of material that constitute coronary disease along with a dramatic reduction of the associated risks (i.e., heart attack). You might call this second, more lax definition "regression" or "reversal". Is "cure" in the strictest sense possible? No, not to my knowledge in 2006. Yes, there are many (kooks) who claim this is possible, but there's no objective evidence of this occurring. Regression, or reversal, however, is indeed possible. In fact, I've seen it countless times following the participants in the Track Your Plaque program. If your heart scan score goes from 1000 (a bad score with high risk for heart attack) to 750, you've experienced a large reduction in the amount of atherosclerotic plaque that is behind coronary disease. You've also reduced your risk of an "event" like heart attack to near zero (provided you remain on the program that achieved regression in the first place). Unfortunately, with present technology regression or reversal does not mean that the original causes of coornary plaque are eliminated. They're just controlled. Fish oil, for example, powerfully reduces triglyceride-containing lipoproteins that trigger coronary plaque growth. But if you stop fish oil, the evil lipoproteins come right back and start injuring your coronaries, causing more plaque growth. The Track Your Plaque program is the closest thing I know of to a "cure" for coronary disease, that is, "cure" in the sense of regression or reversal. Perhaps in future we'll have a "cure" in the strict sense. Until now, this program is the best there is. << Older posts Newer posts >> Newer posts12...9899100101102103104105106...121122Older posts
Addictive Foods 25. June 2007 William Davis (3) Kraft Foods, Inc. is manufacturer of Kool Aid, Oscar Mayer, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Velveeta, Honey Maid Grahams, and hundreds of other processed food products. Post cereals also falls under the umbrella of Kraft with products like Raisin Bran, Post Toasties, and Fruity Pebbles. Annual revenues in 2006 for Kraft: $34.4 billion. A big operation with enormous influence over our eating habits. Nabisco is manufacturer of Oreos, Ritz Crackers, Chips Ahoy and many others. Like Kraft/Post, it is also a big player. While Nabisco was owned for several years by tobacco giant RJ Reynolds, in 2000 it was acquired by Philip Morris, another big tobacco manufacturer. More recently in Spring, 2007, Philip Morris (now called Altria--you'd change your name, too, if it was synonymous with dirt) spun off its Kraft subsidiary for a big profit. However, the management structures remain intertwined. In other words, despite the shuffling of shares, the two industries, big tobacco and big food, are in many respects one and the same. Is it any surprise that the same industry that made billions of dollars pushing addictive nicotine products responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is now intimately involved with addictive products produced and marketed by the processed food industry? If you believe that food manufacturers are innocently and honestly conducting their businesses, simply think back to the testimony provided in front of Congress during the tobacco industry hearings. Broad deception, concealed truths, and outright lies were commonplace. There was no conscience involved. This was about money--and lots of it. Why should the processed food industry, intimate with the tobacco industry, be any different? If you want control over heart disease and your heart scan score, buy produce and buy local. Spend your time in the produce aisle, not the cereal or chip aisle. Unprocessed food, unadorned by bright labels, cartoon animals, American Heart Association endorsements, that's what we should seek.
Heart Scan Curiosities #7 only with your doctor's supervision due to liver effects.--Testosterone for males. We use topical testosterone from Women's International Pharmacy in Madison, Wisconson. Prescription patches like Testim are also effective. --Estrogen for females. This is less "clean" than testosterone, introducing questions about endometrial and breast cancer risk, but it is a choice.--DHEA--A small effect but every little bit can help. We use 25-50 mg per day, depending on blood levels and only if you're 45 years old or older. --l-carnitine--In my experience, a small effect. It requires 2000 mg per day, which is expensive. Sometimes, an expected large effect develops, so it's worth a try if it fits in your budget. --Fibrates--These are the drugs Tricor and Lopid. I don't like these agents very much because I think they're weak, including the effect on Lp(a) reduction. But they are choices for you and your doctor. Lastly, you can simply be guided by your heart scan score. For example, if Tom's initial heart scan score is 200, and he continues his current program and one year later his score is 300, then alternative treatments are worth considering. But what if Tom's score is 189--he's regressed his coronary plaque. Then, who cares what his Lp(a) is? Another issue to keep in mind is that, in the presence of Lp(a), keeping LDL to very low numbers (e.g., 60 mg/dl) may added value in preventing coronary plaque growth. Trapped in a low-fat world 1. November 2006 William Davis (2) If you would like to...--Reduce (good) HDL--Raise triglycerides, sometimes by hundreds of points--Raise blood sugar into the pre-diabetic range--Raise blood pressure --Accelerate coronary plaque growththen go on a low-fat diet like the one promoted by long-time super low-fat advocate, Dr. Dean Ornish. Every day I have to educate patients that a low-fat diet as advocated by Dr. Ornish is a destructive, counter-productive process that makes coronary plaque grow and increases your heart scan score. If you want to gain control over coronary plaque, do not follow the Ornish program or anything resembling it. The Ornish program is a dead end. Instead, the crucial components of a healthy diet for plaque control are:--Low saturated and hydrogenated fat, but not low all fats. --High monounsaturated and omega-3 fats--Low glycemic index (i.e., slow sugar release)--High fiberThat simple. An excellent program to put these limits to practical use is the South Beach Diet. Or, follow the more detailed guidelines on the Track Your Plaque website (open content section). Blame the niacin 31. October 2006 William Davis (7) Despite the fact that niacin is:1) A vitamin--vitamin B32) One of the oldest cholesterol-reducing agents around with a long-standing track record of effectiveness and safety3) Available as a prescription drug as well as a variety of "nutritional supplements"most physicians remains shockingly unaware of its benefits, effects, and side-effects. Most, in fact, are either ignorant or frightened of advising their patients on niacin use. As a result, I commonly have to tell my patients to resume the niacin that their primary care physician has (wrongly) stopped because of itchy feet, grumpiness, groin rash, urinary tract infections, nightmares, diarrhea, hair loss, runny nose, etc. All of these are REAL reasons doctors have advised patients to stop niacin (though none were actually due to niacin). Is niacin really that troublesome? No, it's not. In fact, if used properly, it's among the most effective and safe tools available for correction of low HDL, small LDL and other triglyceride-containing lipoproteins, lipoprotein(a), and dramatic reduction of heart attack risk. If added to a statin agent, the heart attack risk reduction can approach 90%.Statins are just too easy for doctors to prescribe. Niacin, on the other hand, requires a good 15-20 minutes to describe how to use it. It could generate an occasional phone call from a patient who struggles with the annoying but largely harmless and temporary "hot-flush" feeling, a lot like a hot blush. Given a choice, most doctors would simply choose not to be bothered. For this reason, I'll commonly see many, many people with uncorrected low HDLs and other patterns. Have a serious discussion and press for confident answers if you find your doctor reflexively telling you that the wart on your thumb should be blamed on niacin. Here are the steps we advise that really make taking niacin easy and tolerable:1) Take with dinner. 2) Take with 2 extra glasses of water. If you experience the hot-flush later on, drink an additional 2 8-12 oz glasses of water i.e., a total of 16-24 oz). Extra hydration is extremely effective for blocking the hot-flush.3) Take a 325 mg, uncoated aspirin. This is only necessary in the beginning or with any increase in dose, rarely chronically for any length of time. This is not to say that there aren't occasional people who are truly and genuinely intolerant to niacin. It does happen. But those people are a small minority, less than 5% of people in my experience. Niacin is far more effective and safe than most physicians would have you believe. Eat fish three times a day 29. October 2006 William Davis (1) Patients commonly ask, "Why can't I get vitamin D from food? I drink milk and eat fish." They're absolutely right: both vitamin D and some oily fish contain vitamin D. However, it's a matter of quantity. An 8 oz. glass of milk contains 100 units of vitamin D (at least it's supposed to; this is not always true). A serving of oily fish like salmon or herring may contain up to 400 units. Thus, if you ate fish three times a day like the Eskimos or the Inuit, you might obtain sufficient vitamin D to prevent the broad and alarming spectrum of phenomena associated with deficiency.I suspect that most people don't want to eat fish three times a day, nor drink the 20 to 50 glasses of milk per day that would be required to obtain a truly healthy quantity of vitamin D. The vocal and outspoken Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council (www.vitamindcouncil.com) has written eloquently on the potential relationship between influenza and vitamin D deficiency. He and his co-authors on a recently published paper point out that the peculiar and unexplained seasonality of influenza corresponds to vitamin D levels. Read his eloquent discussion in Medical News Today at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=51913. In the article, Dr. Cannell explains:"The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our diet. If we don't expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements...Today, most humans only make about a thousand units of vitamin D a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderly or African Americans, make much less than that. How much did humans normally make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summer sun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into the circulation of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units, that's the single most important fact about vitamin D. Compare that to the 100 units you get from a glass of milk, or the several hundred daily units the U.S. government recommend as “Adequate Intake.” It's what we call an “order of magnitude” difference."Humans evolved naked in sub-equatorial Africa, where the sun shines directly overhead much of the year and where our species must have obtained tens of thousands of units of vitamin D every day, in spite of our skin developing heavy melanin concentrations (racial pigmentation) for protecting the deeper layers of the skin. Even after humans migrated to temperate latitudes, where our skin rapidly lightened to allow for more rapid vitamin D production, humans worked outdoors. However, in the last three hundred years, we began to work indoors; in the last one hundred years, we began to travel inside cars; in the last several decades, we began to lather on sunblock and consciously avoid sunlight. All of these things lower vitamin D blood levels. The inescapable conclusion is that vitamin D levels in modern humans are not just low - they are aberrantly low." Like Dr. Cannell, I am absolutely convinced that vitamin D deficiency plays an important role in a number of illnesses, including coronary disease. The more we mind our patients/participants vitamin D status (blood levels of 25-OH-vitamin D3), the more easily we gain control over LDL cholesterol, pre-diabetic patterns, blood pressure, blood sugar, and coronary plaque. In fact, I am becoming rapidly convinced that vitamin D deficiency is an extremely important coronary risk factor.Because I live in Wisconsin (bbrrrrr!) where seeing the sun is a cause for celebration and sun exposure is possible three months a year, I take 6000 units per day vitamin D. This is the amount necessary to raise my blood levels into the true, physiologic range of 50-70 ng/ml. My wife takes 2000 units per day, and each of my kids takes 1000 units per day, though I believe that my 14-year old son (my size now) should take more. We'll judge by blood levels.If there is a little-known secret to reducing heart scan scores, vitamin D is that "secret". To read more from Dr. Cannell or to subscribe to his free and very informative newsletter, go to Vitamin D Council What if I had a cure for coronary disease? 29. October 2006 William Davis (0) If I had a cure for coronary disease, what would it look like? What would constitute cure? Would you recognize it if I showed it to you? In the strictest sense, "cure" means an absolute elimination of any sign of coronary plaque, as well as elimination of any and all dangers associated with coronary disease. It would also mean elimination of the factors that created coronary atherosclerotic plaque in the first place. In a more practical sense, you could argue that "cure" means a reduction of the amount of material that constitute coronary disease along with a dramatic reduction of the associated risks (i.e., heart attack). You might call this second, more lax definition "regression" or "reversal". Is "cure" in the strictest sense possible? No, not to my knowledge in 2006. Yes, there are many (kooks) who claim this is possible, but there's no objective evidence of this occurring. Regression, or reversal, however, is indeed possible. In fact, I've seen it countless times following the participants in the Track Your Plaque program. If your heart scan score goes from 1000 (a bad score with high risk for heart attack) to 750, you've experienced a large reduction in the amount of atherosclerotic plaque that is behind coronary disease. You've also reduced your risk of an "event" like heart attack to near zero (provided you remain on the program that achieved regression in the first place). Unfortunately, with present technology regression or reversal does not mean that the original causes of coornary plaque are eliminated. They're just controlled. Fish oil, for example, powerfully reduces triglyceride-containing lipoproteins that trigger coronary plaque growth. But if you stop fish oil, the evil lipoproteins come right back and start injuring your coronaries, causing more plaque growth. The Track Your Plaque program is the closest thing I know of to a "cure" for coronary disease, that is, "cure" in the sense of regression or reversal. Perhaps in future we'll have a "cure" in the strict sense. Until now, this program is the best there is. << Older posts Newer posts >> Newer posts12...9899100101102103104105106...121122Older posts
Trapped in a low-fat world 1. November 2006 William Davis (2) If you would like to...--Reduce (good) HDL--Raise triglycerides, sometimes by hundreds of points--Raise blood sugar into the pre-diabetic range--Raise blood pressure --Accelerate coronary plaque growththen go on a low-fat diet like the one promoted by long-time super low-fat advocate, Dr. Dean Ornish. Every day I have to educate patients that a low-fat diet as advocated by Dr. Ornish is a destructive, counter-productive process that makes coronary plaque grow and increases your heart scan score. If you want to gain control over coronary plaque, do not follow the Ornish program or anything resembling it. The Ornish program is a dead end. Instead, the crucial components of a healthy diet for plaque control are:--Low saturated and hydrogenated fat, but not low all fats. --High monounsaturated and omega-3 fats--Low glycemic index (i.e., slow sugar release)--High fiberThat simple. An excellent program to put these limits to practical use is the South Beach Diet. Or, follow the more detailed guidelines on the Track Your Plaque website (open content section).
Blame the niacin 31. October 2006 William Davis (7) Despite the fact that niacin is:1) A vitamin--vitamin B32) One of the oldest cholesterol-reducing agents around with a long-standing track record of effectiveness and safety3) Available as a prescription drug as well as a variety of "nutritional supplements"most physicians remains shockingly unaware of its benefits, effects, and side-effects. Most, in fact, are either ignorant or frightened of advising their patients on niacin use. As a result, I commonly have to tell my patients to resume the niacin that their primary care physician has (wrongly) stopped because of itchy feet, grumpiness, groin rash, urinary tract infections, nightmares, diarrhea, hair loss, runny nose, etc. All of these are REAL reasons doctors have advised patients to stop niacin (though none were actually due to niacin). Is niacin really that troublesome? No, it's not. In fact, if used properly, it's among the most effective and safe tools available for correction of low HDL, small LDL and other triglyceride-containing lipoproteins, lipoprotein(a), and dramatic reduction of heart attack risk. If added to a statin agent, the heart attack risk reduction can approach 90%.Statins are just too easy for doctors to prescribe. Niacin, on the other hand, requires a good 15-20 minutes to describe how to use it. It could generate an occasional phone call from a patient who struggles with the annoying but largely harmless and temporary "hot-flush" feeling, a lot like a hot blush. Given a choice, most doctors would simply choose not to be bothered. For this reason, I'll commonly see many, many people with uncorrected low HDLs and other patterns. Have a serious discussion and press for confident answers if you find your doctor reflexively telling you that the wart on your thumb should be blamed on niacin. Here are the steps we advise that really make taking niacin easy and tolerable:1) Take with dinner. 2) Take with 2 extra glasses of water. If you experience the hot-flush later on, drink an additional 2 8-12 oz glasses of water i.e., a total of 16-24 oz). Extra hydration is extremely effective for blocking the hot-flush.3) Take a 325 mg, uncoated aspirin. This is only necessary in the beginning or with any increase in dose, rarely chronically for any length of time. This is not to say that there aren't occasional people who are truly and genuinely intolerant to niacin. It does happen. But those people are a small minority, less than 5% of people in my experience. Niacin is far more effective and safe than most physicians would have you believe.
Eat fish three times a day 29. October 2006 William Davis (1) Patients commonly ask, "Why can't I get vitamin D from food? I drink milk and eat fish." They're absolutely right: both vitamin D and some oily fish contain vitamin D. However, it's a matter of quantity. An 8 oz. glass of milk contains 100 units of vitamin D (at least it's supposed to; this is not always true). A serving of oily fish like salmon or herring may contain up to 400 units. Thus, if you ate fish three times a day like the Eskimos or the Inuit, you might obtain sufficient vitamin D to prevent the broad and alarming spectrum of phenomena associated with deficiency.I suspect that most people don't want to eat fish three times a day, nor drink the 20 to 50 glasses of milk per day that would be required to obtain a truly healthy quantity of vitamin D. The vocal and outspoken Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council (www.vitamindcouncil.com) has written eloquently on the potential relationship between influenza and vitamin D deficiency. He and his co-authors on a recently published paper point out that the peculiar and unexplained seasonality of influenza corresponds to vitamin D levels. Read his eloquent discussion in Medical News Today at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=51913. In the article, Dr. Cannell explains:"The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our diet. If we don't expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements...Today, most humans only make about a thousand units of vitamin D a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderly or African Americans, make much less than that. How much did humans normally make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summer sun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into the circulation of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units, that's the single most important fact about vitamin D. Compare that to the 100 units you get from a glass of milk, or the several hundred daily units the U.S. government recommend as “Adequate Intake.” It's what we call an “order of magnitude” difference."Humans evolved naked in sub-equatorial Africa, where the sun shines directly overhead much of the year and where our species must have obtained tens of thousands of units of vitamin D every day, in spite of our skin developing heavy melanin concentrations (racial pigmentation) for protecting the deeper layers of the skin. Even after humans migrated to temperate latitudes, where our skin rapidly lightened to allow for more rapid vitamin D production, humans worked outdoors. However, in the last three hundred years, we began to work indoors; in the last one hundred years, we began to travel inside cars; in the last several decades, we began to lather on sunblock and consciously avoid sunlight. All of these things lower vitamin D blood levels. The inescapable conclusion is that vitamin D levels in modern humans are not just low - they are aberrantly low." Like Dr. Cannell, I am absolutely convinced that vitamin D deficiency plays an important role in a number of illnesses, including coronary disease. The more we mind our patients/participants vitamin D status (blood levels of 25-OH-vitamin D3), the more easily we gain control over LDL cholesterol, pre-diabetic patterns, blood pressure, blood sugar, and coronary plaque. In fact, I am becoming rapidly convinced that vitamin D deficiency is an extremely important coronary risk factor.Because I live in Wisconsin (bbrrrrr!) where seeing the sun is a cause for celebration and sun exposure is possible three months a year, I take 6000 units per day vitamin D. This is the amount necessary to raise my blood levels into the true, physiologic range of 50-70 ng/ml. My wife takes 2000 units per day, and each of my kids takes 1000 units per day, though I believe that my 14-year old son (my size now) should take more. We'll judge by blood levels.If there is a little-known secret to reducing heart scan scores, vitamin D is that "secret". To read more from Dr. Cannell or to subscribe to his free and very informative newsletter, go to Vitamin D Council
What if I had a cure for coronary disease? 29. October 2006 William Davis (0) If I had a cure for coronary disease, what would it look like? What would constitute cure? Would you recognize it if I showed it to you? In the strictest sense, "cure" means an absolute elimination of any sign of coronary plaque, as well as elimination of any and all dangers associated with coronary disease. It would also mean elimination of the factors that created coronary atherosclerotic plaque in the first place. In a more practical sense, you could argue that "cure" means a reduction of the amount of material that constitute coronary disease along with a dramatic reduction of the associated risks (i.e., heart attack). You might call this second, more lax definition "regression" or "reversal". Is "cure" in the strictest sense possible? No, not to my knowledge in 2006. Yes, there are many (kooks) who claim this is possible, but there's no objective evidence of this occurring. Regression, or reversal, however, is indeed possible. In fact, I've seen it countless times following the participants in the Track Your Plaque program. If your heart scan score goes from 1000 (a bad score with high risk for heart attack) to 750, you've experienced a large reduction in the amount of atherosclerotic plaque that is behind coronary disease. You've also reduced your risk of an "event" like heart attack to near zero (provided you remain on the program that achieved regression in the first place). Unfortunately, with present technology regression or reversal does not mean that the original causes of coornary plaque are eliminated. They're just controlled. Fish oil, for example, powerfully reduces triglyceride-containing lipoproteins that trigger coronary plaque growth. But if you stop fish oil, the evil lipoproteins come right back and start injuring your coronaries, causing more plaque growth. The Track Your Plaque program is the closest thing I know of to a "cure" for coronary disease, that is, "cure" in the sense of regression or reversal. Perhaps in future we'll have a "cure" in the strict sense. Until now, this program is the best there is.