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.

All in the family--What to do if there's heart disease in your family

3. April 2006 William Davis (0)
What should you do if a close relative of yours is diagnosed with coronary disease?
This question came up recently with a patient of mine. The patient--a strapping, 47 year old businessman who looked the absolute picture of health--was undergoing bypass surgery. Although I'd met him for the purposes of plaque reversal, he was already having symptoms and his stress test was flagrantly abnormal, all discovered after a heart scan score of 765. On the day after the patient's bypass, the patient's brother came to me. Understandably concerned about his own health, he asked what he should do. The answer: get a heart scan.
Measure the disease with the easiest test available. If his heart scan score is zero, great--he's at exceptionally low (near zero) risk for heart attack. A modest program of long-term prevention is all that's necessary. What if his score is like his brother, should he get in line for his bypass? No, absolutely not! But he will need two things: 1) a stress test to ascertain whether or not he's safe (60% likelihood a stress test would be normal), and 2) an effort to determine how the heck he got so much plaque. (We favor lipoprotein testing, of course, for greatest diagnostic certainty.)
Message: Learn from the lessons your own family provides. Don't let this valuable information go to waste.
Gretchen's postprandial diet experiment

Gretchen's postprandial diet experiment

27. November 2009 William Davis (11)
Gretchen sent me the results of a little experiment she ran on herself. She measured blood glucose and triglycerides after 1) a low-fat diet and 2) a low-carb diet.









Gretchen describes her experience:

Several years ago I received a windfall of triglyceride strips that would expire in a week or so. I hated to waste them, so I decided to use them to test my triglyceride and BG responses to two different diets: low carb and low fat.

The first day I followed a low-fat diet. For breakfast I ate a lot of carbohydrate, including 1 oz of spaghetti cooked al dente and ¾ cup of white rice. For the rest of the day I ate less carbohydrate but continued to eat low fat.

The second day I followed a low-carb diet. For breakfast I ate a lot of fat, including a sausage, mushrooms fried in butter, 2 slices of bacon, and ¼ cup of the creamy topping of whole-milk yogurt. For the rest of the day I ate less fat, especially less saturated fat, but continued to eat low carb.

Both days I measured both BG and triglyceride levels every hour until I went to bed. On the low-carb day I had 3 meals. On the low-fat day, I was constantly hungry, had 4 meals, and kept snacking.

You can see the results in Figure 1. On the low-fat diet, after a “healthy” low-fat breakfast of low-glycemic pasta with low-fat sauce, my BG levels shot up to over 200 mg/dL and took more than 6 hours to come down. My triglycerides, however, remained low, and at first I thought perhaps the low-fat diet might be better overall. However, after about 6 hours, the triglyceride levels started to increase steadily, and by the next morning, they were higher than they had been the day before.
On the low-carb diet, my BG levels stayed low all day. However, after meals, the triglyceride levels skyrocketed. After meals they came down, and by the next morning they were lower than they had been the day before.

As I interpret these results, the high triglyceride levels after eating the high-fat meals represent chylomicrons, the lipoproteins that transport fat from your meals to the cells of your body. The high triglyceride levels the morning after eating the low-fat meals represent very low density lipoprotein, which takes the cholesterol your liver synthesizes when your intake of dietary cholesterol is low and distributes it to cells that need it, or again, to the fat for storage.

There are several interesting factors to consider here. First, when you have a lipid test done at the lab, it’s usually done fasting, which means first thing in the morning after not eating for 8 to 12 hours. It tells you nothing about what your triglyceride levels were all day.

Second, the low-carb diet resulted in lower fasting triglyceride levels, but much higher postprandial triglyceride levels. Which are more dangerous? I’m afraid I don’t know. You should also note that the high-fat, low-carb breakfast was extremely high in fat, including saturated fat. I don’t normally eat that much fat but wanted to test extremes.

Third, although the low-fat diet didn’t produce the very high postprandial triglyceride levels that the high-fat diet did, it produced extremely high BG levels that persisted for 6 hours. Some people think that it’s oxidized and glycated lipids that are the dangerous ones, so high BG levels and normal triglyceride levels might be more dangerous than very high triglyceride levels and normal BG levels. Note that high BG levels also contribute to oxidation rates.

Fourth, this shows the results of an experiment with a sample size of one. My physiology might not be typical. If you want to know how your own body’s lipids respond to different types of diets, you should get a lipid meter and test yourself. Unfortunately, your insurance is unlikely to want to pay for this, so it will be an expensive experiment.

The main point of this is that the results of different diets are complex. We have to eat. And what we eat can affect many different systems in our bodies. Finding the ideal diet that matches our own physiology and results in the best lipid levels as well as BG levels is a real challenge.



This was a lot of effort for one person. Thanks to Gretchen for sharing her interesting experience.

Gretchen makes a crucial point: Some of the effects of diet changes evolve over time, much as triglyceride levels changed substantially for her on the day following her experiment. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how postprandial patterns develop over time if levels were observed sequentially, day after day?

The stark contrast in blood sugars is impressive--Low-carb clearly has the advantage here. Are there manipulations in diet composition in low-carb meals that we can make to blunt the early (3-6 hour) postprandial lipoprotein (triglyceride) peak? That's a topic we will consider in future.

More of Gretchen's thoughts can be found at:

http://wildlyfluctuating.blogspot.com
http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/5068
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Comments (11) -

  • ET

    11/27/2009 5:10:43 PM |

    Interesting results.  I follow a low-carbohydrate (<60 g/day) eating plan and I recently had blood drawn and sent to a lab for glucose and cholesterol testing.  It was supposed to be fasting, but the sample was drawn 4.5 hours after I had gotten up for the day.  By then, I'd already eaten breakfast several hours earlier and my coffee with coconut creamer and  half-and-half which represents around 60 grams of fat and 9 grams of carbs.  Both my  glucose and triglycerides were 91.  My total cholsterol was unchanged.  My fasting triglycerides are usually around 45.  I did exercise prior to having the sample taken which could influence my triglycerides.

    On an earlier occassion, I also had a non-fasting cholesterol test performed by a lab and the sample was taken mid-afternoon.  I'd consumed around 150g of fat total that day, starting nine hours earlier and my triglycerides were 79.

  • DrStrange

    11/27/2009 6:07:28 PM |

    Having done similar myself though only testing blood sugar, I can say for certain that if you ate a truly low fat diet (<10% calories from fat) for 2 weeks prior to the test and then ate a truly low fat meal, your blood glucose curve would have been similar to that for the low carb meal.  The spike comes from insulin resistance, largely caused by dietary fat.  It takes about 2 weeks on a low fat diet for that component of IR to be reversed.  I have repeated this same experiment several times with identical results.

    There are two ways to keep a fairly flat sugar curve.  One is a very low carb diet, the other a very low fat diet.  For the low fat diet to work however it must be constant without cheating.  In my experiments I found that only one meal of "normal" fat content, increased IR and caused sugar spikes for many days after.  Over about 10-14 days, my post postprandial sugar curve returned to normal.

  • Nigel Kinbrum BSc(Hons)Eng

    11/27/2009 8:09:00 PM |

    Any chance of persuading someone (Oxford Group, say) to do a randomised crossover intervention trial with a suitable washout period and using different Carb/Fat percentages e.g.
    15P, 55C, 30F (Standard American/English Diet) alternating with:-
    15P, 5C, 80F
    15P, 15C, 70F
    15P, 25C, 60F
    15P, 35C, 50F
    15P, 45C, 40F
    15P, 65C, 20F
    15P, 75C, 10F but without adding extra sugar? The trial previously mentioned has received criticism on a board I post on for adding extra sugar to exaggerate results.

  • Gretchen

    11/28/2009 2:12:20 PM |

    DrStrange, perhaps it was not clear from the quoted material, but I am diabetic. My BG would go up on a low-fat diet. That's what I was on for about 6 months after diagnosis, and I certainly did not have normal blood glucose levels. My A1c was much higher than it was on low-carb, high-fat.

    However, it would be very interesting if nondiabetic people repeated my experiment. I think exaggerated TG responses may be caused by whatever it is that causes the diabetes.

  • Anonymous

    11/28/2009 3:01:50 PM |

    I think DrStrange illustrates that there must be momentum to physiological responses to what is a typical diet for any one person. A low carber's insulin levels may not be ready to handle an untypical (for them)carbohydrate load while a person with a low fat diet maintains higher insulin at all times.

  • Gretchen

    11/28/2009 3:32:59 PM |

    My experiment was flawed in several ways. I was not planning on publicizing the results, so I didn't weigh food or make sure the protein amounts were the same.

    And I didn't do the usual 3-day high-carb eating to make sure I was producing carb-producing enzymes. Not eating carbs can produce diabetes blood glucose (BG) levels in a nondiabetic: called "starvation diabetes" because starvation is the ultimate LC diet.

    However, I already knew I was diabetic. And people with diabetes have different lipid responses, so someone without diabetes would probably not see such a dramatic difference.

    A good experiment for a nondiabetic who has been on a LC diet would be the following:

    1. Measure BG and TGs for a day on your usual LC diet. Weigh the food so you can get exact nutrient levels. This would tell you what happens when you're adapted to the LC diet. Probably measuring every 2 hours would be enough.

    2. Eat a low-fat diet without preparation and follow BG and TGs for a day.

    3. Continue to eat the low-fat diet for a minimum of 3 days, maybe a week or 2 as suggested by DrStrange. Then repeat the experiment in No. 2, eating exactly the same thing.

    4. If you wish, repeat the experiment in No. 1, to see if your lipids went high when you weren't adapted to the LC diet.

    I do know someone else who was concerned that she might be diabetic, and while on a LC diet, her BG levels in a home "glucose tolerance test" approached diabetic levels. She then went on some kind of vegan diet, and on this diet, her BG levels stayed low on the GTT.

    So yes, not eating carbs and eating more fat (two different inputs) can produce a result that looks like diabetes. Which of these two factors is more important is not clear because when you reduce one nutrient you have to increase another to keep the calorie content constant.

  • DrStrange

    11/28/2009 3:45:39 PM |

    Gretchen, were you consistently at about 10% total calories from fat on your "low fat diet"?  Fat intake for most needs to always be not more than about 10% of total calories  for insulin resistance to be dramatically reduced. If someone is insulin dependent, the insulin they take will be maximally effective in that case but the fat intake must be at that low level for every meal ongoing.  One meal with excess fat and IR can shoot up and take many days to come back down.  This is what I found in my body.  Also, this is presupposing that all carbs are coming from very few fruits, vegetables, whole/intact grains (not flour, not sugar, etc)

    I really do not know which is healthier in the long run for someone who is insulin dependent, low fat/high carb or high fat/low carb.  There are studies showing increases, long term, of a number of health problems w/ high fat intake.  On the other hand, w/ the low fat diet you would need to use more insulin which is inflammatory.

  • DrStrange

    11/28/2009 3:59:33 PM |

    Anonymous, I do not have high insulin levels, in fact the opposite!  My A1c was creeping up a couple years ago (peaked at 6.4) so i tried low carb for 9 months and felt worse and worse the entire time.  More research and switched to low fat/high carb.  I have been on a very low fat, vegan (McDougall) diet for about 20 months now.  My A1c last tested 5.1 fasting insulin is <2.00 uIU/ml.  Recent glucose tolerance test with insulin values showed this after fasting ingestion of 75 gm glucose (I am only 5'3" 110 pounds:

    BG (mg/ml) fasting=82, 1/2 hour=114 1 hour=103, 2 hour=86, 3 hour=100

    insulin (uIU/ml) fasting<2, 1/2 hour 8.5, 1 hour=11.0, 1 1/2 hour=13.4, 2 hour=18.1

  • Gretchen

    11/28/2009 9:56:57 PM |

    DRStrange

    Maybe we should discuss this privately, as the best way to treat diabetes is really not the topic of this blog. There are so many variables. You can get my e-mail on my blogsite, which is at the end of the stuff that Dr. Davis cited. Use Wildly Fluctuating.

  • buy jeans

    11/2/2010 8:21:09 PM |

    Gretchen makes a crucial point: Some of the effects of diet changes evolve over time, much as triglyceride levels changed substantially for her on the day following her experiment. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how postprandial patterns develop over time if levels were observed sequentially, day after day?

  • Dharini

    11/13/2011 11:56:52 PM |

    De novo lipogenesis is almost non-existant in humans. Trigs being high the day following a high carb meal probably reflect the regular trigs levels for a particular person. This would be true for any macronutrient composition that is not low in carbs.

    Naturally after a low carb meal there is an increased turnover of lipids because the brain does not have any glucose or glycogen sources for fuel. Thus, triglyceride levels fall ad fasting triglyceride levels are low.

    More importantly, fasting triglycerides DO NOT independently predict risk of heart disease once you adjust for post-prandial triglycerides. (Bansal et al_JAMA 2007_Fasting Compared With Nonfasting Triglycerides and Risk of Cardiovascular Events in Women)

    The effects of a low carb diet on postprandial triglycerides has been measured over 4 weeks in a study by Natalie et al_Diabetes Care 2009. They also found a worsening of triglycerides post prandially.

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