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Track Your Plaque shows how to use
CT heart scans as the 1st step in a proven program to slow, stop, even
REVERSE heart disease!
In this issue:
Hello, everybody!
  Who
needs a procedure?
That is the question that guides the conventional practice of cardiology
today, deciding who and when “should” go to the hospital for their stent,
bypass surgery, defibrillator.
While much of the world becomes increasingly consumed with the search
for the latest and greatest in medical imaging to decide who “needs” a
procedure, we continue to work at our program that keeps you away from
procedures.
Yes, better imaging techniques for heart disease are needed and current
technology will, undoubtedly, evolve over the decades. But a tool for
accurate and reliable imaging for coronary atherosclerotic plaque is
already available. And that’s your friendly neighborhood CT heart
scanner.
Should a bigger and better tool for coronary atherosclerotic plaque
imaging present itself one of these days, then the Track Your Plaque
program can shift gears and incorporate it.
Track Your Plaque is not necessarily just about heart scanning. It is
about: 1) measuring plaque, then 2) controlling, perhaps reversing, it.
In 2008, a simple heart scan—not a CT coronary angiogram, not a stress
test, not a heart catheterization, not MRI, not PET scans—remains the
most accurate, simplest, most accessible, and inexpensive way to
quantify coronary atherosclerotic plaque.
Track in health!
Dr. Davis
Another Track Your Plaque Success Story:
Lipoprotein(a) bites the dust!
I met Rona at age 60. Rona’s younger brother, 4 years
her junior, had just experienced a heart attack and successfully
received a stent. However, the emotional trauma of the experience left
him plagued with anxiety and depression. Rona approach her primary care
doctor to inquire whether she might have inherited a similar tendency.
The response: a cholesterol test, followed by a prescription for Lipitor®
and advice to reduce the fat in her diet.
An administrative assistant, Rona was accustomed to insisting on knowing
the fine details of problems and issues, and delivered only high quality
work herself. So it came as a surprise when her heart disease prevention
program seemed to be based on the slimmest of information, a complete
inattention to detail.
Surely, Rona thought, in an age of robotic surgery, laser treatment, and
high-tech rapid communication, better precision in diagnosing heart
disease was available.
Getting nowhere with her doctor, she had a heart scan. Her score: 108, a
score that placed her in the 90th percentile, the worst 10% of women her
age. She apparently did share at least some of the genetic potential for
heart disease of her brother.
That’s when Rona came to us. Further testing uncovered seven additional
causes of coronary plaque, including small LDL particles, a
lipoprotein(a) of 196 nmol/l—very high, and severe deficiency of vitamin
D.
We proceeded to help Rona correct all of her patterns. Fourteen months
later, another heart scan revealed a score of 84—a 22% decrease.
Dr. Davis: We often tell people that lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a), is
among the most difficult causes of coronary plaque to gain control over.
We know that niacin, hormones like testosterone and estrogen, and DHEA,
all exert positive, though variable, effects. We also know that many
people struggle to reduce Lp(a) to desirable levels.
However, we can now add Rona to our growing list of successes, people
who’ve reduced their heart scan score—despite having Lp(a). Rona joins
our current Track Your Plaque record holder, Amy, who dropped her heart
scan score 63%, also despite sharing the Lp(a) pattern.
Not everybody who follows the Track Your Plaque program will reduce
their score like Rona or Amy. Not everybody with Lp(a) will achieve the
phenomenal results that these two women have. But I do believe we are
getting closer and closer to a powerful solution that far exceeds what
can be accomplished through the conventional answers.
Lipitor® and a low-fat diet? There’s no comparison
.
Will a heart scan help me if I have a stent?
A reader asks: “I have three stents in my heart. Is a heart scan is
advisable or even possible when one or more stents have been placed in
my heart’s arteries?”
The answer: it depends.
It depends on how many arteries contain stents. It does not depend on
how many stents you have.
For instance, if there are three stents in the right coronary, one in
the circumflex, but none in the left anterior descending, then the
unstented artery can still be scored in future for tracking purposes.
It's not perfect, since you've lost tracking ability in two arteries,
and you’re left with tracking plaque in a single artery.
If only one artery contain one or more stents, then you have two
arteries left to track. This is still quite helpful.
In future, it would be nice to be able to score the artery that contains
stents. We can indeed score the artery, but metal overlaps too much with
the calcified plaque and can be virtually indistinguishable. Several
years ago, we investigated the possibility of scoring the stent metal
along with the plaque. After all, we reasoned, if there was a change in
score, it had to be the plaque, not the stent, since metal doesn’t grow.
However, we found that the scoring of the stent was just too variable
and introduced too much variation into the scoring process.
Perhaps in future we will discover a better process to deal with this
vexing issue. But, for the present, our approach is to score only
arteries without stents. Having one or more stents is not an absolute
reason to not have a heart scan; it depends on the number of arteries
containing stents.
Will a heart scan help me if I’ve had bypass surgery?
A related question is whether heart scanning can or should be performed
when you’ve had bypass surgery.
The simple answer: We’re not entirely sure, but we think so.
In my experience, about 50% of people can actually be scored after
having had bypass surgery. In other words, about half of people with
bypasses have enough of their own arteries clearly visible—and
distinguishable from bypass grafts—to allow a score to be generated.
Thus, a score of 732 should reflect atherosclerotic plaque contained
within the three coronary arteries. It should not reflect plaque in the
bypass grafts.
In the other 50%, there is just too much distortion of the coronary
anatomy (though this has no effect on your health; it is simply an issue
related to heart scanning), there is too much overlap of arteries and
grafts, or too much interference from the various metallic objects left
(intentionally) in the body, such as staples used to stop bleeding
during the surgery.
There is a drawback even if a score is obtained: We don’t really know
how heart scan scores behave after a bypass graft is connected to any
artery. For instance, if there is a bypass to the left anterior
descending artery, does the presence of the graft somehow change how the
score will behave over the years—will it increase more quickly, less
quickly, or not affect it at all? Nobody has yet investigated this
effect.
If it turns out that you are unable to obtain a heart scan score, what
other options are there to track this disease? The next choice is
carotid ultrasound. This simple test can also track plaque, though in
the carotid artery. Plaque in the carotid artery does parallel plaque in
the heart’s coronary arteries, though not perfectly. There is about 70%
overlap (i.e., a correlation of about 0.7). But it is an easy test that
is widely available and can be performed even if coronary bypass surgery
has been performed previously.
I always remind people that, even if heart scanning is not possible, all
the other preventive principles of the Track Your Plaque program still
apply. While you won’t have a heart scan score to track, the Track Your
Plaque program remains the number one most intensive heart disease
prevention program available.
Interested in becoming a Track Your Plaque Member?
If you’re interested in finding out more about becoming a Member of Track Your Plaque, go to the
Track Your Plaque Member Benefits
page. See why more and more people are finding out that there are alternatives to the conventional answers (or lack of answers!) for heart disease.
Track Your Plaque Members
Watch for our new and upcoming Special Reports on:
An Interview with Dr. Joel Fuhrman: The Master of Fasting
Fasting may present a chance for accelerated plaque control, such as
that at the very beginning of your program. So we went to an expert in
fasting, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, to get his take on just how fasting could
benefit those of use with an interest in plaque control and reversal.
A review of unique treatments for lipoprotein(a)
Our new Complete Handbook of Vitamin D
Copyright 2008, Track Your Plaque
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