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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!
  Let’s
face it: When trying to follow a program of reversal of heart disease,
the odds are often stacked against us.
Sometimes the problem originates with a drug manufacturer intent on
persuading us that their $120 per month drug provides all the answers.
Other times difficulty arises from the nutritional supplement industry
hell-bent on selling you on the next new craze in supplements.
Or maybe it was your hospital that tried to enroll you in a
thinly-disguised “health” program that thinly concealed an effort to
corral you into some revenue producing procedure that had little to do
with health, but yielded generous payoff to them. (We have an
actively-promoted and expensive campaign going on in our city right this
moment.)
Sometimes the struggle comes from your doctor, who simply wants to wait
until you have warnings of an impending heart attack before it becomes
clear that heart disease was, after all, a real problem in your life
And other times the stumbling block comes from your own life. In this
month’s Track Your Plaque success, we feature the story of a courageous
woman who defied the potentially health-devastating consequences of a
loss of a loved one. Not only did she succeed, but reversed her coronary
plaque more than anyone else before her.
Track in health—despite the odds!
Dr. Davis
Another Track Your Plaque
success story
When we met Amy at age 52, she was at the height of her
career. She had started a small business with her husband seven years
earlier, and they were now enjoying enormous success. She and her
husband, Tim, decided it was time to devote less time to their now
flourishing business and more time to their health.
Both got heart scans. While Tim’s heart scan score was a modest 21,
Amy’s was higher at 117. For a woman, this put Amy in the 90th
percentile (worst 10% for her age group). Her score did surprise her,
despite the fact that her brother had his first heart attack at age 48,
her mother had a heart attack at age 50. As a successful entrepreneur,
perhaps she felt invincible.
A very severe lipoprotein (a) pattern, Lp(a), proved to the pivotal
cause for Amy’s coronary plaque, along with a marked excess of small LDL.
Amy embarked on a program of fish oil, vitamin D, and niacin for Lp(a).
We advised Amy on how to use diet to correct her small LDL pattern.
Amy promptly lost 10 lbs with these changes and was well on her way.
However, Amy and Tim’s daughter unexpectedly suffered a fatal injury in
a work-related accident.
The parents were devastated. Amy returned to us after a few months delay
very shaken but bolstered by the support of her husband, her family that
came back together after the tragedy, and friends. We picked up where
she left off.
A second heart scan 15 months after her first revealed a score of 43—a
63% drop.
Dr. Davis:
In the Track Your Plaque program, we’ve come to respect the profound
effects of stress, particularly one as exceptionally difficult as the
loss of a loved one.
It is powerful testimony to this woman’s strength that she stuck to her
program after picking up the pieces of her life. Thankfully, she had the
support of a loving husband and a family.
I believe that the lesson we can learn from Amy’s important story is
that, while great stress like the death of someone close to you,
divorce, financial ruin, etc., can have enormous effects on health—drop
in HDL, increased inflammatory measures, marked increase in cancer risk,
loss of control over heart disease risk, even a reduction in heart
muscle strength—it does not necessarily have to overwhelm you and undo
all the good you can still achieve. In fact, despite the odds, Amy
achieved the largest percentage decrease in score of anyone every
involved in this process.
Perhaps other people experiencing the same magnitude of stress that Amy
experienced would not have had the same level of success that she did.
But I do believe that this is yet another example of what is possible in
the big picture of heart disease reversal.
“What do you think about those heart scans?”
Reprinted from The Heart Scan Blog
52-year old Jerry came in for a stress test. He displayed the usual
apprehension: fidgeting while he sat on the bed, nervously eyeing his
surroundings.
“Your doctor asked you to have a stress test?” I asked.
“All the males in my family have heart attacks by age 56,” Jerry
explained, “so my doctor suggested I have a stress test.”
Jerry went on to tell me that he had exercised vigorously this morning
for 45 minutes without symptoms. He had, in fact, gone surfing just
several weeks earlier and described how aerobically challenging it was
keeping up with the 20 year olds. “But I did it!” he proudly declared.
As he neared the end of his brisk walk on the treadmill, Jerry asked,
“What do you think about those heart scans?”
Jerry had asked his primary care physician the same question. His doctor
had apparently told him that they were just a gimmick. “We’ll get you a
real test.”
Of course, Jerry’s stress test proved entirely normal. The likelihood of
an abnormal stress test with his history of vigorous exercise was <2%. I
explained to Jerry that not getting heart scan would be a mistake. In
fact, a heart scan was the only easily obtainable test that would
uncover hidden heart disease. In truth, the stress test was a waste of
time—$4000 of insurance money down the drain and unnecessary exposure to
radiation.
If Jerry’s heart scan score turned out to be zero, great! He was
probably spared the genes from the other males in his family, and his
risk of heart attack in the next decade was nearly zero.
If his heart scan turned out be 1000, then a scramble to uncover the
causes and correct them to create a truly effective prevention program
would be crucial for his long term health. Or, perhaps his score was
somewhere in between, but Jerry would then know how far along he stood
on his way to heart disease.
Don’t be a victim of the ignorance of your doctor.
Despite all the attention heart scans have received, the majority of
doctors remain miserably, inexcusably in the dark. I say inexcusable
because CT heart scans can uncover the number one killer of Americans,
the number one cause of all deaths in any primary care physician’s
practices, and it’s laughably easy. How can a physician not advise
patients on the value of heart scans?
Prophylactic bypass operation?
“My CT heart scan score is high. Wouldn't I be better off just getting a
bypass or something? If I know that heart attack is in my future, why
not just get it over and done with?”
Walter and his wife were shaken by his recent heart scan score of 3348.
“That’s got to be a record!” Walter proclaimed. His heart scan score was
particularly surprising since Walter felt great, swam laps every day,
and looked the picture of health and fitness.
We had advised him that, given his overall situation, a bypass operation
or other major heart procedure was unnecessary. He was without symptoms,
his stress test was normal (indicating normal blood flow to the heart),
and heart muscle strength was normal.
Walter’s wife nervously admitted that maybe they’d both sleep better if
he just went ahead with a bypass.
I strongly disagree with this reasoning. While they might sleep better,
there are several problems:
1) Bypass surgery does not reduce long term risk for heart attack. This
has been borne out by numerous studies and has repeatedly disappointed
and puzzled cardiologists and cardiac surgeons.
2) The risk of bypass surgery can sometimes outweigh the risk of an
asymptomatic heart scan score.
3) Bypass surgery is a temporary "fix," a fancy Band Aid for a disease
that progresses after the procedure. One bypass typically prompts
another, and another . . .
4) Bypassing arteries that have vigorous blood flow often causes the
bypass graft to not "take" and close within the first few days or weeks.
Only arteries that have reduced blood flow generally permit long-term
patency of an alternative source of flow, i.e., a bypass graft. In other
words, in Walter’s case, the bypasses may not even work.
Thankfully, nobody in his right mind in the medical community has
publicly proposed that we perform prophylactic bypass operations.
Unfortunately, it is done everyday—many times every day, in fact—often
because of nervousness of people like Walter and his wife, or because of
the nervousness of the physician, or for money.
Of course, hospitals and surgeons would jump at the chance to perform
procedures in anybody with some threshold heart scan score. It would
double or triple “business” overnight. At $70,000 or more per procedure,
hospital administrators would dance with glee. Of course, you and I
would pay for their new burst of wealth with a sharp increase in health
insurance premiums. Someone like Walter would obtain little or no
benefit yet sport a 12 inch scar in his chest.
Bypass surgery and the like can be life-saving. It can restore life to a
person incapacitated by symptoms of heart disease. But in Walter’s case,
it would be a complete and utter waste of time and money, and an
unnecessary threat to his health.
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:
The Bankrupting of American Healthcare: $20 Billion, Many Lives Lost
Each Year?
A thumbnail exposé that examines the financial and ethical impropriety
of the American heart healthcare system. It is accompanied by a
financial analysis that finally puts a hard number on the financial
cost.
Calcium: Your enemy or your friend?
Copyright 2007, Track Your Plaque
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