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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!
  When
you think about it, the Track Your Plaque program is pretty darn simple.
Yes, our program begins with a simple heart scan. It does not require a
CT angiogram, stress test, heart catheterization, or services of a
hospital.
Yes, our program requires that you and your doctor have some
acquaintance with the concepts of lipoprotein analysis. Relying on just
cholesterol is a fool’s game. There are simply too many holes in
cholesterol as a measure of heart disease risk. Control and reversal of
heart disease is rarely possible just by paying attention only to
cholesterol.
Yes, several supplements like fish oil, vitamin D, and niacin might be
necessary. So will some specific, more rational, modifications of diet.
And, yes, in order to track your plaque, another heart scan will
eventually be required. How else can you track results?
But compare the Track Your Plaque program to the conventional path:
prescription drugs that yield limited benefits and plenty of
side-effects, heart attack, major heart procedures like stents and
bypass surgery. Which would you rather have: a 12-inch incision in your
chest, a bill for $100,000, and a two month recovery—or a modest time
and effort investment that allows you to conduct your life by your own
rules?
I don’t know about you, but to me there is no choice: I’ll take the path
of self-empowerment and prevention and reversal of heart disease any day
Track in health!
Dr. Davis
Another Track Your Plaque Success Story: It’s not
brain surgery!
Richard is a successful 53-year old neurosurgeon.
Deeply involved in his work, he neglected his health for the most part,
aside from occasional efforts at exercise. His father’s death set him
back, however, and Richard struggled with the loss of his father from
heart disease. Richard grieved for several years until he finally
decided to get himself a heart scan.
His heart scan score: 343, in the 99th percentile (worst 1%) for men in
his age group. He was also mortified to discover that most of the plaque
was in the upper portion of the left anterior descending artery, a
location that a cardiologist colleague told him was the “widowmaker.”
No stranger to hospitals and procedures, Richard began to explore ways
to avoid these paths. A friend of Richard’s told him about the Track
Your Plaque program.
Quiet and bookish, we were pleasantly surprised at the religious
adherence Richard showed in following the Track Your Plaque program. We
first identified all hidden causes of coronary plaque, which included a
severe excess of LDL particles (much higher than conventional LDL
cholesterol suggested), 75% of which were small LDL; elevated IDL;
lipoprotein(a); and—of course—severe deficiency of vitamin D3. Richard
also showed pre-diabetic patterns of a high glucose, C-reactive protein,
along with the small LDL pattern.
On the Track Your Plaque nutrition program, Richard lost 38 lbs, which
alone yielded enormous improvements in lipoproteins. We added niacin,
vitamin D, fish oil, and a low dose of a statin drug (along with
coenzyme Q10).
18 months later, Richard’s heart scan score: 249, a 94 point or 27%
drop.
Dr. Davis: Thankfully, despite his background in conventional
medicine, Richard was willing to adopt some unconventional—but
effective—new tools to gain control of his coronary plaque. Had he
followed conventional advice (take Lipitor®, eat a low-fat diet), his
score would undoubtedly have climbed to over 500.
Ironically, the radiologist who interpreted and scored Richard’s two
heart scans was puzzled by the drop in score and simply declared that
“with a value of 249, there is high cardiovascular risk.” Of course,
followers of the Track Your Plaque program know that this is patently
untrue. Richard’s risk for heart attack, given the substantial drop in
heart scan score, is nearly zero.
Richard’s heroic weight loss, coupled with the Track Your Plaque
approach of correcting all hidden causes, achieved what many still claim
is impossible: substantial reduction of coronary atherosclerotic plaque
and virtual elimination of heart attack risk.
Why be satisfied with deceleration?
In the Track Your Plaque program, we aim to stop or reduce your heart
scan score.
Recall that, without any effort at prevention, heart scan scores can be
expected to increase at the average rate of 30% per year.
I am continually surprised at how often people—that is, people not in
the Track Your Plaque program—are often content with what I term
"deceleration," or the slowing of plaque growth. In truth, most people
are content with deceleration of plaque growth because they simply don't
know that plaque continues to grow.
For instance, the BELLES Trial (Beyond Endorsed Lipid Lowering with EBT
Scanning (BELLES)), reported in 2005 showed that 650 women participants
continued to increase heart scan scores 15% whether they took
"high-intensity" statin therapy in the form of Lipitor®, 80 mg, or
"low-intensity" statin therapy as pravastatin, 40 mg, even though the
group taking Lipitor® experienced twice the amount of LDL reduction. In
other words, heart scan scores continued to increase at the same rate of
15% per year regardless of the intensity of LDL lowering by statin drug.
Another study reported in 2006, Effect of intensive versus standard
lipid-lowering treatment with atorvastatin on the progression of
calcified coronary atherosclerosis over 12 months: a multicenter,
randomized, double-blind trial reported similar results. Of the 471
participants, those taking Lipitor®, 80 mg, per day experienced 27% per
year plaque growth (LDL cholesterol 87 mg/dl); those taking 10 mg
Lipitor® experienced 25% plaque growth (LDL 107 mg/dl). Once again, the
intensity of statin therapy made no difference on the rate of plaque
growth. Several other studies have documented a similar effect.
In other words, if we are content to sit back and take Lipitor® or other
statin drug, follow the conventional American Heart Association low-fat,
low-cholesterol diet, we will experience somewhere between 15 to 27%
annual plaque growth—year after year. That can only result in
catastrophe.
No wonder that conventional advice offered by your friendly neighborhood
doctor will avoid (postpone?) only one heart attack in four.
Such is the nature of coronary plaque deceleration: growth is modestly
slowed, but is not stopped. Nor is it reversed.
In the Track Your Plaque program, we grade deceleration of plaque growth
into three distinct stages out of a total of five. (See Winning Your
Personal War with Heart Disease: The Track Your Plaque 5 Stages of
Success.)
Why be satisfied with deceleration? Why not aim for a total stop to
plaque growth? Why not aim for stage 5 of Track Your Plaque success:
Reversal!
Is heart disease a deficiency of statin drugs?
Judging from the conversations I hear from colleagues, the media, and
drug company advertising, you'd think that heart disease has one cause:
a deficiency of statin drugs.
As the thinking goes, if you have coronary disease, you need a statin
drug (Lipitor®, Zocor®, Crestor®, Pravachol®, etc.). If you have
progressive coronary disease, you need more statin drug. If you have a
heart attack while on a statin drug, you need even more statin drug.
Some experts have even proposed that we do away with LDL cholesterol and
just give everybody a statin drug at high doses, even put it in the
water.
Does this make any sense to you?
Doesn't it make better sense that if someone has progressive heart
disease or heart attack while on a statin drug, then target the other
causes largely unaffected by a statin drug? There are at least a dozen
major causes beyond LDL cholesterol, many of them untouched by statin
drugs. Why not 1) identify them, then 2) correct them? It seems
painfully obvious and simplistic, yet few people receive such obvious
information for their heart disease prevention program.
Perhaps if LDL cholesterol remains high on a statin drug, then a higher
dose is justified. But more often than not, it's not a high LDL on
statin drugs that responsible, it's all the other causes.
Imagine someone has pneumonia. After 2 weeks of antibiotics, they are
only partly better. The solution: a higher dose of the same
antibiotic—but no question as to whether the antibiotic was the correct
or complete solution in the first place. That's what happens in heart
disease.
The medical community have been brainwashed into believing this $23
billion dollar per year bit of propaganda. The drug companies actively
try to recruit the public into believing the same. Don't fall for it.
Statin drugs do indeed have a role. But they are not the complete
answer. More of the same when disease progresses makes no sense at all.
We all need to be smarter than that.
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:
Phosphatidylcholine: Can it raise HDL?
The question of phosphatidylcholine (PC) and related supplements has
arisen repeatedly in Track Your Plaque Forum discussions, as well as
from our face-to-face experiences in the Track Your Plaque program. To
date, phosphatidylcholine has not been an ingredient in our experience.
However, interest is so great, and some of the anecdotal results so
positive, that we decided to investigate further. Here is a discussion
of the potential merits of this supplement, phosphatidylcholine, as a
means of raising HDL cholesterol, possibly shifting its subclass
distribution, as well as other lipid effects.
NEW FEATURE: Track Your Plaque Virtual Clinical Trials
Copyright 2007, Track Your Plaque
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