LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

CRP

TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS AS A RISK FACTOR FOR STROKE – (02-27-06)

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Metabolic Syndrome Compared With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus as a Risk Factor for Stroke

So metabolic syndrome was a greater predictor of stroke that diabetes, not because of the amount of risk it confers, but because metabolic syndrome is so darn prevalent. As high as 30%. 30%. Did I mention that the prevalence was as high as 30%? So why, I beg, is this condition so incredibly, blatently ignored?

There seems to be a never ending supply of bloodwork from patients coming into my office with strong family or personal histories of cardiovascular disease, and yet their bloodwork is limited to fasting glucose, standard lipids, and maybe an HbA1c. No fasting insulin, CRP, PAI-1, homocysteine. I’d pull my hair out in frustration, but I’ve none left…

Read entire article here

CONTRIBUTIONS OF DEPRESSION TO HEART DISEASE – (06-06-05)

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Contributions of Depression and Inflammatory Markers to Heart Disease

When we talk about true wellness, we are not just talking about eating better and exercising.  True wellness encompasses spirituality, stress reduction as well as psychological health.

This article finds a relationship between depression and increased CRP, interleukin 6 and ICAM 1-all markers of inflammation.  And, given that inflammation has been linked to most chronic diseases, you can do the math from there.

HOW TO BRING DOWN YOUR CRP LEVELS? – (02-21-05)

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High levels of C-reactive protein with low total cholesterol concentrations

Holy moly!!  Patients with normal/low cholesterol and elevated CRP had an ELEVEN TIMES risk of dying with coronary artery disease.  And there are still clinicians out there refusing to check CRP levels in patients with a family history of heart disease.

There is absolutely no excuse for this and these doctors should be pushed out of medicine.  And remember that fish oils, exercise and managing insulin resistance can bring down CRP levels quite well.

Read entire article here

RELATION OF DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS – (03-06-05)

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Relation of depressive symptoms to CRP and pathogen burden (cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex virus, Epstein-Barr virus) in patients w/ earlier acute coronary syndromes

This article has so many implications.  And it is a perfect example of why so much research into “CAM therapies” or natural approaches bothers me.  The finding of strong relationships between both being depressed and/or having a latent viral infection with elevated CRP levels adds yet another layer to the onion that is cardiovascular disease.  Mainstream medicine has always tried to follow the “one cause, one cure” model but it fails miserably for chronic diseases.

Any natural approach to CVD addresses a multitude of lifestyle and nutritional interventions.  And yes, addressing psychological health is a part of that approach.  What I would love to see now is, do antidepressant medications lower CRP levels?  Or do they mask the symptoms and allow underlying damaging physiological imbalances to continue…

Read entire article here

 

EFFECT OF A HIGH FIBER DIET VS A FIBER SUPPLEMENTED DIET ON CRP LEVEL – (11-05-07)

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Effect of a High-Fiber Diet vs a Fiber-Supplemented Diet on C-Reactive Protein Level

Once it was realized that hsCRP as a marker of inflammation was related to a variety of chronic diseases, the hunt was on to find a drug to lower the level of CRP. While this approach is definitely not new and is more the norm, I’ll never understand the motivation when natural approaches already work. We already know that exercise and higher intakes of omega-3 fatty acids help to lower hsCRP, but now we can add fiber to the list.

And while the study looked at dietary as well as supplemental, the goal is to attain 30 g /day from diet alone; at this level of fiber it will come along bearing many other gifts in the form of phytonutrients.

Read entire article here

HOW WELL ARE WE MANAGING HEART DISEASE RISK FACTORS?

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Let’s face it.  If you are willing to make changes, managing cardiac risk factors is a piece of cake (or rather…avoiding that piece of cake…).  Lifestyle changes are not difficult, but require commitment.  Society does not easily support healthy lifestyle and requires a shift from what you’ve been doing.  But the payoffs are massive for you and your family.

I continue to contend that lifestyle changes are the ONLY way to manage chronic diseases.  Maybe if we did not live under the false pretense that, because our “numbers” look better (cholesterol, HbA1c, blood pressure, blood glucose, etc…), we’ve dodged the bullet of early death.  I cannot stress enough that this is just not true.  We live in a society dominated by surrogate end markers.  We think that because our cholesterol has magically been lowered by the coveted, mystical statin that we’ve lowered our risk for a heart attack or stroke.  Ok–so maybe you have, but only by a SMIDGEN (which, in medical terminology, is about 1%).  This is NOT prevention, it is false hope.  Lifestyle changes, on the other hand, have true global health benefits that are unquestionable.

This particular study just reinforces how pathetic “we” are when it comes to cardiac risk factors.  We can’t even do it right using drugs!  In shooting for lower LDL levels AND optimal CRP levels (a marker of inflammation) only 12% of the patients in this large study managed to achieve the desired numbers.  You will hopefully note that they were looking at LDL levels and not total cholesterol.  Hopefully, we are finally abandoning the futility of checking total cholesterol in lieu of better markers.

The authors’ suggestions?  “Smoking cessation, weight reduction, and the greater use of more potent statins at higher doses might be able to improve these outcomes.”  We just don’t get it.  It’s almost laughable how sickeningly dependent we have become on medication to “protect” our health.  Even with a society heavily dependent on meds, we still can’t get 88% of the population to target levels.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002914911004632

GETTING A CARDIAC STENT? CHECK THIS FIRST…

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Regardless of whether you’re on the cath table just starting to fade away from the anesthesia or are reading this from home, inflammation is a major, massive player in heart disease.  We’ve spent so much time focusing on cholesterol levels, mainly because we had a drug that could lower this value so we fit the disease risk factors to the drug that could control that risk factor.  Only recently has inflammation (usually as measured with hsCRP) been looked at as a risk factor.

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is the procedure in which a cardiologist pokes a camera into your coronary arteries to look at how healthy they appear.  If there is a problem, the common answer is to place a stent in a blocked artery to make sure that blood continues to flow through this artery to feed the heart.  The big problem with this procedure is that these stents have a tendency to plug back up again (restenosis).  Two schools of thought exist– the use of bare metal stents or the use of drug eluting stents to lower the risk of restenosis.  In this particular study, researchers determined that the inflammation levels were a major determinant in which a bare metal stent or a drug eluting one should be used.

Less simplify this.  Manage your inflammation long before you need a stent and the decision won’t be there to make.  Exercise, live an anti-diabetic lifestyle, stress less, add a multivitamin, D and mixed tocopherols (Vit E) as well as fix any silent sources of inflammation like poor oral health, poor gut health or food allergies.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002914911003869