LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

heart attack

Can a Simple Mineral Beat Statins for the Heart?

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There are times when it seems like the only answer in medicine is another drug.  For heart stuff this is unquestionably statins.
Have high cholesterol?  Take Lipitor.  Have a family history of heart disease?  Take Crestor.  Your dog’s litter mates’ cousins’ owner had a heart attack?  Take atorvastatin.
You get the idea.
But when it comes to natural approaches which are JUST as powerful without a long list of potentially fatal side effects, it seems like “we just need more research.”
In this particular study, we see a simple approach…those with the highest levels of magnesium in their bloodstream had a 40% reduced risk of suffering sudden cardiac death.
At a cost that is just a fraction of even a generic statin and no side effects when taken orally.

 

Statins Versus Fast Food; Really an Even Battle?

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JUST HOW OFF BASE IS MEDICINE?

Keep in mind that this particular article is an editorial.  The author is writing for the British Heart Foundation.  He believes that the use of a statin can zero out the negative health effects of a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a small milkshake.

Have we really come so far down the dark path of unhealth that we have to accept that patients can’t change and we need to rely on medications instead of lifestyle?  That is truly a sad state of affairs if doctors collectively do not have faith in their patients.

Maybe this is because they themselves are not exactly free of hypocrisy?

Regardless, the faulty reasoning here is that the beneficial effects of statins have been overblown while the negative effects of fast food have been under emphasized.  Or maybe this is just representative of the tightening relationship between medicine and big business as epitomized by the endorsement of Coca Cola by the American Association of Family Physicians…

Calcium Supplements and Heart Disease

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IS MY CALCIUM SUPPLEMENT GOING TO GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK??
It’s always funny the poor research that mainstream media picks up and the good stuff they don’t.
Here are a few things to consider. First, I usually don’t recommend calcium supplementation until someone becomes osteoporotic. At this point it becomes much, much more important to take calcium in order to protect the bones than worry about any additional increased risk to the heart.
Second, reading into the study, it appears that those with a higher dietary intake of calcium were at risk (my interpretation….more dairy intake), while those with lower levels of dietary intake were NOT affected by the calcium supplementation.
Further, we always have to look at the “how.” In this particular case, giving calcium without magnesium in a 2:1 ratio can cause a relative magnesium deficiency, which is NOT good for the heart….The higher quality calcium supplements all include magnesium.

Think You’re Not at Risk for Heart Disease? Take This Test and Find Out

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Prevent heart disease
McCarony/Dollar Photo Club

 

Heart disease is not something that we need to educate the public on. Everyone’s got ideas on how to prevent heart disease.

But, apparently, there’s some massive disconnect between what we need to do and what we are doing.  A recently study revealed that not a single person out of 1,731 were living a lifestyle that included Life’s Simple 7 established by the American Heart Association.  Not a single one.

But I’m confident that not a single person out of the 1,731 actually wanted to have a heart attack or leave his or her family with the untimely death of a loved one.

So why the disconnect?  This particular study may help give you some insight as to why YOU haven’t adopted at least the Simple 7.

In it, researchers looked at a group of 5,863 patients and asked about his or her individual perception of  risk of heart disease based on established risk factors.  The patient’s perceived risk was then compared to his or her ACTUAL risk based on established risk factors.

Individuals were asked to rate his or her heart disease risk for the next years as low, intermediate or high.  Based on these responses, they were classified as hypo-perceivers (the patient’s perceived his or her risk of heart disease as lower than it actually was) and normo-perceivers (the patient’s perceived risk was on par with his or her actual risk).  Here’s what they found:

  • Cardiovascular risk was intermediate in 45.7% and high in 54.3% of individuals as estimated by the Lifetime Risk Score (LRS).
  • Shockingly, 83.9% were hypo-perceivers, thinking that they were at a lower risk than they actually were.
  • A mere 16.1% estimated their risk correctly.

Talk about a massive disconnect.  First of all, EVERYONE in the study had at least an intermediate risk for heart disease.  This is a sad reflection on the overall state of health.  But how could so many of these patients be so unaware at how great his or her risk is??

The rest of the study may give us some insight into just how much our “take a pill to fix it” society has screwed up our perceptions:

  • Smokers were 204% more likely to underestimate their risk.
  • Those with cholesterol problems were 121% more likely to underestimate risk.
  • Sedentary people were 167% more likely.
  • Those who took meds? A whopping 350% more likely to underestimate his or her risk.
  • On the flip side, those with a higher BMI (64%), high blood pressure (43%), depression (54%) and stress (60%) were at a lower risk of hypo-perception.

I have said this time and time and time again.  Taking medications to “fix” your problems does no such thing.  In almost every situation, medications give you a false sense of security.  Even though your blood pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar has gotten better on the meds, it translates very weakly into actually changing your risk of the things you are really worried about like heart attacks, stroke or death.

In other words, you will die with better numbers, but you WILL STILL DIE.

While this is a strong statement, we have seen it play out over and over in the medical literature.  This study just reinforces the fact that our drug-oriented medical approach is creating a society that BELIEVES it is at a lower risk for heart disease, when in reality, it is not.  There is a very high likelihood that you have some degree of risk for heart disease, unless you have adopted at least Life’s Simple 7 (click here for more info on the Simple 7 and see where you stand….personally I’m at a 9.4/10 because my BMI suggests I should lose 4 pounds, but my actual body fat percentage is where I want it to be).

Take the test yourself and let me know how you scored in the comments section!

 

Worried About Your Heart? Did Your Cardiologist Check This?

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YOU MUST ADD THIS TO YOUR LABWORK!!

I personally do not check this lab value, but these numbers are very strong.  Troponin T (cTnT) is a protein that helps cardiac muscles contract.  Any level of heart damage can increase the level of this compound in the blood stream.  In this particular study, those with the highest levels of cTnT had almost an 800% increased risk of dying from a fatal heart attack!!!  800%!!  Even those with mild elevations had increases in risk of dying.  It is becoming more and more frequent to hear of people suffering fatal heart attacks that “had no history of heart disease.”  This is actually very misleading as I’ve said that someone can drop dead of a heart attack leaving a perfect stress test and cardiac screen.  Maybe if these now deceased patients had their cTnT levels checked it would’ve be a wake up call for the path they were on.

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Cholesterol Lowering Drugs & Your Good Cholesterol–Bad News

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aspirin to protect your heart
Sergey Yarochkin/Dollar Photo Club

Despite all the less-than-stellar research on cholesterol lowering drugs, the powers-that-be want us to take even more of it.

The latest “cholesterol guidelines” released late in 2013 have drastically increased the number of patients who would potentially be given a statin.  They have finally dropped the fallacy that total cholesterol has any value (you know–total cholesterol–that lab value that you were taught to pay attention to so doctors would know when to put you on a cholesterol lowering medication..) and basically state that you should be given a statin if your doctor THINKS you might be at risk for a heart attack.

I have certainly been a vocal opponent of the statin class of drugs because the numbers just don’t make any sense.  Treat 1,000 people for 5 years to prevent 11 heart attacks (instead of 22 people who would’ve had heart attackes without the drugs), while at the same time causing diabetes in 8 more.  A net gain of 3.  Out of a thousand.  In 5 years.

That just sucks in my book.

And “they” think we should use it more on more patients.  None of this takes into account the very long list of side effects from this class of drugs (other then the already mentioned increased risk of diabetes).

And, as we treat more and more patients with cholesterol lowering drugs, the amount of people experiencing side effects is just going to skyrocket.  But at least they are not going to have a heart attack because of the statin drugs.

Right?

I guess that all depends.

This particular study looks at one of those little-known secrets about drugs to lower cholesterol.  While they all lower cholesterol levels (for whatever that is worth), in some individuals the drugs also lower HDL (the “good”) cholesterol.  This is generally not a good thing.  Specifically, researchers looked at 724 patients who had just started treatment with statins after having a heart attack and followed for 6 to 9 months.

Eighty-six percent (620) of these patients had his or her HDL-C level increase during the course of the study, while 14% (104) of patients had his or her HDL cholesterol go down.  Here’s what the researchers found when they looked closer at the group that had HDL levels drop:

  • Both groups had their LDL cholesterol levels drop below 100 mg/dl.
  • Adverse cardiovascular events (including death from all causes, heart attacks and stroke) happened more frequently in the decreased HDL group.
  • To be precise, this lower HDL group had these events at over TWICE the rate (15.4% vs 7.1%).
  • Overall, those who had lowered HDL as a result of the statin drugs (to protect the heart, I might add) were 95% more likely to have a cardiac event.

Let’s get this straight.  A drug given to lower cholesterol levels actually lowered good cholesterol levels in 14% of those patients taking them.  In this 14%, they were 95% MORE likely to have a cardiac event??

THIS is the wonder drug that seemingly all of medicine is hanging their hats on to save the world from heart disease?  I‘ll take lifestyle changes, thank you.

 

Aspirin to Prevent Heart Disease; Are You STILL Taking It?

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aspirin to protect your heart
Sergey Yarochkin/Dollar Photo Club

Everyone’s doin’ it. TV ads say you should be doin’ it. Your doctor says you should be doin’ it. But should you really take aspirin for your heart?

For a very long time, this answer was a strong, positive “YES.”  After all-aspirin thins the blood so it would make sense for aspirin to lower your risk of a heart attack, right?

Yes, and hormone replacement therapy for women was a great idea as well.  At least until someone decided to really look at this multi-billion dollar drug industry and found that HRT actually caused everything you were told it would help.  Oops.

So for decades, doctors and advertising messages bombarded you with the idea that aspirin will protect your heart.  The problem is that this was largely a theory that was promoted to you as fact.  But, over a decade ago (2001 to be exact), studies were published finding no benefit to taking aspirin in low-risk individuals.  That means that, for the average person, he or she was taking a drug well-known to lead to bleeding ulcers, kidney damage, strokes, macular degeneration and even pancreatic cancer, all with the idea that it was good for his or her heart.

It took another decade for further studies to make it to the limelight, but in 2010 another study was published and again found no benefit to using aspirin to protect the heart.  Two large meta-analysis of multiple studies published in 2011 also found no benefit to using aspirin to prevent a first heart attack (primary prevention).

At this point, I was SURE that this was the death of aspirin to prevent a first heart attack (the data is a little stronger if you’ve already had a heart attack), but I still have patients taking aspirin for their heart.  And they seemed shocked to hear that it really has no benefits (ok…if you treat 1000 patients with aspirin for 5 years, 2.9 less people with have a heart attack, although 2.8 will experience a major bleed due to the aspirin.  Net gain of 1 person out of 10,000 patients.  So I guess I can’t say that there is NO benefit to aspirin..).

Just in case you still aren’t convinced, this particular study should put your confusion to rest.  In it, researchers looked at 22,576 patients who were at least 50 years of age with stable heart disease that required high blood pressure medications.  These patients were grouped into an “ischemic” group if they had a history of unstable angina, myocardial infarction, transient ischemic attack, or stroke while all others were grouped as “non-ischemic.”  Here’s what they found:

  • 56.7% of all participants used aspirin, which increased to 69.3% by the end of the study.
  • In the “non-ischemic” group aspirin actually INCREASED the risk of a heart attack, stroke or dying by 11%.
  • However, in  the “ischemic” group aspirin did lower the risk of a heart attack, stroke or death by 13%.

For those of us who have NOT had a heart attack, this is NOT good news.  Given the previous studies on aspirin over the past 14 years or so, the results of this study are no surprised at all.

What I will suggest is what I have suggested to all my patients–relying on a single drug (with side effects) to try to change your risk of heart attack instead of making wise lifestyle choices is just plain stupid.  And yet sadly, this is what society promotes.

If you’d like to get a good start on protecting your heart without aspirin, feel free to check out my heart disease eBook on Amazon by clicking here.