We haven't gotten the word out much about the CIMT access tour. So there
are a couple of ways that we're making it available. One is just
this video right here. Another is a series of outros which will show how to
navigate to the membership site and then find the schedule on the membership site.
Why all should do CIMT? Well, there's a couple of really great ways to
screen for heart attack and stroke risk. They just aren't being used very much -
calcium score and CIMT. The calcium score is a great scan. It's a great
screen. It's not a good monitor. You should only do a calcium score every few
years, and you don't see that much progression with it... a little bit
but not much. It's easy to find a good one though the standards are easily met
and it's inexpensive. The CIMT is not so easy to find a good one but it is the
only really good monitoring device. It helps us manage and understand what
we're doing in terms of our risk. If you you may recognize this CIMT, it was mine
back at age 57. I was in that category of people that thought, yeah, you know I'm
getting a little bit older, but I've been the I've been a poster boy for good
cardiovascular risk management at age 57. I had 73-year-old arteries so that was
not a happy time. But you know, when I have made a lot of changes,
tweaks, one of the things that I found out was I had insulin resistance. I did
not know that. The other big change was I finally broke
down and started taking some statin. So there's a lot of statin haters out
there. I know that's an issue, and I know I'll lose a lot of people when I mention
that. But the reality is so as you continue to look through here
yes, this blue line is for boys or men. That's the age, and this is
that how thick your IMT, your artery wall is. That pink line is for women. Women
tend to not put down as much plaque. We've talked about that in multiple places.
Now, this was the study that really made CIMT may made us insight. The scientists
aware that CIMT is a big deal. As you see, it was aged 35 to 65. Now, these are
relatively young people. So if you start looking at the categories - normal
arteries, class 2 with a little bit of wall thickening, class 3 with some
plaque, and then class 4 with so much plaque that it's impeding flow. So here's
the thing. A lot of young people, a lot of low-risk people, as we continue to go
through that age category... the category... the class 1 and class 2 began to
fall off. And here's the thing. I was in class 3. I thought I was in great
shape, but I had plaque and didn't know it. That's what CI MT is really good
about. Again, it's stated before, if you can't find a good CIMT,
a calcium score is great at tipping you off that there's a problem. Then sometime
over the next years, you start managing your risk. I would recommend getting the
CIMT. That's why we've spent so much time getting this event ready for you,
and here the schedules. Birmingham (cancelled). Austin. Orlando. Detroit. Central Ohio. Rochester.
New York. And Portland, Maine. As you continue to go down through the
progression of my CIMT, as you can see, I went from arteries that were 20
years older than me, from 57, well, 57 years old up to
73 year old old arteries. At 57 years old, I have
73-year-old arteries. I continued to decrease my numbers mostly by managing
insulin resistance and by again breaking down and taking the statin. The bigger
item is, well, we can debate what had the bigger impact. Now, as you can see
here, here I'm 62 at this point, and my IMT is still in the low 50s. So I've gone
from 15 16 years older for my arterial age to 10 years younger. Big, big change.
Now, just a couple of other quick points. Where is the carotid artery? It's right
here where's the bulb right there. Why don't we just do the ultrasound? Because
an ultrasound only shows you... the carotid ultrasound only shows you these
people that have so much plaque. It's impeding the flow in their artery. These
class 1 and class 2 which are a huge portion of the population, once you start
hitting your 50s and 60s, those are the people that were really wanting to find
out. People that have a problem and don't know it.
So just a couple of review points. This is what we're looking at. Plaque doesn't
form inside the lumen, the place where the blood flows inside.
Plaque forms inside the artery wall, and that's what we're looking for.
We're looking for this progression. And again, people in these spaces are not
going to see that they or even know that they have plaque but they are at risk. As
you see here, a vulnerable plaque which could burst spew, soft plaque fluid out
into the artery wall. And if it does that, it can form a clot. If the clot is big
enough and goes to the heart, it is a heart attack. If it's big enough
and goes to the brain, it causes a stroke. If it's microscopic and it goes
on for decades, it can cause heart failure and
or dementia and or blindness or kidney disease.
So these are some looks that have a plaque. Unfortunately, it's one of the
major ways of finding plaques after the patient's already died. As you can see,
what we would rather do is find that when you're still alive and still have
the opportunity to make a change. This is another post-mortem image. There was
soft plaque down in this area. This layer right here is an intima layer. It
cracked. That soft plaque went out into the bloodstream. It formed a clot, this
black stuff is not the plaque in itself, not plaque anymore. It's the clot that came
back through the cracks in the intima area. The majority of the clot is no
longer here. It's up in the heart and that's why we're doing a post-mortem on
that patient. It killed the patient. Now, why is good CIMT
difficult to find? Well, as you see, plaque is not always uniform in the arteries. If
you look in the wrong way, you can see a lot less plaque than you actually have.
So getting a good CIMT scan requires fastidious and robust quality systems.
Todd Eldredge - he did his original training as a doctorate in the
epidemiology and how to set up quality systems for cardiovascular testing. So
he's got the perfect background for someone to run this kind of program.
Thank you very much for your interest.
So we've had a lot of people ask about how to get into the CIMT event. We've
got a whole schedule on the membership page. I'm gonna take you through that
real quick. First of all, you go to PrevMedHeartRisk.com. That takes you to
our website. Click on the membership login page, and membership is free. You
just have to give your email address. Then you'll see you've got a menu over
on the left. Live webinar. Second live webinar. CIMT events. Click that button
then click the grey button and you see all of the schedule for getting a good
reliable CIMT near your area. Orlando. Central, Western Ohio just west of
Cincinnati. Austin, Texas. Detroit, Michigan. Rochester. Memphis. Lots of places. And
most of these are thanks to our good friend David Meinz. And again, CIMT
done reliably who's got a lot of advantages very good way to screen, much
better than a stress test, and a lot more comfortable than going to the cath lab.
Thank you very interesting. Go get a good CIMT near you.