Inflammation. Time magazine knew about this 15 years ago. This is a cover
article from 2004, "The Secret Killer: The Surprising Link Between inflammation and
Heart Attacks, Cancer, Alzheimer's, and Other Diseases, and What You Can Do to
Fight It."
How about the medical establishment? Well, the standards committees know
that it exists. They've bantered back and forth on whether to look at C-reactive
protein, and C-reactive protein doesn't have a great... it's got too many false
positives, and they know it. So they're still trying to work through it. I don't
think I'd wait. I think I'd go ahead and get that test. In fact, I did I get that
test on a regular basis for myself as well as my loved ones as well as my
patients. Well, what is inflammation and what why does it matter? Well, that's
actually burning up that... in that glycocalyx? What is the glycocalyx? It's a
fuzzy lining to the intima, the slick lining of the artery walls. Now why
is that important? That glycocalyx protects us protects the
artery wall from what's inside the blood flow, for example, LDL. In fact, plaque is
nothing but LDL. What we used to call bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein),
plaque is nothing but LDL that has gone through the glycocalyx and lodged in the
artery wall. Now, how does that happen? Well, as you see up here, here's the the
artery - the intima, the media. That's the summary. It gets a lot more complicated
in terms of layers but you don't need to remember all that. Look at this next
image. These are a couple of images of the glycocalyx. This is an actual picture
of a glycocalyx, and you see it's lining the artery wall. This is a diagram of
it in the purple and pink here. This picture below is a full, healthy
glycocalyx. And as you see over here, part C here, this small one is a damaged
plaque. Okay, looks as you can see it's much much thinner. Let's take a different
look and a maybe clearer look. This is a nice, healthy glycocalyx, part A here. And
look at this one. This is an injured glycocalyx, part B here. Now what kind of
it? Like somebody came home, who came through
an uncut field with a lawnmower. Now you can... after seeing that visual, you can
begin to understand a lot better why inflammation is actually just the major
issue that causes heart attacks and strokes. Because it's the major issue
that results in plaque buildup. We've been going down the wrong road
focusing on the cholesterol or how high our LDL is. As you can see, it
doesn't matter how high your LDL is. If you've got a nice healthy glycocalyx, and
and if you've got a damaged one, it's gonna get through the damaged one even
at low levels. And it's not gonna get through the nice healthy glycocalyx. Now
what causes this kind of damage to the glycocalyx? By far, the most common is
elevated blood sugar from insulin resistance, prediabetes, metabolic
syndrome. Another cause is high insulin insulin itself will damage that
glycocalyx. Cigarette smoke is lethal to the glycocalyx. Other inflammatory
diseases caused problems as well, and other chemicals. Now let's just take a
quick look. Yeah, we've talked many times about the webinar series and how we've
mislabeled it. The webinar series is actually set up to give you access to
the inflammation panel. And this is a copy of my inflammation panel from 2015.
I used this image because this is the only time I've ever seen Quest labs put
the whole inflammation panel all together you know in one section.
Myeloperoxidase nd PLAC2, these two are enzymes that are actually released
by immune cells that are trying to attack that plaque in the artery wall.
CRP (C-reactive protein) is a protein that the docs, when they do look
for cardiovascular inflammation, actually will often use that but they'll use it
alone. Why don't we use it alone? Well it's way too high false-positive rate. If
we did a 100 flu shots today, 60 of those patients would have a positive
C-reactive protein two days from now. So that's way
too many false positives. Microalbumin creatinine ratio is the most important
of the inflammatory tests. What that tests for is damage to that glycocalyx
and intima layer. It's looking to see if protein is escaping through the filters
of the kidney. Because the filter membrane of the kidney is
the intima. That's what it is. And if protein albumin can filter
through that kidney into the urine, then plaque/LDL can filter through that
glycocalyx, that intima, to form plaque. Let me just repeat that because it's a
little bit complicated. If albumin can filter through the intima and glycocalyx
of the kidneys into the urine, then LDL can filter through the glycocalyx and
intima in the rest of the body to form plaque. Now here's a patient that had...
here's another version of it. As I said, they hardly ever put them all
together. I had to piece these together. And this patient had good C-reactive
protein, good myeloperoxidase, and PLAC2. His microalbumin creatinine was a
little bit elevated. This was a male, and in males, we wanted 7 or below. This
was 10 now. Don't follow the lab normals as listed here. At 30,
the 30 lab normal are lab limit range of 30 is for kidney disease. It's not
for cardiovascular risk. But as you can see here, this patient is actually
improving dramatically. He had much worse values back in 2017 and 2016, so he's
been doing some good work. Do you know your numbers? If not, you
should check them out. Check out the webinar series. Thank you for your
interest. So I'm very excited to announce we now have a membership page. Now what
is that? That's the one place where you can go and access
all of our digital products. It starts off with a few free things, like a lot of
infographics which help you understand the basics of insulin resistance,
cardiovascular inflammation, and other key concepts on how to prevent heart
attack and stroke. The next free item is the intro and first chapter of the book
that we're writing on plaque and the standards of medicine just aren't doing
very well right now in terms of the number one killer and disabler - plaque. We
don't do a good job of measuring it, we don't do a good job of monitoring it, and
there are better ways. So that's what this book is all about. Again, go in, and
get a free a look at the intro and the first chapter. And if you've
purchased the cardiovascular inflammation and IR courses, thank you so
much for doing that. You purchased those at a time before we
had them totally cleaned up. And we've cleaned them up now, and they're
available for you right there on the membership page. Hit the link below,
register and go in, and take a look. Look forward to seeing you there. Thank you.