So, a couple of nights ago. I got a comment from tmacphd, and here's the
comment: My cardiologist who's, by the way, a leading cardiologist at Cedars Sinai,
says this is absolutely impossible. While you may curtail the build-up of
arterial plaque, it is impossible to rid existing plaque from arteries
(exclamation point) and he's talking about the video where I said I reversed 20
years worth of plaque; you know what - I get it. It's that whole - that's my most
popular video, by the way, and these days, recently, it looks sort of like a click
bait. it looks like this is something for a - the thumbnail; My new video manager
Kim Hermoso redid the thumbnail and I thought - you know what - that's a little
bit garish and out there and I was going to tell her and then I looked and
overnight our views on that video doubled so I told her you - you did fine,
it looks great, let's leave it as it is; but, again, so what we're talking about is
we think we got a doc who's doing the worst of Internet YouTube click bait,
telling people what? some Theory - what they want to hear instead of reality;
Right? Wrong. So I obviously - that got me going. This is an issue that concerns me
from several different perspectives. The first perspective I could say is well,
you know what? It's an ego issue and I'd love - I have to do ego battles with other
Docs and cardiologists all the time but that's not the issue. The important issue
here - the important issue is we have so many problems associated with lack of
understanding of prevention. The leadership in medicine -
Most - I talked with cardiologists all the time and most of them don't understand
that you can reverse plaque and this - that misunderstanding is not nearly
as bad as the misunderstanding that you know what? The only thing you can do for
prevention of heart attack and stroke is lower the LDL and statins - is the only
way to do that; but let's get back to the point that you can't reverse arterial
plaque. John and I have done several videos, already looking at specific -
specific articles on plaque reversal. I just quoted three of them. Again, couldn't
help it I responded once then I went back a few minutes later responded again
got a couple of other articles and you see there, in here - you can go to - I pinned
this under that video: jow to drop or reverse twenty years of plaques, so you
can find all of these articles under there. One of them has to do with just
even using the lipitor to get reversal and you do see reversal with lipitor;
Lipitor is not as good as rosuvastatin or potalastatin in terms of
controlling inflammation and that's the big deal here, much more so than LDL;
but before I go on about those issues, let's just get into one of the articles
and cover some details there. This is the Precise IVUS study. IVUS I-V-U-S means
intravascular ultrasound and this is parts of the provides - Precise IVUS study.
Now, let me just - you know what? I'm not going to be able to to show that as well
as I want right there. Let's look at this. Eight - that's Delta. This - this is a slide
I made for this specific discussion. That thing up at the top
and corner says Delta PAV. Guess what delta PAV means? Change in percent of
atheroma volume. In other words, this is a study looking at how much change you can
get. Now, they attributed admittedly to LDL but they were using statins so
they're - they're assuming it's an LDL issue. Now, wait a minute. Let's step back
just a sec. Oh, where did that come from? Some no-name Journal? Well, if you're
a cardiologist, it came from JACC; if you're not a cardiologist - the Journal of the
American College of Cardiology.
2015, Tsujita & Associates, the PRECISE-IVUS study. Again, this is a well-known
study and as you look at this, I'll get a little bit bigger to show you some of
these numbers. As you look at this - this reversal of atheroma is a well-known
thing. Again, as I said, A. It's not common and B, it's - you hardly ever get
completely - you never - I've never seen a case of complete eradication of plaque.
What we're talking about here is actually reversing it though. So, again, as
I said, this thing up in the left hand corner says percent change in atheroma
volume and this blue bar is progression of the volume and that blue bar there is
decline; so every - and this is zero - so in every one of these studies, PRECISE-IVUS
the turbostatin alone, PRECIS-IVUS turbosatin alone with a different group.
Asteroid with the rosuvastatin; Saturn with atorvastatin;
PRECISE Saturn again. All of these - every one of these dots is showing a
decrease in the volume of the atheroma or (pardon me) atheroma is plaque. So
again, I could go on. Well, if I can remember to, I'll put a couple of other
links to other videos and other articles which show that reversal of plaque
certainly can happen. Now, why is that a big deal?
Well, it's a big enough deal that - you know - it pulled me out of retirement. Yet,
again, we live in a world where leaders in medicine think that you can't reverse
plaque and unfortunately - and even more - even more unfortunately, we live in a
world where leaders in medicine think that it's all about LDL. We live in a
world where Scientific American, one of the leading popular journals on science,
publishes an article which says you're fear-mongering when you look at - when you
warn people about insulin resistance. Why? because most people never end up needing
insulin. They - most people never end up getting a full-blown diagnosis of type 2
diabetes. Unfortunately, again, we live in a world where somebody as smart as John
Lorscheider, who knows more about this topic in area than most docs I've dealt
with can come to me first as a patient and say "Look, I've already looked at my
blood sugar. There's no problems with it. My doc looks at it every year and we're
fine." and then, as we start to do a workup, John comes back to me and says "Look
actually, on the insulin challenge I almost hit 300. I wonder how many hours a
day my blood sugar's at 300; and oh, by the way, my ophthalmologist tells me I
have damage to my eyes from diabetes and, oh by the way, my primary care doctor
still says - you know what? That insulin survey was rigged to fail.
You don't have damage." What? we live in a world where the leaders, in terms of
health and coaching get way too wrapped up in things like carbs versus low carbs
and then end up with - we have people like like Chuck Smith who lose 50 pounds on a
vegan diet and then have a heart attack. Now, I've got nothing against vegan - vegan
diets vegan diets a lot of people have lost a lot of weight and I remained
plant-based for three decades but here's the problem. We get so focused on low
carb versus low fat VS vegan VS - and we forget that each one of us is an
individual with our own individual issues and metabolism.
The reason Chuck found - found out that he continued to have - still had a heart
attack after losing 50 pounds on his vegan diet was that he was insulin
resistant. He began watching this channel. He began learning from us that - you know
what? My triglyceride / HDL ratio was 5. 1 is a safe number. 2 is not good. He was
burning his arteries and now, he knows that. So we're in it, he's in a different
space. We live in a world where people like Gene - Gene Lovell can go along
thinking - you know what? I'm - I got a little bit of weight problem but overall
I'm - I'm where I need to be but then develop some heart symptoms; develop a
need for a - for a cabbage, a bypass graft, and then he begins to look at
himself; begins to think of a different way of dieting; loses 50 pounds and says
"That was no big deal and I'm much healthier now" People like Bob Rosenfeld
can say "Look I lost 25 pounds. It wasn't that difficult" and my wife, by the way,
says I look like the man she married. So we live in a world where
a lot of bad things continue to go on. Heart attack and stroke, by the way in
case you haven't heard, Heart attack is the number one cause of
death. Stroke bounces around between 3, 4, and 5;
Used to be number 2 but it's clearly the number 1 cause of disability and
dementia is starting to creep up there in terms of being a major killer. All of
these things start from insulin resistance and we're not dealing with it.
In fact, what we're doing is printing articles saying that we're
fear-mongering over insulin resistance so because people won't need - won't need
insulin; won't develop a full-blown diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.
Unfortunately, those of us in this world - this culture, who are listening to those
experts, are suffering major death you know. Again, we live in a world where we
say - you know what? you've got risk of heart attack and stroke 10% by
Framingham - that's high risk. Whereas, we'll tell people - if you have low risk,
you're fine. Meanwhile, we'll tell them to ignore vascular-intravascular ultrasound
CIMT and find out, people like me and tons of other people that I've seen
actually had a 40% ten year heart attack event risk because we
didn't do the CIMT. we live in a difficult world.
I'm, overall, an optimist. I don't sound like it in this rant but this is why I'm
not gonna retire as long as we have people that are getting beat up, killed,
and disabled by this process - heart attack, stroke, cardiovascular
inflammation. I can't retire. If you'd like - so part of this point is - Yes, we are
open to see patients. We did have to close for a while. While I was working
with - full-time with a couple of companies. We're back in business and let
us know. All you have to do is go to myhealth@PrevMedHeartRisk.com
Michelle can help you get started and
again, be careful who you listen to. Take a look at the science for yourself. Think
- if you've made it this far through that rant, thank you very much for your
interest.