My high sensitivity CRP went up from 1 to 2.3. Concern? I'm rarely
concerned about CRP. Folks that do know about inflammation (most of them and
that's not a lot of folks), most of them mostly focus on CRP.
CRP is C-reactive protein. It's a protein made by the liver, and it's got
way too many false positives. If a hundred people get a flu vaccine
today, 2 days from now, 60 of them would have a positive CRP. So what do we
do? We look at a panel of tests. One is involving myeloperoxidase. Another one
is Lp-PLA2. Those are both enzymes released by your own immune
system as your immune system attacks and liquefies that plaque. The most important
inflammatory test is microalbumin creatinine ratio. Here's what that is.
That's looking at the amount of protein that you're spilling through your
kidneys. You see, each kidney is about a million filters, and a filter is the
membrane where you're pushing fluid through the membrane. In this
case, it's the intima, that critical lining of your artery wall. The fluid is your
blood and the plasma going through it. The most common thing that the marker
that we're looking at is albumin. So microalbumin creatinine ratio. The creatinine
just tells us... it helps us to adjust the numbers that we see in the amount of
albumin for the level of dehydration. Here's the thing. If you get
a microalbumin creatinine ratio of 30 or greater, it indicates full-blown kidney
disease, and that's usually all the lab will tell you. But we know in terms of
cardiovascular inflammation that when you get a level over 6 to 8 if you're
a man or 16 if you're a woman, probably you have inflammation, you have dysfunction
of that intima layer. What's the most common cause of that? Cigarette
smoking can cause it. Inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. But
by far, the most common cause is insulin resistance. The glycocalyx is made
up... most of it is the hairy inner lining of the
intima. And glyco means sugars, so it's made up mostly of of glucose with
some protein in it. And it gets damaged after just a few hours of blood sugar
over 140... 180-200. So those of us who walk around with a blood sugar of 180 for
hours, if you look at photomicrographs, it's like taking a lawn
mower to wipe out huge portions of that glycocalyx. By the way,
John, why don't you get the inflammation course, less than two hours, now less than
thirty bucks. You can figure the whole thing out, understand why I'm not quite
so worried about CRP. But I'd be more worried about those other those other
tests. Okay, so Tom, you've been at the Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention
Conference all weekend here in Louisville in November. Tell me about
your experience. Tell me what you have learned personally and then how you
would like to take this out with you and influence others. I have learned so so
much that I can't begin to explain it at the moment. I thought, what else can I
learn, because I've been studying this stuff for the last couple of years. But
this was very eye-opening and I think I will benefit a lot from it. Everything
here was excellent and I would recommend it to anyone.
Well, thank you. Do you plan to make any changes as a direct result of being here?
Yes. Can you describe one of them? I'm
probably not going to take something. I was thinking of taking medication twice.
I take no medications now. I'm off eleven
of them in the last two years. Wow. And
so it's really benefited me what I've learned. So you've adapted a healthy
lifestyle? Yeah, I've had adapted. And I know you take your own personalized data.
Have you influenced anyone else around you towards the same work you're doing
for yourself? I have tried in one particular case. I have a friend that
just said, I'm not doing that. And he just has triple bypass 2 weeks ago. He's
just talking about dying now. But you're walking testimony and when people look
at you, they've seen the changes in you, correct?
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, 40 pounds makes the difference.
Wow. It shows the wrinkles more. But you've also worked on building your
muscle strength after losing so much weight. I'll try. Okay.
Well, thank you, Tom.