So welcome I just woke up on Saturday morning and I happened to see a
video in my YouTube feed about planting potatoes
and it happened to be from my old friend OAG Charles Hancock now Charles has
quite a story in terms of his own health especially over the past
couple of years
I met Charles when he made a comment on our channel
and these comments are not that unusual but they're very dramatic and I get
tingles every time I read them I got this comment from Charles and it
said hey Doc something like this and you can clear it
up for us if you want Charles I said hey Doc I took your test I didn't have
prediabetes I had full-blown diabetes my doctors
hadn't noticed it and I hadn't either you know you I think you might have
saved my life here's some of the other short parts of
OAG's story he came up to see me we started talking
about what was going on with his health and he said you know I have to tell you
I'm a little bit of a closet nacho chip freak I love those nacho corn chips
and I have them like every day and the reason that topic came up we were
talking about his health and talking about carbs
but I looked at him and he had already visibly
lost weight at the end of the conversation it became clear he said you
know what I dropped about 40 pounds just
dropping nacho corn chips now I made some other changes as well and maybe you
can fill us in on some of the details at OAG
but it's great to have you back this is an impromptu meeting I happened
to see OAG's video and he started sharing with me
some of his updates and we'll talk about those in a few minutes too
if you're okay with it go ahead Charles appreciate you having me on today
because what you do is so important for people's health
and so just like in my set case where you
gave me a couple tips that helped me greatly and the bottom line for me
is okay how can we help others yeah speaking of which so that's the other
thing so this is your CIMT from
August 13th of this year this year yes so you want to describe
what you saw there well the first thing that I look at when
I see that CIMT is i look at that two green boxes up
there and the left corner where it says patient age
and artery age right I was actually 13 days away from
being 81 at that point and so I'm just going to
go ahead and say that patient age was 81 and the artery age
was 64 well you do your math and that's 17
years younger the artery age is 17 years
younger than my actual age now true if you look
to the right where it says patient IMT where it says 0.79 millimeters that I am
not yet at that normal IMT range and I may not get there but we can
work towards it because the normal is 0.50
right if I could explain something for a second here's what happens
here's the difference between CIMT and calcium score and some of the other
things number one there's no radiation that's not really a
big deal because the radiation at least the radiation for a calcium score
is not significant compared to the information that we get
but here's the other thing with a CIMT we know we're starting to lay down
plaque it doesn't wait to see just calcium
it shows us soft plaque as well and we have what's called a nomogram
it shows the arterial age by comparison to your gender
and number two your biological age because there's no radiation
we've been able to get there have been CIMT's done
on healthy people even starting at infancy
at birth and guess what yep you see increased
plaque in kids that weigh 10 and a half pounds like I did
that's more of that diabetes of pregnancy
process going on the other thing that you see from these
nomograms is men you see why men tend to have heart attacks sooner than women
because the blue line here the boys shows that
we just classically have more plaque than girls now if you go over to
your age it's right about here as you mentioned
in the 80s and the typical now see here's where
the problem is normal IMT less than 0.50 millimeters well let's go back
and look at less than 0.50 millimeters that's typical
really for a male at age 25 and i don't really expect you to ever
get back to the plaque of a male at 25 what we want
you to do is stay younger than your biological age which
is going to be more like what 0.85 0.80 that you see over here
does that help yeah that and I use that chart for the same
purposes to say okay how well am I even if I'm not reducing the plaque am I
holding at where I'm at and not getting worse
yeah but in some you might show a little bit
of an improvement especially we'll talk about soft plaque
in just a minute I guess yes actually you bring up soft plaque
it's a really good point so I referred you over to CardioRisk
once you figured out how to get it done you've been doing your own
as you need and great follow-up on it you see the one
they give you the results from last time as well as
this time and that's down in this middle section here under comments
you don't have to remember some of the details that I give people on these
meetings and on these videos it's right there if you have a
measurement greater than 1.3 millimeters that's called a discrete plaque
so we want to look at that point to see if it's
soft heterogeneous or echogenic in other words soft or hard
and echogenic's going to be calcified that's how we know
that it's echogenic because it's got flecks of calcium
in it it's got a lot of flecks now heterogeneous is in between and people
say well if you got soft and that's dangerous and
echogenic is stable is heterogeneous sort of halfway in
between the two and the reality is no heterogeneous is
much more on the stable side and a lot of us like myself
about half of my plaques are heterogeneous so
when you see a pattern like this with half echogenic
half heterogeneous like you've got that's a good stable pattern
well and move your cursor back over to the
right box the previous scan and so where it says internal carotid 1.4
H yeah okay now notice back over to the current scan that H
turned to an E correct which is a good and now see
there's some increase from the 1.4 to 2.6
I think that's just part of the problem that we get in trying to make sure
that we get the exact area the exact same thing
but what is significant and more objective is exactly what you pointed
out the fact that it went from heterogeneous
to echogenic I agree with you I think you're
continuing to further stabilize that plaque that
you do have I think that's the significant reading a
lot of people would read that and say oh my goodness no it grew no
that's not really what's going on here you're continuing to stabilize
right people get confused with this but it is not
correct me if i'm wrong it is not the hard plaque
that causes a heart attack that kills you I had an aunt who was 94 years old
when she died and they told her that her carotid artery was
almost 90% blocked but it didn't affect her greatly
so it isn't the hard plaque that kills you
it is the soft plaque yep exactly right and I'm glad you brought that up because
so many times people come to me and they say no I've
seen your video where you actually reverse
plaque I want to reverse all of mine for the vast majority of cases and times
that's just not reality you know what I'd love to sprout wings
and fly but I don't really have a realistic
expectation that that's going to happen now all of
us can expect that we're going to stabilize
our plaque and that's exactly what you're
continuing to do
yes and I agree 100% and because I have did it
I mean it's not like maybe you can do it or you know if you want to throw out
I have actual data going back to 2018 actual numbers that shows what was going
on and I've done it so I know others can do
it too if they really really really want to
well I can't tell you how much I appreciate you sharing this
that's the early event risk okay green box
okay in November of 2019 or that box says 2.6
in November of 2019 that box was red and it had 3.0 in it
so that meant that it didn't guarantee that I was gonna have a heart attack in
the next four or five years but it said that my
risk was pretty high so now you notice that box is green
under the normal column that says hey because of the changes I've made
results I've had my early event risk of having another
stent or heart attack is lower it's in what we consider normal range yeah it's
a really good point you have gone from red to green in that area and I do think
that that's an area that makes a big difference
one of the critical things that I've mentioned to people multiple times in
terms of most of our patients stories John's
James's Gene's yours is to look at the whole picture look at the whole patient
we've got an 80 79 when you first came to see me 79 year old who
had significant inflammation which you mentioned
not noticeable midsection but as you continued to make some of those
changes made a couple of simple changes like dropping those corn chips
40 pounds later what that decrease in that 40 pounds of body fat
is huge for the inflammatory hormones that body fat creates so
we know that you've made some major changes you're in a better place
and it's just like you were talking about earlier with
your docs you clearly owe your life to your docs you know when they
done stents for example sometimes those have been life-saving
but here's the bottom line even with stents
you can't stent your way out of a lifestyle issue you can't prescribe your
way out of a lifestyle issue you can't bypass your way out of a
lifestyle issue now all of those sound like just key
phrases and sales words or something but that's not really the case
each one of those statements there's been like the COURAGE trials
demonstrated that you can't stent your way out of a lifestyle
problem there's other trials done in New England Journal for
example showing that you can't prescribe changes like you had very very mild
lifestyle changes make three times the difference that any
prescriptions gonna make well see that takes us back to that idea
of your health is in your hands absolutely and you're a great example
you're a great leader for showing that and you're a great person for sharing
this information with others I really appreciate what you've done
continue to get great feedback regarding the webinars and here's why
you know on the internet when you hear a webinar you expect for somebody to try
to sell you something we're not doing that we're trying to
tell you something people are coming in with their labs from Quest
inflammation panel OGTT insulin survey response
and then they're finding out do I have inflammation do I have
insulin resistance and where does that fit in terms of other folks
we're getting ready to start one for CIMT as well
so again people are really excited about finding out
their own status looking forward to seeing you there
thanks