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Avoiding Heart Disease

blog.harjtaggar.com

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Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#71

Post by reedlaw »

crusso wrote: post #45
tansey wrote: post #30

I tend to think of doctors as mechanics. Often when something breaks on my car, the explanation is "it's an old car, that happens eventually." And when they talk about it after fixing it, it's usually "Toyota's a good brand. Take care of it and you'll get another 100k miles from that engine." If I took my car to my mechanic with nothing wrong and asked what I should be doing to make sure the transmission lasts as lon…

Even the front side of your analogy is broken. Mechanics are great sources of information on how to drive so you can maximize the life of your engine. It's like you haven't had a conversation with a mechanic before. Likewise with doctors. I have had 4 doctors in my family (3 still alive), and I've spent many the family meal talking with them about health, longevity, and the mechanical/biology/chemistry behind how you…

Your interactions with mechanics and doctors imply a closer relationship than perhaps that of the OP. My typical experience with is closer to the OP's--that is they have a lot of vehicles/patients to see and don't go in to too much detail on each visit.

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#72

Post by pcrh »

carbocation wrote: post #69
pcrh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those amount to "be lucky", which isn't very helpful advice.

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are all modifiable.

Maybe it's how you phrased it. "Be X", "Be Y", etc.

3, 4, 5 and 7 are hard to modify, either by behavior or with medical intervention.

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#74

Post by sliverstorm »

reedlaw wrote: post #71
crusso wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the front side of your analogy is broken. Mechanics are great sources of information on how to drive so you can maximize the life of your engine. It's like you haven't had a conversation with a mechanic before. Likewise with doctors. I have had 4 doctors in my family (3 still alive), and I've spent many the family meal talking with them about health, longevity, and the mechanical/biology/chemistry behind how you…

Your interactions with mechanics and doctors imply a closer relationship than perhaps that of the OP. My typical experience with is closer to the OP's--that is they have a lot of vehicles/patients to see and don't go in to too much detail on each visit.

Many of them don't go into detail because 99% of customers don't give the slightest fuck. Show genuine interest, strike up conversation, and you can sometimes get a lot out of them.

In any case, service life in cars is usually determined by a couple key things: The design of the system, driving conditions, and service. You may feel like you're being blown off when the mechanic says "obey the service intervals and avoid short trips", but that's 99.9% of what you can do to make the car last.

(Special corner cases are widely-understood and well-documented, such as the impact of very high operating temperatures in automatic transmissions during towing)

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#75

Post by carbocation »

pcrh wrote: post #72
carbocation wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are all modifiable.

Maybe it's how you phrased it. "Be X", "Be Y", etc. 3, 4, 5 and 7 are hard to modify, either by behavior or with medical intervention.

5 and 7 could be achieved by taking a statin (or a PCSK9 inhibitor) lifelong. This has not been clinically trialed–it is only my (and others') extrapolation from the genetic data.

3 and 4 can often be achieved by succeeding at #6, but certainly this is not true for type I diabetics nor for people with MODY or other non-metabolic-syndrome-type diabetes. Dietary discretion is difficult for almost all of us, it is true.

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#76

Post by Justsignedup »

carbocation wrote: post #63

How to avoid heart disease: (0) Be female. Don't be born with heart defects. Don't be old. Don't have Marfan or Loeys-Dietz syndromes. (All of the unfair/can't modify factors will get lumped into recommendation #0.) (1) Don't use tobacco or cocaine, and don't drink too much alcohol. (2) Don't get exposed to radiation or chemotherapy. (3) Don't have diabetes. (4) Don't have high blood pressure. (5) Have low levels of…

Well, I'm fucked.

Grandfather was in decent shape at 40 when pretty much all his arteries clogged. He is now 87 with half a single artery left in his heart. He is not what I would call "living" as much as existing.

On the other side, my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother have intense high blood pressure with no understandable reason.

Well, I figure I may have till I'm 50. Though I hope doing biking marathons would train my heart even a bit to help.

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#77

Post by sliverstorm »

DanBC wrote: post #55
bdesimone wrote: post #4

> Am I missing other major downsides to taking a more proactive approach to managing my own health? Are there other things I should consider looking at to get a complete picture of my health? A potential downside is the tendency is to shift from being proactive about your health to diagnosing (or worse -- treating) yourself based on independent research. I get that it's tempting to fire up google scholar, pubmed, upt…

There's also a risk of becoming hyper-aware of stuff that just doesn't matter. Your heart tends to just do it's thing. But if you concentrate on it you might start noticing weirdnesses. These probably aren't your heart, but now you're anxious, so you think about seeing a doctor. But you don't want to waste the doctor's time, so you look around on the Internet to see what it is. And now you're really worried even thou…

This happened to me with cars & funny noises. I noticed a noise in my first car that, two years later, turned into a spun bearing & rod knock. Ever since I pay super close attention to every noise my vehicles make! Problem is, vehicles make a lot of noises, even when they are operating correctly. Drives me crazy

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#78

Post by oceanic »

Catalyst, an excellent science program on the ABC [1], Australia's national broadcaster, has just had a two-part episode called "The Heart of the Matter", about the science (or lack of it) behind the cholesterol theory.

The researcher Dr Maryanne Demasi[2], herself a research pathologist, has spent three years gathering data, interviewing researchers, scientists and doctors on both sides of the argument, and the show has caused major ripples throughout the medical profession in Australia [3].

The two episodes are on YouTube in full [4] [5] and the transcripts are on the ABC website [6] [7].

For anyone interested in this topic, these shows are HIGHLY recommended.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/team/maryannedemasi.htm?site=...

[3] http://www.6minutes.com.au/news/latest-news/expert-takes-aim...

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDVf-00w5gk

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAKaM330xzg

[6] http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3876219.htm

[7] http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3881441.htm

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#79

Post by sliverstorm »

eshvk wrote: post #6
bdesimone wrote: post #4

> Am I missing other major downsides to taking a more proactive approach to managing my own health? Are there other things I should consider looking at to get a complete picture of my health? A potential downside is the tendency is to shift from being proactive about your health to diagnosing (or worse -- treating) yourself based on independent research. I get that it's tempting to fire up google scholar, pubmed, upt…

The issue is that doctors give you muddled advice too. I had my blood test done last year and I was told that I should cut down on eating any meat and switch to a plant based diet. He also vaguely told me to do more exercise. Yet, I eat incredibly lean food, albeit high protein mainly because I weight lift. I also run 4.5 miles every other day. He couldn't go into more detail apart from this general warning. I could…

So what if your GP is not a leading expert on nutrition? He is a GP. Not a nutrionist. Would you expect on-point LAMP design recommendations from an IT worker?

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#80

Post by tessierashpool »

I have heart disease. if I hadn't followed the advice of Dr. Joel Fuhrman (drfuhrman.com) I'd already be dead. I don't have time to get into it here, but conventional cardiology is essentially malpractice in my opinion. if you have heart disease, or you know someone who does, please check out Dr. Fuhrman's work.
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