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Avoiding Heart Disease

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Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#121

Post by rdl »

computer wrote: post #120
rdl wrote: post #117

Why not come to Thailand and drop a few hundred dollars on comprehensive imaging studies, like I'm doing this week?

Do you have a link with more information on how to go about getting this done?

http://www.bumrungrad.com/ is the place I use. It's a bit more than $200 for MR, etc., but I'm doing the exec screening w/ stress test and ultrasound (http://www.bumrungrad.com/en/health-check-up-bangkok-thailan...) and x-ray, and may do MR and would potentially get a CT (obviously avoid CT if you don't need it due to the radiation dose, but with modern equipment I'm personally not super worried).

I got my LASIK done about 8y ago at TRSC (www.lasikthai.com) which means free checkups and touchups for life, too, also down the street. Eye exams are one case where I usually use a hotel car vs. a taxi to get around, as dealing with obnoxious taxi drivers while sort of blind sucks.

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#122

Post by carbocation »

dhughes wrote: post #98
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…

And then there is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). I am not fat, I've always been thin and my cholesterol is bang on perfect, my blood pressure 120/80 or better. Although I've slacked off the gym for about four years I'm pretty active at work. Anyway out of the blue I am diagnosed with fatty liver: it hurts, I can feel it. Know how people with fatty liver die? Heart attack or stroke, fatty liver significant…

NAFLD is usually caused by obesity. However, it is also a common finding in those with ApoB defects. People with these defects have a curious phenotype: normal or even fantastic lipid levels but with NAFLD/NASH. Essentially, the defective ApoB doesn't get secreted from the liver so serum cholesterol levels look good, but the liver becomes fatty as it cannot export TG and cholesterol.

Certainly not trying to diagnose your familial disorder over the Internet, but taking a trip to a good lipid clinic might be something worth considering if you wanted to be aggressive in the pursuit of a diagnosis. (Which, again, might not be what I'm talking about above.)

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#123

Post by monstar »

memracom wrote: post #113
pw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get on a statin even if your LDL levels are within the normal range. They're very safe (safer than aspirin, arguably) and effective.

Do not follow quack recommendations like this. pw is not a medical doctor and is not licenced to practice medecine. That makes pw a quack. Instead, seek out professionals who don't just say everything is OK, but who tell you what specific things to do and tell you why you should do those things backed up by research. A competent MD will not be afraid to refer you to the research that they are using to make their reco…

Do not follow quack recommendations like this. memracon is not a medical doctor and is not licenced to practice medecine. That makes memracom a quack.

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#124

Post by pitchups »

Surprised that there is just one mention in this entire thread of Dr. Esselstyn[1] and Dr. Dean Ornish[2] - two doctors who deserve more attention in any discussion on the topic of preventing heart disease. They have published research and studies showing that it is possible to prevent and actually reverse heart disease - even in advanced cases of artery blockage - by strict diet and lifestyle changes. President Clinton has adopted their recommended diet after his coronary bypass surgery. Highly recommend reading their research studies and books on the subject.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldwell_Esselstyn

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Ornish

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#125

Post by yurhirt »

It seems to me, as a curious non-medic, that at the root of heart disease is a state of persistent arousal, which is similar to stress -- high blood pressure, high blood sugars and fats, tachycardia, low immune, high inflammation, poor digestion, etc. All arguably useful if you are hunting prey or raiding the next village. But bad for the body in the long run. So I think we ought to ask why in this day and age do we seem to find this biological state desirable -- for example, does it paradoxically enable us, while still alive, to be more productive?

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#127

Post by jerf »

monstar wrote: post #123
memracom wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not follow quack recommendations like this. pw is not a medical doctor and is not licenced to practice medecine. That makes pw a quack. Instead, seek out professionals who don't just say everything is OK, but who tell you what specific things to do and tell you why you should do those things backed up by research. A competent MD will not be afraid to refer you to the research that they are using to make their reco…

Do not follow quack recommendations like this. memracon is not a medical doctor and is not licenced to practice medecine. That makes memracom a quack.

Sorry, no, that does not logically follow. You do not need to be a professional to recommend that you use professional advice. It would only be hypocritical if memracon had subsequently made specific recommendations.

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#128

Post by simik »

pw wrote: post #102
Justsignedup wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Get on a statin even if your LDL levels are within the normal range. They're very safe (safer than aspirin, arguably) and effective.

And, for good measure, a recent ABCTV documentary on the bad science of cholesterol-heart hypothesis and statins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTkyS5yV82Q

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#129

Post by bollockitis »

Amadou wrote: post #38
melling wrote: post #23

Number one leading cause of death: Heart Disease. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate What's scary is that we really don't know much about it. I heard Randell Schwartz (of Perl fame) talk about how the modern carb diet is killing people. He lost 60 pounds by monitoring his carb intake. https://plus.google.com/+RandalLSchwartz/posts/9fYhGYfLNY3

He lost 60 pounds by monitoring his carb intake. The thing about diets is that everybody has got one that worked for them. It seems to me that the one thing all of these different diets have in common is that they require the person to monitor what they eat. Whatever the specifics of the diet, the dieter ends up paying more attention to their meals in general and that extra digilgence translates into reduced caloric…

Anyone can lose weight simply reducing calories, but that weight loss isn't permanent or sustainable, and it may not be healthy. If you run the numbers, the Twinkie Diet guy was actually eating fewer carbs than the average American simply because of calorie restriction, and his low protein intake would almost certainly result in the loss of muscle mass.

The age old advice of "eat less, move more" ignores the body's natural mechanism for fat regulation, which is primarily the hormone insulin. The higher your blood glucose, the more insulin your body produces, the more fat your body will store, and the less reluctant it will be to release its stored energy.

It's obvious that if you're eating fewer calories, then less energy is available for fat storage -- it's simple thermodynamics -- but basic endocrinology tells us that to lose weight all we need is the negative stimulus of insulin, which is primarily achieved through reducing carbohydrate intake.

Re: Avoiding Heart Disease

#130

Post by bdesimone »

Noxchi wrote: post #94
bdesimone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Doctors are people like any other. But they've spent years specializing in evidence based medicine. They aren't perfect. No. But they are the best we have. 2. The far bigger problem is doctors order tests that wouldn't change treatment but rather help avoid malpractice. 3. The quote -- every time I read it -- makes me laugh because it's so disingenuous. My wife had a week of dietary training in med school. You kno…

#3 is totally wrong. First of all, if your wife graduated from med school, she should have taken the Hippocratic oath. An oath written by the guy considered the father of western medicine. You know what he had to say about diet? “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” He also said something along the lines of "if you don't know diet you can't call yourself a doctor" but I can't find the exact quote. >If y…

What are you talking about?

My #3 point was not that dietary health isn't important. It IS important. It's as important as cardiology, renal, etc in the curriculum. That it's "only" one week is shouldn't be taken (and is repeatedly put forth as, as the OP did) proof of how physicians don't care/ aren't trained in diet.

What does your rant about saying the hippocratic oath have to do with anything? What does that have to do with the amount of emphasis the modern medical education puts on health through diet? Of course food should be your medicine. Natural plants are also the base for some ~70% of our drugs. It's just not the only tool in the toolbox.

Then you accidentally support my earlier point that the average joe is godawful self-treating/diagnosing based on their own research. Thanks.

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