131–140 of 142 posts
The simplicity of "switch to a whole foods, plant-based diet and you simply won't die from heart disease" has eased my similar anxieties. http://www.heartattackproof.com/ See also the related documentary, http://www.forksoverknives.com/ .
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…
It’s great to see other tech people educate themselves about health and help break the stereotypes of the ramen eating, soda drinking nerd. This story reads almost like what happened to my dad last year. He complained of shortness of breath and went to see a cardiologist. He got an angioplasty done, which showed severe calcification of the arteries. The doctor advised him to have a quadruple bypass the very next day.…
> Something is wrong in this world when Tom Hanks, with access to the best doctors in the world, announces that he has type 2 diabetes I would imagine that the client relationship in medicine in similar to other industries. Failure is often not a result of the service you provide, but from the fact that the client doesn't listen to the advice they are paying for.
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Get on a statin even if your LDL levels are within the normal range. They're very safe (safer than aspirin, arguably) and effective.
I would be very skeptical of statins. An actual MD who disagrees with you: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/statins/statins-everyone-...
A representative example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Simvastatin_Surviv...
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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…
He is 87 though. And your great grandmother is still alive. You're gonna do just fine.
b) 15-20 years of being completely and utterly crippled, unable to walk (over a few minutes at a time), eat salt at all, lay down, stand, etc... not sure if this is much of a life.
FYI: if you have clogged arteries, your heart is unable to move the water in your blood, thus if you lay down all that water gathers near the lungs and you can't inhale.
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> Why would your doctor read the latest research on preventing disease when he can make a tidy profit from treating your disease? Woah woah woah there. Are you really saying doctors don't read the latest research so that they can make a greater profit? Really? You could have at least picked a more realistic example of misaligned incentives in medicine... e.g. using a more expensive drill bit during a surgery because…
The OP phrased it badly, but the point is sound. Suppose a doctor has a choice of two activities: 1. Read research, unpaid 2. Treat patient, paid The doctor clearly has an incentive to focus on treating disease. They do read research, but they would surely read even more if they were paid directly to do so. There's nothing nefarious in this, it happens in any industry. We do more of the things we're paid to do, and l…
1. Attend CME meeting, often at nice resort locale, usually unpaid, but deductible. Acquire at least 25 hours of such attendance per year.
2. Lose medical license. Pump gas, if you can find a full-service station.
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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…
I have this too but didn't realize it was a risk-factor for anything? What exactly do you feel and where?
From what I understand most people with NAFLD feel nothing, some people who develop scarring (cirrhosis) and even cancer don't feel anything. The liver is weird, at least it can regenerate from a lot of abuse.
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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…
At work a nurse comes in and we can get tested for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes. I go and each time even up until my NAFLD my numbers practically perfect.
Maybe I do have some ApoB protein trouble. Although I doubt there is a lipid clinic anywhere in Canada for me to go to.
Thanks anyway.
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Small backstory and a question for you. My fiancée is a psychiatric nurse practitioner. Recently, we were having dinner with a few of her colleagues, and they were complaining about the overwhelming number of new medications coming to market, and how they could never remember all the interactions, what to use for what, which ones were new, which had been retired, etc, etc. As a CS person, I piped up and suggested, to…
Doctors offices already have something similar, at least for interactions.
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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…
> normal or even fantastic lipid levels At work a nurse comes in and we can get tested for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes. I go and each time even up until my NAFLD my numbers practically perfect. Maybe I do have some ApoB protein trouble. Although I doubt there is a lipid clinic anywhere in Canada for me to go to. Thanks anyway.