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Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

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Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#421

Post by bad_username »

jeffnv wrote: post #89

For what it's worth, this article by the doctors at Barbell Medicine has been my go to recommendation for what to prioritize for health and longevity: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorit...

ALL individuals (both youth and adults) should meet and/or exceed the following:

150 to 300 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity, OR;

75 to 150 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, AND;

Resistance training of moderate or greater intensity involving all major muscle groups on 2 or more days per week

This boolean expression needs some parentheses...

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#422

Post by moralestapia »

ozozozd wrote: post #398
carbocation wrote: post #56

Key Takeaway: Get a CT or CTA scan, and if you can afford it go for the CTA with Cleerly. There is a reason that we don't recommend getting imaging for everyone, and that reason is uncertainty about the benefit vs the risks (cost, incidentalomas, radiation, etc, all generally minor). Most guidance recommends calcium scoring for people with intermediate risk who prefer to avoid taking statins. This is not a normative…

Not sure I follow or maybe you skipped typing a word. You listed the risks and concluded “all generally minor.” The benefit is absolutely nonzero. So, what’s the hold up? And how have the data not caught up? People outside the US are getting the CT scans, while US doctors prefer to lick their finger to guess the weather. My wife’s last interaction with a doctor: patient presents with back and chest pain accompanied b…

"Smaht" people continuously parrot things they read elsewhere, usually in a contrarian way, to assert themselves in a futile and shallow way.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting one CT at a specific point in your life to right a disease which, as TFA states, has a 25% incidence rate.

The smaht ones will now point me to that study of 1-5% of cancers being linked to CT scans. Yeah, sure, but those are not from people who got one-two in their lives.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#423

Post by rwarfield »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #249
embedding-shape wrote: post #219

The author says this about smoking: > If you smoke, don’t. It’s going to kill you. And then this about alcohol: > I think it’s unreasonable to tell people not to drink alcohol if they like it. Why is it unreasonable to tell people not to drink alcohol, but reasonable to tell people to stop smoking? Shouldn't the smoking section also get a "at least make sure it’s really good tobacco that you enjoy and don’t smoke too…

The inconvenient truth that the vast majority of adults refuse to acknowledge is that there is no safe level of alcohol. Any drink is going to damage you, marginal though it may be. Unfortunately the healthiest thing you can do is simply never drink alcohol.

> no safe level of alcohol

I hear this kind of phrasing frequently in the discourse nowadays, but it doesn't seem like a useful framing to me. Is there a safe amount of chocolate? A safe amount of sex? Are we supposed to stop enjoying every pleasure of life as soon as someone does a large study with high enough statistical power to show some negative effect on health, no matter how small?

The question is whether the enjoyment we derive from these things is worth the risk, not whether there is a "safe level", whatever that means.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#424

Post by paxys »

Apes wrote: post #140
sixtyj wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are two contradictory conclusions you should ask for the third one, independent on the previous ones.

The year is 1846, and a doctor has a radical new idea: doctors should wash their hands between performing autopsies and delivering babies! You're not sure of whether this is a good idea or not, so you ask various physicians, and the consensus is unanimous: the very suggestion is offensive, do you think doctors are unclean? A clear conclusion has been achieved.

Are you implying that every new, unproven idea is a good one?

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#425

Post by NotGMan »

DennisP wrote: post #149
NotGMan wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. Humans have eaten complex carbs only for the last 10k years since agricultural revolution. Before that, outside of a small part of Africa, there physically wasn't enough carbs available to say that they made any substantial amount of our diet. Most ancenstral carbs were uber high in fiber, and very low in glucose (starch) and fructose.

I've taken courses in primitive wilderness survival, and one of the staple foods was grass seed. Also lots of roots are edible with cooking, and it looks like we've been cooking for about a million years. Then there's wild rice, cattails, beans, berries, all sorts of stuff. I agree that most wild plants are high in fiber and low in sugar, but there are are a lot of complex carbs to be had, if you have fire.

Interesting. So its possible to gather enough of these food to get eg ~200+g carbs per day (speaking in ancestral context, a tribe)?

Also how much must you eat of these to get enough in order to get enough digestable carbs due to the high fiber content?

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#426

Post by zbentley »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #357
Buttons840 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plaque won't show as calcium until it has been in your arteries for decades and has calcified. It is a delayed indicator. For anyone under 40, it's expected to have zero calcium. Even a measure of 1 or 2 when you're below 40 would be a bad sign.

Is there any way to get rid of the calcification? Experimental techniques?

Sure, surgery and several other risky and/or invasive treatments.

Or you could take statins and prevent it from becoming an issue in the first place.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#427

Post by harleyk »

A recent report from the American College of Cardiology emphasizes the prediction power of hsCRP:

"High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) is an inexpensive and widely available blood test. While there has been debate within the medical community regarding the utility of hsCRP, this statement details the data confirming its value in clinical decision making in primary and secondary prevention."

https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/journal-scans/2025/...

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#428

Post by Avalaxy »

amsterdorn wrote: post #62

Curious about how accessible these tests are in Europe. Living in a country (NL) that doesn't value annual checkups makes me assume detailed, preventative blood testing like this is hard, let alone possible to get in non-extreme situations.

You can order all blood tests you want online in NL. E.g. bloedwaardentest.nl, mijnlabtest.nl, perfectlab.nl. But it isn't cheap so you need to know what to test for to keep the price reasonable.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#429

Post by aldarion »

btilly wrote: post #235
mac-mc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you fix it without statins through better lifestyle and diet, that is the preferrable route. As to why medicine is like this, it's because it's conservative, usually about 17 years behind university research[0], and doctors are shackled to guidelines in most health systems or risk losing their licenses. It isn't a coincidence that the article author had his out-of-pocket concierge doctor tell him the more up-to-da…

I have an objection to the "better lifestyle and diet" approach. Sure, it is absolutely true that better lifestyle and diet has a huge effect. However it is absolutely certain that the vast majority of people who are told to improve their lifestyle and diet, won't. The result is doctors giving advice that they know won't be followed. And thereby transferring potential fault from the doctor to the patient, with no imp…

That is because dietary advice they give is actually bad. It mostly boils down to "limit calories while eating standard western diet" but that is impossible to follow long-term as SWD and similar (e.g. food pyramid) diets are nutrient-deficient.

How many doctors recommend things like paleo diet, intermittent fasting and so on? Not many, I think - most simply focus on calories, combined with the advice that is either extremely generalized ("avoid sugar") or outright counterproductive ("eat 5 - 6 meals a day"). And then they wonder why people can't follow their diet.

Here I described my own experiences: https://ketoview.wordpress.com/2025/11/09/low-fodmap-keto-di...

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#430

Post by liveoneggs »

cthalupa wrote: post #403
liveoneggs wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statins also raise your blood sugar and lower your GLP-1, increasing your risk of diabetes? They also tend to be continued well into old age (off label) despite increasing fall risk, which is way more dangerous to an 80 year old.

A single study showed a single statin reducing GLP-1 levels and ascribed it to gut microbiome changes that could be totally resolved with UDCA supplementation. If this even ends up being reproduced it at most says there is an easy fix for people taking atorvostatin and that it might be a concern with other statins, but this should be treated with the same health skepticism of any other single study finding. Not all s…

How many doctors are cycling through all the statin classes to find the least-bad option for each patient?

(I'll rant about one guy I know.. was any of this related to statin over perscribing? who can know)

Now that we have your LDL under management isn't it easier to just add metformin and gabapentin into the mix? I mean what are the chances you're not also put on a calcium blocker too?

Now you've got brain fog and sleepiness? weird! we have some modafinil for that but now that you're developing early-stage dementia know that it's progressive.

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