Thanks for pointing this out.

But I cannot help but wonder about what these Japanese men got if they did NOT get heart disease.

It was my impression that the rate of stomach cancer was higher in Japan than anywhere else in the world.

I also know that the Honolulu study found a much higher rate of dementia in men who ate traditional diets high in tofu.

Finally, and most concerning, I personally know two people who ate "healthy" diets high in fish only to came down with mercury poisoning bad enough that they had to undergo chelation therapy. (These were people whose mainstream doctors sent them for the therapy, not adherents of alternative medicine.)

Having observed what happens to people who do not get heart disease but do live long enough to develop both cancer and dementia, and having concluded that heart disease is much to be preferred, I'm not entirely sure that we should rush to eat the Japanese diet.

We are all going to die of something. I would much prefer a swift heart attack to a decade of cancer and dementia.

Dr Cannell says at http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-and-brain.shtml#hd4 "activated vitamin D lessens heavy metal induced oxidative injuries in rat brain. The primary route for brain toxicity of most heavy metals is through depletion of glutathione. Besides its function as a master antioxidant, glutathione acts as a chelating (binding) agent to remove heavy metals, like mercury."

It may be that, as well as keeping your vitamin D3 status optimal, using molecullarly distilled fish oil or krill avoids the pollution problems?

I wonder how eating fish compares to drinking fish oil.

I must demur from some of Jenny's comments.

First,  I do not believe that the overall effect of the Japanese diet is to trade heart disease for cancer, as she seems to imply.   E.g., the Japanese, despite smoking multiples more than Americans, have a rate of lung cancer less than half ours.

Second, although it is true that eating a lot of certain species of fish, such as shark, swordfish, and large tuna, creates a risk of mercury poisoning, other species, such as salmon, have very low levels of mercury and may be eaten virtually ad libitum.

Third, dying from heart attack, or its evil twin stroke, is not necessarily "swift".  If a heart attack interrupts blood flow for a few minutes, it causes massive brain damage but not necessarily death.  It can also cause terminal congestive heart failure, which is also not my idea of going "gentle into that good night."

Which fish oil brand is recommended?

Because of the side effects, which I understand are worse with higher fat intake, I think the best use of this is following a low fat diet. It will keep you on the diet! Maybe with Ornish levels (which I do NOT believe is healthy) of fat intake the side effects will be minor.

I learned alot about the product when I visited the manufacturer's site....

http://www.myalli.com

From what I read, the side effects are preventable if you stick to a reduced calorie low fat diet.  I think I will give it a try.

Medicines we take these days are mostly prescribed over the counter. Which is preferably good on my part. But, what about medicines sold on the streets? Whether legal or not, companies are losing quite a bit of money. And who is who to say that anything let alone can be sold on the streets without the proper consent of the manufacturers, not that they would allow it, but still. Regardless how effective the drug or not, even now a days health care should most definitely be a necessity since without it you might end up paying 8 times the price. I think no matter what medicine people are prescribed, everybody should make it a priority in their lives to obtain some sort of health care.

You've mentioned before about the medical communities bias toward procedural medicine. If hospitals were to change their position and embrace a preventive bias for heart disease treatment, (early detection, and then addressing with appropriate supplements, drugs, and diet.) any ideas on how much savings for the nation could be had?

Our analysis suggests $634 million per 100,000 people would be saved if they were to engage in a simple program of prevention using heart scans.

Our analysis and rationale can be found at http://trackyourplaque.com/library/fl_hh005bankrupt.asp.

Dr. Davis: I fully agree that legislation is not the answer to this unfortunate practice. I favor freedom for physicians, and an informed public. Government regulation can and will ruin the practice of health care and incentives for new medical techniques and approaches. For those who think the government can be helpful, take a look at Medicare.

I had a “drive-by” angioplasty done in 1999 and a “drive-by” angiogram done in 2000 by the same cardiologist. He told me that I had 90% blockage on one of my main arteries after he performed the first angioplasty. Few years later, a neurologist told me that I actually suffered from panic attacks, not heart attacks. I always wonder how an experienced cardiologist could mistake a panic attack as a heart attack, not once but twice.

"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

It holds true in medicine, unfortunately. Especially when each swing of the hammer pays thousands of dollars.

I have often thought that one underlying force that drives this phenomenon might be the fear of lawsuits.  Being a lawyer, I hate to bash the legal profession, but I know that once the person is on the cath table and any blockage is found that some interventional cardiologist somewhere might choose to stent, some doctors may feel the need to practice defensive medicine.  Even before they get to the cath table this is probably an influence.  In other words, say this patient died of a heart attack soon after this hospital visit (which as we all know, could happen even if the symptoms were unrelated to his plaque burden).  If the hospital had not done the procedure (especially since they have an entire crew of people sitting around all day long just waiting to do these), it's possible that some other intervention-oriented cardiologist might be found who would testify that the standard of care these days is to do the angiogram, and that had this been done, it's quite possible, even likely, that the blockage could have been opened up and death avoided.  (Even though we know that this is speculative and depends on how close to this visit the heart attack occurs, as far as the likelihood that this might be a life-saving procedure.)  The further out the heart attack occurs, the less compelling the causation argument.  But I gotta believe that there is defensive medicine being practiced in some of these situations.  And the trouble is, it's the very state of the treatment attitude that contributes to this result, i.e., the fact that unexpected heart attacks are as common as they are, and the proliferation and ready availability of cath labs, so that they are viewed as routinely available.

Hi, Warren-

Yes. I agree absolutely.

In fact, I believe this is exceptionally common. So common that it's become acceptable standard of care.

Often the appearance of doing something is better than the appeareance of doing nothing, regardless of how ineffective the treatment is.