All in the family--What to do if there's heart disease in your family

3. April 2006 William Davis (0)
What should you do if a close relative of yours is diagnosed with coronary disease?
This question came up recently with a patient of mine. The patient--a strapping, 47 year old businessman who looked the absolute picture of health--was undergoing bypass surgery. Although I'd met him for the purposes of plaque reversal, he was already having symptoms and his stress test was flagrantly abnormal, all discovered after a heart scan score of 765. On the day after the patient's bypass, the patient's brother came to me. Understandably concerned about his own health, he asked what he should do. The answer: get a heart scan.
Measure the disease with the easiest test available. If his heart scan score is zero, great--he's at exceptionally low (near zero) risk for heart attack. A modest program of long-term prevention is all that's necessary. What if his score is like his brother, should he get in line for his bypass? No, absolutely not! But he will need two things: 1) a stress test to ascertain whether or not he's safe (60% likelihood a stress test would be normal), and 2) an effort to determine how the heck he got so much plaque. (We favor lipoprotein testing, of course, for greatest diagnostic certainty.)
Message: Learn from the lessons your own family provides. Don't let this valuable information go to waste.
Dr. Steven Gundry on The Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Show

Dr. Steven Gundry on The Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Show

20. October 2008 William Davis (4)
I stumbled on a great interview with cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Steven Gundry, on Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Show. (Or, cut and paste: http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/dr-steven-gundry-part-1-episode-179/)

Dr. Gundry has some fun ways of looking at eating and health. I found his comments on the activation of genes (discussed at a very light, non-scientific level) useful. He argues that when humans consume sugar-containing foods, the signal received by the body is that winter is approaching and it's time to build up fat stores in anticipation of the food shortages of cold weather. He finds parallels for this phenomenon in other species. Of course, for humans, winter (in the form of extended calorie deprivation) never comes. In fact, you might argue that, given our excessive reliance on grains, corn, and sugars, that we are, in effect, always in anticipation of a winter that never comes.

I've not read Dr. Gundry's books, but I found this light interview a lot of fun.
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Comments (4) -

  • Anna

    10/19/2008 11:42:00 PM |

    The book Lights Out! make this point, too.

  • Anonymous

    10/20/2008 6:32:00 AM |

    Dr. Gundry makes no distinction between whole fruit and fruit juice. Most vegan heart specialists says eat all the (whole) fruit and vegetables you want. Now Gundry wants to take away this last tasty food group. Is he recommending an all-vegetable diet? (Incidentally, as I recall, horses and cows have enzymes we lack, which allow them to extract more protein from vegetables than can we humans.)

  • Anonymous

    11/20/2008 3:04:00 PM |

    Dr Gundry looks at our diet from an evolutionary point of view.  Today's fruits and veggies have been manipulated by humans to have a much higher sugar content than the starting plants.  Case in point: seedless grapes.  He states that you really have to consider what humans evolved to eat over millions of years compared to the western diet that has essentially been created over the last 50 years.

  • buy jeans

    11/4/2010 5:14:36 PM |

    In my book, I recommend 3 g of fish oil daily. This would normally yield about 1000 mg of EPA and DHA depending on the concentration of the supplement. This is approximately the dose that reduced sudden cardiac death by 50%, and all cause death, by 25% in patients with previous heart attack.

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