Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Track your Plaque - Book Review


How often do we come across news wherein a friend or a relative suffered a heart attack and had to die all of a sudden?

Do you know that the conventional tests (HDL, LDL, Triglycerides, Total Cholesterol, Treadmill test) for assessing whether a person has a risk for future heart attack are woefully inadequate? Meaning, even after all the above are performed on time (with results are considered normal range) – still that person can experience a fatal/non fatal heart attack?

Very often we hear that an apparently otherwise healthy individual suffering from heart disease had to undergo bypass surgery or had to operate with stents etc.

If you want to find answers for this and to educate how to protect yourself – you have to read Track your Plaque book. Dr. William Davis addresses heart disease and what causes heart attacks, how we can identify the risk one has against heart disease, how we can improve upon those parameters through life style changes, diet and medicines.

Why this book? Don’t we have hospitals for cardiovascular care and incase if someone has heart disease – he/she can get better treatment in the hospital, why read this book and make changes to life style among other things?

From Dr Davis's own words - Cardiac care is big business. As a nation, US spent $59 billion on cardiovascular care per year (American Heart Association, 2002). Annual hospital revenues for bypass surgery total $25 billion. Thirty percent of hospital revenues and 50% of profits are from cardiac care. Heart care to a hospital is like the Accord is to Honda, or Windows is to Microsoft—it’s a hot seller.

We live in an age when hospitals measure their success by the number of coronary bypass surgeries they perform. Incredibly, it is still easier to get a bypass operation than it is to get good information on heart disease prevention. There are even billboards on the highways advertising bypass surgery.

Second – this book explains that plaque take decades to grow (for most people) in the arteries and by taking right steps and actions at the right time (not when taken to ER) – we can successfully regress it. This is not big money to you or for the hospital. You can achieve this at much lesser cost than a bypass or an operation involving stents etc. So hospitals are not going to be advertising preventative things to you and me over TV and media. There is no money for them in this. It is your responsibility to protect yourself.

This book explains that - non-invasive 10 min scanning of the arteries for calcium deposits using an Electron Beam Tomography (EBT) Scanner. Based on the scan results, the cardiologist will assign a risk score to the patient, and will order additional blood tests least of which is LDL, HDL, triglycerides and Total cholesterol. Not that they are not important. There are more “definitive” tests that can/need to be done today and identify our current state of Cardio parameters rather than relying on the same old LDL, HDL and triglycerides. A good result in LDL, HDL test does not mean that one is not going to have heart attack.

Based on those results – the patient can work with the Doctor and identify what needs to be done for improving the odds.

One thing I wanted to mention – in the changes that need to be done to improve health - food/fats – the Dr and the author Dr. William Davis argues against saturated fat. He castigates that saturated fat is unhealthy and is not required for the body. In fact it is just the opposite. Second he also says you can consume Canola oil which I do not agree. Vegetable oils (Corn oil, cottonseed, rapeseed etc) are a menace and humans are not evolved to consume that in industrial quantities, which we do . Third he also mentioned that Oat bran can be consumed – I am against it. Oats raise blood sugar and it cannot be good for anyone’s health including Cardio parameters. Recently William Davis wrote in his blog that he has changed his mind on Oats.

Dr. William Davis also runs a program called Track your Plaque. All of the concepts explained in the book – you can also have it done thru this program.

The key takeaway is - artery plaques can be identified in humans using non-invasive techniques, additional blood tests will need to be done to identify what caused the plaque, adopt life style including medicines, supplements and diet and you can regress the plaque.

A must read for anyone who is interested in staying healthy and not wanting to give a surprise to oneself or family.

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for the wonderful info... It is always a puzzle when i hear of someone being in perfect health (only last week he did a complete check and everything was fine); get an attack.
    Pl. write more on health related subjects.

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  2. Good book but wrong advise on dieting I think. People still have lot of reservations against saturated fats or paleo diet. Long way to go. Recently I read that despite highest percapita consumption of wine and beef, argentinians remain healthy and incidence of diabetes or cardio vascular disease are lower on percentage based when compared to most other countries.

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  3. Venkat.. Your blog easily makes me to read more and more to understand the concepts. Thanks for that. Two things..

    1. EBT [ 25 k ]is costlier than Angiogram or CT Scan 15K/10K. EBT is not done in India, to my knowledge.

    2. Good to know the Oat bran theory.One more episode of Food inc.

    Just my opinion.

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  4. For all the other bloggers, I watch this guy(Venkat) or have the privilege of being his neighbor so I know the amount of knowledge he has on this stuff, his strict diet regimen kept him out of medication for a longtime, and Venkat I agree with you on people/GOVT sometimes concentrates on Solutions rather than the problem(Source) itself , if they do it helps not to take use of those billboard ads (Heart Surgery)…

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  5. Thanks Krishna for everything.

    Kathir, this is not a diet book and he has tried suggesting ways and means of parameters that created plaque in the first place. Hence it is not comprehensive.

    Visu, I cannot believe that EBT scanner is not available in Madras Apollo. Kathir, do you know?

    Gnani,

    You are too generous.

    More than the govt - I believe it is we people who have to make the difference. Someone or the other will always try and trick us.

    Thanks to all

    Venkat

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  6. Here are the equipments that are available for cardiac patients at Apollo Madras.

    http://www.apollohospitals.com/cardiology-heart-surgery/diagnostic-services.html

    EBT is not listed in that one.

    Venkat

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  7. Rangarajan Krishnan9:42 PM

    Good info on plaque. However, the theory of diet or food keeps changing all the time. I think the book highlights that there is one more risk namely calcium block and can also kill people thru sudden heart attack. Added to LDL,HDL, and Trig one may have to check for calcium deposits/blocks in the artery/heart.

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  8. Ranga,

    Thanks for visiting and for your comments.

    To your comment that diet and food information of what is good/bad keeps changing all the time - in a way you are correct. But there are lot of misinformation on what is good for maintaining proper health and we have to sift thru lot of information and come to a conclusion.

    Secondly, based on latest testing/research these things will keep changing as well. We need to keep track of these things and keep ourselves updated, since there is no second chance for us in this case.

    Venkat

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