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Except for those with heart disease
or those at the highest risk for heart disease, all the standard medical
risk factors added up to mostly nothing when it comes to predicting heart
disease, heart attack, or stroke. And for healthy adults, even the "alternative"
risk factors, like homocysteine and C-Reactive protein findings were next
to useless.
This is a big one since so many multiple risk factor intervention
programs are in full swing, with more planned, throughout the
US and Europe. The typical risk factors include cholesterol, smoking,
blood pressure and diabetes. And programs include prescription drugs as
their centerpiece, with counseling and education as adjunct treatments.
These are led up
by the American Heart Association, the AMA, local and state governments,
and even the federal government.
Yet just as was found 10 years ago by the Cochrane Heart Group and Cochrane
Collaboration www.cochrane.com treating
risk factors was "ineffective in achieving reductions in total or
cardiovascular disease mortality (death)."
Indeed the findings of these interventional programs showed that some
people actually got worse. Overall deaths actually increased among the
drug-treated group with high blood pressure. And some did benefit. Those
were the folks at the very highest risk of heart disease.
But in the end, it showed once again that high cholesterol, high blood
pressure, etc. were poor predictors of heart disease, stroke or death
in healthy people. And the same can be said for the biomarker risk
factors like homocysteine, C-Reactive protein, B-type natriuretic
peptide. The conclusions were that the costs of using these risk factors
and treating for the same are very high, and these resources would be
better spent in other areas, or simply on those at the highest risk levels.
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If you are healthy, and when your health screening finds your cholesterol
at 250 (which is normal), or your blood pressure to be 140/90 (which is
normal), do not be fooled into powerful, dangerous, usually life-long
prescription drug treatments. This is "not particularly effective
in terms of reducing the risk of clinical events (stroke, heart attack,
angina, etc.)"
But What About CRP and Homocysteine?
Around about 2005 I began wondering about
the relevance of homocysteine levels. After all, synthetic B vitamins
would often lower homocysteine to safe levels, yet do nothing to help
heal the heart. Was this finding not as important as I previously thought.
That may indeed be the case. I now feel that the lowering of the homocysteine
levels has little direct correlation to heart disease.
And while I still monitor the C-Reactive protein (CRP) levels in heart
patients, I now feel that a high CRP level is just an ancillary finding.
In some cases, it can help diagnose inflammation or infection in the coronary
arteries. But it is probably not the major risk factor that many of us
were convinced of.
So it is back to basics. Taking all the tests, getting all the counseling,
following the low-fat diet, taking the drugs like Caduet (a cholesterol-lowering
and blood pressure drug combined into one), doesn't amount to much, and
can even hurt you. Instead, eat whole foods, exercise, drink pure water,
keep a positive attitude, and use phytonutrients when needed. This is
the formula for heart success.
This will be a hard pill for most in the medical profession to swallow.
After all, screenings, interventions, and drugs are critical to their
ongoing control over people and patients. There are thousands of well-meaning
physicians right now that truly believe that a statin (cholesterol-lowering)
drug should be prescribed for every American over age 50!
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