By Randolph Ice PT, CCS
As athletes, it’s easy to believe that we are immune to heart disease because of how much we exercise and our resulting physical fitness. But recent studies have shown that even fit cyclists can have as much atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) as their less active peers.
In 1974 I founded the SCOR Cardiac Cyclists Club to assist with a research grant our hospital had received from the NIH to determine what were the factors that contributed to heart attacks in men between the ages of 40 and 50 years old, “premature” atherosclerosis as it was referred to. The SCOR (Specialized Centers of Research) grant to Rancho Los Amigos Hospital was for five years and recruited 100 men to be placed into a randomized low cholesterol, low saturated fat diet and a low or high intensity exercise program. Coronary angiography was performed on all men prior to entering the study and my role was to establish and keep these men complying with the exercise program.
I was a newly minted PT and this hospital was considered the “Mecca” for PT’s in the early 70s. There were only a total of three hospitals offering Cardiac Rehabilitation Services in all of Southern California at that time and I was lucky enough to go to work at Rancho in 1972.
The men in the “SCOR program” would exercise once/week in a group setting in our PT clinic at Rancho, attend lectures on various heart disease topics and were asked to exercise at home at least two to three times per week. I started the SCOR cycling club on Saturdays as a way of promoting compliance to the exercise portion of the research project while a PT partner of mine started a weekend SCOR Jogging Club for the same purpose for those who did not want to ride a bike (can’t imagine why!).
A complete risk factor analysis including lipids and a glucose tolerance test was done initially, at 18 months and five years into the study along with repeat angiography to examine whose arteries showed progression of disease and whose who did not. A statistical analysis of all their risk factors and blood chemistries was done to correlate what contributed to coronary artery disease progression.
To make a long story short only three factors determined progression of coronary atherosclerosis:
- Continued Smoking – This was huge
- Abnormal Glucose Tolerance Testing – What we would currently call pre-diabetes, insulin resistance or Type II diabetes
- Exercise compliance
Cholesterol, HDL and LDL were not correlated whatsoever. At that time I was a brainwashed PT who was told by all the cardiologists I trained with that “cholesterol” causes heart disease. I even (briefly) switched to drinking non-fat milk and gave up eggs for Egg Beaters in the 1970s. Ugh!! I gave that up after a few months.
The Lipid Theory of Atherosclerosis
By the early 1980s I had treated hundreds of coronary patients in different Cardiac Rehabilitation programs and could see the “Lipid Theory of Atherosclerosis” was not valid as other studies from around the world confirmed our findings at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital where I worked for nine years. That was the beginning of my cholesterol skepticism, which has only been confirmed many times over in the ensuing 40 years.
I am a devotee of the Weston Price Foundation’s Wise Traditions way of eating, which is how I was raised by my farm born and raised parents. If you have never heard of Weston Price DDS, here is his website. This eating program is pretty much just the opposite of the American Heart Associations recommendations, which in my opinion have been a disaster to the American public’s health. Despite 60 years of low cholesterol, low saturated fat propaganda put out by the AHA, Big Pharma and Academia heart disease remains the number one cause of death for the last 60 years! Gee, maybe it’s time for a different approach to prevention.
Unfortunately, by the mid-1980s the first statin drug studies emerged claiming lowering LDL cholesterol reduced cardiovascular death rates in those who previously had a heart attack by “20 to 25 percent.” Well, that is a relative risk reduction. When I read the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (4S Study) in detail which was published in 1984, the actual absolute risk reduction between the statin and placebo groups was “0.8 percent per year” over a five year period.
Really? That’s it??
Buried in the details was the fact that this miniscule change was evenly spread out amongst all levels of initial blood cholesterol levels. Also not reported too loudly was that there was no difference in subsequent second heart attacks nor strokes in either group. What? How can that be??
Heart attacks are caused by progression of atherosclerosis with a coronary thrombosis being the precipitating factor in most (but not all). Clearly Simvastatin did not affect the progression of the disease in those who already had documented atherosclerosis. Heart attacks and strokes occurred equally in both groups.
In fact many studies now show statins accelerate calcification of the arteries via their vitamin K blocking effects. I personally believe based on my experience and observations that statins cause an acceleration of atherosclerosis with more heart attacks. Research clearly shows this, but is ignored.
There are over 300 documented unwanted direct effects of statin drugs. I never recommend them and do everything I can to convince people to get off them before they come down with a statin-induced disease like congestive heart failure or Type II diabetes — or have another heart attack or sudden death.
If LDL cholesterol was “bad” then it would be expected the most benefit would be seen in those with the highest cholesterol and LDL levels. That was not the case in the 4S study and years later, it turns out this tiny survival benefit amongst a cherry picked healthier cardiac population was due to statin drug’s ability to block the pro-inflammatory Nuclear Factor Kappa Beta pathway. LDL lowering was a “side effect,” one which has many detrimental effects as time goes on. This includes reduced immune function with increase susceptibility to pneumonia, cognitive dysfunction, peripheral neuropathy, ALS, Parkinson’s Disease and even dementia.
Stopping the Progression of Atherosclerosis
So what does cause atherosclerosis, what determines whether it gets worse or not and how do you stop it? I am always asked can it be reversed? Well, yes, if you look at those living under starvation conditions, there doesn’t seem to be any heart attacks, but that’s not exactly a desirable lifestyle. In our studies at Rancho we observed coronary atherosclerosis reversal in some coronary arteries in about two percent of our patients, so it is possible, but probably not a realistic goal.
In my mind, if the disease can be arrested in its tracks, then it’s game over. After 49 years of treating thousands of heart disease patients, I think I have discovered through a lot of research and essentially trial and error on my patients what works and what does not.
The Role of Vitamin C
Baby boomers remember the 1972 book Dr. Linus Pauling published entitled “Vitamin C the Common Cold and the Flu.” In this book Dr. Pauling presented extensive research showing mega-doses of oral Vitamin C taken at the onset of cold or flu symptoms could ameliorate these illnesses very quickly. Much research since then has confirmed this therapy works.
What most people don’t know is that Linus Pauling turned his attention to atherosclerosis and cancer and their relationship to vitamin
C after writing this book. This was his work for the next 19 years until his death at age 93. The result of this research along with Mathias Rath MD was the publication of the Unified Theory of Atherosclerosis in 1990 that posited that atherosclerosis is a vitamin C deficiency disease. In essence atherosclerosis is a one manifestation of scurvy created by a low grade chronic deficiency of it.
For example, virtually all mammals are able to manufacture vitamin C in their liver except for humans, guinea pigs, some primates and fruit bats. The latter four do have heart attacks while none of the other mammal species who eat their normal diet do. Did you know the average adult goat will manufacture 13,000 mg of vitamin C every day? Can you now see why people who tell me they take “500 mg of vitamin C every day” are actually extremely deficient? That the government recommends “75 – 90 mg/day from the diet is preposterous!
This topic was extensively documented in Dr. Rath’s 2003 book entitled Why People Get Heart Attacks But Animals Do Not. Dr. Pauling essentially passed the “vitamin C / atherosclerosis” ball on to Dr. Rath at the time of his death in 1994. I began to recommend vitamin C to my patients in the early 1990s, but was probably not recommending enough based on what I have learned since then. Dr. Pauling reportedly took 20 grams of oral Vitamin C for the last 15 plus years of his life once he discovered how much a typical animal makes on a daily basis.
The problem is that oral vitamin C is poorly absorbed and only about 20 percent of a 1,000 mg pill will actually reach the bloodstream (200 mg). That’s enough to meet the RDI of “60 mg” but is nowhere near what is needed to prevent and arrest atherosclerosis IMHO.
That problem was solved a few years ago with the invention of fat soluble vitamin C. Ascorbyl palmitate is a version of that, but lypospheric vitamin C seems to be a much better mousetrap. A 1,000 mg gel packet will have an 80 percent absorption rate (800 mg). My current advice to anyone trying to prevent a heart attack or stroke or progression of peripheral / carotid artery disease is to start with two packets per day at a minimum. Some higher risk people will need more, especially if they have an elevated blood Lipoprotein(a) level. Or take 2000 mg of any fat soluble form of vitamin C. You can have your doctor order a blood vitamin C level to see if you are getting therapeutic amounts absorbed.
Now you may be asking yourself, “How come my cardiologist hasn’t recommended this?” Well, that is a complicated answer, but let us just say vitamin C does not fit into the allopathic pharmaceutical model of treating any disease and is actually competition to statins, ACE inhibitors, diuretics, aspirin, Plavix, beta blockers, etc. The reality is that atherosclerosis in not caused by a deficiency of any drug! It is caused primarily by a deficiency of several nutrients and hormones with vitamin C being the most critical.
One cardiologist who has studied and written about the many therapeutic benefits of vitamin C is Thomas Levy MD, JD. His book Primal Panacea covers the overwhelming documentation proving that in high enough doses, vitamin C prevents and cures cancer, coronary artery disease, infectious and degenerative diseases. I encourage all my patients to purchase and read this book. Chapter four deals specifically with the effects of vitamin C and the mechanism behind how a lack of it leads to arterial wall thickening and how vitamin C protects the coronary arteries. (See attached figure).
Dr. Levy says, “If humans still had the capacity to synthesize vitamin C in quantities commensurate with their need, this disease might be totally non-existent.”
Other Cardiovascular “Risk Factors”
One of the interesting things about atheroscerlosis is the massive age range of heart attacks I have seen. My youngest patient was a female who had a heart attack at age 29 and my oldest was a gentleman with an “MI” at age 92. Why such a huge range? Pretty much everyone in the USA is vitamin C deficient unless they are mega-dosing vitamin C everyday (which is probably less than 0.001% of the population) so there must be other factors that drive this disease. You might be familiar with the American Heart Association cardiovascular disease risk factor list of advancing age, male sex (post-menopausal women finally catch up to men by age 65), smoking, Type II diabetes, obesity, hypertension, family history, inactive lifestyle, etc. What you may not be familiar with is the newer list of risk factors I consider to be as if not more important and can be easily measured.
They include:
- Lipoprotein(a)
- Homocysteine
- Highly sensitive C Reactive Protein
- Fibrinogen
- 25HyroxyVitamin D3
- Fasting Insulin, Hemoglobin A1C, Fasting Glucose
- Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH)
- Oxidized LDL
- Low Free Testosterone Levels (men)
- Low Estradiol and Progesterone Levels (Women)
- Fasting Triglycerides
My experience has been that the more of these biochemical abnormalities one has on top of a vitamin C deficiency, the earlier atherosclerosis will develop and a heart attack or stroke will occur. People with heart attacks under age 50 tend to have several of these, while those over age 80 tend to have just a few. Each of these risk factors could be a topic of separate discussion however that can be deferred until later should there be an interest.
Another huge contributing to heart attacks is root canaled teeth, first identified by Dr. Price in the 1940s as a major causative agent of many diseases. He wrote two books totaling 1,100 pages on the dangers of this procedure. Dr. Levy agrees and has written another book called The Toxic Tooth, illustrating how these dead teeth become infected and leak endotoxins into the circulation from anaerobic bacteria. Periodontal gum disease is also a contributing factor to heart attacks via the same mechanism. I do my best to discourage these in my patients and encourage them to see an endodontist to determine if the root canaled tooth/teeth are infected and consider having them extracted.
Here is a Youtube video where Dr. Levy discusses how root canaled teeth can contribute to heart attacks via inflammation.
Keep in mind atherosclerosis is an arterial wall (endothelial) injury / repair process gone haywire. Vitamin C is critical to the repair process and all the other factors listed above just accelerate the injury to a greater or faster extent. Eliminate as many as possible and speed up the endothelial healing and heart attacks will cease. At least that has been my experience since the early 1990s.
My approach is to measure all of these and develop a nutritional supplement plan combined with aerobic and strength training exercise and a bio-identical hormone replacement program to negate as many as possible.
Notice I do not measure total cholesterol, HDL nor LDL. After 49 years, I see no value in trying to change them, so why measure them? They have no predictive value. In fact one will live longer if they are left alone. It has been shown that centenarians have an average blood total cholesterol level of 250 ng/ml. Why fight success? Your liver makes as much LDL and HDL as it needs to on a daily basis and trying to lower LDL or raise HDL by dieting or with drugs is a recipe for more illness.
Finally, even though I did not know any of this information back in the 1970s and 1980s, many of my SCOR CCC heart disease patients who rode every Saturday year-after-year survived into their late 80s and early 90s. My oldest was 92 when he passed away from dementia and had no progression of atherosclerosis since his bypass surgery at age 54. That’s 38 years with no cardiac event — pretty much unheard of.
Certainly we can say regular exercise of any kind has protective effects on the coronary arteries. However one still hears about the “Jim Fixx Story” so it is necessary to keep in mind atherosclerosis is a multi-factorial process and one cannot count on just exercise to keep you heart attack free.
Jim Fixx was a runner who died of a coronary at age 52 after changing his lifestyle and popularizing running as a positive health behavior. His sudden death / MI was blamed on “genetics,” yet none of what I have written about here was known in 1977 when he died, so I think it is better to say we don’t really know how this happened.
My SCOR club members usually passed away from “old age” or cancer, the number two cause of death in this country. Interestingly since I have implemented more aggressive nutritional supplement and hormone replacement therapies, only a few of my heart disease patients have succumbed to cancer and none have had any heart attacks in the last 20 years.
Yes it’s anecdotal but trends are trends!
Randolph Ice PT, CCS
USC Graduate – 1971
Founder SCOR Cardiac Cyclists Club – 1974
Inventor/Manufacturer of Ultra Energy – 1986, SPIZ meal replacement/energy drink – 1995 (www.SPIZ.net)
Clinical Coordinator – Vintage Medical Hormone Replacement Group – 2000 to present
Director of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation at Rancho PT, Murrieta California 1991 – 2020
Director of Physical Therapy and Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation – Metroflex Gym – 2020
Yikes, there is so much misinformation in the article by Randolph Ice…..quite the ‘point of view’.
Hello Rob:
Thanks for reading my article.
What do you consider to be “misinformation?”
This is a dangerous article. Take this statement, for example: “Despite 60 years of low cholesterol, low saturated fat propaganda put out by the AHA, Big Pharma and Academia heart disease remains the number one cause of death for the last 60 years! Gee, maybe it’s time for a different approach to prevention.” Huh? Huge numbers of Americans are obese and few follow the dietary recommendations. High levels of heart disease hardly confirm that those recommendations are wrong. And animals having heart attacks? Most animals only live a short time. How many 10 year old kids have heart problems.? Are there any long term randomized studies of the impact of high doses of vitamin C? A cite to a 1990 book “postulating” a beneficial impact is not persuasive.
Hello Joe:
“Huge numbers of Americans” have become obese and insulin resistant precisely due to the misquided “war” on dietary cholesterol and saturated fat.” For the past 40+ years the government has been pushing a higher carbohydrate, lower fat diet and the result predictably is insulin resistance, obesity, Type II diabetes and the Metabolic Syndrome. This syndrome is present in60 – 65% of the patients I see with coronary artery disease. There serum cholesterols, LDL’s and HDL’s are all over the place. Their Triglycerides are almost always elevated.
“Amimals lonly l;ive a short time.” What has that got to do with heart disease? The point is that mammals eating their usual diet do not have heart attacks. BTW, elephants, Galapagos giant turtles and macaws live as long or longer than humans.
Ten year old kids do have heart attacks if they have congenitally inherited very elevated homocysteine levels. Read the Homocysteine Revolution by Dr. Kilmer McCully published in 1997.
There are no randomized trials of Vitamin C and heart disease…………there never will be as the costs would be in excess of a $1 billion and there is no financial return for the Vitamin C companies to invest that kind of money when it is not a patentable product.
If you want more verification of the Vitamin C/coronary heart disease link, read the Primal Panacea written by the cardiologist Thomas Levy MD, JD, published in 2011.
Thanks Mr Ice. Can you please share some of your published references used in this interesting article you’ve written? Somewhat like Dr Mirkin consistently does. That way, I can share your article with other – skeptical physicians, who may shrug off your article bc of no references. All the best!
Sure.
1.) Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price DDS, the 8th edition being published in 2009.
2.) Root Canal Coverup – George Meinig DDS – published in 2008
3.) Priimal Panacea – Thomas Levy MD, JD, published in 2011
4.) Why Animals Don’t Get Heart Attacks, But People Do – Mathias Rath MD published in 1994.
Here is Dr. Pauling’s and Dr. Rath’s original paper on the Vitamin C deficiency/Atherosclerosis connection published in 1990:
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1992/pdf/1992-v07n01-p005.pdf
5.) Here is one article on the benefits of testosterone replacement in men with coronary artery disease:
Testosterone supplementation reduces heart attack risk in men with heart disease
Date:
April 3, 2016
Source:
Intermountain Medical Center
Summary:
A new multi-year study shows that testosterone therapy helped elderly men with low testosterone levels and pre-existing coronary artery disease reduce their risks of major adverse cardiovascular events — including strokes, heart attacks, and death.
Share:
FULL STORY
A new multi-year study from the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City shows that testosterone therapy helped elderly men with low testosterone levels and pre-existing coronary artery disease reduce their risks of major adverse cardiovascular events — including strokes, heart attacks, and death.
The study showed that patients who received testosterone as part of their follow-up treatment fared much better than patients who didn’t. Non-testosterone-therapy patients were 80 percent more likely to suffer an adverse event.
“The study shows that using testosterone replacement therapy to increase testosterone to normal levels in androgen-deficient men doesn’t increase their risk of a serious heart attack or stroke,” said cardiologist Brent Muhlestein, MD, co-director of cardiovascular research at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute. “That was the case even in the highest-risk men — those with known pre-existing heart disease.”
The Intermountain Medical Center research team will present results of the study at the American College of Cardiology’s 65th Annual Scientific Session on Sunday, April 3 at 12:15 p.m., CDT.
The research team studied 755 male patients at Intermountain Healthcare hospitals. The men were between the ages of 58 and 78, and all had severe coronary artery disease. They were split into three different groups, which received varied doses of testosterone administered either by injection or gel.
The conclusions:
After one year, 64 patients who weren’t taking testosterone supplements suffered major adverse cardiovascular events, while only 12 who were taking medium doses of testosterone and nine who were taking high doses did.
After three years, 125 non-testosterone-therapy patients suffered major adverse cardiovascular events, while only 38 medium-dose and 22 high-dose patients did.
Here is another showing how low testosterone contributes to CAD, insulin resistance, Type II diabetes and worsening congestive heart failure:
Methodist Debakey Cardiovasc J. 2017 Apr-Jun; 13(2): 68–72.
doi: 10.14797/mdcj-13-2-68
PMCID: PMC5512682
PMID: 28740585
Testosterone and the Heart
Travis Goodale, M.D., Archana Sadhu, M.D., Steven Petak, M.D., J.D., and Richard Robbins, M.D.
Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
Go to:
Abstract
Testosterone (T) has a number of important effects on the cardiovascular system. In men, T levels begin to decrease after age 40, and this decrease has been associated with an increase in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular (CV) risk. Low T levels in men may increase their risk of developing coronary artery disease (CAD), metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes. Reduced T levels in men with congestive heart failure (CHF) portends a poor prognosis and is associated with increased mortality. Studies have reported a reduced CV risk with higher endogenous T concentration, improvement of known CV risk factors with T therapy, and reduced mortality in T-deficient men who underwent T replacement therapy versus untreated men. Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) has been shown to improve myocardial ischemia in men with CAD, improve exercise capacity in patients with CHF, and improve serum glucose levels, HbA1c, and insulin resistance in men with diabetes and prediabetes. There are no large long-term, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials to provide definitive conclusions about TRT and CV risk. However, there currently is no credible evidence that T therapy increases CV risk and substantial evidence that it does not. In fact, existing data suggests that T therapy may offer CV benefits to men.
Testosterone can also prevent/reverse atrial fibrillation if caught early enough:
https://www.prestigewellnessinstitute.com/blog/preventing-atrial-fibrillation-with-testosterone
https://hcp.nebido.com/hcp/testosterone-news-resources/research-news/effective-testosterone-treatment-reduces-incidence-of-atrial-fibrillation
Sure.
Books:
1.) Primal Panacea – Thomas Levy MD, JD’
2.) Why Animals Don’t Get Heart Attacks But People Do – Mathias Rath MD
3.) Nutrition & Physical Degeneration – Weston Price DDS
4.) The Root Canal Coverup – George Meinig DDS
5.) Vitamin C and the Common Cold and Influenza – Linus Pauling PhD.
The original paper published by Linus Pauling Ph.D and Mathias Rath MD on the Vitamin C deficiency/atherosclerosis connection:
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1992/pdf/1992-v07n01-p005.pdf
Testosterone and Heart Disease connection:
https://www.nature.com/articles/3901504
https://jeffreydachmd.com/2015/02/testosterone-prevents-heart-attacks-older-men/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160403195920.htm#:~:text=A%20new%20multi%2Dyear%20study,%2C%20heart%20attacks%2C%20and%20death.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5512682/
Testosterone is key to the prevention of atrial fibrillation:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.116.004880
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29808758/
Testosterone replacement is critical for improving heart function in men with congestive heart failure:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1768161/
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCHEARTFAILURE.111.965632
Testosterone improves angina pectoris symptoms and ischemia in those with CAD: This was first observed in the late 1930’s by the Germans who were the first to determine the chemical structure of testosterone and
then how to synthesize it. They were the first to administer it to men with angina and gangrene from PAD…..and documented improvements.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1768369/
Here is an article in 1945 demonstrating benefit utilizing an inferior form of testosterone replacement. T. Proprionate that is only in the body for 2 – 3 days before it is metabolized.
Currently T. cypionate is the commercially available form of injectable testosterone in the USA and is bioavailable in the body for 7 – 8 days.
I have found it very effective at relieving exertional angina pectoris.
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/5/7/305/2722894
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.102.16.1906
From the father of bio-identical hormone replacement in the USA, Jonathon Wright MD:
https://tahomaclinic.com/2010/10/bioidentical-testosterone-2/
Thought this was a great article until I checked out the Weston Price link. One of that site’s top articles is a bunch of correlations (correlation does not equal causation) between illnesses and electrical frequencies (while conveniently ignoring things like the Black Death pandemics well before electricity was thing), with the conclusion that 5G causes Covid and things like coronavirus and influenza aren’t actually contagious. Too beyond the pale for me.
Well before you throw out the baby with the bath water, you might want to read Dr. Price’s books. He was years ahead of his time discovering the connection between tooth/gum health and their connection to CAD and many other degenerative diseases.. His Nutrition and Physical Degeneration book should be mandatory reading for all medical school students IMHO.
Dr. Price wrote about the problems with root canals in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and has subsequently been proven correct many times over.
I suggest you read Dr. Arthur Firstenberg’s book The Invisible Rainbow A History of Electricity and Life before you reject the connection between EMF radiation and disease. Hundreds of scientists around the world have written about this issue and the many diseases it can cause.
I found the article very interesting, and thought provoking. Taking more Vit C never killed anyone ;=)
That is correct!
I was about to order high doses of Vitamin C, but then I did a little research. Dietary Vitamin C never hurt anyone. Some studies have found that supplemental Vitamin C in high doses have increased mortality, rather than the opposite.
I have never seen any published article the correlates dietary Vitamin C intake with mortality. Could you cite your references?
Thanks!
Let’s hear from Dr Mirkin on this.
Back in 1994, I picked up a flyer in my local bike shop for the Solvang Century, a ride produced by the SCOR Cardiac Cyclists Club. I had never heard of centuries, but was sufficiently intrigued to sign up for the shorter Solvang Prelude that fall. So began my journey from an occasional casual cyclist to a 250mile/week roadie, that has included many centuries and other events, and helped me be fitter at 65 than I was at 25.
Thank you, Randy, for founding SCOR and for everything you have done over the past several decades for cyclists, and cycling, in Southern California.
You are welcome!
This is a misleading article and unbalanced with presentation of data. No discussion of subsequent statin studies with simvastatin, atorvastatin or VASCEPTA (icosapent ethyl), the specific fish oil isolate studies. No evidence based medicine supporting vitamin C use. Recent studies of simvastatin/ezetimibe in older patients show a greater decrease in cardiovascular events. The editors of RBR should vet pieces like this before posting the lest this site turn into a cycling version of Infowars. PLEASE ignore this piece,
We all are entitled to our opinions. As adults, we are all capable of reading the literature and coming to our own conclusions. My article is based on more than just cardiology journal articles which in many cases can be manipulated by the population picked for the study and the statistical methods and standards used to come to a conclusion. Relative risk vs absolute risk reduction is a prime example when it comes to statin drugs. No statin study that I have ever read had more than a 1 – 2%/year improvement in absolute mortality. I have observed multiple “side effects” in my patients over that last 35 years since they came out that will more than offset that improvement in the long haul with CHF, ALS, dementia and Type II diabetes being examples. My observations are based on my 49 year career treating thousands of heart disease patients and finding what works and what doesn’t.
All entitled to our opinions… how lame.
Promoting false and misleading information has dire consequences to those gullible enough to follow it..
Your article is just plain false, and reprehensible.
Hmmm, in 2002 I had a cryptogenic stroke at age 35. I was in the military at the time so I was in excellent health.
My BP, BS, LDL, & triglycerides were all ‘borderline’ but not threatening. Since then my Drs have put me on thinners, BP, and statins for prevention of a 2nd episode. I no longer take statins as they make my cycling very difficult. Hx of CVD in all male family members, and subsequent deaths from CVD, all younger than 50 years of age. I am know the last remaining in my immediate family. Only factor I see in my longevity, I’m 54, is my intense cycling history, and the fitness achieved while in the military.
Can this be so? Should I consider a vitamin C regime?
Thanks for a great article!
We would never recommend going against the advice of your own doctor who knows your own specific medical history and situation, so I’d start by asking there. Some doctors are more pro vitamin, and some are very anti vitamin. Sometimes they’ll say something like they don’t believe a particular vitamin will help you at all, but it also isn’t harmful to try. But other times supplements can interfere with medications, so you’d want to get clearance.
My suggestion is to read Dr. Thomas Levy’s book Primal Panacea and look at his YouTube video’s on the many benefits of Vitamin C has on coronary artery disease as well as infections, diabetes, etc. In addition, I would suggest you have all the risk factors I discussed in my article measured. More than likely you will find one or more that are abnormal. Then you will be able to more precisely define what else you need to do.
There is one, clinically proven, effective method to not just stop, but reverse, atherosclerosis. ONLY ONE.
Is a 12 year follow up study of 18 individuals validating this approach, good enough for you? Of course not. This is the alternate, fact free universe of RBR where “bro science” is science.
http://www.dresselstyn.com/site/study02/
This is small study of short duration in a small self-selected population with interesting results. The focus solely on the reduced serum cholesterol levels and no mention nor discussion of other risk factor alterations limits its interpretation IMHO.
Essentially this is the Pritikin Diet combined with a statin or other LDL lowering drugs as far as I can tell. Not one word is mentioned on whether these 18 people exercised and what their compliance was with it. Were they couch potatoes or marathon runners? Were they insulin resistant or Type II diabetic, obese, hypertensive, hyper-homocysteinemic, hypogonal, hyper-inflammatory, cigarette smokers or what?, There is no statistical multi-factorial analysis of all their risk factors and what role they played.
In our SCOR study years ago in men who had heart attacks under age 50, we found smoking, insulin resistance and compliance with exercise determined whose coronary disease showed progression and whose did not. The low fat, low cholesterol LDL lowering that was achieved had no effect on progression of atherosclerosis. Sorry…….that’s just the scientific facts.
One can achieve cholesterol levels of <150 with statins and/or Repatha alone………so why do we need to diet at all? I don't agree with that approach but 95% of cardiologists I deal with give out no dietary advice to their patients and focus solely on drug therapies with the goal of reaching an LDL of "70 mg%. or less."
Why?
Because taking a pill is easier. Following a "diet" is hard and compliance with diets is in general over a long time frame very poor.
It's not very good when it comes to exercise compliance for primary prevention in the general public as well as in the secondary prevention crowd either. At least 60 – 70% of my patients discontinue the exercise program I set up for them within 1 – 2 years. Complying with behavioral changes for most Americans is very
very difficult for many reasons.
Based on observing the Pritikin Program here in Santa Monica back in the 70's and 80's where people lived in a facility for 30 days where their meals were prepared, the compliance for a few weeks was great. However very FEW people followed this diet in the long run……..and I am talking about 5 – 2o years later..
I had a few vegan/Pritikin devotees back in those days and sooner or later they fell off that program. The fact that Dr. Esselstyn had only 18 people follow this program for 12 years confirms the difficulty in sticking with this extremely low fat, low cholesterol diet. It's not just not palatable and realistic for the vast majority of people who lack this kind of will power. .
It may well be his results had nothing to do with lipid levels and everything to do with the fact they were consuming more Vitamin C (and other helpful nutrients and antioxidants) from their higher fruit and vegetable intake………confirming Dr. Pauling and Dr. Rath's hypothesis.
Or it may be that they had lower oxidized LDL levels or reduced insulin levels or decreased hsCRP levels that accounted for their lack of progression. To say all 18 arrested their coronary artery disease progression because they maintained a serum cholesterol of <150 is not proven by the lack of attention to the other risk factor changes that may or may not have occured.
I have had well over 100 patients in my Cardiac Cycling Club survive 20 – 38 years post-cardiac event without further cardiac episodes not following the low cholesterol, low fat mantra. It's anecdotal but I certainly proves you do not have to be on a low fat, low cholesterol diet to prevent recurrent cardiac events.
I found it easier to keep my heart patients riding bikes regularly than eating kale.
This focus on dietary fats/cholesterol as the primary cause of atherosclerosis is misguided, ignores the many other PROVEN risk factors I discussed and has lead to millions of repeat events.
This is a multi-factorial disease and we are still learning what they are and what modifications work best. I am providing information based on my observations treating this disease for nearly a half century. Rejecting dogma and opening my eyes in the mid-80's to other science has allowed me to arrest the progress of atherosclerosis in virtually everyone. I started focusing in on correcting nutrient and especially hormonal deficiencies as well as teaching how to avoid toxic food ingredients (trans-fats, pro-inflammatory vegetable oils and excess simple sugar consumption in particular) and the role of exercise and stress reduction (which is what exercise does best),
So no…………there are several ways skin a cat. Anyone who treats disease knows there are many cures.
BTW, what's with the hostility? It's not becoming you "Bro."
Yours was a very interesting article and a compilation of other ideas regarding not just cardiovascular health in general, but The many life threatening issues faced by all humans who somehow make it to age thirty. Even with the supporting evidence you cite, it is still anecdotal at best. Let’s face it, there are so many factors not controlled for in most studies and “how to live a longer, healthier life” recommendations that we can only surmise that a healthy, reasonable diet and regular exercise may lead to a longer life. Please make no mistake, I am a seventy five year old serious cyclist that also participates in intense outdoor work and I firmly believe that as a result my daily existence is enhanced by such. My professional field is nueropsychology but I am trained in critical thinking skills in evaluating medical research. Your article is replete with nonsense statistics that become dangerous to the general public wanting to believe the conclusions you have made. As for me, I plan on living forever, so far so good!!
Thank you, Dr Dan.. Liked this article? There’s one about heart disease in athletes at VeloNrws, by a bicycle mechanic..
Hi, what’s the follow up to this article? You mentioned a bunch of other contributing factors such as Vitamin D3, fasting and a few others.