CAC - Coronary artery calcium scan

tests
(Troy) #1

Some info from Peter Attia

Enjoy🙂

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Coronary Calcium Scan
(KCKO, KCFO) #2

Thanks for posting this. Great info. I’m a mid ranger on the CAC. Needed to see this.

(Ellen ) #3

Are you concerned about your number @collaroygal? My CAC score is 79, now he wants me to have a stress test. I don’t want to take a day off work for another test. My B/P is normal (always), I’m not diabetic, and my EKG is always great. Did your doctor want more testing after your CAC results?

(KCKO, KCFO) #4

Yes I am concerned. I am following Dr. Blanchette’s guidelines for stopping the progression. It really did shock me, I do well on physicals, this blindsided me. (Thank you, Ivor Cummins!! ) I’ve started taking more D3 along with the Vitamin K complex. I will be retesting in the spring, if no change I will look into additional things like very low dose statin. Rreally do not want to go there, but if all the other things I am doing doesn’t work, I will give it a go til the next scan to see if they do any good. I am hoping the fish oil and K and D supplementation will work. Oh and I am doing niacin as well, almost forgot. That takes some getting used to even half dose caused flushing, but after the breaking in period it has been fine. My PCP doesn’t even know I did this and she won’t until after the next test result is in :), I did this out of pocket and so glad I did.

I did have the ultrasound done to see how my blood flow is and it is fine. That was done about 3 yrs. ago. Stroke not CVD has occurred in my family so I am concerned about clotting, this protocol will aide in that effort too.

Under 100 is low risk. Ask your dr. about following the lowering protocol. PM me with your email addy, and I will copy my flyer from Dr. Blanchette and email it to you if you are not familiar with the protocol.

#5

Vitamin B3? Why? Is it for the nicotinamide support effect for NAD production?

(Joey) #6

@Ely So, I don’t want to wave off the situation, but to clarify what the table is saying to me, it’s this…

Since you have a non-zero CAC score that’s less than 100, your likelihood of NOT having an event (i.e., coronary death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, bypass surgery, or angioplasty) is 99.00%. [Pause for exhale.]

Now, if you had a zero CAC score, then your likelihood of not having such an event would have been 99.46%. To be sure, 99.46% is better than 99.00%.

And yeah, you’d rather have a 99.46% chance of avoiding such heart-related misery than a mere 99.00% chance. But a 99.00% chance isn’t terrible … right?

I’m not saying you shouldn’t take really good care of yourself. After all, you deserve nothing less.

But as someone whose 60+ yrs of eating a so-called “healthy” low-fat diet has produced a similar non-zero CAC score of < 100 - and as someone who is now doing many of the things you’ve cited to take better care of my future health - I would suggest you look at the matter from this perspective …

Your glass is not half full. Your glass is 99.00% full.

So take good care of yourself, enjoy life, and don’t stress too much about things yet to come. :vulcan_salute:

(KCKO, KCFO) #7

D3 not B3. D3 works with the K vitamins to get the calcium into teeth and bones where it belongs, not in your heart’s arteries.

#8

Not sure how much of Ivor Cummings you have watched sorry if you know this already. On the good side, as long as you stop the CAC score progressing(increasing) then the risk is lower.

If you are doing keto and the other things it will most likely be reversing.

Based on my understanding CVD is in a large part due too inflammation caused by high insulin if you keep that low that is the big risk factor.

Get that low do the other things (you mention). Seems like that is the best course following the science

I don’t remember seeing it, sleep, stress, and exercise are all part of it.

(Ellen ) #9

:blush: great advice Joey. I’m going to try and email @collaroygal so that I can follow her protocol. I’m not doing the stress test yet. Maybe next year. I appreciate your view and another way to look at these results.

(Bob M) #10

Statins actually increase progression of calcium score. (Supposedly, they make the calcification “more dense”, which they argue is good. Not sure that’s really true, though.) First, we don’t really know how much “error” is in these, so just realize you can get a slightly different score and that may be meaningless. Second, while I think the idea is to reverse the score, if you don’t get any growth, that’s also good.

What type of stroke are you concerned about? If bleed through (Hemorrhagic Stroke), up your saturated fat intake. If it’s Ischemic Stroke (a blockage), that’s a tougher one. You’re looking for something that’s not completely calcified (so called “soft” plaque), so clotting might be where you want to look, which is what you said.

(KCKO, KCFO) #11

B3 = niacin so yea, I’m doing that as well as the D3, which is the more important one in my case.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #12

As I understand it, the rate of calcification is more important than the actual score. If you can slow the progression or even halt it, your risk of a cardiovascular event goes down considerably. Of course, the best is reversing the calcification, if at all possible, but that is likely to be a years-long process.

If your other numbers are good, I would suspect that the risk is still manageable, even given a high CAC score. One of the most important of the blood tests is HbA1C, since glycated haemoglobin is more likely to clump and clot, which of course greatly increases the risk of an untoward event.

(KCKO, KCFO) #13

Any, I was too young to know the deep details of my relatives who had them. I have done more research on avoiding strokes than CVD up until now.

My genes profile show I would be tolerant of statins. I don’t want to do them, but if I have to go there to halt or lower the calcium levels, I will probably do that. Water based and very low dose only though.

(Bob M) #14

Before you do that, get a Twitter account and follow David Diamond. Right now, he is posting one citation per day of statin damage to mental health, because Peter Attia and Thomas Dayspring have blocked him, but TD posted one study where statins ostensibly showed a benefit for mental health.

Personally, I would take a statin only if I had to, under duress. The ones that cross the brain-blood barrier, for instance, are HIGHLY associated with ALS.

(KCKO, KCFO) #15

I won’t do it if I don’t feel I have to do it. This podcast from Ivor Cummins is a good one. Water soluable statins are the least damaging type according to the Australian dr. in this podcast. He is pro lowcar/keto diets and does CAC scans at his practice.