Are Heart Attack Risk Calculators Wrong?
The Truth About Heart Disease
Since the 1950s the medical industry has been peddling the myth that high cholesterol causes heart attacks. But here’s the truth. As Americans’ cholesterol levels have gone down, heart disease has not. It remains the number one cause of death in the United States.
I use a better warning system for heart attacks. I measure my patients’ telomeres.
What are telomeres?
You know by now that telomeres are the little countdown clocks at the end of your chromosomes. They prevent DNA strands from unraveling.
When you are young your telomeres are long. But every time a cell divides the telomeres get shorter. Cells die when telomeres are too short to protect DNA. And you begin to develop the signs and diseases of old age — including heart disease.
Heart Attack Risk Signal
Telomeres are one of the best signals I’ve found for whether someone is at risk for a heart attack. And a recent study backs up what I’ve seen in my own patients.
Effects of Shorter Telomeres
Researchers measured the telomere lengths of nearly 4,000 heart attack patients within 24 hours of their attacks. They found that the heart attack victims had shorter telomere lengths when compared to a healthy control group.
In fact, every time telomere length dropped by one unit, heart attack risk more than doubled.1
Another study measured the telomeres of 337 people who had a heart attack (myocardial infarction, or MI). They also measured 337 people who did not. The slide below sho...
Source: Al Sears, MD Natural Remedies - Category: Complementary Medicine Authors: Al Sears Tags: Heart Health Source Type: news
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