Why are you still taking a statin drug?
The post Why are you still taking a statin drug? appeared first on Dr. William Davis. (Source: Wheat Belly Blog)
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - September 4, 2020 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle alternatives to statins cholesterol coronary disease heart disease LDL lipids Lipitor undoctored Source Type: blogs
32 yo with right sided chest pain. Zero ST Elevation, but that does not matter.
DiscussionIn hindsight I feel there are very few alternative causes for an ECG like this other than an acute LAD occlusion. I believe this is one of those ' subtle STEMI ' cases where neither the ECG nor the symptoms are very obvious or severe and the usual evolution is not seen.I think of these cases as ' insidious infarcts ' and I have seen this in all infarct territories and I do not think they are particularly rare. Essentially the patient is fairly comfortable and the ECG is not obvious but the patient ended up with Q waves, huge troponins and we missed the opportunity to reperfuse the artery when it counts. These pat...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - February 17, 2020 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
Beyond heart health: Could your statin help prevent liver cancer?
Liver cancer is hard to treat. It’s a top-five cause of cancer-related death worldwide and a growing cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Since liver cancer is often found at a late stage, when treatment has limited benefit, there has been increasing interest in prevention. That’s where statin medications might come in.
Liver cancer is usually caused by chronic liver disease, so an important way to prevent liver cancer is to treat the underlying trigger. For example, curing hepatitis C infection — an important cause of chronic liver disease — reduces the risk of liver cancer. However, if the liver d...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 27, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Irun Bhan, MD Tags: Cancer Drugs and Supplements Health Source Type: blogs
Are polypills and population-based treatment the next big things?
Cardiovascular disease (CVD), such as heart attack and stroke, is a leading cause of death and disability in the US. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are major risk factors for CVD, and even though they are quite common and highly treatable, they tend to be undertreated. This is especially true among those who are poor or members of a minority. It’s estimated that thousands of lives could be saved each year if more people with high blood pressure and high cholesterol received treatment for these conditions.
The appeal of the polypill
One reason that high blood pressure and high cholesterol are poorly treated is t...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 13, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Source Type: blogs
Study supports benefit of statin use for older adults
In this study, the most common reason that patients or their doctors stopped statins was the development of advanced cancer or other major illness.
In my practice, I have also cared for many patients who have stopped taking statins or who express reluctance to take statins due to side effects. The most common side effect is muscle ache (typically tenderness or soreness of the large muscle groups, such as the biceps and thighs), which affects about 20% of statin takers and reverses when the statin is discontinued. There is also a slightly increased risk of diabetes with long-term statin use and, very rarely, liver problems....
Source: Harvard Health Blog - October 2, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Dara K. Lee Lewis, MD Tags: Drugs and Supplements Health Healthy Aging Heart Health Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 2nd 2019
In conclusion, in the absence of obesity, visceral adipose tissue possesses a pronounced anti-inflammatory phenotype during aging which is further enhanced by exercise.
Methods of Inducing Cellular Damage are Rarely Relevant to Aging, and the Details Matter
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2019/08/methods-of-inducing-cellular-damage-are-rarely-relevant-to-aging-and-the-details-matter/
One of the major challenges in aging research is determining whether or not models of cellular or organismal damage and its consequences are in any way relevant to the natural processes of aging. One can hit a brick wit...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 1, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Large Polypill Clinical Trial Shows a Third Reduction in Cardiovascular Events
The research and medical communities are slow to undertake work on combination therapies. Regulation makes it exceedingly expensive to assess multiple combinations, and there are numerous other perverse incentives to challenge any effort to build combination therapies with components developed and manufactured by different groups. Short of working around the existing system of regulation, and methods of doing this at scale are lacking at the present time, this is a challenging problem to solve. People follow incentives. Given this, it it is entirely plausible that there are many largely unexplored instances in which existi...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 30, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
MKSAP: 49-year-old-man with right arm weakness
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 49-year-old-man is evaluated 1 day after having an episode of right arm weakness without pain that lasted 5 minutes. He is now asymptomatic. The patient has type 2 diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia. Medications are aspiri n, metformin, and atorvastatin. On physical […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 24, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/mksap" rel="tag" > mksap < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions Neurology Source Type: blogs
Landmark Results Achieved in Aging and Chronic Disease: Danish Group Extends Disease-free Life by 8 Years
By WILLIAM H. BESTERMANN JR., MD
New Scientific Breakthroughs Can
Provide a Longer Healthier Life
Twenty-one years of follow-up comparing usual care with a protocol-driven team-based intervention in diabetes proved that healthy life in humans can be prolonged by 8 years. These results were achieved at a lower per patient per year cost. Aging researchers have been confident that we will soon be able to prolong healthy life. This landmark study shows this ambitious goal can be achieved now with lifestyle intervention and a few highly effective proven medications. These medications interfere with the core molecular biol...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 11, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Practice Patients aging chronic disease Denmark Diabetes William Bestermann Source Type: blogs
Is it SAFE to be grain-free?
Listen to critics of the Wheat Belly lifestyle and you’d think that, by banishing all things wheat and grains from your life, you will be excommunicated from your church, tossed out of your club, ostracized by friends and family, and suffer dire health consequences like heart disease and colon cancer. After all, they say that you are eliminating an entire food group and will be crippled by lack of fiber and nutrients. Worse, our focus on increasing our intake of fats and oils will get you a heart attack, three stents, or bypass surgery and you’ll be obliged to take Lipitor and Repatha for a lifetime.
First of a...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 25, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle grain-free Weight Loss Source Type: blogs
A poor sense of smell might matter more than you thought
As one of the five major senses, you could argue that our sense of smell is the least important. Sight, hearing, touch, and taste may poll better than smell, but try telling that to someone who has lost their sense of smell entirely.
The truth is that loss of the ability to smell comes with a significant cost, because olfaction serves several purposes that affect quality of life and even safety, including
stimulation of appetite
enhancement of the sense of taste
alerting you to which foods should not be eaten (if they’re rotting, for example)
warning you of danger (as with smoke warning of fire).
Loss of smell can also...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - June 18, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Alzheimer's Disease Brain and cognitive health Ear, nose, and throat Source Type: blogs
What your doctor may not know about cholesterol
Confusion over cholesterol issues is everywhere and shared by most people, including doctors. Unfortunately, it means that, by seeing your primary care doctor or even cardiologist, you are being advised with information that is superficial and largely ineffective while ignoring the MANY issues that really should be addressed to manage risk for cardiovascular disease. Admittedly, these are somewhat complicated issues and even I have been guilty at times of giving overlysimplistic answers. I’ll try to keep this as straightforward as possible, but it is a bit hairy.
I blame this situation on the statin drug industry, as...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 17, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Cholesterol undoctored wheat belly Source Type: blogs
I Can’t Hear You!
A 50-year-old man presented to the emergency department complaining of ringing in his ears and difficulty understanding what people were saying. He was concerned that he was having a stroke. A full neurological exam was unremarkable aside from decreased hearing, but his hearing deficits appeared to be equal bilaterally. Otoscopic exam demonstrated a normal tympanic membrane, and the rest of his physical exam was unremarkable. The patient's past medical history was significant for hypertension and hypercholesterolemia, for which he took lisinopril and atorvastatin. He was recently treated with a 10-day course of doxycycl...
Source: The Tox Cave - April 1, 2019 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Nutritional Lipidology
The statin drug industry and their willing and eager servants, i.e., doctors, have managed to prop up a drug franchise that has reaped hundreds of billion of dollars over the years while providing little benefit but plenty of harm. Although I’ve discussed these issues many times here in the Wheat Belly Blog, the Wheat Belly books, and more recently in the Undoctored book and Blog, it bears exploring further. I keep on hoping that clarity, logic, evidence, truth and repetition overcome our lack of billions of dollars in marketing that Big Pharma controls, a genuine David-vs-Goliath situation.
I call all the varied c...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - December 17, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates cardiovascular cholesterol heart lipoproteins statin undoctored wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Live the Wheat Belly lifestyle, get off prescription medications
Take a look at the list of medications people have been able to stop by following the Wheat Belly lifestyle.
These represent medications prescribed by doctors to, in effect, “treat” the consequences of consuming wheat and grains. They prescribe drugs to treat inflammation, swelling, skin rashes, gastrointestinal irritation, high blood sugars, airway allergy, joint pain, high blood pressure, leg edema and other abnormal effects caused by wheat and grains.
The list includes anti-inflammatory and pain medication, acid reflux drugs, injectable and oral drugs for diabetes, numerous anti-hypertensive agents, asthma i...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - October 27, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates autoimmune blood sugar bowel flora cholesterol Gliadin gluten-free grain-free grains Inflammation undoctored Weight Loss wheat belly Source Type: blogs
