A couple different new things for me…
Sheesh… Now we can’t be anxious about being depressed…
Patients with concomitant diagnoses of stable CAD and either major depressive disorder (MDD) or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) had a greater-than-twofold increase in the risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in the two years following a baseline assessment, although comorbid MDD and GAD appeared not to be additive in their effects on cardiac risk.
I recently tried taking Rhodiola because I read it helped with managing stress. I 
don’t get too stressed out as it is so I didn’t have especially high expectations about what the results might be and I didn’t feel an especially significant impact after I began to take it. But then about 2 to 3 weeks into it I began to notice that I had a bit more energy and felt even less stress than usual. I have a friend who I turned on to doing Rhodiola and he tells me that a Rhodiola/Ashwagandha combination is especially terrific. I thought I’d try that in the near future. Those two combined with the Carnitine I’m taking ought to make for good things.
In terms of supplement links…
The Life Extension Foundation has a great introductory article on Rhodiola and the Immortality Institute has a couple of great Forum threads on it including this one. Here’s the LEF report on LEF report on Ashwagandha.
The only downside I see is that I have a terrific type-A wife who believes I’d be better off if I was a little more stressed out about her issues… (Just kidding honey…)
There was a great article on Vitamin D3 in Scientific American magazine back in November 2007.
The FACCers are too busy even to lift a finger to provide public advice about how to design a study of remarkable cardiac event reducing events…
You’ll recall that I provided my take on the discussion going on over at Club WebMD’s Heart.org forum about Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC) Scan Scoring. Drs. Blanchet and Davis were making the point that doing CAC scans on patients was having a dramatic impact on the number of patients having cardiac events.
Well, both these great docs were given a hard time by those cardiologists who frequent that forum. They put it to Dr. Blanchet especially that he was in it for the money or that his data wasn’t reliable because it hadn’t been subject to the rigors of a formal study.
Well, Dr. Blanchet, intent on making a difference, made a post in that thread on December 2, 2007 as follows.
Study design
I have been trying to imagine what study I could do that could result in meaningful outcomes.Would a study looking at 1,000 patients beginning in 2002 and following through 2007 and measuring the average BP, and cholesterol be of value? Probably not because what would that prove other than I might be a better doctor than I was 5 years ago.
If I did a study looking at the number of heart attacks in my practice 5 to 7 years ago compared to the number over the last 3 years, would that be significant. I think that one could argue that meds have changed and the delta cannot be attributed to measuring coronary calcium.
What about comparing my results to another Internist practicing in my town with a similar patient mix who believes the “experts” and does not use coronary calcium imaging? How much would that study cost and who would fund it?
In other words, even if I had the financial resources to do a study that could prove something to “evidenced based” satisfaction, I am not sure how to proceed. As I have seen such a remarkable result with EBT imaging, I am not going to randomize half of my patients to NCEP-ATP-III guidelines and treat the other half more aggressively; I have lost too many friends in the past relying on national guidelines.
Your suggestions are appreciated, this is uncharted water for me.
So, after having told Blanchet that his data wasn’t rigorous enough or that he was on the take, take a guess at how many cardiologists publicly stepped forward merely to advise him about how to put together a study about his remarkable patient results.
You got it…. Zero.