I have a few blog posts in the queue and I’m not quite ready to go with any of them so I thought I’d try to push on a list of smaller topics that aren’t worth a post of their own.
Well, first up is news that a Life Extension Foundation (LEF) Resveratrol supplement product doesn’t contain near the level of Resveratrol claimed on the label.
ConsumerLabs.com is reporting that the LEF 20mg Resveratrol capsule only contains 26.5% of the claimed amount. You’ll notice that the LEF website is on my Blogroll list, so I find this pretty disappointing.
I like a lot of what LEF is up to and I still placed an order last evening to take advantage of their end of year sale. I guess I need to be a bit more circumspect about ordering from them. I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say about this.
I see that the good Doc Davis over at Track Your Plaque is going to publish a Special Report which consists of an interview with Dr. Billy “TheSuddenDeathReducer” Blanchet that I wrote about last week.
Now that is going to be great. Speaking of “TheSuddenDeathReducer”…
As part of preparing for that blog post last week, I had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Blanchet briefly. And he said something about CAC Scores (i.e., a Heart Scan Calcium Score) that really struck a chord. It wasn’t anything different than what Dr. Davis has written. But it is a bit of a different twist on the point. Perhaps, too, actually hearing it instead of reading it made a different kind of impact. He said:
There is only one better predictor of a cardiac event than a CAC Score. And that is your next CAC Score.
For some reason I can’t explain, at least for me, that way of stating it has a more significant psychic impact. Perhaps it’s because the point is made simply and clearly that what’s significant is the process of Serial CAC Scanning for high risk individuals like me and not a single scan.
Some good news on the the Supplement Budget front…
This last week, I substituted an LEF 1 gram instant release Niacin capsule for a couple Slo Niacin time release tablets and there was no flushing sensation. This is significant because when I first got the LEF Niacin capsule a few weeks ago I had a flush that put me on the couch. I’m going to try 2 grams next week and see if I can take it.
This is good news for a couple of reasons. First, at least as I understand it, the more concentrated the period during which Niacin is released, the less harm the liver is done. Second, the relative cost of the Niacin instant release capsule is significantly less per my TYP Supplement spreadsheet. So, I splurged and bought myself some better tasting arginine with the expected savings last night.
And suddenly I feel a need to kick a FACCing doctor…
Over at Yahoo Health, Dr. Simeon Margolis, M.D., Ph.D. of Johns Hopkins University writes:
I have seen two members of our faculty at Johns Hopkins who required coronary artery bypass surgery at a relatively young age, even though a high Lp(a) was their only risk factor.
There are no known strategies for successfully lowering Lp(a). Treatment with the drug niacin has been reported to lower Lp(a), but that did not work in the two patients mentioned above. Their experience made me stop trying to lower Lp(a) levels. Instead, I have considered a high Lp(a) as another reason to lower LDL cholesterol as aggressively as possible. [Emphasis added]
You read it right. The good doctor evidently couldn’t be troubled to actually read the literature about strategies for lowering Lp(a). For him, the truth about what works and doesn’t work can be entirely known from his experience with two patients.
It occurs to me that if he got the Lp(a) treatment facts wrong, what do you think the likelihood is that he got the lipoprotein risk factor analysis wrong for his two colleagues as well? What about LDL-C Particle Number, Small LDL, and Low HDL2b? Did the testing and analysis take place for those factors?
Who wants to bet against me when I say that it DIDN’T take place? (I might as well pick up a few bucks here and there right?)
What? Well, you’re right. I guess it is too bad for those two guys. Oh, and I guess there is potential for thousands of people at Yahoo Health to be misinformed and become discouraged about doing anything to stop heart disease in their lives. But whatcha gonna do?
I’ve taken a snapshot of this Yahoo posting by Dr. Margolis to ensure that this particular instance of idiocy is preserved forever.
