Heart Cipher

I have recently become convinced that finding a “cardiologist” isn’t necessarily the key to success for integrating Track Your Plaque program (TYP) practice with your HMO or other types of medical care.

I lucked out and am now well on my way to 100% integration. I’m not exaggerating: If I continue to prove myself worthy, I can easily see continuous and permanent 100% integration.

I can’t go into detail at this time. At some point, I believe I’ll be able to describe the incredible support for TYP and my more general health that I worked to establish and that I’ve found within my HMO.

In short, I have found a local TYP program Jedi Master to assist me under the tutelage of Dr. William “Yoda” Davis.

For now, what I can say is that I believe getting help from ANY medical professional who is already familiar with TYP or is open to new ideas is more important than that they be a cardiologist or even a doctor. I DID luck out. I lucked out incredibly. But I also followed a particular path, without understanding the full implications of what I was doing, that made the odds of things going well much higher. Let me explain…

(image courtesy of msn.com)

Read the rest of this entry »

Before the end of year holidays, I wrote about the fact that I was to meet with another specialist at my Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) about my participation in the Track Your Plaque (TYP) program.

In that post, I described a strategy for engaging my HMO in implementing the TYP program in my life.

A key element of that strategy was and is to get the key information that is important for the TYP program into MY HMO patient record.

Accordingly, I prepared a formal document to take to my appointment with this specialist so I had specific data and issues documented to discuss.

I’m very happy I took this approach.

I’m not going to go into details here about how everything went because I need to pull my punches. Let me just say, however, that I’m amazed at the positive turn events have taken related to getting my HMO involved. Not everything has gone well and not everyone has been supportive but the most important elements have gone far better than I could possibly have imagined even just a month ago.

I have stripped out all my personal information from the document I prepared so you can browse it and evaluate how you might do something similar with your physicians. Also, I don’t see the preparation of this kind of document to be the first time I’ll be preparing something like this, so any feedback you have on the document is much appreciated.

Images of the reformatted document are shown after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

I want and need to get myself on the record about the fact that, from here on out, I’m going to have to pull my punches. I hadn’t intended to do that at the time I started this blog, but I can’t think of a way not to have to do it.

The problem is that I haven’t quite figured out how to treat recent appointments with doctors about my own health here at this blog.

The problem is that it would not be fair for me to write about these appointments without letting the doctors know in advance that I am doing a blog about my own heart health care in real time. And I’m not going to tell them that I’m writing this blog and fairness is an important principle for me.

So, I’m going to have to pull my punches some.

I’m still going to write about issues that I see as real problems in heart health medical care. But I’m going to have to speak more generally about those problems.

Truth be told, I’ve been told some incredibly stupid things by doctors who I think should know better.

More importantly, suppose I found a medical professional who turned out to be supportive of my Track Your Plaque related effort but yet, for various understandable reasons, didn’t want me to write too much about it. To respect his request, I’d have to “pull my punches” about how terrific he was and how great the whole experience could be.

Does that sound vague? Great! I’ve succeeded.

What I can write about, and will write about, are the things I’ve done that have led to more success in dealing with medical professionals about my own heart health.

(image courtesy or ProgressivePunch.com)

One of the dilemmas facing people attempting to implement the Track Your Plaque program (TYP) in their lives is finding a doctor to work with. There’s a need for ordering blood tests, for getting advice, double checking on supplements/medications to try, etc.

I had been thinking that my HMO isn’t particularly a great one for doing TYP within.

But a casual comment from a friend got me to rethink that question and triggered still another thought about how to “shoehorn” the TYP program into a physician/patient relationship.

In this post, I’m going to explain how this shoehorn works in terms of what I’m going to try to do with my HMO. I haven’t actually tried these ideas yet but will in the next few weeks.

Oh… I almost forgot to say thanks to the friend whose comment triggered the idea.

Thanks!

(image courtesy of aidsforarthritis.com)

Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote previously about how pleasantly surprised I was with my blood test results after 3 months on the Track Your Plaque program.

Well, it turns out that I wasn’t the only one surprised at the result, including the new Lipoprotein(a) test I just had done.

What happened was this. I finally got around to looking at the paper report on the blood tests rather than just reviewing the results online.

And the paper report had some information on it that the online version didn’t…

(image courtesy of openlearn.open.ac.uk)

Read the rest of this entry »

There have been quite a few developments in the last few days related to my personal journey. Mostly positive developments so I thought it might be useful to summarize them here.

I’m still reeling mentally from my first 3 month Track Your Plaque (TYP) blood test results. I DID really believe everything Doc Davis says about the importance of low carb, no wheat, etc. And yet, somehow, I never expected my 1st quarter numbers to look so good. I was pretty faithful to what I imagine a TYP diet might look like but I probably have been closer to the diet of Jimmy Moore than to the one Dr. Davis would advocate. Not because I don’t want to do it but just because I have a lot to learn yet about what it is and how to do it. And YET, I have these great blood test results.

All that low-fat theory and ideology is a big fat lie. An astounding development in the history of modern science.

I’ve been experiencing a feeling of some regret and loss because I realize now that I’ve had it within my grasp to get to these sorts of results for YEARS. No scientific breakthrough was required for me to do low carb. No new invention was required for me to stop eating wheat. I could have been fighting this disease more effectively YEARS ago…

Read the rest of this entry »

I just came across a study of Track Your Plaque (TYP) program blood test results for a 3 month period for a group of, hmm, let’s see, that would be one middle aged male.

Oh, yes, yes, yes that would be me!

This was no double blind with an extra twist sort of study that you’d want to give a lot of credence. But I’m sure you can imagine that it means a whole lot to me.

I wanted to get a set of baseline numbers at my HMO at 3 months on the program. I’m also looking to raise my HDL and want to participate in the new TYP program “virtual trial” of the use of PhosphatidylCholine for raising HDL. So, I needed an HDL number before I got started with that too.

There is good news and bad news in the latest results…

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I was feeling pretty good about the 15 pounds I’d lost since mid-September on a low carb diet I’ve been trying to do.

I promised myself that I was only going to go off the diet on the US Thanksgiving day holiday itself. Well, you know how that went…

A few weeks ago, Dr. Davis quoted me at his HeartScanBlog to the effect that as long as I kept my consumption of carbohydrates down and stayed wheat free, I didn’t really feel hungry. And that’s true.

But in going off the diet on the holiday, I found it difficult to climb back into the diet saddle the following days. And now, of course, I’m staring wide-eyed at the December holiday season just around the corner. I was hoping to lose another 10 pounds by the time the New Year started. Now I’ll have to do 15 to meet that goal.

(image courtesy of Stanford University)

Read the rest of this entry »

After I decided to blog about my experience with cardiovascular disease and the Track Your Plaque program I thought for a couple weeks about what I might call the blog.

I came up with several names along the way that I was excited about for a day or two and then tossed out.

I finally got around to looking up the word “number” in an online thesaurus and came across the word “cipher“. I knew immediately that “Heart Cipher” was the name of a blog I wanted to write because the word cipher has several different meanings that are appropriate to my writing the blog.

(image courtesy of borderschess.org along with rules for use here).

At the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the following definition of cipher appears:

Read the rest of this entry »

I had a mild heart attack at the age of 43. For weeks prior to the event, I had been experiencing a strong burning sensation centered at the top of my sturnum when I walked a distance more than a 100 yards. I had no idea what the sensation was. That sensation, which felt more like a burn than anything else, wasn’t on any list of symptoms for heart attack that I knew.

Indeed, it wasn’t actually a sign I was having a heart attack. It was merely a sign that I had a serious problem with one or more coronary arteries.

But I ignored that sensation.

Read the rest of this entry »