Heart Cipher

In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Low Carbohydrate and Mediterranean Diets were found to be more helpful for controlling obesity and the blood lipids related to Coronary Artery Disease than a Low Fat Diet.

One of the most devastating ways that Medical Professionals have contributed to the increase in obesity and heart disease has been their insistence on a “one size fits all” approach to nutrition for these problems. One only needs to stroll down grocery store aisles to understand that the dominance of the “Low Fat Diets are best” ideology is coincidently timed with great increases in obesity.

Thankfully, more scientific studies are showing these recommendations to be flawed at best.

HeartWire at TheHeart.org has a great rundown on this new study.

At a minimum, what this study does is confirm that my personal experience is not an anomaly.

Here’s the link to the journal article and the abstract appears after the jump.

(image courtesy of the New England Journal of Medicine)

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Once in a while, you hear or read some cardiologist make a set of statements that are so astonishing that they merit special comment and to be called out.

And there’s even more of a need to highlight the statement when that cardiologist’s professional colleagues fail to do so.

Such is the case in a recently begun thread at the “ClubwebMD” forum at TheHeart.org.

A cardiologist in that thread (who I won’t name but can be found by the diligent using Google) uttered something that boils down to the title of this post.

“My patients are too poor or too stupid to get the best cardiac care.”

At the outset, let’s grant that this cardiologist deserves at least some credit for being honest. Or maybe you think I’m exaggerating. No doctor, not even a FACCer, would make this point so baldly, right? (I use the designation “FACCer” as shorthand for describing a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology with whom I am particularly taken.)

Well, how about we do this? I’ll provide the verifiable online quotations and commentary and then you decide whether my interpretation of his remarks in this post’s title is a fair one.

Deal? Ok then, follow me after the jump for more…

(image courtesy of thechaly.wordpress.com)

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On Friday July 4th, 2008, an Illinois man died of a heart attack following his scaling of Mt. McKinley (aka Denali). The tour guides he was scaled the mountain with attempted to revive him for 45 minutes before finally giving up the attempt.

He was buried on Sunday at the summit of the mountain at 20,320 feet above sea level because of the difficulty and danger involved in bringing his body back down the mountain.

According to the Chicago Tribune…

James Nasti was an avid runner, cyclist and mountaineer who had been on an 11-year quest to climb the highest points in all 50 states.

But upon reaching his 49th high point on the 4th of July, the Naperville father of three collapsed and died on the summit of Mt. McKinley in Alaska, apparently of a heart attack…

James Nasti belonged to the Highpointers Club, whose members try to visit the highest points in 50 states. He had only White Butte, N.D., left to scale, his son said.

Nasti was a runner and cyclist who had trained for the climb up Mt. McKinley and had no known history of heart trouble, his family said.

“He had done a stress test two years ago and there was no indication of heart trouble, no family history of the disease,” his son said.

Nasti did not appear to be sick or in distress and was climbing strongly before the collapse, McLaughlin said.

“It sounds like from the guides that this was a particularly strong team as a whole and he was a strong climber. It was unexpected,” she said.

Meanwhile, in the first of a series of reports on Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment, (the MESA study), a measure of coronary calcium was shown to be better than carotid IMT for predicting CVD risk.

As the “baby boomer” generation ages and the cardiology and medical communities continue to ignore the results of dozens, if not hundreds, of studies of the predictive power of Coronary Artery Calcium scanning, we will continue to read stories about people taken down by heart attack at the pinnacle of their life and achievements.