Archived News of the Week

Skullduggery in the Heart Health Business

I noticed in the New York Times a couple of days ago, a page one article on how important and wonderful statin drugs are for everyone. And - as I read with increasingly morbid fascination- I discovered that they meant, quite literally, everyone, which means those with normal to low cholesterol levels at whatever age. (I can see it now: Newborns getting a shot of Zocor along with their hep B vaccination.) This means that Big Pharma weaseled a page one article - in what is probably the most prestigious and perused newspaper in the world - advocating the use of statin drugs for practically everyone with a circulatory system. The corporate heads must be wetting their pants with glee.

"I have an idea." said the head Three Piece at AstraZeneca. "Since it looks like our cholesterol ploy is tanking, we'll just find another reason to use statin drugs. And here's what I suggest: No one knows too much about C-reactive protein levels but we do know that it measures inflammation. And inflammation isn't too good for the old ticker, so let's make that the reason to prescribe statins for now. Let's devise a great big research project, uh, maybe 18,000 healthy men and women over 50 with elevated CRP and normal cholesterol and give them Crestor (and hope to God no one dies from our drug), and at the end of the study, measure their cholesterol levels and their CRP levels."

And that's just what they did. Cholesterol levels went down even further to what I know to be very unhealthy levels (under 150) where bad things start to happen like cancer and suicide and erectile dysfunction, and lo and behold everyone's CRP levels got lower, too.

I have been saying for years now that cholesterol is relatively unimportant to the incidence of heart disease, and that blood levels of CRP is what we should be routinely measuring. In fact, I suggest that all of my patients have two very important measurements, one of which is CRP. (The other measurement later.) But thanks to AstraZeneca's Jupiter Study, now there is another reason to give a statin, in case the outdated cholesterol one goes the way of olestra and fenphen.

Yes, Crestor the Statin, like Vlog the Terminator does hit hard and does indeed lower CRP levels, but with the risk of the usual statin side-effects like pathologically low cholesterol level, diabetes, kidney disease, rhabdomyolysis where your own muscle tissue eats itself or maybe excruciating "unexplained" muscle pain or memory loss or even worse, something called Transient Global Amnesia, a scary event where you lose your memory for maybe an hour. Eventually, your memory chip reboots and you are as good as new, but by this time, you have been rushed to the ER, and have endured thousands of dollars worth of tests to rule out a stroke.

Here's the big caveat and also a big gift from me: First of all, do you know what lowers CRP levels? Yep. Good old fashioned, cheap and very non-threatening fish oil plus a good alkaline diet. Secondly, the number of your cholesterol level is not important. What is important is how much of it is oxidized. Do you know what keeps cholesterol from being oxidized into bad particles which tend to glom unhealthily onto the inside of your arteries? Yep. Fish oil. Seems to me that if you take about 3 G of fish oil per day and eat right and maybe add some good ginkgo, you've got all your bases covered.

Now, I have another surprise for you: This is about a study suggesting that excess calcium raises your risk of cardiovascular disease: A study in New Zealand reported by the British Medical Journal and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition was conducted over a period of five years involving 1,471 post menopausal women with an average age of 74. 732 women were randomized to take 1,000 milligrams of calcium citrate while 739 took a placebo, or no supplemental calcium at all. Here's the shocker: The calcium treated group had a 47% higher incidence of heart attack, stroke or sudden death. I have always maintained that the 1200 mg. of calcium that is suggested to all women over 35 is outrageous and have told my patients this.

In another study, involving over 5600 women 58 years or older, it was found that calcium supplementation may increase the risk of hip fracture by 64%. Another study done in Zurich showed that there was no "protective association between hip fractures and intake of calcium over 555 mg. per day" and the WHO says that "hip fracture rates are higher in developed countries where calcium intake is higher than in developing countries where calcium intake is lower." This is called the Calcium Paradox and, like the French Paradox, we are still trying to figure it out.

Bottom line: Get your calcium mostly through food. I know it's difficult to shake the old calcium paradigm, especially one which employs scare tactics such as "you need 1200 mgs of calcium a day or your hip will break or you will have horrible pain from compression fractures in your spine or you will be wheelchair bound from osteoporosis" but it appears that we require much less calcium than we have been lead to believe.

If you Google "calcium content of foods" you will get a big list of foods to eat. Shoot for 600 mgs of calcium per day, mostly through food. You can make up the calculated difference with a good, absorbable whole food calcium. You won't absorb the calcium you are eating unless your vitamin D levels are adequate (in the 40-60 range which is high normal on the charts) and this is the second blood test I strongly recommend.

Chicken Burgers

I love these and they are so easy to make.

Ask the Whole Foods butcher to grind you a pound and a half or so of boneless, skinless chicken breast. Two big halves should do it. They might grumble, but they will do it. You could use ground turkey, too. I just don't happen to like ground turkey.

In some butter and EVOO, sauté until soft a small package of mushrooms (I like the Bella's) which you have chopped up pretty finely along with a small onion, ditto. Then add a small package of chopped spinach. You have already defrosted the spinach and wrung out the extra moisture. Just let the whole mess cook long enough to blend, a minute or so.

Your ground chicken is already in another bowl. Add the onion-mushroom-spinach mixture to the ground chicken and mix it all up with your hands. Add some S&P and form into patties. The patties I make are maybe 4-5 oz and fit nicely in a bun. Sauté in olive oil until done inside. Eat one for dinner on a sprouted grain bun with organic mayo and freeze the rest of the uncooked patties individually.

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