From the Desk of Carolyn Dean MD ND
It seems that at least one cardiologist is fed up with patients not taking heart disease seriously because they aren’t taking their statins and blood pressure pills. So, this particular cardiologist, who I shall leave unnamed in this article, is telling his patients that heart disease is worse than cancer, and he’s written a book about it. He says heart disease is the new Big C. He reasons that people are very afraid of cancer so they take it seriously and get treatment for it. Yet heart disease kills more people than cancer, but patients don’t have enough fear of heart disease and think they can get away without taking drugs.
What I find frightening is that this younger generation of doctors skips over the lifestyle and diet solutions to heart disease and dives right into the drugs.
Calcium Buildup = a Tumor?
This cardiologist uses the coronary artery calcium test to show people the calcium plaque building up in their arteries and equates it to a growing tumor. When they have a calcium score that’s not even high, he starts them on a statin drug. He complains that they often came back a few months later and said they stopped the statin and did “a little bit more physical activity, and a little bit healthier diet, thinking they would be fine.”
That’s when he reads them the riot act and tells them that they have to think of this as a cancer tumor growing in their coronary arteries! The cardiologist says he’s trying to empower the patient – to take their meds. Not to make greater dietary changes, or a better exercise plan, or to take supplements like magnesium, potassium, omega-3s, and vitamin D3,K2. That’s not part of his equation. Doctors never learned about any of these alternative measures in their medical training and don’t even consider it for their patients.
Start Checking in Childhood
The current thinking is to diagnose heart disease earlier and earlier. They recommend getting low-density lipoprotein cholesterol checked in childhood, repeat it when you’re a young adult, and repeat it every ten years thereafter. There are also heart disease risk assessments, but then they say that everyone seems to be at risk, so the first step is statin preventive therapy! That decision is reinforced by using the coronary calcium scan, and this cardiologist says you can tell patients, “Once your score is above zero, you have atherosclerosis in your coronaries.”
I’ve written before about the coronary artery scan, and according to a 2020 study called “Coronary Artery Calcification Under Statin Therapy and Its Effect on Cardiovascular Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis:”¹
Statins do not reduce or enhance CAC as measured…in asymptomatic populations at high risk of cardiovascular diseases but seem to slow down CAC progression.
So, if anything, statins may only slow down coronary artery calcification; they don’t reverse it.
What do I recommend? Saturating doses of oral picometer magnesium, vitamin D3K2, Omega-3 algae A+E, all direct calcium to the bones and support the structure and function of the cardiovascular system.
Carolyn Dean MD ND
The Doctor of the Future