My Recent Calcium CT Scan

[Teacher Terry]

By the way, all this talk of the various drugs that folks take - or refuse to take - we had a whole thread on statins. I've probably said this before: If you don't trust your doctor to prescribe meds for you - you should probably find a doctor you DO trust to prescribe for you. I agree we should all do our own research on such things, but why pay for advice you're not going to take. You could save a lot of money by skipping the doctor if you don't want to follow her/his advice. Just my thinking on the subject but YMMV.

Medicine is a practice and not an exact science. The only person that lives with the results is the patient. Everyone’s bodies are different as are their reactions to medication. Studies that disprove older research can take decades to be published and for doctors to change their conclusions.

Many of us have seen older friends and relatives harmed from widely accepted treatments. I have seen people blindly trusting doctors and never questioning their treatment. Some of us take a more proactive approach that involves taking personal responsibility for the outcomes whether they are positive or negative.

 

[JBTX]

By the way, all this talk of the various drugs that folks take - or refuse to take - we had a whole thread on statins. I've probably said this before: If you don't trust your doctor to prescribe meds for you - you should probably find a doctor you DO trust to prescribe for you. I agree we should all do our own research on such things, but why pay for advice you're not going to take. You could save a lot of money by skipping the doctor if you don't want to follow her/his advice. Just my thinking on the subject but YMMV.

People have this perception that prescriptions are bad, but supplements are good because they are “natural”. There really is no difference other than a prescription has been tested for efficacy and you can be confident you are getting what you are paying for but supplements are pretty much completely unregulated and no guarantees that the dosage is right or if you are even getting what you are buying.

 

[Cayman]

My cardiologist pops a statin daily. Says most of his colleagues do, too - including those like him who have no indication of cardiovascular disease (his choice, I'm not advocating for every healthy person to take statins). He says he knows it's a lifesaver.
Flattens/shrinks plaque - smooths out caps so hopefully one won't break off & kill or disable you. There's so much scientific evidence showing statins to be lifesaving and if your doc says one is indicated then for gosh sake take one. Cardiovascular events - heart attacks and strokes aren't prospects to play around with.

 

[Teacher Terry]

My cardiologist pops a statin daily. Says most of his colleagues do, too - including those like him who have no indication of cardiovascular disease (his choice, I'm not advocating for every healthy person to take statins). He says he knows it's a lifesaver.
Flattens/shrinks plaque - smooths out caps so hopefully one won't break off & kill or disable you. There's so much scientific evidence showing statins to be lifesaving and if your doc says one is indicated then for gosh sake take one. Cardiovascular events - heart attacks and strokes aren't prospects to play around with.

Cognitive decline is not something to take lightly either.

 

[Montecfo]

No other reason to take the test other than DW and I had heard that it had some predictive value for heart disease. I have absolutely no symptoms. I am considering telling my doctor that I would like to wait before taking the statin, to possibly get my cholesterol down through dietary changes first.

It seems reasonable. On symptoms the first symptom of coronary artery disease is often a heart attack.

You took the scan to identify CAD risk. You found some.

So my suggestion is: be smart. I feel my Dr was not very concerned about my borderline cholesterol reading because he saw a fit healthy active person. Being fit healthy and active does not insulate you from heart attack risk, however.

Full disclosure: heart attack at 47 playing basketball, heart "event" at 59. 2 stents in the widowmaker.

Fully recovered I'm told.

 

[JBTX]

Cognitive decline is not something to take lightly either.

While this appears to happen anecdotally in some cases, there isn’t solid evidence that this is a common thing, and to the extent it happens it appears to be reversible. On the flip side there is some weak evidence that statins actually reduce occurance of dementia and Alzheimer’s, but again this hasn’t been proven in randomized controlled trials.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar...ls have,cognitive impairment in some patients.

 

[mickj]

If you want to know more than your cardiologist

The Clot Thickens: The Enduring Mystery of Heart Disease is a book written by Malcolm Kendrick and Dr. Kendrick that was first published on October 29, 2021. The book is described as a 150-year detective story that features unrecognized heroes who may eventually be recognized for their work on the causes of heart disease.


The Clot Thickens: The enduring mystery of heart disease -
Overview. This is a 150-year detective story with a cast of unrecognized heroes who may, finally, become known for their work on the true causes of heart disease
The book demonstrates that cholesterol, particularly LDL, are the wrong targets, and then leads the reader through the evidence that supports the thrombotic
theory. It also discusses the application of the theory to various issues and treatment approaches.
Some recommend the book for people who have been diagnosed with CVD or diabetes, or who have had a stroke or heart attack
.

 

[KarenF]

Be very careful with calcium supplements. If you take too much calcium at one time, it will calcify your arteries. If you don't take the right amount of K2 with it, it will calcify your arteries. I get my calcium through diet. There are lots of studies on this. Why doctors recommend calcium supplements is beyond me

 

[Accidental Retiree]

I was quoted $95 if Medicare didn't cover it, but they did. My score at age 68 CCS 1.

I was quoted $200 if Medicare did not cover it—but they did.

My score was 0. Age 68.

 

[Trooper]

Be very careful with calcium supplements. If you take too much calcium at one time, it will calcify your arteries. If you don't take the right amount of K2 with it, it will calcify your arteries. I get my calcium through diet. There are lots of studies on this. Why doctors recommend calcium supplements is beyond me

Interesting. Coincidentally looked at the nutrition label for a protein powder I have been using post-workouts for nearly 10 yrs (3-4x/week). I mix it with water, cinnamon, banana and spinach usually. It contains 1080 mg of calcium which is 80% of RDV. Not sure if that's contributing to my CAC but it can't be helping I imagine.

 

[RS53576GG]

I ran across this article on the mechanism behind statins causing cognitive decline a couple years ago. I did a little more digging and didn't find a whole lot of new info on the subject so it may have turned out to be a dead end or maybe it's accepted and everyone has moved on to other studies.

https://news.arizona.edu/story/research-reveals-possible-reason-for-cholesterol-drug-side-effects

The good news is that mental fuzziness disappears after the person stops taking a statin. (Speaking from personal experience!)

When I was working with my gastroenterologist on my liver enzyme reaction to Rosuvastatin he said that all statins work pretty much the same way and if you have a bad reaction to one of them you'll likely have a bad reaction to all of them. While he was referring to problems with liver enzymes this may be true for mental fuzziness as well.

Since my liver enzyme problem had been solved and my mental fuzziness had disappeared (which I only detected by it's absence) I stopped looking into the topic any further. There may be more recent journal papers that have newer data on this subject.

One of the interesting things about the medical world is that the vast majority of medical papers I've read have had the same basic format.

1) We tested xxxx number of people with half being given a dose of magic stuff and half given a placebo.
2) The results are magic stuff works in yyyy number of cases and the placebo had the same effect on zzzz number of cases.
3) Therefore it's reasonable to conclude that magic stuff is/isn't a viable solution.

That's pretty much it. Engineering and scientific papers where the laws of physics are pretty well understood always frame the problem within these laws and show how it holds without exception in every case. This gives a solid foundation for further work to be done with reasonable certainty.

My guess is that this difference is due to the fact that the physical mechanism behind biological systems has yet to be comprehensively established in such a way that the phenomena being discussed can be accurately and irrefutably quantified in every case. The medical world is still in the empirical phase of understanding. How long will it take for them to REALLY understand biological systems so every cause and every outcome can be accurately identified? Probably quite a while. A century or two?

I've never heard of a blood test or some other quick and inexpensive method for assessing the presence of "beads on a string". Seems like this would be a useful test for those people who would like to keep all their wits about them.

 

[Koolau]

Medicine is a practice and not an exact science. The only person that lives with the results is the patient. Everyone’s bodies are different as are their reactions to medication. Studies that disprove older research can take decades to be published and for doctors to change their conclusions.

Many of us have seen older friends and relatives harmed from widely accepted treatments. I have seen people blindly trusting doctors and never questioning their treatment. Some of us take a more proactive approach that involves taking personal responsibility for the outcomes whether they are positive or negative.

No disagreement here. I'm just saying that you need to be on the same page as the doctor you choose. If you have a doc pushing pills on you that you do not think you should be taking, find a doctor who has other options for you. It's a real hassle sometimes to find such a doc, but you need to w*rk together - not be at loggerheads.

 

[Teacher Terry]

No disagreement here. I'm just saying that you need to be on the same page as the doctor you choose. If you have a doc pushing pills on you that you do not think you should be taking, find a doctor who has other options for you. It's a real hassle sometimes to find such a doc, but you need to w*rk together - not be at loggerheads.

I have had the same wonderful female doctor for 27 years. She’s 10 years younger than me and I dread when she retires. We don’t always agree but respect each other’s opinions. At one point she wanted me to take statins and I told her I would never take them. I doubt that I will 100% agree with any doctor.