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Heart Health: Testing for Heart Disease
If you get nothing else from this post, take this: Determining your heart health takes more than a cholesterol test. That one well known test is just not enough, and since for some reason the general medical profession seems to be behind the curve, it’s probably going to be up to you to keep your heart and vascular system pumping at full flow.
We’ve been discussing clogged arteries for the past few weeks, since Dave’s quadruple by-pass surgery February 23rd, and to wrap things up for this round, let’s look at the routine tests we should all get, and for those with heart failure symptoms, let’s take a glance at the path Dave’s heart treatment took.
There are too many variables between all of us to make an easy checklist. We each — individually — need to walk through the process and stick with it until we’re satisfied with the answer. Your doctor, assuming you even have one, does not have time to monitor your compliance, and, in fact, may not even know some of what follows.
Here’s how to get started.
The basic fasting (fasting… this is important) lipid panel includes cholesterol, LDL/HDL and triglycerides. Interesting, but not nearly enough.
Add to that:
VDL cholesterol
Cholesterol subparticle size
Homocysteine
LP(a)
IDL
C-Reactive Protein
Fibrinogen
The specifics of the above are developed more in this post on inflammation and oxidation. I know this looks like a bunch of gibberish, but it’s likely only one or two will be elevated, and you’ll only need to research those. You don’t need to become a lab tech to understand the basics that effect you.
Also check:
Blood pressure
Glucose (fasting)
Insulin (fasting)
Iron (serum iron, TIBC & serum ferritin)
You’ll want to specifically request that a copy of the the lab report be sent to you; this isn’t automatic, for some reason that I can’t imagine. The point of the entire effort is for you to have the results to comb over (don’t fret, the report will show both your results, plus ratings for low, desirable or high ranges to gauge them against), and to have for later comparisons. Don’t simply get the blood test and count on your doctor to call you to tell you to take a B vitamin. That probably isn’t going to happen; you have to follow through.
While Dave’s clogged arteries were fixed by the surgeon, the underlying problem remains. Bottom line: the replacement arteries will clog if his blood oxidation and inflammation are not lowered.
There were only two dings on Dave’s blood test results over the years: ultra-dense LDL subparticles and an elevated CRP of 4. He took high-dose niacin for several years to address the LDL subparticles, but unfortunately, we didn’t understand the C-Reactive Protein elevation and didn’t research or tackle that. In hindsight, there’s no way to discover if changes over the past few years would have kept him off the surgeon’s table.
He’s now backed off the milkfats and lowered his beef intake to see if that will bring the CRP back in line. Because he’s coming off artery by-pass surgery, we both feel it’s warranted to protect the replacement arteries by taking a statin, Vytorin, which he hasn’t taken in the past since his earlier cholesterol readings have always been quite low. With his doctor’s knowledge, I suspect he’ll test his cholesterol without the statin sometime later this summer to see if his new fish-over-beef diet changes things.
If you do take a statin, please please please take a high dose CoQ10 supplement. Throughout this recent process I haven’t heard a doctor or nurse mention that, so I suspect yours hasn’t either. Statins blunt CoQ10 in the same way they work on cholesterol, and if nothing else, lack of CoQ10 will sap your energy and make your muscles ache. Bad juju.
Dave takes 450mg of Now Foods CoQ10 daily, without fail, and he takes an NSP B-Complex to lower oxidation and clotting.
Tip: Donate a pint of blood quarterly to lower your fibrinogen and remove excess iron.
Your doctor can order these blood tests, but in some cases you’ll have to be persistent. In fact, many of these tests aren’t on the lab sheets, and your doc will have to look up the codes to get the orders right. Here’s a further discussion of these lab tests at Genova Diagnostics.
You youngsters may feel immortal, but I’ll betcha in 20 years you’ll be real happy to have a baseline report for comparison, assuming there’s nothing drastically wrong that needs life-extending attention.
Now then, let’s get serious. Are you having trouble right now?
If you have shortness of breath regularly, which is what got Dave moving toward his recent surgery, or find you need to elevate your upper body more in order to sleep, get yourself to a cardiologist and walk through the test procedures. (If you have chest pain, use the emergency room instead!) The full gamut took Dave about two months — go here, go there, come back next week — just put your head around it and get ‘er done. It may save your life. Well, I mean, you’ll still die eventually, but hopefully when you’re closing in on a hundred instead of next year.
Exercise Stress Test (basic or advanced if possible)
Radionucleide Stress Test
Echocardiogram (ultrasound view of the heart chambers, valves and lining)
Electrocardiogram (EKG) (looks at heart rhythm)
Holter Monitor (24-hour EKG used to watch heart during normal activities)
Chest X-ray (checks for heart size, fluid in the lungs, pneumonia and other causes of shortness of breath)
Cardio Catheterization — angiogram (the most invasive of the tests, uses a thin catheter tube into blood vessel to inject dye seen on an x-ray — stents may be inserted at the same time if needed)
Brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) (used to determine if you have heart failure)