New and Improved Doug 3.2 - Now Statin Free

Photo Credit: JD Hancock via Compfight

Once, in 2004, I had gone on a statin (Lipidil) as kind of an experiment - to see how it would improve my blood lipid profile.

It lowered my Total Cholesterol (TC) a bit, lowered the LDL a bit, and raised the HDL by a small amount. Since raising HDL as much as I could was my objective, I dropped the statin.

Then, in May of 2006, after complaining about some unusual (but not severe) pain while vigorously exercising, I had an angiogram that spotted a nasty piece of plaque on one of the major arteries of the heart. Because of the location, angioplasty was considered too risky, so I had open heart surgery to bypass  the plaque in July of 2006.

After the diagnosis in May, I was put onto a series of statins (Zocor, Crestor, Lipidil), and I've been on them until today.

After a doctor visit this morning though, he and I have decided to experiment with this (it's now day 45 of no grains, no legumes and very limited dairy). Since I have blood-work on a spreadsheet back 15 years, we'll take a new baseline asap, and another one in 90 days. The statin is dropped as of today.

What I'm hoping to see are three things:

1. My general blood profile will change - hopefully for the better. TC may go up, and LDL may go up as well, but the much more important HDL will raise, and Triglycerides will remain low. Apparently getting LDL Particle Size (a very important measure) is hard to do here in BC, and isn't ordered.
2. Blood glucose levels will be very low. Since there's not a lot of sugar or refined carbs in the diet, this should be a no-brainer.
3. Internal inflammation marker (CRP or C-Reactive Protein) will be very low as well. See the article below for my fascination with inflammation.

This inflammation is coming from an unexpected source - the grains in our diet. We've only been consuming them in a relatively unprocessed form for maybe 10,000 years. In a processed form, for about 100. This, in the evolutionary time-scale, is very, very new. Our bodies don't know how to process it.

Take a look at this article from Dr. Dwight Lundell, a heart surgeon for the last 25 years (entire article):

"The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.  

It Is Not Working!  

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.  

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before. 

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year. 

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped....

...What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods. 

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now."

So this is what it's all about.

Explanations for what has happened to me (open heart surgery in 2006, followed by a stroke in 2009 - not to mention the TIA in 2008 and the "labyrinthitis" in 2007) are incredulous. Doctors finally came to the conclusion "it's gotta be genetic". That's what they say when they really mean "I haven't got a clue".

Nope - I say the more obvious answer is what I've been eating for the last 16 years.

The next task I have, in addition to monitoring blood levels moving forward, is to see if I can dredge up some old blood-work that I must have had done prior to turning vegetarian in 1996. We'll see what I can find......