Age Strong

I have mentioned to you in the past that I have a family history of heart disease, and about five years ago, I decided to have my heart checked out to see if the Quist family curse was affecting my cardiovascular system. 

I want to make it clear that I had no symptoms, felt great, worked out every day, was at a healthy weight, and had no real underlying reasons to want to see a cardiologist other than the family history. I believed this was just a precaution and that I would be checked out and told everything was in tip-top shape.

I was in for a surprise…

The cardiologist ordered a mixture of blood tests and measures, all coming back in a good to great range. Then, he had me do a stress test, which I passed easily. 

My final test was a heart scan, an easy-to-get, non-invasive, cheap test that directly measures whether you have calcium deposits in the arteries of your heart. Having calcium in the arteries of your heart means you HAVE heart disease and are at high risk for all the bad things it brings, like heart attacks, stroke, disability, and, in many cases, a much earlier death than you might want.

Before I share the results of the heart scan… I want to share a fact… in the form of a question. 

What do you think the first symptom of having heart disease is for the majority of people who suffer from heart disease?

• Shortness of breath with exertion.
• Intermittent tightness/pain in the left side of the chest.
• Lightheadedness and dizziness.
• Heart attack, many times fatal.

OK, If you answered d. you are correct. Does this shock you? Heart disease typically brews for decades in your arteries with  ABSOLUTELY NO SYMPTOMS!!! It then strikes without warning and many times claims the life of its victim. 

So, back to the story. My heart scan results came back horrible ☹️ and indicated that I was at high risk of having a bad outcome in the years to follow, and by the bad outcome, I mean a heart attack, Bi-pass-stroke-stent, early death, etc. NO THANK YOU…

So, you might say to yourself at this point of the story… I’m only in my 30s or 40s and don’t need to worry about this sort of stuff at this point. RIGHT? 

ACTUALLY THAT THOUGH PROCESS COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG! We may think of heart disease as something that only our grandparents experience, but the truth is it is the number one cause of death for all of us past the age of 45. More importantly, the sudden heart attack of someone in their 40s, 50s, or 60s has been typically building slowly for decades in their arteries! 

So the argument could be made that if you have not had a heart scan, you might want to talk to your doctor about getting one as early as your mid-thirties, as it is one of the best screening tools available, to see if this sometimes silent killer is lurking in your body.

If you do find out that you have heart disease, your physician will likely prescribe a statin medication that lowers your cholesterol, which you will probably need to be on for the rest of your life.

So, if you are on this boat (meaning you have existing heart disease), and your doctor has prescribed a statin, the rest of this email is for you. 

So, at the time I got my lousy heart scan result, I was seeing two different types of doctors. The first was a functional medicine physician, and the second was the cardiologist who prescribed the statin and ordered all my tests.

I’m a person who has always preferred to keep myself in good health through thoughtful lifestyle choices. I was currently on no medication and frankly wanted to keep it that way. I was very conflicted about taking the statin for the following reasons.

1. Statin can sometimes have harmful side effects.
2. My functional medicine doctor and many other people have weighed in on statins, saying that they do not make a significant enough change in your risk of suffering a heart attack to warrant their use. Some books I have read and “experts” I have listened to have gone as far as to say that stains, although they lower total cholesterol, do not do anything meaningful to other blood markers that are more relevant to your risk of developing or slowing heart disease.

OK, so you know me… I decided to construct an experiment on myself in addition to interviewing local cardiologist Dr. Josh Liberman to find out more. If you are interested in this, you can see the results of this experiment in the latest Form and Fitness Channel episode. I have to admit the results surprised me.