Why can healthy lifestyle choices eliminate 90% of the risk of having a heart attack, while drugs can only reduce the risk by 20% to 30%?
According to the standard American diet, atherosclerosis – hardening of the arteries, the number one killer of men and women – is found. start in our youth. Investigators collected about 3,000 sets of coronary arteries and aortas (the aorta is the body’s main artery) from accident, homicide, and suicide victims aged 15 to 34 and found that fatty plaques in the arteries can develop in our teens and become atherosclerotic plaques. deadly In the heart, atherosclerosis can cause a heart attack. In the brain, it can cause a stroke. Check out the progress below and at 0:35 in my video Can cholesterol be too low?.
How common is this? All the teenagers they looked at – 100% of them – already had fatty streaks are formed inside their veins. By the early 30s, most already have those streaks blooming into atherosclerotic plaques that bloom in their arteries. From ages 15 to 19, their aortas had streaks of fat across them, but on average, still no plaques, as seen below and at 1:15 in mine. video.
The plates have started to appear in their abdominal aorta in their early 20s and worsened in their late 20s, by which time fatty streaks had penetrated throughout. By age 30, their arteries were in bad shape, as seen below and at 1:25 in mine. video.
But it’s just the abdominal aorta, the main artery running through the body that divides into our legs. What about the coronary arteries that feed the heart?
Researchers found the same pattern: fatty streaks in teenagers, early signs of plaque in their early 20s that progress with age, and by their early 30s, most people already have plaque in their coronary arteries, as seen below and at 1:47 in mine. video.
Atherosclerosis starts still in adolescence.
That’s why we shouldn’t wait until heart disease becomes an indication for its treatment. If it starts when we are young, we should start it when we are young. If you know you have a cancerous tumor, you don’t want to wait until it grows to a certain size to treat it. If you have diabetes, you don’t want to wait until you start going blind before you do something about it. So how do you treat atherosclerosis? You lower LDL cholesterol is reduced by a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol—a diet low in eggs, meat, dairy products, and junk food.
If we want to stop this epidemic, we must”to change our way of life, respectively, starting from infancy or early childhood. Is such a radical proposal completely impractical?” (Eating healthier? Radical?!) It takes effort to change our behavior, but atherosclerosis is the cause of our death. In the case of cigarettes, we have done very well, reducing smoking rates and reducing lung cancer rates. And, yes, healthy eating is safe. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world’s largest and oldest association of nutrition professionals, even strictly plant-based diets. are suitable for all stages of life, from pregnancy. (NutritionFacts.org is one of the websites recommended by the Academy for more information.)
Title of important research was published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology declares: “Treatment of atherosclerosis should be the next major goal of cardiovascular prevention.” What evidence do we have that lifelong LDL suppression does this? There is A genetic mutation in a gene called PCSK9 that about 1 in 50 African-Americans are lucky to be born with because it lowers their LDL cholesterol by about 40% over their lifetime. Indeed, they were found have low rate of coronary heart disease – 88% reduction in risk compared to those without the genetic mutation, regardless of cardiovascular risk factors on average. Most of them had high blood pressure and were overweight, about a third were smokers and about 20% had diabetes, but this shows how a long history of low LDL cholesterol can significantly reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, even if there are many other risk factors.
This is about a 90% reduction in events such as heart attack or sudden death it happened at an average LDL level of 100 mg/dL, compared to 138 mg/dL in those without the genetic mutation. This means that LDL can be lowered even below 100 mg/dL. Why a decrease in LDL cholesterol of about 40 mg / dl from a lucky genetic mutation lower coronary heart disease risk by about 90%, while the same reduction with statin drugs only reduces it by about 20%? A more likely explanation? Continuity. When it comes to lowering LDL cholesterol, it’s not just about how low it is, but how low it is.
This is why choosing a healthy lifestyle can to clean Almost 90% of the risk of having a heart attack is lost, while drugs can only reduce it by 20% to 30%. If you get was treated with the drug in the future, you need to get your LDL below 70 mg/dL to stop the progression of coronary atherosclerosis. But if we start Formerly a healthier choice, it may be enough to lower LDL cholesterol to just 100 mg/dL, which should be within reach for most of us. This is consistent with each country’s death from heart disease averaging about 100 mg/dL, as seen below and at 5:21 am. video.
But that’s the only time you can maintain your LDL cholesterol for life.
If you later rely on medication to stop the progression of the disease, you can needed to get your LDL below 70 mg/dL, and if you try to use drugs to reverse a lifetime of bad food intake, you won’t get coronary heart disease until your LDL drops to about 55 mg/dL. If your heart disease is so bad that you’ve already had a heart attack, but you’re trying to avoid another one, ideally, you can push your LDL to around 30 mg/dL. Once you hand which is low, not only will you prevent any new atherosclerotic plaques, but you will also help become normal tablets you already have, so they are less likely to open and kill you.
is Is it even safe to have cholesterol levels this low? In other words, can LDL cholesterol ever be too low? We will find out later.
Dr.’s comment
Didn’t know that atherosclerosis starts at such a young age? see Heart disease starts in childhood.
To learn more about drugs and lifestyle, watch my video The real benefits of diet and drugs.
Want to learn more about so-called primary prevention? see When low risk means high risk.
Does cholesterol size matter? Watch the video to find out.
