Heart Calcium score- Anyone done it?

234 on cholesterol prolly isnt bad if your triglicerides and HDL are good.

I didnt know about the heart calcium score but will be requesting it now. Thank you for the heads up.

My wife works for a group of cardiologists. She had my parents and her parents all get one.

It finally got my dad to get serious about his health and definitely extended his life. He is 68 and has out lived (age wise) his father and grandfathers. Since he got serious and dropped 60lbs, his score has gone down. He was at MAJOR RISK for a heart attack or stroke.


It's a very handy piece of the puzzle for your cardiologist. If anyone has or thinks they have a cholesterol, heart, or any cardiovascular disease, ask for a calcium test. Just know it doesn't provide all of the answers, but is part of a large puzzle.

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I know the keto people are going to go in a rage but I can’t understand how keto diet is healthy unless they are a subset of people with genetic makeup that the diet agrees with them.

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Youtube

Ivor Cummings explains it in this video fairly well. Cut to about the 24 minute mark. I do suggest watching the entire video though.

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RIP thread.

We barely knew ye

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Hopefully not.

I've asked for one before - doc said I was too young to worry about

Had mine done in November. I’m 41 and I was 6 ft, 225 and my total cholesterol was 144. PCP and I thought I’d be fine but my CAC score came back at 482. Scared the living shite out of me. I’m active.. never smoked, big into CrossFit, powerlifting, hiking, and climbing so it was a shock.

No symptoms, no weird lipids, blood pressure, etc.

It literally changed my world in an instant. Best fifty bucks I ever spent.

I went vegetarian at first and after a few weeks went whole food/plant based vegan. No added oils or sugars. Quite a few studies out there show this can lower your buildups and reverse heart disease.

Do yourself a favor. Drop fifty bucks for the test.

Were still learning those. This all started in November!

But, I can tell you that I’ve went from 225 lbs to 189 in two months. My endurance, recovery, and strength has improved big time in CrossFit and lifting. Much more clarity throughout the day and better sleep at night. I’ll put that all to the test at the Mayhem Showdown in a few weeks.

Blood work wise..I go back next week. I’m not sure what to expect. I was already at 144 total and tris were 86. I’ll do another calcium score in a year.

Check out Caldwell Esselstyn and his research. Or Pritikin’s research. It’s pretty amazing on reversing heart disease. This lifestyle change was hard at first but not now. It’s routine. I’ve got nothing to lose.

Shawn Baker is always talking about his score. I think it was like a 0.6, after years on carnivore.

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Ivor Cummings

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Finally. I scrolled (backward) through a lot of bad advice and analysis in this thread until I got to this.

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What bad advice do you believe has been said?

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Cholesterol came back at 234, so I definitely will be working g to bring this down as well.

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Total cholesterol is utterly meaningless, and “working to bring this down” is therefore equally meaningless.

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Doc said those are borderline. So he wants to recheck in 4-6 months.

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See above plus, your cholesterol levels fluctuate—often extremely—day-to-day, hour-to-hour, so it’s silly to take a biannual snapshot of an already meaningless marker and make health decisions based on it.

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HDL-LDL ratios are important.

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This isn’t necessarily a bad statement, but if you dig into lipidology, you start realizing it isn’t all that meaningful from a causation standpoint. The “good” v. “bad” cholesterol paradigm is outmoded. Cholesterol isn’t the problem. There is a strong correlation between really high LDL and CVD, but modern science is revealing that LDL itself isn’t the culprit, and attempts to merely lower it and/or raise HDL don’t have the desired outcome. Also LDL is neuroprotective.

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I know the keto people are going to go in a rage but I can’t understand how keto diet is healthy unless they are a subset of people with genetic makeup that the diet agrees with them.The Inuits(Eskimos)traditional diet consisted entirely of meat and fat,almost no plants and no sugars and they did well.Now that they are adopting our diet,their health has been devastated.

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Lordy, where to start here. There are plenty of threads on this so I won’t spend much time, but this is a straw man. There isn’t just one “keto diet.” If you don’t understand ketone metabolism and the benefits of beta-hydroxybutyrate and the many ways to create endogenous ketones and maintain a state of fat adaption, then I recommend starting there, instead of just identifying some mythical monolithic “ketogenic diet” and citing some pseudoscientific genetic speculations.

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Interesting book is “The Blue Zones”,it is study of people with exceptional lifespans and their diets.

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This book is based on a terribly designed and executed epidemiological study. I could write a book on its flaws.

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I went vegetarian at first and after a few weeks went whole food/plant based vegan. No added oils or sugars.

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The only thing sound in this sentence is the added sugars part. The added oils part is overly broad. I add a shite ton of olive oil to by homegrown broccoli sprouts every day. I cook in avocado oil at least a couple times a week. I fuel long slow runs fasted with just MCT oil. Etc etc I’m not touching the vegan propaganda as most people on here know it’s utter bullshite. But the elimination effect of your diet certainly was beneficial.

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Once I got 60 I got serious about diet,read Caldwell Esselstyne,China Study andPritikin diet.I tried vegetarian diet for awhile but I coudn’t hack it besides I deer hunt and didn’t want to quit.Quit all dairy,only meat I eat is venison,wild pig if I kill one,vegetables,nuts.We don’t buy any meat except a rotisserie chicken once or twice a year.Also no bacon or processed meat,I really miss ham as I love it.

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The China Study is up (down) there with the Blue Zones. I’m not going to get into the debate here, but you asked me what I thought was misguided, so I’m listing it. Also, the wild venison and pig sound great, but I’m not sure how practical that is for your average person. And the once or twice a year chicken thing – why? No bacon and ham? “Processed” is a vague, ambiguous and overly broad term. It’s all about how something is processed and using what, and what it being processed.

For a balanced, scientific summary of lipidology, start with Ron Krauss. He is a (THE surviving) founding father of that field. He didn't just jump the gun on abandoning the cholesterol hypothesis. Rather, he has slowly and methodically (the way science by definition operates) advanced the field to employ more nuanced, science-based diagnoses, preventions and treatments.