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As we know heart disease is the number 1 cause of death in this country at over 450,000 people in 2008 accounting for $448.5 billion spent. Since the eighties we have been taught that the primary cause of heart disease is high cholesterol levels causing plaque in the arteries. Because of this belief, statin drugs have become the highest selling drugs in history, of which Lipitor is the most popular. Today, though, we are starting to see a shift in this thinking as more and more people are coming to the realization that while the high cholesterol=heart disease connection is great marketing for the drug companies, we continue to see staggering levels of heart disease even as millions of people take these medications.
If high cholesterol was the cause of heart disease and millions of people are on medications to lower it, shouldn’t we see less and less levels of heart disease?
Why do we see countries with high average cholesterol levels have comparatively low rates of heart disease?
The good news is more and more attention is starting to be placed on what I believe is the real cause of heart disease (and many other chronic diseases including cancer and diabetes): a pro-inflammatory state in the body as the result of a pro-inflammatory lifestyle. MSNBC recently had an article outlining a new $20 million study sponsered by the Federal government that is going to take a look at Fish Oil and Vitamin D supplementation and their effect on heart disease rates. I suspect that this study will show a decrease in those populations supplementing with Fish Oil and Vitamin D as these supplements have anti-inflammatory properties which help to offset the damage done by the typical American lifestyle.
Let’s take a look at what we mean by a pro-inflammatory state in the body. We cause a pro-inflammatory state in two ways: our body’s stress response and food we eat. First we’ll talk about the stress response. The autonomic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that controls sub-conscious, visceral function. It can be divided into two parts, the parasympathetic and sympathetic. You may have heard the sympathetic nervous system called the “flight or fight response.” Basically what happens is this: when we are stressed, whether by a tiger jumping out at us, by a fight with our spouse, or any other negative stimulus, the sympathetic nervous system sends signals to organs and glands causing an increase in catabolic activites (heart rate, blood pressure) and a decrease in anabolic activities (sex glands, digestion, growth, cellular immunity). The sympathetic nervous system also stimulates the adrenal glands to release catecholamines (adrenaline, epinephrine, etc) and cortisol. These hormones cause a cascade of actions that, in a short-term stress situation are necessary, but if allowed to continue unchecked can have devastating effects. Some (but not all) of these effects include:- increased blood glucose levels and increased insulin resistance
- increase blood lipid and cholesterol levels (LDL up, HDL down)
- increase in body adipose (fat) tissue
- increased clotting factors
- increased vasoconstriction
- increased feelings of stress, fear, anxiety
- and much more.
The chronic accumulation of these effects is the pro-inflammatory state, leading to what is termed high Allostatic Load. A high allostatic load causes your body to not be able to adapt to stress properly, leading to chronic disease.
The other way we cause a pro-inflammatory state is by the food we eat. Dr. David Seaman writes
extensively on how certain foods we eat are converted into inflammatory products in the body. His book, Clinical Nutrition for Pain, Inflammation, and Tissue Healing, is a great resource for exactly how this happens. To summarize, we need to stay away from grains, white sugar, white flour, and especially corn products. These foods are converted into pro-inflammatory products in the body (we need these products to heal properly, the problem is that most of us have way too much). One example of how this happens is with Omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-6 fatty acids are ingested and then converted in the body to pro-inflammatory products. This conversion is increased in the presense of trans fat and insulin (whose levels are raised due to the Stress Response). We ingest Omega-6 fatty acids when we eat corn and corn derived products, which is present in almost every processed food we eat as well as most of our meat (beef, chicken, and pork). A great book on our food supply and its components is “The Omnivores Delimma” by Michael Pollen.How does a pro-inflammatory state lead to heart disease? The pro-inflammatory state causes the perfect storm when it comes to heart disease. All of the effects, and then some, that we listed above contribute to damage to our vessel walls. In a nutshell this is what happens: the chronic inflammatory products (including free radicals) that are rushing through the blood vessels cause the walls of those vessels to become weak. The body rushes to fix them using clotting factors. Fat also becomes trapped in the walls. Over time this happens enough that the vessels eventually become clogged, leading to a heart attack.
Looking at this process you may ask: If my vessels walls are becoming clogged with fat (cholesterol) doesn’t it make sense to lower my cholesterols levels? Furthermore, don’t studies show a correlation between cholesterol levels and heart disease rates? The answer to the first questions is no. The level of cholesterol in your blood doesn’t matter, the level of damage caused by inflammation does. You can have high levels of cholesterol in your blood, but if your vessels walls are not being damaged then you will not develop plaque in the arteries. This is the reason countries like France, despite having high average cholesterol levels, have comparatively low rates of heart disease. Conversely, lower levels of cholesterol due no good if the vessels wall are damaged due to inflammation. This goes back to the question we posed in the beginning: why is our rate of heart disease so high if so many people are taking cholesterol meds? The answer: because the cholesterol level doesn’t matter! It’s a fancy number, but unless you’re making lifestyle change to prevent a pro-inflammatory body state you’re still going to be at risk.
The answer to second question,”don’t studies show a correlation between cholesterol levels and heart disease rates?”, is actually true. The reason is simple, one of the effects of chronically high catecholamine and cortisol levels is an increase in the body’s production of LDL (and decrease in HDL). Furthermore, people who live a pro-inflammatory lifestyle consume high levels of omega-6 fatty acids, cholesterol, and trans-fat. In the end though, as we outlined, the problem is not the high cholesterol damaging the blood vessels, it’s the chronically high levels of inflammatory products circulating as a result of lifestyle.As you can see, heart disease is a completely preventable disease caused by your lifestyle. You don’t have to be enslaved by a number. In our next post we’ll talk about what you can do to prevent heart disease in yourself and your loved ones.
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The 3 dimensions of Health
Natalie, a local Wellness Coach, passed this article from the Huffington Post, “Is it an Eating Disorder, Or a Relationship Disorder?”, on to us. Written by one of her mentors, it does a great job of emphasizing the relationship between the biochemical and psychological dimensions of health.
Remember you must have balance in all three dimensions (physical, biochemical, and psychological), I don’t care if you have 3% body fat and work out 7 days per week, if you aren’t happy, if you don’t surround yourself with good, supportive people, if you don’t have constructive ways to manage limit and manage your emotional stresses, you will not be well! There’s a reason that above our door it says, “Be Fit, Eat Right, Think Well” ….because it’s true!
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Is Your Ab Workout Hurting Your Back?
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
This article pretty much sums it up. Many of you are working on deadbugs, birddogs, etc. core strengthening exercises. Stuart McGill, the expert quoted in the article, developed these exercises (and I stole them). The most important thing to take away is this: ab work is not core work, in fact improperly done ab work will hurt your back.
Please talk to us about your ab routine and if it is appropriate for your body!
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Joi
n us for The Wellness Revolution!Wednesday, July 8th, 6:00 p.m.
Learn:
- How to empower yourself to make healthy nutritional choices (i.e. Gatorade sucks!)
- How to revolutionize your workouts!
- About the need to rise up against cholesterol medications and consume healthy fats!
- Why kids and pregnant women need chiropractic too
- + much more!
…and don’t miss the grand unveiling of our new Wellness Boot-Camp!
Join us for appetizers and dinner for the whole family! Kids can join the revolution too! We’ll have games for kids of all ages! Don’t miss outJuly 8, 2009
6:00 P.M.
La Finca Restaurant
3361 N. Elston
Seats are complimentary, but limited. Please call us at 773-583-4325 to RSVP. Our only request is that you bring a friend that we haven’t met before and who needs to join the Revolution! -
If any of you have friends or loved ones, including children, who are taking medication for asthma, please let them know that regular chiropractic care can help them! Take a look at this link from the FDA that actually states the potential for mind altering side effects of certain asthma medications! I’m sure most parents are unaware of those risks as they allow thier children to take these medications for exercise induced asthma.This is simply unacceptable! Please…lets help more people get off of these needless medications for problems that can be healed naturally with proper wellness instruction.Asthma should not be a lifelong chronic label, but people don’t know where to turn for answers without your voice.
FDA warning on neuropsychiatric events in children as a result of taking asthma medicine.ps…I’ll be covering more controversial topics like this at our upcomming “Wellness Revolution” Dinner on Wednesday, July 8, at 6pm. WE still have about 20 seats left! Call our office for more details on this upcoming event!
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The second podcast in our “Seven Health Secrets” series. Dr. McKinley discusses problems behind medicine’s current view on “preventative” procedures.
Enjoy!
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The Wall Street Journal Health Blog today posted a couple of articles (here and here) on the costs and the effectiveness of preventative medicine in the US and Germany. The articles outline that despite their high costs, preventative medicine programs do not actually help to prevent any disease such as colon or breast cancer. In fact the article on Germany, based on research by the German magazine Der Spiegel, claims that the only people who benefit from the screenings are the doctors who are paid fees to perform the test. For example, there are no randomized trials (the gold standard for medicine) demonstrating benefits for patients who under go regular colonoscopies. In the US researchers looked at a prevention program performed with 200, 000 Medicare participants. They found that it didn’t improve patient’s health and it didn’t result in fewer doctor and hospital visits and therefore less cost. For anyone who came to our dinner event last March these articles shouldn’t come as a suprise. Preventative medicine is a misnomer. It doesn’t actually prevent anything. You could have a colonoscopy every single day for a year, but doing so would not lower your chances of getting colon cancer. Preventative medicine is really early detection and screening. It simply tells you if you already have the problem (this is an important role but it clouds the issue in peoples minds). True
preventative medicine is all about the lifestyle choices you make. Each one of us has the keys to determine if we develop or don’t develop any of these chronic diseases such as heart disease and cancer. We should be (and do in our office) advocating lifestyle intervention; that is the key to making America (and Germany) healthy, and in the process saving billions of dollars, not costly screening tests. -
MSNBC just posted an article on the upcoming FDA decision to approve new pyschiatric drugs for children.For this discussion I’m going to leave aside the questions of 1.) whether these drugs are safe and effective (many groups are questioning whether enough studies have been done to determine the long term effects of the drugs), and 2.) do children need to be taking them or is there a better way to help them?
Just like efforts to promote Lipitor for children, we are again seeing drug manufactures attempting to push medicine designed for adults onto younger and younger children. This time it is a drug that many studies show has no greater effectiveness, or less side effects, then current drugs on the market. What is the motivation behind this push then? Well these older drugs were first developed in the 1950s, meaning that they can be bought as generic. The cost for them is around $100/month. The newer drugs cannot be bought as generic, they sell for between $300/month and $500/month. These drugs had combined sales of $14.6 billion last year. With approval for use in children that number could conceivably double. My question is what motive beyond money could there be to approve new drugs (that haven’t been long term tested, even beyond 6 weeks) for children, and promote there use over older, known drugs when there is basically no difference in effectiveness between the two?
If these new drugs are approved by the FDA, there are two groups of people I feel sorry for. The first, of course, is the children who take it, especially if these drugs turn out like so many others who are not properly tested (or are and those test results are buried), and have dangerous long term effects that we don’t know about now.
The second group is the doctors who perscribe these drugs. In many cases all the information that
doctors receive about a drug, its effectiveness, side effects, etc. are from the manufactures themselves. Most doctors, especially general practitioners, simply do not have the time to do due diligence and study every single drug they prescribe. There are too many. They are forced to rely many times on marketing materials they receive from drug reps, whose job it is to convince the doctors to prescribe their medication, in the case of these psychiatric drugs cost 2-3 times more but show little to no increased effectiveness. For a more indepth view of the lengths that drug reps go to sell their products check out this article from ABC News. It interviews a former rep for Eli Lily who sold Zypraxa, one of the drugs we’re discussing here. He describes the lengths he went to sell doctors on drugs. In another article a chiropractor from Michigan posts a blog describing his interaction with some pharmaceutical reps.In the end we all pay the price if these drugs are approved. The children who take them unknowingly face the unknown consequences of long term use of these drugs. We, the public, have to pick up the tab on the increased cost of using these medications over the ones currently prescribed.
Update: The panel voted to OK the psychiatric drugs just a couple hours ago. The FDA doesn’t have to take the recommendation, but does anyone think that they won’t? Again, there is too much money riding on it for them not to. Don’t forget, many of these same folks who determine supposedly impartially determine what drugs get approved eventually leave the FDA to work at the drug companies themselves in high paying positions. They definitely don’t want to endanger that golden parachute.
In a completely related note, the Wall Street Journal reports another research psychiatrist has been accused of not disclosing the fact that he receives money from the drug company, GlaxoSmithKline, which make the drug Paxil. He was researching on a NIH grant the effects of Paxil on pregnant women. /sarcasm| I’m sure that GSK was paying him out of the goodness of their heart and expecting nothing in return in regards to his research, even though it could be worth billions to them if her returns the “correct” outcome. /sarcasm\
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- Natural Health June 2009
The June 09 issue of Natural Health Magazine has a short article describing chiropractic care. None of it will be new info for our patients, but it is a good introductory article and while it does focus on back pain it does make mention that chiropractic care is about more than just it.
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7 Health Secrets - Your Genes Don’t Control Your Destiny
This is the first clip in our 7 Health Secrets podcast series, available on ITunes - simply search for McKinley Chiropractic!
Dr. McKinley discuss epigenetics and the fact that your genetic code doesn’t determine your life.
Enjoy!
