6th August 2018

One of the most difficult issues in discussing cardiovascular disease is that it is generally considered to consist of two completely different processes. The first of which is the development of atherosclerosis, or atherosclerosis plaques, which are thickenings that can grow, narrow, and block arteries over years or decades.

The second process is thrombosis (a blood clot) that forms on top of the plaque. Often thought to be due to plaque rupture – something like a boil bursting – which exposes the blood to the inner plaque material. This, in turn, triggers a sudden blood clot (thrombus) to form, which fully blocks the artery causing a heart attack. Now that, anyway, is the current mainstream view.

Or, perhaps like a volcano? The pressure from the magma builds up and up, until the ‘plug’ at the top gives way and the whole things goes off bang. I am not sure if I like that analogy, but it may capture the concept of something slowly, slowly, building up, before the sudden catastrophe occurs.

You may see nothing wrong with this model, but it creates massive and complex issues when looking for potential causes of cardiovascular disease. Because it states that we have two completely different processes here, which could have completely different causes, and how do you know which one is more important, or which one to target? Or which one to blame?

So, for instance, we know that heart attacks are more common on a Monday morning than any other time of the week¹. Clearly, this is not due to the sudden growth of atherosclerotic plaques overnight on a Sunday. If it is due to anything, it is due to the early morning rise of cortisol which, in turn, makes it more likely for a blood clot to form – because cortisol is ‘pro-coagulant.’

Equally, after you have suffered a heart attack, almost all of the treatment that takes place is to do with breaking down blood clots, removing them, or prizing them apart. At its simplest, you can give an aspirin to try and dissolve the clot. Or you could give a ‘clot buster’, such as tissue plasminogen activator – (TPa).

More commonly nowadays, a catheter is inserted into the coronary artery blocked by a blood clot, to reach the clot, push through it, and open up a metal stent to hold open the blocked area. So, in one way, the acute treatment of heart attacks could simply be described as blood clot management. As could the treatment of the majority of strokes where a clot breaks off from the carotid artery (artery in the neck) before travelling into the brain and getting stuck.

So, clearly, you cannot dismiss the importance of blood clotting in causing death from cardiovascular disease. In fact, if you never had a blood clot, you would never die of a heart attack or a stroke. No matter how much atherosclerosis you had. [I am not entirely sure if this statement is correct, but it is very nearly correct].

Now, you may rather like this dual model of ‘Athero-thombosis’. However, I do not. Indeed, I hate it. For one thing I do not like having to invoke two completely essentially unrelated processes to explain a single disease. Mainly though, even if it wasn’t deliberately designed to protect the ‘LDL-hypothesis,’ that is exactly what it does.

Primarily because the idea of athero-thrombosis firmly places blood clotting, in the aetiology (causal chain) of CVD right at the end, where it can then have nothing to do with the development and growth of plaques. Which means that you can dismiss any and all associations between plaque formation and blood clotting, no matter how strong. ‘Yes well, of course, things that make the blood less likely to clot will protect against cardiovascular disease, and vice-versa. But it has nothing do with atherosclerotic plaque formation, that is all to do with LDL.’ End of discussion.

Yet, and here is a thing, not often commented on – if at all. Most atherosclerotic plaques contain cholesterol crystals. In fact, the early researchers, when they found cholesterol in plaques must have been looking at cholesterol crystals, or they would have had no idea what they were looking at.

Why is this important? Because you cannot make cholesterol crystals from the cholesterol found in LDL molecules. Why not? Because the cholesterol in LDL is primarily bound to fatty acids (call them fats), thus creating a cholesterol ‘ester’, a.k.a. ‘esterified cholesterol.’ And cholesterol esters do not, indeed cannot, turn into cholesterol crystals. The only substance in the body containing enough pure cholesterol to form cholesterol crystals, are the membranes of red blood cells (RBCs).

Next question, how do you get a red blood cell into a plaque?

The only possible way is for there to have been some form of bleeding/haemorrhage into the artery wall. Of course, once you have had a haemorrhage, you end up with a blood clot. At which point you have enough RBCs kicking about for cholesterol crystals to form. As made clear in the NEJM paper: ‘Intraplaque Hemorrhage and Progression of Coronary Atheroma.’²

‘The aim of this study was to demonstrate erythrocyte membranes within the necrotic cores of human atherosclerotic plaques, even those without recent hemorrhages, and relate them to the progression and instability of the lesions. We also examined the fate of erythrocytes in established plaques in atherosclerotic rabbits to provide a model of hemorrhage-induced progression of lesions. Establishment of a link between intraplaque hemorrhage and the expansion of the lesions would provide another potential mechanism of plaque progression and vulnerability.’

‘The finding that intramural hemorrhage in an experimental atherosclerotic lesion induces the formation of cholesterol crystals with the recruitment of macrophages supports our hypothesis that erythrocyte membranes in the necrotic core of human coronary lesions can cause an abrupt increase in the levels of free cholesterol, resulting in expansion of the necrotic core and the potential for the destabilization of plaque’

Okay, what does that all mean? Basically, red blood cells that end up in plaques cause an abrupt increase in cholesterol in the plaque, leading to destabilisation of the plaque – which is the underlying cause of heart attacks and strokes. Or, to put this another way. Repeated blood clotting occurs first, followed by intra-plaque rupture. Which is the exact opposite way round to the current athero-thrombosis model. Which means that it should really be called the ‘thrombo-atherosclerosis’ model.

The observation of blood clots going off all over the place, narrowing an artery, shortly to be followed by heart attack is outlined very clearly in this paper. ‘Unstable angina with fatal outcome: dynamic coronary thrombosis leading to infarction and/or sudden death. Autopsy evidence of recurrent mural thrombosis with peripheral embolization culminating in total vascular occlusion.’

Now, that is a lot of jargon for one title … of any paper. So, I shall translate. Unstable angina is a condition whereby the attacks of angina become more and more frequent, triggering almost all the time. It is usually the harbinger of a final, fatal Myocardial Infarction. So, yes, in one way we are looking at the end process of CVD. However, in the situation we have an opportunity to see rapid atherosclerotic development with clots forming, one on top of another which, eventually completely block the artery. That is the ‘recurrent mural thrombosis’ bit.

Here is the abstract. If you are not medically trained, you are not going to get much of this. However, what it describes is exactly what I am talking about. Repeated blood clots creating layered blood clots, one sitting on top of another, causing the artery to narrow. This is, in effect, super-accelerated thrombo-atherosclerosis.

I include this unchanged, because I want people to know that I am not interpreting what is said here to suit my argument. What the authors are describing is, exactly, what I have been banging about for years. Namely that atherosclerotic plaques are blood clots, in different stage of development and breakdown. Good luck:

‘Extensive microscopic examination of epicardial arteries and myocardium was performed in 25 cases of sudden death due to acute coronary thrombosis. Eighty-one percent of the thrombi had a layered structure with thrombus material of differing age, indicating that they were formed successively by repeated mural deposits that caused progressive luminal narrowing over an extended period of time. This episodic growth of the thrombus was accompanied by intermittent fragmentation of thrombus in 73% of the cases, with peripheral embolization causing microembolic occlusion of small intramyocardial arteries associated with microinfarcts. The period of unstable angina before the final heart attack was, in all but one of 15 patients, characterized by such an ongoing thrombotic process in a major coronary artery where recurrent mural thrombus formation seemed to have alternated with intermittent thrombus fragmentation. The culmination of this “dynamic” thrombotic process in total vascular occlusion caused the final infarction and/or sudden death.’³

Clot after clot after clot, building up a layered structure of clots one of top of another. Followed by the ‘big one’, the clot that killed them.

Another condition where you get very rapid atherosclerosis development is following a heart transplant – sad to say. The process in such patients is exactly the same as in unstable/crescendo angina, if far slower. Namely, repeated thrombus formation, leading to the rapid growth of atherosclerotic plaques. Here from the European Heart Journal: ‘Repeated episodes of thrombosis as a potential mechanism of plaque progression in cardiac allograft vasculopathy.’

[Cardiac allograft vasculopathy = degeneration of the blood vessels in transplanted heart. I don’t know why they don’t just call it atherosclerosis, but they don’t.] Now, here comes some more proper jargon from the paper If it is too dense for you, what it describes are repeated blood clots on the arterial wall (mural thrombosis), leading to the development and growth of atherosclerotic plaques.

Discussion

The current serial IVUS (intravenous ultrasound scan) study demonstrated that a substantial number of asymptomatic HTx (Heart transplant) recipients had lesions (plaques) with complex lesion morphology, such as multiple layers, intraluminal thrombi, and plaque ruptures. Furthermore, this study implies that recurrent episodes of coronary thrombosis, presenting as ML(multi-layered) appearance, may mediate the progression of CAV (Coronary allograft vasculopathy).

Multiple layers are often indicative of repetitive, periodically occurring asymptomatic thrombus formation. Post-mortem studies for native atherosclerosis demonstrated healed plaque ruptures and erosions with multiple layers of distinct tissue components.12 ML appearance identified by cross-sectional IVUS imaging has been interpreted as mural thrombus. To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal IVUS study, demonstrating multiple layers not only at a single time point (ML appearance) but also longitudinally (ML formation). The present serial IVUS study demonstrated that lesions with ML formation exhibited new inner layers with distinct echogenicity overlaying pre-existing outer layers. This observation could be highly indicative of repeated episodes of mural thrombosis.’ ⁴

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Thrombo-atherosclerosis. Not athero-thrombosis. Blood clotting is not simply the final event in the CVD. It is the only event, and it is how atherosclerosis starts, grows and eventually kills you. Or, to put it another way, there are not two processes in cardiovascular disease, there is only one.

You heard it here first.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7925507

2: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa035655

3: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/71/4/699?ijkey=7c374f414cfa07f8668551aba66604e81cc54adc&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3787274/

23rd July 2018

Trying to work out what causes any disease is tricky, very tricky, although in some cases it has been relatively straightforward – at least in retrospect. Scurvy, for example, has a single cause. A lack of vitamin C. If you replace the vitamin C, all the signs and symptoms of scurvy will disappear.

Equally, tuberculosis, is caused by the single pathogen, or microorganism, the tuberculous bacillus. The discovery of the bacillus was made by Robert Koch in 1882 using his meticulous scientific technique, based on his famous postulates:

• The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease but should not be found in healthy organisms.
• The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
• The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
• The microorganism must be re-isolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.

Koch didn’t just stumble across a bacteria in someone with TB and announce to the world that this was the cause of TB. He knew that if you look in any sample from diseased lungs, you will find hundreds of different bugs kicking about. Which of them is the true cause?

To find out, you need to isolate one, find a culture where it can multiply, then stick it in another animal to see if it develops the same disease. You take that microorganism back out of the newly diseased animal and check it is the same bacteria that you isolated in the first place. Then, and only then, can you claim you found the causal agent.

Good stuff, sounds complicated. In truth, that was simple.

Things become far more difficult when, for example, you cannot find a single causal agent. Or you find that you have found a likely agent, but many people exposed to it do not get the disease. Or, you find that people who have not been exposed to your proposed causal agent can also get the same disease.

Smoking, for example. You have a hypothesis that smoking causes lung cancer, but most people who smoke do not get lung cancer. Equally, many people who have never smoked can suffer from lung cancer. Given this, you could argue that it is not actually smoking that causes lung cancer, but something else. An argument used for decades by the tobacco industry to establish that smoking was perfectly healthy.

Recognising these difficulties, in 1965 the English statistician Sir Austin Bradford Hill proposed a set of nine criteria, known as ‘Bradford Hills cannons of causation’. They were designed to provide a model for epidemiologic evidence of a causal relationship between a presumed cause and an observed effect. It was Hill and Richard Doll who demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. The list of the criteria, or cannons, is as follows:

Strength: (effect size): A small association does not mean that there is not a causal effect, though the larger the association, the more likely that it is causal.

Consistency: (reproducibility): Consistent findings observed by different persons in different places with different samples strengthens the likelihood of an effect.

Specificity: Causation is likely if there is a very specific population at a specific site and disease with no other likely explanation. The more specific an association between a factor and an effect is, the bigger the probability of a causal relationship.

Temporality: The effect has to occur after the cause (and if there is an expected delay between the cause and expected effect, then the effect must occur after that delay).

Biological gradient: Greater exposure should generally lead to greater incidence of the effect. However, in some cases, the mere presence of the factor can trigger the effect. In other cases, an inverse proportion is observed: greater exposure leads to lower incidence.

Plausibility: A plausible mechanism between cause and effect is helpful (but Hill noted that knowledge of the mechanism is limited by current knowledge).

Coherence: Coherence between epidemiological and laboratory findings increases the likelihood of an effect. However, Hill noted that “… lack of such [laboratory] evidence cannot nullify the epidemiological effect on associations”.

Experiment: “Occasionally it is possible to appeal to experimental evidence”.

Analogy: The effect of similar factors may be considered.

You may have noted that these cannons are not remotely black and white. There are many shades of grey here. Even so, I can confidently assure you that if you take any of the current risk factors for heart disease, they fail to meet some, many, or indeed any, of Bradford Hills cannons for causation.

For some time, I looked at Koch’s postulates, changing the word microorganism to pathogen. I reviewed the Cannons for causation and repeatedly tried to apply them to possible causes of cardiovascular disease, but I found that they are of little practical use. Things got very complicated very quickly and trying to pull all the necessary strands of thought together was well beyond my mental capacity.

I began to realise that when it comes to cardiovascular disease we do NOT have any single causal agent, or factor, or even a remotely coherent causal model. Something noted over twenty years ago.

‘Our poor understanding of the nature of coronary heart disease explains why we lack a clearly expressed paradigm to explain it. All diseases are explained on the basis of a paradigm, or model, which is an expression of present understanding even though it might be incomplete or wrong. Being able to develop a paradigm, to construct a model, implies a certain level of understanding; the absence of such a paradigm which would include most if not all known risk indicators, implies very little understanding.

In practice there is what can be regarded as a ‘flat paradigm’ for the development of coronary heart disease, in that it is thought to be due to the addition of a wide range of risk indicators. The flat paradigm of CHD means that it might appear to be due to genetic influences in one person, cigarette smoking in another, a faulty diet in another, a metabolic abnormality in another etc.. This contravenes traditional pathological teaching that a given disease has a specific cause, although a variety of factors might influence the natural history of the disease. In fact, the flat paradigm is simply a summation of observations and make no attempt to explain how the various factors might interact.’¹

In that article, Grimes uses the term ‘flat paradigm’ which I rather like, but have never seen used before, or since. Others commonly describe CVD as being multifactorial, as though this helps in any way. ‘Yes, CVD is multifactorial.’ In reality, the use of this term is basically an admission of failure. ‘We don’t really know what causes CVD, but here is a list of things that we think might have something to do with it, in some people, but not all… look, stop asking difficult questions.’

This lack of any coherent model is reflected in the latest CVD risk calculator developed in the UK. It is called Qrisk3. There were two earlier models Qrisk1 and 2. You can bring up the calculator on-line and input all your ‘risk factors’. It will then work out your risk of having a cardiovascular ‘event’ in the next ten years – allegedly. It can be found here:https://qrisk.org/three/

It has twenty variable factors. These are

• Age
• Sex
• Smoking
• Diabetes
• Total cholesterol/HDL ratio
• Blood pressure
• Variation in two blood pressure readings
• BMI
• Chronic kidney disease
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)
• History of migraines
• Severe mental illness
• On atypical antipsychotic medication
• Using steroid tablets
• Atrial fibrillation
• Diagnosis of erectile dysfunction
• Angina, or heart attack in first degree relative under the age of 60
• Ethnicity
• Postcode

There is an alternative calculator used in the US. It only uses ten factors. It can be found here http://www.cvriskcalculator.com/ As an aside, neither of them use LDL to calculate risk. Interesting? [Both calculators greatly overestimate risk].

Looking at the UK version, what does it all mean? Does this list imply understanding? No, it is just a mis-mash of the most common things that have found to increase your risk of CVD. Some of the items on the list can only be associations e.g.:

• Age
• Sex
• Ethnicity
• Postcode (Zipcode)
• Angina, or heart attack in first degree relative under the age of 60

You may say that age clearly does cause CVD – it is certainly the most powerfully weighted factor on the list. I would counter that, if you have no other identified risk factors for CVD, why should getting older be a problem? What is the mechanism?

At least three items on the list are caused by CVD

• Variation in two blood pressure readings
• Erectile dysfunction
• Chronic kidney disease

One of them sits completely alone

• Atrial Fibrillation

As for the others:

• Smoking
• Diabetes
• Blood pressure
• Total cholesterol/HDL ratio
• BMI
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
• History of migraines
• Severe mental illness
• On atypical antipsychotic medication
• Using steroids tablets

Here we have ten causes? But can these extremely disparate things all cause the same disease, and in the same way. History of migraines, and smoking, for example – what links them. Or, severe mental illness and rheumatoid arthritis. Go on, try and fit them together, with the LDL hypothesis, and see if you can end up with a coherent model.

Therein lay the challenge that I set myself many years ago. Of course, I could easily add many other items to Qrisk3. Antiphospholipid syndrome, sickle cell disease, Kawasaki’s, air pollution, magnesium deficiency, Avastin, proton pump inhibitors and on and on.

The reality is that, when you analyse Qrisk3, it is immediately apparent that there is no single necessary and sufficient causal agent to be found here. One alternative would be to suggest that there are several hundred different varieties of CVD, all with their own specific cause, and all leading to the same pathophysiology [a term used to describe the disordered physiological processes associated with disease or injury.]

To put this another way, the classical causal models were never going to work for CVD. Koch’s postulates, Bradford Hills cannons for causation represent a paradigm that is not suitable for understanidng CVD. For starters it is impossible to establish how they can all fit together as independent factors.

Even if you restrict yourself to the twenty different variables on Qrisk3, the possible combinations between them is twenty factorial. Which is twenty times nineteen, times eighteen, times seventeen etc. That is 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 possible interactions. Two-point four sextillion. Go on, design a clinical trial to explore that.

What I came to realise, eventually, is that you cannot understand CVD by studyng hundreds and hundreds of different risk factors that could be causal, could be associations, could be coincidence. The only possibly way to understand this disease, was to stop looking for causes and start looking at the process. This is something that I have said many times before, but it bears almost endless repetition, for it is key to everything.

If you cannot explain why, and more importantly how such things as: postcode, rheumatoid arthritis, smoking, steroids and history of migraines can lead to an increased risk of CVD you are just making lists and explaining nothing. So, having got that off my chest, again, I shall return to process in the next instalment.

1: Grimes D, Hindle E, Dyer T: ‘Respiratory infection and coronary heart disease: progression of a paradigm.’ Q J Med 2000: 93:375-383

15th June 2018

Many years ago, whilst I was at University, a doctor called Elspeth Smith was giving a small group tutorial on cardiovascular disease. I did not know it at the time, but she was doing detailed research into the process of atherosclerosis itself. During the tutorial she made this statement ‘cholesterol cannot get past the endothelium.’

At the time I had no idea what the endothelium was, and in truth, not much idea about cholesterol. However, those six words changed my life. At least my medical life. It was as if a door had opened onto a hidden world. No-one else in the group reacted, but I knew from the way those words were spoken that this was someone who was thinking something very differently. Very differently indeed.

Here is the conclusion of one of her talks, reproduced in the book: ‘Factors in formation and regression of the atherosclerotic plaque.’ Yes, the usual jargon filled stuff, but the bit at the end is most interesting.

‘In this talk I have concentrated mainly on the factors that may be involved in the progression of the early, low-lipid gelatinous lesion into the typical fibrous plaque with lipid-rich centre that is generally accepted as the significant lesion in occlusive vascular disease and have tried to emphasize the key role that may be played by fibrin.’

Fibrin, the key component of blood clots. How strange, how completely whacky. Is this woman mad. In the tutorial, she moved on quickly, almost as if being caught in an act of disloyalty. Which, I have come to realise, she was.

I now believe that, if she had been bolder, Dr Smith would have got it. The answer as to what really causes cardiovascular disease. I have since read many of her papers, and her contributions to various books. To my mind she was right over the target, looking straight down at the answer – bomb doors open.

Unfortunately, to fit in with mainstream consensus whereby everything must rotate around cholesterol (LDL/cholesterol), she kept looping back to cholesterol, and LDL, constantly trying to crowbar them into her research. Where they did not, and do not, fit.

She also made it too complicated, falling into the trap of ultra-reductionism. A trap that becomes almost impossible to avoid if you travel down and down, further and further, into biological systems. A point will be reached whereby, as physiological systems become smaller, they also multiply endlessly in all directions, and it becomes virtually impossible to see how they link together to create disease.

If you want to see the bigger picture, you must keep moving up and down between the levels. Just as a work of art cannot be understood by an analysis of the molecular structure of the paint, human physiology cannot be understood by tracking down individual biochemical pathways looking for the tiny, essential, lever that starts it all. The single snowflake that triggers an avalanche.

Anyway, getting back to her comment ‘cholesterol cannot get past the endothelium.’ Once you come to recognise that this is true, you are forced to accept that the cholesterol hypothesis, or LDL hypothesis is wrong, because it makes no sense. This does not necessarily mean that LDL does not have any role to play, but it cannot be the necessary factor. The ‘if and only if’ factor.

Which means that, if you want to understand cardiovascular disease, you must strip everything apart and start looking at the whole thing again. If not LDL, then what? Unfortunately, the moment you do this, a number of different problems emerge. The trickiest one is trying to find absolutely agreed facts to build a hypothesis on. Which is far more difficult than you would imagine.

Some facts may seem like bedrock, but when you start to press down on them, they can begin to crack and splinter, and turn to quicksand. For example, the fact that – at a younger age – women have a lower mortality rate from cardiovascular disease than men. This ‘fact’ is quoted endlessly but is it true? Not universally. Younger Brazilian women have an almost identical rate of death from heart disease as the men. At least it was, last time I looked

So, do women really have a lower rate of cardiovascular disease due to a biological difference? Or it is all to do with environmental differences, or psychological differences, or something else?

[By the way I am not referencing much of this blog, this time. You can simply Google most of this stuff yourself. I hope by now readers of this blog will accept that when I make a statement it is not plucked from thin air].

So, do we actually know? Really and truly know? Where are the foundation facts? At one point I reached a little island of despondency where I felt that there was no fact that I could rely on. It seemed that there was nothing that could not be contradicted.

For example, heart attacks are caused by blood clots in the coronary arteries. Surely that is certain? Well, I can find you solid evidence to contradict this, and several people I communicate with will argue that the blood clot follows the heart attack/myocardial inflation (MI). Not the other way around. You think this is mad?

What is certain is that you can find people who suffer from myocardial infarctions with no evidence of any blood clot, in any coronary artery, anywhere. It even has a name. Myocardial Infarction With Nonobstructive Coronary Arteries (MINOCA). To quote from an article in Circulation:

‘Myocardial infarction with nonobstructive coronary arteries (MINOCA) is clinically defined by the presence of the universal acute myocardial infarction (AMI) criteria, absence of obstructive coronary artery disease (≥50% stenosis), and no overt cause for the clinical presentation at the time of angiography (eg, classic features for takotsubo cardiomyopathy)’

This, I should add, is not rare. Maybe 25% of all heart attacks.

Yet, and yet. If you give drugs designed to break down blood clots (clots busters) you can reduce the risk of death from a myocardial infarction (MI). So, clearly, many myocardial infarctions are caused by blood clots. Equally if you use a device to clear out an obstruction from the coronary artery and put in a stent to keep the artery open this does reduce the risk of death following an MI.

Which means that you can – on the face of it – have MIs caused by blood clots, and MIs not caused by blood clots. Apart from the missing blood clot, they are both the same thing, with damaged heart muscle, raised cardiac enzymes and suchlike. So, what the bloody hell is going on?

Equally, you can find people who die of an MI and when you examine their coronary arteries you can find that a blood clot had formed days, or weeks, before the MI occurred. So, again, what the bloody hell is going on here? The blood clot did, or did not cause the MI? Surely not if there is a gap in time, of weeks, between the clot and the MI.

At which point you find yourself asking, or at least I did, how many people have the classic MI. By which I mean a blood clot forms in a coronary artery, then the person gets immediate central crushing chest pain and a myocardial infarction. More than half, less than half? In truth I do not know, and nor does anyone else.

In fact, just to throw more confusion into the ring, it is clear that the vast majority of MIs do not actually cause any symptoms at all. Or at least not symptoms that make anyone think they were having a heart attack.

Deep coal miners in Russia die the very earliest from heart attacks, at least I am pretty sure that they do. Average age of death is less than fifty. If you examine the hearts of these coal miners they will have had, on average, six previous MIs before the final one that got them. None of which were identified at the time. So, why do some MIs cause terrific pain whilst others do not? I have no idea. Nor, as far as I can ascertain, does anyone else.

Perhaps you now have some idea of my difficulty in trying to study CVD. At times it is like trying to pick mercury up off a flat table top. Or, asking questions of someone who will only answer your questions with another question. Frustrating.

I came to realise, eventually, that I could not rely on evidence, then work backwards. Instead I had to look at the metabolism, the physiology, the anatomy and suchlike, and attempt to work out what was going on. Then create a working hypothesis and see if facts fitted into it. Alternatively, find facts that completely blow it out of the water.

So, here we go, again. My working hypothesis as to the cause of CVD is, currently, the following:

• The first step in the development of atherosclerosis is damage to the endothelium (layer of cells that lines all blood vessels). No damage to the endothelium = no atherosclerosis.
• After the endothelium has been damaged a blood clot forms over the area
• The blood clot is mainly broken down and removed – on site
• Any remaining blood clot is covered over by new endothelial cells, effectively drawing the clot into the artery wall.
• Further repair systems, such as macrophages, then break up and remove any blood clot remnants, so nothing remains….

Unless.

Unless clots form more rapidly than they can be got rid of, at which point a plaque starts to develop, and grow. When it reaches a critical point, the final deadly blood clot occurs. [I will deal with the issues of MINOCA and suchlike, in the future].

Essentially, therefore, we are looking at a dynamic process whereby, if damage > repair, problems occur. However, if repair > damage, all is well. My analogy is with road repairs. [A major issue in the UK at the moment]. All roads are being damaged by car tyres, rain, ice and suchlike, all the time. If they are regularly repaired, then potholes will not form. However, if the damage outstrips repair, you end up with potholes all over the place.

In a similar sort of way if damage > repair in our arteries we develop atherosclerotic plaques. There are three things that can lead to accelerated atherosclerotic plaque development:

• Increased rate of endothelial damage
• Bigger, and more difficult to remove, blood clots forming
• Impaired healing systems

What this ‘three stage process’ hypothesis can immediately explain is why atherosclerotic plaques never develop in veins. The blood flow in veins in much slower, the blood pressure is around thirty times lower, and the biomechanical strain is much lower. Ergo, the endothelial cells in veins have a lot less ‘strain’ to deal with in their day to day lives. So, there is less endothelial damage going on.

It also explains why, if you take a vein, and use it in a coronary artery bypass (CABG) atherosclerosis very rapidly develops. It further explains why atherosclerosis never develops in the blood vessels in the lungs (pulmonary blood vessels). The blood pressure here is, again, far lower. Although, people with pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure in the lungs) can develop plaques.

What else does it explain? Well, it explains how smoking increases the risk of CVD. Smoking has no impact on the classic risk factors such as LDL levels, or blood pressure, or diabetes. However, smoking does cause rapid and significant damage to endothelial cells.

Smoking a single cigarette causes mayhem. Endothelial cells die, as measured by a rise in endothelial microparticles in the blood, Endothelial Progenitor cells (EPCs) are released from the bone marrow to repair the damage. At the same time platelets (the key component of all blood clots) are activated. In fact, all hell breaks loose.¹

When you look at the damage smoking does, it amazes me that anyone who smokes lasts longer than a week. But they do. Which just demonstrates that the repair systems in the body are extremely efficient.

Anyway, what is clear is that smoking causes CVD through endothelial damage. Precisely the same thing happens with air pollution. It is increasingly recognised that air pollution increases the risk of CV death, and that the primary mechanism is endothelial damage.

‘In healthy, non-smoking, young adults, episodic exposure to PM2.5 [fine particulate air pollution] was associated with elevated circulating endothelial microparticles, indicative of endothelial cell apoptosis [cell death] and endothelial injury’. ²

Sorry, I did reference those two. I thought they might be difficult to find.

In fact, if you look for any ‘factor’ that damages the endothelium, you will find that it increases the risk of CVD. Below is a list of some of the things that I have been looking at, in some detail. Many of which you will never have heard of, but try not to let that put you off:

• Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
• Sickle Cell Disease
• Lead (the heavy metal)
• Mercury
• Bacterial infections
• Kawasaki’s disease
• Avastin (and any other VEGF inhibitor (vascular endothelial growth factor)
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Proton Pump Inhibitors (used for ulcers and suchlike e.g. omeprazole)
• Scleroderma
• Smoking
• Air pollution
• Chronic Kidney Disease
• Vitamin C deficiency
• Erythema Nodosum
• Cocaine use
• Migraine
• Diabetes

That list is probably long enough for now. On the face of it, most of these factors may seem completely unrelated. But the simple fact is that they all cause significant endothelial damage, and they all greatly increase the risk of CVD. From 100% in the case of omeprazole, to 50,000% in the case of sickle cell disease.

You may be wondering how the hell does Sickle Cell Disease damage the endothelium. Well, sickle cells are sharp, sickle shaped red blood cells (erythrocytes) – that is where the name comes from. It should come as no great leap of the imagination to propose that having sharp sickle shaped red blood cells hammering through your arteries may be rather likely to damage them.

‘A recent study of spleens* resected from Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) patients… has shown that there was consistent vascular lesions affecting large arteries. The same finding was also shown in studies of brains from SCD patients who developed cerebrovascular accidents (strokes). These lesions were attributed to the rigidity of sickled erythrocytes causing mechanical injury to the endothelial cells. The widespread distribution of the lesions was also suspected in other studies, in which it was suggested that the sickled erythrocyte-endothelial adhesion seen in the microvasculature could be occurring in large arteries and contribute to large vessel endothelial injury, vascular intimal hyperplasia and thrombosis.’³

*spleens are often removed from those with sickle cell disease because they become enlarged and liable to rupture

And here, from the paper referenced above, is the case of a fourteen-year-old boy with sickle cell disease. Much jargon, but important jargon.

‘A 14 year-old boy was referred to our vascular unit, with gangrene of the right foot. The condition started about one year prior to this referral with ulceration of the foot which was treated conservatively. The condition of the foot deteriorated until development of gangrene of most of the foot. The boy is a known patient of SCD. His past medical history revealed right sided stroke when he was 8 years old. His parents have SCD. His brother had also SCD and died suddenly at the age of 5 years.

There were no identifiable risk factors for atherosclerosis.

On examination, there were no palpable pulses [no pulses could be felt]. He was found to have heavily calcified femoral and brachial arteries [main arteries of arms and legs]. Plain x ray of both arms showed extensive calcifications of brachial, femoral and popliteal arteries. An X ray of his right foot showed infarction and osteomyelitis of most of the bones [infection in the bones].

Plain CT [detailed x-ray] of the abdomen and pelvis showed calcification of splenic artery and calcifications of both iliacs and inferior mesenteric artery [arteries branching from the aorta, main arteries of legs and artery supplying the bowel]. Digital subtraction angiography [too complicated to explain here] showed occlusion of right external iliac artery and both superficial femoral arteries with extensive collaterals. MRI & MRA of the brain showed left parietal wedge area of infarction with total occlusion of the supraclinioid segment of left internal carotid artery [important bit of the brain] and multiple collaterals. The patient had a right below knee amputation and was discharged home on antiplatelets.’³

This fourteen-year-old boy had calcified atherosclerosis in virtually every artery in his body. With, and this should be highlighted again no identifiable risk factors for atherosclerosis.

Now, you can look at every single current hypothesis as to the cause(s) of CVD, and NONE of them can explain why this fourteen-year-old boy has widespread and overwhelming atherosclerotic plaque development. He represents the classic black swan.

On the other hand, if you believe that endothelial damage is the primary driver of CVD, this case history makes perfect sense. It also explains how the other fourteen things on my list increase the risk of CVD, whereas the current ‘LDL hypothesis’ can explain precisely NONE of them.

Which makes it – fourteen-nil to the endothelial damage hypothesis, and we have not even reached half time. Russell Ross – who first proposed the ‘response to injury’ hypothesis would be pleased with this result. As would, I hope, Elspeth Smith. Unfortunately, they are both now dead. But I hope to see that they get the posthumous recognition that they deserve.

They were telling us what truly does cause CVD, but no-one was listening. Everyone else was content to blindly follow the ‘cholesterol hypothesis’ waving flags, cheering, and raking in the money.

1: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090314&type=printable

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5215745/

3: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1533316707000192

22nd March 2018

A year ago, I wrote a blog suggesting that lead – as in the element – could have caused/causes a great deal of cardiovascular disease. I went further, to propose that the removal of lead as an additive in petrol (gasoline) may have been responsible for a significant percentage of the decline in cardiovascular disease in the Western World, over the last forty or fifty years.

Last week a paper was published suggesting that excess lead was responsible for as many deaths as smoking ¹. So, there you go, it turns out I was right. Once again. Yes, yes, I know, Nobel prize on the way. Or perhaps not.

In fact, what cheered me most about this study is that my hypothesis that endothelial damage is the trigger for CVD, was strongly supported. Some time ago I set about looking for factors/things that were capable of damaging the endothelial cells that line arteries. I tend to do this by going to Google and typing in the words endothelial damage ‘and’ copper, or lead, or mercury, or glucose, or smoking, or sickle cell anaemia etc. etc.

Then I see what pops up. At which point I switch to PubMed to look for the associated papers in the area. As it turned out when you hit lead and endothelial damage there was not a great deal, but it is fascinating, and it is clear that lead does damage endothelial cells, in various ways. It also damages many other things in the body – but that is another story.

This relatively unstructured searching system is how I ended up looking at chelation therapy. This form of treatment is/was supposed to remove heavy metals, such as lead, from the body. I had written it off as ‘woo-woo medicine’ (a phrase I actually hate, but I thought it was appropriate here). So, you use drain cleaner in arteries and this makes you better. Yes, right, pull the other one. Bong, next.

Oh well, you live and learn. Turns out that chelation actually works².

The second thing about the latest paper demonstrating the impact of lead on CVD is that the endothelial damage conjecture had proven ‘predictive’. The best scientific hypotheses are those you can use to predict what is going to happen in the future or better explain the facts of what happened in the past.

As an example of a good predictive hypothesis, we know that if we stand in a specific place, at a specific time, we will see an eclipse of the sun. We know this because we have been told that it will happen by people, who get this right 100% of the time.

If, on the other hand, someone says global temperature will rise by two degrees in the next twenty years, and it does not, we should be rightly sceptical that the scientists predicting this have got their ideas properly nailed down. We should also be sceptical when people alter their hypothesis to fit the facts. Global Warming has become Climate Change. Which some, like me, would say has changed their hypothesis from one that can be disproven, to one that cannot. ‘We predicted the Climate would change, and look it has. Told you so.’

‘Well gee whizz that was just so extremely helpful. Thanks.’

Anyway, to get back to endothelial damage. My conjecture is that, if you can find a factor that damages the endothelium, you will find that it increases the risk of CVD. It is not enough to say that most things that damage the endothelium increase the risk of CVD, or that almost everything that damages the endothelium increases the risk of CVD. It has to be everything.

There are, of course, provisos. We know that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer. We also know that some people who smoke never get lung cancer. So, on an individual basis, there can be protective things going on. Ergo, I would not expect everything that causes endothelial damage to cause CVD, in everyone.

Equally, we know that the tuberculous bacillus causes TB. However, not everyone that is exposed to the bacillus gets TB. We also know that people who carry the gene for CCR5 delta 32 mutation cannot be infected with HIV or Ebola. Why not? Because their cells do not code for the protein that allows these viruses to gain entry to cells. Just thought I would throw that one in. I am not just interested in CVD, you know.

In reality, there is almost nothing that is both necessary and sufficient to cause disease, or death – in everybody. Some people have survived falling out of aeroplanes without a parachute. Not many, but it has happened. Ebola kills up to 80% of those it infects, but some survive.

So, what I spend a lot of time doing is attempting to establish is whether or not endothelial damage is ‘necessary’ for CVD to develop [not that it is sufficient in everyone]. Or as someone told me on the blog ‘If and only if.’ As in, CVD will develop if, and only if, endothelial damage has occurred.

So, are there contradictions to the endothelial damage hypothesis? Well, if there are, I have yet to find them. Which does not mean that they do not exist. The closest I have come to a contradiction is with thalidomide. Everyone has heard of this drug, and the terrible malformations it caused. I suspect not many people know why it caused limb malformations.

It is because it interferes with the production and growth of endothelial cells. Because these cells did not grow and develop, blood vessels did not develop and grow in the unborn child, so there was no blood supply to support limb growth. So, the limbs were terribly shortened. I suspect that if thalidomide had been given at an earlier stage of the pregnancy the heart, brain, lungs etc. would have failed to develop and the foetus would have been non-viable – with spontaneous abortion.

Because thalidomide interferes with the formation of new blood vessels (angiogenesis) it is now used to treat cancer, and leprosy, and a few other things as well. Cancers need their own blood supply to grow, and if you stop them triggering new blood vessel growth and development the shrivel up and die. At least, that is the plan.

Other drugs have been developed to stop angiogenesis. One of the first was Avastin. Technically, it is a Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) inhibitor. It inhibits the growth of new endothelial cells. It is also widely used in macular degeneration, where the growth of new blood vessels in and around the macula (the main bit of the retina you use to see with), destroys the vision.

Unfortunately, Avastin has a significant adverse effect. You can probably guess what it is. Yes, it increases atherosclerotic plaque growth, and significantly increases the risk of death from CVD. In high doses, over two years, up to a 1,200% increase in heart attacks³.

Now thalidomide is not exactly the same as Avastin, but it definitely has a negative impact on endothelial cells in some way. But I can find no evidence for thalidomide increasing CVD risk. I can find evidence that, if you give thalidomide to pregnant animals, they too demonstrated limb deformity in offspring. However, if you give Viagra this eliminates the deformity. So, we know that inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) must be a key mechanism of endothelial dysfunction with thalidomide.

Therefore, it should increase CVD risk. Does it, or does it not? Well, you can read this paper ‘Apoptotic signaling induced by immunomodulatory thalidomide analogs in human multiple myeloma cells: therapeutic implications.’⁴ And try to decide if it does, or it does not. Personally, I cannot figure it out at all. I am kind of hoping that it does, or else my theory is in danger of hitting the waste bin.

Until next time.

1: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30025-2/fulltext

2: https://universityhealthnews.com/daily/heart-health/the-therapy-nobody-wants-you-to-know-about-found-to-successfully-treat-heart-disease

3: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167527313004282

4: http://www.bloodjournal.org/content/99/12/4525.full

13th March 2018

Before putting cardiovascular disease to bed for a while and talking about other things – such as diabetes – I thought I should highlight a fact that is almost never remarked upon yet is extremely important. At least it is, if you trying to bring down the cholesterol hypothesis. The fact is this. A raised cholesterol level, or LDL level, is not a risk factor for stroke. Not even in familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is a raised cholesterol level a risk factor for stroke.

Here, I am quoting from a study published in the Lancet called ‘Cholesterol, diastolic blood pressure, and stroke: 13,000 strokes in 450,000 people in 45 prospective cohorts. Prospective studies collaboration.’

‘After standardization for age, there was no association between blood cholesterol and stroke except, perhaps, in those under 45 years of age when screened. This lack of association was not influenced by adjustment for sex, diastolic blood pressure, history of coronary disease, or ethnicity (Asian or non-Asian).’ ¹

I think that this was a big enough study to demonstrate that, if there is any effect, it can only be tiny. Yes, the study is over twenty years old, but it was done before statins came along to distort the entire area. By which I mean after the mid-nineties, a large number of people with raised cholesterol were being put on statins, thus making any interpretation of the impact of different cholesterol levels, on stroke, almost impossible.

As for Familial Hypercholesterolaemia. The findings of the Simon Broome registry (set up in the UK to study the health impact of FH) were, as follows

‘The data also confirm our earlier findings that FH patients are not at a higher risk of fatal stroke.’ ²

Thus, a raised cholesterol level is not a risk factor for stroke, even at very high levels found in FH – even in homozygous FH (where both the subject’s genes are faulty so leading to more severe FH). Yet, and yet, statins reduce the risk of stroke. Not by much, and not to the extent that I consider the benefits to outweigh the harms, but they do. Here, plucked from a million possible articles is something from the American Heart Association

‘Millions more people worldwide may benefit from cholesterol-lowering statins after a global study showed the drugs help reduce heart attacks and strokes in people at moderate risk. The risk fell slightly further when patients also took blood pressure drugs.’ ³

The absolute figures wobble about, depending of which of the myriad studies and meta-analyses you choose to look at, but the reduction in stroke risk is about the same as the reduction in the risk of heart attacks/myocardial infarctions.

When I see facts like this, I try to use logic. The logic, in this case, goes something like this:

• Factor A (raised LDL) is not a risk factor for disease B (stroke)
• However, if you lower factor A, the risk of disease B falls

Conclusion. Something other than the lowering of Factor A is causing the reduction in the risk of disease B. If you take this thought one step further, the beneficial effect of statins on the risk of stroke, flatly contradicts the cholesterol hypothesis.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8551820

2: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/29/21/2625/530400/Reductions-in-all-cause-cancer-and-coronary

3: https://news.heart.org/statins-lower-heart-attack-stroke-risk-in-people-at-average-risk/

14th February 2018

The mind

The final big-ticket item on my list, of how to avoid CVD and live longer, is poor social interactions, and the strain caused by them, or whatever you want to call this rather difficult to define area. Here we have a whole range of different, interconnected, issues. Childhood abuse, family breakup, abusive partner, financial difficulties, abusive and bullying boss at work, social isolation, mental health issues, loneliness, no sense of being part of a supportive family or group – religious or otherwise.

The simple fact is that we humans are social animals. We require nurture and support by others. We need a sense of belonging, a sense of value and purpose. We need to be loved, not hit, or shouted at, or bullied, or treated with contempt.

When I first started looking at CVD, this was the area that I focussed on. It seemed obvious to me, that there was an enormously important mind/body connection that was simply being ignored by mainstream research into heart disease – and all other diseases. Despite the complete lack of interest by most researchers, whenever and wherever you look, if you chose to see, psychological/mental health issues were standing right there, waving their arms about and shouting me, me, me, me. Look at ME!

The full impact of negative stressors was highlighted in a study that was sent to me a few months back. Researchers found that people who suffer from significant money worries are thirteen times more likely to suffer a heart attack. Yes, thirteen times more likely, or 1,300%. Now that is the level of increased risk where I tend to prick up my ears and pay attention. Relative risk, or not¹.

It is also clear that mental health, or mental illness, plays a massive role in overall health and life expectancy, as highlighted by researchers from Oxford University.

‘Serious mental illnesses reduce life expectancy by 10 to 20 years, an analysis by Oxford University psychiatrists has shown – a loss of years that’s equivalent to or worse than that for heavy smoking….

…The average reduction in life expectancy in people with bipolar disorder is between nine and 20 years, while it is 10 to 20 years for schizophrenia, between nine and 24 years for drug and alcohol abuse, and around seven to 11 years for recurrent depression.’²

Yes, when your mind goes wrong, your body follows, with disastrous consequences for overall health. Of course, there is overlap between mental illness, drug use, smoking and suchlike. However, you can strip out all the other things, and you are left with the ferocious power of the mind/body connection. The power to nurture, and the power to destroy.

I usually tell anyone, still listening after I have bored them on various other issues, that health is a combination of physical, psychological and social wellbeing. Three overlapping sets. The holy trinity of wellbeing. You must get them all right, or nothing works. As Plato noted, a few years back “the part can never be well unless the whole is well.”

Who are the shortest-lived peoples in the world? Are they the poor? Not necessarily, although poverty can be a clear driver of ill-health. The shortest-lived people in the world are people who live in the places of greatest social dislocation and disruption. Or, to put it another way, people who have had their societies stripped apart. Australian aboriginals, NZ Maoris, North American aboriginals, the Inuit.

‘Indigenous Australians have the worst life expectancy rates of any indigenous population in the world, a United Nations report says. But it’s not news to Aboriginal health expert. They say it simply confirms what Australian health services have known for years.

Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the Northern Territory (AMSANT) chief executive officer John Paterson said the findings of the report, which examined the indigenous populations of 90 countries, were no surprise. The UN report – State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples – showed indigenous people in Australia and Nepal fared the worst, dying up to 20 years earlier than their non-indigenous counterparts. In Guatemala, the life expectancy gap is 13 years and in New Zealand it is 11.’ ³

Twenty years earlier. I think that figure is worth repeating. I cannot find anything else, from anywhere, that gets close to that sort of impact on health – on a population basis.

Or, to put it another way, do not be a stranger in your own land. It kills you. The differences in life expectancy in the US or the UK mirror these findings, albeit less dramatically. There are areas, within deprived inner-cities in the UK, where people do almost as badly as Australian aboriginals.

It does not take a genius to guess where they might be. Inner city Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool. The same thing can be seen in ghetto areas in virtually all cities in the US. Where the marginalised poor live – but not for terribly long.

‘The differences between places [in the US] are sometimes stark. For example, the average person in San Jose (California District 19) lives to 84 years compared to just 73 years for someone from Kentucky District 5, in the rural south east of that state.’⁴

On a more positive note, living in supporting and positive environments, is exceedingly good for you. The Blue Zones are areas of the world where people live longer than anywhere else. For example: inland Sardinia, Loma Linda California, Nicoya (Costa Rica), Okinawa, Ikaria (Greece), and a couple of others. [I think I should point out here that they are also, sunny, something not mentioned in the book].

The most important factor was a sense of well-being, community, a connection with other people, a sense of purpose, and good relationships with friends and family. As a slight aside, the author of the book “The Blue Zones”, Dan Buettner, was very focused on the benefits of a high vegetable, low meat diet. He tried hard to promote the idea that diet was the primary driver of good health.

For example, in Sardinia, he wrote the following about the food that was eaten there:

‘It’s loaded with homegrown fruits and vegetables such as zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, and fava beans that may reduce the risk of heart disease and colon cancer. Also on the table: dairy products such as milk from grass-fed sheep and pecorino cheese, which, like fish, contribute protein and omega-3 fatty acids.’

The Sardinians themselves, however, have a completely different view of what they eat, and they protested the misrepresentation of their diet:

‘In 2011, Sardinians called for formal recognition of their diet insisting that “the secret to a long life can be found in their traditional diet of lamb, roast piglet, milk and cheese.”’⁵

In fact, many years earlier, researchers studied another Italian community that defied all dietary expectations. This was in the town of Roseta in Pennsylvania. This community had moved, virtually lock stock and barrel, from Roseta in Italy, to a new Roseta in the US. It was noted that they had an extraordinarily low rate of CVD. Why? Here, once again, I quote an article from the Huffington Post:

‘What made Rosetans die less from heart disease than identical towns elsewhere? Family ties. Another observation: they had traditional and cohesive family and community relationships. It turns out that Roseto was peopled by strongly knit Italian American families who did everything right and lived right and consequently lived longer.

In short, Rosetans were nourished by people.

In all ways, this happy result was exactly the opposite expectation of well-proven health laws. The Rosetans broke the following long-life rules, and did so with a noticeable relish: and they lived to tell the tale. They smoked old-style Italian stogie cigars, malodorous and remarkably pungent little nips of a cigar guaranteed to give a nicotine fix of unbelievably strong potency. These were not filtered or adulterated in any way.

Both sexes drank wine with seeming abandon, a beverage which the 1963 era dietician would find almost prehistoric in health value. In fact, wine was consumed in preference to all-American soft drinks and even milk. Forget the cushy office job, Rosetan men worked in such toxic environs as the nearby slate quarries. Working there was notoriously dangerous, not merely hazardous, with “industrial accidents” and gruesome illnesses caused by inhaling gases, dusts and other niceties.

And forget the Mediterranean diets of olive oil, light salads and fat-free foods. No, Rosetans fried their sausages and meatballs in lard. They ate salami, hard and soft cheeses all brimming with cholesterol.’⁶

The Okinawan’s, another of the Blue Zone populations are also known as the pig eaters. It is said that they eat every part of the pig, apart from the squeak. In short, you can focus on the diet of very long-lived people around the world, if you want, but you will find little or nothing here. Much in the same way, you can look at the French, with the highest consumption of animal fat in Europe, and the lowest rate of CVD.

Getting back to the main point in hand. What can we really learn about the Blue Zones is that social health is terribly, terribly, important. Perhaps the single most important factor of all. If your social health goes wrong, your psychological health will suffer, followed by your physical health. More recently it has been recognised, finally, that loneliness is a significant driver of ill health and early death.⁷

Be happy, be friendly, be healthy. Live long and prosper, my friend.

1: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320037.php

2: http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-05-23-many-mental-illnesses-reduce-life-expectancy-more-heavy-smoking

3: http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2010/01/15/indigenous-life-expectancy-worst-world

4: https://www.fastcompany.com/3045495/the-wellbeing-of-all-436-us-congressional-districts-mapped-and-indexed

5: http://www.statinnation.net/blog/2014/8/12/did-dan-buettner-make-a-mistake-with-his-blue-zones

6: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rock-positano/the-mystery-of-the-roseta_b_73260.html

7: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691614568352

29th January 2018

Magnesium

Someone very wise once said. ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?’ Actually, it was John Maynard Keynes (yes, I looked it up).

In my last blog I wrote about Magnesium, thus:

‘As for magnesium. Magnesium deficiency is increasingly recognised as a major health issue and can greatly increase the risk of sudden cardiac death. I now routinely test patients for magnesium levels, as does the rest of the health service, which has belatedly woken up to the importance of this chemical. Magnesium deficiency can also trigger atrial fibrillation (AF) which, in turn, vastly increases the risk of stroke.

But I feel I am running away with myself a bit. I need to stop and take stock. The last thing I want people to do, is to worry too much about the levels of this and that in the blood. I do not want you rushing to the doctor, or private lab, to have everything repeatedly checked.

 Magnesium level deficiency for example. This is almost unknown if you do not take an acid lowering drug such as omeprazole, or lansoprazole (both proton pump inhibitors (PPIs)). Unless you are taking one of these, of any other ‘zoles,’ long term, you are extremely unlikely to be magnesium deficient.’

Well, as it turns out I was wrong. Who me? Someone sent me links to a paper published in the BMJ Open, published this very day, 29^th Jan 2018. As it turns out magnesium deficiency is far more common that I thought. The paper is entitled: ‘Subclinical magnesium deficiency: a principal driver of cardiovascular disease and a public health crisis.’

‘Subclinical magnesium deficiency is a common and under-recognised problem throughout the world. Importantly, subclinical magnesium deficiency does not manifest as clinically apparent symptoms and thus is not easily recognised by the clinician. Despite this fact, subclinical magnesium deficiency likely leads to hypertension, arrhythmias, arterial calcifications, atherosclerosis, heart failure and an increased risk for thrombosis. This suggests that subclinical magnesium deficiency is a principal, yet under-recognised, driver of cardiovascular disease. A greater public health effort is needed to inform both the patient and clinician about the prevalence, harms and diagnosis of subclinical magnesium deficiency.’

The paper can be read in full, here. http://openheart.bmj.com/content/openhrt/5/1/e000668.full.pdf

So, when I said I don’t want people to rush about getting the levels of this and that checked, with regard to magnesium I was wrong. I do want people to rush about getting the levels of magnesium checked. [Although I suspect you will not get very far with your local GP].

What is the normal magnesium level?

• Normal’ serum magnesium levels 0.75–0.95mmol
• A serum magnesium <0.82mmol/L with a 24-hour urinary magnesium excretion of 40–80mg/ day is highly suggestive of magnesium deficiency.
• Serum magnesium levels above 0.95mmol/L may indicate hypermagnesaemia

There are more complex tests that can be done, that may need to be done? Because the vast majority of magnesium is not in the blood, it is stored in cells/tissues/organs, you can be down to virtually your last drop, without the blood level being affected.

To find out how your magnesium stores are looking, you can give a magnesium infusion, and see how much is then excreted.

Thoren’s intravenous magnesium load test for diagnosing magnesium deficiency

Provide ~360–480mg of magnesium intravenously over 1hour

If <70% (less than 70%) of the magnesium load comes out in the urine over 16 hours, this is highly suggestive of magnesium deficiency

I have never heard of anyone having this test, ever. Most doctors will never have heard of it either. I only know about it, because I just read this article. Maybe someone can tell me who does it, and how it costs.

Anyway, funny how things turn out. Here I am writing a blog of vitamins and supplements and two days later, out pops a major review article on magnesium. I must be psychic. Or maybe not. But I thought it was important to make you aware of this research. I leave it up to you to decide how to act upon it.

27th January 2018

Vitamins and supplements and suchlike

I did say I was going to talk about strain and mental health next, but so many people have commented on vitamins and supplements, that I thought I should cover this area. I must say that I do like vitamins, I like the idea of them – and my mother did make me take vitamin C tablets every morning. So, perhaps she is to blame for my early age mental programming.

However, there is very little good evidence that any vitamin supplement is beneficial. In large part this is because there are not huge profits to be made from selling vitamins, as they cannot be patented.

If a company did a major clinical trial on vitamin K, and found that it saved lives, there would be nothing to stop anyone else selling vitamin K, whilst claiming the newly discovered health benefits for themselves. The company that took the financial risk, and funded the trials, would be unable to recoup any research costs.

Another factor in play here is that the pharmaceutical industry is doing its level best to attack vitamins as damaging and dangerous, and lobbying madly to have vitamin supplements banned.¹

Once they achieve this state of Nirvana, they can then invent new synthetic vitamins, patent them, and sell them back to us at hugely inflated prices, making massive profits. I just made that bit up, but I wouldn’t put it past them. What they are more likely to do is to add vitamins to various other drugs, to extend patent life. As Merck attempted to do with statins and niacin – and failed.

Another of the problems in trying to get a handle on the potential benefits of vitamins, is that it can be very unclear what the optimal dose, or blood levels, might be. This, I believe is because of the way that vitamins were first discovered.

Over many hundreds of years, it was noticed that some diseases occurred when ‘something’ was missing from the diet. Scurvy was the first of these diseases to be well documented. In 1753 a Scottish surgeon first proposed that lemons and limes could prevent and/or cure the condition. Obviously, he had no idea what it was in the limes and lemons that did the trick.

Other diseases such as pellagra and rickets were then identified as being due to a lack of a substance, of some sort. The term for theses missing substances was coined as ‘vital – amines’. Shortened to vitamins.

It took some time before the vitamins themselves were isolated. The first was vitamin B_1, in 1910, the last was vitamin B₁₂ in 1948. There are generally accepted to be thirteen vitamins, many of them are B vitamins, of one sort or another. However, in my opinion there are only twelve. Vitamin D is really a hormone.

I think vitamin D was only classified as a vitamin because no-one knew that it could be synthesized in the skin, from sunlight. Whilst people lived mainly outside, there was no vitamin D deficiency, it was only when the industrial revolution started, and people began to live and work indoors that rickets, (bent malformed bones) became an epidemic. A lack of vitamin D in the diet was identified as the cause.

Thus, Vitamin D looked and acted like a dietary vitamin deficiency, but it was not actually a dietary vitamin deficiency. Or at least only in part. To prevent rickets, children were given milk. Unfortunately, we are now seeing rickets again, because darker skinned Muslim women now fully cover up their skin, and some of them are becoming severely vitamin D depleted.

The reason for this ramble, is to make the general point that vitamins were only identified when major, immediate, and potentially life-threatening illness were identified. Which meant that the first task was the find the dose, or blood level, that prevented things like scurvy and rickets and pellagra. At the time researchers were not looking for longer term effects e.g. prevention of CVD, or cancer, or suchlike. Which means that there is no recommended daily allowance that takes optimal health into account.

I sometimes think of the recommended daily intake of vitamins as being just enough to keep you alive, but no more. A bit like having houseplant that is small and shrivelled. But if you give it some form of plant feed, it bursts into vigorous growth, and is far healthier.

Unfortunately, because we have these hallowed recommended daily intakes, vitamins are viewed by the medical profession as very simple things. You give the vitamin, make sure it gets above a baseline level in the blood, and that’s that. Nothing to see here, move along.

But if we look at just vitamin B12, the reference range (normal range), is all over the place. In the UK is set at 110 – 900ng/l [Itis higher in some regions]. In the US is it between 200 – 900ng/l, and in Japan 500 – 1300ng/l.

In Japan and the US, with a level of 110 you would immediately be given additional B12, in the UK you would be ignored. ‘Your level is fine, go away.’ I have seen many patients who strongly believe that they need additional Vitamin B₁₂ injections, as they feel tired, depressed and suchlike. The NHS simply ignores, unless they have level below 110. Perhaps I should advise them to emigrate to Japan.

An additional problem with vitamin B₁₂ is that the synthetic Vitamin B₁₂ normally used is called hydroxocobalamin. This is then converted into the active form, methylcobalamin, in the body. However, some people cannot metabolise into methylcobalamin and need methylcobalamin injections. Which they cannot get on the NHS. Jolly good. Yes, the more you look into the area, the more complicated, and frustrating, it gets.

Vitamin D is the vitamin most in the news at present. The debate and arguments about vitamin D are becoming quite vitriolic. Some doctors refuse to believe that anyone has a true vitamin D deficiency, others think that the entire population needs to be dosed with added vitamin D during the winter months. I am very much in the latter group.

For example, it has only recently been discovered that that vitamin D has potent anti-cancer effects, and may reduce the risk of CVD. What level of vitamin D is needed to provide these benefits. Almost certainly a much higher level than that required to prevent rickets. Has this level ever been established…no. What about the risk of developing thin bones in old age? No.

Even more recently, a low level of vitamin D has been associated with a much higher level of hospital admission with acute asthma ². What level is needed to prevent this happening? No idea. As the potential benefits of vitamin D continue to pile up, the minimum blood level remains unchanged and, it seems, unchangeable.

Moving to folate which, despite its name, is another B vitamin. Folate is known to be essential to prevent neural tube defects in the unborn child, and to produce red blood cells and suchlike. Again, the doses to stop these things happening has been established.

However, a recent study in Cambridge has shown that B vitamins, including folate, have significant benefits in reducing homocysteine levels, and if you give them in high doses, way above those currently recommended, they may delay, or even prevent, Alzheimer’s disease and reduce, or prevent, brain shrinkage ³.So, what is the correct dose of folate? Enough to stop neural tube defects, or anaemia, or enough to stop Alzheimer’s?

Can vitamin K prevent atherosclerotic plaques from becoming calcified? Who knows, they have never tested the correct formulation. Can vitamin C reduce the risk of CVD? Who knows? It was tested once in humans, at the wrong dose – at least the wrong dose according to Linus Pauling.

We haven’t the faintest clue about the correct doses, and blood levels of vitamins, required to achieve optimal health. What I do know is that you can take far more than the recommended daily dosage with no problems whatsoever. Vitamins are almost entirely safe. In the US, in 2010, for example, not a single person died from taking a vitamin ⁴.

On the other hand, you may be interested to read about the total burden of damage and deaths due to correctly prescribed pharmaceuticals. Here, from Harvard University:

‘Few know that systematic reviews of hospital charts found that even properly prescribed drugs (aside from misprescribing, overdosing, or self-prescribing) cause about 1.9 million hospitalizations a year. Another 840,000 hospitalized patients are given drugs that cause serious adverse reactions for a total of 2.74 million serious adverse drug reactions. About 128,000 people die from drugs prescribed to them. This makes prescription drugs a major health risk, ranking 4th with stroke as a leading cause of death. The European Commission estimates that adverse reactions from prescription drugs cause 200,000 deaths; so together, about 328,000 patients in the U.S. and Europe die from prescription drugs each year. The FDA does not acknowledge these facts and instead gathers a small fraction of the cases.⁵’

Zero deaths, versus 328,000 per year. If I were truly looking for something dangerous to ban, it sure as hell would not be vitamins.

So, which vitamins would I recommend taking? My own view is, take vitamin D in the winter, vitamin C always, along with thiamine and Vitamin K2. About five to ten times recommended daily intake should be fine.

What of other supplements, such as: magnesium, co-enzyme Q10, potassium, L-arginine, L-carnitine, Omega-3 fatty acids, and suchlike. Well I am keen on potassium, very keen. I first noted that higher potassium consumption was associated with significantly reduced mortality in the Scottish heart health study.

This was not some minor difference either. We are talking more than a fifty per cent reduction in overall morality, in men ⁶. Lesser effect in women. This was far from an isolated finding. In study after study, potassium reduces blood pressure and, in turn, reduces the risk of CVD and overall mortality. Interestingly, the Mediterranean diet, such as it exists, tends to be high in potassium ⁷.

As for magnesium. Magnesium deficiency is increasingly recognised as a major health issue, and can greatly increase the risk of sudden cardiac death. I now routinely test patients for magnesium levels, as does the rest of the health service, which has belatedly woken up to the importance of this chemical. Magnesium deficiency can also trigger atrial fibrillation (AF) which, in turn, vastly increases the risk of stroke.⁸ But I feel I am running away with myself a bit. I need to stop, and take stock. The last thing I want people to do, is to worry too much about the levels of this and that in the blood. I do not want you rushing to the doctor, or private lab, to have everything repeatedly checked.

Magnesium level deficiency for example. This is almost unknown if you do not take an acid lowering drug such as omeprazole, or lansoprazole (both proton pump inhibitors (PPIs)). Unless you are taking one of these, of any other ‘zoles,’ long term, you are extremely unlikely to be magnesium deficient. As for potassium, get some lo-salt (a mixture of potassium and sodium chloride), or eat lots broccoli and bananas, and you will be fine. Other vegetables are available.

What of Omega-3 fatty acids, the fabled fish oil. There is some good quality evidence that they can be good for you. They seem to have beneficial effects on the conduction of electrical impulses in the heart. They are mildly anti-coagulant, a bit like aspirin with fewer downsides, such as causing blood loss from the stomach. They also have some benefits on brain function.

So, should you take an Omega-3 supplement? Easier, I think, to eat fish once a week. Sardines on toast is my favourite. But if you feel the need to buy Omega-3 supplements, go ahead. The only downside is cost.

A few years ago, I was contacted by a small company that wanted to create a combination pill to reduce the risk of CVD. They asked me to give them some medical input and support, which I did, but they ran out of money. Before going bust, they did produce a few thousand tubs of Prokardia. A tablet that contained:

• Vitamin K2 5µg
• Thiamine 7mg
• Folic acid 7µg
• Potassium 50mg
• Magnesium 50mg
• L-arginine 600mg
• L-carnitine  50mg
• L-citrulline 7mg
• Co-enzyme Q10 3mg

The L-arginine and L-citrulline on that list are ‘co-factors’ for the production of nitric oxide (NO) in endothelial cells. Co-enzyme Q10 is something I have talked about at some length, and L-carnitine is an amino acid that has been found to have many benefits in CV health. I would have added vitamin D and vitamin C to this list, but you can only get so much stuff in one tablet before it becomes a meal in itself.

I would have been more than happy to promote Prokardia as a supplement. It could do no harm, and everything on that list was potentially beneficial for heart health. Unfortunately, Prokardia does not now exist. However, if you took these supplements, in these doses x4 (you were supposed to take four tablets a day) you would not go far wrong.

Having said all this, I do not want everyone to get too carried away with supplements. I have read articles supporting supplement after supplement, and every single vitamin that exists, in high doses. However, it can all get a bit ridiculous. Eat good, natural foodstuffs, and it should be possible to get everything you need in the diet. After all, that was what we were designed to do. Our ancestors did not go around searching for potassium supplements, or L-citrulline. It was all right there, in the nearest woolly mammoth. All you needed to do was catch it.

1: http://www.anh-usa.org/fda-massive-attack-on-supplements/
2: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/10/03/vitamin-d-supplements-protect-against-severe-asthma-attacks/and
3: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/23/9523.short
4: Bronstein, et al, (2011) Clinical Toxicol, 49 (10), 910-941
5: https://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/new-prescription-drugs-major-health-risk-few-offsetting-advantages
6: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2127508/pdf/9314758.pdf
7: https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/potassium-lowers-blood-pressure
8: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/127/1/33

29th December 2017

What is stress?

I have talked about stress quite a lot, but as many people have pointed out, the word itself is meaningless. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that is has too many meanings, or that it means different things to different people.

Paul Rosch, a very brilliant man¹, told me that when he was first looking at stress soon after the Second World War, he was working with Hans Sayle, a Hungarian. Sayle often commented that, had he understood English better, he would have used the word strain, not stress. He fully understood that ‘stress’ is the thing that creates ‘strain’ on the body. It is strain that matters, not the stress.

This, I think, is absolutely critical. You can look at some people’s lives and they may seem highly ‘stressful’, whereas others appear to be relaxed, and avoiding stresses wherever possible. However, you have no idea at all who is under the greater strain.

I remember a cardiologist, many years ago, pointing to an elderly woman who had just had a heart attack. ‘She lives in an idyllic cottage in the middle of the country, married, with loving children. No stress at all. So, don’t tell me stress causes heart disease.’ I merely shrugged. How could the cardiologist possibly know what was going on under the surface?

Perhaps her husband came home and beat the living daylights out of her every Saturday night. I remember seeing another lady, a few years earlier, who was deeply upset because she had been in hospital for an operation, and whilst there her husband had her two, very large, dogs put down.

Yes, she loved the dogs, but her main anxiety was that she had bought them for protection. When her husband went out for an evening and drank, he would come home and beat her mercilessly. She had bought the dogs for to keep her safe, now they were gone.

This couple were upstanding members of the community. They were regarded as having a perfect marriage and a perfect life. He was a magistrate and a local businessman, she ran a couple of charities. Having heard her story, I later watched them together, smiling and a laughing at local events. This was after I knew what actually went on in the home. Superficially, I could not tell anything was amiss between them.

On the other hand, some people can appear to lead lives that are full of stressors, yet can cope very well. Probably because have good physical and psychological resources, and are highly resilient. They usually have many other supportive factors in their lives. A loving partner, friends, family, and suchlike.

I think we are all also guilty of deciding that what causes us strain, will also cause someone else strain, and vice-versa. In fact, identical stressors can create very different effects. I give a few lectures every year. I quite enjoy it, I feel in control, and confident that I am good at giving talks and I find the process positive and enjoyable. However, I know of people who find the idea of standing up in front of other people absolutely terrifying. To them, giving a lecture would create massive negative strain.

In short, we cannot know the strain that someone else is under by looking at what they do, or how they act. Even massive events, such as having a partner die, will not have the same impact. For most of us this would be shocking and terrible. However, if your partner has been an abusive bully for thirty years, their death may come as a relief. Yes, it is all complex stuff indeed.

The reality is that, if you want to know if someone has suffered a level of negative stress, sufficient to have damaged them, you have to measure it. Yes, the dreaded objective medical science. Of course, before measuring things you have to have a hypothesis to test.

The hypothesis here is reasonably straightforward. It is as follows. Long term negative stressors (or one overwhelming acute event) can create damage to the neuro-hormonal system that coordinates the physiological reaction to strain. This, in turn, has negative physiological effects that can lead to serious disease e.g. CVD, or diabetes, or both.

If a tiger walked in the room, we would all react in pretty much the same way. Sudden terror. This would activate a vast array of different responses, and this reaction starts in the hypothalamus – deep within the brain. When stimulated, the hypothalamus releases hormones that, in turn, activate the pituitary gland to release further hormones. These hormones travel to the adrenal glands where the stress hormones are synthesized. Cortisol, adrenaline (epinephrine) and suchlike. This is called the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis (HPA-axis).

The stress hormones that are released, speed up the heart rate, release glucose into the bloodstream, dilate the pupils, shunt blood supply from the guts to the muscles, and suchlike. At the same time the unconscious nervous system, which is tightly interwoven with the HPA-axis, lights up, and this puts every other system in the body onto ‘fight or flight’ mode. The blood pressure goes up, sweat glands are activated, blood clotting factors are released, and so on and so forth.

This is all normal, and natural and, assuming you survive, after about twenty minutes, or so, all systems start to wind back down to ‘normal.’ If the fight or flight system switches on ‘accidentally’ due to a perceived threat, that is not a real threat, this is usually called a panic attack. Which is why some people go nuts on aeroplanes and try to open the doors at 35,000 feet. In the midst of a panic attack the conscious mind is over-ridden, as the persons ‘inner chimp’ desperately tries to flee the situation. [The ‘Inner chimp’ is the part of the brain fuelled on impulsive emotion and gut instinct].

Some people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are far more likely to see threatening situations all around them, and trigger panic attack mode far more often than others. Their fight or flight system has been set to super-sensitive mode. A child shouting may trigger the memory of a battlefield attack. Ditto a plane passing overhead, or a car changing direction rapidly. Not easy to live in a state of hair-trigger fight or flight.

Children who have been physically, or sexually abused have much the same hair-trigger systems in place. They live life on high alert, and are ready for fight or flight at any time. Billy Connolly, a Scottish comedian, who was abused when he was a young boy, always said he did not like being touched. It brought back memories that setoff deep, negative reactions.

All this is well known, and widely accepted. What is less widely accepted is that repeated activation of fight or flight can, in time, lead to a breakdown/burn-out/dysfunction of the HPA-axis and the unconscious nervous system – usually called the autonomic nervous system. In part, this is because people have steadfastly measured the wrong things, at the wrong times.

Perhaps the single greatest ‘measurement’ problem is to look at cortisol levels only n the morning. Cortisol is a key ‘stress’ hormone that is released in response to stressful situations. It also naturally fluctuates during the day. It rises to its highest level in the morning, just before you wake up, then it drops. Then rises and falls during the day.

Researchers, looking to link ‘strain’ to heart disease, and diabetes, and suchlike, have made the mistake of only measuring early morning cortisol in those with CVD, and found it to be lower than normal. They have then stated that HPA-axis dysfunction cannot be an underlying cause of CVD and/or diabetes – or any other serious medical condition.

This, of course, is exactly the wrong interpretation. If the HPA-axis is damaged, the normal rise and fall of cortisol, will break down. Or, to put it another way. A burnt-out HPA-axis leads to ‘flat-line’ cortisol production. It gets pumped out at the same rate – no matter what is going on Therefore, if you measure the cortisol level in the morning, in those with HPA-dysfunction, it can appear to be low, not high.

The correct way to diagnose HPA-axis damage, is to take regular cortisol measurements over a twenty four hour period. This was known by a Swedish researcher called Per Bjorntorp, who used hourly measurements of cortisol, to see what the flexibility of the HPA-axis was in people suffering from ‘cardio-metabolic disease.’ That is, people who have the ‘metabolic syndrome.’

The metabolic syndrome is a group of abnormalities that are often found clustered together. Abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, raised blood sugar levels (sometimes high enough to be called type II diabetes), raised clotting factors, high triglycerides/low HDL, higher LDL levels, high insulin levels.

This syndrome is also (has also been) called: insulin resistance syndrome, pre-diabetes, syndrome X and Reaven’s syndrome. Whatever you call it, it is the same thing. It is associated with a greatly raised risk of CVD. Around six-fold in some studies a.k.a. 600%.

Per Bjorntorp did a series of studies looking at HPA-axis dysfunction, and the metabolic syndrome, and he concluded that the underlying cause of the metabolic syndrome was indeed HPA-axis dysfunction. Here, I quote from his paper. ‘The metabolic syndrome – a neuroendocrine disorder?’

‘Central obesity is a powerful predictor for disease. By utilizing salivary cortisol measurements throughout the day, it has now been possible to show on a population basis that perceived stress related cortisol secretion frequently is elevated in this condition. This is followed by insulin resistance, central accumulation of body fat, dyslipidaemia and hypertension (the metabolic syndrome). Socio-economic and psychosocial handicaps are probably central inducers of hyperactivity of the hypothalamic–pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. Alcohol, smoking and traits of psychiatric disease are also involved. In a minor part of the population a dysregulated, depressed function of the HPA axis is present, associated with low secretion of sex steroid and growth hormones, and increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system. This condition is followed by consistent abnormalities indicating the metabolic syndrome. Such ‘burned-out’ function of the HPA axis has previously been seen in subjects exposed to environmental stress of long duration.’ ²

It shouldn’t really be a great surprise that if you damage the HPA-axis/autonomic nervous system that you will end up with the metabolic syndrome. The short-term effects of activating the flight or fight system are to: raise blood pressure, raise blood clotting factors, raise blood sugar levels, raise LDL, and direct energy stores out of subcutaneous fat.

If this becomes a chronic state, you will end up with chronically: raised blood pressure, raised blood clotting factors, insulin resistance/type II diabetes and increased abdominal fat/central obesity, as fat stores are moved from the subcutaneous to the central fat stores.

We have a perfect model confirming this sequence with Cushing’s disease. This is a condition where excess cortisol is produced in the adrenal glands (usually due to a small cortisol secreting tumour). The long-term effects of Cushing’s disease are:

• Raised blood pressure
• Raised blood clotting factors
• Insulin resistance/type II diabetes
• Raised VLDL, low HDL (dyslipidaemia)
• Central obesity
• Greatly increased risk of CVD, around 600%

In short, long term increased cortisol production, creates a severe form of the metabolic syndrome, and a very high rate of CVD.

I suppose the final link in the chain is to look at what happens if we prescribe people cortisol. In truth, we do not do this, not exactly. Instead, we prescribe them corticosteroids. These are often just called ‘steroids’. They are used to treat inflammatory conditions, such as asthma, Crohn’s disease, Rheumatoid arthritis and suchlike.

All the prescribed corticosteroids are synthesized from the basic cortisol template. Cortisol is also called a corticosteroid, because it is a steroid hormone manufactured in the ‘cortex’ of the adrenal gland. One commonly prescribed corticosteroid is prednisolone, and the chemical structure of cortisol and prednisolone can be seen in the two diagrams.

If you prescribe steroids long-term, they too cause insulin resistance, then the metabolic syndrome, then type II diabetes, and much higher risk of CVD. The risk of CVD is increased by, up to, 600%. ³

Personally, I see this whole issue as a bit of a ‘slam dunk,’ where all the evidence fits together in an almost perfect causal chain:

Bjorntorp, in a series of well controlled studies, demonstrated that environmental ‘stressors’ can lead to HPA-axis dysfunction/physiological strain. This, in turn, leads to the metabolic syndrome. The metabolic syndrome, in turn, leads to a vastly increased risk of CVD.

PTSD is also a condition where the HPA-axis is dysfunctional⁴, and the rate of CVD is vastly increased⁵. Equally those who are victims of childhood abuse demonstrate HPA-axis dysfunction⁶ and a greatly increased risk of CVD⁷. Severe depression is also associated with HPA-axis dysfunction⁸ and a greatly increased risk of CVD⁹.

The key hormone in this process appears to be cortisol, because a high level of cortisol, independently of HPA-axis dysfunction, also leads to the metabolic syndrome, and a very high rate of CVD. In addition, if you prescribe corticosteroids they, too, lead to the metabolic syndrome and a very high rate of CVD.

Which of the elements of the resultant metabolic syndrome are most important? This is not entirely clear. Is it the raised blood pressure, the clotting factors, the high insulin or sugar? To an extent it does not matter that much. If you can get rid of the underlying cause, they will all disappear.

Next blog. How to get rid of the underlying cause?

1: https://www.stress.org/about/chairmans-blog/

2: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0007114500000957

3: http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4928

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182008/

5: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27566327

6: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15471614

7: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24923258

8: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC181180/

9: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/35/21/1365/582931

9th December 2017

Stress/strain – again

It has been a long time since my last blog, but life can get in the way of other things. Three lectures to give, a deadline for my book and revalidations. The latter a complete pain that UK doctors have to go through every five years, which means gathering together evidence of all the things I have done, the learning I have learned, the hoops I have jumped through – and suchlike.

Then, my cousin dropped dead of a cerebral haemorrhage. At least he died doing something he enjoyed. He had just holed a putt on a golf course near Edinburgh, when his number came up in the great lottery of life. It reminds me that whatever we know, however much we learn, fate rules us all, and makes a mockery of our belief that we can control everything. ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.’

In this blog, I am going to return to stress, which I prefer to call strain.

Just after writing my last blog someone was kind enough to send me information about a study that had been done, showing that people who are under financial stress are thirteen times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, and people in stressful jobs are six times as likely to have a heart attack. Not yet published research, but presented at a conference in South Africa. You may have read it¹.

As those who have read my blog over the years will know, I have long argued that chronic negative stress is, from a population perspective, the single most important driver of cardiovascular disease. The mind/body connection is key to health, and thus, illness. This, I think I further emphasised by the point that mental illness is associated with the greatest impact on life expectancy.

‘Serious mental illnesses reduce life expectancy by 10 to 20 years, an analysis by Oxford University psychiatrists has shown – a loss of years that’s equivalent to or worse than that for heavy smoking….

…The average reduction in life expectancy in people with bipolar disorder is between nine and 20 years, while it is 10 to 20 years for schizophrenia, between nine and 24 years for drug and alcohol abuse, and around seven to 11 years for recurrent depression.’²

Up to twenty years reduction in life expectancy.

Yes, when your mind goes wrong, your body follows, with disastrous consequences for physical health. Of course, there is overlap between mental illness, drug use, smoking and suchlike. However, you can strip all the other things out, and you are left with the ferocious power of the mind/body connection. The power to nurture, and the power to destroy.

I usually tell anyone, still listening after I have bored them on various other issues, that health is a combination of physical, psychological and social wellbeing. Three overlapping sets. The holy Trinity of wellbeing. You must get them all right, or nothing works. As Plato noted, a few years back, “the part can never be well unless the whole is well.”

Who are the shortest-lived peoples in the world? Are they the poor? Not necessarily, although poverty can be a clear driver of ill-health. The shortest-lived people in the world are people who live in the places of greatest social dislocation. Or, people who have had their societies stripped apart, with massive resultant stress. Australian aboriginals, NZ Maoris, North American aboriginals, the Inuit.

‘Indigenous Australians have the worst life expectancy rates of any indigenous population in the world, a United Nations report says. But it’s not news to Aboriginal health experts. They say it simply confirms what Australian health services have known for years.

Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the Northern Territory (AMSANT) chief executive officer John Paterson said the findings of the report, which examined the indigenous populations of 90 countries, were no surprise. The UN report – State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples – showed indigenous people in Australia and Nepal fared the worst, dying up to 20 years earlier than their non-indigenous counterparts. In Guatemala, the life expectancy gap is 13 years and in New Zealand it is 11.’³

I continue to find it absolutely amazing that mainstream medical thinking casually dismisses mental ‘stress’ as a cause of anything, other than mental health. The connection is always dismissed in the following way.

People who are depressed, anxious, suffering from PTSD and suchlike are more likely to drink and smoke and participate in other unhealthy lifestyles, and it is this that causes their higher rate of CVD and reduced life expectancy, and suchlike. There is a degree of truth to this, but some researchers have looked at this issue and found that the ‘unhealthy lifestyle’ issue explains very little.⁴

Underlying such an explanation, it has been noted that financial worries can increase your risk of heart disease by thirteen-fold (relative risk). Many of the arguments about CVD currently rage around diet, with people battling about HFLC vs LFHC, [high fat low carb vs low fat high carb].

In all the dietary studies I have seen, we are talking about increased, or reduced, risks in the order of 1.12, or 0.89. Which means a twelve per cent increased risk, or an eleven per cent reduced risk. These figures may just reach statistical significance, but they are so small as to be, to all intents and purposes, completely irrelevant.

On the other hand, a thirteen-fold increase in risk can be written another way. This is a 1,300% increase in risk. Compare this to anything to do with diet, or raised cholesterol, or blood pressure, or blood sugar or – any of the other mainstream risk factors. It is like comparing Mount Everest to a mole hill.

Yet, and yet, attempting to divert attention, and discussion, away from diet, or cholesterol, or sub-fractions of cholesterol, or suchlike seems an impossible task. People may say that they cannot see how stress can cause CVD. To which I say, every single step has been worked out, many times, by many different people.

Chronic stress → dysfunction of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA-axis) → sympathetic overdrive + raised stress hormones → metabolic syndrome (raised BP, raised blood sugar, raised clotting factors, raised cortisol, raised all sorts of things) → endothelial damage + increased blood clotting → plaque formation and death from acute clot formation.

And if you want to close this loop further, stress also increases LDL levels, in some studies by over 60%⁵. So, when you see raised LDL, in association with increased CVD, it is not the LDL causing the CVD. It is stress, causing both.

1: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320037.php

2: http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-05-23-many-mental-illnesses-reduce-life-expectancy-more-heavy-smoking

3: http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2010/01/15/indigenous-life-expectancy-worst-world

4: http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/98438/e81384.pdf

5: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4370130/

12th November 2017

Another slight detour I am afraid. This is due to the recent publication of the ORBITA study. Reported in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), thus:

‘Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is not significantly better than a placebo procedure in improving exercise capacity or symptoms even in patients with severe coronary stenosis, research has found.¹

The ORBITA study, published in the Lancet, is the first double blind randomised controlled trial to directly compare stenting with placebo in patients with stable angina who are receiving high quality drug treatment.’ Compared to the sham-controlled group:

• PCI did not significantly improve exercise time. The numerical incremental increase in average exercise time was 16 seconds (P=0.20).
• PCI did not significantly improve measures on well-validated patient-centered angina questionnaires.
• PCI did not significantly improve the Duke treadmill score or peak oxygen uptake.
• PCI did significantly improve the dobutamine stress echo wall-motion index, indicating that stenting reduced ischemic burden.

In short, PCI did nothing at all. I can hear cardiologists across the US putting plans for new swimming pools on hold. ²

As many people know, the purpose of a stent is to open up obstructed coronary arteries, and then keep them open, using a metal framework ‘stent’, that sits within the artery. This procedure has been done on thousands, millions, of people. In an acute myocardial infarction (MI or heart attack to you) it provides benefits. However, in non-acute blockage it does nothing, apart from enrich interventional cardiologists.

Frankly, I was surprised that these researchers got ethical approval for this study. Carrying out a sham operation is a pretty major thing to do to a patient. I am further surprised they managed to get any volunteers, but they did. I very much take my hat off to these researchers. Bold, very bold, indeed. They must have been pretty damned certain they were going to see no benefit from stents.

Anyway, this study only proves what many people had suspected for some time. Stents, in the non-acute situation, do not work. Of course, this study has already been attacked and dismissed. Here is one review from SouthWestern medical centre, entitled ‘Stents do work: A closer look at the ORBITA study data.’:

‘ORBITA was small – too small, in fact, considered definitive evidence that cardiologists should change the role of stents in clinical practice.

I participate in a number of cardiology care guidelines committees and even wrote a piece about the ORBITA trial for the American College of Cardiology. In order for regulating bodies to change clinical practices, research studies must present data from a much larger pool, such as the 2007 COURAGE PCI study, which enlisted more than 2,000 participants. In general, larger trials present data that are more statistically significant and more appropriate to apply to specific patient segments.’ ³

Too small? Wrong patient type, no doubt the wrong atmospheric pressure as well. Unlike the studies that were used when cardiologists first started doing stents, where the study size was precisely zero. In fact, if you read the entire article from the Southwestern medical centre, it is gibberish. But it will have the desired effect. The ORBITA study will have no impact stenting revenue. Like many other ideas in medicine, it is too seductive, and far too lucrative. The artery is blocked, it must be opened. End of.

Many years ago, Bernard Lown had precisely the same issue with Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG). Another massively lucrative intervention which rapidly became the operation – based on no evidence whatsoever. It was such an obviously brilliant idea that to question it was to defy ‘common sense.’ You have a blockage in an artery, bypass it with a graft.’

One thing that you find about good science is that it is usually very far removed from ‘pure common sense.’ It is counterintuitive. It is counterintuitive because it challenges established thinking a.k.a. prejudices. As Einstein had to say. ‘Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before age eighteen.’ He also said that ‘It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.’

If you want a really good read, I recommend Bernard Lown [he is my hero]. He was the first to challenge the orthodoxy that CABG was an unquestioned good. For which he was of course, roundly attacked. His essay on this can be read here⁴. I include a particularly poignant section by Bernard Lown discussing CABG:

‘One might wonder why patients acquiesced to undergoing a painful and life-threatening procedure without the certainty of improving their life expectancy. I have long puzzled at such acquiescence. Surprisingly, patients not only agreed to the recommended intervention but commonly urged expediting it. Such conduct is compelled by ignorance as well as fear. Patients are readily overwhelmed by the mumbo-jumbo of medical jargon. Hearing something to the effect of “Your left anterior descending coronary artery is 75 percent occluded and the ejection fraction is 50 percent” is paralyzing. To the ordinary patient such findings threaten a heart attack or, worse, augur sudden cardiac death.

Cardiologists and cardiac surgeons frequently resort to frightening verbiage in summarizing angiographic findings. This no doubt compels unquestioning acceptance of the recommended procedure. Over the years I have heard several hundred expressions, such as: “You have a time bomb in your chest” and its variant “You are a walking time bomb.” Or, “This narrowed coronary is a widow maker.” And if patients wish to delay an intervention, a series of fear-mongering expressions hasten their resolve to proceed: “We must not lose any time by playing Hamlet.” Or, “You are living on borrowed time.” Or, “You are in luck — a slot is available on the operating schedule.” Maiming words can infantilize patients, so they regard doctors as parental figures to guide them to some safe harbour.’

The man is a genius and he can write far better than wot I can. I should hate him.

Some forty years later, or so, we find that CABG has been replaced by PCI/stenting. Exactly the same knuckle headed stupidity has driven stenting. The noise of sheep bleating ‘Narrow artery bad, open artery good,’ fills the air. My goodness, I think they’ve got it. Who could possibly argue with that? Kerching!

Those who have read my endless blog on the causes of on CVD will know I have long been highly sceptical of stenting as the answer to anything very much. Other than the removal of large sums of money from person A, to hospital B, and interventional cardiologist C.

Why does it not work? How can it possibly not work?

Because the heart is not simply a pump, arteries are not simply pipes, and humans are not inanimate objects whereby our function, or lack thereof, is purely dependant on some form of medical or surgical intervention. Thus endeth the lesson on stenting.

1: http://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5076

2: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/888115?pa=ItuYp8yggqEV0rOdozORa13VwlwcjMMn88tJMLYfucZ3N%2FNEihiaVx2Ypnp0WNqT8SIvl8zjYv73GUyW5rsbWA%3D%3D

3: http://www.utswmedicine.org/stories/articles/year-2017/stent-PCI-ORBITA.html

4: https://bernardlown.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/mavericks-lonely-path-in-cardiology/