24th September 2017

‘The flow of rivers and streams in their boundaries . . . the circulation of the blood in our arteries and veins . . . the flight of the insect, the bird and the airplane; the movement of a ship in the water or of a fish in the depths . . . these are all, in major degree, varied expressions of the laws of fluid mechanics … Everywhere we find fluids and solids in reactive contact, usually in relative motion; and everywhere in this domain, the laws of fluid mechanics must control.

Application of the laws of fluid mechanics to the natural conditions in the circulatory system reveals a rational and demonstrable basis for the localization, inception, and progressive development of atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis does not occur at random locations. It does occur uniformly at specific sites of predilection that can be precisely defined, predicted, and produced by applying the principles of fluid mechanics. The areas of predilection for atherosclerosis are consistently found to be the segmental zones of diminished lateral pressure produced by the forces generated by the flowing blood.

Such segmental zones of diminished lateral pressure are characterized by tapering, curvature, bifurcation, branching, and external attachment. Serpentine flow in a relatively straight vessel also produces segmental zones of diminished lateral pressure.

Although these anatomic configurations occur in many variations of geometry, their common feature is a pattern of blood flow conducive to the production of localized areas of diminished lateral pressure. This is the initial stimulus.

Atherosclerosis may therefore be considered to be the biologic response of blood vessels to the effect of the laws of fluid mechanics, that is, the diminished lateral pressure generated by the flowing blood at sites of predilection determined by local hydraulic specifications in the circulatory system.’¹

Not my words, and quite poetic I suppose. What does it mean. It means, if you accept what is written, is that atherosclerosis forms exactly where you would expect it to form – if the initial stimulus is ‘diminished lateral pressure’.

My last blog was primarily a looking at the primary stimulus for the initial formation of atherosclerotic plaques. I like to use the term biomechanical stress. I am not entirely certain if this means anything. But the general idea is that atherosclerotic plaques start at the points in blood vessels where there is the greatest ‘biomechanical stress.’

Several people who know far more about fluid dynamics questioned this. I think that they are all probably right in what they say, and the mathematics are well beyond my understanding. However, what I do know, and what are facts, are the following:

• Atherosclerotic plaques inevitably occur where is there is tapering, curvature, bifurcation, branching and areas of external attachment.
• Plaques never develop in veins, regardless of tapering, curvature and branding and suchlike.
• Plaques never develop in the arteries and veins in your lungs – unless you develop pulmonary hypertension (raised blood pressure in the lungs) – though a caveat applies.
• Plaques often appear on one side of an artery, and not the other (i.e., they do not encircle the artery).
• If you take a vein from the leg, and use it as a coronary artery bypass graft, it will rapidly develop atherosclerotic plaques.

Therefore, whatever term you want to use, however, you wish to understand it, it is clear that in order to get a plaque to start, you need to apply some form of ‘stress’ to the blood vessel, and the blood pressure needs to be at a certain level – or else nothing will happen. This is true, no matter what the LDL level, or the blood sugar level, or whether you smoke, or [insert any one of eight thousand risk factors here].

Ergo, there must be some form of damage occurring at the point of high biomechanical stress, that triggers plaque development. Under biomechanical stress, the first part of the artery to suffer will be the endothelium – the layer of cells that lines the arteries. If endothelial cells are stressed, damaged, or dysfunctional, this is the trigger for plaques to start:

‘In view of the ever-increasing prevalence of ischaemic heart disease in the developed and developing world, it has become imperative to identify and investigate mechanisms of early, potentially reversible pre-atherosclerotic changes in the endothelium. To date, the most clearly defined and well-understood early precursor of atherosclerosis is Endothelial Dysfunction. In fact, Endothelial Dysfunction can be regarded as the primum movens of atherosclerotic disease.’²

I guess that primum movens is Latin for ‘the single most really important thing.’

In short, you damage the endothelium, and that releases the atherosclerotic dogs of war. What sort of things are known to increase endothelial stress/damage. Here is a list, off the top of my head, of a few factors that have been identified.

• Smoking
• Air pollution
• Diabetes
• Cocaine use
• Dehydration
• Infections/sepsis
• Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)
• Lead
• Stress hormones
• Avastin
• Omeprazole
• Cushing’s disease
• Kawasaki’s disease.

I could go on, and on, but I think that is enough to be going on with. All of these factors have been demonstrated to cause significant damage to the endothelium – in different ways – and there is another thing that they all do. They all increase the risk of dying of CVD. Some of them enormously increase the risk. A young woman with SLE has an increased risk of dying of CHD of 5000% (relative risk increase).

When you are looking at a 5000% increase in risk you are, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, looking at a cause.

The only other increased risk I have ever seen to match this, or in fact beat this, is in young people with sickle cell anaemia where the increased risk of stroke is 33,000% (relative increase in risk). Yes, not many young people get strokes, but an increase of 33,000% is difficult to argue with.

Why do they get so many strokes? It is, in part, because the ‘sickle’ shaped red blood cells clump together more easily than normal shaped red blood cells. Once they clump together, they form clots, and these clots block arteries. Often in the brain – but also elsewhere. It is not as simple as this, but that will do for now.

There is another thing about sickle cells anaemia that I find of great interest. It is the only condition (at least the only condition I have come across), where atherosclerotic plaques can form in the lungs – at normal blood pressure.³

Why does this happen? Well sickle cells are not round and smooth. They are crescent shaped, and spiky at the ends, and stiffer than normal red blood cells, and they are more likely to cause mechanical damage to the endothelium.

‘A further mechanism of endothelial dysfunction is attributed to the rigidity of sickled erythrocytes (red blood cells) causing mechanical injury to the endothelial cells.’³

In addition:

‘The sickling process leads to vascular occlusion, tissue hypoxia and subsequent reperfusion injury, thus inducing inflammation and endothelial injury. This causes a blunted response to nitric oxide (NO) synthase inhibition.’³

Yes, our old friend Nitric Oxide again. Put simply, sickle cells crash into, and damage endothelial cells, which then stop producing as much NO. This endothelial dysfunction then leads on to atherosclerosis. All of this happens with no other risk factors present, and in arteries where atherosclerosis is normally never seen. Which means that we are looking very directly at cause, and effect. Physical damage to endothelial cells, no other factors required.

Now, I am aware that many people wonder why my series on what causes heart disease/cardiovascular has been so long and meandering. One major reason is that there is so much to try and find out, and explain. Also, and perhaps more critically, if you are going to try and understand cardiovascular disease fully, you must attempt to fit everything together, and that does take time.

For example, you must explain how: SLE, sickle cell anaemia, Kawasaki’s disease, omeprazole, diabetes, smoking and infections (to name but seven) can all cause CVD when, superficially, there is nothing to link them. Certainly none of the established, mainstream, risk factors.

There is no point in saying that, yes, they all cause heart disease, and that’s that, just add them to the list. There is a requirement to fit them within a single process, and it must make sense. It also has to be supported by the facts – as far as that is possible.

Equally, there is no point in saying CVD is ‘multifactorial’, which is the normal defence of the mainstream when pressed on why many people, with no risk factors for CVD, still get CVD. The word “multifactorial” explains nothing, it is just an escape route for those pressed to explain the many ‘paradoxes’ or refutations that keep on appearing.

If, for example, you cannot explain how sickle cell anaemia causes atherosclerotic plaque formation, in pulmonary arteries, this means you do not understand, or do not wish to understand, the underlying process. It fits nowhere within the accepted major risk factors, yet it increases the risk of stroke by 33,000%, and causes plaques to develop in the lungs. So, you cannot just ignore it, relatively rare though it may be.

So, where have we got to? Where we have got to, I believe is to demonstrate that the trigger factor for CVD is damage to the endothelium. If you don’t damage the endothelium nothing else happens. The damage happens at well recognised places where the biomechanical stress is at its greatest. Which means that, with no biomechanical stress, there can be no atherosclerotic plaques.

However, it takes more than just biomechanical stress. You also have to have, at least one, extra factor present to trigger endothelial dysfunction. Then … next episode.

References:

1: From Chapter 8 Coronary Heart Disease: The Dietary Sense and Nonsense: George V. Mann: 9781857560725: Amazon.com: Books

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3721957/

3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2780857/

16th September 2017

Beginning at the end.

Whilst there is significant controversy about how atherosclerotic plaques may start, and grow, the final event in cardiovascular disease is, in most cases, pretty much accepted – even by me. The formation of a blood clot. Yes, there are many caveats here, and also a number of different processes that can occur, but I am not covering them in this blog. I am using the simple ending. The obstructive blood clot.

If a blood clot forms in the coronary arteries – blood vessels supplying blood to the heart – it can fully block the artery, jam up blood flow, vastly reduce oxygen supply, and cause a myocardial infarction (MI). The clot usually forms on the surface of a pre-existing atherosclerotic plaque.

If a blood clot forms in the carotid arteries – main blood vessels supplying blood to the brain – it can then break off, travel up into the brain where it gets stuck, jams up blood flow, reduces oxygen supply, and cause a cerebral infarction (ischaemic stroke). Again, blood clots in the carotid arteries almost always form on the surface of atherosclerotic plaques formed earlier.

What this means is that reducing the formation of blood clots will, or definitely should, reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. And, of course, it does. Aspirin, for example, has anticoagulant action, and it lowers the risk of CVD, although not by a huge amount.

However, recently, a study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine which demonstrated that if you add rivaroxaban – an anticoagulant, primarily used to prevent strokes in patients with Atrial Fibrillation – to aspirin, this further reduces the risk of CVD¹.

The trial was reported thus, in the Daily Mail on the 11^th of September:

‘Phenomenal’ pill slashes the risk of death from heart disease by 22% and could save millions of lives, ‘ground-breaking’ trial finds.’

Oh yes, we do like a phenomenal pill, do we not. Mockery of such ridiculous hype aside, this was an impressive result. Far more impressive than any statin trial, it must be added – with no impact on LDL levels at all. Only one slight problem, it would be rather expensive to add rivaroxaban to everyone taking aspirin. Minimum cost, about £6Bn/years ($8Bn/year) in the UK alone.

Of course, there are other things that can reduce the risk of blood clotting. Omega 3 fatty acids, for example which reduce ability of platelets to stick together² – an action almost identical to aspirin. Then there is Von Willibrand disease – a condition where people lack a key blood clotting element called the Von Willebrand factor. Patients with this condition have a 60% reduction in the risk CVD.

Those with haemophilia had – prior to the development of clotting factors to replace those that were missing –around 20% the risk of CVD of the surrounding population.

On the other hand, there are situations where the risk of blood clotting increases. Use of non-steroidal drugs e.g. brufen, naproxen, diclofenac etc. These increase the risk of clotting, and CVD. There are conditions, such as Hughes syndrome and Factor V Leiden where the risk of blood clotting goes up, and so does the risk of CVD and so on, and so forth.

In fact, I think it can be stated with complete confidence that any drug, condition, or anything else that reduces the risk of blood clotting, also reduces the risk of CVD, and vice-versa. Of course, if you reduce the risk of blood clotting, you can also increase the risk of serious bleeding. So, it is not all positive. All is balance. Yin and Yang, and suchlike. Even the relatively benign aspirin, in low doses, can lead to chronic blood loss, anaemia, and, in extreme cases, death.

What does this prove. Well it certainly proves that blood clotting and CVD are intimately related. So much so that the word ‘atherothrombosis’ is often used to describe the processes of CVD. ‘Athero-‘ = the atherosclerotic plaque growing then ‘-thrombosis’, the clot that forms top of the plaque that then kills you. That, at least, is the official Soviet party line.

However, I never liked the idea that we have two almost completely different processes going, that are linked together, but only at the final event. I wanted to explore the idea that a single process – blood clotting – could be responsible for plaque starting, growing and then ‘rupturing’ causing the whole spectrum of atherothrombosis. Blood clots, from start to finish.

This took me on a pretty amazing journey, a long and winding route indeed. I have come to believe that the system of blood coagulation must be, just about, the most complex physiological system in the body. It is beyond mind-boggling. Just when you think you have read about every factor involved, another one pops up. Indeed, I think I am forgetting facts about blood clotting faster than I can learn them. My brain is full.

However, the other day, I came across an expression that captured something about blood clotting that I have always struggled to put into words. It described the coagulation system as ‘idling’, as in sitting with the engine running. The blood coagulation system is never ‘off’ it is always turning over in the background, constantly producing small combination of substances that make up a full blood clot.

I suppose this is because, if you suffer a significant wound, or damage to a large blood vessel, the coagulation system cannot hang about. It must accelerate from zero to one hundred in the blink of an eye. Bang, go, stamp on the accelerator. At the same time, if it accelerates out of control, the clot will be too big, it will spread too rapidly, blocking blood vessels all over the place.

So, almost the moment you stamp on the accelerator, you are hammering on the brake. Accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake. Build up the clot, break down the clot. A fantastically dynamic system with feedback loop upon feedback loop. Too little clotting, you die. Too much clotting, you die. This is going on, all the time, in your body. A system constantly hunting, and hunting, to find equilibrium.

What is the greatest, the most powerful trigger, for a clot to form? It is a substance called Tissue Factor (TF). It is found almost everywhere in the body, but it is found in the highest concentrations within the walls of the larger arteries and veins. This, of course, makes perfect sense. If an artery, or vein, is damaged, the place you want a blood clot to form is exactly at that point. Bang, go.

Tissue factor is sometimes called extrinsic factor. It is called this because it does not float about (freely) in the bloodstream, it sits ‘externally/extrinsically’ to the blood. [In fact, platelets and white blood cells also contain TF, but it is inactive/not expressed unless other things are triggered first].

Other parts of the clotting system are often referred to as intrinsic factors that trigger the ‘intrinsic clotting system’. Factors you may have heard of, such as factor VIII, or factors IX and X and Xa etc. The intrinsic system tends to operate more slowly, and less powerfully, than the extrinsic (massive over-simplification warning).

Normally, the ‘intrinsic’ clotting factors, and the extrinsic system operate together to drive and amplify the clotting response once it is triggered. All of which means that, normally, you want to keep the blood well away from contact with TF, because the moment there is contact, all hell breaks loose and a blood clot will form, instantly, at that point.

The single most important barrier that keeps the blood separated from TF is the endothelium. Which means that an intact and healthy endothelium is the best protection against accidental blood clots forming. Yes, blood clots can form with no TF contact. A deep vein thrombosis (DVT) can develop in veins with intact endothelium. The process is different, the blood clot formed is also very different. It is mainly an intrinsic process.

Forgetting other types of blood clot that can form elsewhere in the body, the only way a clot will form in the larger arteries is due to endothelial damage. No endothelial damage, no clot. Once a blood clot has formed, then stabilised, what happens?

Well, normally the clot will not have been allowed to get too big, because all the feedback loops will kick into action to slow things down. So, most clots will not fully block an artery, nor even half block an artery. They also get shaved down in size quickly. Primarily through the action of Tissue Plasminogen Activator (TP(a)).

TP(a) is an enzyme floating about in the bloodstream that converts plasminogen into plasmin. Plasminogen is an inactive enzyme that is incorporated into all blood clots as they form. When TP(a) converts plasminogen to plasmin, it slices fibrin apart, chopping blood clots into small pieces. A process known as fibrinolysis. Two of the major components of a blood clot are platelets – small sticky cells that coordinate the clotting response – and fibrin – long sticky strands of protein that binds the clot together.

However, there will be always be a part of the clot that remains clamped to the artery wall. Because if all the clot was fully broken down/fibrinolysed, the bloodstream would be exposed to TF again, and the entire blood clotting process would simply kick off…. again.

Which means that once a clot has been formed, a part of it will always be left stuck to the artery wall. This then needs to be got rid of. How does this happen? Well, it is not like scratching your skin, whereby a clot (scab) forms, the endothelium re-grows underneath it, then the scab falls to the ground. If this were the process that happened in an artery, where do you think that clot would go? Down the artery, to get stuck where it narrows, to cause an infarction. Not a very good design feature, I would argue.

So, what happens is something far cleverer. A replacement endothelial layer is created from Endothelial Progenitor Cells (EPCs). These are synthesized in the bone marrow, and float about in the bloodstream. Chemicals released, when endothelium is damaged, attract EPCs to the area of damage/blood clot.

Once they arrive they stick to the surface of any remaining clot, then they grow into fully mature endothelial cells, forming a new endothelial layer. What this means is that any remaining blood clot now sits beneath the new endothelial layer, and within the artery wall itself. It cannot now break off and get stuck somewhere else in the body.

Even more clever is the fact that EPCs have the capability, to become something other than mature endothelial cells. They can travel down another road in the developmental pathway, to become monocytes. Monocytes, in turn, mature into macrophages.

Macrophages are white blood cells whose job it is to clear up all alien materials in the body. Dead cells, invading bacteria, any damaged tissue. They squirt nitric oxide out, oxidise dead and damaged material, such as anything found in a blood clot, then engulf it, before travelling off to the lymph glands. Here, the dead, damaged and alien materials are further broken down, before excretion from the body.

Thus, with EPCs, you have the entire repair and clearance system all in one package. Some of the EPCs that arrive on the scene, form the new endothelial layer. The rest turn into monocytes, then macrophages, which clear away the remnant blood clot.

This process of repair and clearance is what I call ‘healing’. Others choose to call it inflammation, and claim it is the underlying cause of CVD. Good for them. I suspect it may not be a fertile route to travel down.

The other thing to note here is that the substance which is most intimately bonded to the exposed endothelium, at least in humans, is lipoprotein (a) (LP(a). Lipoprotein (a) is Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) with an extra protein attached to it. A protein called apolipoprotein A. This protein is fascinating, because it has an almost identical structure to plasminogen. Identical apart from a single amino acid.

However, this difference, though very slight, is critical, because it means that TP(a) cannot have any effect on apolipoprotein A. There can be no conversion to plasmin. Thus, any blood clot, or part of the blood clot, containing Lp(a) is extremely resistant to fibrinolysis. It cannot be broken apart, and so remains attached to the artery wall, and will be a major component of the remnant blood clot that is then drawn into the artery wall – and then broken down by macrophages.

This is where Linus Pauling, Mattias Rath, vitamin C, and guinea pigs come into play. I have discussed this area before, but I am going to discuss it again…. Soon.

Before fully signing off on this blog I shall leave you with another thought, which is this. Lp(a) is identical to LDL ‘bad cholesterol’ – apart from a single attached protein – apolipoprotein A. So, if you were closely studying the contents of an atherosclerotic plaque, it would be quite easy to think you were looking at LDL, when you were actually looking at Lp(a)?

Of course, what I have done here is to describe a process of clot formation, and repair, that is probably happening all the time. The next question is obvious. When, and how, can this process become ‘abnormal?’ When, and how, does it lead to CVD?

1: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1709118#t=article

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8925184?log$=activity

P.S. those interested in a great deal more complexity, this paper is a belter. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1538-7836.2007.02515.x/full

Here is one section that explains a great deal in a few words. ‘Recent evidence suggests that ECs [endothelial cells] in regions of disturbed flow in arteries are primed for activation (they have increased levels of NF-κB in their cytoplasm) and that systemic imbalances (e.g. associated with sepsis or cardiac risk factors) may result in the translocation of NF-κB to the nucleus and increased expression of procoagulants such as tissue factor (TF) and adhesion molecules. TM, thrombomodulin; t-PA, tissue-type plasminogen activator; EPCR, endothelial protein C receptor; TFPI, tissue factor pathway inhibitor; VWF, von Willebrand factor.’ And there, I think you have it, in a nutshell. Although I realise that most people have never heard of any of those things.

5th September 2017

Wipe your mind clear of all previous ideas about CVD. About as easy as standing in the corner and not thinking about a tiger. In reality, once you have read about, and talked about, and researched, and thought about anything, patterns are created in your mind. Familiar landscapes develop, and well-worn pathways become the comfortable and easy routes to travel down.

Say what you like about Ancel Keys (and I had better not, for I would end up swearing a lot), he created the tightly patrolled mental box for everyone. Diet and cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. These are the great beacons that mark out, the map of the mind, where all thinking and discussion must take place. They illuminate all, and beyond them is darkness.

Now, blow out the beacons. Move out into darkness. We shall create a new landscape of thought. We have control of the vertical, and the horizontal, you are entering the Outer Limits. [I suspect some people may not get that reference]. We are breaking free of the box. In fact, there is no box, it no longer exists.

In the distance, there is a glimmer of light… it is our first fact. At least we hope it is a fact. We approach the glittering light and scrape way the grime that has been obscuring it for many years, to reveal…

Atherosclerotic plaques only develop in larger arteries.

Quite close to it, almost hidden away, lies another fact.

Atherosclerotic plaques never develop in veins.

There are two exceptions to the second fact – well, there are more, but these are the most obvious. First, if you take a vein, and use it to create a coronary artery bypass graft, it will develop atherosclerosis very rapidly. Secondly, if you create an arteriovenous fistula AV-fistula (fusing an artery and vein together) for dialysis patients, the venous section will develop atherosclerotic plaques.

Setting aside these exceptions, these two facts were as close to inarguable as I have been able to find. Inevitably, they lead to my first question. Why do plaques develop in arteries, and not in veins? Right now, I can see you doing what everyone does, searching for a simple answer, with thoughts such as:

• There is less oxygen in veins, and oxygenation is damaging to arterial walls
• The pressure is less in veins
• The LDL level is lower in veins (it’s not, but I have heard a lot of people say this)
• Arteries and veins have a different structure (they do not).

And so on, and so forth. Isn’t the search for a quick and simple answer fun…?

After exploring almost every avenue that I believed could possibly be involved in CVD, I found myself returning more and more often to the difference in blood pressure in veins and arteries as the place where the answers were most likely to be found.

However, I knew pressure, by itself, is not going to cause anything, unless you succeed in ‘bursting’ an artery, or ‘bursting’ the lining of the artery. I mean, this can be done. You can develop an aneurysm (thinned and ballooned area) in an artery, which can then rupture – usually with catastrophic consequences.

But before that, what can pressure do? Force things carried within the artery into the artery wall behind? No, that does not make sense. For that would mean everything carried in the bloodstream would simply be blasted into all artery walls, everywhere. The smallest molecules would go first, molecules such H₂0 to start with. Does this happen…. No, of course not. Our arteries, and the endothelial cells that line our arteries (and veins), are not leaky.

In short, differences in pressure cannot provide any sort of an explanation.

However, there is a law of fluid dynamics which says – words to the effect – if the pressure in a tube is higher, the velocity of the fluid flowing through a tube will also be higher. Which means that blood is travelling far faster in an artery than a vein. A veritable white-water maelstrom, compared to a meandering river as it approaches the sea.

Thus, it is easy to imagine that anything lining an artery is going to be exposed to far greater ‘forces’ than anything lining a vein. These forces, which I shall call biomechanical stresses, will be particularly intense in certain places. For example, where arteries branch (bifurcate) e.g. where the carotid arteries, that supply blood to the brain, branch off (bifurcate) from the aorta.

Another place of extreme biomechanical stress is within the coronary arteries. These arteries are exposed to a unique stress, in that they are compressed with great force when the heart contracts. Some have likened this to stomping on a hose every second. Indeed, blood cannot flow in coronary arteries during systole (ventricular contraction) because they are squeezed shut.

In general, if you look at where atherosclerotic plaques develop, you find that they most often occur at maximum biomechanical stress. Where carotid arteries (main arteries supplying blood to the brain) branch from the aorta, and also where other arteries branch from the aorta, and within the coronary arteries. It seems, therefore, that biomechanical stress is required for plaques to develop. This is not the same as high blood pressure, but it is closely associated with high blood pressure.

In truth, this idea is not in any way contentious. This is a highly jargon filled section from a paper called ‘Biomechanics of Atherosclerotic Coronary Plaque: Site, Stability and In Vivo Elasticity Modelling.’

‘Although the coronary and peripheral systems in their entirety are exposed to the same atherogenic cells and molecules in the plasma, atherosclerotic lesions form at specific regions of the arterial tree. Such lesions appear in the vicinity of branch points, the outer wall of bifurcations and the inner wall of curves. Pathologic studies, have shown that healed plaque ruptures are predominantly in the proximal portions of the left anterior descending (LAD), right coronary (RCA), left circumflex (LCx) and left main (LM) arteries. Investigations over the last decade have elucidated both fluid mechanical and most recently structural biomechanical factors that mediated the site of plaque formation.’¹

Which is all fine and sensible. However, this very same paper states the following:

‘Plaque formation is now recognized as an inflammatory process triggered by high levels of serum LDL that enter the coronary wall, encounter oxygen reactive species, and become oxidized. The oxidization, in turn, stimulates the recruitment of monocytes that convert to macrophages to phagocytize oxidized LDLs. This forms a necrotic core with recruitment of smooth muscle cells from the media to seal over the fatty core.’

That is the official party line as to how CVD starts, and develops. But if you believe that, you immediately face a conundrum. How can you reconcile the hypothesis that raised LDL entering the artery wall initiates plaque development, with the observation that atherosclerotic lesions form at specific regions of the arterial tree? It is surely one, or the other, but it cannot be both. Sorry, but at this point I need to take you back into the landscape of raised LDL and CVD.

You may think, in fact you probably are already thinking: “Well, biomechanical stress damages the endothelial cells, allowing LDL to enter.” Now, that could be true. However, if that is true, then you have (if you believe in the cholesterol hypothesis), just made a move that will result in checkmate against you.

The argument goes like this:

If LDL can only leak into the artery wall at an area where the endothelial layer is damaged, and this is where plaques develop, this means it cannot leak through in areas where the endothelium is not damaged. Ergo, the first step in the development of plaques cannot be LDL ‘leaking’ into the artery wall past the endothelium, it is damage to the endothelium. Ergo, a raised LDL level is not the primary cause of CVD. Checkmate.

You don’t like that logic? If you prefer a few more facts, using a different approach.

If you think LDL is capable of, simply, transporting itself past the endothelium, then you need to define a mechanism. Is it simply osmotic pressure, with LDL travelling down a concentration gradient from the bloodstream into the artery wall? Is it actively transported through endothelial cells? Does it leak between the endothelial cells? These are the mechanisms that I have seen most commonly proposed – although they are often presented with so much surrounding jargon that it is almost impossible to work out what is being said.

In truth, I have spent years and years trying to establish if LDL can, or cannot, move into the arterial wall, past the healthy, undamaged, endothelium. If I had been organised enough, I could have gathered together ten thousand papers saying that it can, and another ten thousand saying that it cannot.

Having torn up twenty thousand papers, on the basis of complete uselessness, I began with, what may seem a simple question, a thought experiment if you like. Why would endothelial cells allow LDL to pass through them, to then allow LDL to be oxidised in the arterial wall behind? This process serves no physiological purpose, other than to kill you from cardiovascular disease!

The idea that endothelial cells simply cannot prevent this from happening is, frankly bonkers. Cells can quite easily control the passage of single atoms/ions through their cell membranes Indeed, this is one way that all cells function. To give one example, they can pump individual sodium ions out, and individual potassium ions in, to maintain an electrical action potential. They only lose the ability to control their own internal environment, within very tight parameters, when they die.

Therefore, the idea that an endothelial cell cannot prevent a relatively massive LDL molecule from entering the side facing the bloodstream, then passing straight though, then ejecting itself out the other side, is complete nonsense. Complete… nonsense.

Indeed, it has been well established that the only way LDL can enter a cell, is for that that cell to manufacture an LDL receptor, wave it about it the bloodstream to lock onto an LDL molecule, before dragging the receptor and the LDL back inside. Ergo, LDL does not get into an endothelial cell, unless the cell wants LDL to enter. It activates complex processes to allow this to happen.

The reason why some people have very high LDL levels is because they cannot manufacture enough LDL receptors, or the LDL receptors they manufacture are faulty. A lack of LDL receptors, or faulty receptors is, of course, the underlying problem in Familial Hypercholesterolaemia(FH). Proof, if proof were truly needed, that LDL cannot force its way into cells – no matter what the concentration in the bloodstream.

In short, even a superficial understanding of how cells control the passage of atoms and molecules, leads to the inescapable conclusion that LDL cannot possibly travel straight through an endothelial cell, without the activation of complex and highly controlled cellular process.

This problem has been duly noted by those who support the LDL/cholesterol hypothesis. So, the current thinking, although I have never seen it expressed clearly, is that there must be gaps between endothelial cells, wide enough for LDL to leak past.

Again, no. The fact is that, in a healthy artery wall, with healthy endothelium, there simply are no gaps between endothelial cells. Here, from a paper entitled. ‘Endothelial Cell Junctional Adhesion Molecules.’ [jargon alert].

‘Endothelial cells line the lumen of all blood vessels and play a critical role in maintaining the barrier function of the vasculature. Sealing of the vessel wall between adjacent endothelial cells is facilitated by interactions involving junctionally expressed transmembrane proteins, including tight junctional molecules, such as members of the junctional adhesion molecule family, components of adherence junctions, such as VE-Cadherin, and other molecules, such as platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule.’²

At the risk of simply repeating what this paper says, there are no gaps between endothelial cells. Instead, there is a highly complex structure of proteins and other molecules between each endothelial cell ensuring that nothing gets past – unless the endothelial cells are instructed to let them past. This happens with white blood cells, they can open the junctions between endothelial cells, and move into the artery wall – then out again. Clever stuff.

Of course, if most things travelling in the bloodstream had to overcome complex barriers to get past the endothelium you would die, as your blood would simply circulate round and round, struggling to exchanging nutrients back and forth with the underlying tissue. Which kind of negates the point of having a circulatory system in the first place.

Nature, in the way that nature does, noted this potential problem, and came up with a solution. As blood vessels get smaller, and smaller, the endothelium develops holes – called fenestrations. These fenestrations allow almost everything present in the blood to flow freely in and out of the surrounding tissues/organs. Red blood cells would be one exception.

Why, you could ask, would endothelial cells have fenestrations in them to allow the free passage of molecules in and out, if things can freely pass in and out of non-fenestrated, tightly bound, endothelium?

At this point, I am overwhelmed with the need to make a quick summary:

1: It is impossible for LDL to pass straight through a living endothelial cell

2: Endothelial cells are tightly bound together, and will not allow anything to pass between them.

In addition, here are a couple of other facts to consider.

The first of which is that, in the brain, the endothelium never becomes fenestrated. There are no holes, even in capillaries (the smallest blood vessels in the body). Which means nothing can move into, or be removed from the brain, that the endothelial cells do not grant passage. This barrier function is usually referred to as the blood brain barrier (BBB):

‘Cholesterol is a major constituent of the human brain, and the brain is the most cholesterol-rich organ. Numerous lipoprotein receptors and apolipoproteins are expressed in the brain. Cholesterol is tightly regulated between the major brain cells and is essential for normal brain development. The metabolism of brain cholesterol differs markedly from that of other tissues. Brain cholesterol is primarily derived by de novo synthesis and the blood brain barrier prevents the uptake of lipoprotein cholesterol from the circulation.’ ³

To put this another way, if LDL could pass the BBB, then the brain would not need to synthesize its own cholesterol, and the brain does synthesize cholesterol within specialised glial cells. Which is further confirmation that an intact, non-fenestrated endothelium, blocks the passage of LDL.

Now here is a final fact (a final fact in this blog at least) that I would like you to ponder. Which is that large blood vessels have their own blood vessels, known as vasa vasorum. Literally, ‘blood vessels of the blood vessels’. Vasa vasorum surround and penetrate large arteries, and veins, supplying them with the required nutrients.

They are, of course, fully fenestrated (full of holes). Thus LDL, or anything else, can simply leak out of the vasa vasorum and into the artery wall if it so wishes – yes, even down a concentration gradient, if you like to think of it in this way.

Which means that there is absolutely no need for LDL, or anything else, to be absorbed through the endothelium lining the arteries, as it can get in from ‘behind’, so to speak. Which takes me back to my first question here. Why would endothelial cells transport LDL past themselves, and into the artery wall behind – if LDL can perfectly easily get into the artery wall from the vasa vasorum? This truly would be an exercise in pointlessness.

I could go on, as I have only touched upon a small part of the complexity involved here. But I hope to have given you enough food for thought. Yes, you easily can make statements such as ‘Plaque formation is now recognized as an inflammatory process triggered by high levels of serum LDL that enter the coronary wall’. Certainly, if you say it fast enough, and do not think about it, such a statement can seem reasonable.

However, if you start looking at the actual process required for LDL to travel into the arterial wall, you begin to realise that it is (with a healthy and intact endothelium) simply not possible. Or, if it is possible, it should be happening everywhere, in all arteries and veins. Not at discrete points.

At which point, you begin to realise that the cholesterol hypothesis, whilst is sounds superficially reasonable, requires mechanisms of action that just do not exist.

LDL cannot enter the arterial wall, at least not from the lumen of the artery, unless the endothelium has been damaged in some way. If you damage the endothelium, all hell breaks loose – and then we have a completely different story on our hands. One where LDL may have a role in plaque formation, or it may not, but it most certainly cannot be the primary role.

This is a conclusion that I arrived at a long time ago. Not, initially, because I set out to debunk the hypothesis. I simply wanted to understand how a raised LDL could cause atherosclerosis. ‘Because it does’, has never ever been a reply that I am happy to accept. In fact, nowadays I would translate this particular ‘because it does’ into ‘because it must.’ It must, because if LDL cannot pass through, or past, a healthy endothelium, the cholesterol hypothesis is wrong. And it can’t, so it is.

Now I have got that out of the system, I shall move on to look at what happens when you damage the endothelium. For that, logically, must be the first step in plaque formation.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4722860/

2: http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/36/10/2048

3: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cholesterol/2012/292598/

19 August 2017

Having spent many years smashing everything into pieces in an attempt to work out what is going on with cardiovascular disease, I am now going to attempt the amazing feat of bringing everything together in some sort of coherent structure. I have no idea how long this may take, so please bear with me while I first set the scene by making a couple of point that need to be made.

Point One:

‘Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.’ H.L. Mencken.

Cardiovascular disease is best seen as a process. Attempts to find the key, single, cause has created the massive multifactorial monster we see before us today. Unfortunately, the trap of searching for a/the cause seems to be hard wired into our thinking. This approach has worked well for things such as infectious diseases and suchlike, but it does not work here. I have lost track of the number of times someone has come up with the new cause of CVD, then tried to crowbar all observations to fit. Or simply dismiss contradictory evidence.

• It’s caused by infections
• It’s all due to vitamin C deficiency
• It’s all due to blood sugar
• Its’ all due to inflammation etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

It’s…….

In truth, I was as guilty of this as everyone else. I believed that ‘stress’ was the cause, and everything could be incorporated within this factor. This is not true. Stress/strain represents one factor that is capable of causing CVD – quite an important one – but it cannot explain everything.

Whilst there obviously are ‘causes’ of cardiovascular disease, they cannot be understood in isolation from process(es). What is going on, and why, and how can things that seem to cause cardiovascular disease be fitted into these processes.

It may seem intellectually unsatisfactory to move away from a simple, single, cause model. We all want the E=MC² moment, or the untangling of the structure of DNA moment. Eureka! That was never going to happen here, or it would already have happened. If there truly were a single cause it would have been found by now – and it hasn’t.

Point Two:

The evidence base is flawed. In part because studying complex biological systems is, in itself, very difficult to do. The number of variables involved is mind-boggling, and the number possible interactions between those variables is mind boggling to the power one trillion. If you are looking for absolute certainty…. look elsewhere.

Just to give one example of how many potential factors there are. Here is part of a paper by researchers, who looked at geomagnetic disturbance and its impact on heart attacks and strokes (Russian paper):

‘It was shown statistically that during geomagnetic disturbances the frequency of myocardial infarction and brain stroke cases increased on the average by a factor of two in comparison with quiet geomagnetic conditions. These results are close to results obtained by (Stoupel, 1999), for patients suffering with acute cardiological pathology. Our recent study (with L.Parfeonova) revealed the relation between heart ventricular ectopic activity (VEA) and geomagnetic conditions in patients with CHD. On the average 1995 episodes of VEA having on one patient within 24 hours have been revealed in patients, whose records coincided with the periods of geomagnetic storms and 1440 VEA episodes for active conditions. Minimal quantity of VEA episodes was found for unsettled condition: 394. In a quiet geomagnetic condition VEA episodes appeared more often than in periods of unsettled conditions.’¹

How many researchers have taken geomagnetic disturbances into account as a potential confounding factor in their research? I would suggest, none. Yet here is a factor that can (possibly) increase the risk of CVD events by 100%.

I chose this example, almost at random, to highlight the point that this stuff is complicated, and there any many, many, uncertainties involved. Can you control any study for all factors ever found to be associated (causally or otherwise) with CVD? No, you cannot.

Alternatively, you can do what many people do. Dismiss research that seems contradictory, or just daft. I can see many people automatically seeking to dismiss a Russian study about the effect of geomagnetic disturbance on CVD on the dual grounds that is a: Russian and b: bonkers. That would be unwise.

Of course, there is the other problem that much of medical research (especially in the highly lucrative area of CVD) has been funded by the pharmaceutical industry, resulting in the problem that most research findings are false:

‘There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.’²

This is a famous paper, one of the most cited and read in medical research history. It was written in 2005 and things have got worse, not better, since then.

Oh, but of course, peer review keeps everything on the straight and narrow:

‘The mistake, of course, it to have thought that peer review was more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability – not the validity – of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.’ Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet.

In this morass, where does one turn?

This is a question that has no definitive answer. Shall I just choose evidence that suits my argument, and dismiss all else? To an extent, the difficulty in disentangling evidence was my spur to write the book Doctoring Data. In it, I attempted to determine what is valid and what is not. How to spot the biases and errors. How to know what it true, from the other stuff?

Answer… it cannot be done. Not for certain. Whatever evidence I choose, it can be criticised – in one way or another. Did the study I am quoting control for geomagnetic disturbance or not? As a general rule, any study – and I mean any study – can be pulled apart and dismissed, if you so wish. Which could leave most of what I do as a smoking ruin.

However, most of the research I look at has one major advantage. There is not much, if any, financial interest, behind it. Other than suppressing it, I suppose.

Yes, of course, I bring certain biases to the discussion. I am almost entirely anti-statin. I am not a great believer in blood pressure lowering – at least not at current levels. I do not believe in the cholesterol hypothesis and I think that the anti-saturated fat dogma is completely bonkers and has no evidence to support it – at all. I believe that salt is good for and, in most people, protects against CVD.

I believe that a high carbohydrate low fat diet is utterly bonkers – especially in those with diabetes. And suchlike. In short, I believe that almost everything we are told is good for you, is bad for you, and vice-versa. With the exception of smoking (bad) and exercise (good).

Having got that out of my system. Let us begin….. in the next blog.

1: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014cosp…40E1114G

2: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Inflammation – or not

Over the last few years there has been a significant shift, from many researchers, towards the idea that atherosclerosis is an inflammatory process, to a greater or lesser extent. Below is a quote from a cardiac surgeon. A man who admits he was wrong about cholesterol being the main underlying cause CVD, so I can applaud him for that. He goes on to say:

‘Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.’¹

And so on and so forth. More recently, a friend and fellow cholesterol sceptic, Aseem Malhotra, was lead author on an article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine entitled: ‘Saturated fat does not clog the arteries: coronary heart disease is a chronic inflammatory condition, the risk of which can be effectively reduced from healthy lifestyle interventions.’

A major statin study called JUPITER, was designed to look at lowering C-reactive protein with rosuvastatin, to see if this would lower the risk of CVD – in those with low or normal cholesterol levels. C-reactive protein (CRP) is a non-specific marker of inflammation. To quote the lead investigator:

‘The recent JUPITER trial demonstrated that potent statin therapy reduces by 50 % the risk of heart attack and stroke among men and women with low levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol who are at increased vascular risk due to elevated levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biomarker of low-grade systemic inflammation. In JUPITER, both absolute risk and the absolute risk reduction with statin therapy were related to the level of CRP, whereas no such relationship was observed for LDL-C.’²

I could find another ten thousand papers all stating that CVD is caused by inflammation. Case proven? Well, the case is certainly proven, beyond doubt, that atherosclerosis is strongly associated with inflammation in the arterial wall. To which my response would be… and so what exactly?

If you twist your ankle, and tear ligaments, you will also find a great deal of inflammation in the surrounding area. You would, however, be stretching reality to suggest inflammation is the underlying cause of ankle ligament damage. I suppose you could try.

In my simple little world, inflammation is a result of underlying damage. It is not, and cannot be the underlying cause. Inflammation is a manifestation of the body attempting to heal itself. In fact, whenever I see the word inflammation, I mentally replace it with the word ‘healing.’ For many years I have smiled enigmatically at the widely accepted advice following a badly sprained ankle. RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). These are all ways of reducing inflammation, sorry, healing.

Just looking at the ‘I’ in RICE. Ice:

‘Ice works by decreasing the blood flow to an area, thus temporarily diminishing the swelling and inflammation that accompanies most injuries —- (when the tissue re-warms … the inflammatory process resumes). But in the 1970s we knew very little about the healing process.   We did not understand that inflammation is actually a very important initiating event of the overall healing process.

When you are injured, the blood vessels to the area dilate. That causes the swelling and warmth you notice. The increase in blood flow brings with it very potent chemicals, proteins and cells.   Those chemicals and cells set off a cascade of reactions that we refer to as inflammation. More importantly, this is also what initiates the HEALING process.   Yes, inflammation is a necessary part of the healing process. The inflammation chemicals send a message to other cells to come to the injured area… they also wake up sleeping or dormant cells already residing in the area of the injury. Those cells in turn start to repair the ligament, muscle or skin at the site of injury.’³

‘Finally, conventional sports medicine catches up with Chinese traumatology. In Chinese medicine, we NEVER recommend ice for injuries. Simple physics will tell you that ice applications will constrict blood vessels which will reduce blood flow to the injury, meaning less waste products removed and less nutrition delivered therefore slower healing.’⁴

I say, reduce inflammation at your peril. You may reduce the swelling, and some of the bruising, and things will certainly look less ‘damaged’. But, again, so what. Two billion years of evolution have created some pretty effective healing processes, which we also call inflammation. Interfere with inflammation, and the results are predictable.

The most powerful anti-inflammatory agents known to man are corticosteroids, so called as they are all synthesized around the base compound, cortisol (a corticosteroid). Medically they are used in a number of auto-immune/inflammatory conditions, ranging from rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, eczema, lupus, transplant organ rejection and suchlike [Asthma is a bit different].

In these conditions, there is a rationale for reducing inflammation. Here, we have the body ‘seeing’ various proteins as alien, and attacking them, through an ‘auto-immune’ response. Yes, there is inflammation. However, this is not the body trying to repair itself. This is the immune system causing damage, by attacking the body itself, with resulting inflammation. In short, do not confuse inflammation with inflammation.

However, if inflammation were the underlying cause of CVD, then corticosteroids should reduce the risk of CVD, as they are the most potent anti-inflammatories known to man. But they very much do not. A paper was published recently, called ‘Can machine-learning improve cardiovascular risk prediction using routine clinical data?’ A fascinating paper indeed. The purpose was, as follows:

‘Current approaches to predict cardiovascular risk fail to identify many people who would benefit from preventive treatment, while others receive unnecessary intervention. Machine-learning offers opportunity to improve accuracy by exploiting complex interactions between risk factors. We assessed whether machine-learning can improve cardiovascular risk prediction.’

I have not written about this paper before, although it identified LDL as completely irrelevant in predicting CVD risk, and the risks it did identify were almost completely different from those in the current risk calculators. In fact, the number one risk factor of cardiovascular risk was Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). I have never seen this on any risk calculator before, and I am trying to digest the implications.

However, getting back on track, the main point of interest here is looking at number three on the list of factors that can increase CVD risk:

Oral corticosteroid prescribed

At number eight:

Immunosuppressant prescribed

Immunosuppressants are also designed, effectively, to impair the inflammatory response. They are used in much the same sort of conditions as steroids. In fact, corticosteroids could also be termed immunosuppressants.

The highly damaging effect of corticosteroids, or other drugs designed to suppress the immune response, should not really come as any surprise. There is a medical condition called Cushing’s disease, in which too much cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands. The impact of Cushing’s disease on CVD is to increase the risk by, at least, 500%. ⁵

Other anti-inflammatory drugs have similar, if less spectacular effects, on CVD risk. The FDA recently increased the warning level on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Drugs such as ibuprofen, naproxen, diclofenac.

‘The FDA is strengthening an earlier warning about the cardiovascular safety of non-aspirin non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), both prescription and non-prescription, the agency said Thursday. After a comprehensive review of new safety information, the FDA is requiring updates to the labels of all prescription NSAIDs to reflect recent information on risk of heart attack and stroke. Over-the-counter non-aspirin NSAIDs already contain some safety information, but the labels on these drugs will also require an update, said the FDA in its announcement posted online.

The new labels for prescription NSAIDs should contain the following information, according to the FDA:

• The risk of heart attack can occur within weeks of starting an NSAID, and that risk may increase with longer use.
• The risk seems to be higher at higher doses.
• It’s not clear if the risk of heart attack and stroke is the same for all NSAIDs.
• The drugs can raise the risk of heart attack or stroke in both patients with a risk of heart disease and patients without.
• Patients with heart disease or risk factors for it are at a greater risk of heart attack or stroke following the use of NSAIDs, because they have a higher risk at baseline.
• There is also an increased risk of heart failure for patients using NSAIDs.⁶

Of course, it can be argued, and it has, that steroids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents have other potentially damaging effects on the CVD. Whilst this is undoubtedly true (to an extent), you would still not expect agents that are, primarily, anti-inflammatory, to vastly increase the risk of CVD. If CVD is an inflammatory disease.

Personally, think that the science here has been done. Agents designed to reduced inflammation all greatly increase the risk of CVD – from moderately to spectacularly*. Thus, whilst it is true that you can find inflammation within arteries where atherosclerosis is developing, this DOES NOT mean that the inflammation is causing the problem.

What you are seeing is the body trying to heal damage, and then getting cause and effect twisted through one hundred and eighty degrees. ‘That’s looks abnormal, let’s get rid of it’. A pretty good summary of a great deal of medical research over the last few hundred years, I suppose.

1: https://www.sott.net/article/242516-Heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23225175

3: http://www.howardluksmd.com/orthopedic-social-media/ice-ice/

4: http://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/why-ice-delays-recovery.html

5: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8187313

6: https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/fdageneral/52530

*aspirin is the exception. However, aspirin has strong anti-coagulant effects. It stops platelets sticking together. In this way, the anti-coagulant effects of aspirin, outweigh the damaging anti-inflammatory effect.

Alcohol – an update

My last blog on alcohol caused somewhat of a stir, as I suspected it would. To those who did not read it, I recommended that, from a cardiovascular health point of view, those who do not drink alcohol should start. I recommended this because there is strong evidence that moderate alcohol consumption significantly reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease – and can also reduce overall mortality/increase life expectancy.

There were many objections, scientific and, in some ways, moral. Because of this, I felt the need to go over the area again, which is a bit unusual for me. I think there were three main objections that were raised:

1) People who do not drink are not drinking because they have illnesses that have stopped them drinking, therefore they are less healthy than moderate drinkers to begin with. Ergo, you are not comparing apples with apples.

2) None of the studies have been randomised controlled studies, they are purely observational.

3) If people who do not drink, are advised to start drinking, a proportion of them will end up drinking too much and will damage their health.

1) People who do not drink are not drinking because they have illnesses that have stopped them drinking, therefore they are less healthy than moderate drinkers.

This is probably the easiest objection to refute. The massive one million patient study in the BMJ, that I quoted in my previous blog, looked at this potential confouder¹. By which I mean that the researchers took care to separate out those who had drunk previously, from those who had never drunk.

Whilst the BMJ study looked at all sorts of outcomes, I shall restrict myself to two here. The ones that are most important. Namely, fatal cardiovascular disease (CVD), and all-cause mortality.

Increased risk of fatal CVD vs. moderate drinking

• Non-drinker = 1.32 (32% increased risk)
• Former drinker = 1.44 (44% increased risk)

Increase risk of all-cause mortality vs. moderate drinking

• Non-drinker = 1.24 (24% increased risk)
• Former drinker = 1.38 (38% increased risk)

As you can see, there is some merit to the argument that former drinkers are less healthy than never drinkers. However, if you remove former drinkers from the equation, non-drinkers remain at a significantly increased risk of CVD, and overall mortality, compared to moderate drinkers.

2) None of the studies have been randomised controlled studies, they are purely observational.

I cannot really argue too powerfully against this objection, for it is true. No-one has, to the best of my knowledge, taken a large number of people and split them into two groups. One to drink alcohol, the other to abstain. Then, after ten years or so, find out which group did better. I should point that that whilst such a trial could be randomised, and controlled, there is no way it could be placebo controlled, or double blinded (double blinded means that neither the participant or the researcher would know if the participant was, or was not, drinking alcohol). Thus, no perfect trial could ever be done.

The reality is that, in medicine and medical research you just have to roll with what you have got. In recent years, I have seen a growth in a research fundamentalist belief, which is that the only way you can ever prove anything is through a randomised placebo controlled double blind study, with tens of thousands of people in each arm.

I find this somewhat strange, and more than slightly strange. The vast, vast, majority of things that are done in medicine, have no randomised controlled studies to support. Do you think penicillin was subjected to a controlled study before it was used? Um, no. Do you think hip replacements have ever been studied in a randomised controlled trial? Um, no. Do you think breast cancer screening has ever had a single randomised controlled study? Coronary artery bypass grafts, Um, no. Almost any surgical intervention you think of. Um, no. Vaccines. Um, no.

I could keep going on for a long, long, long time on the interventions that are widely accepted, which have far less evidence to support them, than the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption. I worked with the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) at one time, to develop their educational website. By our estimate, around 13% of cardiology interventions had any evidence at all to support them (let alone randomised controlled studies). This statistic may have improved, but I doubt it.

Much of practice was defined by ‘expert consensus’. Which I also call ‘Eminence Based Medicine’.

My view is that, to dismiss all evidence that does not fit into the ‘gold standard’ of placebo controlled randomised double blind study is easy – of course. But if you are going to do this, you would have to also dismiss all the evidence on smoking and lung cancer – for example.

Certain things will never, can never, be studied in randomised controlled studies. So, we must look at best possible evidence, and make decisions based on that. Otherwise what are we to do? We can chuck all antibiotics, and vaccines, into the dustbin for starters.

3) If people who do not drink, start drinking, a proportion of them will end up drinking too much and damaging their health.

This last point is clearly the most difficult to argue against. What if I do advise people to start drinking and a significant proportion become alcoholics. Will I not have done great harm? Well, of course, this is not impossible. However, I consider it highly unlikely, because non-drinkers are almost certainly a very different group of people from already drinkers. Probably highly health conscious and well controlled people.

To be frank, I suspect many non-drinkers do not drink for moral and religious reasons, and would not start drinking even if the evidence for benefit was utterly overwhelming. [Nor would I expect them to, some things are not up for discussion].

There is also the counterargument that if many were to benefit from moderate drinking, this would counterbalance the possible harm of a smaller number becoming alcoholics. The greater benefit for the greater number? Yes, I know, this is one definition of fascism, but hey…

I shall move to the example of sunbathing here. Yes, it is true that sun exposure can cause various skin cancers (probably not malignant melanoma). Doctors urge everyone to avoid the sun, almost at any cost. In doing so, we will prevent a certain amount of skin damage, and certain skin cancers. This is, of course, good.

However, as a study from Sweden demonstrated, the trade-off is that you are far more likely to die from CVD, and you will also reduce your life expectancy by about the same amount as if you smoke ‘Avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor for major causes of death: a competing risk analysis of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort.’

OBJECTIVE:

Women with active sunlight exposure habits experience a lower mortality rate than women who avoid sun exposure; however, they are at an increased risk of skin cancer. We aimed to explore the differences in main causes of death according to sun exposure.

METHODS:

We assessed the differences in sun exposure as a risk factor for all-cause mortality in a competing risk scenario for 29,518 Swedish women in a prospective 20-year follow-up of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden (MISS) cohort. Women were recruited from 1990 to 1992 (aged 25-64 years at the start of the study). We obtained detailed information at baseline on sun exposure habits and potential confounders. The data were analysed using modern survival statistics.

RESULTS:

Women with active sun exposure habits were mainly at a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and non-cancer/non-CVD death as compared to those who avoided sun exposure. As a result of their increased survival, the relative contribution of cancer death increased in these women. Non-smokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group, indicating that avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking. Compared to the highest sun exposure group, life expectancy of avoiders of sun exposure was reduced by 0.6-2.1 years.

CONCLUSION:

The longer life expectancy amongst women with active sun exposure habits was related to a decrease in CVD and non-cancer/non-CVD mortality, causing the relative contribution of death due to cancer to increase.²

Why do medics write in such a convoluted way? Is there a course on ‘complete obfuscation of the reader’ that I missed somewhere along the line? Anyway, the point here is that sun exposure meant you very significantly avoid CVD death and live longer (good). But, if you die, you have more chance of dying of cancer (bad?). Of course, if you reduce death from CVD you will, by default, increase the risk of dying of cancer – well you have to die of something. Less of A means more of B.

As a cardiologist once said to me. ‘My job is to keep people alive for long enough for them to die of cancer.’ Sorry, but I do love black humour.

The general point here is that you must look at the greatest benefit to the greatest number. Could I tell a lot of people to avoid drinking alcohol because some people may, I repeat may, turn into alcoholics.

I shall leave you with a quote from an article ‘Ethanol and cardiovascular diseases: epidemiological, biochemical and clinical aspects.’

Conclusion: to drink or not to drink?

‘It is not easy to answer this Hamlet’s question, because alcohol consumption is like a razor-sharp double-edged sword. Current guidelines of the American Heart Association (AHA) state that moderate alcohol consumption is beneficial for cardiovascular health, but the AHA clearly states that non-drinkers should not begin drinking alcohol in middle age due to possible counter-balancing ill consequences of alcohol consumption. Before the definitive decision prospective randomized blinded trials would be important: engage a large pool of non-drinkers, half of whom would commence a moderate drinking regimen, whilst the other half remained abstainers.

The two groups would be followed for years in a search for eventual differences in cardiovascular disease and heart-related deaths. First possible data were available in 2008. King et al observed that of 7697 participants who had no history of cardiovascular disease and were non-drinkers at baseline 6.0% began moderate alcohol consumption and 0.4% began heavier drinking.

After 4 years, new moderate drinkers had a 38% lower chance of developing CVD than did their persistently nondrinking counterparts. Those who began drinking moderately experience a relatively prompt benefit of lower rate of CVD morbidity with no change in mortality rates after 4 years. The collected data make a strong case of the cardiac benefit of controlled drinking.’³

Thank you and cheers. Not that I expect I will have convinced anyone who objected to my last article.

1: http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j909

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26992108

3: Ginter E, Simko V. ‘Ethanol and cardiovascular disease: epidemiological biochemical and clinical aspects.’ Bratisl Lek Listy 2008: 109(12) 590-4

Alcohol

Many moons ago when I wrote The Great Cholesterol Con I provided a very short section at the end on what people should do, to avoid heart disease. It went something like this:

1: Do not smoke cigarettes (to which I would now add  – or anything else).

2: Take exercise – that you enjoy. Don’t try to drive yourself into the ground. Walking outside is particularly good, especially on a sunny day.

3: If you don’t drink alcohol, start. If you do drink, drink regularly – don’t binge drink – and make sure that you enjoy what you drink. Drink with friends, drink sociably, don’t drink to get drunk.

4: If you hate your job, get another one – don’t feel trapped.

5: Make a new friend, join a club, find an area of life that you enjoy. Praise other people and try to compliment other people more often.

6: Look forward to something enjoyable every day, every month, and longer term.

Not a very long list I admit, and even at the time I was aware that there were other things that could be done. However, I was reluctant to write yet another ‘ten ways to stop heart disease completely – forever (money back if you die)’ type of book. My sister was critical of my ‘advice free’ book. ‘People want to be told what to do.’was her terse comment. She is good at terse.

My view was that advice should be accepted by the bucketful, but only given out by the thimbleful. People need, I replied with the utmost pomposity, to make their own decisions about what to do with their lives, and not keep looking for some fluffed up latter day prophet to guide them. Not giving direct advice has the added advantage that you won’t get sued, or lose your license to practice medicine. Or at least, it makes it far less likely.

However, in my long and winding series on what causes heart disease I have popped in a few bits of advice along the way. In this particular blog, I am returning to my Great Cholesterol Con advice on alcohol. Whilst writing that book I had noticed, and have continued to notice, that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of dying of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Also, that non-drinkers generally have the shortest life expectancy. In short, if you don’t drink, start drinking.

The rest of the medical profession absolutely hates this message. At heart, you see, most of them are secret puritans. The idea that doing something enjoyable, might also be good for you, is just too much to bear.

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” H.L. Mencken

Which means that the medical profession have done their best to attack any evidence that alcohol may be good for you. The most common argument used to dismiss the fact that non-drinkers have the shortest life expectancy, is that they have some underlying illness that stops them drinking. It is the underlying illness that then causes them to die, and not the fact that they do not drink.

‘There are ongoing debates about the role of combining different types of current non-drinkers in producing this apparent protective effect (of moderate drinking). Specifically, former or occasional drinkers might have reduced or ceased drinking because of ill health, making the aggregated non-drinking group artificially seem to have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality.’¹

Or maybe not.

You may recognise the exact same argument used on cholesterol levels. In general, those with the lowest cholesterol levels also have the shortest lifespan. A phenomenon noted in almost all long-term studies. This, we are told, is absolutely and certainly NOT because a low cholesterol level is harmful. It is because an underlying illness lowers cholesterol levels and it is the underlying illness that kills people– not the low cholesterol levels themselves. Good try (no evidence).

The irony, of course, is that this would seem to be the perfect illustration of the fact that a low cholesterol level is caused by ill health, and not a sign of good health. Or to put this another way, if a low cholesterol level is caused by an underlying illness, that kills you, then a low cholesterol level can hardly be considered something to be striven for. Can it? (See under PSCK-9 inhibitors increasing overall mortality.)

At present our glorious cardiovascular experts are happy to inform us, in all seriousness, that a low cholesterol level can be both a sign of underlying illness, and a cause of good cardiovascular health.  Or, to put it another way, the cholesterol level can be both an effect of illness and a cause of illness. That’s the problem with logic. Misuse it, and it will come around and bite you on the bum.

Anyway, returning to alcohol. Is there any evidence that people who do not drink, do so because they are suffering from an underlying illness? No, there is not. Or, if there is I have never seen it. It is just a meme which, because it fits with firmly held underlying prejudices, has become accepted as a fact.

Actually, when it comes to prejudices, my own is that alcohol – as a chemical – is not protective against CVD. It is protective because in the various forms that humans drink it, it is relaxing, reduces stress/strain, and when it is drunk in company it is part of a lifestyle that is protective. In short, if you are looking for CVD protection, you would be best not to stir sixteen grams of pure alcohol into a beaker containing two hundred mls of water, then consume every morning before breakfast. [Two units].

Far better to uncork a bottle of red wine, (white wine, what is all that about?) thirty minutes before a nice home cooked meal. Then pour it lovingly into a glass, swirl it around a bit, then enjoy. If you can also do this outside, looking over a sapphire blue bay, with boats bobbing in a light breeze, so much the better. [This was never really an option whilst growing up in Scotland.]

In short, I do not believe drinking alcohol is a true ‘drug’ effect. The lifestyle around drinking has a major part to play. However, I may be wrong. Researchers have studied the effects of different types of drink on factors that I consider key for CVD. Endothelial function, and blood clotting factors. It seems that red wine, and beer are the most beneficial.

Here, from a paper entitled: ‘Acute effects of different alcoholic beverages on vascular endothelium, inflammatory markers and thrombosis fibrinolysis system.’

CONCLUSIONS:

‘Acute consumption of red wine or beer improves endothelial function and decreases vWF levels, suggesting that the type of beverage may differently affect endothelial function and thrombosis/fibrinolysis system in healthy adults.’²

vWF is von Willibrand Factor, something I have written about in the past. Research has demonstrated that people with low vWF levels are up to 60% less likely to die from CVD. vWF tends to make platelets sticky and more likely to cause blood clots. Alcohol consumption also considerably reduces fibrinogen levels, a key clotting factor, at all levels of drinking.

However, if you drink a great deal, the effects can reverse. You also get a sharp rebound in some clotting factors. Heavy drinking appears to increase tissue factor (THE key clotting factor), factor VII, and other pro-clotting factors such as plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1). ³

Clearly, therefore, there does seem to be a ‘therapeutic window’ for alcohol consumption. An amount of drinking where the benefits are greater than the potential harms. Actually, I hate writing the words ‘therapeutic window’ alongside ‘alcohol consumption’. To me, this turns the act of drinking alcohol into a dull and joyless disease prevention activity

Viewing alcohol as some form of drug completely misses the point that there is, I strongly believe, ‘happy’ drinking and ‘unhappy’ drinking. How you drink, is a least as important as how much. I make this point with great confidence despite having no evidence at all to support the statement.

However, if you want to treat drinking alcohol as something like taking a vitamin tablet, or a daily aspirin, then I suppose you can. And good luck with that. You would be like a relative of mine who had been persuaded that drinking red wine was particularly heart healthy. He drank one point five, standard, glasses of red wine every evening with his meal.  Not a drop more, not a drop less.

I have no idea if he enjoyed the red wine or not. He was not the sort of man to share that sort of information. He was more of a ‘life is to be endured, not enjoyed’, sort of a man. Still, with his meticulous wine drinking regimen, he remained alive for twenty-five years after a massive, nearly fatal heart attack. So, maybe he was right – and I am wrong.

Anyway, the main reason for writing this blog is that, just before I went on holiday, I noticed that there had been a massive study done on the effect of drinking alcohol on CVD, published in BMJ open. It had the snappy title:

‘Association between clinically recorded alcohol consumption and initial presentation of 12 cardiovascular diseases: population based cohort study using linked health records.’⁴

Ah, the poetry, the emotional power of it all. Why do researchers feel they must use such emotionally crippled language, the dreaded passive voice? Of course, I know the reason, they won’t get published if they dare use an active verb, or a personal pronoun. ‘I did this.’ Is not a phrase you will ever see in a research paper. More’s the pity. Language and emotion are closely linked, but attempting to use only the most stripped out passive language does not add scientific accuracy, it just makes it very, very, very, dull to read.

Back to the paper itself. It was, of course, observational. However, it was very big. They looked at 1,937, 360 people. And there were 114,859 cardiovascular events, of various sorts. From heart attacks, to strokes, to a first heart failure diagnosis. It also included something that I have not really come across before ‘unheralded coronary death.’ Which means, I presume, dropping dead of a heart attack without any prior diagnosis of heart disease, or any kind.

The results that I was most interested in were the following. The comparison between non-drinkers and moderate drinkers.

Non-drinking was associated with

• 33% increased risk of unstable angina
• 32% increased risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack)
• 56% increased risk of unheralded coronary death
• 24% increase risk of heart failure
• 12% increased risk of ischaemic stroke
• 22% increased risk of peripheral arterial disease
• 32% increased risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm

Interestingly, these increased risks were very similar in heavy drinkers: Heavy drinking (exceeding guidelines) was associated with

• 21% increased risk of unheralded coronary death
• 22% increased risk of heart failure
• 50% increased risk of cardiac arrest
• 11% increased risk of transient ischaemic attack
• 33% increased risk of ischaemic stroke (intracerebral
• 37% increased risk of cerebral haemorrhage
• 35% increased risk of peripheral arterial disease
• 12% lower risk of myocardial infarction
• 7% lower risk of stable angina

Which reinforces the fact that there is a level of drinking that is beneficial which lies somewhere between non-drinking and heavy drinking. It is called moderate, but it is very difficult to know what this means. I would guess between one and four units a day.

At what point does ‘heavy drinking’ start. Again, this is difficult to say, as researchers tend to clump anyone who drinks more than ‘moderately’ into the group of heavy drinking. This is a game that I call statistical clumping.

By which I mean, we have (for example) four groups. Non-drinkers, occasional drinkers (one or two drinks a week), moderate drinkers (one or two units a day), then heavy drinkers. ‘Heavy drinkers’ as a group, contains all those who drink more than two units a day. In effect, you are ‘clumping’ together those who drink more than two units a day with those who drink two bottles of gin a day. This kind of skews your figures and makes it impossible to know when beneficial drinking stops and damaging drinking starts. [The same game is played with obesity].

So, where are we? Adjusting left right and centre for all confounders, we are left with a simple fact. If you drink alcohol in moderation (with all the provisos attached to that statement), you will significantly reduce your risk of developing, and dying, or CVD.

So, I stand by my statement made in The Great Cholesterol Con. If you don’t drink alcohol, start. Did the authors of the study recommend that non-drinkers start dinking? Of course not. They would never dare. Here is as close as they got.

‘Similarly, while we found that moderate drinkers were less likely to initially present with several cardiovascular diseases than non-drinkers, it could be argued that it would be unwise to encourage individuals to take up drinking as a means of lowering their risk (although it must be noted that the findings from this study do not directly support this as we did not consider transitions from non-drinking to drinking).

This is because there are arguably safer and more effective ways of reducing cardiovascular risk, such as increasing physical activity and smoking cessation.’

Well, I would agree that stopping smoking and exercise would be more effective than starting drinking. However, the statement is still ridiculous. What of those who do not smoke, and who do take exercise. What of those who will not stop smoking and will never takes exercise. Should they still not drink alcohol, and thus fail to gain the obvious benefits?

The other statement is equally ridiculous…. ‘We did not consider transitions from non-drinking to drinking.’ So, we know that moderate drinking is beneficial. We know that not drinking increases risk. But we don’t know that if you start drinking, this will be beneficial.

I shall state this in a different way. ‘We did a placebo controlled study where we saw that those taking the drug gained benefit. However, we did not start giving those on the placebo the active drug, so we do not know if moving from taking placebo to the active drug would be beneficial.’ Using this logic, no clinical study ever done has ever proven anything. Sigh. Where is the God of logic when you need him – or indeed her.

In the end, I have this to say about alcohol. Moderate drinking (whatever that may be) is not harmful. It is probably beneficial. My own view is that alcohol consumption is tightly wrapped within healthy lifestyles to do with sociability friendship and suchlike, and that the amount of alcohol is only a part of the story. However, if you want to drink a couple of glasses of red wine in the evening – go for it.

1: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j909

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18295937

3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9607117

4: http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j909