Cholesterol

[jp1]

I'm with Steve regarding PA's. Until last year I had not seen a doc since we moved to San Francisco in 2009, other than a specific non-life-threatening situation that obviously required a day surgery procedure during our first year here. A couple of issues prompted me to finally go for a physical 6 months ago. The PA spent a full hour with me taking a full medical history and discussing at length various concerns and potential issues that an old man of 50 should be thinking about. The blood work showed higher than ideal cholesterol and in our followup conversation he basically left it up to me to determine if/how I wanted to proceed on that front. Reading Steve's post about the ratios confirmed my thoughts on the subject at the time (no statins unless absolutely necessary) and I will be rejecting any efforts to put me on statins, but may ask for more tests next time of my pattern A and pattern B LDL. After that conversation I came to realize that that one issue (statins) was one of the main things that kept me out of doctors' offices for 8 years.

The issue which ultimately pushed me to see the PA was tinnitus. He didn't deal with that in any substantive way beyond explaining what does/doesn't cause it (allaying my fears that I had some underlying serious issue) and then gave me a referral to a specialist to look into it in more depth.

[Teacher Terry]

-Tammy, I tried allergy shots and not only did they not help but they almost killed me. Now I am taking allergy drops that my insurance will not pay for. No one has ever died from these. They help but still need asthma meds.

[Williamsmith]

-Tammy, I tried allergy shots and not only did they not help but they almost killed me. Now I am taking allergy drops that my insurance will not pay for. No one has ever died from these. They help but still need asthma meds.

I am very interested in this. My wife gets a weekly allergy shot. I’m not sure what they do for her.

[mamalatte]

sweetana - do you mind if I ask, what type of scan did you have that shows there is no plaque? I thought that the only way to find this out was the stress/treadmill test followed by some sort of angiogram procedure if "stress test" results not good, but perhaps I am way outdated??

[Williamsmith]

My experience has taught me not to fret about the details. Death is death. It comes by way of heart disease and it comes by way of an ice dam breaking loose from a roof at the worst time. One should not mock it but I think we Americans are preoccupied with our “privilege” to live long fulfilled lives. Amen.

[sweetana3]

mamalatte: A local hospital (to use equipment and personnel that are not 100% used by patients) has $49 heart scans on the CT machines to detect hardened plaque build up in the various arteries. The results are immediately read by a professional and provided in writing. Quick and cheap way to learn something about the heart. I had zero calcium build up but husband found he had 50%+ build up and made an appointment with a cardiologist (not a part of this hospital) for a longer workup.

[catherine]

Thanks to pharmaceutical companies advertising and drug pushing.....I have become quite cynical about the need for all these chemical “fixes”. Is here any evidence that all these pills are making us healthier?

I always hate to be an apologist for the pharma companies, but I found it very interesting that over the 20 years I have
asked doctors the same question: "What has changed over the past decade?" Primary care physicians over the past 10 years inevitably said "well, I no longer have to run to the ER for patients who have had heart attacks."

I'm just as skeptical of Big Pharma as anyone else but I do believe that antihypertensives have helped a lot. Sorry. I'm the one that has probably asked a few hundred doctors the same question and I get the same answer.

At the same time, are we overprescribed medications and are our healthcare choices driven by profit? Absolutely. But I give credit where credit is due.

You have to take the good with the bad I guess.

[JaneV2.0]

Or it could be because smoking rates are way down...

[Williamsmith]

Or it could be because smoking rates are way down...

You have to admit.....she’s got a point. I mean, in the medical field don’t they always refer to double blind research? Or something like that?

[catherine]

You have to admit.....she’s got a point. I mean, in the medical field don’t they always refer to double blind research? Or something like that?

Check out the Framingham study if you want to look at double-blind studies. https://www.framinghamheartstudy.org...hs/history.php

Smoking is definitely a risk factor for heart disease, but high blood pressure trumps that. And antihypertensives do lower high blood pressure.