I finally got around to reading the June 2013 issue of
Men's Journal, you know, the one w/
Mark Ruffalo on the cover. I was particularly interested in the article, "
The New Guide to Heart Health", starting on page 69. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the article online to offer you a link so you'll need to download your copy electronically or go old school and either purchase it at a newsstand or borrow it from your public library.
As with a lot of information parsed out by the lay press, some of it is misinterpreted, but for the most part, the author got it right. For instance,
if you don't have known heart disease, taking a statin won't offer you much benefit. Over 5 years, no lives were saved, although 1 heart attack & 1 stroke were prevented for every 60 persons and for every 268 persons, respectively, taking a statin. Balance this against the fact that 1 in 67 developed diabetes and 1 in 10 developed muscle aches/damage. And as the author noted, eating along the lines of the
Mediterranean diet was associated w/almost 1 in 3 lower risk of heart attack in a study published earlier this year.
However, I was disappointed that there was no mention of using any calculator to determine risk of heart disease but rather a suggestion to "
Upgrade Your Cholesterol Test" by getting a CT scan of the heart to measure coronary artery calcium. Sure,
CAC helps stratify risk but it's really only useful in those at intermediate risk. So rather than expose everyone to unnecessary radiation, why not calculate one's risk for a future event in the next 10 years using
Framingham criteria,
Reynolds Risk score, or even
QRISK2 (if you're an Anglophile). For point of reference, low risk is considered less than 10% while high risk is greater than 20%. Intermediate risk is therefore in between or 10-20% over the next 10 years.
Check back in tomorrow when I discuss ordering those additional tests.
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