April 25th 2019

Thank you to those of you enquiring after my health. I have had a horrible cough and cold and proper ‘man flu’ for the last couple of weeks, now settling. Before that, skiing, before that lecturing. But enough about me.

Over the last few weeks I have watched a flurry of activity from all directions, as the attacks on red meat and saturated fat intensify. Walter Willett must be writing up a new research paper every five minutes, such is the wealth of material he has cascaded down upon a grateful world in recent weeks (I suspect others may be doing much of the heavy lifting on his behalf).

It also seems that the Lancet has given up any pretence of being an objective seeker of the truth. Instead, the Lancet appears to have become a mouthpiece for the vegan movement. Here is what the Lancet has to say about their new EAT-Lancet project.

‘Food systems have the potential to nurture human health and support environmental sustainability; however, they are currently threatening both. Providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an immediate challenge. Although global food production of calories has kept pace with population growth, more than 820 million people have insufficient food and many more consume low-quality diets that cause micronutrient deficiencies and contribute to a substantial rise in the incidence of diet-related obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases, including coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Unhealthy diets pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than does unsafe sex, and alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined. Because much of the world’s population is inadequately nourished and many environmental systems and processes are pushed beyond safe boundaries by food production, a global transformation of the food system is urgently needed.’¹

Many out there probably agree with much of this statement, especially the parts about environmental sustainability and insufficient food to feed many people. However, even if you do, you have to ask what an investigative medical journal is doing in this space. There is no longer even an attempt to be mildly objective. The Lancet has simply taken sides. Which is the exact opposite of what any scientific journal should ever, ever, do. You may notice that Professor Walter Willett was the lead author of the article quoted above

Here is one statement that I would like to further highlight. Unhealthy diets pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than does unsafe sex, and alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined.’

At this point I completely part company with Walter Willett. For it is the most complete and absolute nonsense. For a start, how did he calculate the figures? For example, sexually transmitted disease – and death. How many people die of this? How many people suffer, and by how much? Do we have any idea?

Well, we know that many children die from congenital syphilis. How many around the world? I checked the WHO publications on this, and there are only estimates to be had. HIV? Gonorrhoea? Hundreds of millions that are infected, and affected, but how many millions? How many deaths? Unknown really.

We can perhaps be a little clearer on the other things such as cigarette smoking. Just looking at one country, the US:

‘Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day.’ ²

The US population is around three hundred million. The population of the world around seven billion. If 480,000 deaths a year occur in the US, this would equate to eleven million deaths a year around the world.

Alcohol?

Around the world, about 1 in 5 adults were estimated to drink heavily in any given 30-day period. The burden of ill health for alcohol was less than for tobacco, but still substantial: 85.0 million DALYs [Disability adjusted life years]. Alcohol-related illness was estimated to cause 33.0 deaths per 100,000 people worldwide.³

Thirty-three deaths per 100,000 people worldwide is two point three million deaths each year from alcohol, worldwide. As for ‘illegal’ drug deaths.

‘Globally, UNODC estimates that there were 190,900 (range: 115,900 to 230,100) drug-related deaths in 2015, or 39.6 (range: 24.0 to 47.7) deaths per million people aged 15-64 years. This is based on the reporting of drug-related deaths by 86 countries.’⁴

This figure seems low, based on the CDC review of drugs deaths in the US

‘70,237 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in 2017. The age-adjusted rate of overdose deaths increased significantly by 9.6% from 2016 (19.8 per 100,000) to 2017 (21.7 per 100,000). Opioids—mainly synthetic opioids (other than methadone)—are currently the main driver of drug overdose deaths. Opioids were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017 (67.8% of all drug overdose deaths).’ ⁵

70,237 in the US would extrapolate up to 1.623 million deaths a year worldwide. Maybe other countries don’t hand out opiods like sweeties to everyone. Although, in the UK, we are certainly following suit.

So, we have some figures to go on. Somewhere in the fifteen to twenty million per year killed by unsafe sex, alcohol, drug and tobacco use each year. Who knows what the morbidity might be?

This is a gigantic figure, and we are supposed to believe that unhealthy diets are worse than this? I would challenge Walter Willett to find a single randomised controlled clinical study demonstrating that any dietary substance has significantly increased the risk of death in anyone, ever.

By unhealthy, of course, what the authors mean is animal fats/saturated fat, red meat, bacon, sausages and suchlike. Essentially, anything that is not vegan.

What of saturated fat? The last time it was possible to get an accurate assessment of saturated fat and deaths from CHD in individual countries was in 2008. After that, the figures mysteriously disappeared. Luckily Zoe Harcombe kept a copy and sent it to me.⁶

From these figures, I present you with a graph. Sorry, it is a bit complicated. So, please take a little time to study it, because it has two axes. The percentage of energy from saturated fat in the diet is the top axis, going from 0% up to 18%. As you can see from this, saturated fat intake is highest in France at 15.5%, and lowest in Georgia at 5.7%. Second lowest Azerbaijan, then Ukraine, then Russia.

The other axis looks at deaths from CHD. With the highest being Russia, then Georgia, then Azerbaijan, then the Ukraine.

The fact that stands out is that the countries with the lowest saturated fat intake had, on average, six times the rate of death from CHD, in comparison to the four countries with the highest saturated fat intake. I like to wave this graph at people who tell me that saturated fat in the diet is the single most important risk factor for CVD. I also like teasing vegans with it. Although they rarely respond well to teasing – as you may imagine.

I would also like to enquire of Walter Willett what he makes of data like this? I presume he would just ignore it, or point to the vegetarians of La Loma California, or suchlike. But, as any scientists know, you cannot just pick and choose populations you like and ignore those that you don’t. Nor would I dream of saying that, from this graph, we can prove that saturated fat intake protects against CVD. However tempting that may be.

But I know that this is what the EAT-Lancet are likely to do, along with all other researchers who simply ignore things they don’t like. In fact, the games played to prove that saturated fat is bad for you, twist the fabric of logic well beyond breaking point.

Which takes to me to favourite paper of all time. ‘Teleoanalysis: combining data from different types of study.’ Published in the BMJ more than fifteen years ago. ⁷

The paper makes this statement:

‘A meta-analysis of randomised trials suggested that a low dietary fat intake had little effect on the risk of ischaemic heart disease.’ Good, I like that. It seems astonishingly accurate. Randomised trials on dietary fat have had no effect. Which is the point where this paper should really have fallen silent.

But no, the authors decided that we should ignore these pesky studies a.k.a. evidence. Instead we should use teleolanalysis. I shall now quote directly, and heavily from the papers itself.

‘Once a causal link has been established between a risk factor and a disease it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to determine directly the dose-response relation. For example, although we know that saturated fat intake increases the risk of ischaemic heart disease, the exact size of the effect cannot be established experimentally because long term trials of major dietary changes are impractical. One way to overcome the problem is to produce a summary estimate of the size of the relation by combining data from different types of study using an underused method that we call teleoanalysis. This summary estimate can be used to determine the extent to which the disease can be prevented and thus the most effective means of prevention. We describe the basis of teleoanalysis, suggest a simple one-step approach, and validate the results with a worked example.

What is teleoanalysis?

Teleoanalysis can be defined as the synthesis of different categories of evidence to obtain a quantitative general summary of (a) the relation between a cause of a disease and the risk of the disease and (b) the extent to which the disease can be prevented. Teleoanalysis is different from meta-analysis because it relies on combining data from different classes of evidence rather than one type of study.

In contrast to meta-analysis, which increases the precision of summary estimates of an effect within a category of study, teleoanalysis combines different categories of study to quantify the relation between a causative factor and the risk of disease. This is helpful in determining medical practice and public health policy. Put simply, meta-analysis is the analysis of many studies that have already been done; teleoanalysis provides the answer to questions that would be obtained from studies that have not been done and often, for ethical and financial reasons, could never be done.’

In so doing we can prove that saturated fat causes heart disease. ‘I say, Bravo. Bravo, sir. You are truly a genius.’

It is upon such foundations as this that the EAT-Lancet authors can say – in all seriousness – Unhealthy diets pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than does unsafe sex, and alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined.’

Keep saying it and people will end up believing you. Even if you have not a scrap of evidence to support it. A phenomenon first noted by Lewis Carroll in his magical poem the Hunting of the Snark…

“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,

   As he landed his crew with care;

Supporting each man on the top of the tide

   By a finger entwined in his hair.

“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:

   That alone should encourage the crew.

Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:

   What I tell you three times is true.”

Unfortunately for the EAT-Lancet crew, repeating nonsense as many times as you like cannot magically transform it from nonsense to truth. The biggest recent study on the impact of diet and heart health was the PURE study. Which was reported thus, last year:

‘Findings from this large, epidemiological cohort study involving 135,335 individuals aged 35 to 70 years from 18 low-, middle- and high-income countries (across North America, Europe, South America, the Middle East, South Asia, China, South East Asia and Africa) suggest that high carbohydrate intake increases total mortality, while high fat intake is associated with a lower risk of total mortality and has no association with the risk of myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease-related mortality.

Furthermore, a higher saturated fat intake appeared to be associated with a 21% lower risk of stroke. Why might these results be in such contrast with current dietary advice? “The conclusion that low fat intake is protective is based on a few very old studies with questionable methodology,” explains Professor Salim Yusuf (McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), senior investigator for the PURE study. “The problem is that poorly designed studies performed 25–30 years ago were accepted and championed by various health organisations when, in fact, there are several recent studies using better methods, which show that a higher fat intake has a neutral effect,” he continues, citing the example of the Women’s Health Initiative trial conducted by the National Institutes of Health in 49,000 women that showed no benefit of a low-fat diet on heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease.’ ⁸

Anyway, I know that facts are pretty much useless against the diet-heart behemoth. It eats facts, turns them through one hundred and eighty degrees and spits them out again. I just felt the need to let people know that IT IS ALL COMPLETE AND UTTER RUBBISH. Gasp. Thud. I feel my man flu returning.

Refs:

1: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31788-4/fulltext

2: ‘https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm

3: https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/tobacco-alcohol-and-illegal-drugs-are-global-health-threat/

4: http://www.unodc.org/wdr2017/field/Booklet_2_HEALTH.pdf

5: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html

6: European cardiovascular disease statistics 2008 edition. Steven Allendar et al: Health Economics Research Centre, Dept of Public Health, University of Oxford.

7: https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7415/616

8: https://www.escardio.org/Congresses-&-Events/ESC-Congress/Congress-resources/Congress-news/the-pure-study-understanding-the-relationship-between-nutrition-and-heart-disease

17th March 2019

[Is stress the most important cause of cardiovascular disease?]

Forgetting for a moment attacks by various people, and newspapers, that shalI remain nameless [Mail on Sunday UK], I thought I would return to the more interesting topic of what actually does cause cardiovascular disease and. As I have done several times before, I am looking at stress/strain.

I know that, deep down, most people feel that stress can lead to illness. ‘Oh, I was terribly stressed, then I went down with the flu.’ Or ‘He has been under a lot of stress and had a heart attack.’ If we go back over a hundred years William Osler, a famous physician, described a man suffering from angina as ” … robust, the vigorous in mind and body, the keen and ambitious man, the indicator of whose engines are always at ‘full speed ahead’ “.

The idea that hard driving Type A personalities were more likely to die of heart attacks gained great popularity at one time. But you don’t hear so much about this anymore. It is all diet, and cholesterol, and blood pressure and diabetes and tablet after tablet. Measure this, monitor that, lower this and that.

I believe that the side-lining of stress to be a monumental mistake. Because it remains true that stress is the single most important cause of heart disease, and I intend to try and explain exactly how this can be. Once more into the breach dear friend.

I shall start this little journey by explaining that stress is the wrong word to use. In fact, the use of the word stress has often been more of a barrier than an aid understanding. This is because, when we talk about stress, we really mean strain.

Stress or strain

It was Hans Seyle who coined the term ‘stress’ to cover the concept of negative psychological events leading to diseases, specifically heart disease. Of course, this is a terrible oversimplification, but it will do for now. Seyle later admitted that, had English been his first language (he was born in Slovakia) he would have used the term strain, not stress.

This is because stress is the external force placed on an object, or a human being. Strain is the resulting deformation or damage that can occur. Therefore, it is the resultant strain that is the driver of ill health.

For example, being told you are a useless idiot by one or another parent would be considered a significant external negative ‘stressor.’ The resultant anxiety and upset then represents the strain. However, the two things do not necessarily match up very well.

If you are highly resilient, or perhaps deaf, being told you are a useless idiot may have absolutely no effect on you whatsoever. You will continue to whistle a happy tune, whilst skipping along the pavement.

If, on the other hand, you are a rather more sensitive soul, or perhaps being told you are a useless idiot is a daily occurrence, then the resultant strain/deformation may be quite severe. In this case, the same external stressor can result in completely different levels of internal strain – depending on the resilience of the individual.

To give another example, some people enjoy giving public talks, they look forward to it. Others would rather chew their own arm off rather than stand up and talk in public. Once again, we have the same external stressor, resulting in completely different levels of internal strain.

The death of a close relative, such as a husband, is a major negative stressor which, for most people would cause a significant burden of strain. However, if the husband was an abusive bully, who regularly beat his wife, the death may be a blessed relief and the levels of strain will be reduced greatly. Then again, the conflicting feelings of guilt, relief, happiness and grief can lead to immense strain.

In short, there is no point in saying that an individual is under a great deal of stress. That may or may not be true, but it is very difficult to define, or measure. What matters is their response to negative stressors – real or perceived. The internal strain.

Of course, this does not mean that you can discount external stressors. These can be very important on both an individual, and a population wide basis. So, before looking at strain in more detail, I am going to review external ‘population-wide stress(ors)’.

Population-wide stressors

Whilst this is a fascinating area, the terminology used is more than a little variable, and confusing. One of the problems is that the terminology swirls around, and people write about the same thing using different words or use the same words to describe different things. A bit like using IHD, CHD, CAD and CVD to describe much the same thing, I suppose.

To keep this simple, and stripping terminology down things down to basics, the concept I am trying to capture, and the word that I am going to use, here to describe the factor that can affect entire populations is ‘psychosocial stress’. By which I mean an environment where there is breakdown of community and support structures, often poverty, with physical threats and suchlike. A place where you would not really want to walk down the road unaccompanied.

This can be a zip code in the US, known as postcode in the UK. It can be a bigger physical area than that, such as a county, a town, or whole community – which could be split across different parts of a country. Such as native Americans living in areas that are called reservations.

On the largest scale it is fully possible for many countries to suffer from major psychosocial stress at the same time. This happened very dramatically after the breakup of the Soviet Union, which started in some countries earlier than others e.g. Poland. But the main event was the fall of the Berlin wall, and the collapse of communism across most of Eastern Europe. It was studied quite closely by a number of researchers. Here is one paper:

‘The mortality crisis in transition economies. Social disruption, acute psychosocial stress, and excessive alcohol consumption raise mortality rates during transition to a market economy.’ ¹

As the paper states:

‘Acute psychosocial stress was one of the main drivers of the sharp mortality increase experienced by the former communist countries of Europe. In central Europe, the post-communist mortality crisis was quickly solved, while in much of the former USSR, life expectancy at birth did not return to 1989 levels until 2013.’

The splintering of the Soviet Union is something to be, generally, celebrated. However, it caused a massive surge in premature deaths, mainly from cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Below is a graph which tracks at CVD deaths in men under 65s in four former Soviet countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus. The graph starts in the year 1980 and goes on to 2015 ².

CVD was similar in all four countries and was pretty steady, perhaps gently falling. Then, Berlin wall fell in 1989, with major disruption hitting Russia by 1991 when Gorbachev was ousted by Yeltsin. At which point CVD took off in all country.

It may be easier to see a clear pattern if we look at a single country in the Soviet Union, Lithuania. This is a graph that I have used several times before. Figures are from Euro Heart Statistics.

In Lithuania CVD was gently dropping until 1989 then – Bam! Virtually a doubling of the rate in a five-year period. Then it dropped straight back down again.

If you want a comparator country in Europe, here is the UK during the same time period. A steady uninterrupted fall (completley undisturbed by the launch of statins in 1987) Every other country in Western Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia etc. show the same pattern as the UK – a steady fall.

Getting back to the Soviet Union, it is it interesting that the main increase in those who died was seen in men, mainly middle aged men. To quote from the social disruption paper again:

‘Looking back, it could have been expected that the European mortality crisis would primarily have affected children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the disabled. Yet, as shown.. men were much more affected than women in every transition country. The fastest relative upswing in mortality was recorded for 20−39 year olds, who experienced a marked rise in violent deaths, while the fastest absolute rise occurred among 40−59 year olds, who were mainly affected by a rise in cardiovascular deaths.’

It seems inarguable that extreme psychosocial stress, as experienced in ex-Soviet Union countries after 1989, drove a massive spike in CVD deaths, which is only now beginning to settle down in many of the countries.

As an important aside, you may notice that, in Russia, the rate of CVD rose quickly from 1990 until about 1995, then dropped. Then it jumped up again in 1998. You may ask, what happened in 1998? Well, this was the year of the collapse of the Ruble – known as the Ruble crisis. It resulted in massive financial chaos, and levels of poverty exploded.

‘Mobs trying to get their savings were barred from entering the banks, executives flew to London to get suitcases full of dollars and coup plans were discussed in the newspapers. The value of the stock market dropped to 10 percent of its value of the previous year, the value of Ruble tumbled by 75 percent, and 18 of Russia’s 20 major banks effectively collapsed under massive debts. Foreign investors, some of them calling Russia “Indonesia with nukes,” fled the country.

Some have said the damage to the economy was greater than that unleashed by Hitler’s armies in World War II. By the time of the 1998 Ruble crash ran its course the poverty level had increased from 2 percent of the population in the Soviet era to 40 percent.’  ³

Moving away from the Soviet Union to the population that has undergone the single greatest and most extreme form of social breakdown and disruption, social stress and dislocation known. This is the Australian aboriginals. A group of people that has been subjected to an immense burden of negative stressors.

Here are a few bullet points from a study carried out by the Australian Government:

• Stress is a significant factor of the lives of Aboriginal young people.
• High levels of self-harming intent and behaviour. Feelings connected to loss of hope – high levels of anxiety and depression
• Rapid social change in Aboriginal communities.
• Interpersonal violence, accidents and poisoning, stress, alcohol and norms of violence as in male to male fighting.
• Domestic violence and child abuse, as well as sexual assault, are further stressors and sources of mental ill health.
• These behavioural outcomes reflect the impact of historical factors, colonisation and disadvantage.

What impact has this had, specifically on cardiovascular disease rates? A research study was done, called the Perth Aboriginal Atherosclerosis Risk Study (PAARS) population. The investigators looked at CHD (coronary heart disease), not CVD (cardiovascular disease) – which would also include strokes. Sorry for jumping about in the terminology, but everyone does. Indeed, it is hard to find two studies that use the same terminology, or end points.

Sticking to CHD, which basically means deaths from heart attacks, researchers found that the CHD rate in Austrailian Aboriginals was 14.9 per 1000/year versus 2.4 for the general population. This is 1,490 per 100,000 per year [this is metric most commonly used] and represents the highest rate I have ever seen in any population, in any country, at any time – ever. Although Belarus came pretty close at one point.

What also stands out is that the rate of heart attacks in Aborignal Australians was six fold higher than the surrounding population. However, if we separate the figures from men and woman, we can see something even more astonishing.

For Aboriginal men the rate of CHD was 15.0 versus 3.8 per 1000 per year. A four hundred per cent increase on men in the surrounding population. For aboriginal women the CHD was almost exactly the same as for the men, 15.0 per 1000 per year – which is highly unusual in itself – as men normally have a much higher rate than women.

The astonishing fact is that Australian Aboriginal women had a rate of CHD that was ten times the rate of the surrounding female population. Or, to put it another way. One thousand per cent higher. ⁴

A similar picture, though less extreme, can be seen in Native Americans. As outlined in this 2005 paper. ‘Stress, Trauma, and Coronary Heart Disease Among Native Americans.’ ⁵

‘This study quantified exposure to trauma among American Indians, adding to the existing evidence that this population experiences a disproportional amount of trauma. We were intrigued by the statement “It may be that high rates of trauma exposure contribute to the increasing prevalence of cardiovascular disease among American Indian men and women, the leading cause of death among this population” and wanted to lend support to this assertion. Indeed, American Indians now have the highest rates of cardiovascular disease in the United States.

In a study similar to the AI-SUPERPFP study (American Indian Service Utilization, Psychiatric Epidemiology, Risk and Protective Factors Project (AI-SUPERPFP) Team). Koss et al. documented adverse childhood exposures among 7 Native American tribes and compared these exposures to levels observed in the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study conducted by Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a health maintenance organization population. Compared with participants in the ACE study, not only did the American Indians have a significantly higher rate of exposure to any trauma (86% vs 52%), but they also had a more than 5-fold risk of having been exposed to 4 or more categories of adverse childhood experiences (33% vs 6.2%).’

Wherever you look, you can see that populations that have been exposed to significant social dislocation, and major psychosocial stressors, have extremely high rate of coronary heart disease/cardiovascular disease.

This can be supported if we look at the twenty countries in the world that have the highest rates of CVD – both men and women. Figures from WHO 2017 ⁶.  Ex-soviet countries in bold

• Turkmenistan
• Ukraine
• Kyrgyzstan
• Belarus
• Uzbekistan
• Moldova
• Yemen
• Azerbaijan
• Russia
• Tajikistan
• Afghanistan
• Syria
• Pakistan
• Mongolia
• Lithuania
• Georgia
• Sudan
• Egypt
• Iraq
• Lebanon

I feel that some of these figures may not be entirely accurate. Such as the CVD rate in Syria, or Iraq in the last few years. As for the rest. I would not like to comment on the social and political situations in all of these countries in too much detail. However, we are not looking at peaceful and mature democracies here. Mainly dictatorships and countries riven by internal conflict.

Winding this back to the US, there is a pattern of CHD showing that certain counties suffer much higher rates than others. Figures taken from the CDC. On this graph darker means a higher rate of heart disease, lighter means less heart disease. These are deaths per 100,000 per year. You may discern a pattern.

The UK shows precisely the same sort of picture with inner cities and more deprived areas, having much higer rates than affluent suburbs.

Wherever and however you look it becomes apparent that higher levels of psychosocial stress are strongly associated with CVD/CHD. In some cases, very strongly indeed.

But how can psychosocial stress and factors such as childhood trauma, as seen in the Australian Aboriginals, or Native Americans, lead to a build up of atherosclerotic plaques in the arteries,the main cause of CVD?

Or to put it another way, how does a negative external stressor, lead to the internal physiological strain, that causes CVD? For that we need to turn to Sapolski, Bjortorp and Marmot. Which comes next!

1: https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/298/pdfs/mortality-crisis-in-transition-economies.pdf

2: https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/publications/statistics/european-cardiovascular-disease-statistics-2017

3: http://factsanddetails.com/russia/Economics_Business_Agriculture/sub9_7b/entry-5170.html

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20427550

12th January 2018

I’m going to try and draw some of the strands together at this point, in an attempt to provide some advice as to how to reduce the risk of CVD. Of course, there is massive overlap with other health issues. Smoking, for example, does not just cause CVD; it also causes lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and many other unpleasant things.

So, you could call this instalment of the blog: “How to remain healthier and live longer”. Here I am only going to focus on the big-ticket items, the things that have been shown to make a real difference to life expectancy. For example, even if you believe that statins are effective in reducing CVD risk, when you look at the clinical trial data – assuming you believe it, one hundred per-cent – the average increase in life expectancy is around four days, if you take a statin for five years¹.

Which means that, if you start taking a statin aged fifty, and keep taking it religiously for thirty years, you could expect to live for an extra: 6 x 4 days = 24 days. Or a bit less than a month. You may think this is worthwhile, you may not. This, by the way is the best-case scenario.

On the other hand, it has been estimated that if you take regular exercise, you could live for an extra four and a half years. Which makes exercise at least fifty-four times more effective than statins. Or, to put it another way 5,400% more effective.

As I hope that you can see, I am trying to give you a sense of the scale of benefits, or harms, that I am discussing here. Most of what is hyped by the pharmaceutical industry, and others, sits on the cusp of completely and utterly irrelevant. Is coffee good or bad for you? Who cares, the effect on life expectancy is in the order of a couple of days – either way.

Looking at preventative cardiovascular medications, the only ones that make a really major difference are anti-coagulants (blood thinners) such as warfarin, rivaroxaban, apixaban and suchlike. These are primarily used to prevent stroke in atrial fibrillation. Here, you can reduce the absolute risk of a stroke by around 50% over ten years. I am not sure how this can be re-calculated into increased life expectancy. I am sure it could be done, but it is complicated. However, this is still a massive benefit, and would mean years, not days, of extra life.

In short, if you have atrial fibrillation, you most definitely should take an anticoagulant. You might want to explore magnesium supplementation, particularly if you are taking an anti-acid PPI such as omeprazole, lansoprazole – or any of the other ’…prazoles.’ These lower magnesium levels. They also lower NO and, vitamin B12 levels and double the risk of CVD death. So, I would recommend never, ever, taking these long-term.

You might also want to try reducing weight, alcohol intake, stress/strain, and carbohydrate intake at the same time to see if you can flip out of atrial fibrillation naturally. It may work, it may not.

Moving away from that slight detour, what are the other real, big-ticket items? Perhaps the most obvious is smoking, or not-smoking. Smoking twenty cigarettes a day will reduce your life expectancy by around six years. Not only that, it will reduce ‘healthy life expectancy’ by far more. By which I mean you may well have ten or twenty years of such nasty things as: difficulty breathing, repeated chest infections, leg ulcers, angina, and suchlike, before you then die – early.

At this point you may be thinking, this is all incredibly conventional. Well, yes, it is. However, there is absolutely no doubt that exercise, and not smoking, have a massive and positive effect on health. Which means that they can hardly be ignored.

Of course, some people smoke and live to ninety, and some people take no exercise and live to ninety. So, what does that prove? Nothing at all. You can play Russian roulette for several rounds without blowing your brains out, but it is going to get you in the end.

My next big-ticket item, however, is not conventional at all. It is sunshine. If there is one piece of mainstream medical advice that I would vote as the single most damaging, it would be the current, ever more hysterical, advice to avoid the sun. If we dare expose ourselves to a stray photon, we are told, then we will vastly increase the risk of dying of skin cancer.

It is true that fair skinned people, living closer to the equator than their skin was designed for, can suffer superficial skin damage with excess solar exposure. There is also a significant increase in the risk of several types of skin cancer: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and rodent ulcers (non-melanoma cancers). Whilst not pleasant, they can be easily spotted and fully removed. Which means that they are not a major health risk, and will have virtually no impact on life expectancy.

The type of skin cancer of greatest concern is malignant melanoma. Whilst melanomas can also be spotted early, and successfully removed, they can grow deeper into the skin. At which point cancerous cells will break off from the main melanoma ‘body’, and travel about in the blood stream, before getting stuck in various other places and growing (metastases). Five-year survival for metastatic melanoma is around 15 – 20%.

So, this truly is a cancer to be avoided, even if it is not common. But does sun exposure cause, or increase, the risk of, malignant melanoma? Here, from the Lancet:

‘Outdoor workers have a decreased risk of melanoma compared with indoor workers, suggesting that chronic sunlight exposure can have a protective effect. Further, some melanomas form on sun-exposed regions; others do not…

It has long been realised that indoor workers have an increased risk for melanoma compared with those who work outdoors, suggesting that ultraviolet radiation is in some way protective against this (melanoma) cancer. Further, melanoma develops most often on the back of men and on the legs of women, areas that are not chronically exposed to the sun.’³

Essentially states that the more sunlight areas of your skin are exposed to, the less likely you are to develop a malignant melanoma. How does this fit with the fact that there has been a steady rise in the incidence of malignant melanoma (incidence means number of newly diagnosed cases per year).

The first to question to ask is simple. Is this a real rise, or has it been driven by increased recognition and diagnosis? A study in the UK concluded that there has been no true increase in incidence. It is publicity, fear, and misdiagnosis that has created the apparent epidemic of melanoma. As noted in this article in the British Journal of Dermatology:

‘Melanoma epidemic: a midsummer night’s dream?’

‘We therefore conclude that the large increase in reported incidence is likely to be due to diagnostic drift which classifies benign lesions as stage one melanoma…The distribution of the lesions (melanomas) reported did not correspond to the sites of lesions caused by solar exposure. These findings should lead to a reconsideration of the treatment of ‘early’ lesions, a search for better diagnostic methods to distinguish them from truly malignant melanomas, re- evaluation of the role of ultraviolet radiation and recommendations for protection from it, as well as the need for a new direction in the search for the cause of melanoma.’⁴

In short, the rise in malignant melanoma is most likely an artefact, driven by diagnostic drift, and an increased recognition of early, benign lesions (‘lesion’ is just a word for an abnormal ‘thing’ found on the body). In fact, if you look at the evidence more closely, it seems that sunlight may, in fact, protect against melanoma. A study in the US looked at people who had already been treated for melanomas, to review recurrence and long-term survival:

‘Sunburn, high intermittent sun exposure, skin awareness histories, and solar elastosis were statistically significantly inversely associated with death from melanoma.’

The conclusion of the paper:

‘Sun exposure is associated with increased survival from melanoma.’’⁵

Maybe not quite what you expected. But then again, vitamin D is synthesized by the action on sunlight on the skin. It converts cholesterol to vitamin D, and vitamin D has potent anti-cancer actions. Remove this from the skin at your peril.

Enough of the fear of the sun and malignant melanoma. I don’t wish to get dragged any further onto the playing field of the anti-sun brigade. Instead, here is a list of benefits that have been found from increased sun exposure. I am giving you the most positive figures here (these are relative risk reductions).:

• 75% reduction in colorectal cancer
• 50% reduction in breast cancer
• Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma 20 – 40% reduction
• Prostate cancer 50% reduction
• Bladder cancer 30% reduction
• Metabolic syndrome/type II diabetes 40% reduction
• Alzheimer’s 50% reduction
• Multiple sclerosis 50% reduction
• Psoriasis 60% reduction
• Macular degeneration 7-fold reduction in risk
• Improvement in mood/well-being.^6,7

Well, what do you know. If you raise your gaze from malignant melanoma there is a world of benefits associated with greater exposure to the sun. With all these benefits, you would expect to see a real improvement in life expectancy. Does this happen?

Indeed, it does. There have been a series of studies in Denmark and Sweden looking at the benefit of sunshine. One of them, which looked at overall life expectancy, concluded that avoiding the sun was as bad for you as smoking.

‘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.’’⁸

This was a twenty-year study. If average life expectancy is around eighty years, we can safely multiply those figures by four, to work out that a decent amount of sun exposure can add somewhere between three, to eight years, to your life expectancy. Let’s call it five.

But it is not just cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s that are reduced by sunbathing. Sun exposure is also particularly good for the cardiovascular system, mainly because it increases nitric oxide levels. This, in turn, reduces blood pressure, and the risk of developing blood clots. It also protects the endothelium, and has significant benefits on lowering blood pressure and suchlike⁹.

Not only that, but lying in the sun is free and enjoyable. So, who could possibly ask for anything more?

At this point, you now know my first three big ticket items for living longer. More importantly, living longer with more ‘healthy’ and enjoyable years.

1. Do not smoke
2. Take exercise
3. Go out in the sun – and enjoy it.

These three things alone can add around sixteen years to your healthy lifespan. Next, the impact of mental health. The biggest hitter of them all.

1: http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/9/e007118

2 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001335

3: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2804%2915649-3/fulltext

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19519827

5: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15687362

6: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5129901/

7: https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/97/3/161/2544132

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

9: https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/441266

Viagra

For those who have read my endless series of blogs on cardiovascular disease, you may know exactly where I am going at this point.

Some time ago, Pfizer were developing a drug to treat angina. It blocked an enzyme called phosphodiesterase type-5. [Although I believe that its exact mechanism of action was not known at first]. To put it another way, this drug was a phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitor (PDE5i).

The moment Pfizer found out what enzyme this drug blocked, they tried to patent the pathway that blocked this enzyme. Pharmaceutical companies trying to patent biological pathways. Perhaps I should try to patent the Krebs cycle, and charge everyone on the planet for having such a thing. Kerchingggg!

‘The U.S. patent office appears to have granted Pfizer a patent covering any drug that blocks this enzyme, meaning that it can sue all of its potential competitors.’¹

Luckily, this time they were rebuffed.

Anyhoo, back to the drug. During phase one clinical trials, where humans are given the drug for the first time to see what effects it may have, many of the volunteers were hanging on to their medication, rather than handing them back. This was very unusual. Almost unknown in fact.

When researchers went out to find out why this was happening it was discovered, not quite sure who admitted to this, that sildenafil/Viagra improved erectile function. Thus, Viagra, the first PDE5i, was born. The first drug that worked simply and effectively to improve erectile dysfunction (ED). As for treating angina… that piffling indication was rapidly shelved as the dollar signs appeared in the sky above Pfizer HQ. Sex, as they say, sells.

In truth, it is actually one of the best drugs ever. Not only does is treat ED, but it can also be used by mountaineers to prevent pulmonary oedema (fluid filling up in the lungs), which is one of the major symptoms of altitude sickness. It does this by reducing the blood pressure in the pulmonary vessels (blood vessels in the lungs).

To explain a little further. If you climb very high, and the oxygen level drops, the heart pumps blood harder and harder through the lungs to get as much oxygen as possible into the system. This can result in fluid leaking out of the vessels and into the lung tissue, so they fill up with fluid. At which point you effectively drown, so you die. Viagra stops this happening, by lowering the blood pressure in the lungs.

Unsurprisingly, Viagra is used to treat people who have pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure in the blood vessels in the lungs) at sea level. It is sold under the name Ravatio, for this indication – but we know that it is just Viagra. In addition, Viagra can be used to treat Raynaud’s disease, where the small blood vessels supplying the fingers and toes constrict, leading to painful cold fingers.

So, here we have a drug that can treat angina, pulmonary hypertension, erectile dysfunction and Raynaud’s disease at the same time. Thus, you can have great sex at twenty thousand feet above sea level, not get chest pain, or breathless, and stay warm at the same time. What more could a man ask for?

How does it do all these things? The answer is that it increases Nitric Oxide (NO) synthesis in endothelial cells. When it does this in the penis, it stimulates erections. In the heart, it opens up coronary arteries. In the lungs, it dilates the blood vessels, in fingers and toes it opens up arteries. So, all of the many different effects, are all due to exactly the same process – increased NO synthesis. Viagra also lowers blood pressure – as you would expect.

At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I talked about this in my book ‘Doctoring Data,’ under the heading ‘Viagra and the drugs of unintended consequences.’ I posed the question. ‘If we were to prescribe Viagra as an antihypertensive, which is entirely possible, and it were found to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, which effect do you think would be responsible for the benefit? The blood pressure lowering effect, or the anticoagulant effects? Or something else.’

Since I wrote those words, someone has actually looked at the impact of PDE5is on cardiovascular disease. Researchers at Manchester University, in the UK, studied the use of Viagra in people with diabetes – who often have erectile dysfunction. Here is what they found:

‘Viagra could prevent heart attacks, according to research. Patients taking the male impotence drug were found to have a lower risk of having a heart attack or dying from heart failure than those not on the medication. The lead scientist told the Daily Express the findings are “incredibly exciting”.²

The research paper was published in ‘Heart’, a BMJ journal. Actually, this paper was published last year, but only seems to have hit the press in the last few days. I spotted it in the Times a few days ago.

Here are the main results (for those readers who like their statistics)

‘Results: Compared with non-users, men who are prescribed PDE5is (Viagra, Cialis and the like – my words) (n=1359) experienced lower percentage of deaths during follow-up (19.1% vs 23.8%) and lower risk of all-cause mortality (unadjusted HR=0.69 (95% CI: 0.64 to 0.79); p<0.001)). The reduction in risk of mortality (HR=0.54 (0.36 to 0.80); p=0.002) remained after adjusting for age, estimated glomerular filtration rate, smoking status, prior cerebrovascular accident (CVA) hypertension, prior myocardial infarction (MI), systolic blood pressure, use of statin, metformin, aspirin and β-blocker medication. PDE5i users had lower rates of incident MI (incidence rate ratio (0.62 (0.49 to 0.80), p<0.0001) with lower mortality (25.7% vs 40.1% deaths; age-adjusted HR=0.60 (0.54 to 0.69); p=0.001) compared with non-users within this subgroup.’³

For those who don’t like their statistics quite as much as me (shame on you). I shall attempt to simplify.

• Over a seven year period, those men taking PDE5is (Viagra Cialis and the like) had a 4.7% reduction in overall mortality – compared to men who did not.
• Those taking Viagra were 38% less likely to have a myocardial infarction
• If you did have a myocardial infarction, those who were taking PDE5is had a 25.7% death rate. Those who were not taking PDE5is had a 40.1% death rate. So, if you were unfortunate to have a heart attack, you were 14.6% less likely (absolute risk reduction) to die if you were taking PDE5is.

Or, to shorten this even more

• 4.7% reduction in overall mortality
• 38% reduction in MI (relative risk reduction)
• 14.6% reduction in death after an MI

Whilst the first figure of a 4.7% reduction in overall mortality may not sound terrible exciting, it knocks all antihypertensives and cholesterol lowering medication into a cocked hat. Even if you add them together and multiply by two – on their best day. Because 4.7% is an absolute risk reduction. [Absolute mortality reduction in the Heart Protection Study (HPS), the most positive statin trial, was 1.8% over five years]

The benefits of Viagra are even more startling when it comes to having a heart attack (MI). The current ‘gold standard’ treatment of choice is Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI), which basically means popping a stent into a blocked coronary artery to open it up again.

It has been estimated that PCI results in a 2% absolute reduction in mortality⁴. On the other hand, Viagra gives you, very nearly, a 15% reduction in overall mortality. Or, to put it another way, Viagra may be seven and a half times as effective as PCI.

But it does not end here. it was also found that men with heart failure were 36% less likely to die if they took a PDE5i.

‘In the other subgroups, there was an inverse association between PDE5i use and all-cause mortality. Those with a recorded history of congestive cardiac failure, TIA and PVD had 36%, 40% and 34% lower risk, respectively.’ [A TIA is a transient Ischaemic attack/small stroke. PVD is peripheral vessel disease.]

Congestive cardiac failure is usually shortened to heart failure. [This 36% is a relative risk reduction, and I could not work out what the absolute risk was from the paper. I am probably too thick].

The effect on heart failure is almost certainly because another benefit of increasing NO is that you increase ‘angiogenesis’, otherwise known as, ‘the creation of new blood vessels’. If a coronary artery does completely block, this often leads to heart failure, as not enough oxygen and other nutrients can get into the heart muscle downstream.

However, if collateral blood vessels develop, the blood will be directed around the blockage and back into the artery downstream, through these newly created blood vessels. Although collateral circulation is not as effective as a fully patent coronary artery, it will create a significant flow of oxygen and nutrients once more. Thus, heart failure will be greatly improved.

Louis Ignarro, who identified nitric oxide (NO) as the key chemical messenger that dilated blood vessels, and won the Nobel Prize for doing so, decided to start treating people who have end stage heart failure with l-arginine. He had been looking for a substance that would, naturally increase NO, and found l-arginine did the job best. He has had some amazing results. Perhaps he should start using Viagra instead.

This study, I must add, was not interventional, it was observational. However, it strongly supports the hypothesis that increasing NO synthesis is just about the most important thing you can do. If you want to avoid dying from CVD.

Do I think everyone should take Viagra? Well, if you have heart failure, diabetes and a high risk of CVD – probably. Will you get a doctor to prescribe it for you, for CVD prevention? Absolutely no chance. Will anyone ever fund a study on this? With the drugs now off patent – no chance.

Oh, the joys of modern medicine. Unless someone does a controlled randomised double blind study on a medication, doctors will not prescribe – are not allowed to prescribe. However, virtually the only people with the money to do such studies are pharmaceutical companies. If the patent life of a drug has expired, no money can be made. So, no trial will be done. So, drugs that are almost certainly beneficial wither on the vine.

Unusually, for me, I do not blame the pharmaceutical companies for this. They are not charities. They need to make money or they die. You cannot expect them to spend hundreds of millions on a clinical study, without any possible means of gaining a return on their investment. We live in a funny old world.

In the meantime, look to other things that can increase NO synthesis. L-arginine/L-citrulline does this. Potassium does this. Sunlight does this. Exercise does this. Meditation does this. Vitamin D does this, as does Vitamin C. What are you waiting for? Go for a walk in the sun and eat an orange – you will live forever.

1: https://www.forbes.com/2002/10/23/cx_mh_1023pfizer.html

2: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/viagra-could-lower-heart-attack-risk-and-risk-of-dying-from-heart-failure-a7082801.html

3: http://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2016/07/26/heartjnl-2015-309223.full

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12517460?access_num=12517460&link_type=MED&dopt=Abstract

[Hold the front page]

Last night I watched a you tube presentation which completely astonished me. It was given by Professor Salim Yusuf, who is as mainstream as mainstream can possibly be. Here, from Wikipedia:

‘Salim Yusuf (born November 26, 1952) is an Indian-born Canadian physician, the Marion W. Burke Chair in Cardiovascular Disease at McMaster University Medical School and currently the President of the World Heart Federation, a world-renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist. In 2001, he published a landmark study that proved the benefits of clopidogrel in acute coronary syndrome without ST elevation.’

Here, from Forbes magazine in 2012:

‘McMaster University’s Salim Yusuf has tied for second place in the annual ranking of the “hottest” scientific researchers, according to Thomson Reuter’s Science Watch. Yusuf was a co-author of 13 of the most cited papers in 2011. Only one other researcher, genomic pioneer Eric Lander of the Broad Institute of MIT, had more highly-cited papers than Yusuf.’¹

On February the 12^th he gave a presentation at a cardiology conference in Davos, Switzerland which can be seen on YouTube. In this presentation, he makes the following points:

1. Saturated fat does raise LDL, a bit, but has no effect on CVD – maybe slightly beneficial. Monounsaturated fats are slightly beneficial. Polyunsaturated fats are neutral.
2. Carbohydrate intake is most closely associated with CVD
3. Fruit and vegetable intake has little or no impact on CVD – nor does fish intake [He wonders where the five portions of fruit and vegetable intake recommendations actually came from]. Vegetables in particular have no benefit.
4. Legumes – beans and suchlike – are beneficial.
5. The recommendations on salt intake are completely wrong, and set far too low. For those who do not have high blood pressure, low salt intake increase mortality. On the other hand, high salt intake does no harm.
6. He recommends higher potassium intake.
7. He criticizes Ancel Keys and lauds Nina Teicholz [Author of big fat surprise].

Well, good for him. It seems to have taken him a long time to get there, but he did in the end. Of course, mainstream medicine will remain in shocked silence, so you will likely hear nothing of this in the mainstream media. But, hey, you get to see it here. Perhaps someone would like to send this presentation to the BHF and the AHA and ask them for a comment?

The YouTube presentation is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sNqnAZTy4w

1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/04/25/when-youre-hot-youre-hot-salim-yusuf-second-most-influential-scientist-in-2011/#6ac825575abe

Lead

I have been studying cardiovascular disease for well over thirty years now. I have come across a million different hypotheses about what causes it. There is almost no foodstuff, vitamin, infectious agent, chemical compound, atomic element or activity [lack of, or excess] that has not been proposed at some point.

Many of them can look very promising, and the underlying hypothesis is often elegant – very elegant indeed. But what you must do with any hypothesis is to hold it close to the unforgiving flame of mortality data, and see if it is tempered by the heat – or simply melts.

I resolved very early on in my long and winding study on cardiovascular disease that any hypothesis had to explain everything – not just some things. For example, as almost everyone in the entire world knows a raised cholesterol level is considered the most important cause of cardiovascular disease. But it is exceedingly easy to find facts that seem to completely contradict this.

Here, for example, is a little graph looking at only two countries. It compares the death rate from heart disease in Russia and Switzerland, in men under the age of sixty-five relation to the average cholesterol level in those two countries.

in Russia, with an average cholesterol level of 5.1mmol/l (197mg/dl) had a death rate 834% higher than that in Switzerland, which had an average cholesterol level of 6.4mmol/l (248mg/dl). Yes, this graph is the right way around. Yes, these data come from the World Health Organisation, and can be found on the British Heart Foundation (BHF) website. These particular statistics are now very deeply buried, but can still be found here: https://www.bhf.org.uk/publications/statistics/european-cardiovascular-disease-statistics-2008

I sometimes wonder if anyone at the BHF actually looks at these data, but that is a question for another day. Of course, when presented with facts like this, the dismissals. and creation of ad-hoc hypotheses rapidly reach into the sky. The word ‘paradox’ will be used pretty heavily, that’s always a good, temporary, escape route. In reality these two figures represent a full-blown black swan. But, hey, facts are slippery things.

Anyway, in my quest to explain everything about heart disease, perhaps the hardest single thing to explain is the fact that the rate of cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes) has been going down in pretty much every single Western country for decades. I would say ‘first world’ country, but my son (a geography graduate) informs me that this terminology is now virtually barred for being racist. I shall be considered an ancient, prejudiced reactionary for using such a term.

So, I will say, Western Europe, North American, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and suchlike.

Now, the decline in CVD did not start at the same time, in all these countries. At this point I will make myself a hostage to fortune and make some sweeping statements. The rate of CVD peaked first in the US, in the late 1950s and has been falling since. It peaked next in Finland in the 1960s. In most of the other countries CVD peaked in the 1970s, before falling. It is impossible to say that there was a uniform worldwide effect. [Today, some countries are on the way up the mortality curve e.g. China and India].

However, I will make the general statement that CVD has been falling in most ‘first world’ countries for decades. This started long before any effective medical interventions were available. In the US, in the 1950s, there were no effective blood pressure lowering agents, no stents, no CABG, no clot busters…. Nothing really.

Possibly the greatest single factor has been the reduction in smoking. At the end of the second world war virtually all men smoked. Nearly 90% in the UK in the 1950s. Since that time the number of smokers has fallen, and fallen.

In addition to this, during the 60s, 70s, 80s and onwards, medical interventions have also greatly improved. In-hospital survival from a heart attack or stroke has improved almost year on year. The figures are complex, but around 60% of those admitted to hospital with a heart attack used to die – it is now around 30%, maybe less.

Some of this is due to the fact that ‘strict bed rest’ following a heart attack, the key medical intervention for decades, was abandoned. A piece of medical mismanagement that killed millions and millions… and millions.

What else may have cause the fall? I think that in the UK, the clean air act has a significant effect. The Great Smog of London, in the early 1950s, killed tens of thousands in less than a week. Much of this was from respiratory complications, but also CVD. It is now more clearly established that air pollution, in general, increases the risk of CVD. Most Western countries have drastically reduced air pollution.

Now, I would like to consider something almost never mentioned. Lead. That is the element, not the verb. Or the noun, as in dog lead.

In the 1920s someone discovered that if you put lead in petrol/gasoline it had all sorts of benefits on engine performance and wear and tear – and so on. Unfortunately, lead also caused all sorts of problem for human performance, and wear and tear. It is a heavy metal and, like other heavy metals, a powerful human toxin.

Despite the fact that lead toxicity was known for decades, it took until the nineteen-sixties before countries starting banning it from fuel – and pipes in housing – and the like. Which reversed a long-term trend of lead building up inside human beings. It lasts for decades within bone – gradually leaking out.

With regards to lead and CVD, is there a link?

A researcher called Weisskopf looked at the amount of lead in bones, and the rate of CVD. He found that those with the most lead in their bones were 837% more likely to die from CVD (relative risk)¹ than those with the least lead in their bones. Now, whilst that is a relative risk, it is of the magnitude where we can safely say we are looking straight at a direct cause of CVD.

How does lead cause CVD. Most likely through the following mechanisms

‘Lead causes endothelial dysfunction by binding and inhibiting endothelial nitric oxide synthase and decreasing nitric oxide production.’²

Yes, we are straight back to my old friends, endothelial dysfunction and decreased nitric oxide (NO) production. In the world of cardiovascular disease, if you know where to look, all roads lead to NO.

If lead does cause CVD, is there any evidence that removing lead from the body can reduce the risk of CVD? [‘Reversibility’ and ‘Experimental Evidence’, the two most powerful of Bradford Hill’s canons for causation]. Which brings me to TACT. A trial designed to look at the impact of chelation on CVD. A way of removing heavy metals from the body…

What I love about this trial is that it was set up primarily to prove that chelation was nonsense, to be laid alongside homeopathy, and suchlike – by mainstream researchers. To quote an article in Medscape:

‘The original TACT trial wrestled with enrolment, ultimately taking over a decade to yield results, in part because cardiologists were absolutely convinced that chelation was a load of horse hockey.’ ³

TACT stands for Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy. When I first heard about chelation, I too, dismissed it as horse hockey. However, it turns out that I done the thing that I always advise everyone else against doing. I placed it in the ‘impossible/horse hockey’ category without making the effort of trying to find out what it was really about.

As it turns out, I should have made more effort…

‘TACT found that patients randomized to a regimen involving up to 40 separate three-hour infusions of a chelation-therapy solution (disodium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid [EDTA], ascorbic acid, magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, B vitamins, procainamide, and a small amount of standard heparin) experienced an 18% drop in the trial’s primary end point (all-cause death, reinfarction, stroke, revascularization, or hospitalization for angina) compared with patients randomized to a placebo infusion.’³

More extraordinary than this:

‘When we broke the composite down to look at our secondary end points, we found that we had about a 40% reduction in total mortality, a 40% reduction in recurrent MI, and about a 50% reduction in mortality [in patients with diabetes],”’³

A 40% – 50% reduction in mortality. Well, well, well. Eat your heart out statins. In fact, eat your heart out every single pharmaceutical product ever tested. What has been the effect on mainstream thinking on CVD? As you would expect, absolutely nothing has changed in the slightest. Still TACT2 is now being set up – so we can all look forward to that being ignored in about seven to ten years’ time.

Anyway, in an attempt to bring some structure to this blog, I am going to return to the start. Why has the rate of CVD gone down in most first world countries over the last fifty years? One of the reasons, I believe, is that the level of heavy metal pollutants (in particular, lead) has been dropping since around the mid nineteen sixties.

I think it could be argued that the US was the first country to embrace the motor car. Thus lead toxicity would have hit the US before anywhere else. I am not going to argue this too strongly, but I place it before you, for your consideration.

I shall finish by saying that, if you want to look for reasons for the pattern on CVD over the last sixty years, or so, you really need to start looking outside the box. For there are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

1: Weisskopf MG, Jain N, Nie H, et al. ‘A prospective study of bone lead concentration and death from all causes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer in the Department of Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study’. Circulation 2009;120(12):1056-64.

2: Natalia V. Solenkova et al: ‘Metal pollutants and cardiovascular disease: Mechanisms and consequences of exposure.‘ Am Heart J 2014;168:812-22

3: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/814643?pa=QYKVfN05tfWXqq6%2BfjZ30whyKyHVDGvMW4WYyHO8jprcrUBo6WRIR4VFzOaThtqB8SIvl8zjYv73GUyW5rsbWA%3D%3D

In my long and winding road around cardiovascular disease I have often visited the same themes a few times. In part, this is because we are not dealing with Newtonian physics here. If billiard ball A strikes billiard ball B, at five metres per second, at an angle of 45 degrees, billiard ball B will move off at angle C at velocity D, assuming perfect elasticity. This will always happen, every single time.

On the other hand, with CVD, the complexity of human physiology and psychology, environmental factors, genetics the time of day, even sunspot activity – can have an effect – so some people have reported.

‘Space proton flux and the temporal distribution of cardiovascular deaths.

The influence of solar activity (SA) and geomagnetic activity (GMA) on human homeostasis has long been investigated. The aim of the present study was to analyse the relationship between monthly proton flux (> 90 MeV) and other SA and GMA parameters and between proton flux and temporal (monthly) distribution of total and cardiovascular-related deaths. The data from 180 months (1974-1989) of distribution in the Beilinson Campus of the Rabin Medical Centre, Israel, and of 108 months (1983-1991) from the Kaunas Medical Academy, were analysed and compared with SA, GMA and space proton flux (> 90 MeV). It was concluded: monthly levels of SA, GMA and radiowave propagation (Fof2) are significantly and adversely correlated with monthly space proton flux (> 90 MeV); medical-biological phenomena that increase during periods of low solar and/or geomagnetic activity may be stimulated by physical processes provoked by the concomitant increase in proton flux; the monthly number of deaths related (positively or negatively) to SA are significantly and adversely related to the space proton flux (> 90 MeV).’¹

Oh yes, I do cast my net far and wide when looking at cardiovascular disease, as I feel I must. Quite what we are all supposed to do when the space proton flux is greater than 90MeV, I am not certain. Perhaps a tin foil hat would become appropriately protective headgear. By the way, this paper can be found in the National Institutes of Health on-line library – Pubmed. Referenced, peer-reviewed, and everything.

The point being? The point being that if you are looking for ‘billiard ball’ certainty, you are not going to find it here. If you were to do absolutely everything that I believe to be protective against cardiovascular disease, you will shift the odds in your favour, but you could still get struck down by a heart attack or stroke.

Anyway, with that proviso firmly in place, I shall move ahead, or maybe backwards. On the basis that some subjects need a second visit, I have decided to return to look at vitamin C again. First, because I have just been harangued by someone who believes that if you take high doses of vitamin C every day, you can reverse/cure heart disease completely and utterly. He also felt that I had completely ignored the work of G C Willis ‘The reversibility of atherosclerosis’, and also the research of Pauling and Rath on vitamin C.

It is true that I have not actually mentioned Willis before, but I have certainly written at length of Pauling and Rath. However, I realise that time passes, people forget things, and previous blogs settle to the bottom of the sediment layer. Therefore, it is not a bad idea to refresh things from time to time. I am also returning to vitamin C and the issues around it, because I have been getting a lot of correspondence about lipoprotein (a) (Lp(a)) recently. It seems this lipoprotein is gaining increasing attention. Of course, vitamin C and Lp(a) are tightly bound together.

Time, I think, for a quick refresher about this whole area. Particularly as it helps to confirm my central hypothesis that CVD is a disease of blood clotting, and you would struggle to explain the vitamin C/Lp(a) axis in any other way.

To begin. At some point in the distant past, our ancestors lost the ability to manufacture vitamin C. This happened, so I recently read, around sixty-one million years ago. Seems a long way back, but there you go. It has happened to some other animal groups, but not many. Quite why it occurred is unclear. You probably think you know, but I suspect you are wrong.

Interestingly, and as a bit of an aside, vitamin C is synthesized through a multi-step process, and the original molecule is glucose. Humans lack the last step in the process. Perhaps, because of this, glucose and vitamin C have some interesting interactions in the body. Mainly, it seems, that high levels of glucose prevent vitamin C from entering cells. Particularly immune cells, which need a lot of vitamin C to operate effectively. Make of that what you will.

Moving on, because humans cannot synthesize their own vitamin C, we must obtain it from within our diet. If we do not manage to eat enough, we will end up with scurvy. Scurvy presents with many different symptoms, but the one I am going to focus on in this blog is bleeding.

Bleeding occurs, because vitamin C is essential for collagen synthesis – a critical building block of supportive tissue throughout the body. Loss of collagen leads to break down of various structures in the body. For example, the walls of blood vessel walls which, start to break down and ‘crack.’

As blood vessel walls crack, they leak, and bleed. This leads to the best known symptom of scurvy, which is bleeding gums. This was well recognised several hundred years ago, mainly in sailors who had a highly-restricted diet during long voyages. In scurvy there is also bleeding in many other blood vessels, but you can’t easily see it. The usual cause of death in severe scurvy is internal bleeding.

On the positive side, after sixty-one million years, or so, evolution came up with a partial solution to the early stages of scurvy. Namely, the synthesis of a substance to block the cracks in the blood vessel walls, and control the bleeding. This substance is, or course, lipoprotein (a).

Lipoprotein (a) (Lp(a)) is synthesized in the liver, and it travels around in the bloodstream, looking for any cracks in blood vessels walls a.k.a. damaged endothelium. When a crack is spotted Lp(a) is attracted to the area and sticks very firmly, and cannot easily be removed. Of course, the rest of the blood clotting system also moves into action, so all hell breaks loose. Therefore Lp(a) becomes mixed up with platelets, red blood cells, fibrin, and almost everything else in the blood, including all the other lipoproteins.

However, Lp(a) has a very special trick up its sleeve. It mimics plasminogen.

After a blood clot forms, anywhere in the circulation, it has to be broken down, and removed – once the blood vessel underneath it has repaired. I liken this (not very accurately) to road works. If the road surface is damaged, the repair team comes in, sets up barriers and traffic lights and suchlike, then they repair the road. Then all the barriers, and traffic lights, and suchlike, must be removed.

Within a blood vessel, removal of barriers, and traffic lights, is a tricky exercise. Where does the blood clot go? Once a large blood clot has formed, over a ‘crack’ in the wall, it cannot stay there forever, restricting, or totally obstructing, blood flow. On the other hand, if the entire clot simply broke off, and travelled down the artery, it would get stuck as the artery narrowed – causing a complete blockage. Not a good idea.

Ergo, there is a need for a process that removes blood clots that have formed within blood vessels. It is called thrombolysis, or fibrinolysis. To ‘lyse’ means to break down.

The main player in thrombolysis is plasminogen. It becomes incorporated into (almost) all blood clots that form. It is activated by tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA). This turns plasminogen into plasmin, the ‘active’ enzyme that slices fibrin apart [fibrin is a long, and very strong, string of fibrinogen molecules that wraps round blood clots and binds them together].

t-PA can be manufactured and given to people who have heart attacks and strokes, to break apart the blood clots that are blocking the arteries in the brain, or the heart. You may have heard of t-PA referred to as a ‘clot-buster.’ Great stuff, but not so good if your stroke is due to a bleed in the brain, rather than a blood clot. In which case….

t-PA has been around for a while now and, with heart attacks at least, has mainly been superseded by angioplasty. Which is to open up the blocked artery, and stick a metal support (stent) into the artery. T-PA is still use in ischaemic strokes. That is, after you have had a brain scan to work out what sort of stroke you are having.

Sorry to appear to be going off in different directions here, but the systems of blood clotting are highly complex, and I think that explaining where Lp(a) fits in, is important.

Lp(a) is actually a lipoprotein, just like LDL. In fact, it is exactly like LDL, because it is basically LDL. It is the same size and shape, it contains triglyceride and cholesterol. However, it differs in one important aspect. Whilst LDL has a protein stuck to it called apolipoprotein B-100, Lp(a) has another protein stuck to it called apolipoprotein (a). Which is why it is called lipoprotein (a).

The fascinating thing about the protein, apolipoprotein (a), is that is has almost exactly the same chemical structure as plasminogen. So close, that you could hardly tell it apart. However, apolipoprotein (a) is completely unaffected by t-PA. It does not convert to plasmin, it is inert. So, when you want to break down a clot (fibrinolysis), the parts that have Lp(a) incorporated into it, cannot be broken down.

Which means that if you have a high Lp(a) level, you will develop bigger and more difficult to break down blood clots. Exactly what evolution had in mind for creatures that cannot manufacture vitamin C, and need to plug cracks in artery walls when the vitamin C level falls. However, not so good, if you want to stop atherosclerosis from developing.

Because these Lp(a) rich blood clots have to go somewhere, and the only place that they can go is to be absorbed into the artery wall itself, and then broken down. However, these clots are more difficult to break down, so, with repeated clots over the same area of artery wall, bigger and bigger plaques will grow.

That, anyway, is the theory.

What G.C. Willis did in 1957 was to study guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are another animal that does not synthesize vitamin C. He made them scorbutic (vitamin C deficient a.k.a. scurvy). Actually, he did not make them all scorbutic. He had a control group of twelve guinea pigs that he put on a vitamin C deficient diet, then injected them with vitamin C. None of these twelve guinea pigs developed any measurable atherosclerosis.

On the other hand, those guinea pigs on a scorbutic diet rapidly developed atherosclerosis. When I say rapidly, I mean within days. I think this point is worth repeating. If you make a guinea pig scorbutic, it will develop plaques, identical to those found in human arteries within days.

Willis then started feeding his guinea pigs vitamin C, and he found that the lipid filled plaques quite rapidly disappeared. He describes what he saw happening to the guinea after they were fed vitamin C.

‘The results of this investigation indicate that early lesions of atherosclerosis are quickly resorbed. The stages of this process are first a fading of lipid staining in the region of the internal elastic membrane with later a disappearance of all extracellular fat. Active phagocytosis of lipid by macrophage occurs, and when these macrophages finally disappear no evidence of the lesion remains.’ ²

I shall translate that passage for those with a non-science background.

What Willis found was that if you remove vitamin C from the guinea pig diet, they develop fat filled atherosclerotic plaques within days. If you then add vitamin C to the diet again, the plaques rapidly disappear (within days). The process of removal appears to be that the fat/lipid is ingested (phagocytosed) by white blood cells – known as macrophages.

However, if you let the plaques grow for too long, it is far more difficult to get rid of them.

‘More advanced lesions are considerably more resistant to reversal. Extensive lipid deposits clear in some parts of plaque but islands of intensely staining lipid persists in other parts. The macrophage response to such areas is only slight.’

It seems that if you don’t get rid of the plaque pretty much straight away, you don’t get rid of it at all. [Or maybe he didn’t wait long enough to see what happened over months, or years. Although my childhood memory of guinea pigs is that they tend to drop dead at the slightest excuse].

Of course, this was guinea pigs, not humans, so we must be careful not to extrapolate too far. However, previously, Willis had studied humans. Not many, only sixteen. Ten people with identified plaques were given vitamin C, six were not. In those ten treated with vitamin C, the plaques got bigger in three, stayed the same in one, and reduced in size in six. In those six not given vitamin C, three remained the same, and in three the plaques got bigger. Interesting, but hardly cast-iron proof of anything.

At this point there are a number of strands to gather together. We now know that humans cannot synthesize vitamin C, so we need to eat it. Without enough vitamin C, our blood vessels crack and bleed, and in severe cases we bleed to death.

In order to provide a degree of protection against vitamin C deficiency (scurvy), we produce lipoprotein (a) to fill up the cracks the blood vessels. However, unsurprisingly, a high level of lipoprotein (a) Lp(a) is associated with a higher rate of CVD.

‘In summary, elevated Lp(a) levels associate robustly and specifically with increased CVD risk. The association is continuous in shape without a threshold and does not depend on high levels of LDL or non-HDL cholesterol, or on the levels or presence of other cardiovascular risk factors.’ ³

This raises two inter-connected questions. Does vitamin C supplementation lower Lp(a) levels, and does it reduce the risk of CVD? It is of course entirely possible that vitamin C could reduce CVD risk by protecting blood vessels from ‘cracking’ without having any effect on Lp(a) levels.

Now you would think that this would have been an area of research interest to someone…. Anyone. However, the only people who seem to have looked at this area in any details are Linus Pauling (double Nobel prize winner, now dead) and Matthias Rath. A man whose reputation within the mainstream medical profession makes that of Andrew Wakefield look like mother Teresa. This from Wikipedia:

‘The Sunday Times (Johannesburg) has described Rath as an “international campaigner for the use of natural remedies” whose “theories on the treatment of cancer have been rejected by health authorities all over the world.”

On HIV/AIDS, Rath has disparaged the pharmaceutical industry and denounced antiretroviral medication as toxic and dangerous, while claiming that his vitamin pills could reverse the course of AIDS. As a result, Rath has been accused of “potentially endangering thousands of lives” in South Africa, a country with a massive AIDS epidemic where Rath was active in the mid-2000s. The head of Médecins Sans Frontières said “This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised treatment without any scientific evidence”; Rath attempted to sue him.

Rath’s claims and methods have been widely criticised by medical organisations, AIDS-activist groups, and the United Nations, among others Former South African President Thabo Mbeki and former Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang have also been criticised by the medical and AIDS-activist community for their perceived support for Rath’s claims According to doctors with Médecins Sans Frontières, the Treatment Action Campaign (a South African AIDS-activist group) and a former Rath colleague, unauthorised clinical trials run by Rath and his associates, using vitamins as therapy for HIV, resulted in deaths of some participants. In 2008, the Cape High Court found the trials unlawful, banned Rath and his foundation from conducting unauthorised clinical trials and from advertising their products, and instructed the South African Health Department to fully investigate Rath’s vitamin trials.’

Matthias Rath even managed to fall out with Linus Pauling, before Pauling’s death, and law suits ensued. Rath has also successfully sued the BMJ, received £100,000 in damages. So, as you can see, not really a poster boy for mainstream medical research.

I include this information, as I think it is critical to the entire Vitamin C discussion. Because Matthias Rath is viewed as absolute scientific poison this has made the whole area of vitamin C supplementation a complete no-go area for any respectable scientist. If, as a doctor, you try to suggest that vitamin supplementation may be a possible treatment for, say, CVD, you might as well hand you licence over to the authorities at the same time – to save them the trouble of striking you off the medical register (almost a joke, but not quite).

So, essentially, we have a huge void here. The only research that I have ever seen (maybe I missed some) to establish if vitamin C supplementation does actually lower Lp(a) levels was done by Matthias Rath. And, according to him, it does. More so, in those with higher levels to start with. I am not referencing this research, but I would suggest you have a look around Rath and Pauling and vitamin C and Lp(a). See what you think. I think the research is robust.

With regard to the critical question, does vitamin C reduce the risk of CVD [with or without lowering Lp(a)]. I would say, case currently unproven. This does not mean that it does not (in fact I believe that it probably does). What I mean by ‘case currently unproven’ is that no-one has done a large scale interventional study using vitamin C to find out if it really reduces CVD.

The problem here is that such a study is almost certainly never going to be done. There is no way anyone can make money from doing such a study. Vitamin C cannot be patented, so if a company spend several hundred million ‘proving’ that vitamin C reduced CVD death, they would never get any money back.

You would have to find a Governmental organisation, tax payer funded, to do such a study. And with Matthias Rath around, that just ain’t going to happen. No-one would touch it.

However, there is one way to definitely reduce Lp(a) levels, and that is to take l-carnitine. Here, from a study called ‘L-carnitine reduces plasma lipoprotein(a) levels in patients with hyper Lp(a)’

‘L-carnitine, a natural compound stimulating fatty acid oxidation at the mitochondrial level, was tested in a double blind study in 36 subjects with Lp(a) levels ranging between 40-80 mg/dL, in most with concomitant LDL cholesterol and triglyceride elevations. L-carnitine (2 g/day) significantly reduced Lp(a) levels… the reduction being more dramatic in the subjects with the more marked elevations. In particular, in the L-carnitine group, 14 out of 18 subjects (77.8%) had a significant reduction of Lp(a) vs only 7 out of 18 (38.9%) in the placebo group. In a significant number of subjects the reduction of Lp(a) resulted in a return of this major cardiovascular risk parameter to the normal range.’ ⁴

Does this then result in a reduction in CVD risk? The answer is that I do not know, for sure. A meta-analysis of L-carnitine supplementation has been done. This consisted of five trials on three thousand people. L-carnitine supplementation did show some benefit – which did not reach statistical significance, but came very, very close.

For those of you who like a bit of statistics, here we go

‘The interaction test yielded no significant differences between the effects of the four daily oral maintenance dosages of L-carnitine (i.e., 2 g, 3 g, 4 g, and 6 g) on all-cause mortality (risk ratio [RR] = 0.77, 95% CI [0.57-1.03], P = 0.08)’⁵

CI [0.57 to 1.03] – close, but no cigar.

To put this into figures anyone can understand. In the intervention groups (those taking L-carnitine) there were 83 deaths. In the control group (those not taking L-carnitine) there were 106 deaths. Total study population was 3108, split in two groups: control and intervention. This gets as close to statistical significance as you can get (virtually). In fact, if this had been a statin trial, you would never have heard the end of it. ‘Ladies and gentlemen a 22% reduction in overall mortality with L-carnitine supplementation.’ [Oh, what fun statistics are].

So, what do we know?

• A high level of Lp(a) is associated with a higher risk of CVD.
• There is a probable causal mechanism linking Lp(a) to CVD death
• Lp(a) is synthesized in animals that cannot make their own Vitamin C
• A lack of vitamin C causes blood vessels to crack open – and potentially leads to atherosclerotic plaques development
• Animal models have shown that a lack of vitamin C does lead to rapid atherosclerotic plaque development, and that replacement of vitamin C causes rapid regression of atherosclerosis
• Some evidence from humans suggest that vitamin C supplementation causes regression of atherosclerotic plaques
• Vitamin C supplementation does seem to lead to a reduction in Lp(a) levels
• L-carnitine supplementation does lead to a reduction in Lp(a) levels
• L-carnitine supplementation may reduce overall mortality.

What would I now recommend? If you have a high Lp(a) level take lots of vitamin C and l-carnitine and see if your Lp(a) level falls. If it does, keep taking lots of vitamin C and l-carnitine for the rest of your life. If it does not fall? Not sure.

As for the rest of us? Well I have no idea how much vitamin C anyone should take, or how much l-carnitine is required. There is literally no area of medicine that is less clear than our true vitamin requirements. You can find a thousand shouty people supporting high vitamin supplementation – any or all vitamins.

My view. I do not think the RDAs for vitamins are remotely accurate, or useful. They were established in times of absolute deficiency. The agreed Vitamin B12 levels, for example, were based on seven people, over sixty years ago, and remain unchanged to this day. All seven had pernicious anaemia (caused by vitamin B12 deficiency).

So, I do not believe in the RDAs at all. They are often, I believe, too low for optimal health. I can see no harm coming to people from taking lots of vitamin C or lots of l-carnitine. So, supplement away. You will probably reduce your risk of dying from CVD.

References
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9140214

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1823880/?page=3

3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295201/

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11213533

5: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4223629/

As 2016 draws to an end, I believe that a change is in the air. The dietary guidelines, or perhaps I should call them the ‘dietary misguidedlines’, are under a sustained attack. This, finally, may actually result in success. We will be able move on from believing that fat, or saturated fat, in the diet is responsible for cardiovascular disease or, indeed, any form of disease.

But where to then? The current dogma is that saturated fat in the diet raises cholesterol levels and this, in turn, leads to cardiovascular disease. However, as many of you may have spotted earlier this year, in the Minnesota Coronary Experiment (MCE), substituting saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat was effective at lowering cholesterol levels. However, it had absolutely no effect on deaths for heart disease, and greatly increased the overall risk of death.

The summary of this trial was, as follows:

• It involved 9423 women and men aged 20-97
• A cholesterol lowering diet was used, replacing saturated fat with linoleic acid (from corn oil and corn oil polyunsaturated margarine).
• The low saturated fat group had a significant reduction in serum cholesterol compared with controls.
• There was no evidence of benefit in the intervention group for coronary atherosclerosis or myocardial infarcts.
• For every 0.78mmol/l reduction in serum cholesterol [Around a 20% reduction], there was a 22% higher risk of death [This is about a 30% reduction in cholesterol level]

Big deal, you might think. This is just one trial, so what difference does it make. However, this was no ordinary trial. It was absolutely pivotal for four main reasons:

• It was the largest controlled trials of its kind ever done. That is, substituting saturated with polyunsaturated fats.
• It was done by Ancel Keys (who started the entire diet-heart hypothesis in the first place)
• It was finished, before the main clinical nutritional guidelines were developed
• It was not published at the time, for reasons that have never been explained, by anyone.

As the authors of the re-analysis note.

“Whatever the explanation for key MCE data not being published, there is growing recognition that incomplete publication of negative or inconclusive results can contribute to skewed research priorities and public health initiatives. Recovery of unpublished data can alter the balance of evidence and, in some instances, can lead to reversal of established policy or clinical practice positions.” ¹

Which is a polite way of saying that a bunch of liars hid the results. Almost certainly because the results contradicted their self-promoted message that saturated fats are unhealthy. It is clear that these researchers, in particular Ancel Keys, did this quite deliberately, and then continued to promote their own dietary dogma.

I think it is almost impossible to overestimate the long-term impact of the non-publication of this trial.

• For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
• For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
• For want of a horse the rider was lost.
• For want of a rider the message was lost.
• For want of a message the battle was lost.
• For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
• And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Here is my updated version

• For want of the MCE trial evidence the McGovern hearings were lost
• For want of the hearings the guidelines were lost
• For want of the guidelines the message was lost
• For want of the message battle was lost
• For want of the battle saturated fat was lost
• All for the want of the MCE trial data.

The McGovern hearings which set the entire direction of nutritional thinking, and guidelines, took place in 1977. The MCE trial ran from 1968 to 1973. Had the data from this study been made available, the dietary guidelines in the US, the UK and the rest of the world (In their current form, demonising saturated fat) simply could not have been written.

If those guidelines had not been written, then the entire world of cardiovascular research would almost certainly have gone off in a different direction. The role of LDL in causing CVD would have been consigned to the dustbin history. Goldstein and Brown wouldn’t have done their research on Familial Hypercholesterolaemia, statins would never have been developed, and we not have been forced to endure fifty years of the damaging, destructive diet-heart/cholesterol hypothesis.

The fact that the diet-heart/cholesterol hypothesis is complete nonsense, has been clear as day to many people for many years. In 1977 George Mann, a co-director of the Framingham Study, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine called it ‘the greatest scam in the history of medicine.’ In my view, anyone with a moderately functioning brain, can easily see that it is nonsense.

So, if not fat and cholesterol, what does cause cardiovascular disease, and more importantly, what can be done to prevent it, or at least delay it? At last (some of you are thinking) I will state what I believe to be one of the most important things you can do to reduce the risk.

Returning to the central process of cardiovascular disease (CVD), for a moment. If you are going to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, you must do, at least, one of three things:

• Protect the endothelium (lining of blood vessels) from harm
• Reduce the risk of blood clots forming – especially over areas of endothelial damage
• Reduce the size and tenacity (difficulty of being broken down) of the blood clots that develop

If you can do all three, you will reduce your risk of dying of a heart attack, or stroke, to virtually zero.

What protects the endothelium?

There are many things that that can do this, but the number one agent that protects the endothelium is nitric oxide (NO). Thus, anything that stimulates NO synthesis will be protective against CVD. Which brings us to sunshine and vitamin D.

• Sunlight on the skin directly stimulates NO synthesis, which has been shown to reduce blood pressure, improve arterial elasticity, and a whole host of other beneficial things for your cardiovascular system, not least a reduction in blood clot formation.
• Sunlight on the skin also creates vitamin D, which has significant impact on NO synthesis in endothelial cells, alongside many other actions. It also prevents cancer, so you get a double benefit.

Therefore, my first direct piece of direct advice for those who want to prevent heart disease, is to sunbathe. In the winter when the sun is not shining take vitamin D supplementation. Alternatively, go on holiday to somewhere sunny. Or get a UVB sunbed, and use it.

My only note of warning here is to say, don’t burn, it is painful and you don’t need to.

By the way, don’t worry about skin cancer. Sun exposure protects against all forms of cancer to a far greater degree than it may cause any specific cancer. To give you reassurance on this point, here is a Medscape article, quoting from a long-term Swedish study on sun exposure:

‘Nonsmokers who stayed out of the sun had a life expectancy similar to smokers who soaked up the most rays, according to researchers who studied nearly 30,000 Swedish women over 20 years.

This indicates that avoiding the sun “is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking,” write the authors of the article, published March 21 in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Compared with those with the highest sun exposure, life expectancy for those who avoided sun dropped by 0.6 to 2.1 years.

Pelle Lindqvist, MD, of Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Sweden, and colleagues found that women who seek out the sun were generally at lower risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and noncancer/non-CVD diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and pulmonary diseases, than those who avoided sun exposure.

And one of the strengths of the study was that results were dose-specific — sunshine benefits went up with amount of exposure. The researchers acknowledge that longer life expectancy for sunbathers seems paradoxical to the common thinking that sun exposure increases risk for skin cancer.

“We did find an increased risk of…skin cancer. However, the skin cancers that occurred in those exposing themselves to the sun had better prognosis,” Dr Lindqvist said.”²

In short, avoiding the sun is a bad for you as smoking. In my opinion ordering people to avoid the sun, is possibly the single most dangerous and damaging piece of health prevention advice there has ever been. The sun has been up there, shining down, for over four billion years. Only very recently have we hidden from it. If you believe in evolution, you must also believe that sunshine provides significant health benefits. It cannot be otherwise.

Happy, sunny, CVD risk reduced, 2017

I have just added a little poem that was just sent as a comment on my blog. Thanks for the laugh.

Ancel Benjamin Keys
Researched dietary disease.
When the facts turned out contrarian,
He simply up and buried ’em. [Martin Back]

1: http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246
2: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/860805

‘The greatest scam in the history of medicine’ George Mann

I have been a bit quiet of late, mainly because I got a cough that ended up as a nasty chest infection, that also caused my brain to turn to mush for about three weeks. Maybe it was the antibiotics. Anyway proof, as far as I am concerned, that the mind and body are closely connected.

Yes, another little detour from my series, trying to explain what causes cardiovascular disease. But I thought I need to look, once again, at the hypothesis that saturated fat consumption is a cause – perhaps the cause of cardiovascular disease?

To be honest, I have studied saturated fat consumption many, many… many, many, times. The one thing that has always stood out, most starkly, is the complete lack of any real evidence to support the idea that it causes cardiovascular disease.

On the other hand, evidence contradicting it arrives on an almost daily basis. The following study was sent to me a few days ago, although it is now almost ten months since it was first published. The researchers looked at nearly thirty-six thousand people over twelve years. It was done in the Netherlands. The main conclusions were that that:

‘Total saturated fat intake was associated with a lower IHD (Ischaemic Heart Disease) risk (HR per 5% of energy 0.83). Substituting SFAs with animal protein, cis-monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats or carbohydrates was significantly associated with higher IHD risks (HR 1.27 – 1.37).’¹

One thing scientific researchers have learned over the years is that you can never say anything in a straightforward way. I think the game is that, if anyone can easily understand your findings, you lose. A game played to its illogical conclusion by French Philosophers. Something I remarked to my son, who was trying to quote Derrida at me. Here would be one snappy Derrida quote:

“Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way?”

Yes, indeed. Couldn’t agree more.

As with Derrida, so with scientific papers. What these researchers should have said is the following. ‘The more saturated fat you eat, the lower your risk of dying of cardiovascular disease, and vice-versa.’ A thirteen per cent reduction in death for every five per cent increase in energy obtained from saturated fat consumption. Why do they run away from making such easy to understand statements? I think Derrida could probably tell us. If we could ever understand anything he ever wrote, or said.

However, I am not going to bombard you with endless facts contradicting the saturated fat hypothesis, I am going to get a little more philosophical here. To ask, what is it about some scientific ideas/hypotheses that they become so quickly entrenched – without the need for the tedious requirement of any actual facts.

My thoughts were drawn to this issue by something seemingly unconnected. Which is a legal hearing the UK concerning shaken baby syndrome. Most experts in paediatrics are absolutely convinced that there is such a thing. It is quoted in textbooks as an undisputed fact. Many parents, and other adults, have been convicted, and sent to jail, for shaking their babies so hard that it caused the ‘triad’ of shaken baby syndrome: subdural hematoma, retinal bleeding, and brain swelling

On the other hand, we have Dr Waney Squier, a paediatrician who used to provide expert opinion on child abuse cases in the UK. She was struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC) for, well the exact judgement is, as per Derrida, impossible to understand.

The GMC judgement has certainly been criticized:

‘Michael Mansfield, Clive Stafford Smith and others argue that the General Medical Council is behaving like a “21st-century inquisition” in the case of Dr Waney Squier (Shaken baby syndrome doctor struck off, 22 March).’

The GMC responded thus:

‘Far from wishing to suppress different views, we recognise that scientific advance is achieved by challenging as well as developing existing theories, and importantly in this context we are absolutely clear that neither the GMC nor the courts are the place where such scientific disputes can be resolved. To be clear, it is possible that a doctor who ultimately was proved to have the correct theory could present their evidence in such a way as to mislead, just as it is possible for a doctor advocating a theory ultimately proved to be flawed to present their case in context and with integrity.’

Niall Dickson

Chief executive, General Medical Council

The only possible response to Niall Dickson’s remark is ‘bollocks.’ You can present the correct theory in a way to mislead, and you can present a flawed hypothesis with integrity? George Orwell would surely nod in approval of such perfect doublethink. You are right, but we don’t like the way you present being right. We would rather listen to someone talk absolute nonsense using the correct professional manner. Can I have my knighthood now, please?

Leaving the machinations of the GMC aside, the main issue is simple. Dr Waney Squier does not believe that shaken baby syndrome exists. Of course she knows that the triad of subdural haematoma, retinal bleeding and brain swelling exists. But she believes there could be other explanations. Including, perish the very thought, an accidental fall.

Because she does not believe in shaken baby syndrome, she has presented evidence in court which has tended to undermine the prosecution case against parents and carers, accused of shaking a baby and causing severe brain damage. Much to the annoyance of the police and they then, for it was indeed them, reported Dr Squier to the GMC.

Now, I know what most of you are thinking. Surely ‘shaken baby syndrome’ exists. This must have been proven. Well, it has not. If you think about it, how could it be proven? How do you think a study on shaken baby syndrome could ever be done? Get five hundred children, shake them forcefully and see what happens to their brains. I suspect you might find gaining ethical approval for a such a study might be tricky.

Despite this, and the fact that shaken baby syndrome represents an ‘unproven hypothesis’ almost all experts around the world are convinced that shaken baby syndrome exists. Dr Squier, who seems a well-rounded and sensible lady, has made the terrible mistake of questioning that this dogma. There could be, shock horror, other possible causes.

The police objected, judges objected, her peers objected, and she has been struck off. No longer able to practice medicine anywhere in the world. She has become a medical pariah.

The good news is that her case in going in front of an actual court of law in the UK. I strongly suspect (maybe I just hope) that her ‘conviction’ will be overturned. She does have the support of a number of other paediatricians around the world. However, in the meantime, other doctors, who do not believe in shaken baby syndrome, will not dare go to court to testify in support of those accused of shaking babies. Such is the power of the Spanish Inquisition.

Shaken baby syndrome: saturated fat consumption.

On the fact of it shaken baby syndrome and saturated fat consumption have very little in common. However, from another perspective the parallels are clear. Both are seductively simple ideas that appeal to common sense. That most deadly of all senses.

Most people can clearly see how a small, vulnerable, baby will suffer significant brain injury if it is shaken too hard. Close your eyes and you can virtually see it happening. If you can bear having that image in your head for any length of time.

Most parents, I think, can almost see themselves doing it, or having done it – when their child will ‘just not dammed well stop crying.’ In short, shaken baby syndrome can easily be visualised, and it triggers a kind of visceral horror. We can easily see how a feckless parent may lack the self-control required to stop themselves doing it. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up….’

And that, dear reader, is as scientific as shaken baby syndrome gets. A hypothesis based on visceral fear, prejudice, and knee-jerk judgement. This makes it almost perfectly resistant to any contradictory evidence. Try to argue against it, and you will meet anger and bluster and the idee fixe.

I was once told a story which goes as follows. It concerns a psychiatrist trying to convince a patient that he is not dead. A battle that that had gone on for many years, eventually the psychiatrist comes up with a brilliant idea….

Psychiatrist:       ‘Do dead people bleed?’

Patient:                                   ‘No, I guess not.’

Psychiatrist:       (Takes pin from lapel and pricks the patient’s thumb, and a drop of blood appears). ‘Aha, do you see that?’

Patient:                 (Looks at thumb) ‘What do you know, I guess dead people do bleed then.’

The ‘saturated fat causing heart disease hypothesis’ comes from a very similar place called – well, it’s obvious isn’t it, just common sense. Heart disease is basically a build of fat in the arteries, isn’t it.? Where can that possibly come from? Fat in the diet. Especially the thick, sticky, gooey stuff that you get on a pork chop, or suchlike. That’s got to be it hasn’t it? The thick horrible squidgy gooey fat that you eat, ends up as thick horrible squidgy gooey fat in your arteries. Serves you right for eating fat, and MacDonald’s, and suchlike.

There rests the entire scientific argument against saturated fat. As such it is difficult to argue against. Facts simply bounce off. As demonstrated very clearly to me in a more recent publication. A very major review was published a few weeks ago on the Journal of Food and Nutrition Research called ‘Food consumption and the actual statistics of cardiovascular diseases: an epidemiological comparison of 42 European countries.’ ²

‘The aim of this ecological study was to identify the main nutritional factors related to the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in Europe, based on a comparison of international statistics.’

What did they find? Well, they found lots of things, but the key things they found were the following:

‘We found exceptionally strong relationships between some of the examined factors, the highest being a correlation between raised cholesterol in men and the combined consumption of animal fat and animal protein (r=0.92, p<0.001). The most significant dietary correlate of low CVD risk was high total fat and animal protein consumption.’

Now that paragraph really needs a however in it. Just after p<0.001 and the ‘The.’ Yes, they found that animal fat (mainly saturated fat) and animal protein did indeed raise cholesterol. However, animal fat and animal protein consumption showed the most powerful correlation with low risk of cardiovascular disease.

Which food items showed the highest correlation with increased CVD risk? Have a guess.

‘The major correlate of high CVD risk was the proportion of energy from carbohydrates and alcohol, or from potato and cereal carbohydrates.’

The conclusion of the authors:

‘Our results do not support the association between CVDs and saturated fat, which is still contained in official dietary guidelines. Instead, they agree with data accumulated from recent studies that link CVD risk with the high glycaemic index/load of carbohydrate-based diets. In the absence of any scientific evidence connecting saturated fat with CVDs, these findings show that current dietary recommendations regarding CVDs should be seriously reconsidered.’

When the British Heart Foundation was presented with the findings from this study they found a Dr Mike Knapton to make the following statement:

“Other studies, however, show diets high in saturated fat are linked to raised cholesterol levels, which is a risk factor for heart disease. So, for you and me, we should consider our diet as a whole to reduce our overall risk, such as a traditional Mediterranean style diet, which is a style of eating associated with a lower rate of coronary heart disease. The key is a balanced diet over all, rather than considering individual foods. There are many factors which cause heart disease and stroke and no single food or nutrient is solely responsible for this. We will continue to recommend switching saturated fat for unsaturated fat.”

As you can see, when presented with evidence, the BHF refuses to consider it, and turns to gibberish. Dr Mike Knapton argues that this study should be ignored, because other studies have shown that saturated fat raised cholesterol levels, and this is a risk factor for heart disease.

‘Hellooo Dr Knapton. This study also showed that saturated fat increased blood cholesterol levels. However, what it also showed is that this reduced the risk of heart disease. Did you even read that bit, or do you simply dismiss papers contradicting the diet-heart hypothesis on the basis they must be wrong – so what it the point of actually reading them?’

On many occasions I, and others, have tried to engage the BHF in debate. However, you can’t. They just provide ‘statements’. The statements never change, the evidence they use never revealed. However big a study, however contradictory it is, it will be met with statement such as Other studies, however, show diets high in saturated fat are linked to raised cholesterol levels, which is a risk factor for heart disease.

Made up scientific hypothesis are, I find, very difficult to dislodge with evidence.

1: ‘The association between dietary saturated fatty acids and ischemic heart disease depends on the type and source of fatty acid in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer andNutrition–Netherlands cohort’ Jaike Praagman, Joline WJ Beulens, Marjan Alssema, Peter L Zock, Anne J Wanders, Ivonne Sluijs, and Yvonne T van der Schouw. Am J Clin Nutr doi: 10.3945/ajcn.115.122671

2: http://www.foodandnutritionresearch.net/index.php/fnr/article/view/31694

[Yes, this one took a long time to write]

When I started looking at heart disease, or cardiovascular disease (CVD) it was initially because I was interested to know why the Scots and the French had such different death rates. I had also just finished a book by James le Fanu called ‘Eat your heart out’ in which he made it very clear, or at least he did to me, that fat/saturated fat in the diet had nothing to do with CVD in any way shape of form.

However, at the time le Fanu was very much a voice crying in the wilderness. The experts had a very different song, or dirge. Namely that the Scots diet was terribly unhealthy, and this fully explained why they kept keeling over from heart attacks. Their bad diet raised cholesterol levels and…. thud (sound of Scots person falling over dead).

This is still very much the case. All of our medical authorities still announce the absolute truth of the ‘terrible Scottish diet’ with adamantine confidence. They usually bring out the almost mythical ‘deep fried mars bar’ as the perfect example as to why the Scots die of heart attacks, and strokes, and suchlike. ‘Well, what can you expect of a nation that eats deep fried mars bars… ho, ho.’

The truth is that hardly any Scotsman, or women, has ever eaten such a thing. And if they did it once, they will most certainly never do it again (I was certainly put off for life after one drunken foray on a Saturday night). Of course, there is also a perfect irony here. A mars bar is almost entirely made up sugar (not fat). When you fry it, it will be in vegetable/polyunsaturated fat – as saturated fats have been virtually banned in deep fat fryers. So, in theory, a deep fried mars bar should be somewhat more heart healthy than a ‘virgin’ mars bar. As it now contains a mass of hot sugar plus some heart ‘healthy’ polyunsaturated fat.

I suppose this example, at least to me, highlights the complete lack of any consistent logic or thought in the diet heart world. A fact that I became very painfully aware of, over many years. Indeed, I came to realise that there is no area of human existence where more nonsense is spouted than the ever-changing beliefs about what constitutes a healthy, or unhealthy diet. Frankly, it is almost entirely wall to wall rubbish.

At one point I made an effort to look at the classical ‘risk factors’ for heart disease between France and Scotland. This was done some years ago as part of a paper I wrote called ‘Does Insulin Resistance cause atherosclerosis in the post-prandial period?’ Something which I still think is at least part of the picture of CVD.

Here is the table I put together from a number of different sources – there was no single source for the data I was looking for. [I could not find separate UK and Scottish figures for a number of the factors, so I had to look at the UK as a whole. In addition, at there were no clear cut data on saturated fat, so I used animal fat as a proxy – which is almost the same thing]

As you can see, there was virtually no difference in the classical risk factors for UK men and French men. Despite this, the French had one quarter the risk of death from ischaemic heart disease [what you or I would tend to call heart disease]. Since that time the French rate of heart disease has continued to fall, as it has also done in the UK, whilst the French consumption of saturated fat has risen. Interestingly total cholesterol levels have fallen in both countries.

So, whatever was going on had very little to do with diet. And if it had very little to do with diet, then it also had little to do with cholesterol either. If your hypothesis is that eating saturated fat increases cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol levels, which then causes CVD then how can two countries with exactly the same saturated fat consumption and cholesterol level (and all other risk factors equal) have such a different rate of CVD? And how could France, whilst continuing to eat more saturate fat, have a falling cholesterol levels? And how does the Ukraine, which currently has the lowest saturated fat intake in Europe, end up with the highest rate of CVD etc. etc. etc.

When you start looking at facts like this you must start to question the diet-heart cholesterol hypothesis. Or at least I thought you must. How wrong I was. Virtually the entire medical profession was wedded to the diet-heart cholesterol hypothesis – still is. Facts appear to have no impact whatsoever on this belief system.

Anyway, once I started to look at CVD in more detail, I was confronted with a choice. Accept that I must be wrong. After all, how can all the researchers and experts and Nobel prize winners be wrong. They must surely be seeing things that I cannot. Or, accept that the diet-heart cholesterol hypothesis was wrong. The blue pill, or the red pill.

Dear reader, I chose the red pill, in the sure and certain knowledge that rejecting the conventional thinking was certainly not going to be an easy path to follow. I also knew that if I was going to reject the diet-heart/cholesterol hypothesis, then I had to try and find out what does actually cause CVD. When I looked around at first there, were few alternative voices, or hypotheses out there. If truth be told, there seemed to be none (at least initially). But if not cholesterol, then what?

Over time, as I looked around, some ghosts in the machine began to emerge. I was aware of a doctor (whose name I cannot even remember) who firmly believe that fibrinogen was the main cause of CVD, and I went to a talk that he gave on the subject – not paying it much heed in truth. Then the Scottish Heart Health Study was published, and the single most powerful risk factor that emerged for CVD risk was… fibrinogen. A blood clotting factor. Aha. Could CVD actually be due to blood clotting abnormalities?

This was a time before the internet, before search engines, before finding information was so easy. This was an era when you had to traipse down to the medical library and pull actual books from actual shelves if you wanted to find out stuff. After pulling a lot of books off a lot of shelves I learned of Duguid, a Scottish doctor, who argued that blood clotting was the cause of CVD (I paraphrase).

His work was published shortly after the second world war, and has remained mostly unread. Then I went all the way back to Karl von Rokitansky who, in 1852, felt that atherosclerotic plaques were, in fact, just blood clots – in various stages of repair. An observation which, from time to time, other researchers have noted. Most particularly a doctor called Smith, from Aberdeen. He is no longer active in this area of research.

Here is the abstract from his paper ‘Fibrinogen, fibrin and fibrin degradation products in relation to atherosclerosis’. I have quote the abstract in full, for those who like to see a bit more detail. Others may glaze over, or skip to the last sentence:

‘Many human atherosclerotic lesions, showing no evidence of fissure or ulceration, contain a large amount of fibrin which may be in the form of mural thrombus on the intact surface of the plaque, in layers within the fibrous cap, in the lipid-rich centre, or diffusely distributed throughout the plaque. Small mural thrombi are invaded by SMCs (smooth muscle cells) and collagen is deposited in patterns closely resembling the early proliferative gelatinous lesions. In experimental animals, thrombi are converted into lesions with all the characteristics of fibrous plaques, and in saphenous-vein bypass grafts, fibrin deposition is the main cause of wall thickening and occlusion. There seems little doubt that fibrin deposition can both initiate atherogenesis and contribute to the growth of plaques.

Epidemiological studies indicate that increased levels of fibrinogen and clotting activity are associated with accelerated atherosclerosis, and although blood fibrinolytic activity has given inconsistent results, in arterial intima both fibrinolytic activity and plasminogen concentration are decreased in cardiovascular disease. Fibrin may stimulate cell proliferation by providing a scaffold along which cells migrate, and by binding fibronectin, which stimulates cell migration and adhesion. Fibrin degradation products, which are present in the intima, may stimulate mitogenesis and collagen synthesis, attract leukocytes, and alter endothelial permeability and vascular tone.

In the advanced plaque fibrin may be involved in the tight binding of LDL and accumulation of lipid. Thus there is extensive evidence that enhanced blood coagulation is a risk factor not only for thrombotic occlusion, but also for atherogenesis. Enhanced blood coagulation frequently coexists with hyperlipidaemia and, together, these may have a synergistic effect on atherogenesis.’ ¹

For those whose eyes did glaze over, concentrate only on the last sentence. ‘Enhanced blood coagulation frequently coexists with hyperlipidaemia and, together, these may have a synergistic effect on atherogenesis.’

Here, ladies and gentlemen, lies my little secret. My evil twin brother who I have kept in the attic for the last twenty years, gnawing at the floorboards. The terrible truth that there is an association between LDL levels/familial hypercholesterolemia and CVD. Something which I appear to have argued against for many, many, years.

Does this mean that the experts have been right, all along? High LDL cholesterol levels do cause CVD? Well maybe, maybe not. At this point I need to take you back to the statement again. ‘Enhanced blood coagulation frequently coexists with hyperlipidaemia.’

Does this mean that hyperlipidaemia actually causes enhanced blood coagulation? Or does it mean that something else causes both. Here is the old ‘yellow fingers and lung cancer’ discussion.

‘People with yellow fingers are more likely to die of lung cancer.’

Why… because people with yellow fingers smoke, and smoking causes lung cancer. Ergo yellow fingers are simply a sign of smoking, they do not actually cause lung cancer.

‘People with raised LDL are more likely to die from CVD’

Why… because people with raised LDL are also more likely to have enhanced blood coagulation. Ergo, raised LDL levels are only associated with enhanced blood coagulation, they do not actually cause CVD. It is the blood coagulation factors.

Alternatively, raised LDL may actually enhance blood coagulation, all by itself.

Where does the answer lie? In truth the answer has been very difficult to tease out. Even now, after many years, I do not feel that I can fully disentangle the data. Here for example, is a paper called ‘Maternal familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) confers altered haemostatic profile in offspring with and without FH.’

‘Children with (n=9) and without (n=7) FH born of mothers with FH, as well as control children (n=16) born of non-FH mothers were included in the study. The concentrations of tissue plasminogen activator, plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI-1), tissue factor (TF), TF pathway inhibitor (TFPI), thrombomodulin, fibrinogen, prothrombin fragment 1+2 and von Willebrand Factor were measured. Our findings show i) higher levels of PAI-1 and TFPI in children with and without FH born of mothers with FH compared with control children, ii) lower levels of thrombomodulin in children with FH compared with control children, and iii) significant correlations between maternal PAI-1 levels during pregnancy and PAI-1 levels in the offspring.^’2

What this tells us is that, if a mother has Familial Hypercholesterolaemia, she passes on abnormalities of blood coagulation to her children. Both those that have, and those that do not have FH. [Not all children of mothers with FH will end up with the FH gene]. Some of this may be epigenetically modulated. In short, it is not the LDL that is important, it is simply the mother’s genes….

Or is it? Here is a paper suggesting that the LDL itself, independently of anything else, makes platelets more likely to stick together (a key step in blood clotting).

‘The interaction of platelets with lipoproteins has been under intense investigation. Particularly the initiation of platelet signaling pathways by low density lipoprotein (LDL) has been studied thoroughly, since platelets of hypercholesterolemic patients, whose plasma contains elevated LDL levels due to absent or defective LDL receptors, show hyperaggregability in vitro and enhanced activity in vivo. These observations suggest that LDL enhances platelet responsiveness….’ ³

However, maybe these researches misinterpreted what they were seeing. For example, another paper found that the level of LDL in those with FH was not related to their risk CVD. It was purely the level of clotting factors that was related to CVD. This paper entitled: ‘Coronary artery disease and haemostatic variables in heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia.’

‘Haemostatic variables were measured in 61 patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia, 32 of whom had evidence of coronary heart disease. Age adjusted mean concentrations of plasma fibrinogen and factor VIII were significantly higher in these patients than in the 29 patients without coronary heart disease, but there were no significant differences in serum lipid concentrations between the two groups. Comparisons in 30 patients taking and not taking lipid lowering drugs showed lower values for low density lipoprotein cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol and antithrombin III, and a higher high density lipoprotein ratio while receiving treatment. The results suggest that hypercoagulability may play a role in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease in patients with familial hypercholesterolaemia.’⁴

So it is not the high LDL? It is the raised blood clotting factors that are found in some, but not all of those with FH. As you can see, it is not straightforward at all.

Just to complicate the picture further, here is a paper strongly suggesting that HDL is directly anti-coagulant.

‘Native HDL prevents platelet hyperreactivity by limiting intraplatelet cholesterol overload, as well as by modulating platelet signalling pathways after binding platelet HDL receptors such as scavenger receptor class B type I (SR-BI) and apoER2′. The antithrombotic properties of native HDL are also related to the suppression of the coagulation cascade and stimulation of clot fibrinolysis. Furthermore, HDL stimulates the endothelial production of nitric oxide and prostacyclin, which are potent inhibitors of platelet activation. Thus, HDL’s antithrombotic actions are multiple and therefore, raising HDL may be an important therapeutic strategy to reduce the risk of arterial and venous thrombosis.’ ⁵

And what about VLDL?

‘There is a considerable body of evidence supporting an association between hypertriglyceridaemia (high level of VLDL), a hypercoagulable state and atherothrombosis. A disorder of triglyceride metabolism is a key feature of the metabolic syndrome that increases risk of both ischaemic heart disease and type 2 diabetes approximately 3-fold. An increasing prevalence of obesity and metabolic syndrome is likely to contribute markedly to the prevalent ischaemic heart in the foreseeable future, and therefore it is crucial to understand mechanisms linking hypertriglyceridaemia and a hypercoagulable state. Activation of platelets and the coagulation cascade are intertwined. VLDL and remnant lipoprotein concentrations are often increased with the metabolic syndrome. These lipoproteins have the capacity to activate platelets and the coagulation pathway, and to support the assembly of the prothrombinase complex. VLDL also upregulates expression of the plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 gene and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 antigen…’ ⁶ etc.

You can go back and forward in this area, finding research that contradicts itself upside down and inside out again. What I think I know for certain is the following:

• High LDL levels/familial hypercholesterolemia is closely associated with increased blood coagulation (in a high percentage of those with FH, though not all) – through many different interrelated mechanisms. Some genetic, some possibly directly due to LDL itself.
• VLDL (triglyceride) seems to increase blood coagulation – and this seems a very consistent finding
• HDL has anticoagulant effects

I don’t know how powerful these different pro and anti-coagulant effects are, but they certainly exist. To an extent I could just say what does it matter if LDL does, or does not increase blood coagulation directly – but is simply associated with blood clotting abnormalities. It all fits within the processes that I have outlined in this series of blogs. Namely, anything that increases the risk of blood clotting increases the risk of CVD. And LDL (directly, or through genetic association) does increase the risk.

However, I thought it would be dishonest of me not to highlight the fact that there could well be a causal association between LDL (and VLDL) and CVD. Also there does seem to be a causal protective mechanism provided by HDL.

Or, to put this another way, perhaps all the experts were (a bit) right all along. Even if they have consistently promoted a process that does not make any sense at all i.e. LDL leaks into artery walls causing inflammation and plaque growth etc.

A further proviso is that I cannot see that the LDL/VLDL/HDL effects are very strong. After all I just co-authored a paper showing that higher LDL levels in the elderly are associated with increased life expectancy and a slight reduction in CVD risk. [There are many other factors clouding the issue here – too many to discuss in one go]. Confused yet… welcome to my world.

So where did I get to. I think I got to the point where I accept that:

• LDL is pro-coagulant and – at very high levels e.g. in FH – increases the risk of CVD [though it is difficult to disentangle this from intertwined genetic pro-coagulant factors]
• VLDL is pro-coagulant, and increases the risk of CVD
• HDL is anticoagulant and protects against CVD

Which then brings onto statins, and how they work. First to re-iterate that statins do reduce the risk of CVD [Something, I have never disputed]. However, they do it not by lowering LDL, but because they have anticoagulant effects. Not that potent, about the same as aspirin, but the effect does exist.

Here from a paper entitled ‘statins and blood coagulation’:

‘The 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl (HMG)-coenzyme A (CoA) reductase inhibitors (statins) have been shown to exhibit several vascular protective effects, including antithrombotic properties, that are not related to changes in lipid profile. There is growing evidence that treatment with statins can lead to a significant downregulation of the blood coagulation cascade, most probably as a result of decreased tissue factor expression, which leads to reduced thrombin generation…. Treatment with statins can lead to a significant downregulation of the blood coagulation cascade….’ ⁷ An effect confirmed by their protection against DVT.

‘Venous thromboembolism (VTE) includes both deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism. The 2009 JUPITER trial showed a significant decrease in DVT in non-hyperlipidemic patients, with elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, treated with rosuvastatin.’ ⁸ Yet, the experts continue to tell us that statins work, purely, by lowering LDL levels. Ho hum.

Whilst I could have written this series and simply pushed LDL, VLDL and HDL to one side. I thought I needed to bring them into the discussion. Not to dismiss them but, I hope, to explain what their role within CVD may actually be – pro and anti-coagulant agents. Here is where they fit, and make sense. Looking at lipoproteins in the light also helps to explain how statins actually work.

References:
1: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3524931
2: http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/23199546
3: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16877876
4: Br Heart j 1985; 53: 265-8
5: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24891399
6: https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/93221
7: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15569822
8: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22278047

When you start thinking about things in a new way it is funny where it takes you. You end up seeing connections, where you may previously only have seen confusion. You see links where they could not, or should not, seemingly exist before. In this blog, I am going to take you from migraine to sickle cell disease, and explain how they both cause CVD – and how they both do it through exactly the same underlying mechanisms.

Before reading on, perhaps you might like to think about how this can possibly work … It is always much more satisfying to work things out for yourself. Or maybe that’s just me.

To begin. As you will have picked up from this blog, I believe that cardiovascular disease (CVD) is, essentially, a disease created by endothelial damage and/or dysfunctional blood clotting. With a bit of impaired clot repair thrown in. I spend too much of my life tracking down anything, and everything, that may cause CVD to see if this hypothesis fits – or does not.

Which is why I was interested to see a headline that appeared very recently on Doctors Net (A website for doctors in the UK). It was entitled ‘Migraine cardiovascular link examined’. Up to this point, I had not realised that migraine and CVD were related. So it was something new to me:

As the article, in the BMJ, went on to say:

Young women who suffer from regular migraine attacks appear to have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, researchers warn today.

Women are three to four times more likely to experience regular migraines. The condition has previously been linked to an increased risk of stroke, but although the physiology of migraine has close links to the vascular system, the way in which migraine increases risk of stroke is unclear.

A team led by Professor Tobias Kurth of the Institute of Public Health in Berlin, Germany, looked at this association, and the link with cardiovascular disease in general.

They used details on 115,541 women aged 25 to 42 years at baseline, taking part in the US Nurses’ Health Study II, which began in 1989. Over the 20 years of follow-up, 15% of the women were diagnosed with migraine.

Cardiovascular disease was 50% more likely among the women with migraine. Heart attack was 39% more likely, stroke 62% more likely, and these women were 73% more likely to have a revascularization procedure.

In addition, women with migraine were 37% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than women without migraine, and the risk was not significantly altered by age, smoking, high blood pressure, or use of hormone medications.¹

So here is, yet another possible cause of CVD. There was no explanation put forward in this study, it was simply an observation. However, I find that unexplained observations are where the answers lie. These are the ghosts in the machine. Truths that occasionally emerge from the dark depths of the ocean, like oarfish, or giant squid, before slipping back into the abyss.

When I see a study like this, the first thing that I do is to look for an association with blood clotting, or endothelial damage, or both. If there is no association, then my hypothesis has suffered a serious blow. On the other hand…

So, taking a deep breath, I looked around the research done in this area. There has not been a great deal, but to my relief. [Yes, I know, a true scientist should never get too attached their own ideas. But, you know what, it’s hard not to….] To my relief I found that migraine is associated with, or causes, blood clotting abnormalities – and also damage to the endothelium.

Just to quote one short section from the Stroke Association:

‘Migraine-Related Stroke – There is evidence that patients with migraine, particularly migraine with aura, have an increased risk of stroke. The mechanism for this is unclear, although migraine is associated with abnormalities of platelet, coagulation and blood vessel inner lining function, and that may contribute to an increased risk of stroke.’ ²

Just to add further to the connections that potentially open up, I was interested to stumble across a case study where a patient’s migraines were ‘cured’ by using warfarin.

An unusual case report on the possible role of warfarin in migraine prophylaxis

Abstract

Background: Migraine is a complex disease whose physiopathological mechanisms are still not completely revealed.

Findings: We describe an unusual case, not yet described in literature, of a patient who reported migraine remission, but still presented aura attacks, since starting a therapy with Warfarin.

Conclusions: This case report brings out new questions on the role of the coagulation, especially the blood coagulation pathway, in migraine with aura pathogenesis, and on the possibility to use vitamin K inhibitors, Warfarin or new generation drugs, as possible therapy to use in migraine prophylaxis.³

I must admit I never saw that one coming. Migraines can be treated with warfarin? Though, I suppose, had I thought things through, I might have worked it out. Or maybe not.

Anyway, pulling this information together, we now know that migraines increase the risk of CVD, – more often strokes than heart disease. When you look deeper, you find that migraines are also associated with endothelial dysfunction, and blood clotting abnormalities.

As should be pretty obvious, this all fits perfectly with the ‘CVD is all caused by blood clotting’ hypothesis. On the other hand, if you would like to try to explain how migraines cause CVD through any another process, please let me know. Of course, it could be that another deeper process causes both blood clotting abnormalities, and migraines, but that is for another day.

Of greater interest to me is that, whilst I was studying migraine and CVD, another condition kept popping up on the search criteria. Something that was, again, completely new to me. Which is that there is a very strong association between sickle cell disease (SCD), and CVD. I had never previously thought to link these conditions. However, a number of the migraine articles pointed me towards sickle cell disease (SCD).

Sickle cell disease is a genetic condition whereby red blood cells are malformed and have a sickle shape. This accounts for the name. It is a genetic mutation that, in milder forms, is thought to to protect against malaria, because mildly sickle shaped red blood cells are more difficult for the malaria parasite to enter. However, in its more severe forms, sickle cell disease is quite damaging. Sickle cells can burst, get stuck in smaller blood vessels, form clots in blood vessels in the eyes – leading to blindness, lung and kidney problems etc.

To cut a long story short, in sickle cell disease there are all sorts of ‘clotting’ problems. There is also the potential for significant endothelial damage due to the abnormal shape and function of the red blood cells. Given this, you might expect increased risk of CVD. Which there is, as covered in the paper ‘Atherosclerosis in sickle cell disease – a review:’

‘Ischemic (lack of oxygen) complications are the major causes of morbidity and mortality in patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). The pathogenesis (what causes these problems) of these complications is poorly understood. Ischemic events in these patients have been attributed to the effects of hemoglobin polymerization, resulting in rigid, dense and sickled cells trapped in the microcirculation. Therefore, vascular occlusion is often considered to be synonymous with occlusion of microvasculature by sickled red blood cells. Several observations suggest that other factors may also play a pathogenic role. Atherosclerosis is one of these factors and may affect many arteries all over the body.’

It is fascinating what you find, when you decide to look at things from a different perspective. You start looking at the connection between migraine, CVD, and blood clotting, and end up studying sickle cell disease. I must admit that I get a great sense of satisfaction when I come across facts like this. Somewhat like completing a jigsaw puzzle. ‘Yes, hoorah, it all fits. In fact, it all fits perfectly.’

Indeed, the article on Atherosclerosis in sickle cell disease goes on to bring in Nitric Oxide and L-arginine. I have covered both of these factors in some in detail earlier on in this series. [Sorry this section a bit jargon filled]:

‘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. In recent years, investigators’ attention has been attracted by the effects of chronic hemolysis on vascular bed integrity and function in patients with congenital hemolytic anemias. Hemolysis results in the release of free hemoglobin.

On one hand, it scavenges NO by oxidizing it to nitrate and releasing red blood cell arginase. On the other hand, it hydrolyzes L-arginine, the substrate of NO synthase. Because of these effects, NO bioavailability and its action is limited. All the previous mechanisms cause impairment of NO production. NO is an important vascular relaxing factor and its deficiency would lead to large artery stiffness. In addition, NO promotes general vascular homeostasis by decreasing endothelial expression of adhesion molecules, decreasing platelet activation, and inhibiting fibroblast, smooth muscle cell and endothelial cell mitogenesis and proliferation.’

In one short section on SCD we have virtually everything I have been writing about in this series so far. There is:

• Reduced NO synthesis
• Damage to the endothelium
• Increased risk of blood clotting in general
• Increased platelet activation and adhesion
• Inhibition of endothelial cell repair and proliferation
• Increased risk of CVD and accelerated atherosclerotic plaque development

Another highly important point here is, as follows. You may recall that I said atherosclerosis almost never forms in the blood vessels in the lungs (pulmonary blood vessels). The only time it does is if you have pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure in the blood vessels in the lungs).

Well, I just found out that if you have sickle cells disease, you are at high risk of developing atherosclerosis in the lungs:

‘The pulmonary artery is one of the common sites of atherosclerosis in sickle cell disease (SCD). Autopsy of the pulmonary artery in patients with SCD showed that approximately one-third of the patients had histological evidence of medial hypertrophy, intimal proliferation, and subintimal proliferation and fibrosis.’

Now you may not think this is particularly important, but to me it is a killer fact. Atherosclerosis in the pulmonary arteries is something so unusual that when you find it, you are looking at the mother lode. If you can cause atherosclerosis here, then you are gazing at a true underlying cause, with all other risk factors stripped out.

Here is the process (or processes) revealed. Deep joy. It is not often that I come across a fact that I had no idea existed before. Certainly not one that confirms so perfectly everything that I have been saying.

I realise that I have repeatedly stated that the primary purpose of science should be to contradict hypotheses. Here, all I have ended up doing, is providing more facts that support my own hypothesis. I would ask you to believe that I started out looking for a contradiction. I ended up with greater confirmation. Confirmation from places where I had never previously even thought to look.

References:

1: BMJ 1 June 2016; doi: 10.1136/bmj.i2610

2: http://www.strokeassociation.org/STROKEORG/StrokeConnectionMagazine/ReadSCNow/Uncommon-Causes-of-Stroke_UCM_461424_Article.jsp#.V1aXV5EgthE

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

4: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2780857/

Scientific hypotheses are easy. You can make up thirty a day if you want. In the arena of cardiovascular disease, I have watched many a hypothesis spring to life in the middle of a conversation. For example, I was at a meeting where an ‘expert’ was attempting to describe what foods cause CVD. Pizza was held up as a very unhealthy food.

I pointed out that there had only been one study done on pizza consumption and CVD. It showed, very clearly, that the more pizza you ate, the lower your risk of CVD. Quite a strong protective effect as a matter of fact. The study was done in Italy.

The moment the geographical location was mentioned, the expert simply replied. ‘Oh yes, but Italian Pizzas are far healthier than pizzas in the UK.’ Thus, ‘the healthy Italian Pizza hypothesis’, was simply plucked from thin air. It was based on no evidence whatsoever, but it seemed reasonable to the expert at the time I suppose. Who knows, it may even be true. Although I suspect not.

Now, I have nothing against the creation of any scientific hypothesis that anyone cares to put forward. Science progresses, primarily, through the development of new ideas. But if you are going to propose a new hypothesis it is beholden upon you to do something that few people then seem willing to do. You need to try and disprove it. There is no point looking for supporting data, you can find supportive data for almost any idea you decide to come up with.

There is a fairly well-known and humorous explanation for CVD (humorous the first fifty times you are told it anyway) that goes like this:

• Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us
• Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us
• Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us
• Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us
• Germans drink beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and sufferfewer heart attacks than us
• The French eat foie-gras, full fat cheese and drink red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us

CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you

How would I disprove the ‘speaking English’ hypothesis? Assuming, that is, I could be bothered. I would point out that, currently, speaking Ukrainian kills you. Ukrainians have ten times the rate of CVD of the UK, and the US. Ergo, it is not speaking English that kills you. Next.

Moving to slightly more serious things. Disproving is where I started with in my long term search for a hypothesis about CVD. I did not start out with my own hypothesis. I started out trying to disprove other hypotheses.

Which inevitably meant that I started with the diet-heart/cholesterol hypothesis, as this was, and remains, the number one hypothesis in the area. I am not going to go through all the refutations again. Suffice to say that it failed in so many ways that it was clearly bunk.

Of course, this left me thinking, if CVD has nothing to do with saturated fat in diet, or cholesterol levels, it must be something else. What could that something else be? I began by looking at stress (I realise that the term stress is not remotely precise). I started with the thought that stress, whilst eating, could be a cause/the cause. If you are stressed you will be releasing stress hormones, these antagonise insulin, so when you eat blood sugar levels spike and VLDL levels spike etc.

I became interested in the idea that we measure almost all metabolic parameters e.g. blood sugar, VLDL, cortisol, glucagon in the fasting period. Yet, perhaps all the damage was being done within two hours of eating. So it seemed that we may, to use an analogy, be trying to understand football by visiting a football stadium only before and after the match is being played. ‘Blimey, nothing different ever happens here at all.’

I felt I was onto something, but thinking then moved on to a more general stress hypothesis. I felt that I got most of the way to creating a perfect scientific hypothesis. I had causes and pathways and a mass of supportive data. However, I could still find plenty people with an increased risk of CVD who were not in any way stressed. They had such things as antiphospholipid syndrome (Hughes syndrome). Or they were children with Kawasaki’s disease. Or they had type II diabetes, or they were taking drugs, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, or Avastin. Or… the list went on.

Equally, I could find factors that reduced the risk of CVD, that had nothing to do with reducing stress. For example, aspirin (not a massive effect, but it does exist). Von Willibrand disease, omega-3 fatty acids, potassium, vitamin C. As with causal factors, the ‘nothing to do with stress’ list went on.

So, what did this mean? That stress did not cause CVD, or that it caused only one type of CVD. Or it caused CVD through a completely different process than other causes of CVD? It was at this point that I began to realise I was looking at things the wrong way round. There was no point in saying what things may, or may not, cause CVD – and compiling an ever-lengthening list of ‘risk’ factors.

I had to work out the process through which any factor may operate, both causal and protected. As some of you will know, in this series, I have pointed this out before… many times. But I think that it cannot be said often enough.

So I turned the entire thinking process inside out, and started again. I began by asking the question, what are atherosclerotic plaques? What do they consist of? What do they contain? It became very clear that they are primarily blood clots – in various stages of development and repair.

Having recognised this, I went further back, or forward, to look at the final event in CVD. This is, basically, the formation of a blood clot. Heart attacks occur when a blood clot blocks an artery supplying blood to the heart (there are caveats here, but I am not going into them at this point). Stokes occur when a blood clot blocks an artery in the brain (further caveats).

There is little disagreement that the blood clot is the final event in CVD. Most acute treatments for heart attacks and strokes are, essentially, ways of removing any clot that has formed. You can use aspirin, or more potent clot busters, or you can stick in a catheter to remove the clot/open it up/stick in a stent. You can do a bypass, diverting the blood round the clot… etc. Interventional cardiology could, pretty, accurately be described as ‘blood clot management.’

Many of the drugs used to prevent heart attacks and/or strokes are also anti-coagulants e.g. aspirin, Clopidogrel, warfarin, apixiban etc. [Statins are also potent anticoagulants]. Yet, and yet, no-one seemed willing even to countenance the possibility that blood clots also cause atherosclerotic plaque development. ‘Yes, blood clots kill you, but they have nothing to do with plaque formation.’

‘What, even when plaque contain such things as red blood cells, cholesterol crystals, fibrin, fibrinogen and Lp(a) and….’ the list of things found in both blood clots and plaques is very long.

But of course no expert can agree to this ‘blood clot’ hypothesis. To do so means that you have to discard the cholesterol hypothesis. Which ain’t going to happen anytime soon. So we currently have the dual hypothesis. Cholesterol causes plaques to form, then blood clots kill you. The ‘atherothrombosis’ hypothesis. Which can look as though the mainstream is agreeing about the importance of thrombosis, but is actually a way of keeping the cholesterol hypothesis alive.

For a while I half agreed with this atherothrombosis hypothesis, but the more I thought about it, the more it started to fall apart. I began to focus down on one thought. Can you explain CVD though the ‘abnormal’ development of blood clots alone? Can you link any and all factors, known to cause CVD by their impact on one of two things:

• Endothelial damage (which triggers blood clot formation)
• Increasing blood coagulability (making clots more like to form, become bigger and/or less easy to break down)

Then I started writing out a list of things that I knew did one, or both, of these things. There was no particular order to this:

• Smoking
• Cocaine use
• Cortisol
• Kawasaki’s disease
• Diabetes
• Rheumatoid Arthritis
• Kidney failure
• Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories e.g. brufen, naproxen
• Biomechanical stress (within arteries)
• Dehydration
• Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
• Antiphospholipid syndrome (Hughes syndrome)
• Vitamin C deficiency
• Raised fibrinogen levels (key clotting factor)
• Homocysteine
• Bacterial infections inc. gingivitis
• Increased plasminogen activator inhibitor – (1 PAI-1) levels (critical factor in blood clot repair/breakdown)

I could have kept going, but that is enough for now. What do all of these things have in common. They increase the risk of atherosclerotic plaque formation, death from CVD. Most importantly, of course, they cause endothelial damage and/or increased blood coagulability. And I could not, and cannot, think of anything else that links them all together.

Then I started to think about factors that reduce the risk of CVD.

• Exercise (overall, not whilst doing it)
• Moderate alcohol consumption
• Aspirin
• Clopidogrel (expensive aspirin)
• ACE- inhibitors (a blood pressure lowering agent)
• Yoga
• Haemophilia
• Statins
• Von Willibrand disease (lack of a specific clotting factor in platelets)
• B vitamins (enough to reduce homocysteine)
• Adequate Vit C (no idea what the correct intake should be)
• Potassium (higher consumption reduces platelets sticking together)
• Vitamin D
• Nitric Oxide (through sunlight – and other nutrients e.g. l-arginine)
• Magnesium (and other micronutrients)

Again, I could keep going. What do all of these things have in common. Well, once again, they either protect the endothelium, or they reduce blood clotting. And they all reduce the risk of CVD.

To my mind there was, and is, an almost perfect correlation. But, as I said earlier. Looking for supportive data is all very well. Can you find the black swan? Or black swans. Are there facts that completely contradict the ‘it’s all to do with blood clots’ hypothesis of CVD?

Warfarin could be one such black swan. Warfarin reduces the risk of stroke (in atrial fibrillation), but it does not really reduce the risk of heart attacks. It is a very powerful anti-coagulant, so surely it should do both. Yet it does not. Why not? Is this a black swan, or can it be explained?

My conjecture is, as follows.

Warfarin is a vitamin K antagonist. It is active in the liver, and interferes with the production of a number of clotting factors (mainly prothrombin and factor VII). This tends to inhibit clots forming, spontaneously, within the blood itself. Which is why warfarin is very effective in Atrial Fibrillation.

In Atrial Fibrillation, the upper chambers of the heart fibrillate (twitch rapidly) so some of the blood tends to get stuck in the upper chambers (the atria). Blood in stasis tends to start clotting. A clot forms, it is then ejected into the lower chamber (the ventricles) where it is then immediately pumped out into the rest of the body. These clots can get stuck anywhere the blood vessel narrows sufficiently – often in the brain, causing a stroke.

Warfarin also works well when you have blood stasis in the veins. For instance, if you break your leg, you will be put in a cast. At which point, due to physical immobility, the blood tends to stop flowing freely, if at all. At which point clots can form, a deep venous thrombosis – DVT. This can then break off and travel through your heart into your lungs causing a pulmonary embolus (PE), which can kill you. Warfarin tends to stop this ‘stasis’ blood clot formation. [Long distance flight and sitting anywhere for a long time can have the same effect]

So why does warfarin have little effect on the clots that cause myocardial infarction. This is probably because damage to the endothelium – the trigger for all the other downstream problems – exposes tissue factor (TF) to the blood. Tissue factor sits within the artery wall itself, and it is the big daddy of clotting.

As you can imagine, the body views damage to an arterial wall as a potential emergency situation that requires immediate and powerful clotting. A damaged artery wall exposes TF Once TF is in play, it will ride straight over such things as a lack of factor VII and prothrombin. TF will directly drive platelets to stick together, and form a plug over the area of damage. It can also directly activate thrombin etc.

Thus, whilst warfarin will prevent the slower ‘stasis’ clots from forming, it will have little effect on the emergency ‘damage to the artery wall’ clotting caused by exposure to TF. I am not going into any more detail on this, but it could be said that warfarin is a good ‘intrinsic’ anticoagulant. But has far less impact on the ‘extrinsic’ clotting system.

On the other hand aspirin, which prevents platelets sticking together, will have a more significant effect on reducing clot formation after activation of TF, as will Clopidogrel, as will a lack of von Willibrand factor (as found in Von Willibrand disease). This, to my mind at least, fits with the fact that ‘less potent’ anticoagulant factors can reduce risk of heart attacks (albeit by differing amounts), whereas warfarin does not.

So, the lack of effect of warfarin on heart attacks can be understood, in relation to where it actually acts in the coagulation system. In addition, because warfarin is a vitamin K antagonist, and vitamin K appears to protect against the build of calcium in various tissues, warfarin accelerates calcification in artery wall. Which could be a further problem in itself – leading to a higher rate of CVD.

Now, you could think this is all rather convoluted. An attempt to explain why an apparent contradiction is not a contradiction all. You could, of course, be right to think this. But firmly believe that the lack of effect on warfarin, on heart attacks, can be explained. Through a deeper understanding of the clotting system. In fact, the different effects of different anticoagulants on CVD risk supports rather than undermines the hypothesis.

Perhaps, now, you may gain an inkling as to why it has taken me so many, many, years to try and establish the true underlying cause of CVD. It did not take too long, at least once I got my thinking the right way round, to work out that blood clotting may be the underlying process that underpins CVD. What has really taken the time is looking for contradictions.

And, in the spirit of true scientific endeavour, I welcome as many attacks/contradictions as people can think of. What does not kill a scientific hypothesis can only make it stronger.

I have been much cheered by all the discussion on my series about what caused heart disease a.k.a. cardiovascular disease. Because of various comments, my series has gone off in a few different directions. I realise that not everyone agrees with everything (or anything?) I have to say, and that several issues I thought were clear, clearly are not. This is fine. Science should progress by discussion and debate and contradictions.

In this blog, in order to answer some of what people have written (albeit indirectly), I am going to look at two of the conventional risk factors for CVD in a bit more detail, and try to explain why they represent a major problem for conventional thinking.

As many of you may have discovered, if you go to see your GP – almost anywhere in the world – they will use a list of ‘standard’ risk factors to calculate your risk of a cardiovascular ‘event’ over the next five or ten years.

There are a few of these calculators, but two of most commonly used are probably QRISK2 and the ASCVD, created by the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association. [ASCVD = atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease]. I cannot find out where the term QRISK comes from – perhaps someone can help me.

The ASCVD is a bit shorter than QRISK. It looks at:

• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Total Cholesterol
• HDL
• Systolic blood pressure
• Diastolic blood pressure
• Treatment for blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Smoker

The QRISK is a UK developed risk calculator. It is a bit bigger and more complicated than ASCVD. It looks at:

• Age
• Sex
• Systolic blood pressure
• Diastolic blood pressure
• Total Cholesterol
• Total Cholesterol/HDL ratio
• Serum triglyceride
• Smoking
• Glucose Impaired glucose tolerance/diabetes
• Left Ventricular hypertrophy
• Central obesity
• South Asian (South Asians, in the UK, have a far higher risk of CVD)
• Family history of CVD

Now, there is no doubt that all of the factors on both lists are associated with CVD – to a greater or lesser degree. At least they are for the US and UK population currently living. It has to be pointed out thought, that if you use QRISK in France, you have to divide the risk by 4… ahem, slight problem.

A further problem is that it has been discovered that they both vastly over-estimate risk in US and UK population.

‘A widely recommended risk calculator for predicting a person’s chance of experiencing a cardiovascular disease event — such as heart attack, ischemic stroke or dying from coronary artery disease — has been found to substantially overestimate the actual five-year risk in adults overall and across all sociodemographic subgroups. The study by Kaiser Permanente was published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The actual incidence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease events over five years was substantially lower than the predicted risk in each category of the ACC/AHA Pooled Cohort equation:

• For predicted risk less than 2.5 percent, actual incidence was 0.2 percent
• For predicted risk between 2.5 and 3.74 percent, actual incidence was 0.65 percent
• For predicted risk between 3.75 and 4.99 percent, actual incidence was 0.9 percent
• For predicted risk equal to or greater than 5 percent, actual incidence was 1.85 percent

“From a relative standpoint, the overestimation is approximately five- to six-fold,” explained Dr. Go. “Translating this, it would mean that we would be over-treating a good many people based on the risk calculator.”’¹

So, you feed your risk factors in a risk calculator that took many years to create, using data carefully gathered by experts from the world of cardiology, and your true risk is overestimated five to six fold. Excellent. That mean millions upon millions of people have been told to take a statin based on a calculation that is so inaccurate as to be virtually meaningless. [This was always going to happen, because risk was established using clinical data from decades ago, since when, CVD rates have fallen dramatically]

Anyway, leaving the horrible inaccuracy of these risk factor calculators aside for the moment. What of the risk factors themselves? I am not going to look at all of them here, just two. Firstly, age. There is no doubt that age is the single most important risk for CVD. Your risk at 65 is around ten times as high as at age 35 – no matter what the overall risk may be in your particular country.

In fact, if you have no other factors at all, in the US, your future CVD risk at the age of 67 is so high (according to the calculator) it means that you are advised to go on a statin immediately, for the rest of your life. Ho hum. For women it is a few years later. ‘Here’s your first pension payment – with built in statin prescription.’

I find it fascinating that almost everyone seems to accept age as a risk factor for CVD, without really questioning why this should be so. Age does not necessarily increase the risk of diseases. There are many which are more common when you are younger, and the risk diminishes as you age.

The argument seems to be that CVD slowly progresses. Thus, as you get older, the risk increases. Yes, perhaps. However, if you have no conventional risk factors for CVD, why should it progress at all? At the risk of repeating myself, I shall repeat myself. You have no risk factors for CVD. Yet, as you grow older, your risk of CVD reaches the point where you are statinated. Because your future risk is so high.

But what is causing the atherosclerosis in your arteries to develop. Age? Through what process can age created atherosclerotic plaques, assuming no other risk factors? Raised cholesterol… well you don’t have raised cholesterol. Raised BP? Well, you don’t have raised BP. Smoking, well, you don’t smoke… etc.

The other major risk factor where we have an acceptance of a fact – without even an attempt at explanation is gender. In most populations younger men have a far higher risk of CVD than women. The different in risk varies greatly, but averages at about three to one. By which I mean, a women aged 55 women will have around one third the risk of a man aged 55 (living in the same country). Even if they have exactly the same risk factors.

For years it was stated, with great confidence, that this difference was due to female sex hormones. These hormones in some – never fully stated fashion – protected women against CVD. It has now been proven, beyond a molecule of doubt, that this is not true. Female sex hormones do not protect against CVD. Indeed, they probably accelerate it.

So, what does protect women against CVD. There is no explanation. It just is. Feed gender into the calculator and a different risk pops out for men and women. Why, because men and women, have a different risk of CVD. Why? Because they do. [BTW, the South Asian issue is much the same. Multiply the risk by 1.4. Why, because you do].

The reality is that age, and gender, are two of the most powerful risk factors for CVD. In that, if you use the ASCVD or QRISK calculator and change only age, and gender, the risk will go from close to zero, in a young woman to dark red – danger, danger, in an older man. Even if you set all other risk factors to zero.

It has always baffled me that experts in cardiology seem utterly unconcerned about this. They do not even consider that this is an issue. However, if the two most powerful risk factors you have for CVD, cannot be explained, are not explained, then you really have a major problem. Even if you cannot even comprehend that you do.

If you cannot explain why age, and gender, cause CVD… you cannot explain CVD.

1: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-05/kp-crt042916.php