Hearts, Minds and Calcium

In the process of my physical for age 50 I was treated to a Cardiac CT scan. The procedure is relatively easy as medical tests go. You lay on a slab that moves you in and out of the big CT donut with some leads attached to your chest. The technology allows a calcium score to be calculated that is considered a new indicator for the potential of a cardiac event. Calcium in the arteries is "atherosclerosis" or "hardening of the arteries". It ISN'T "blockage", but they believe that it is a precursor to blockage. I managed to fail it very well with a score for my age that would put only 6 people out of 100 being worse off.

The test was a week ago Thursday, with the results the following day, so I got a full week to enjoy "limbo" relative to how bad this really is. Friday AM I took a stress test, which fortunately I passed with flying colors. A good hour was spent in the PM talking to a couple of I'm sure very high priced Mayo cardiologists. The bottom line is "it is another risk factor, but it is too early to give a solid % of exactly how bad it is". What it means for sure is "Lipitor, low cholesterol diet, lose weight, more medication to reduce blood pressure and be sure to keep up all the exercise".

Interestingly, we don't really have the technology to predict "sudden death heart attacks", although the Cardiac CT is often oversold as just that. At least at Mayo, the next test after the Cardiac CT is the stress test, and they have no inclination to do a Angiogram where they put a probe into the heart unless there is chest pain and/or a negative indicator on a stress test. Putting a probe into the heart is not without risk, and unless someone is 50% blocked or greater, they aren't going to stent it anyway. They will proceed with the same drug therapies that I'm now on in hopes of some level of reversal, or at least slowing the deposits so that the rest of the population catches up with the patient.

Everyone over "40 or so" carries around an increasing risk that "something will go wrong" and a piece of plaque (that nearly everyone that age has some of) will break off and lodge in the wrong place. When it does, things go bad in a hurry and life is in danger. They have a lot of theories about the mechanism; inflammation is a leading guess, and they check the blood for something called "C-reactive protein", yet another risk factor which was fortunately normal in my case.

So, I embark on an attempt to radically change my weight profile ... even though a relatively svelte Moose at 6'4" 280lbs, it is time to work toward the lower bounds of "lost Moosehood" in the lower 200lb register. Some nut claims that even for 6'4" and "massively boned" (size 14 ring) something like an anorexic 240 is "obese". "Living" seems a better idea than "living large", so a smaller feedbag is already in evidence.

Certainly I would have preferred a great score and no need to make any changes, but being given the opportunity to make changes and hopefully avoid a heart attack seems like a blessing that should be looked at positively. The "easy week" of weight loss is behind me with 6lbs down. It ALWAYS seems easy for the first week ... but when 10% of your bodyweight is 28lbs, it ought to be ;-(

I'm thinking that the logical thing is to "blame the skinny" and lay some sort of a "skinny tax" on them. I've seen some of those high metabolism types eat like there was no tomorrow and not put on weight. Such things are simply "not fair", and any decent Government would find some way to put those folks in their places as fast as possible! It must be Bush's fault that it hasn't been done already!