You’ll Never Worry About Cholesterol After This

Hello Health Champions. Cholesterol  and heart attacks are perhaps the most  

misunderstood topic in all of healthcare and as a  result a lot of people get hurt and are suffering  

needlessly. And here are just some of the problems  we hear forever that HDL is good LDL is bad. High  

cholesterol is bad and that's just way way too  simplistic. There's so much more to it than that  

we hear that a statin drug could be necessary  after we try diet and exercise without success  

but the question is what diet and what exercise  are they trying and very often people ask me or  

I see suggestions of natural remedies to lower  cholesterol but the question is are we sure we  

want to lower it now please keep in mind that I am  not saying that a stat drug is never a good idea  

I'm not saying that cholesterol can never be too  high or out of balance that's not what I'm saying  

but there may be like one percent of people with a  genetic defect with familial hypercholesterolemia  

whereas that drug is the right thing for them  but for the vast majority of people who get  

blanket recommendations of statin drugs  because their cholesterol is too high  

we need to understand a lot more and even though  I will defend higher cholesterol numbers I'm not  

saying that higher is always better and I'm not  saying that you should not get concerned about  

what your blood work says that you should just  disregard everything on there what I am saying  

is I think it's a bad idea to make a diagnosis  on a single marker such as high cholesterol  

or high LDL and if we then based on that diagnosis  get a prescription for a chemical or medication  

that will interfere with the function  of the liver which we'll talk about  

and interfere with health then I believe we  are doing some of the greatest disservices  

to mankind and we need to understand some  of the things that I'm going to talk about  

first we need to understand something about this  molecule cholesterol first of all it's synthesized  

in every cell of your body that has a nucleus  that's basically every cell except red blood  

cells can make cholesterol a lot of it is made in  the liver and that's traditionally where we hear  

that cholesterol is made and because the body  makes cholesterol itself then if you eat less then  

the body will make more if you eat more the body  will make less the body needs to have a certain  

amount of cholesterol and the brain is one of the  places that's most dependent on cholesterol 23%  

of all the cholesterol in your body  is in the brain and interestingly  

the cholesterol molecule is too large to cross the  blood-brain barrier so all of the cholesterol in  

the brain is manufactured in the brain because  it's that important cholesterol is necessary  

for many things and one of the most important is  as a building material as a structural component  

the cell membrane which is the surface  bilayer of every cell in your body  

30 mole percent meaning 30% of the  number of molecules in that cell membrane  

is cholesterol and if you look at these little  arrows this yellow structure is cholesterol so 30%  

is a lot more than what they're showing in this  picture 30% of your cell membrane is cholesterol  

and why is that cell membrane so important because  the cell membrane is the actual decision maker of  

everything in your body your body processes  billions of bits of information every second  

and it's all about the cell membrane because  the cell membrane is a barrier that determines  

what stays outside and what gets into the cell and  inside the cell is where you have your metabolism  

and your metabolic function and the manufacture  of every hormone and protein and substance  

in your body and cholesterol is a huge part  of determining the properties of this cell  

membrane because there's a fine balance between  rigidity and flexibility when you determine  

how the cell membrane works so cholesterol is  critical for the function of that cell membrane  

and where do you have the most important cell  membranes that handle the most signals well in  

the brain of course which has tons of cholesterol  and then when the brain needs to send the messages  

out to the periphery when the central nervous  system talks to the peripheral nervous system  

which has millions of these electrical wires that  go to every little part of your body then it sends  

it along a nerve pathway called an axon and this  axon it's just like electrical wires in your house  

basically that it needs a surface insulation just  like your wires have that plastic coating so does  

your axons and your nerves need an insulation and  that insulation is called myelin that myelin is 27  

cholesterol and there is a severe disease called  multiple sclerosis which happens when this myelin  

is defective or gets attacked cholesterol is  also a precursor to bile so when your gallbladder  

releases bile to dissolve fats to help you  digest fats bile consists mostly of cholesterol  

it's also a precursor to steroid hormones so a  lot of your endocrine system a very fine-tuned  

communication system depends on cholesterol so  testosterone estrogen and progesterone are made  

from cholesterol and also cortisol and very often  I talk about cortisol in this channel because  

cortisol is a stress hormone and too much of it  on a chronic basis contributes to a lot of health  

problems but it doesn't mean that we don't need  it it's still critical because if you can't have  

a stress response then you're basically a sitting  duck that means you can't respond to the events  

of life and you might just be standing  there when the bus comes to run you over  

so with all these functions of cholesterol do we  really want to just shut it down do we really just  

unilaterally say that cholesterol is a bad thing  you have too much let's shut it down there's no  

wonder that there's such dramatic side effects  when we try to interfere with cholesterol and what  

about ldl and HDL we've heard that their LDL is  bad HDL is good but they are just doing their job  

ldl is a low density lipoprotein it's a carrier  that contains a little bit more cholesterol  

than the HDL does and therefore its job is to  deliver cholesterol when the body needs it when  

appropriate the HDL is high density lipoprotein  so it has a lower percentage of cholesterol  

so therefore it tends to attract it collects and  returns cholesterol so if the body has to have  

LDL or cholesterol delivered then it  would seem like a really good thing  

to have some LDL to deliver that right and if the  body needs HDL to collect then that would seem  

like a really good thing the appropriate amount  of LDL and the appropriate amount of HDL is a  

good thing it's not that LDL or HDL is good  or bad what we want to be concerned with  

is the properties the state the health of these  particles and what we want to watch is small LDL  

when the LDL is large and fluffy there's nothing  wrong with it there are no ill health effects  

but when it gets small it is because it's  damaged by inflammation and by oxidative stress  

and we'll talk a lot about this so you get it  totally clear so the small LDL also it is a bad  

thing in a sense that it indicates that something  is wrong but the small LDL itself is just a victim  

of inflammation and oxidative stress and what is  the cause of inflammation and oxidative stress  

it is sugar toxins and excess free radicals  and that excess is key to understand that  

oxidative stress is necessary to produce  energy free radicals is necessary  

as a result of producing energy and performing  metabolism but when things get out of balance  

and we have all these things in excess that's  when we have a problem and I've used this  

analogy before but I really want to reinforce this  that we want to stop calling LDL bad because LDL  

shows up after the problem when we have oxidative  stress LDL is delivered to repair the damage  

it's like we see the fire department at the  scene of an accident and we say oh that evil  

fire department is there causing accidents again  no they showed up after and they're trying to help  

the victim because the victim indicates that  something bad happened but LDL and HDL are both  

good things just like these first responders  are and when the blood work comes back with a  

cholesterol over 200 then it's almost a knee-jerk  response for a lot of practitioners to recommend  

a statin drug so what do statins do there are a  couple of things we'll talk about but one of the  

things that's really important to understand is it  can upregulate the number of LDL receptors on the  

liver so the liver recycles these LDL particles  and on the surface of an LDL particle there is  

something called an apo b protein that can be  recognized by these receptors and then the liver  

recycles these LDL's so the statin drug increases  the number of receptors and now we can start  

recycling these LDL's but here's the thing it  is only the large and the fluffy the buoyant LDL  

that's healthy that get recycled right so  we reduce the total number of cholesterol  

of LDL cholesterol by reducing the fluffy buoyant  LDL but it is the oxidized damaged LDL that we're  

trying to get rid of and this has a damaged Apo-B  protein so the receptor can't recognize it see no  

matter how much we up regulate the receptors  there is no change to these oxidized LDL'  

so we could make an argument that we're still  doing a good job because if we reabsorb more  

of the fluffy LDL then there will be less LDL  overall in total to get oxidized in the future but  

what really happens that's more important is that  we change the ratio and we'll talk more about that  

that we the ratio of the oxidized to the buoyant  the small to the large LDL that ratio goes up  

and gets much much worse and this is one of  the more important indicators for heart disease  

so even though the statin drug will reduce the  total number it will make the ratio worse the  

small LDL does damage in many ways first of all  it's an indicator of damage because if we have  

a lot of small LDL we know that there's a lot of  oxidative stress and inflammation but furthermore  

this inflammation and oxidative stress it can  create damage or cracks in the inside surface and  

the intima of the blood vessel and if you notice  that this plaque here is not inside the opening  

it's not inside the lumen of the blood vessel it  is between the surface layer and the muscular wall  

so the surface layer the inside has to crack it  has to get more loose so that these particles can  

get through and create these plaques and the  small particles will slip through the cracks  

much much easier the large fluffy ones don't tend  to do that and the other problem like we talked  

about is the small LDL cannot be recognized by  the receptors so when we have a buildup of these  

and they slip through then we need for someone  else to take care of them and this is where the  

immune system comes in you have white blood cells  called macrophages they're like little Pac mans  

and they follow these small particles in through  the cracks or wherever these small LDL's are but  

if they've gone through these cracks behind the  intima now that's where they hang out and that's  

where the immune cells go and now they gobble up  as many of these little LDL's as they can and then  

when they're full now they've contained the LDL's  but they've turned into foam cells and that is  

basically what the plaque is but now let's look  at some actual blood work to help us understand  

what we need to look for to understand the bigger  picture we don't want to make a diagnosis we don't  

want to hyper focus on one variable we want  to understand the bigger picture what are  

all of the markers or some of the markers involved  with insulin resistance metabolic syndrome  

poor metabolic health inflammation stress etc.  here is a patient that came in first to me around  

September and we did some blood work and then we  repeated the blood work after about three months  

almost exactly three months first thing we look  at I've condensed this we're just looking at a few  

variables here but glucose according to  the reference needs to be 65.99 and I think  

the 99 is too high I think it needs to be under  88, 85 ish 65 is fine if you're on a low carb  

diet otherwise it probably indicates hypoglycemia  but this guy had really good glucose control even  

when he came in at 82 after a few months it was  74 so both of those values are good no big deal  

then we look at some liver enzymes the AST  is often called the liver enzyme but it is  

part of several different organs and these  enzymes are not really supposed to be  

in the blood they end up in the blood when the  cells wear out and they spill their content  

and some of that is normal because we have  a turnover of cells so if a few cells break  

and spill their enzymes that's okay and  the range for this one is 0 to 40 and  

it's never going to be zero but 40 is really  too high you want it kind of to be 25 or so  

and he started out at 29 but after three  months he was at 20. so we see some improvement  

the alt is also not a hundred percent specific  for liver but it's mostly specific to liver  

and that one they put at zero to forty four he  started out at forty again a little bit too high  

after three months he's in a much better range 27.  then we look at total cholesterol and they want to  

see that 100 to 199 in my mind a completely crazy  arbitrary number if it is under 150 i will be  

much much more concerned than if it's 300 because  cholesterol is necessary and if it gets too low  

then that means your liver is not healthy enough  to make it could be something like heavy metal  

toxicity so anyway this person had 277 and this is  by the way it's a 43 year old male and then after  

three months it is one point worse so basically no  difference we look at triglycerides which is the  

fat in the blood so traditionally we hear that if  you eat a high fat diet your fat in the blood will  

go up and they want to see that 0 to 149 if it's  zero you'll be dead if it's 149 I think that's too  

high I want to see that probably between 50 to 80.  and he started out at 112 after three months it  

was 65. VLDL is also a great indicator of insulin  resistance just like triglycerides are because the  

VLDL is a very large very low density lipoprotein  it has even more triglycerides in it than the LDL  

so its job is to deliver the triglycerides into  circulation and if your cells are resistant and  

it doesn't accept and and let that triglyceride in  for fuel because it already has too much fuel that  

cell is resistant and the triglycerides will build  up and if the cells don't want the triglycerides  

the VLDL has nobody to deliver to so therefore  the triglycerides and the VLDL both go up with  

insulin resistance the lab range for VLDL is 5  to 40 and I never want to see 40 because that is  

strongly pre-diabetic this guy came in at 20 which  is pretty good but still a little bit too high I'd  

rather see it under 17, 18 or under 15. but after  three months he is at ten which is a very healthy  

number so he had some insulin resistance starting  out even though he had good glucose control  

at 82 he was still a little bit insulin resistance  based on the triglycerides and the VLDL but after  

three months it's looking much better then we  look at the LDL-C which is calculated LDL or the  

milligrams or the mass of LDL it doesn't count  the particles which we'll get to in a second  

and this number they want to see under 99 again  the range is 0 to 99 and it's zero you'll be dead  

so I don't know why the range goes to zero but 99  again is a totally arbitrary number because it's  

about the health of the LDL particles not the  total amount and my patient started out at 209  

so more than double what he was supposed to have  and after three months he had 215 so basically  

no change or even a little bit worse and the  only thing that shows up on these blood reports  

is the high flag for total cholesterol and LDL  so in their minds this guy is a perfect candidate  

for statin medications but if we're starting  to understand the bigger picture and we look  

at all these markers that have to do with the  true risk markers for heart disease we see that  

glucose got better AST, ALT enzymes got better  and triglycerides and VLDL got better so he had  

five out of seven markers that got dramatically  better while two of these stayed the same so to  

me this is saying this person is getting healthier  and this is the level of cholesterol that his body  

likes to have now so far all these numbers  you could get on a very standard blood work  

but if we want to start understanding a little  bit more we add something called an NMR profile  

where we can start looking at the size and the  number of particles so when we look at the LDL  

particle number then the range is supposed to  be under a thousand and my patients started out  

at two thousand seven hundred so almost three  times higher number of LDL particle that looks  

like a disaster right but we don't want to jump  to conclusions because we see a lot of the other  

markers are actually getting better so we want to  know what's happening here and one of the things  

we want to analyze this is we want to understand  what does this mean what is the significance  

of these different numbers and when we look at  the number of small LDL's they want to see less  

than 527 out of a thousand in the mainstream  criteria that means they think it's okay if you  

have up to 53 percent of all your LDL be small  and damaged and why do I construct that number  

and look at it because that represents the degree  of inflammation and oxidative stress in the system  

if you have a thousand LDL particles on average  53 of those are going to get damaged and to me  

that is way too high I don't care about the  total number as much as I do the percentage  

that get damaged so my patient here started out  at 1400 three months earlier so he was at 52  

again I'm not happy with that at all but even  though he has a lot of LDL particles he is no  

worse than the mainstream criteria for acceptable  but again I want to see that much lower and what  

we see then is after three months even though  his total cholesterol basically stayed the same  

and his LDL went up his particle number went down  by over 300. and when we look at the nitty gritty  

and we look at the small LDL particles this is  nothing short of amazing he went from 1400 to 200  

small particles he did away with 85 percent of  his particles and he went from 52 percent to 9  

again why is this so huge because the  52 percent represents how many percent  

get damaged by oxidation and inflammation and  if we can go from 52 percent to 9 percent we  

have massively reduced his risk of heart disease  so what do we do with this we follow up again in  

three months and now we see that we have one two  three four five six seven out of nine markers are  

vastly improved so we check again in three months  and we see make sure that we're still going in the  

right direction but we don't jump to conclusions  based on a single number now let's understand a  

little bit more about the mechanisms of statin  drugs because anytime you have high cholesterol  

they want to prescribe a statin so we want to  understand what's actually happening in the  

body so does a statin drug medication reduce the  total amount of cholesterol yes absolutely it does  

and one way is that it up regulates the  receptors we get more of the recycling but  

it does not reduce the small LDL so even though  it reduces the total and the LDL it doesn't reduce  

the kind that we try to get rid of so I just want  to emphasize that over and over it's so critical  

but the main way that the statin does its work is  through something called the mevalonate pathway  

and here's how that works when the body makes  cholesterol it starts out with the substance  

called HMG-CoA reductase and then through a  number of different steps that I don't bother  

with the details in the end the body ends up with  cholesterol so the names here are not important  

I just want you to show that there's a number of  different steps and we end up with cholesterol but  

once we take a statin once we take a medication to  lower cholesterol and to block the production then  

we knock out a lot of this HMG-CoA reductase and  when we do that of course we also knock out the  

end result of that pathway which is cholesterol  but there's one more detail and that is  

there's another product from a component halfway  down called CoQ10 and the CoQ10 also gets knocked  

out to a large degree to probably whatever  percentage we reduce cholesterol by we're  

also going to reduce CoQ10 because they're part  of the same pathway and what does CoQ10 do it  

is one of the enzymes that the mitochondria  use to produce energy so 95% of our energy of  

all the energy used by every cell in your body  depends on CoQ10 so any time that you block the  

production of CoQ10 you're also blocking some  of the production of energy so if you have to be  

on a cholesterol medication for whatever reason  or if you're working to get healthy so you could  

have that discussion with your doctor at the very  least you want to make sure that you supplement  

quite massively with CoQ10 probably at least 300  milligrams a day and cholesterol medication are  

very controversial because they have a much higher  rate of side effects than just about anything else  

out there and here are some of those SAMS  stands for statin associated symptoms  

and in increasing severity it starts with myalgia  which is muscle pain then we have muscle disease  

we have myositis which is muscle inflammation now  the disease is so bad that we start breaking some  

cells and they spill an enzyme called creatinine  kinase so now it means the muscles are breaking  

down more than they should and the worst  version of this is called rhabdomyolysis and  

"rhabdo" means striated or skeletal muscle "myo"  means muscle and "lysis" means it's basically  

melting that your muscles are just disintegrating  this is completely disabling and sometimes fatal  

part of this picture is also joint inflammation  tendon disorders arthritis and things like that  

because joints get 90 percent of their  stability support from muscles so if the  

muscles don't work and they're not firing right  then the joints are going to get unstable and  

suffer and get inflamed as well statins have  also been associated with type 2 diabetes  

with neurological problems with neurocognitive  effects and cognitive you want to think  

focus memory intelligence things like that also  hemorrhagic stroke bleeding stroke bleeding in  

the brain hepatotoxicity that you're interfering  so much with the liver that the liver gets toxic  

and the kidneys can also get toxic and there's  many more conditions so lots of side effects are  

observed but they keep saying that they're  unclear about the mechanism but we do know  

that it interferes with the production of coq10  so we will have a loss of energy so whatever body  

parts whatever organs use the most energy are  probably going to be the ones to suffer the most  

and those would be the brain the heart the  liver and the muscles because they are higher  

metabolically active than most other tissues and  other than that cholesterol medications are so  

beneficial because after all they lower  cholesterol right but I hope you see by now that  

just looking at one number and saying we need  to lower cholesterol in itself is not the goal  

here's something that will hopefully get your  attention in a study they found that lipophilic  

statins which is a subclass a type most common  class of statin drugs more than doubles the risk  

of dementia one of the most devastating conditions  one of the things that people are the most afraid  

of is to lose their whole personality and their  cognition these medications can more than double  

and this was from the society of nuclear medicine  and molecular imaging in 2021 annual meeting  

so they did some pet scans which is sophisticated  brain imaging and they found a substantial  

decline in metabolism substantial  decline in energy production and activity  

in the posterior cingulate cortex that is the  first place to lose function to have decreased  

function when people have early Alzheimer's here's  another study from neurology 2005 and they found  

that when we look at the risk of dementia there  was a longitudinal study they followed people for  

many many years as they were aging and at 70 years  old they looked at the people with the overall  

lowest cholesterol not because they were taking  a medication or anything they just looked at  

what are their cholesterol levels and they  compared the lowest group to the highest group and  

they found that there was 69 percent less dementia  in the people with the highest cholesterol  

they followed this along and when these people  were 76 years old they found that there was 80  

percent less dementia in the people with the  highest cholesterol and in the 79 year old group  

it was still a 55 percent less dementia so what  this means is that cholesterol is neuroprotective  

it protects you against dementia and now you may  be thinking well maybe i have to sacrifice my  

brain a little bit as a trade-off for better  heart health and they often claim that it is  

beyond the shadow of a doubt it's very very clear  that cholesterol medication reduces cholesterol  

and reduces plaquing and heart disease and  that may or may not be true depending on  

what study you look at but what if you're just  lowering cholesterol and then dying from something  

else so when we look at all cause mortality dying  from for any reason and this was a study in Lancet  

in 1997 we see the people with the lowest  cholesterol we put them at a hundred as a as  

a reference and then we see the people with medium  cholesterol had 40 percent less mortality and the  

people in the group with the highest cholesterol  had a 60 reduction in all-cause mortality  

so again what they're saying you're less likely to  die for any reason if you have higher cholesterol  

but here's the one I hear the most still because  people they go low carb they cut out the sugar  

they start improving their health they feel  better and then they're still scared because  

someone tells them that a low carb high fat diet  will raise your cholesterol and they specifically  

say that you can't eat all that meat and all that  butter because saturated fat will increase your  

LDL is that true well maybe i think there is maybe  a correlation that saturated fat will increase but  

what we see is that it increases the fluffy  LDL the buoyant harmless LDL and what happens  

with sugar carbohydrates and processed seed oils  these are the things that cause inflammation and  

oxidative stress they will increase the small LDL  so even if you eat saturated fat and have a higher  

total level of LDL what we're concerned with  is what percentage of the LDL has been damaged  

and now you're probably wondering then the example  that I gave you what did this guy do did he eat  

low fat like they recommend no he ate more meat  and vegetables and butter and more saturated fat  

but he ate less fast food because he had  had some bad habits in the past that we  

got rid of and he pretty much cut out all  the sugar and he reduced his carbohydrate  

now the thing to understand I made this point  before I want to make it again that you have to  

cut the carbohydrates low enough to dramatically  reduce insulin you can't go from 60 carbohydrate  

to 30 percent carbohydrate and call that low carb  because you're still making too much insulin and  

now with all that insulin you still can't burn  through that saturated fat you have to lower  

sugar eliminate sugar and lower the carbohydrates  enough that there's a significant change in your  

insulin now that saturated fat is good for you  and because this person came to our office we  

also put them on very specific supplements a  very specific program and what was so specific  

we identify the root causes that  this person needed to handle  

and for him it was scars first of all because  scars interfere with the meridian with the  

acupuncture chi that flows in the skin if you  have scars then that distorts that information  

electromagnetic fields was a big thing so  electromagnetic radiation from wi-fi and  

Bluetooth and cell phones and laptops and iPads  and things like that can distort the communication  

that your body is trying to send he also had  some chemical issues we needed to gently detoxify  

he had some digestive intel food intolerances he  gave him some digestive enzymes then he was low in  

vitamin d that was a simple one and he also needed  a little bit of immune support and down the road  

he needed a little bit of adrenal support so why  am I mentioning this because so many people ask me  

that does Ashwagandha work does  turmeric work is vitamin d good  

vitamin d is good for you if you're low in vitamin  d you should add some but if you have a headache  

or a digestive problem a thousand different people  with a headache could have a thousand different  

root causes so we're not addressing the headache  we're addressing the root cause and that is the  

only way that we can create long-term change  and when they tell you you need to get on a  

cholesterol medication if you still have high  cholesterol after trying diet and exercise  

so which diet are they talking about because if  you don't understand the things we talk about  

in these videos chances are that what you have  tried have been heart healthy diets recommended  

by the mainstream who are low-fat lean meats lots  of fruits grains and seed oils and while you're  

much better off if you eat this from whole  food rather than eating sugar and fast food  

for most people it's still not enough to make  a big difference because you're not reducing  

insulin enough to turn around that metabolic  syndrome also we want to understand what  

exercise are they talking about because people  usually have the mindset of no pain no gain so  

if you go and you join the so-called boot camp in  the gym at five in the morning where they try to  

exhaust you as much as possible in 45 minutes  that may be the exact opposite of what you're  

trying to do to burn fat because these boot camps  will put you into a glycolysis into an anaerobic  

metabolism where you break down sugar and when you  break down the sugar you're going to get cravings  

for more sugar and more carbohydrate and you're  going to drive up your cortisol you're going to  

break down muscle and you're going to create more  stress and more inflammation if you do that wrong  

so again there may be a very small percentage  of genetic defects that could benefit from a  

cholesterol medication but don't jump on one until  you have done the correct diet and exercise for  

a while and you understand what you're trying  to change but here's what still happens a lot  

i get people coming in and they might report on  a video on YouTube and they say I feel amazing  

my weight my glucose my a1c my insulin values my  triglycerides my HDL my small LDL my VLDL my sleep  

and pain they're all better I feel amazing but  I'm still worried because my cholesterol is high  

with all of this getting better now all I want  is to bring my cholesterol down how do I do that  

and the answer is you don't if all of these  other values are better you are getting healthier  

now I'm not saying that there is a number  where you don't have to worry but 200  

250 300 350 are probably totally  fine if everything else looks good  

if it's 500 700 thousand then I don't know then  you need to have a discussion with somebody  

now what if all the things that I've talked about  are looking good or heading in the right direction  

but you still have some doubts this is where  you go for a calcium score or a coronary artery  

calcium score so what they do is they do an  imaging of your heart and your coronary arteries  

and you get a number back so it's going to depend  on the lab that performs it and where you are what  

units they use and what the scale is  the one I get back usually goes from 0  

to 400 or higher and here's what that means if  you get back a zero that's a negative test that  

means you have no plaque that there's a very low  risk for a heart attack or a myocardial infarction  

if you're between 1 and 10 now there may be some  plaque but if it's there it's going to be minimal  

and you're still very low risk if it's between 11  and 100 you have mild plaque mild heart disease  

but you're still at a mild risk for a heart attack  if your numbers come back between 101 and 400 now  

you have moderate heart disease there is some  plaquing present and you have a moderate risk of  

heart attack and if your number comes back over  400 then there is a large amount of plaque it's a  

high probability that one or more of your coronary  arteries have a substantial amount of blockage and  

there's a relatively high risk of a heart attack  in the next five years but very very few people  

i don't think I've ever had anyone come back  in this number so what is this talking about  

that if they're trying to tell  you that your high cholesterol  

indicates that you are a candidate for heart  disease why don't we just find out why don't we  

take a picture and see if it's actually there  and there's not a 100 correlation between the  

calcium and the plaque because they're measuring  the calcium and only indirectly guessing how  

much plaque there is but there's a pretty good  correlation there and it's a very inexpensive  

test now get this insurance doesn't pay for this  they'd rather pay tens of thousands of dollars  

for cholesterol medication than to spend a hundred  dollars on a test like this to actually find out  

so if you're in doubt get with your doctor and  have them order a calcium score and then you can  

evaluate depending on what the results are when  you get it back if you're on the top half of this  

then you know you're in pretty good shape and in a  few years you have another score and you make sure  

that it's not getting worse then you can consult  and evaluate with your doctor and at my office  

wellness for life we have a department that can  help you get some blood work and a consultation  

to help you understand your blood work and  if necessary or appropriate could get you a  

calcium score after that I'll also put a link down  below for five percent off on CoQ10 if you don't  

have a good source already. If you enjoyed this  video make sure you check out that one. And if you  

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