Posted on 09/03/2024 3:40:44 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
To the known risk factors for cardiovascular disease—high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, overweight and obesity, smoking, and physical inactivity—a new one has to be added, clonal hematopoiesis. This condition is triggered by acquired mutations in blood stem cells and was already known to be associated with an elevated cardiovascular risk.
Now, a new study resolves this by establishing clonal hematopoiesis as a new risk factor for atherosclerosis—the formation of lesions in the arterial wall that underlies most cardiovascular disorders.
In a second study, the CNIC scientists propose the ancient medication colchicine as the central plank of personalized strategies to alleviate the effects of clonal hematopoiesis associated with acquired mutations in the TET2 gene.
Acquired mutations in blood cell lineages: A new cause of atherosclerosis
An adult person produces hundreds of thousands of blood cells every day. This high rate of cell division unavoidably entails the accumulation of DNA mutations in the dividing cells. These mutations are known as somatic mutations, and are acquired, not inherited.
"Although most somatic mutations are innocuous, some give the affected cells a competitive advantage that allows them to expand and progressively accumulate, generating clonal populations of mutated blood cells, a phenomenon known as clonal hematopoiesis," explained José Javier Fuster.
The researchers used high-sensitivity DNA sequencing technology and noninvasive imaging techniques.
The results of the study clearly demonstrate that participants who had mutations linked to clonal hematopoiesis at the start of the study were more likely to develop atherosclerosis in the following years. On the other hand, the presence and extent of atherosclerosis had no influence on the expansion of mutated blood cells.
In the new study, the CNIC group show that the adverse effects of TET2 mutations on cardiovascular health can be alleviated by treatment with the anti-inflammatory drug colchicine.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
As one who frequents Cardiologists, I need the “Cliff Notes” version on how I might have—or how I acquired—clonal hematopoiesis.
This is a quick rundown of it:
https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/types/leukemias/risk-factors/clonal-hematopoiesis-ch
Uh oh. Colchicine is cheap. This will only fly in Europe and Russia.
I can’t tell which came first, the fix or the problem.
If you don’t mind the runs, the squirts, the trots.
Bubble guts, gut grenades, the brown rain...
Yeah.., no, great idea..? Uhm...
To get rid of gout, all those issues were worth it.
Of course They do…….
“ Uh oh. Colchicine is cheap. This will only fly in Europe and Russia.”
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LOL - I’ve noticed that correlation also.
Bkmk
For me, despite Colchicine’s help with my gout flareups, it destroys your bowels and often your bedsheets, too!
Colchicine is a nasty drug with a nasty side-effect profile
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2014/022352s017lbl.pdf
https://www.google.com/search?q=Colchicine+side-effects
I am 63 and had a minor heart attack a bit over 3 weeks ago. I now have three stents and I am on several drugs. It was caused by clogging of the arteries.
While I was sitting in the hospital bed, waiting to get my Roto-Rooter job and the stents, and afterwards while I was recovering, I watched a lot of videos from board-certified cardiologists on YouTube. One of them had a very interesting approach. He said that the biggest problem was - contrary to popular belief - not that we consume too much cholesterol (because the liver naturally produces somewhere between three and four times as much as we consume, because we don’t consume enough for the bodies needs). He said the big issue is why the cholesterol is going into our arteries and creating plaques. He said the answer is very simple: the plaques are the body’s way of covering up and healing inflammation inside of our arteries, kind of like a natural Band-Aid. The plaques are made of cholesterol, white blood cells, and a few other substances. So, the problem isn’t the cholesterol, it is the inflammation. If you can very significantly reduce the inflammation in your arteries, you can significantly slow down or even stop the addition of new plaque. So, what causes the inflammation? According to this guy, it is the vast amount of carbohydrates that we consume, far more over the last 100 years than ever before in human history, and our bodies simply have not been able to evolve to deal with this problem (he also said that seed oils, like corn, canola, peanut and soy, or also extremely inflammatory, and are basically poison to our bodies. He recommended extra-virgin olive oil and omega-3 oils on greater quantities than most people have). What the body does is produce massive amounts of insulin to digest the carbohydrates and bring down our blood sugar. It’s actually the excess of insulin that causes the inflammation. So he recommended two things: first, reducing carbohydrates to a minimum. His second recommendation was Colchicine. He indicated that it’s original purpose was to treat gout, and that it had a very beneficial side effect of reducing systemic inflammation in the body, but especially inflammation in the arteries.
I mentioned this to my cardiologist, and he said that, just coincidentally, a little more than six months ago he and the other doctors in his practice, had started to prescribe Colchicine for those patients who met the criteria. I believe that one of the chief criteria is that you have elevated inflammation. He looked at my blood test results from the hospital and said, “good news, you’re a candidate, I’m going to prescribe it for you.“ So I have been taking Colchicine for the last 2 1/2 weeks, And since I not only have a personal history of cardiac issues, but a family history on top of that, I intend to take it for the rest of my life.
Back to the YouTube cardiologist - he indicated toward the end of that particular video that if he only could prescribe two medication‘s for anybody who had plaque in their arteries (which is pretty much anybody above the age of 35, no matter your genetics or eating habits), he would recommend one baby aspirin to prevent clotting and Colchicine. He said it is very ironic that both of those medications are incredibly cheap, aspirin because it’s never been a prescription medication, and Colchicine because its patent has long since expired. It is my goal to get off of the statin that I was prescribed, but I’m going to wait for blood tests in mid-November when I go back for a follow up appointment to show a good drop in my cholesterol. I am going to be cutting the amount (on my own if necessary), but I’m quite certain that he will not take me off statins completely . In fact, I indicated to him my distrust of statins due to their many potential side effects (among which are an increased chance of Alzheimer’s because our brains are composed of 75% cholesterol, and type two diabetes, which results in great inflammation of the arteries). I specifically mentioned to him what this YouTube cardiologist said, that cholesterol was not the problem, that cholesterol in the arteries was a symptom of an underlying problem. I told him that I was not interested in playing numbers games with my cholesterol score, but that I was much more interested in dealing with the underlying cause of my atherosclerosis over the long term. In any case, my cholesterol was only about 223 a few months ago, which is a little high by the latest standards, but well within the healthy range at the time when a very good friend of mine who is my age was attending medical school in the mid ‘80s.
One final thing: I want to warn every single person who is concerned about their cardiac health who is reading this post to make sure that neither they nor their doctors rely on a stress test as a predictive tool. I had a stress test about a year and a half ago. I was told that the test should last approximately eight minutes, and would end when my heart reached the target beats per minute. Well, after eight minutes, I was still 15 BPM below the target rate, so the test continued. The speed kept going up every 30 seconds, as did the incline on the treadmill. The test finally stopped at a little bit over 12 minutes . When I went back for a follow up appointment to go over the results a couple of weeks later, I was told that there were a couple of very innocuous anomalies that were of no serious concern, and I went home with a very great false sense of security. Also, starting just after Thanksgiving last year, I joined a gym, and for six months went four or five times a week to do some reasonably demanding cardio, along with some weights and sitting in the sauna. Believe me, when I started having chest pains a few weeks ago, I was incredibly surprised. In fact, until I started getting pain in my jaw, and then started sweating profusely, I was in complete denial that this could be happening to me. Part of that was because of the stress test results, and part of it was because I thought that I was taking reasonably decent care of myself. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. Later on, I saw one of the YouTube cardiologists talk about stress tests. He had a chart with numbers from 0 to 10, with zero being completely clean arteries, and 10 being completely occluded arteries. He had an arrow between eight and nine, and he explained that your arteries could be 85% occluded, and a stress test might pick up absolutely nothing regarding your risk of a heart attack (and guess what, that’s about where my arteries were). So, my most sincere and urgent advice, especially for the older among you, or those with a family or personal history of atherosclerosis, is to make sure that you have imaging tests of your heart and of your coronary arteries. You need to see what is going on, and have some measurement of how narrow your arteries are. That is far more predictive and useful information to you and your doctor than a stress test. The cardiologist in the YouTube video said that stress tests are pretty much nothing more or less than a giant money machine for cardiologists. Many of them don’t know better, which is a pretty sad commentary, but we patients need to be informed about our own bodies and our health. we are our own best advocates, but we can’t be without knowledge.
I urge everybody on this thread to read my post number 14. Apologies for some of the typos, but that is Siri’s fault and I didn’t catch all of them. More seriously, it details what I have been going through and what I have learned over the last three weeks or so, since my heart attack. Much of what we think we know, and worse, what our cardiologists think they know, is simply not correct. Please read my post for more detailed information.
Great post. Thanks.
“So, my most sincere and urgent advice, especially for the older among you, or those with a family or personal history of atherosclerosis, is to make sure that you have imaging tests of your heart and of your coronary arteries. You need to see what is going on, and have some measurement of how narrow your arteries are. That is far more predictive and useful information to you and your doctor than a stress test. The cardiologist in the YouTube video said that stress tests are pretty much nothing more or less than a giant money machine for cardiologists. Many of them don’t know better, which is a pretty sad commentary, but we patients need to be informed about our own bodies and our health. we are our own best advocates, but we can’t be without knowledge.”
Absolutely...I’ve had 2 Heartsaver CT scans and should of had more at $99 a pop. Stress test are nothing more than money makers. I had a CT scan back in 2006 or so along with 20 or so co-workers. We had our own control group as it were and one guy with really bad scores did have a heart attack. Ultrasounds are very useful too. I observed as it was taking place the calcium bookers hanging on my heart valve in real time.
1000mg Krill Oil and an aspirin daily is what works for me now. No more ischemia in my arms. I despise the cardiologist I’ve been exposed to over the years.
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