Bypass surgery / Stents do not work

[Songwriter]

Or do they? Alternative health books say they don't. The people I know who have had stents... a high percentage, over half, have had to had another stent or bypass surgery. If you go by me... stent last January... heart problems came back in August. IMO, despite my doing far better regarding rehab than the majority of heart patients do post-surgery.

Anyway, I have a very important question. I find this most confusing. If you have an opinion, please give it. I am not looking for medical advice, just your opinion about this.

I've read the Dean Ornish book, the McDougall book, the Dr. Whitaker book, the PP book, many books. Many of them flat out make a statement like this: Bypass surgery and stents do not work. I suppose that what they are inferring is that long-term, they do not save lives. That's a bit confusing thinking of David Letterman having five bypasses and Bill Clinton having four or whatever it was... that's pretty serious blockage... and they are doing find and dandy. Of course, it was just a few years ago they had surgery.

Okay. Pretend you are someone having chest pain. You call 911. They take you to the ER and soon, you are diagnosed with arteriosclerosis (a heart disease) -- artery blockage. IMO, mainstream medicine will, 100% of the time, recommend angioplasty / stent / bypass surgery. Strongly recommend.

This strong recommendation cost a friend of mine his life. Bruce went in for a physical, a walking, talking lively 57-year-old man full of life. He woke up dead. From the surgery. I admit, it is unusual but it does happen. Dead.

Back to you. You are diagnosed with blockage. They recommend a surgical procedure. Probably 99%+ of everybody says okay, do it.

Now, the books I mentioned, and more, I'm sure, say that these procedures do not work. In essence, I guess they say the only time it's warranted in when you have no option. When your risk of dying withOUT the procedure is too high NOT to have it.

So, how do you decide if you can NOT have the procedure? This is so confusing to me. I guess these books say you should go back home and go on their heart disease beating program and turn your health around. I'm all for that. I now buy into the PP plan. But how is one supposed to decide when he MUST have a surgery or not?

If you do NOT have this procedure it is very possible you are going to be one of these people who will have angina and other weird heart pains during your rehab. How do you decide when you should call 911 again? Or accept that yes, you have these pains but you will soon turn the corner and get better?

I hope this makes some sense because it sure is confusing. You could just say oh, screw it, do the surgery and then try to turn it around. Meanwhile, even a stent costs $60,000 or so. Bypass is probably $200,000. And by the way... they don't work? What to do?

Bottom line is I don't really understand what the Eades and Ornish and Whitaker, etal expect someone to do. Rather than have surgery.

Enlighten me.

[laughingW]

Well you asked for my opinion....

If it were me, I'd go home and start doing whichever of those programs looked best for me (PP). Surgery might be a temporary mechanical solution to the problem, but it doesn't fix the cause. The cause of the problem is that the way i was eating and moving, my body was responding by depositing things in my arteries. Everything in my body starts out as food (plus whatever else I ingest!) and every move I make has a training effect, intended or not.

So my job would be to change the way I eat and move. Surgeons don't seem to care about finding out what made your particular body gunk up. To them, the blockage IS the problem, so fixing the blockage is all there is.

For scary 911 calls, I would find a rehab exercise person, plus working with the doc, so I could tell the difference between levels of exertion and heart events.

I would hang out with others doing the program, and especially find lots of success stories to cheer me up.

I would not expect instant results but would expect good results every six months until it was reversed.

And I would not expect a surgeon or cardiologist to have diet and exercise expertise. I would go to an ND and a PT. MDs like the Eades I have never seen in my world.

[dvdmon]

Ok, here's my opinion, not advice.

First a bit of background: I have similar concerns not because I have a stent or heart disease, but because I worry that I will be faced with that dilemma at some point. I have been on PP for 6 years now, but I was not diligent all of that time and of course before that I did various other diets or no diet at all. I'm still fairly young (38), but I've been overweight (although not obese) since I was maybe 10 years old, albeit with periods where I was also closer to a "normal" weight. But my father had heart disease, had a couple of bypasses and finally died at the age of 50. My half brother (who's been obese for the past 20 or so years) just had heart attack last year at the age of 48 and got a stent. So it runs in the family. I've had a couple of scares over the last year or two which turned out to be muscular or nerve related - I have a pinched nerve in my back which can cause pain that is confusingly similar to angina). And my blood pressure is higher than it should be.

So I've had to think about this a lot and basically I really do not want to be operated on unless it is really a life-threatening situation. Surgery carries a ton of health risks itself. As you point out, there still seems to be some debate about whether these procedures are beneficial - at least for everyone. The one problem with just going on one of these plans after the problem is already there, well, I'm not sure how much it will help. I'm not sure if any plan has been shown to actually dissolve plaque. Ornish is the only guy who asserts his plan is proven to alleviate heart disease, but I'm not convinced of that. I will tell you that my Uncle started experiencing angina at around the same time that my dad died (back in 1977). He found a doctor in Boston who put him on Pritican. Although I don't think he followed it consistently over the years, he has lived a lot longer and only had his first heart attack this year at the age of 81. This is all anecdotal, of course and doesn't prove anything, but what it indicates to me is that one doesn't have to have surgery in order to survive for a long time with heart disease.

I myself am trying to do whatever I can to decrease risk factors, including exercising more, having lots of Omega-3 fatty acids (from fish oil), taking CoQ10, giving blood, avoiding trans fats, trying to get a good amount of sleep, and keeping stress down. I'm also finally trying to get back down to the weight I achieved after I had been on PP for a year, but eventually regained.

I've gotten some cholesterol tests which give more info then the standard lipid profile. They specify the other risk factors that are talked about in PPLP, like LDL subtype, homocystene, lp(a), and some others I'm blanking on at the moment. These factors (as well as my HDL and Triglycerides) look good. Of course the total and total LDL are higher than what the docs want, but I don't care about those because I'm convinced they aren't significant. There are also various tests that I want to take that might give me more direct insight into exactly what my arteries are looking like. For example a stress test where they pump radioactive die into your veins to see how the blood is routing around. I've had a normal stress test which turned out ok, but this one I guess gives more direct info. Then there are new CT scans that are supposed to show calcium deposits in the arteries, which is an indicator for plague. I think doing these test will give me a bit more confidence - well, if they turn out ok. If they don't, well, I guess I will just use that as motivation to be that much more diligent!

But at least for me, I think it makes the most sense to do everything I can to improve my risk factors and even live with a little pain (and panic) from time to time, if that's what happens, and avoid such a drastic measure as surgery for as long as I possibly can - really until it is obviously a matter of life or death!

[dvdmon]

Oh, forgot to mention - not sure if you saw this article, but I found it interesting (and relevant to the discussion):

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=56755

[Songwriter]

dvdmon, how does giving blood lower CVD risk?

BTW, keep trying to do your prevention regimen. It could very well be I could have prevented this if I had stuck to my "health nut" ways, which I followed for many years. Midlife crisis took its toll on my lifestyle.

I don't like having heart disease one bit. Sounds like a silly statement but what I mean is, I don't take it lightly. I assume many men think they get a stent or surgery and they are fixed. Nope. Just patched. My heart pains came back in only six months, a major disappointment. I am now making major headway to eliminating those pains but having them is a real bummer. Thinking that any hour, a heart attack may come... that's a drag.

[dvdmon]

Bill, I guess you've only read the original PP and not the more recent Protein Power Lifeplan? If so, I would definitely recommend reading it. The Eades update a lot of their info, and include additional stuff. They have a whole chapter on iron and how having too much of it has been linked to CVD. For men, the only way to decrease your iron is to give blood.

I can imagine it must be horrible to have that constant fear. It's bad enough when I get these odd minor pains which I'm pretty sure are due to my pinched nerve, but they still make me wonder!

By the way, the other thing I am just starting to try out right now is something called Intermittent fasting, which Mike Eades wrote about on his blog back in September. It's theorized (shown in animals at least) to decrease many risk factors for various diseases (inlcuding CVD, I believe).