Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - Coronary Artery Calcium Score

Quote:

Originally Posted by khrussva

So it's official. My Agatston score is 158 - down from 347 a little more than two years ago. I dropped from the 91st percentile for my age to the 75th. So 158 is still not a great score, but it is better than 347!

The conversation with the cardiologist was brief. He started off by saying "Calcium scores usually don't go down. Your score went down." I gathered that he didn't know what to make of it any more than my PCP. He didn't offer any explanation. He did ask me a few questions in an attempt to remember who I was. He didn't ask anything about what I had been doing since that first test, so I volunteered. I told him that I eat LCHF everyday, exercise, and provided the short list of supplements that I take. IMO he was remarkably disinterested in the lifestyle information that I offered. So I pressed him for more details from the report. He seemed in a rush to move on, so he offered to post a copy in my patient portal. That was the end of the 5 minute consultation. I expected more. But at least I have a printed copy of my report. I look forward to comparing the two reports when I get home tonight.

FYI: I did send Ivor Cummins a message about my unusual results. He hasn't responded. He probably thinks I'm a joker or a crackpot. Now that I have my follow-up report in-hand, I'll try contacting him again. Dave Feldman did read my CAC scan posts on his LMHR FB page. He asked me to do a write-up/recap of all of this for his Cholesterolcode.com website. I'll do that this weekend.

I find that when in consultation with doctors, given the role they've been trained for where people expect them to be all knowing in everything health, if they're confronted with something they know little about, they'll downplay and quickly move on. Not a bad guy, but he's expecting the respect given to someone who knows everything, and when he can't offer anything of substance, he'll appear disinterested and imply that it's nothing of importance as a passive defense mechanism. Yes, we're all human. This is where we as our own patient advocates need to persist in our questions, research, and our own N=1s.

I'm sure Ivor will respond at some point, and I can understand why Feldman is interested, as you're blazing a new path in an area we know little about due to lack of long-term history in selecting for a specific dietary approach with a CAC baseline to measure against. All good stuff! Yes, 158 isn't a great score, but you can be buoyed by the fact that you're doing the right things to move in the right direction. More use cases like yours, Ken, will help everyone. I would reach out to Jeff Gerber (he's my brother's doctor) and Eric Westman (whom you know), as they'd be very interested as well.

Edited to add: Have you considered doing an update to your story on DD? That would be very informative to many beyond this forum and get the attention of many clinical professionals as well. I believe DD would love to hear about your results as you continue to write your story.