On 6/25/2010 2:24 PM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> As a doc you may appreciate this bit of biochemical analysis by Dr.
> Malcolm Kendrick.<http://thincs.org/Malcolm.choltheory.htm>
>
OMG!! I haven't had so much fun or laughed out loud as much at anything
I've read in ages!
"Finally a plaque may burst, causing a blood clot to form over the
ruptured area. This blocks the artery completely. A myocardial
infarction results, which may or may not kill you."
This is particularly interesting to me. When Dr. Meyer Friedman was
recruiting people for a big CHD study, he showed us potential recruits
what he called the most famous slide in the history of cardiology. It
showed the actual bursting of a plague, the partially necrotic contents
bursting out and the clotting response of the blood.
This was over 20 years ago. Up until that time, they knew that arterial
plaques were part of CHD, but not the explicit, acute mechanism that
caused an infarction. One of his researchers took the heart of a
recently deceased man and spent time others hadn't bothered to spend on
extensively using a microtome to take endless, very thin sections of the
arteries. Et voilà, the smoking gun!
> or this one regarding heart disease, statins and total mortality titled
> "Thank God He Didn't Die of Heart Disease Doctor".
> <http://thincs.org/Malcolm3.htm#march24>
>
Good, but not as great as the first one. Just as valuable, perhaps, but
not as entertaining.
> Kendrick can be very irreverent at times... which I think is called for.
>
> Finally, a more rational hypothesis regarding the cause of heart
> disease. One that actually accounts for the known data.
> <http://mercola.fileburst.com/PDF/Ravnskov%20McCully%20Vulnerable%20plaque%20formation.pdf>
>
Again the reference back to the aftermath of the famous slide:
"There is general agreement that atherosclerosis begins as an
inflammatory process in the arterial wall, and also that rupture of a
vulnerable plaque is the starting point for the creation of the
occluding thrombus in myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke."
This is all very interesting to me because of the CHD study in which I
was a participant. (I almost let a preposition dangle there, what with
Andrew on holiday, but I'm sure Chris and Piers are still alert.)
Dr. Friedman's hypothesis was first popularized in his book "Type A
Behavior and Your Heart." Like Jung's formulation of extrovert and
introvert, Type A behavior entered the popular lexicon in a form
somewhat distorted from its true meaning.
His basic hypothesis was that the chemical processes normally generated
in mammals, and humans, in particular, by dangerous situations, "flight
or flight" situations were being produced almost continually in many
contemporary people as a response to continual, everyday stress. The
problem is that these chemical responses to extreme dangers used
chemical that, while life lengthing on average, when invoked
occasionally and briefly, were toxic to normal tissue.
In the case where they are continually in the blood, they damage the
vessels. I don't recall hearing back then that "atherosclerosis begins
as an inflammatory process in the arterial wall", but it's certainly
consistent with what we were told, that the result of the continual
stress reaction was atherosclerosis. We were shown sections of arteries
of Type A young men in excellent physical 'shape', 'Nam deaths, that
were stiff and full of plaque and those of Type B* old men who had died
of other causes that looked as young and plaque free as a baby's.
His research led him to believe that two primary behaviors constituted
the definition of Type A and were a major cause of CHD.
1. Inappropriate anger. That is, anger out of proportion or even
completely inappropriate to the apparent cause. We tended to refer to it
as Free Floating Hostility.
2. Time urgency. Anxiety and strain inappropriate, often wildly so, to
the true time demands on the person.
His initial idea was to do some studies to measure these behavior and
their effects, then find a way to modify them. He came up with a fairly
sophisticated way to measure the degrees of these behaviors with some
precision. Then he embarked on experiments to change them.
The first large scale study was a five year study of people who had just
had a heart attack. He and his assistant were literally interviewing and
recruiting participants at bedsides. The idea was to use classic
behavior modification techniques. The study, described in the book
"Treating Type A Behavior and Your Heart." was a great success, is that
it was terminated early for ethical reasons. The difference in mortality
between treatment and control groups had already proven the hypothesis
and it was unethical not to notify the surviving control group members
and offer them treatment.
The study I was in was much like the prior one, except used only people
who had no symptoms at all of CHD, but were old enough, between 45 and
65 at inception, that lots of CHD should show up within the ten years of
the study.
The experience of being in the treatment group was literally life
changing for me. Not only did my behavior change in the narrowly defined
ways desired for the study, my life changed in quite profound,
psycho-spiritual ways. This was true for some other members of my
treatment group, and apparently generally for treatment groups, although
probably more for me than most. I would not be living the delightful
life I am without that study.
Based on my experience, I decided that all the conventional testing,
worry and treatments for CHD prevention and treatment were likely
misdirected, if not outright bunk, and have ignored it all since. How
nice to find out that others more qualified than I agree.
We were given progress reports that a statistically significant lower
rate of CHD was happening in the treatment groups. Then the study ended
for my group, Dr Friedman died at 90, and I don't know how it all turned
out. A web search says he died with the final results on his desk, but
not what they were.
Even if they were positive, the trouble with his approach is that
there's no big money in it, particularly in traditional medical
companies. Lots of facilitated small group sessions is quite expensive,
so the potential client group is small. The medical industry model of
mass markets for relatively less expensive treatment doesn't fit.
Moose
* Dr Friedman never liked the term "Type B"; he thought of Type A
behavior as unhealthy and anything else as simply normal.
--
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