Integrative Nutrition Health Coach and accredited Positive Psychology practitioner Smaranda Maier gives the low-down on what we can do to support our cardiovascular health.
We are going to continue exploring the vast area of metabolic health in the hope of understanding the best conditions for our bodies to thrive and to live and age gracefully and joyfully. One of the most controversial topics in heart health is the use of statins for the rest of your life once you are 50+ years old to prevent heart attacks.
If you are connected to the actual medical research and evidence across the world daily, as I am, you would be almost fed up with the antagonistic messages regarding this topic and which markers to pay attention to in your lipid profile when you get your blood tests done.
Because the mission of my work is to bring clarity in a simple manner that can provide people with reliable information, I couldn’t wait any longer to bring clarity to this matter using personal research and my own observational approach based on what I see in my practice.
To me, my clients’ health becomes a personal matter because I understand how important it is to have someone with you on that part of your health journey when you encounter difficulties, feel under pressure, or are unsure and ultimately feel unsafe.
My background in positive psychology helped me build my coaching system centred around our main need as human beings: the need to be seen. That need is best met when you feel seen, heard, and valued. For some strange reason, this is the missing part of conventional medicine. The patient’s feelings and needs are often forgotten when the system is under pressure.
I am not here to criticise, but to bring clarity that will re-establish that sense of safety and being seen as a human being instead of a customer for a pharmaceutical producer or the premium payer for the insurance company, and unfortunately, another demanding patient for an overwhelmed medical system.
When it comes to the most prevalent mortality risk factor in the world, cardiovascular risk, we need to pay attention to what is causing it and why it is a constantly increasing risk despite the tremendous efforts and progress made by the medical and pharmaceutical fields in the long run. Ultimately, people are still suffering and dying from risk factors that can be reversed under the right guidance and with an approach that includes lifestyle factors and medication where needed.
In my personal research on this topic, I came across two big themes: one is that LDL cholesterol is the main marker that dictates cardiovascular risk, and the second is that once you are 50+ years old and your LDL is high, you are pushed towards what was called the “New medicine halves risk of heart attack death!” – statins.
In my research, I came across a very objective view. Dr Paula Byrne, a researcher at Evidence Synthesis Ireland, shares what she and her team found when they looked at the evidence on statins and the risk of bad outcomes like stroke and heart attack. In most areas of medicine, doctors are advised by expert groups on how to prescribe for typical patients. These groups publish ‘clinical guidelines’ to advise doctors. In heart and circulatory medicine, many of these guidelines assume that the lower a patient’s ‘bad’ cholesterol, the better it is for them.
Equally, they assume that prescribing statins reduces risk in a meaningful way. Dr Byrne states in her article, “There is no doubt that statins are very good at reducing ‘bad’ cholesterol but that’s not what really matters. What we need to know is how good are statins at reducing bad outcomes like death, heart attack and stroke? Although statins are a common preventative medicine in older people, sometimes the benefits of taking them are quite small. For individuals, it’s useful to think about the absolute reduction in risk they are likely to get from taking statins, and this depends on many factors, not just cholesterol. The other thing to consider is possible harm. For many people, if the benefit of statins is small, even a small possibility of harm may be off-putting.”
And this is what I am talking about. If there are many other factors, why are we not starting to consider them? Revamping our overall lifestyle for the sake of increasing our chances of living longer and better is worth the effort. In the next few weeks, I am bringing to the world a brand-new course on sustainable lifestyle changes for optimal cholesterol levels and improving your heart health.
Visit my website here for more.
