diet – Page 3 – Just thoughts

So that was a bit of a surprise! Just over two weeks ago, on a Sunday morning I was doing something rather stupid – lifting and turning a large bag of garden cushions above my head, up the stairs into the loft room – and I felt something “go” in my chest. It wasn’t a sharp pain as such, just a sudden ache – a bit like you get when you’ve twisted suddenly, or stretched too far. But unlike that sort of pain, it didn’t seem to want to go away. So I rested for a while, but it persisted, so with my history, I asked Jenny to take me to A&E at UHW.

I only seem to have had one of these symptoms …… and the pain was very mild, but the troponin test suggested that I’d indeed had a mild (or minor) heart attack. So I stayed in the Heath for a couple of days whilst they monitored me and persuaded me to go back on blood pressure medication – candesartan, and to take clopidogrel for a year. That I’ve done, and will do, but more important (for me) is that I need to face-up to the reality that I’ve been too sedentary this year – I’ve not had enough exercise so I’ve put on weight slowly, my diet has been a bit too laissez-faire – I’ve eaten more carbs than I should and I’ve probably drunk too much alcohol, and I’ve done precious little to try and reduce my levels of anxiety/stress. These, I’m now committed to tackle and how I go about this I’ll detail in my next, and ensuing posts.

Those of you who know me will know that my interest in what causes heart disease was stimulated by my own experiences – which I described in a blog a few years back, and by my strange encounters with a condition called Transient Global Amnesia which after investigation I believe to have been related to the use of statins which had already caused me some side-effect concerns.

So this led me to the work of Dr Malcolm Kendrick, a Scottish GP, who has argued the case against the general and widespread prescribing of statins, as well as persuasively arguing against the demonisation of cholesterol.

The purpose of this blog post is to alert anyone that might be interested that Kendrick’s massive series of blog posts on “What Causes Heart Disease” is almost certainly coming towards an end.

This series of more than 30 posts has been a revelation, has engaged hundreds of people in comment and discussion, has caused controversy at times, has gone down a number of interesting pathways, even some diversions, has gone round in a few circles but has always sought to examine whether you can establish causal relationships for heart disease.

Kendrick has admitted at times that he’s changed his mind – such as the impact of stress on CHD, but he has always argued, as anyone who understands what the scientific method is all about, that you cannot have a theory which allows paradoxes, such as the one shown below. Such a theory has no validity. Therefore saturated fat is not the demon it’s portrayed to be.

I would encourage anyone interested in their health to pause and take a look at Kendrick’s blog over the next few weeks, and then come to their own conclusions. I’ll say no more!

Tag: diet

Encore #hospitweet … no way!

Heart disease – causes and processes?