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Tag : supplementation
Is it Prevention or is it Early Diagnosis?
Everyone seems to agree that prevention of disease is critically important, but most of what doctors do under the heading of preventive care is not prevention, it’s really just early diagnosis.
Pap smears and mammograms don’t prevent breast and cervical cancer; they help us diagnose them early. Prostate exams, chest x-rays, and your annual physical don’t prevent disease, they help us find it early. It is possible not to have a disease, but still be weak, tired, and overweight, while robust good health means being fast, strong, lean, smart, and sexy.
But fast, strong, lean, smart, and sexy pretty much define optimal health, and optimal health requires you and your doctor working together to change your lifestyle, enhance your diet and supplements, move your hormones back to a robust youthful level, and boost your immune system. This is the direction I think medicine should be moving.
Testosterone Levels Are Related to Heart Attacks
A low normal testosterone level may increase your risk of dying from a heart attack.
126 men who were admitted to the intensive care unit for fresh heart attacks had their testosterone levels evaluated. These men were then followed for the next 30 days to see how they did. 16 men died, and 110 men survived. However, 100% of the men who died had testosterone levels in the bottom 25 percentile of the normal range. Their testosterone was not low. In fact, it was within a range in which there are a few American doctors who would recommend testosterone supplementation, but everyone who died was within that low normal range.
Once more, we have good evidence that being normal is not enough. Where you are within the normal range can make the difference in living and dying. As I keep saying, normal is not acceptable. Shoot for optimal.
Cholesterol & Heart Disease Part 3
Is their higher level of testosterone the reason men have an increased risk of heart disease compared to women? For many years doctors have thought so. This belief seems to have grown largely out of the fact that women generally tend to have lower risk of cardiovascular disease than men (at least until after menopause). Because estrogen has a significant anti-inflammatory effect in the blood vessels, and because we think of testosterone as the opposite of estrogen, for a long time the medical community presumed that testosterone must increase the inflammation that can lead to heart disease.
We now know that, like estrogen, testosterone also has a potent anti-inflammatory effect in the arteries. Testosterone isn’t part of the problem – but it can be part of the solution.