Calcium scoring: get it done

This story in The NY Times is an important one. A calcium score is a simple 5-10 minute CT scan of the heart. It shows whether or not you’ve got plaque building up in your arteries and assigns a score starting at 0. 0? You’ve got no problems. Anything else you might want to consider starting on statins, especially depending on family history. It is literally one of the easiest tests you will ever do and the benefit can be immense.

This paragraph bothered me:

A calcium scan helped Stephen Patrick, 70, a retired tech executive in San Francisco, reach that point. “For years, I was borderline on cholesterol, and I managed to beat it back with less cheese toast” and lots of exercise, he said. “I was on no meds, and I took pride in that.”

I’m going to bet he didn’t “beat it back” very much. Exercise does a body good, it does little for changing cholesterol levels, especially LDL. Dietary changes can help a lot but depending on the person won’t necessarily get your LDL (bad cholesterol) level where it needs to be.

For me that LDL number needed to be below 70 (in Europe per my cardiologist that number is 50!). Do I need to do better on diet and exercise? Definitely but I was never going to get that low by diet and exercise changes - bad genetics. Statins got my LDL down to between 50-70.

I honestly don’t know why so many people are so against taking statins. They’re proven. So is the calcium score test. Get it done.