432: ‘Encore Week’ 2011: Dr. Kurt Harris

Kurt G. Harris, MD and author Gary Taubes are beyond any doubt the most influential men in my life at the present time and the impact of what I have learned from them upon my daily life is enormous. I shall always be in their debt. Kurt’s link to the NIH article on the Pleiotropic Effects of Statins was a real eye opener for me, and here is why: By way of background in order that you see from whence I come, I am a 78 year old Caucasian and retired banker. In November of 1982 endured six by-pass grafts on my coronary arteries using sections of my Great Saphenous vein and two of my mammary arteries. I had no elephants sitting on my chest symptom; only indigestion and pain down the back of my left arm, but an angiogram became my treadmill to the bypass table. I have been taking simvistatin for years, ostensibly to lower my LDL test values. I began with 20 mgs, then 40 and for the past four or five years 80 mgs/day. I have had no detectable liver damage or muscle pain from this dosage, but in the back of my mind, I have always wondered if I might be taking too much? Am I being victimized once again by well meaning physicians, cut from the same cloth as those who brought us the “high cholesterol precipitates heart attacks” hypothesis and the “fat is bad” notion which sentenced me and many other Americans to years of low fat diets which never worked? We were hoodwinked, as Gary and Kurt make abundantly clear; not by intentional evil doers, but by well intentioned researchers, physicians and gullible senators who misinterpreted the research results and acted upon it in such a way as to recommend to the general public a low fat high carbohydrate lifestyle. This has resulted in the obesity epidemic so prevalent today.

Over the years I flirted with the Aitkins diet which seemed to be working for me, but reading all the anti-Atkins print and “Low Fat Diet” books scared me into rejecting ketogenic diets, which were condemned by what seemed the majority of physicians and even our government and the leading health organizations like the A.M.A. (I still have many of these books which no longer occupy a prominent place on my book shelves. Among them are: Low-Fat Living, by Robert K. Cooper, Ph.D.; The McDougall Program For a Healthy Heart, by John A. McDougall, M.D.; Renewal, The Anti-Aging Revolution, by Timothy J. Smith, M.D.; Reversing Heart Disease, by Dr. Dean Ornish; and, Turn Off The Fat Genes, by Neal Barnard, M.D. These learned doctors certainly know more about medical matters than I, a lowly Navy Hospital Corpsman during the Korean War.) Whom was I to trust and believe? In the recent past I read Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories (three times, and counting). It was my epiphany, and more recently I acquired his “Why We Get Fat.” All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me and I am now convinced it was “All a Big Fat Lie,” as Gary set forth in his article I read in The Best American Science and Nature Writing (2003).

Now I am enthralled by the on-line blog of Dr. Kurt G. Harris which led me to the link to the Pleiotropic Effects of Statins. For almost 20 years I have been taking statins and as far as I can tell have suffered no adverse consequences. Avid record keeper that I am, 42 blood lipid panels have been tested between 7/19/91 and 1/7/2011. My average Total Cholesterol over this period was 193, with a high of 264, and a low of 121; my average LDLs were 98, with a high of 169 and a low of 39; my average HDLs were 72, with a high of 82, and a low of 35; and my average Triglycerides were 184, with a high of 307 and a low of 73. Over this period I have taken ever increasing doses of Simvistatin, which might explain the blood lipid levels even though I followed the SAD meal plan and for a long time the Low Fat approach. For the past few years I have been overweight, but not in the morbidly obese category. At 5’ 9” my weight shot up to 206 through the December holidays, but since January 1st, I have followed a ketogenic diet and during the month of January lost 16 pounds. I realize much of this was water, but I do test and show a moderate amount of ketone bodies in my urine, so I know I’m on the right track. When I reach my ideal weight say three months from now I will add back in a few more complex carbohydrates to level off, where I intend to remain the rest of my life. I do resistance exercises three times a week, and play a little golf.

My expectation was to see my LDLs go down and my HDLs go up simply because of the new way of eating, and I was anticipating the possibility of asking my cardiologist if I could reduce my simvistatin dosage accordingly. Table 1 on page 28 of the Statin Pleiotropy lists 12 highly desirable side effects of Stain drug administration independent of its effect on Cholesterol. Now I wonder, why would I want to go off a drug I tolerate so well, and which has such promising beneficial side effects? Naturally, I want to do what is in my best interest, who wouldn’t? But which is the most reasonable?

As an aside, my wife who is now 76 had a lipid profile as of 9/30/2010 of Total Cholesterol 261, Triglycerides 84, HDLs 84 and LDL (Calculated) of 164. Her GP doctor insisted she start simvistatin therapy with 20 mgs, which she was not able to tolerate, and discontinued. Her doctor, however, is still insistent. Gary Taubes in his “Why We Get Fat” book says on page 187: “For women, HDL levels are so good at predicting future heart disease that they are, effectively, the only predictors of risk that matters.” My wife’s HDLs are quite high and when she was 65 she had an unexplainable feeling in her chest which led to an angiogram. It showed she had a 10% blockage in just one of her coronary arteries. We reason that if in 65 years she had only a low level blockage in one of her coronary arteries, why assume she will suddenly develop arthrosclerosis? What are we missing here?

The evolutionary approach to what foods we developed to eat appeals to me. Sequencing of my Y-Chromosome puts me into Y-Haplogroup N1c1, which means I carry the TAT and M-178 mutations, among others. The human groups today with the highest percentage of this Haplogroup are the Sami and Finns in arctic Scandinavia. They were hunter-gatherers who followed their reindeer herds from Siberia up into Arctic Scandinavia, after the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice-age, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. I’m happy to report that when Moses was bringing his tablets down from the mountain 6,000 years ago, my direct male ancestors were probably having a nice reindeer steak dinner, with fresh caught fish and a few berries, and had been doing so for a few thousand years. I should, therefore, do fine on my new diet plan, don’t you think?

In closing allow me to repeat my joy at the writings of Garry Taubes and Dr. Harris; they furnish the inspiration and motivation I need.

Sincerely,
Don Blankman
The Villages, Florida