Can you reverse coronary calcium

Statins are the most effective and commonly used cholesterol-lowering medications in the United States. They work by blocking the protein in your liver that the body uses to make low-density lipoprotein LDL , or bad cholesterol.

Eating a balanced diet and engaging in regular exercise can both be very important parts of reducing high blood pressure and high cholesterol, two major contributors to atherosclerosis. Even if your healthcare professional prescribes a statin, you may want to consider eating nutrient-rich foods and exercising regularly. Your doctor may be able to help you with this as well. If you smoke, you may want to consider quitting smoking. Smoking can cause a buildup of plaque in the arteries.

It can also reduce the amount of good cholesterol high-density lipoprotein, or HDL you have and can raise your blood pressure, which can increase stress on your arteries. Managing a moderate weight can lower your risk of developing complications due to atherosclerosis.

A surgeon may either remove plaque from an artery, put in a stent, or redirect blood flow around the blocked artery. Your healthcare professional may determine during a regular physical exam if you have risk factors for atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis tends to occur more commonly in people with a history of smoking or conditions such as:. Talk to your doctor about your best options. Atherosclerosis is a condition in which cholesterol, calcium, and other substances, collectively referred to as plaque, clog your arteries…. For others…. Lifestyle changes can significantly reduce high blood pressure and even lower your risk of hypertension in the future.

Learn how garlic and dark…. I wrote about chelation in a previous article. A recent study looking at a treatment that includes chelation with added vitamins and antibiotics found that it changed calcium scores in about half the study subjects, but there is no long-term outcome data, so it is not known if it led to better outcomes or not.

You mentioned that your doctor said that you have calcification in the main artery to your heart. Plaque in the main vessel or the left anterior descending artery is more significant than other vessels because this vessel feeds so much of the heart muscle. If the decreased blood supply to this part of the heart has been severe enough to create heart failure, it is particularly important. People with left main artery disease and heart failure are at more risk for a bad heart rhythm during exercise and so it is usually treated more aggressively than other vessels that have plaques.

So, what can you do? There are four elements of the Ornish Lifestyle Medicine program. You mentioned that you exercise and eat well, but also consider stress management and group support , which are the other two important factors when it comes to reversing heart disease.

There are also many people who come through our program thinking they are following the diet, but after experiencing the diet See Ornish Kitchen sample menu and getting the training, they discover that that they were only partly following the diet. This may or may not be true for you. The take-home message is that calcium score is a marker of disease risk and interventions that change the calcium score have not been proven to affect long-term health outcomes.

Making the changes we teach in each element of the Ornish Lifestyle Medicine program have been proven to reverse heart disease. This may or may not affect the calcium score, but increases blood flow to the heart and decreases cardiac events. To your best health! Better Health Begins With You Comment 4. Name required. Email will not be published required. Estrogen is known to prevent heart disease by increasing the number of LDL cholesterol receptors in the liver.

So, fill up on unsweetened soy milk, edamame, and soy nuts. Garlic: Eating garlic will make your food taste better, as well as help stop artery-clogging plaque at its earliest stages.

Also, garlic will lower the number of cholesterol-carrying lipoproteins in your system. Metamucil: High fiber diets have been shown to reduce heart disease. Barely and Oatmeal: Another good source of fiber, but whole grains also contain plant hormones that lower cholesterol. They contain beta-glucan, which acts like a sponge to absorb and drive out LDL in your body.

Flaxseed: Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, flaxseeds are great anti-inflammatory agents that also help reduce the risk of heart disease and atherosclerosis. About 2 tablespoons of ground or milled flaxseeds should work.

Also, apples are a great source of antioxidants, which prevent atherosclerosis. Having a heart event can be a challenging and emotional experience. As you begin your recovery, South Denver Cardiology and Pritikin are ready to help you.