What I want is for the middlemen to be cut out, the government to be footing the bill and for us to have a lot more choice in what treatments we choose and for what. But it’s no different than having a military or police or firefighters, and we all pay for those, and they still help people too poor to pay taxes. Illness and injury kill more people than war does. Time to look at medicine as a form of national defense.

It’s not enough to have private insurance. People lose their jobs when they become too sick to work, then they lose their insurance and then they have pre-existing conditions that won’t be covered for too long a time, if ever. Or the only treatment available is “experimental,” so isn’t covered. Or the patient uses up their lifetime maximum on the policy.

Cutting out insurance isn’t going to help. I once thought as you probably do, that insurance has driven up the cost of care and that we could all afford a doctor when we could pay him cash. Before insurance was invented, medicine was a lot more basic and crude than it is now. And even then there were too many people who couldn’t afford the doctor, which is why insurance was created to begin with. There was already a market for it because people were already getting in over their heads.

This is just one of those issues on which we’re going to have to bite the bullet and distribute the risk. And I hate to say it, too, because I know the government is capable of overstepping its bounds and often willing to do so to boot. But I hate the idea of people dying unnecessarily even more.

Coronary calcium scoring is a much better way to go. Several points here. You are unlikely to find an EBT machine to do this in New England. New 64 slice CT machines can do the job just fine, with low radiation if prospective gating is used. I paid $150 out of my own pocket for it. (One lab wanted $3,501 for the same procedure – shop around or go to the Track Your Plaque website for help finding one.) I am in the 80th % ile for my age, not good but not devastating.

I can work my problem for a lot less than the annual cost of my Lipitor. I can measure success with a coronary calcium scan every couple of years. Not cheap, but a great investment in longevity. Plus, I feel so much better, stronger, more athletic, better in the sack, etc. since pitching the Lipitor and correcting some nutritional problems, it is amazing.

Glad to hear you’re doing so well.

Feel free to edit this long post.

If I were you I wouldn’t wait until December to go back to the cardiologist – I would try to go ASAP. There is some indication that statins do reduce calcium scores, but at what cost? The studies on all-cause mortality for men over 65 show no difference whether on a statin or not, which means that any improvement in heart disease risk if offset by an increase in other risk factors. The studies of the Masai by George Mann showed that these tribesmen who ate a high-meat, high-dairy low-carb diet had fairly significant coronary arterial plaque but no actual heart disease. Their plaque was stable. Stable plaque isn’t all that risky – it’s the unstable plaque that is problematic. It would be nice to have known what your calcium score was a year or two ago. No change between then and now would indicate stable plaque.

Keep me posted

Not as far as I’m concerned.

However, my question relates to our 17 year-old son who may have just the opposite situation – a real problem that isn’t widely recognized as such. After donating blood, he received a total cholesterol reading back from the blood bank – just 114 (no breakdown). Step 1 is to have the result checked. If we confirm that he’s this low, what additional steps do you recommend? Do you know of anyone in the Dallas medical community who would have a healthy perspective on this?

Thanks for your books and good work

I wouldn’t worry about it as long as everything else is okay. Adolescents and young adults often have cholesterol levels in this range. I remember when I was in medical school and we all got our labs checked. Almost everyone had cholesterol levels in the very low range.

Former professor of obstetrics gynaecology at UCLA, Dr. Guy Abraham, started a study in 1997 called The Iodine Project based on the hypothesis that maintaining whole body sufficiency of iodine requires 12.5 mg per day. According to Abraham whole body sufficiency exists when a person given a 50 mg load of iodine excretes 90% of the iodine load. The iodine project has found that iodine reverses fibcrocystic disease, diabetic patients require less insulin, hypothyroid patients require less thyroid medication, symptoms of fibromyalgia subside and patients with migraines stop having them.

In the area where I live there appears to be a cluster fibromyalgia. I have spoken with some of the patients. They told me that their symptoms come and go and are often debilitating. Drugs prescribed by their MDs do not help. Since the treatment of this group is managed by a regional chronic illness coordinator for our health care system I passed along one of Miller’s articles on iodine and fibromylagia to her. She dismissed out of hand any possible role of iodine in fibromyalgia by stating that iodine deficiency does not exist in North America because “iodine is added to salt”. Despite the fact that the iodine in salt is not readily absorbed, she and other health care professionals are pushing for a reduction in salt intake which would also reduce the intake of iodine. Perhaps this concept was exceedingly difficult for her to grasp. She went on to state that diseases like fibromyalgia are “far too complicated to be treated with simple things like iodine” (read: fibromyalgia needs lots of pharmaceuticals).

Insofar as your invitation to bash our socialized health care in Canada I would be more than happy to oblige. However, if I really get started it would take a blog of its own. So I will limit my comments to one of my biggest gripes; a set fee per consult.

Social medicine is a numbers game for MDs working the system. MDs get a fixed fee which is not based on results (which don’t matter a whit so long as MDs follow established treatment protocols), but on consults. I don’t care how altruistic or humanitarian an MD is when he or she first starts to practice if they can do basic maths it is only a matter of time before they make the connection that the more patients they run through their practice, the more money they make. It is dead simple. And the fastest way to run patients through is to write a script every 4 or 5 minutes. Some MDs excel at speed writing.

Patients are usually happy because they think scripts represent good treatment. They are also happy because they believe our social health care system is free and they are entitled to free treatment for anything that ails them right up until time they die. If health care costs keep rising at the current rate, Canadians are in for a very nasty surprise. My health care plan says that I have a maximum life time limit of $100,000 after which I pay everything myself. And I have a premium plan with all the bells and whistles. If I get hit with a big one like a transplant and post operative treatment I think $100 K would not go very far.

How much should one aim for in a day? I came across some kelp capsules.

Iodoral is a pretty good supplement that’s well absorbed. You can find it online. Kelp capsules contain some iodine, but not as much, I don’t think, as Iodoral.

Some medical researchers are making a very good case for widespread iodine deficiency and are recommending a daily supplement in the order of 10 or more milligrams. But I have had a hard time finding an absorbable, high potency iodine supplement. The only one I have found so far is called Iodoral. Do you know of a good iodine supplement?

Iodoral is a good supplement. It’s the one we use. There are a couple of companies that have sent me info on new iodine supplements they’re making, but I haven’t used the products yet. I’ll probably do a post on the whole iodine deficiency issue after I’ve done a little more product evaluation.