Because Good Medicine Deserves Better Explanations
It’s been almost forty years since Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris sang about the guy who left his gypsy girl for a journey “to the valley below”. His final cup of coffee became a classic. One more cup of coffee for the road One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go To the valley below – Bob Dylan 1976 Coffee, second … Read more
We’re all aware of the aggressive campaign driven by public health authorities and medical professionals to decrease blood cholesterol. It all started more than fifty years ago when the Framingham Heart Study reported that high blood cholesterol was a major risk factor for coronary heart disease (1). Central to the dogma was the belief that lowering blood cholesterol would … Read more
Cardiology is renowned for its innovative procedures and cutting edge technology. However, one of my favorite scientific papers of 2014 did not address innovative techniques, DNA sequencing or new wonder drugs. It dealt with the fact that certain lifestyle habits and the absence of abdominal obesity may prevent most heart attacks. Toady, chronic noncommunicable diseases are one of the biggest … Read more
The modern history of coronary heart disease is quite remarkable. Acute myocardial infarction (acute heart attack) appears to have been relatively uncommon until it emerged in the early 1920s. Then came the plague. In the 1950s coronary heart disease had become the most common cause of death in the industrialized world. The symptoms were often dramatic and … Read more
Today was a big day at the annual conference of the American Heart Association in Chicago. The results of the long and eagerly awaited IMPROVE-IT trial were presented. You may think IMPROVE-IT is just another ordinary study of the efficacy of a particular cholesterol lowering drug. But it’s more than that because it tests the important and heavily debated lipid … Read more
