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Any people in their 40s with very high CAC scores?
Heart & Blood Health | Last Active: Dec 19 4:03pm | Replies (13)Comment receiving replies
@star123 @star123 My PCP seems reluctant to escalate it to a cardiologist, but he prescribed me atorvastatin.
I went for a run on an isolated trail today and kept thinking that if I had a heart attack out there, no one would find me for a while. That’s true for anyone, I guess, but knowing I’m suddenly in a high-risk category hit hard. It’s a lot to process—going from feeling healthy to having a chronic disease that’s the world’s top killer. The stress of it probably isn’t helping either, so maybe I also need therapy, meditation, or some kind of radical acceptance to keep my head straight.
Anyway, I wish you the best managing this and hope you have many pleasant years ahead with your family. Thank you for sharing and helping me see this reaction is normal.
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@nagoh I'm so sorry to hear you are having these kinds of thoughts. I have them, too. It's so hard. And I think you are right - it's the sudden and unexpected transition from healthy to sick that is hard to adjust to. To help make myself feel a bit better about exercising alone, I put some baby aspirin in my jogging fanny pack just in case and I wear an Apple Watch with settings to call for help if I fall during a workout. But I suspect that all of this is probably unnecessary and I'm not sure if it's actually helpful or not to give these thoughts any credibility by "preparing" in this way. Even with CAD, our overall risk of having a heart attack in the short run is probably actually quite low - it's just higher than the risk of other people and will go up if not managed well.
Another way to put this: even a 5% risk of a MACE in 10 years - which is likely a significant overestimate in your case (check https://mesa-nhlbi.org/researchers/tools/mesa-score-risk-calculator to see) - is still a 95% chance of no MACE in 10 years. And if you ask google to calculate your yearly risk at this rate, it comes out at about .512% a year - which is a nearly 99.5% chance nothing happens each year. I hope that gives you some peace of mind. These are the things I tell myself when I worry!
In terms of practical matters - You might want to ask for an Lp(a) test from your PCP, since that might explain why your CAC is high for your age. This was the case for me. If your Lp(a) is high, you should potentially receive more aggressive treatment for your other cholesterol numbers as it's a significant independent risk factor. (My cardiologist wants my LDL-C under 55 because of my high Lp(a), not my CAC score.) Likewise, assuming drugs are approved to treat Lp(a) in the next few years, this way you know you should get on them when they become available.
Also, one more thing to keep in mind that is often overlooked since so many people diagnosed with CAD are men or older women - my cardiologist told me to stop taking the birth control pill and to only take transdermal hormones (patches and creams) for perimenopause. This has been the piece that has actually been hardest to sort out since I have had a lot more perimenopausal symptoms since going off the pill. You should bring these things up with your PCP and gynecologist as you move through your 40s. It's a drag!
Good luck with all this. I hope you hang in there and manage to thrive despite it!