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Extremely high calcium score at 42 - is there any positive here??
Heart & Blood Health | Last Active: Jun 25 3:31pm | Replies (193)Comment receiving replies
steveny,
Most cardiologists immediately go to a stress test ... my sense is to assess how serious your condition MIGHT be - some add an echo test component, as well. Not prescribing a stress test with high CAC is unusual, it seems to me - unless your cardio believes your exercise regimen would have pointed to serious blockages, already?
My interest with doc consult in a few weeks will be for a stress test plus echo, and probably CT angiogram. My diet has always been pretty balanced - moderate in most respects. Never smoked, occasional beer or mixed drink, exercised quite a bit prior to hip replacements (have worn the friction surfaces on the first one down a bit), very active lifestyle, Already taking statins as I noted previously, and icosapent ethyl (Vascepa) with good cholesterol, LDL and trigylceride numbers ... so, not much more possible in that regard. Glucose and A1C tests have always been higher than my diet or lifestyle should dictate so likely genetic.
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I am going to pursue the stress test. I have an appointment with a second cardiologist tomorrow and it is one thing I will press on. One issue here is that my main cardiologist is off the next two weeks - I think I was literally his last patient before his vacation. So there's no stress test to be done in his office until he returns. And as I said, he did order a new CT scan, this time with dye contrast. My understanding is that this might even be better than a stress test in terms of revealing potential blockages/build-up? That test is set for the first week of August - when he is back.
Interesting to hear your description of your lifestyle. I think I'd describe mine similarly. No smoking, not a heavy drinker, have a long history of exercise, and not overweight; I think my diet has probably been worse than yours. But it does seem that genetics have to be heavily implicated here to get me to such a high score at such a young age. I can imagine someone without my genetic load scoring a 0 with my lifestyle. Really seems like this calcium score is the major dividing line between who is and isn't vulnerable to heart attacks and stroke; not that it can't happen to someone with a 0 score, just that it's *vastly* more likely in our group. Real luck of the draw element to this, I think, and we both drew lousy hands. (I saw one general population study that estimated that 93% of people at age 40 have CAC scores of 0; so even to get a 1 would have put me in a small minority. To be at 397....)
I did also want to share this from some UK research that I stumbled on yesterday. It apparently came out last summer and it's a little confusing, but it seems to raise the possibility that high CAC scores could be related in some way to higher levels of exercise. It raises some interesting potential questions. I can't apparently post the link here because this system doesn't allow URL's from new members. But if you google "
Exercise may contribute to narrowing of arteries, research suggests," I think you may find some articles about the study.