What is a Coronary Artery Calcium Score?

A coronary artery calcium scan reports your coronary artery calcium score. It is useful as a screening tool for those who are not known to have arterial disease. It should not be used to assess symptoms or monitor arterial disease in response to therapy. 

If you already know of the presence of arterial disease in your body (if you’ve had a stroke, heart attack, stent, or bypass surgery) or carotid artery ultrasound, determining this score is unnecessary. It may also lead to risky, costly/profitable stents or surgery with no benefit in the absence of symptoms like angina or heart failure.

What does the score mean?

A score of zero is generally reassuring that the risk of heart attack from silent arterial disease is low in studied populations. You want this score to be as low as possible. However, if you have other risk or evidence of arterial disease, you could have plaque that is not calcified, known as soft/homogeneous/vulnerable/or unstable plaque. This occurs in about 10% of those with zero calcium scores.

Non-calcified plaque is the most vulnerable to rupture (the event that leads to heart attack). Therefore, a score of zero does not guarantee that you will not have a heart attack. Plaque can still form after a reassuring test in response to a change in conditions that promote inflammation, such as a dental infection.

Coronary calcium scores rise as plaque heals and inflammation subsides. In our experience, scores rarely fall, which makes this scan inappropriate for measuring progress.

Instead, we recommend measuring trends of the thickness (sickness or inflammation) of your carotid arterial wall, which can be done with completely safe ultrasound. This is a much more meaningful measure of disease response to treatment. To find this option, click www.vasolabs.com/events.

Coronary artery calcium scans can lead to a slippery slope that can be dangerous to your health and your pocketbook. They can lead to unnecessary procedures, such as stents, that do not prevent heart attack or stroke in individuals with no symptoms. 

If there is no plaque seen on carotid ultrasound, an elevated Coronary Artery Calcium Score should provoke a search for root causes and efforts to eliminate them.  

The proper response to a positive screening/asymptomatic coronary artery calcium score should be to identify the root causes of arterial disease and eliminate them. This is what we do at the CureCenter.

If you have no history of heart attack, stroke, TIA, stent, bypass or other evidence of arterial disease, we suggest first getting a carotid ultrasound to screen for plaque as the first step. You can do this by scheduling your 15-minute CureScreen.

If you’re unsure what to do next, request a no cost/no obligation Discovery Zoom Call today.

What is Body Composition Analysis?

Scales measure weight, which includes lean body mass, water, and fat. We urge you to go beyond the scale and schedule a body composition analysis, which measures your percent body fat and visceral fat.

We use the InBody 570. This cutting edge technoolgy reports visceral fat, which is the cause and effect of insulin resistance. Reduce visceral fat to reduce your insulin resistance, the most common and reversible root cause of arterial disease, diabetes, and prediabetes.

With the InBody 570, you can know exactly what you’re made of: lean muscle mass, body fat mass, percentage of body fat, water, and visceral fat estimation, among other measurements. This will enable you to understand more completely the effects of the changes you make in your nutrition and exercise.

When you get a body composition analysis at the CureCenter, you will receive your results on the InBody App you can download from the App or Google Play Store. Results over time are reported and pushed to your phone to monitor your progress. Monitor visceral fat and percent body fat with the same interest as we monitor blood pressure and cholesterol. With our InBody technology, we can do this easily and frequently. 

To schedule, click InBody. It might hurt is your feelings 🙄, but dealing with reality empower you and put you in more control of your metabolic health with your food and activity choices.🙂

Good News! Your first measurement is FREE! What do you have to lose other than excess fat and misery?

If you can’t come to our Springfield or Morton IL locations, you can find an InBody owner at this link: inbodyusa.com/support/nearest-testing-location/

Measure, Mentor, Monitor, and Maintain Momentum. This is the key to your improvement.
Our InBody composition analysis is affordable and easy to access. Insurers do not pay for this test. We don’t want this to be a barrier.

Your initial InBody analysis is free of charge. Subsequent measurements are covered by our Proactive Medicine or Personal Medicine Membership. Nonmembers are charged $20/appointment for subsequent measurements recommended every 2-4 weeks.

Don’t let the cardiologist or coroner be the first to tell you about your disease.

by Dr. Craig Backs

How much time do you have? Are you sure?
Recently, I learned that a current patient lost her husband to sudden death in his 50’s due to an apparent heart attack, dying right in front of her. Imagine trying to resuscitate a loved one and losing them this way. I’m certain that she tried to convince him to get a CureCenter evaluation, starting with an ultrasound and root cause lab assessment. But it never happened. Was it denial or ego?

Now it is too late, another casualty of the failure to know the truth about the Catastrophic Unseen Reversible Epidemic of Progressive Cardiometabolic Disease: Heart Attack, Stroke, Sudden Death, Dementia are all far more optional than you have been fooled into believing.

So many stories…….

I once met with a man in his 60’s who I cared for years ago. He was interested in reconnecting because his current physician had retired. After speaking with him, I offered to develop a custom CurePlan. He declined and stated, “I eat right, I exercise, and my doctor says my cholesterol is good.” I decided to not push the issue because it rarely if ever works to change beliefs. 

A few weeks later, I received a call from the hospital. It was this man’s wife, informing me that he had suffered cardiac arrest while exercising the prior morning. Fortunately, beating the odds, he had been successfully resuscitated and was recovering without apparent residual effects.

He now wanted to discuss a CurePlan because his catheterization had demonstrated three vessel coronary artery disease and he was recommended for coronary bypass surgery. He asked: “What should I do?”   

Sadly, I had little to offer him and urged him to follow the advice he had gotten for standard care. I had no influence on his hospital care other than as a “friend” that would only create friction with his surgeon and other doctors. 

I could have suggested he go home, come see me to discuss the details, and then decide if surgery, with all its risks, is the correct option. However, I didn’t believe it was worth the risk of him going into cardiac arrest again outside the hospital. I did not have all of the details of his diagnosis and he had previously declined my offer for a custom CurePlan and advice for proactive measures.

So, he and his family went through life altering operation on the heels of a life altering cardiac arrest and resuscitation. All of this would likely have been avoided if he had known of his arterial disease early and proactively treated the missed root causes proactively. 

I hope that someone who reads this story will act proactively in their own interest and for the benefit of their loved ones. Identify the disease that lurks within and could take you out in a moment without warning. Go to TheCureCenter.Life and click the boxes to get started.