I thought I could "out-lifestyle" my genetics ... I was wrong!
My Lifestyle
- I never eat fast food and rarely eat any ultra-processed food
- I intermittent fast 20 hours a day
- I get well over 200 minutes of HIIT (high intensity interval training) exercise each week
- My wife and I walk about 60 minutes most days of the week
- I’m not stressed, and I usually get about nine hours of sleep each night
Despite my healthy lifestyle, I was whistling past the graveyard
Heart disease was a birthright in my father’s family. He came from a family of 14 siblings, all of whom died of heart disease.
To ascertain the heart health of their children, my parents had our family tested for cholesterol levels way back in the late 60s when statins and the cholesterol scare were just beginning to gain public notoriety.
Our familial blood tests revealed that two of my five sisters and me were “gifted” familial hyperlipidaemia (FH), – genetically very high levels of LDL –from my father, while my mother and three other sisters had “healthy” levels.
Children on statins for life?!!!
Incredibly, my 6-year-old sister, me at age 12, and 14-year-old sister were prescribed a lifetime statin (Questran) to lower our LDL cholesterol.
Not surprisingly, we had severe reactions which covered everything from muscle and joint pain to nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, constipation and diarrhea… WTF! … as far as we were concerned, the cure was worse than the disease!
It wasn’t long before we devised ingenious ways to avoid our daily dose, even though we assured our parents that it was duly swallowed.
Once a month, we made the trek to our cardiologist for blood tests, and though my father’s blood work was responding to the statin, my sister’s and mine remained “mysteriously” and stubbornly high.
Needless to say, our parents and the cardiologist weren’t nearly as clueless as we thought. Eventually the daily statin routine faded away, and nothing more was ever mentioned.
These were the early days of statins, and my father diligently continued his monthly blood tests – which must have been effective at lowering his LDL and triglycerides since he kept at it for many years.
Still, nonetheless, the statins didn’t seem to have much effect on their “supposed” purpose — preventing heart disease — because he had a heart attack while in his 60s, and a few years later, he underwent surgery for several blockages. Four months after surgery, he died in hospital at the age of 74.
My second experience with statins
When I turned 40, I finally got around to getting a physical and not surprisingly, my new doctor put me on Crestor, a statin to lower my highly elevated LDL.
Within a week, every joint in my body ached, and any form of exercise was extremely painful. Feeling that the cure was worse than the disease, I chucked the Crestor and never thought any more about it… until a year ago when I began to have these nagging doubts that perhaps all may not be well.
A Case of Wilful Blindness or Naive Optimism?
I was 65 years old, and although I hadn’t been to a doctor in 25 years, as far as I could tell and the way that I felt, there was no reason for a visit; after all, I reasoned that my healthy lifestyle would override my (FH) genetic disposition.
In retrospect, it was a case of hoping, gambling and wishful thinking – in other words, I was virtually whistling past the graveyard in the idiotic hope that what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.
My Holiday Heart Attack
The week before Christmas, I began to suspect that my daily 45-minute HIIT routine required a little more energy than the day before.
On Christmas day, I did my HIIT routine, and immediately after, I took my blood pressure because, once again, I felt as though it was considerably more strenuous than a day earlier. But since my blood pressure and heart rate appeared normal, I shrugged it off as me being a worrywart and assumed it was probably just some imagined stress of hosting our family Christmas party.
The following day, my wife and I were about 15 minutes into our walk when I noticed some chest pain. Once again, I reasoned that it was probably due to some variation of push-ups that I had tried a couple of days earlier, and it was likely nothing more than muscle soreness.
Fifteen minutes later, the pain had not subsided. When I mentioned it to my wife, she suggested we sit down for a few minutes. We did. It went away, and we continued but within a short time the pain was back. We sat again; it went away, and I continued to reason that it was nothing more than sore chest muscles.
By the time we got home, the pain was consistent, but after sitting down for a while, it went away; for the next 5 hours, it would come and go despite doing almost no physical activity. By nine o’clock, I was ready for bed, and while bending over the sink and brushing my teeth, the pain suddenly got really intense. It felt as though someone was standing on my chest.
I quickly did a Google search for signs of a heart attack, and of the nine or so warning signs, I had just one – chest pain, but it was severe enough for me to finally suggest to my wife that we go to emergency just to be on the safe side.
While there, they gave me an EKG and a blood test. The EKG was fine, but my blood test showed signs of troponin… I had had a heart attack.
I spent the night in emergency, in a case of shock and embarrassment (how could this possibly happened to me?), and the following morning, I was taken to a nearby hospital for a coronary angiogram, which showed my (LAD) left anterior descending artery (also known as the widow maker) was 99% blocked (which required a stent), and a branch off the LAD was 88% blocked (which required angioplasty).
I Was Woefully Reckless
All things considered, I was incredibly lucky because my heart attack could have easily resulted in cardiac arrest.
Incredibly, people can suffer a heart attack and not know it!
Before my father’s heart surgery, his surgeon asked him how long it had been since he had had his heart attack. Surprised my father said that he hadn’t had one. When his surgeon informed him otherwise, my father did recall feeling a great deal of pain while driving back from Florida a couple of years earlier, but the pain went away, and he dismissed it as heartburn.
Never, Never Dismiss Chest Pain
Little did I know that cardiac arrest often happens quite sometime after a heart attack.
Which heart-attack patient will suffer an electrical rhythm disturbance leading to a cardiac arrest is usually random and not related to the size of the heart attack. It most commonly occurs within 24 to 48 hours of the event itself. That’s why all heart attack patients usually go to a special cardiac ward, a coronary care unit for the first couple of days where their heart is continuously monitored. (1)
Why I Was So Very Lucky
Following my angioplasty, I couldn’t stop thinking about what might have been. For example, if I had felt better (instead of worse) during my Google search on “signs of heart attack”, I likely would have reasoned my way to concluding that I was suffering from sore muscles or heartburn, and the next day, while feeling perfectly fine, I would have maxed out on my HIIT routine… and then I can only imagine that cardiac arrest would have been a distinct possibility.
What Should I Have Done?
Nine months before my heart attack, I should have followed my gut and taken a stress test just to see if my lifestyle was indeed enough to overcome my (FH) genetic propensity to heart disease.
That simple stress test would have alerted me and my physician that I was in the danger zone, and I could have had my angioplasty without risk and damage to my heart – because every heart attack causes damage, sometimes reversible, sometimes not.
Upon being discharged, I was given a cocktail of blood thinners, statins, anti-clot drugs, and God knows what else.
I’ve already had some serious side effects from the statins – and I’ve taken measures to deal with that, but that’s a story for another day. 😉
So that’s my lesson and my heads up.
I had a surprise heart attack that shouldn’t have happened, and I was bloody lucky it wasn’t fatal.
References
- Malhotra, Aseem. A Statin-Free Life: A revolutionary life plan for tackling heart disease – without the use of statins, Hodder & Stoughton, UK, 2021
