Hi I’m new to this forum ,57 year old male and looking for any advice ,I had a quadruple bypass in March 2018 and all was good had a speedy recovery went through rehab no probs.Then in June 2018 Started with same symptoms as before my bypass surgery but worse ,eventually after putting a lot of pressure on Doctors etc I was given an Angiogram which revealed out of the four grafts 1 artery blocked completely,1 partially (80%) blocked,1 unable to find,1 running clear .I have been advised that stents and more surgery are not an option and will be treated by medication .I was sent for the treadmill test but after 58 seconds I was removed as I was about to pass out now awaiting a tilt table test .
My symptoms are Pins and Needles in left arm ,pressure pain on chest ,irregular heart beats and palpitations.dizzyness,breathlessness ,lightheaded all of which are worse upon exercise or simple exertion .I have blacked out twice and been advised not to work or drive .
Consultant seems to think that it’s is not related to the blocked arteries
Just wondered if any one else has had similar and any advice appreciated
Many thanks
Waiting times for bypass surgery 
Climbing Stairs after Bypass surgery
Quadruple bypass surgery 
Triple Bypass surgery
Beyond belief! Has no-one mentioned insulin-resistance and reducing insulin stimulation, starting with a lower glycaemic-load? watermark.silverchair.com/1...
Hi Concerned ,
Thanks for reply never been mentioned to me do you have any more info
Where to start? Remember the recent BHF campaign that acknowledged the link between heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes? Well, the main underlying risk is insulin resistance. Essentially, high insulin levels are caused by an overstimulation of the pancreas from what we eat, then compounded by blocking the insulin receptors (that feedback the amount of insulin circulating) with visceral fat. This visceral fat results from lipogenesis insulinandmore.com/2018/01/..., and has little to do with ingested fat that we've been warned to avoid. You can see from the link that the insulin index rating of whole milk is just 24 compared to skimmed-milk which is 60.
In fact, the low-fat advice that PHE gives lowers our expectation of just how much what we eat affects our chronic health. Typically people follow the advice with little improvement, often being told it is genetic, and rely on statins.
A Mediterranean approach has been proven to be far more effective. The MHRA stats state that statins are effective in preventing 450 heart attacks, strokes or mortality events in 10,000, which is just 4.5%. The PREDIMED study found that having olive oil or nuts improved heart attack rates by 30% compared to a low-fat control.
The ICS-NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme Mediterranean approach has up to 9 portions of berries and/or non-starchy vegetables per day, 4 to 8 portions of natural fat (favouring monounsaturated), 4 to 8 portions of low-Gi carbohydrates, 2 to 3 portions of protein (again, don't remove the natural fat), and 2 to 3 portions of full-fat dairy.
Hi concerned,Thanks for the info,interesting.
John
"The MHRA stats state that statins are effective in preventing 450 heart attacks, strokes or mortality events in 10,000, which is just 4.5%."
I think that statement, although possibly true (I'd actually heard 7% but let's not quibble) actually distorts the underlying reality. The problem is that Statins are prescribed willy nilly, including many people with a very low chance of a heart attack. If they were only prescribed to higher risk patients the percentage benefit would be much higher.
But there lies the rub; the cardiac event risk factors used in England & Wales (Scotland follows separate procedures) are looking dated, for example weight/waist measurement/BMI aren't really factored in, neither are co-morbidities. And I've been trying to understand why valuable predictive tests such as cardiac calcium scans aren't more widely used. NICE recognises their superb predictive qualities, but still won't endorse them because of the radiation risk of any incremental scan (which amounts to just four days of normal background radiation!) and the fact that the evidence is skewed towards white ethnic participants and they demand data with a broader ethnic profile (I get that, but I'm white so why am I denied the test?).
However, going back to statins, it's significant that the MHRA still says,
"The benefits of statins are well established and are considered to outweigh the risk of side-effects in the majority of patients. The efficacy and safety of statins has been studied in a number of large trials which show they can lower the level of cholesterol in the blood and reduce cardiovascular disease and can save lives. Trials have also shown that medically significant side effects are rare."
As a genuinely higher risk patient I for one would not want to be without my daily statin.
This from .gov.uk gov.uk/drug-safety-update/s...
I don't have any heart disease because I keep my insulin levels low instead of relying on medication.
Here's where I got the 7% figure. This is the NICE report on statins.
nice.org.uk/guidance/cg181/...
As you can see they break down the effectiveness of statins by different levels of cardiac risk. So for the least at risk group statins will save 4 people out of every 100 users from heart disease or stroke. But for the most at risk group, statins will save 15 people out of every 100. So it's as I previously said, statins become progressively more effective the higher your personal risk factors. The modal risk factor group is the 20% risk level, and for this group the statin effectiveness score is the 7% I mentioned before.
I've also see this NICE report quoted as evidence that statins increase the risk of diabetes. Yes, at the 80mg dose that's true, but at the far more common 20mg and 40mg daily prescribed dose then the increased risk of diabetes drops to statistical insignificance. In a way this underlines the oft quoted difference between a "toxin" and a "poison", almost everything is a toxin, but what stops it from also becoming a poison is the dose in which its taken!
It's also interesting that Dr Ford Brewer (one of the relatively few YouTube cardiac gurus who isn't an obvious charlatan or snake oil salesman) is also strongly convinced of the general need to tackle insulin resistance for heart care, but within his own personal regime he also takes a statin. And that's where I am too, I take insulin resistance very seriously and diet accordingly, but I see no conflict with also taking a daily 40mg statin.
For me the conflict is taking something that unnecessarily impairs liver function.
Dr. Kendrick argues any benefit comes from the statin's anti-platelet/anticoagulant properties, which can be attained far more safely from other sources.
Hi Do you know any stats for people who both follow the Mediterranean diet and take statins? This is what I have chosen to do due to the mountains of conflicting advice out there.
So what's your calcification score "concerned " You advocate it but have you had one?.
I for one was given my score after a CT scan that showed I had a blocked LAD and later went on to have a stent procedure.
I too take insulin resistance seriously!
My score's zero. I paid privately, because my wife needed one (only then did the GP pay due attention) then wanted to see what "eating all this fat" is doing to me.
Unfortunately, the company we used don't provide scans anymore.
Hi Concerned,
I think it would be better to drop the "because" from that sentence. It's very difficult to prove categorically that one is caused by the other. It's fine if you can keep your insulin levels down (through diet and exercise?) but not everyone's in that fortunate position.