Looking and feeling fit, don't be fooled

Tom, Kudos to you for following through with the Doc's orders! That's one hell of a wake-up call, but Congratulations on lowering your #s, and keep on truckin, brother! :banana:

Spread the word my friends. I know there are swimmers looking good and feeling great but their plumbing may not be. Thanks and good luck in all your endeavors. Coach T

I feel I should reply to this thread, as something heart-related has just happened with me. Two weeks ago I started my morning swim and couldn't get through my warm-up without my chest feeling tight. I'd rest and it would go away. Went to the doctor Wed. and my resting ekg was normal. Did a stress test Thu. and the results came back with an abnormality. Last Friday I was in for angioscopy and eventually a stent in one vessel. Thing is, I'm 38, never smoked or drank, blood pressure has been normal ever since it's been measured. Cholesterol was a little high 5 yrs ago (214 total) but had steadily dropped to 154 last winter. Long story short, don't ignore or "tough out" unusual pains. Incidentally, I feel fine now and hope to resume full-blown swimming in a week or so. Worse thing about this is now I have to eat right, so here's a banana :banana: But I think we need a dancing apple as well.

Glad you got it turned around. I have seen this so many times on various forums from people who are active and feel that they are healthy due to their diet and exercise. Such is not always the case as you have seen. These tests are so painless and inexpensive (for those with insurance at least) that it seems absurd to avoid them.

If a man says something in the woods and there are no women around to hear him, is he still wrong? No a man is never wrong but he must still pretend to be listening.

I had one as well and came away from it thinking that it was just a way to scam me for some money (health insurance didn't pay for it) and give life insurance companies an excuse to raise my rates. Does anyone have any information on how well these things correlate with actual risk? How frequently should they be repeated? Does your "score" ever go down? Thx, Skip Montanaro

So a scan scam?

A calcium score greater than 100 indicates an increased risk of future cardiac events (heart attacks). This information can be used to identify those individuals who should be treated more aggressively with respect to risk factor modification (statin therapy, for example). The score does seem to correlate with extent of disease, however there is not a consensus regarding how often the scans should be repeated. EBT is a type of CT scan which measures the calcium score; it is noninvasive and does not utilize IV contrast. A CT angio, on the other hand, requires an IV and the administration of contrast; it actually shows the coronary arteries and location of plaque (but not as clearly as a cardiac catheterization, despite claims to the contrary).

With a little Googling I came across this article on about.com: heartdisease.about.com/.../EBT.htm Seems the efficacy of EBT isn't necessarily cut and dried. If you have an extremely high score or an extremely low score it seems it will correlate very well with your disease risk, but it seems there ls a large middle ground which can yield lots of false positives and false negatives. Skip Montanaro

I had an EBT scan a few years ago, which had scale which went all the way to 1000 or above. Does anyone know which is the best type of scan to quantify calcification?