I seem to be repeating myself lately, but I think this does bear repeating:
There's no need to re-invent the wheel when it comes to gaining control over your heart scan score.
The Track Your Plaque program is the most powerful approach known to help you gain control over your coronary atherosclerotic plaque and CT heart scan score, bar none. While 100% of people do not drop their score, more and more people every week are doing so. (One of the admitted weaknesses of the Track Your Plaque website is our failure to list more success stories; we're working on it.)
The basic program is quite simple:
--The Rule of 60 for lipids (LDL 60 mg/dl; HDL 60 mg/dl or greater; triglycerides 60 mg/dl or less)
--Identify hidden causes of plaque, esp. small LDL, Lp(a), and IDL, followed by specific corrective action
--Fish oil--minimum 1200 mg per day of EPA + DHA
--Normal vitamin D3 blood levels (We aim for 25-OH-vitamin D3 of 50-60 ng/ml)
--Normal blood sugar (<100 mg/dl)
--Normal blood pressure (<130/80)
--An optimistic attitude
Much of the other stuff--vitamin K, matrix metalloproteinase reducing strategies, flavonoid strategies, exercise-induced hypertension, etc.--are, for the majority, fluff. Their real role is in people who may have failed in stopping the rise of their heart scan score just doing the basics of the program.
If you neglect the basics, hoping to find some magic potion, I'm afraid the overwhelming likelihood is that you will fail. I've seen it happen time and again. Someone will come to my office with an extraordinary list of supplements--hawthorne, dozens of anti-oxidants, EDTA, concentrated flavonoid preparations, and on and on. Not only is it shockingly expensive to do this, it's also unnecessary and foolhardy. This kind of unfocused, hocus-pocus in the hopes of getting it right fail time after time.
The Track Your Plaque program, while not foolproof, is the best I know of. Stick to the basics and wander off when the basics fail. But there's extraordinary power in just achieving the basics.