STEMI versus NSTEMI Two Very Different Types of Heart Attacks

When teaching students, residents, fellows, and other cardiologists at conferences, one of the most important concepts to understand is the treatment differences between a STEMI and an NSTEMI. Why? Because this will affect how you treat ...

Are Lean Mass Hyper Responders At Higher Risk For Heart Disease?

There is this movement online where people who eat very low carb, eat mostly meat and fat, including saturated fat, think that they cannot get heart disease because they are “metabolically healthy”. They define this as having high HDL...

Does Inflammation Cause Heart Disease?

In the 1970s, there was this theory that cholesterol only came to the arteries to patch up damaged artery walls. The theory was that you must have damage first, then the cholesterol would come in to fix it. This theory also extended to inflammation. That if ar...

Do Statins Cause Diabetes?

It’s complicated. It depends on what you mean by “causes diabetes”. There’s a lot of nuance. Please read the entire article.

If you already have pre-existing insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, and or diabetes, you are at a slightly increased risk of developing, or worseni...

HDL Cholesterol Is Not Protective Or Is It?

Another common misconception that needs to go away is that “HDL cholesterol is protective”. While HDL particles are involved in removing cholesterol from our arteries, the levels of HDL-C are not related to, nor indicative of any of the numerous functions...

Supplements To Lower Cholesterol?

This is a great question that was answered by a team of researchers at the Cleveland Clinic in a trial or study called the Sport Study.

The Cleveland Clinic did such a study on supplements that were thought to lower cholesterol. They were all third party tested an...

What Is LDL Cholesterol And Is It Dangerous?

The most common question I am asked on social media is about LDL cholesterol. This molecule is the most studied molecule in all of medicine. We spend billions of dollars studying LDL cholesterol and LDL particles, because they have been shown to cause he...

What Is Non HDL Cholesterol

 Non-HDL cholesterol is all of the cholesterol that is not included in the HDL fraction of your lipoproteins. It is total cholesterol minus HDL cholesterol, or TC-HDL= non-HDL.

The reason we like to use this is that it is a "measured" cholesterol. It is not calculated f...

Does Low Cholesterol Or Statin Medications Cause Cancer?

This is a great question! I have to answer this every day with my patients and on social media. Fortunately, this has been studied extensively and we have the answers.

Statins actually reduce the risk of all forms cancer.

A very well done s...

Is Type 2 Diabetes Genetic Disorder?

Yes. Type 2 diabetes is absolutely genetic. There is no argument amongst the medical community. But there is a ton of nuance. People don't ever want the nuance. They just want to fall into one of two camps; either it is or it isn't genetic.

While type 2 diabete...