Heart Stress Test - Prognosis and Recommendations

I wrote about my Dad's condition with Coronary Heart Disease and how it ultimately led to him passing away. I went and got consultation with a Cardiologist and these were the steps that we followed:

1. Blood work
2. Cardiac CT Scan
3. Stress Test

Blood work was done to test my Sodium, Potassium, LDL, HDL and diabetes levels. This is first indicators of something going wrong with your body function. There are ranges prescribed by the Heart Associations. We checked and found out that my basic measures are all within range. My blood pressure was "excellent" according to my doctor. Once we had done this, my doctor recommended that we get a Cardiac CT Scan done and I did that last month, the results were surprising to say the least. I have what is known as the Atherosclerosis which is a fancy word to say that there is hardening of my arteries and in my case the small artery. My doctor right away recommended that we go on a lipid lowering drug regime. I take 40mg of atorvastatin everyday since he prescribed it and will go in for more blood work in another couple of weeks.

Heart function under stress
Yesterday we did the Stress Test, basically a number of nodes were attached to my chest and I was on stationary bicycle. The peddling became harder and harder, the doctor kept recording my blood pressure and the machine was recording the beating of all the arteries that go to my heart. All I saw was about 10 graphs that were showing the regularly going up and down, which I believe is the beating rhythm of my heart. The doctor explained to me the stress levels and how they see if there is any abnormality when the heart is working at its peak. He gave a passing grade on all the analysis, which means there is no depravity of Oxygen or Blood Flow to my Heart when it is put under stress which is good because if there is a symptom of either a Oxygen or Blood Flow depravity then it leads to a stroke or heart attack. The prognosis is that I can continue with all my physical activity i.e running without any constrain.

Diet
He recommended the South Beach Diet basically reducing the consumption of simple carbohydrates like white bread, cakes, cookies, pasta, candy and alcohol but increase consumption of complex carbohydrates.

Drug and Treatment

He pointed me to two recent studies, the Reversal Study and the Saturn Study. Both studies point to a method of treatment that my doctor wants me to follow.“This study demonstrates that the highest doses of the most effective statins currently available is safe, well tolerated and produces marked plaque regression,” said Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Stephen Nicholls, MD, PhD, lead investigator of the trial. The finding that these therapies produced low levels of LDL, raised HDL and removed plaque from the artery wall in a safe manner is positive news for patients with heart disease.” The bottom line is that when one goes through an aggressive lipid lowering drug regime i.e 80mg of Atorvastatin or Rosuvostatin, they found that it actually reversed the case of Atherosclerosis. My doctor wanted me to continue the 40mg dosage for another couple of weeks and ensure that there are no side effects before bumping my dosage. The saturn study was designed to measure the impact of CRESTOR (rosuvastatin) 40 mg and atorvastatin 80 mg on the progression of atherosclerosis in high risk patients sponsored by Astra Zeneca and their findings are here.

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Cardio Vascular Disease

My father passed away on September 19, 2011. he was diabetic and had his first heart attack on July 11, 2011. The doctors recommended that we do a by-pass surgery. Before he could get his body in shape to do the surgery he had 2 more attacks. He was rushed into surgery they found 6 major blocks in his artery and his heart was functioning only at about 30% capacity. His internal organs were very badly damaged, he fought for 19 days in the intensive care but finally his kidneys gave up. I stopped running regularly since my father's incident. Althought I have been doing some runs just don't have the motivation to get started again seriously. My plans to run the Chicago Marathon in 2011 did not happen as I was preoccupied with my Dad's passing. While I was visiting my dad every day in the IC unit, we got to talk to the doctor about why he had this problem of course there were many reasons he was diabetic and the doctors felt that he had Cardio Vascular Disease which is basically cholesterol build up on the veins and arteries that blocks blood flow in your body. It happens due to many reasons, like smoking (my dad did not smoke), heavy drinking (my dad was a teetotaler), bad food habits (my dad was very disciplined did not take sugar or eat rice since he found out he was diabetic), overweight (he was once again not overweight - 70 kgs for a 6 foot frame) etc. The main reason I felt that we could not save him was the fact that we did not detect the problem early enough.

I got myself tested with a CT Scan on my veins, arteries and my heart, much to the surprise of my doctor and myself, there was some narrowing of my arteries. The doctor initially told me that we don't need to do a stress test but now I am on a cholesterol lowering drug and I plan to take a stress test on January 18. I have been tracking my heart rate during all my runs and this data should give more insights into my condition. I feel fine though the holiday diet has not been very helpful but I plan to get on the running trail quite soon and give a good fight to my condition.

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Chicago Marathon October 9 2011

I have not blogged since last year about my running since I got injured and could not run the Reykjavik Marathon which was suppose to be my qualifier for Boston Marathon. Never the less, have not stopped running or training to qualify for Boston. I took a brief break last year but continued to train through the winter and have been building a good base for my final push for Chicago Marathon this year. I convinced my partner Sonny to run this marathon as well. Click on the link to see a larger image of my running summary so far I would say it has not been bad, I have run 1 race, the 2011 Mid Night Run, here is the result, 47:23 was the time. Nothing to thump the chest about but it gave a great feedback to me that I need to start running more often during the week. With regard to building a base I think it has been a fair effort, I have done about 743.7 kilometers so far. Now for the running plan for the next 12 weeks:Training Plan with Actuals

100.5 km in the week of June 28 to July 4th

One of the goals that I set out to do this year was to increase my weekly mileage to reach 100km+, I achieved that goal last week. I did 100.55 km in 8:20:51 @4:59/km and I burned a total of 8568 calories! It feels great to have achieved one more milestone in my running activity. I also did a Yasso 800 during the week and here is the details of the track work.


when I compare this to my first Yasso 800, I see some improvements, on an average I have improved about 8 seconds on the 800 and I was able to do 5 laps out of the door now compared to only 3 last year. In addition, my Max heart rate did not cross 175 where are last year it was 177 so 2 heart beats slower and 8 seconds faster.

Based on the above, my average speed split pace for 1 km is 3 min 51 seconds, which extrapolates to 2 hours 42 min 31 seconds... for a marathon. Of course we cannot do a linear projection. But I am sticking to this projection as my best effort time.

Powerade - Midnight Run: 44:17 PB

Ran the Reykjavik Powerade Midnight run 10k race in 44 min 17 sec... here is the official result. This was my personal best and I improved from 46:03 last year so it is almost 2 minutes improvement. Based on this run, my projected time for the Reykjavik Marathon is 3:23:12 still 9 minutes slower than what I need for Boston. The good thing is I know what I need to do to push myself for the next 2 months. It is going to really hard work! Hey, no-one told me that it was going to be easy

Reykjavik Marathon 2010 Training Plan - Goal 3:15:00 - Destination Boston

click to enlarge

Well, here is my training plan for the next 10 weeks before the Reykjavik Marathon. The goal is to qualify for Boston Marathon with a time of 3:15:00, many that I have mentioned this to have looked at me like I was stating something like I am flying to the Moon in the next 10 weeks! Well, criticism and nay sayers aside... I shall focus and build on the base that I have started my training on. I feel good and I can see that my endurance and speed are increasing and I know that there is no substitute for hard work and perseverance. 'noph said

Half marathon result: 1:45:08

I decided to run a half marathon race 15 minutes before the start of the race yesterday. I originally intended to just meet a fellow runner and run with him as a rabbit to help him achieve his time goal in the race but never got to meet him. It was a chilly day but it was bright and sunny, I found out later that the Ash Cloud from Eyjafjallajokull volcano was finally moving over Reykjavik and the air quality was deteriorating.
The official result is here , I finished 99th of the 192 runners. I was quite satisfied with my time as it was 8 seconds slower than what I set myself as a goal. 2009 and 2010 have been wondering years in my running as I am starting to understand my body and able to set goals that are challenging yet achievable. It is a great feeling...


View Vormaraþon FM 2010 in a larger map
Above is the route of the Marathon, it was a pretty good route which I have run a number of times. Started off with a good clip, at the beginning of the 5th km my Garmin battery died so I was more less blind to my pace. I felt pretty good and completed half way in about 50 minutes I think I was not sure. Then the wind was on my face for the rest of the race, it was brutal. Never the less, finished the race by sprinting the last 200m with the clock striking 1:45! of course I stopped after passing the clock only to notice the finish line was a couple of yards in front of me and all the people standing shouting at me to move forward... which I did and that cost me the last 8 seconds :)

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