My Heart Scan Shows VERY HIGH RISK Plaque | Dr. Michael Twyman

Michael Twyman (0:00)

Plaque on your scan showed you had 1,265.6 millimeters of total plaque. This is a high-risk finding. This test tells you you're very high-risk of having a cardiac event unless you do something different.

Mark Bell (0:12)

I was on performance-enhancing drugs and was on a lot of them, and my blood pressure was also really high.

Michael Twyman (0:18)

I mean, I've definitely seen morbidly obese people who have completely clean, cornered arteries. They have no observable plaque. And I've seen triathletes who had heart attacks while they were on the biotech. Just because you're thin doesn't guarantee you're not gonna have plaque. And just because you're heavy doesn't mean that you have tons of plaque either. What I tell patients is exercise is one of the best anti-aging drugs. And then unfortunately, once you start getting into kind of more the endurance athlete type things, there's often a time of diminishing returns.

Mark Bell (0:43)

And just for the record, I take full responsibility for anything that I've done, whether it be steroids or whether it be the fact that I followed a ketogenic diet for a long time. All right, well, I'm here with Dr. Twyman's doctor. Can you explain, you know, your background and stuff for people before we dive into all this heart disease stuff?

Michael Twyman (1:05)

Sure. So I'm Dr. Twyman. I'm a board certified cardiologist. My practice is Apollo Cardiology, and I'm located in St. Louis, Missouri, been a physician since 2002, and my passion is trying to help people not have heart attacks and strokes.

Mark Bell (1:18)

Do you actually do surgeries and stuff?

Michael Twyman (1:20)

Previously, he was doing invasive procedures, but when I eventually decided I wanted to do surgeries on preventing heart attacks instead of treating them, I stepped out of the hospital about seven years ago.

Mark Bell (1:30)

So you have been inside the body though, and you've seen all this stuff up close and personal.

Michael Twyman (1:34)

Correct. I've seen how bad it gets.

Mark Bell (1:36)

Yeah. Damn.

So what I would like to go over today is, I've been announcing to people, I've been putting out some information more recently about my calcification, about my plaque, and there's a lot of just misunderstanding, I think, of all this. And I think, I think rightfully so, like the information is coming out is pretty quick. It seems like things are changing, you know, in your time in cardiology, I'm sure, some recommendations and some things have changed. I know even the lipid lowering drugs and stuff like that have advanced quite a bit to where they have less negative side effects and stuff like that. And we can review all that. But I think the place I'd like to start first is, because I think there's these things that are kind of like caught in people's minds about like what fixes heart disease.

So what are some things that I guess could maybe prevent? What are some preventative measures, you know, if you had a list out of top five? What do you think are five, top five practices that you think could potentially help somebody stay away from cardiovascular disease?

Michael Twyman (2:46)

Sure, so, you know, and when we're speaking of cardiovascular disease, I mean, today we're mostly going to be speaking about coronary artery disease or plaque in the arteries. Because there's also valvular heart disease, there's congenital heart disease. We're mostly talking about the thing that is most common, the number one thing that kills Americans. So plaque is extremely common, particularly if you do these very advanced tests such as yourself, like the CLEARLY analysis, you can find plaque at a very early stage. Generally, when the person is asymptomatic, so they're not having any exercise-induced symptoms.

So, approximately 20 million Americans have plaque in their arteries, and 800,000 a year have heart attacks.

Mark Bell (3:22)

One second, 20 million Americans have plaque, is that just of people that got tested, or is that an estimation?

Michael Twyman (3:30)

That's what's known. But yes, probably if more people were screened, we'd have a higher incidence.

Mark Bell (3:35)

So it's 20 million that have been tested in one way or another for plaque. Okay, I understand. Correct.

Michael Twyman (3:40)

But once you have plaque, then that's what we'll jump into, is like, what can you actually do about it? First, you got to find it. But yes, lipids are going to be important, but you also have to be metabolically healthy. You have to have low oxy of stress and inflammation. Then one of my interests is really looking at the lining of the arteries, the endothelial glycocalyx and the endothelium. That's the protective coating of the arteries.