If your calcium score is ZERO, how confident should you feel about not having heart disease, and having nice clean arteries?
Did you recently get your coronary calcium score measured and it was zero, but you’re wondering if this absolutely for SURE means you have crystal clear arteries?
“It may not mean totally clear arteries,” says Dr. Sameer Sayeed, a cardiologist at ColumbiaDoctors of Somers, NY.
“There may be some very mild plaques that are essentially clinically insignificant and are not calcified enough to be detected on the calcium score,” continues Dr. Sayeed. “Technically it does mean clear arteries in the big scheme.”
How to Help Prevent Clogging of Your Coronary Arteries
So if you are concerned that you may still have some mild heart disease or not perfectly clear arteries despite having a coronary calcium score of zero, there are several things you can do to dramatically reduce the risk of eventually developing significant levels of heart disease.
AVOID TRANS FATS AT ALL COSTS.
Okay, maybe a few times a month won’t hurt (there’s no data on the dangers of trans fats just a few times a month), but make sure that a few times a month won’t transform to a few times a week.
However, when you consider how much a few times a month would mean over a 10 year period — this seems to be a considerable ingestion of trans fats over that period of time.
So it’s best that you do everything possible to just flat-out avoid them.
LIMIT PROCESSED FOODS (even if they don’t contain trans fats) as much as you can.
Make a homemade chicken pot pie; forget Marie Callender’s.
DO HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING.
There are numerous other ways to protect against developing coronary artery buildup and maintaining clean arteries and keeping your calcium score at zero.
These include taking the supplements of green tea extract, turmeric, garlic and krill oil, and eating omega-3-rich fish several times a week.
Dr. Sayeed performs echocardiograms and stress tests at the Midtown Manhattan and Westchester offices at Columbia Doctors. He is also trained in cardiac CT imaging.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Shutterstock/ uzhursky
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