Information Please

The biggest problem you will have in fighting heart disease is the woeful lack of information about new discoveries concerning why heart disease occurs, how heart attacks happen (it's not what we were led to believe), and successful medical treatments for preventing and even reversing heart disease.

Check out the links section of this blog for useful websites that I use to collect information. But, be wary. There is no such thing as free lunch. Take note of who is paying for the website. If it is a drug company you can bet all the information is slanted - but it is information nonetheless. Just be certain you properly filter it and adjust for the bias.

At the top of the list is the Track Your Plaque website. This is a paid membership site but also has a lot of free information including a free book titled "What Does My Heart Scan Show?" (I wish it had been available when I got my heart scan) and a free newletter. The medical director is cardiologist Dr. William Davis. I found Dr. Davis during my initial research. Suffice to say I have fired all my other doctors. He gets it! If you are looking for cutting-edge and aggressive help, this is where you will find it. DISCLAIMER: I also helped launch and administer the website (yeah, I'm a computer geek too) for which I have been paid the princely sum of zero dollars and zero cents (well, OK, I do get a free membership worth $6.65 a month). But, hey, this is the Internet. You never know where the next Google or YouTube will come from! The first clue will be that I start posting from Tahiti instead of the Midwest!

Some of the other sites such as Medscape are also membership sites and are free to join (they are generally paid for by drug and medical device manufacturers as opposed to consumers so guess whose side they are on). Regardless of the motivation they are still useful sites for information gathering. Part of the beauty of the free market is that whoever is paying for the site will certainly trumpet their own success and cast themselves in the best light but they will also criticize the competition and point out their failures. The trick is to get your information from MANY sources to provide the proper balance.

Then, of course, there are the traditional sites like the American Heart Association. These are a good place to get statistics (i.e. what happened in the past) and, unfortunately, old news. But, they are a good place to go and verify (perhaps 1-5 years later) what you found elsewhere.

This blog is here to help but, remember, the person MOST interested in keeping you alive is YOU!

Get involved and stay alive,


HeartHawk