"You need a femoral artery bypass" said the surgeon.

Tweet

Well that was a shock to me in 1999, at age 55. I'd been healthy and athletic until high blood pressure and difficulty walking landed me in the operating room. The surgeon had cleared a blockage in my descending aorta but couldn't clear one in my left femoral artery. Hence his stunning statement to me. I was devastated. Coming from a long lived family, I had always wanted to live beyond 100. To me, arterial surgery was like giving up. I had one thing on my side: a long career as a scientist. I refused the surgery and began reading everything I could about vascular health. I began a website to share my search with others. I would not give up despite another surgeon later on telling me I needed an aorto-bifemoral bypass. I rejected his advice too. It's now almost seven years later and I'm still intact, writing, gardening, and looking forward to the future with a sense of wonder. In the years since I first refused bypass surgery clinical trials have established that high dose statins can halt plaque progression or even reverse it. So I added a high dose statin to my regimen of good nutrition and constant exercise to my limits. Those initial studies led to the conceptual promise of raising HDL-cholesterol (the good cholesterol) by substantial amounts to hasten plaque reversal. Such a medication would be the blockbuster drug of all times so the major pharmaceutical research companies are all hot on the trail of such a molecule. Pfizer came close by December 2006, terminating a multi-center global trial of a molecule called torcetrapib, which raises HDL-cholesterol by up to 100 per cent, but had a slight excess of mortality in the active drug arm (very few deaths but an excess nonetheless), losing over 900 million dollars, heading back to their organic chemists for a safer molecule. While this has been happening other research has shown that consumption of 8 ounces of pomegranate juice a day causes an ongoing slow reduction of plaque in carotid arteries. So I now have an ample supply of pomegranate concentrate in my refrigerator. Even more recent research data shows that upper body exercise can be as beneficial as lower body exercise in the improvement of walking for those with peripheral artery disease. Heck, I just knew that tilling my vegetable garden from a folding metal chair was helping me. Last year I used the metal chair technique, sitting and standing, using a hoe, rake and spade, and had a great crop of produce from a 30 foot by 40 foot garden. Well OK, it's almost seven years since I laid on tha surgeon's table and felt totally devastated. But now I can walk up to 500 feet before my legs begin to hurt. Even then I just need ten minutes of rest before I can do it again. Over and over again. I will walk into the future. I can keep on this way until a pharmaceutical company gets approval for an HDL-cholesterol raising medication that raises it by a substantial amount. Even more recently studies have shown that people who reach their centenarian teens have been remarkably free of vascular disease all their life. Even more staggering, in these weeks of February 2007, a research study has been published that states the statins work by upregulating a protein that hinders telomere shoretening when cells divide. Since telomere shortening is directly implicated in the aging process this is a stunning conclusion. So yeh, I still want to pass that 100 mark, reckon I still have a chance, didn't let the surgeon's knife slice into me, have joined the life extension foundation, and I still see the wonder ahead. I want others to share my sense of wonder. I want others to walk with me beyond that 100 mark and on into the future. Do you? John Fahey