Fibrinogen and Heart Disease 
While the pharmaceutical companies fatten up on profits from their successful public cholesterol "education" campaign, a large list of identifiable and treatable cardiac risk factors goes virtually unnoticed by the medical profession and the public at large. Because the profession is so dominated by the pharmaceutical mentality, orthodox physicians find themselves stuck in a small box with the enemy being cholesterol, the victims their heart patients, and their tools the prescription pad and samples of statin drugs.  And so, they settle for mediocre results, and hundreds of thousands of patients die each year of heart problems while under a physician's care, and many many more are sent for costly, risky, and invasive "life saving" surgical procedures in a desperate effort to keep them alive.

What is clear to an unbiased medical observer who has not bought into the drug merry-go-round is that cholesterol is not the only significant risk factor, and that drug therapy is not such an ideal approach to the problem of coronary artery disease. For years, we have been testing our heart patients for ALL the known risk factors (Lp(a)), homocysteine, CRP, fibrinogen, testosterone, DHEA-S and others) for arteriosclerosis, and monitoring levels during the course of natural treatment approaches. I see almost no deaths among our cardiac patient population. I tell all new inquiring heart patients that those taking chelation therapy just don't have coronary events or strokes. That is not a double blind study, but it is my clinical experience over the last 11 years that I have been ordering chelation IV's for my heart patients. Then too, we take dietary improvements, weight loss, and nutritional supplmentation very seriously in these patients for a comprehensive approach.

I wanted to touch on fibrinogen levels as just one example of how orthodox medicine's blinders keeps them from having truly outstanding results with heart patients. For the most part this precursor to fibrin (involved in the clotting process) is never tested. Why? Well it's probably because they are obsessed with cholesterol and it would dilute their message if they started talking about other risk factors like fibrinogen, and also the pharmaceutical companies haven't come up with a drug for lowering fibringen levels yet. Probably when the statins have been thoroughly discredited, caused countless complications, and fall into disfavor, THEN the drug companies will start introducing drugs to reduce some other risk factor. Right know, it would dilute the brainwashing campaign about cholesterol, and reduce sales of statin drugs. But I think you should know something about fibrinogen, because it's an important independent risk factor for both coronary events and their related mortality.

In a group of physicians, fibrinogen levels over 343 mg/dl doubled the heart attack risk. A 2006 study just released found that higher fibrinogen levels predict increased 42 month mortality rates in post heart attack patients. In a very large study (154,211 subjects) JAMA reported last fall that for each 100 mg/dl increase in fibrinogen over baseline levels over time, there was an associated 2.4 fold increase of developing coronary heart disease. Interestingly, cancer incidence also increased as levels go up. Since fibrinogen is a precursor to fibrin, a protein which becomes part of the "coat or covering" that cancer cells often produce to "hide" from the immune system, that may explain this finding.

Considering this data, I believe that it is wise that people know their fibrinogen (and CRP, homocysteine, etc) levels, and attempt to keep them under 300. Do you know yours? There are a variety of nutritional products we prescribe, especially nattokinase (and also IV EDTA chelation therapy) that effectively reduce fibrinogen levels. Seek the aid of an experienced natural medicine doctor to keep you on the right course, and keep your risks of future health problems as low as possible.