Sunshine on my face, a smile I can't hide... officially a Cardiologist!🫀
My childhood dream became a reality because of these people here - my incredible family, faculty and co-fellow!
Here’s to a future dedicated to preventive cardiology, media, and medicine!
@VMFHealth
New in @AJPCardio:
Under the 2026 ACC/AHA dyslipidemia guideline, over 60% of U.S. adults aged 30-79 without ASCVD now have a statin indication, up from 43% under the 2018 guideline.
That’s 31.3 million newly eligible Americans.
But only 1 in 4 eligible adults are currently on therapy.
🔗 https://t.co/d6NdxoZLzs
There is no one more deserving of this award based on expertise, patient care, research and community outreach. Dr. Keith Ferdinand does it all! Congrats Keith!
❤️🧡💛June 12, 2016 💚💙💜
Ten years ago today, our community was forever changed. Today, and always, we remember and honor the lives of the 49 Angels, we continue to stand with the families and survivors and we show the world we are Orlando United. 🕊️
Confused by conflicting information about statins and other lipid-lowering therapies? You’re not alone. Watch our Statins Ask Me Anything with Wake Forest University cardiologist Dr. Michael Shapiro for fact-based answers to real community questions.
View the full video on our YouTube channel: https://t.co/ULvNO61vMl
#KnowFH #KnowLpa
Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for more deaths than cancer and chronic respiratory diseases combined. Most deaths from CVD are related to coronary heart disease, but heart failure, hypertension, vascular disease and arrhythmias contribute to the high burden. See the latest in the 2026 Statistics Update.
Simon Hill @theproof turns 40 this week. Happy Birthday Simon!
He has spent the last decade keeping his ApoB and LDL-C between 70 and 90 mg/dL through diet.
He had serial coronary CT angiograms performed under the supervision of @BudoffMd using the same QAngio and HeartFlow technology as the KETO-CTA study. He compared his own plaque progression data to KETO-CTA and NATURE-CT.
Then he started a PCSK9 inhibitor.
Not because a guideline told him to. Not because his doctor was worried. Because the imaging data told him something, and he listened to it.
That is evidence-based preventive cardiology in 2026. Measure the thing. Then act on what it shows.
The carnivore community has spent years arguing that ApoB at 70-90 mg/dL is fine. Simon measured. Simon decided. Simon says.
Watch his YouTube series when it drops.
Your CAC score was zero. The plaque did not get that memo.
You got a CAC=0 scan at 50. Your doctor said you're fine. But the plaque that will kill you at 65 wasn't calcium yet, it was soft, invisible to the scan, and already loading your arterial wall while your ApoB was quietly elevated.
205 people. No cholesterol medication. Average age 54. Average LDL-C 111 mg/dL. More than half had CAC=0 at baseline. All of them had serial imaging done years apart.
Non-calcified plaque nearly doubled.
The soft vulnerable stuff went from 9% to 23%. By the rescan, 31% of the people who started with a clean calcium score had developed new calcium.
Classic loading phase.
This is the gap the "my CAC is zero, I'm fine" crowd has been standing in. The calcium score tells you where the disease has been. It cannot tell you where it is going.
A clean scan at 54 with ApoB quietly elevated is not a guarantee. It is a lag.
The grifters who tell patients to skip their statin because their calcium score looks good are using a rear-view mirror to navigate a highway.
Stay awake my friends.
When a patient has made it to 85 years old in reasonable health, their instinct - and often their physician’s - is to redouble prevention efforts, optimize every number, and close every gap. @uw_cvm 's #JamesStein want to argue the opposite. If you have made it to 85 and are healthy and living independently, you have won the game of life. The appropriate response is not more medicine. It is recognizing what got you there and being very careful not to break it. We have precious few interventions that can reliably extend an 85-year-old’s lifespan (let alone their health span) but an infinite number of ways we can mess it up @lucypgeridoc
We were absolutely floored by the millions of you that watched us make silly water sillouettes on our driveway last summer. We are starting out the summer the only way we know how, and this time it’s all about movies! What else do you want to see? We have a whole summer ahead, a driveway and a hose. The possibilities are endless!!!
📢 New Research Alert: Does Baseline Cardiovascular Risk Influence the Benefit of LDL-C Lowering in Primary Prevention?
A new systematic review and meta-analysis challenges conventional thinking about LDL-C lowering in primary prevention, demonstrating that the relative benefit of pharmacologic LDL-C reduction may actually be greater in lower-risk populations.
Key findings:
🔹 Analysis of 17 randomized trials involving more than 105,000 participants found that the relative risk reduction (RRR) associated with each 1 mmol/L reduction in LDL-C was substantially greater in lower-risk populations than in higher-risk populations.
🔹 At an annual cardiovascular event rate of 1%, a 1 mmol/L LDL-C reduction was associated with an estimated 36% reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events, compared with 13% at a 3% annual event rate.
🔹 Higher-risk populations required substantially larger absolute LDL-C reductions to achieve comparable relative benefits.
🔹 The findings support consideration of earlier LDL-C lowering strategies before cardiovascular risk becomes established.
These results add to the growing body of evidence that cumulative LDL-C exposure matters—and that earlier intervention may yield meaningful long-term cardiovascular benefits.
📖 Read the article: https://t.co/Jt5y1QGfqa
#PreventiveCardiology #LDLCholesterol #PrimaryPrevention #ASCVD #LipidManagement #CardiovascularPrevention #CardiologyResearch #Cholesterol #HeartHealth #EvidenceBasedMedicine
Did you know that the first women to land on the Normandy beachhead in June 1944 were nurses of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service?
Their task was to establish a field hospital for 600 wounded soldiers.
They succeeded.
Please remember these heroines who saved lives:
Thank you to all who fought and sacrificed in freedoms defense all those years ago. Incredible footage here. Blessed that both my uncles survived and will never forget the over 400,000 who did not come home.
Got up early to see @DrMarthaGulati talk about sex and gender differences in heart disease @CACPR_1 conference in Toronto.
As always Dr. Gulati gave an enlightening and fantastic presentation.
☝️Must read (by R. Hegele)
👉 Human genetics has become the most powerful engine for discovering new lipid-lowering therapies—and the evidence is already changing clinical practice.
1️⃣ PCSK9: Individuals born with loss-of-function mutations have lifelong low LDL-C and dramatically lower ASCVD risk. This observation led directly to the development of evolocumab, alirocumab, inclisiran, and now oral PCSK9 inhibitors and gene-editing strategies.
2️⃣ APOC3: Natural APOC3 deficiency results in very low triglycerides and reduced cardiovascular risk, inspiring therapies such as olezarsen and plozasiran, now approved for familial chylomicronemia syndrome.
3️⃣ ANGPTL3: Patients with genetic ANGPTL3 deficiency exhibit combined hypolipidemia and protection from ASCVD, paving the way for evinacumab and next-generation RNA and gene-editing therapies.
4️⃣ HDL-C: Genetics also teaches us what not to target. Mendelian randomization predicted that simply raising HDL-C would not reduce cardiovascular events, a prediction later confirmed by the failure of CETP inhibitor outcome trials.
👉The next revolution is already underway: RNA silencing and gene editing aim to permanently reproduce these naturally protective genetic variants, potentially providing lifelong cardiovascular benefit from a single intervention.
🔗🔓 https://t.co/p80GrcsZnQ
@society_eas@nationallipid@AHAScience@JAHA_AHA
Just witnessed a kid who’s probably 10 years old walk into a Subway. He said he was having trouble figuring out how much a sandwich costs, and that he only had $5 (in change 🥹)
The woman ahead of him in line stopped her transaction without hesitating and added the kids sandwich to her transaction.
The cashier gave her a discount, and the kid ended up tipping the place all of his coins.
Some of my faith in humanity has been restored 🥰