Knowledge is Power, hsCRP and Heart Disease Risk

Transcript Generated by AI.

Announcer: 0:00

Welcome to the MedEvidence Monday Minute Radio Show hosted by Kevin Geddings of WSOS St. Augustine Radio and powered by ECNORE Research Group. Each Monday morning, Dr. Michael Koren calls in to bring you the latest medical updates with insightful discussions. Medevidence is where we help you navigate the real truth behind medical research, with both a clinical and research perspective. So sit back, relax and get ready to learn about the truth behind the data in medicine and healthcare. This is MedEvidence.

Kevin Geddings: 0:31

Dr. Michael Koren is with us, as he normally is around this time on Monday mornings and he helps make us a little bit smarter. Knowledge is indeed power, right, Dr. Koren?

Dr. Michael Koren: 0:41

It is Kevin, it is Good morning, and that's one of my favorite quotes. I think Francis Bacon first said it, but I'm not 100% sure. Do you know off hand who was credited with that idea?

Kevin Geddings: 0:54

I don't but talk about sounding like an educated guest, the Francis Bacon. That's really good, doc.

Dr. Michael Koren: 1:00

Yeah, so again, it's probably been around for about 500 years. This concept that when you have knowledge, you empower yourself is so important and the corollary to that, by the way, is what you don't know, can really hurt you. There you go. That's a good one too. Yeah, that'll be my corollary, the 21st century corollary, to what Francis Bacon said 500 years ago.

Dr. Michael Koren: 1:26

But that's really very important in health care, as you know, and we find that over and over when people get involved in clinical research or just engage the health care system, they gain knowledge, and that knowledge helps them in many different ways, some of which are very tangible and some of which are not so tangible, and sometimes just the process of learning about something in healthcare will translate into something that people kind of figure out by themselves. So I find it fascinating, and the net effect, Kevin, is what we call the Hawthorne effect, which is that when people get observed in healthcare and when people participate in clinical trials, they always do better than expected. So studying things, looking at things, understanding your health situation, results in better outcomes for everybody, and that's been shown over and over again in lots of research. And an example of that that we're working on right now as we speak is this concept of hsCRP, or high sensitivity C-reactive protein, and this is a marker, a protein that indicates when there's inflammation ongoing in your blood vessels, and more and more of our studies are checking that, and it turns out that that has a lot of predictive value.

Dr. Michael Koren: 2:39

If people have high levels of hsCRP, there's a higher risk for having a heart attack or a stroke, and this is a risk that could be predicted 30 years in advance. A recent study actually came out that was led by one of my medical school classmates who looked at data from the women's health study, which was conducted 30 years ago, and their levels of CRP predicted what would happen over the next 30 years. So it's pretty remarkable, and, as we speak, we're doing studies right now that help people have their CRP checked for free. In fact, if you qualify for the study, you may get a little bit of a payment for being involved in the research, and this is something that's really quite important to know, particularly if you have a history of heart disease, and not knowing about this again can hurt you, because you may have silent inflammation that you're not even aware of.

Kevin Geddings: 3:30

Wow. And how about if you perhaps maybe haven't had a cardiac incident, but in your family there's a history of heart disease.

Dr. Michael Koren: 3:39

Absolutely. Those are people that shouldn't know what it is. But we find, for the studies that we're doing now and for the shortest term, predictive risk is to look at people that have had some history. So, again, as I mentioned, the study that was done in the Women's Health Initiative looked at people who were completely healthy 30 years ago and this hsCRP was predictive of their overall risk. But again, that took decades to play out. In the short term, over the course of months and years, we can look at your CRP and have a pretty good idea if that stable heart situation could get worse, right.

Kevin Geddings: 4:16

All right. Well, if people would like to participate, if they've had some sort of a cardiac issue and they'd like to be tested for this inflammation marker, they can get in touch with ENCORE Research Group, right?

Dr. Michael Koren: 4:26

You got it, that's right, very simple.

Kevin Geddings: 4:27

Yeah, very simple. Go to EncoreDocs. com. That's EncoreDocs. com. You can also call locally. They have offices here in St. John's County and St. Augustine, near UF Flagler Hospital in the Whetstone Building. Call 904-730-0166, 904-730-0166. And in addition to this study that's going on, there's countless other studies dealing with all sorts of other health challenges, so you can get educated about all those and other ways that you can participate in leading-edge medical research. Speaking of knowledge being power which, by the way, yes, you did get it exactly right that was Sir Francis Bacon's quote by the way, Doctor.

Dr. Michael Koren: 5:06

Excellent. I'm glad that part of my brain is still working.

Kevin Geddings: 5:11

Well, technically he said "ipsa scientia potestas est, because he was speaking in Latin, but the translation holds. Let's put it that way Speaking of knowledge being power. You know, med evidence. That's a good way for just the rest of us who are not med school graduates to get some good health care information, Right, doc?

Dr. Michael Koren: 5:32

Yeah, and again this gets the same concept of knowledge is power, and what we do in MedE vidence is tell you what we know about an issue, importantly, what we don't know about an issue.

Dr. Michael Koren: 5:42

And again, knowledge is power, and the lack of knowledge can be very dangerous, and especially trying to do things and make changes based on a lack of knowledge can be something that leads to the downfall of a lot of people. So we both tell you what we know and what we don't know, and, of course, we're talking about the process of how you learn about the things that you don't know process of how you learn about the things that you don't know. So we think it's a powerful way for people to gain knowledge and ultimately make good health care decisions for themselves and their family. So give me an example of that is we just recently did a podcast with Dr. Rothstein, Mitch Rothstein, who did a really nice job of breaking down insomnia. So people, when they're up at night and they can't get to sleep, they might want to think about what do you know about your situation, what don't you know about your situation and what can you do to figure out how to make things better?

Kevin Geddings: 6:31

Yeah, now, there's good information there and it's in a variety of different methods, if you will, media that you can easily access. But before you allow yourself to go down the Google rabbit hole of searching out health care information, we strongly recommend that you use the medevidence. com website. Medevidence. com the truth behind the data, medevidence. com. And, like we said, if you're just tuning in or you're getting to a point where you can jot something down, go check out the website encordocscom for opportunities where you can engage in some leading medical research and benefit yourself and others in the process. Encoredocs. com, Dr. Koren. Any closing thoughts before we let you go on this beautiful Monday morning?

Dr. Michael Koren: 7:09

We'll stick with knowledge is power, so that'll be our mantra for the week. There you go.

Kevin Geddings: 7:14

Thank you, Doc.

Announcer: 7:15

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