The Calcium Score That Changed Everything: Why Following the Rules Made Me Sicker
Twenty years ago, a doctor told me my cholesterol was "borderline high." Not terrible. Not dangerous. Just... elevated enough to warrant intervention.
So I started taking a statin. A small dose at first—what my cardiologist would later call a "baby dose." I took it every day for two decades. I also did everything else right: avoided saturated fat, chose low-fat dairy, limited red meat, started every day with "heart-healthy" whole grain cereal.
I was the model patient. Compliant. Diligent. Trusting.
Fast forward to 2024. My cardiologist ordered a coronary artery calcium scan—a CT scan that measures the amount of calcified plaque in your arteries. The score is straightforward: zero means no detectable plaque, and higher numbers indicate more arterial calcification.
My score: 450.
To put that in perspective, 92% of people my age have less arterial plaque than I do. After twenty years of statin therapy specifically designed to prevent exactly this problem.
The Questions Nobody Was Asking
My cardiologist's response? Prescribe a more powerful statin.
No curiosity about why two decades of cholesterol-lowering medication had failed to prevent the exact problem it was supposed to solve. No investigation into whether the underlying hypothesis—that lowering cholesterol prevents arterial plaque—might be flawed. Just double down on the same failed strategy with a stronger drug.
That's when I started asking different questions:
If statins work by lowering cholesterol, and my cholesterol has been managed for 20 years, why are my arteries full of plaque?
What if cholesterol isn't actually the primary driver of arterial disease?
What if the foods I was told to avoid might have actually protected me?
What if the "heart-healthy" processed foods I embraced were causing the inflammation that damaged my arteries?
What I Found When I Started Digging
I began reading the actual studies, not just the headlines about them. I learned to identify funding sources and conflicts of interest. I discovered that the same statistical tricks are used repeatedly to make small effects seem dramatic.
What emerged was a pattern I couldn't unsee:
The cholesterol hypothesis has significant problems. An analysis published in The Pharmaceutical Journal examined 44 randomized controlled trials of interventions to lower LDL cholesterol and found no benefit on mortality. If cholesterol truly caused heart disease, any method of lowering it should improve outcomes. But only statins show cardiovascular benefits—suggesting their effects have nothing to do with cholesterol reduction.
Insulin resistance, not cholesterol, is the most important predictor of cardiovascular disease. Research shows that preventing insulin resistance reduces heart attacks by 36%, while LDL-C ranks lower at just 16%. Yet we obsess over cholesterol while ignoring the metabolic dysfunction that actually drives arterial damage.
The foods I was told to fear might have been protecting me. The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet I followed for decades is precisely the pattern that promotes insulin resistance and inflammation—the actual drivers of arterial disease.
The Personal Cost of Institutional Failure
I don't share this story to complain about my cardiologist. She's a good doctor working within a system that taught her cholesterol causes heart disease and statins are the solution. The problem isn't individual doctors—it's institutional capture by pharmaceutical funding, flawed research methodology becoming medical dogma, and economic incentives that reward managing disease rather than preventing it.
But the cost of this systemic failure isn't abstract. It's measured in:
The 63 pounds I've lost since I stopped following conventional nutrition advice
The energy I've regained by eliminating processed foods and stabilizing my blood sugar
The mental clarity that came from understanding the biology behind the guidelines instead of blindly trusting them
The calcium score I'm working to stabilize (and hopefully improve) by addressing root causes instead of just chasing cholesterol numbers
Why I Wrote This Book
We're Not Sick, We're Being Sold documents the year I spent investigating how we got here. Not as a doctor—I'm not one—but as someone who learned to read research the way journalists read documents: looking for who benefits, who's funding the studies, and what's deliberately not being said.
Every chapter follows the same pattern I discovered:
A preliminary correlation gets transformed into definitive causation
Industry funding shapes the research agenda
Institutional momentum prevents course correction even when evidence accumulates
Patients pay the price while the system profits
The statin myth, the cholesterol obsession, the low-fat disaster, the breakfast propaganda, the seed oil deception—they all followed this playbook. Understanding the pattern helps you see it everywhere, from current GLP-1 marketing to whatever miracle cure is being promoted next.
What Changed When I Changed My Approach
In April 2024, I made a decision. Instead of following the advice that had failed me for two decades, I would follow the actual evidence about metabolic health:
Eliminated processed foods and industrial seed oils
Prioritized protein and vegetables over grains and sugar
Started intermittent fasting to improve insulin sensitivity
Focused on metabolic markers (insulin resistance, inflammation) rather than just cholesterol
The results speak louder than any argument: stable energy, mental clarity, significant fat loss, and biomarkers moving in the right direction.
More importantly, I understand why these changes work. That understanding is what makes them sustainable. When you know that sugar hijacks your dopamine system like a drug, you don't feel deprived avoiding it. When you understand that insulin resistance—not cholesterol—drives most chronic disease, you know which interventions actually matter.
This Isn't About Being Anti-Medicine
My calcium score of 450 is real. If I have a heart attack, I'll need emergency medical intervention, and I'll be grateful for every cardiologist, surgeon, and ICU nurse who saves my life.
But we've confused emergency medicine—where conventional approaches excel—with preventive medicine, where they often fail. Pills are good at managing acute crises. They're terrible at addressing the root causes of chronic disease.
The goal isn't to reject medical care. It's to use it appropriately while addressing the metabolic dysfunction that makes it necessary in the first place.
Your Turn
If you've followed conventional advice and haven't gotten the results you expected, you're not alone. The system isn't broken—it's working exactly as economic incentives dictate. Understanding that is the first step toward making better decisions.
We're Not Sick, We're Being Sold provides the tools to think critically about health claims, build a healthcare team that understands metabolic health, and implement changes based on evidence rather than marketing.
With 380+ peer-reviewed citations and transparent methodology throughout, it's not asking you to trust me—it's showing you how to evaluate the evidence yourself.
The calcium score that shocked me into investigating became the catalyst for understanding why conventional approaches so often fail. That understanding might be exactly what you need to finally make progress on health goals that have felt impossible.