Plaque (or atherosclerosis)
Plaque, for those who know what it is, it is atherosclerosis. This is the buildup of calcium, blood cells, and inflammation on the interior lining of your arteries.
It can make them very fragile and prone to blowing up and totally blocking when there’s a blood clot in them. Reversal of plaque is controversial, but there is evidence that if you drive your cholesterol down to really, really low levels, you can reverse some build up.
Some plaque though is really stuck on and very calcified. In other words, it starts to look a bit like bone. It’s not bone, but you know what I mean. There’s a lot of calcium in it. Very hard to reverse that kind of plaque. But you can reverse some, particularly early on. And early plaque is probably the most dangerous of all because it’s most fragile and liable to blow up in a sense.
Driving your cholesterol down to incredibly low levels and keeping them there is one way to give a chance for reversal.
Dr Norman Swan, Physician and Journalist
Related resources:
