I'm in my early 40s and my calcium score came back 200 with most of it in the LAD. How did this happen?

[Guided_by_Voices]

Wow this is a good book so far! I'm about one third through. Thank you for the recommendation.

I'm in kind of a similar boat as Stoak, with an 18.9 calcium score at age 44, which puts me in the 78th percentile. Of course, my PCP says that's great and didn't recommend I do anything about it.

I had a calcium score done at age 40 and my score was a 3 then, which I thought was great, because it was so close to zero. Now I understand that it should have been zero, and there is a big difference between a little and none. My score then also put me around the 75-80th percentile, so my lifestyle over the intervening years has apparently not done anything positive or negative to influence progression beyond what is typical.

This has led me to start intensely researching CVD. I think regardless of what camp you end up in with regard to your beliefs around cholesterol, you should measure the impact of your interventions with everything available, including carotid IMT, calcium scans, coronary angiograms, etc. Year over year changes in markers of actual plaque will be the most useful way to determine whether you are on the right path.

P.S. don't inhibit aromatase

Kudos to you for actually reading and educating yourself. That book essentially becomes a tool against which almost all actions can be validated against. It's also worth noting that statins are well-known to not reduce plaque and apparently hasten the calcification of soft plaques, which the statinators have tried to argue is a good thing. My issue with the CAC score is that it would be very hard to pin down the impact of one or several interventions, and the overall action is always the same, which to me is to continuously learn and do everything you reasonably can based on what you learn