Extremely fit and diet conscious with heart issues

My husband is 42, very athletic, exercises 5 days a week. he is very conscious about eating low fat low carb diet, does not smoke or drink. However he has family history of cardiac disease, his mom had unstable angina at age 42 but she is also a diabetic. Given his family history he has been extremely careful about his diet and exercise regimen. he has been passing his cholesterol blood work with flying colors for the last 5 years.

Despite all that he developed chest tightness last week after a bike ride. the chest tightness got worse with exertion so we went to the ER and where they did some basic blood work to eliminate if he had a heart attack and some EKG and sent to a cardiologist. He has his stress echo yesterday and the doctor wants us to do an angiogram this afternoon and may be insert stents if needed.

This diagnosis has shocked us, and don't know what to do. Is this normal? has anyone in this forum gone through a similar situation? There is nothing we can do to change the lifestyle. We will for sure start medicines.

What are the ramifications of having stents? your words of advice will calm us down

Thank you

There is a school of thought that cholesterol is not the issue. There are myriad opinions as to what IS the issue, and it's probably more than one of these things. Triglycerides and HDL (good cholesterol) are thought by many to be the most important blood results. You might also ask for an advanced lipid panel which should include testing for other proteins like LP(a), apo(e), and other tests (I'm not an expert). But it should be done by a cardiologist who knows what to do with the results. Not all do.

Also, before doing an invasive test like an angiogram, I would ask for a Ct heart scan. That will tell you if there are blockages, and also will give you a score representing the plaque load in his arteries. If it's clear, it might avoid an angio.

After a bad ekg and echo stress, my Dr sent me for the Ct heart scan, and it showed blockages, and a calcium score of 937 (anything above 400 is really bad and means high likelihood of coronary artery disease.)
The next day I had the angio and had 3 blockAges, they stented 2 of them, I'm fine right now, changed diet (although not as drastically as I did early on) I do a lot of walking and try to stay active.

By the way, I never had high cholesterol, I only had high triglycerides, and low HDL.

Read books by Dr William Davis. Total Wheat Belly. And a new book that just came out ... Undoctored (which I just got but haven't read.

Agree with you jdiane. Sugar in particular, and simple carbs in general, cause inflammation. It's a very complex subject and I think nobody really knows, or can pinpoint the one cause of heart disease, because there are many factors at play.