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Well, you better gives those arteries back to that teenager. You're getting them all crusty for the kid.
Good analogy about wrinkles.
LOL, I guess that isn't fair. The teenager should have the chance to get his coronary arteries crusty all by himself.
This pronouncement from the cardiologist about my "pristine" coronary arteries came after the cardiac cath he insisted on doing as I'd been having a lot of issues related to cardiac arrhythmias- both brady and tachycardia that had been going on for 2+ years ( the tachy longer than that). I commented to the doc that given my coronary arteries were so good at age 71, I ought to be able to throw the heart healthy living to the wind, stop the statin and do and eat exactly as I pleased because if I hadn't been able to gunk up those arteries in the 71 yrs I'd been trying, I doubt I could do much damage in the maybe 20 years or less that I had left. He laughed, but said 20 years was plenty of time to clog up arteries and those, coupled with cardiac arrhythmias makes a very dangerous situation.
I have heard that too. Possibly it was from a herbalist in the UK.
However, in Chinese medicine there are thousands of years of experience and they also use face diagnosis. They do acupuncture on the ear (which is supposed to be a mirror image of the body) so I suppose they may be some truth in it as a diagnostic sign. I am not sure how you would test this experimentally so I am not surprised no-one has done a study on it. Heart disease is supposed to be one of the top diseases so it would be difficult to tell if it is a cause or an effect perhaps.
Dr. Oz did a segment on this when his show first started, 2009 or 2010. I believe the idea is that the earlobes respond to the same conditions that harden arteries.
My ears were smooth, but my brother in law had deep creases. He died of a heart attack a few months later. He was overweight, ate lots of red meat and carbs, and had recently lost his wife, all things that are likely to increase the risk of heart attacks.
Now I have deep creases. I went to a stroke prevention event recently and asked about it; the doctor didn't think it was anything to worry about.
I recently read that a new, effective treatment doesn't become mainstream for an average of 23 years, because it takes that long for it be added to med school curricula and taught to a new generation of doctors.
So maybe the crease just hasn't done its time.
Re Dr. Oz: he was pretty informative the first couple of seasons, then just went for sensationalism. He featured stuff that I'd already seen on hokey shows like "Ripley's Believe it or Not" and "A Thousand Ways to Die." I suspect his "researchers" watched those shows for ideas.
So I looked, and I have one ear lobe that is perfectly smooth, while the other has a crease. Tonight I have people coming over to play cards. I will check them out!
Despite my recently discovered bilateral Grade 2B Frank's crease (THANKS A LOT WINTERBIRD!!!), I've surpassed my dad's first heart attack age by 9 years, and I smoked for 25 years while he never smoked. I also don't have the high blood pressure that he had, perhaps because I didn't have to a raise a child like me.
Seriously, this turned into a study and a potential diagnostic?
I have an extra crease on one elbow and one of my knuckles looks more wrinkled than the opposing one, and my hair is thicker on the right side of my head. This probably means I'm going to stroke out before age 62.
Well, presence of bilateral ear lobe crease often accompanied by vascular dysfunction. Postmortem study confirmed the significant positive correlation between the presence of ear lobe crease and coronary heart diseases.
Is it accurate? The accuracy is pretty high.
The calculated prevalence of Frank's sign was 85.8% in patients with coronary artery disease confirmed by coronary angiography. With a sensitivity of 68%, specificity of 77%, positive predictive value of 94% and negative predictive value of 28%.
....but just going by age gives you even better predictive value.
The expense and risk of coronary angiography (the definitive test of coronary risk) is high enough and the predictive value of Frank's Sign low enough that you wouldn't order an angiogram based on the presence of only Frank's sign.
So I looked, and I have one ear lobe that is perfectly smooth, while the other has a crease. Tonight I have people coming over to play cards. I will check them out!
Actually when I checked it out in the mirror I found only my right ear lobe is creased, the left one is smooth. For me that can be explained by my habit of sleeping on my right side, with a soft pillow nestled around my head. I often wear a pair of small hoop earrings that I forget to take out at bedtime, so I envision my right earlobe being sort of folded around the earring in that right ear.
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