My Plaque Protocol, and Why I Started a PCSK9 Inhibitor | Simon Hill, MSc

A few weeks ago, I shared my own heart scans and the amount of regression was dramatic. In sixteen and a half months, the plaque in my arteries had dropped by 48%. And the top comment on this video, how did you do this? And underneath that, person after person asking the same thing. One person said the whole episode felt like a bait and switch, that they were never going to find out how to actually reduce plaque. Fair enough. That episode though was about my results. This one today is how I got them and whether that 48% was even real. Because here's the part that might seem strange. Despite that number, I've started a prescription medication to lower my blood lipids. In this episode, I'll tell you exactly which one and why. Quick housekeeping before we get into things. This, of course, is not medical advice. It's one person's process, and your numbers belong with your doctor. If you're new here, I'm Simon Hill, physiotherapist by training, masters in nutrition science from Deakin University in Melbourne, and I've interviewed hundreds of researchers and clinicians on this show since 2018. I have a particular interest in cardiovascular disease and track this disease in my own arteries, which is what today's episode is all about. I'll go as far as saying, I don't think anyone else on the Internet has had their coronary arteries analyzed this many ways and then been silly enough to publish all of it. Some might even say that this is a world's first. Take that for what it's worth, of course. It's hardly a competitive field. So a quick recap in case you missed the last episode on this topic. I've had serial coronary CT angiograms or CCTAs. These scans don't just tell you whether you have blockage. They allow you to quantify how much plaque is in your arteries and what type it is. So instead of being told that you have mild, moderate, or severe soft plaque, I got reports breaking it down. Soft plaque, calcified plaque, total volume, all in cubic millimeters. And just so we're clear, this isn't the plaque your dentist talks about. Different plaque, different body part. Though it would be pretty cool if we could floss our arteries. The first scan I had was in December 2024 at age 38, and then a follow-up scan sixteen and a half months later in April 2026 at 39. I've since turned 40. That's a whole another story, but happy birthday to me. Same imaging center both times, same scanner, same protocol at the Lundquist Institute in Los Angeles under the guidance of doctor Matthew Budoff, one of the world's experts on this type of imaging. Those scans, the baseline and the follow-up scan, were then analyzed by three different software platforms. On one of them, HeartFlow, my total plaque volume had dropped by about 48%. That's the number that ended up in the title of this episode. That's the …