How can I have a problem? My nutrition and lifestyle are excellent.

If you’re making optimal choices regarding nutrition, exercise, work life balance and supplements–but still not seeing the results you hoped for–consider this: 

First of all, congratulations!
Your odds of living a higher quality and longer life are far better because of the good choices you make. Without good choices, your results would likely be far worse. 

Thank you.
Your efforts benefit not only you, but also your family and your community. By staying healthy and active, you’re able to support others instead of becoming sick, dependent or disabled.   

However, hidden risks might still be at play–through no fault or awareness of your own.
Some health threats can hide beneath the surface and are invisible to even the most disciplined individuals. Here are a few:  

Genetic Factors:

• Epigenetics: Some genes are subject to reduced expression (or can be “turned down”) with specific measures.

• Insulin resistance: Even if you are lean and fit, insulin resistance can creep in–especially after menopause or andropause. 

• Lipoprotein(a): This inherited cholesterol particle increases risk and may respond to treatments like niacin or aspirin.

• 9p21 Gene Variant: A known risk marker for cardiovascular issues.

• MTHFR Gene Mutation: May require more intake of methylated forms of folic acid and B12.

• ApoE Genotype: Might call for adjustments in your diet based on your specific genotype.

• Haptoglobin Genotype:  In some people, gluten is more inflammatory and Vitamin E can do more harm than good.

Even if your ancestors had unhealthy habits and suffered from heart disease or strokes, your genetic “bad luck” might still need more than just good behavior to overcome.

Oral Health Risks: 

• Periodontal Disease: Dangerous bacteria in the mouth can inflame the gums and the arteries. These bacteria can even be shared through kissing or contact with pets.

• Dental Providers Without a Systemic Focus: Complacent oral health providers tend to be focused primarily on traditional dentistry and not on health connections, threats and opportunities for overall optimal health.

• Endodontal Conditions (Dental Abscess): Infections like dental abscesses can be asymptomatic for weeks or months, but can still affect your health. These are detectable through blood work or dental imaging. Think: failed root canals, deteriorating crowns or delayed dental treatments due to cost or inconvenience.

COMMON MYTHS & MISLEADING ADVICE

• Biased or Dated Guidelines: Mainstream medical advice (like the discredited food pyramid and the misguided obsessive focus on cholesterol) is often based more on politics than proven results.  One might wonder if the intent is more, not less, disease as a business model.

• Internet “Experts”: Podcasters, pundits and other media may be motivated more by monetization and attention than helping you achieve real, measurable health outcomes. And they can only address generalities, not your specifice circumstances or needs.

• Product Pushers: Opportunists may promote products for profit over individual results.  Pharma is criticized for its incentives and corruption of regulation. Doesn’t the same risk exist in the less regulated nutraceutical environment? Should it be trusted more or less? Is a friend or family member sharing a benefit or profiting from your purchase and participation in a marketing program?

STAY OPEN-MINDED AND INFORMED

We all have blind spots. Be open to learning new information to enhance the progress you’ve already made. Don’t be offended or take new information or feedback personally–it’s not a criticism of your efforts, but a chance to build on them.

Beware the nocebo effect–the power of negative expectations to produce negative results (a self-fulfilling prophecy).   

Treatment decisions should be based on objective, measurable results–not anecdotes, beliefs or assumptions. Biased studies and the experience of others don’t predict personal experience with a supplement or drug.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• All recommendations are intended for your personal benefit. 

• You always have the right to accept or decline any treatment. 

• Conflicting advice is common–your job is to choose what makes sense for you and track your results.  
   
  Let’s work together to make you–and your arteries–as healthy and youthful as possible. 
  

The Biggest and Worst Pandemic?

There is a CURE. We can end the Catastrophic Unseen Reversible Epidemic of Cardiometabolic Disease.

Arterial and cardiometabolic disease is the progressive chronic condition with acute manifestations most responsible for destroying our lives. It shortens and ruins more lives than COVID and all cancers combined.

It starts earlier than we tend to think as arterial injury leading to inflammation and plaque formation.  It becomes symptomatic as a stroke, heart attack, dementia, kidney disease and peripheral vascular disease when plaque ruptures.   It is preventable, reversible and yes Curable in the sense of long term stable remission.

Forty years of practicing medicine has taught me that most of us are NOT MOTIVATED TO CHANGE TO BECOME MORE HEALTHY, especially when addicted to toxic food and behaviors that are highly promoted and subsidized by cultural propaganda and public policy.  Public health recommendations are making the problem worse, not better, by incompetence and corrupting industry influence. 

We generally get motivated by pain, suffering and fear of loss to seek help and make sacrifices, giving up the “good” to get something better.  This is why we buy life and disability insurance.   We should be investing in health assurance.  We improve not by a radical transformation but by a series of nudges. This is the strategy of those who would change our culture for the worse. Why not use it for the individual and common good?

While prevention is the best approach to any problem, most of us are past the point of prevention.  We need to see it, measure it and stop progression to achieve/sustain remission by healing the injury for a long-term CURE, individually and as communities. 

The contribution of oral inflammation (infected teeth/inflamed gums) is almost universally overlooked.  Dental professionals have the opportunity to offer a medical home alternative when working in collaboration with proactive medical professionals who look beyond the traditional risk factors of hyperlipidemia, smoking and hypertension.  These include insulin resistance (a feature, not a bug for our hunter gatherer optimization), exposure to oxidative stress from the environment, vitamin D deficiency, homocysteine elevation, lipoprotein(a) and others. 

This should be an option for anyone, for those making a living as well as those with the luxury of living a “lifestyle.”  Success comes most often not from a radical change in behavior.  Instead, it comes from a series of nudges to improve reinforced by seeing measurable progress in response to change: 

• Body Composition measures of insulin resistance: Visceral/% Body Fat 

• Blood test indicators of inflammation: hsCRP, LpPLA2, Microalbumin/Creatinine ratio 

• Ultrasound measured arterial intima media thickness/age/inflammation 
  

Case in point:  Recently, I performed carotid ultrasound scans with a Butterfly iQ+ point of care ultrasound and body composition analysis using the InBody 570 on 39 employees of a rural business.  This took place in my motorhome office parked in their parking lot. 

The CEO, a patient in my proactive medicine practice, leads by example.  He invested an average of $172/employee to offer the opportunity to see their individual threats (arterial plaque and inflammation) and pursue the opportunities to heal.   This is consistent with providing his employees with free access to vitamin D, C, zinc and other supplements and letting each employee decide whether they would benefit from COVID mRNA injections.

These are hard working skilled blue collar and agricultural workers with less than average access to mainstream healthcare.   The majority have no college education.  This does not predict lower intelligence or insight.  Quite to the contrary, there is a preservation of common sense and critical thinking skills

The age range was 18-79.  Job descriptions ranged from CEO to janitor.   

With the support of our CureCoach.app, the Butterfly ultrasound cloud archive, templated reports and my office manager, reports were out in 1 day digitally and securely on CureCoach.App with email and text reminders to access their report on the secure CureCoach.app. 
 

Findings are typical of the population at large:

• 23 of the 39 (59%) have visible arterial injury that can be healed, postponing indefinitely disabling strokes and life ending/changing heart attacks, rehabilitation, stents or bypass surgery.   

• 20 of the 37 (54%) tested on the InBody 570 (pacemakers and pregnancy not allowed) had a visceral fat level consistent with inflammatory insulin resistance.  This is the metabolic derangement that is the most prevalent driver of chronic inflammation and progresses to prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes with all its complications. 

• Everyone with arterial injury or elevated visceral fat has been offered an opportunity to have a 30 minute video appointment to review reports and discuss process of further testing and lifestyle/supplement/medical intervention, including cost.  Most cost of further evaluation and treatment/monitoring are covered by third party payers.   

Discovery Zoom Calls can be scheduled by clicking here.   

Discovery Zoom Calls are being scheduled and completed and most are pursuing further lab assessment and consultation.  Arrangements have been made to have the Quest and Cleveland Heart Lab blood tests drawn for Quest pickup at the local health department within five minutes from the business.   

Labs are billed to insurance or to the practice if direct payment is preferred and then billed to the patient at a significant discount off list prices.  We meet with them to review results by video conference when they are ready, and reminder emails and texts can be sent to the procrastinators. 
 
Lessons learned: 

• We TALK about prevention but we ACT to intervene when motivated by pain, suffering or visible or palpable evidence of injury or illness.    

• We need less talk and more action.  Scan and measure first, address questions later. Replace the risk model with a measurable disease model.

• Risk calculation is replaced by disease revelation, measurement and monitoring of the changes from intervention.  A proactive lifestyle and medical intervention strategy outperforms a prevention or intervention strategy for those already afflicted by silent but deadly progressive arterial injury. 

• A small efficient team with digital cloud-based tools can accomplish more at a lower cost (time and treasure) than the current bloated reactive system that depends on chronic disease and its complications for revenue to support bloated facilities, teams and bureaucracies that have nothing to do with care and everything to do with optimizing profit/margins.

• The key to success is motivation provoked by awareness and concern, open mindedness, and coachability, not education, wealth or social status.  Many highly educated, wealthy and high-status individuals lack the qualities for success described above. 

• A picture is worth a thousand words; a video is worth far more.  Personally seeing ultrasound images of arterial injury with an opportunity to heal it motivates change.  Simply seeing reduces risk scoring for heart attack and stroke by 50% in 1 year.  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32818-6/abstract Talk about a blockbuster intervention! 

• Population improvement can begin organically, one individual at a time, then at scale.   

• We should not wait for the government or other authorities to act.  They won’t change themselves. We don’t have the time.  People are needlessly suffering and dying for lack of access to optimal but achievable remedies and results. 

• Focus on arterial injury (Inflammation and plaque) and reduction of visceral fat (insulin resistance) is achievable and improves general wellness by measuring reliable indicators of chronic inflammation due to oxidative stress.   

• Rural and blue collar workers deserve this as much as urban executives and the laptop class.  They are just as, or perhaps more, likely to succeed with the right kind of coaching. 

• Rural communities are more likely to succeed than urban and suburban populations because they are less controlled by the current mainstream health care system controlled processes and incentives. 
   

This is just the start.  This is scalable, effective and far more affordable than the alternatives.

Finally, in the past 10 years with well over a thousand patients, NO PATIENTS FOLLOWING OUR PLAN for arterial disease remission have suffered a stroke or heart attack. The only medically beneficial stent was needed to correct the failure of a stent placed for no good clinical indication 18 months earlier. And the one patient who needed coronary bypass deteriorated after 3 or more COVID mRNA injections. Compared to historical control experience, this is dramatic evidence of efficacy and a huge threat to the medical industrial pharma payer business model.

Lifeline Screening

Lifeline Screening offers nationwide access to carotid artery ultrasound screening for arterial disease. It is a good service that could improve outcomes if applied differently. It calls attention to arterial disease and other signs of cardiometabolic disease. But it could have more impact than it does.

When they identify atherosclerotic disease, their usual recommendation to “monitor annually” supports the monitoring business plan but misses the best opportunity to reverse arterial disease when it is “mild.”

Calling arterial disease “mild” is as logical as referring to “mild cancer.”   Would you accept a recommendation to monitor your early cancer and wait for advanced stage disease to intervene?

If the disease is advanced and they suggest referral to an interventional specialist, consider a consultation with The CureCenter.  But if you have even the earliest findings on your Lifeline report in a drawer somewhere, we should have a discussion about it.

If you have a Lifeline Screening report, register at CureCoach.App, scan and upload the report to the message thread. Or fax it to 866-594-7830 or mail a copy to The CureCenter for Chronic Disease, 2131 W. White Oaks Dr. Suite A, Springfield, IL 62704. Include contact information (mobile phone and email) so we can reach out to you. Or register for a Discovery Zoom Call.

We will review it and use it to advise you how it can motivate and support efforts to reverse your disease and get rid of the threat of stroke and heart attack by finding and mitigating your specific root causes with a Personalized CurePlan.