The Biggest and Worst Pandemic?

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

Arterial and cardiometabolic disease is the chronic condition with acute manifestations most responsible for destroying our population of INDIVIDUALS. It continues to shorten and ruin 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.   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 are more often and more urgently 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 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.

My ultrasound did not reveal significant atherosclerotic plaque/atheroma. What are my next steps?

If your carotid ultrasound did not reveal significant atherosclerotic arterial injury/disease (seen as “plaque,” or atheroma/inflammation in your artery wall), and your arterial age is significantly younger than your chronological age, that provides some peace of mind.

However, there may be disease in your coronary (or other) arteries. The following recommendations become stronger as you get older and if you have other common risk factors like family history of stroke, heart attack, stents or bypass surgery, high cholesterol, diabetes or prediabetes, high blood pressure, smoking or others. It is more important for a 60 year old with Type 2 Diabetes and hyperlipidemia than a 35 year old with few if any risk factors.

The next step in searching for arterial disease is Coronary Artery Calcium Score (CACS). If you’ve already had this test, we would be happy to review your results. Coronary Artery Calcium Score above zero means you have calcified atherosclerotic plaque/atheroma in your coronary arteries. Non calcified or homogeneous plaque/atheroma, which is the stage of plaque evolution that is the greatest risk for an event, is not detected by this test.

If you want a CACS, do an internet search for “Coronary Artery Calcium Score near me” online.  You should be able to find an imaging center or hospital that will offer this without a physician order. Call our office at 217-321-1987 or request a Discovery Zoom Call with Dr. Backs to discuss your results.

Beware: Coronary Artery Calcium Score is offered at a low entry price but typically followed by recommendations for cardiology consultation, stress tests, echocardiograms and the slippery slope to stents and surgery. Before you respond to invitations from the intervention focused cardiology program, schedule a Discovery Zoom Call to discuss your findings and options. The only stent any of my patients have needed was to fix the failure of a stent placed a couple of years earlier with no symptoms and for no evidence based benefit.

Of course, if you have had a stroke, TIA, heart attack, stent or surgery for vascular disease or other manifestation or proof of atherosclerosis/arterial disease, screening test results are not needed to get started. Click here to schedule and start development of your personalized CurePlan, a game plan to put your disease into remission.

What does a CureScreen carotid ultrasound with plaque/atheroma vs. no plaque/atheroma look like?

Click here to see a CureScreen carotid ultrasound with plaque.

Click here to see a CureScreen carotid ultrasound with no plaque.

My ultrasound revealed atherosclerotic plaque or inflammation. What now?

If your screening ultrasound revealed atherosclerotic arterial disease, shown as “plaque,” or inflammation in your artery wall, you can stop its progression and even reverse it, heal it and put it into remission. Improvement in the carotids, as measured by intima media thickness and reported as arterial age, predicts improvement in the coronary/heart arteries and elsewhere.  

I’m often asked: “How can this be? How is it possible that I have arterial injury, inflammation and even plaque?  How is it that doing everything I’m told is healthy still leaves me with this serious problem?”

Don’t be offended.  It isn’t your fault.  This happens quite often.

Sometimes the advice we are following is not optimal.  A healthy lifestyle will prevent or slow the development of arterial injury from toxic food and lack of exercise, but it does not guarantee total protection.  There are many factors that are lurking in the background that are overlooked by standard health care.  You now have the opportunity to cover the blind spots, the gaps in your plan for a long healthy life. You can have safety and peace of mind.

This can include genetic factors that can be addressed to reduce the expression of these factors, vitamin D deficiency, homocysteine elevation due to inadequate folic acid, sleep disorders, stress, environmental toxins, insulin resistance (in spite of normal blood glucose levels) and others. 

We identify these hidden root causes with our initial lab panel and then offer solutions to address revealed opportunities for greater safety and peace of mind, avoiding events, stents and surgery.

We measure the improvement and monitor to be sure that success is sustained with repeat lab testing, ultrasound to document improvement in arterial inflammation/age and body composition to follow reduction in body/visceral fat.

You can heal injury, inflammation and dangerous soft and heterogeneous plaque, evolving plaque into stable and safe calcified plaque. Think of atherosclerosis like acne, which is an inflammatory condition of the skin with pimples that pop up in spots. Pimples and plaque are more prone to rupture right after they form. Pimple rupture creates a scab to heal the rupture. Plaque rupture forms a blood clot in the lumen that blocks blood flow, causing damage to the tissue supplied by that artery. Coronary blockage results in heart attack or myocardial infarction. Carotid plaque rupture results in a stroke or transient ischemic attack. Both can be interrupted with rescue procedures, but proactive efforts to intervene and prevent events is far less risky and costly.

Stenosis or blockage, which affects blood flow capacity and chronic symptoms of angina or claudication, is much less important than the risk of plaque rupture, which is greatest with new soft plaque and least with old calcified plaque. Rupture suddenly appears as a stroke or heart attack.

New homogeneous or heterogeneous plaque can rupture, forming a flow blocking blood clot to cause stroke, dementia, heart attack, kidney failure, and other debilitating events.  These events are treated by standard emergency stage rescue care with stents and surgery. While waiting for treatment, you may suffer a fatal or life-altering stroke or cardiac arrest. You could also accumulate small strokes resulting in vascular dementia over time without noticeable acute symptoms.

These disasters can be avoided with proactive action to reverse disease into remission.

At the CureCenter, we strive to reverse atherosclerotic arterial inflammation, achieving remission to the point it is considered cured or healed, and no longer a threat.  In other words, we Make Your Arteries Safe Again.

We will collaborate and share with your current primary care provider and specialists who provide standard care. They probably won’t understand all that we do. Even if they do, the system in which they practice blocks their ability to offer it.  They may disagree, but they can’t offer better.

We always welcome a conversation, especially if they will study this website or read “Healthy Heart Healthy Brain.” Standard care tends to be reactive to symptoms and with procedural intervention, sometimes doing more harm than good.  I always offer my phone number to share with your doctor to discuss differences. It is rarely needed.

Stents can fail, requiring further treatment and high-risk antiplatelet or blood thinners to prevent closure of the arteries. The CureCenter will help you get optimal results by creating a personalized lifestyle and medical CurePlan. We help you make changes you can live with. We don’t expect perfection. We support progress.

We recommend supplements and medication based on documented need and monitor the effects, adjusting as needed.

What does a CureScreen with plaque vs. no plaque look like?

Click here to see a CureScreen with plaque.

Click here to see a CureScreen with no plaque.

Be safe. Be resilient. Request a complimentary Discovery Zoom Call with Dr. Backs to get started.