What will my other providers say about my CurePlan?

Ideally, you should be able to trust your providers, from nurse practitioners to specialists, with your overall health and wellbeing. We all want to think of our doctor as “the best” and trust their advice.

Sadly, most “providers” are now employees of organizations that determine what they can and cannot offfer. It is reasonable to ask, “Can I trust those who control my providers’ paychecks?”

Here are some helpful questions to ask yourself when determining if your provider is right for you:

• What did my provider do to identify my chronic disease?

• What are they offering to CURE (not just manage) it?

• Do they wait and watch while it advances toward a more serious event such as heart attack or stroke?

• Do they offer you what they do for themselves?

When asked to detect “presymptomatic” arterial disease, most providers will schedule you for a stress test. The benefits of stress tests are only in the assessment of symptoms. They miss all but the most advanced state of coronary artery disease. False positives or equivocal tests lead to coronary angiograms and often unnecessary life altering stents.

Stop! Ask yourself, “How does this help me when I have no symptoms?” before agreeing to this approach. The only stent my patients have needed in the past 10 years was to fix the failure of a stent placed for a blockage in the absence of any symptoms. The other stent placed was done so in spite of measurement of no reduction in flow before stent placement. Unbelievable but true.

For more information, we recommend reading the book Prevention Myths by Drs. Ford Brewer and Todd Eldredge. 

Many modern providers are constrained by convention, guidelines, groupthink, complacency, and financial incentives to monitor and manage arterial and other chronic disease. They profit more from invasive, lucrative procedures and rehabilitation than they ever would from prevention. This is the business model that serves “health care” more than people. Surgery, stents and rehab are more profitable than healthy patients. You are not the customer in this model. Your chronic disease is the product.

This is not an attack on individual providers who work within the health care system, including your PCP and specialists. It is a sad observation of its brokenness and the corrupting nature of third party payment, employment of providers, and consolidation of healthcare into fewer and larger institutions. These institutions are dominated by those who have never uttered the Hippocratic Oath or watched a patient suffer in person.

You can do better.

At the CureCenter, we practice Proactive Medicine: Most of us are past the point of prevention. We tend to talk about prevention but act to fix a problem.

Our program reveals “presymptomatic” disease and “prevent” complications from progressive arterial disease. We expect to reverse your chronic disease and prevent untimely death or disability due to stroke, heart attack, or other major health events.

Side effects include feeling and looking better, more mental clarity and energy, and other positive effects. The goal is to live long, healthy, and happy.

Request a discovery call and start down the road to health today.

What is chronic disease and can it be cured?

A chronic disease is a medical condition that persists over a long period of time, typically for years. Chronic diseases can significantly impact your quality of life. Examples include diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis (arterial disease), dementia, and certain types of cancer. Chronic diseases are caused by an interaction of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors.  They become more common as we age.

The chronic diseases listed above (among others) are comorbid, which means more than one typically coexist in the same individual. They interact to cause harm. The root causes include a refined, processed, carbohydrate-rich diet, sedentary lifestyle, high levels of stress, sleep disturbances, and smoking interacting with genetic tendencies.

At the CureCenter, we emphasize the bad S’s: Sweets, Starches, Snacks, Seed oils, Sitting Salt, Smoking, Sleep/Snoring disorders, Stress and Sexual Starvation. We promote a diet of real unprocessed food and exercise, augmented with supplements and medications for specific needs.  But at least stop eating processed food, sweats and starches.

Why is it important to reverse chronic disease into remission or cure?

Events such as heart attack and stroke can become lethal quickly. However, they are actually caused by years of silent, unknown chronic disease which progresses to atherosclerosis/arterial disease. Plaque rupture or erosion is the first step in the cascade leading to the blood clots that suddenly interrupt blood flow. Changing your lifestyle and reversing chronic disease is not just important for your overall general health. It significantly reduces your risk of serious, disabling and fatal events such as heart attack or stroke.

Reversal of chronic disease will also improve overall quality of life by reducing common symptoms such as fatigue or difficulty breathing. It can prevent further complications and development of other serious diseases.

I’ve always been told that chronic disease is manageable, but not reversible. Why is this incorrect?

Let’s be honest. The business of mainstream medical care is Chronic Disease Management. Mainstream medicine is simply overseeing our health decline with “management” of chronic disease. It sets you up to be vulnerable to inevitable exposure to Covid, flu, and other external threats. We can do better.

The “Standard of Care'' goal is to manage the disease and treat its complications. Costly and profitable drugs and procedures are the mainstay of treatment with this plan, with costs rapidly rising to unsustainable levels. We may live longer, but we’re sick and racking up costs and treatments. Keep in mind: Your costs are revenue for the medical system, including health insurance. You are not the customer. You are the product.

We have good news: Chronic disease can be Prevented, Reversed, put into Remission, and even Cured!

It is reversed by better choices about nutrition and activity interacting with our genes and environment. Quit smoking, avoid alcohol and drug abuse, avoid sugar and processed foods (sweets, starches, and snacks) and get off the couch. Be aware of the addictive nature of processed foods and find support to overcome craving for them.

Our mission is to discover and measure your chronic disease, identify your individual root causes, develop aPersonalized CurePlan to reverse it, and demonstrate measurable improvement.

When improvement or remission lasts long enough, it’s reasonable to call it “cured.” No cure is 100% effective or lasts forever, but this cure can endure for years if we do the right things.

At the CureCenter, we Measure, Motivate, Mentor, Measure again, and Maintain Momentum. We call these our healthy M&M’s! They are good for you and can cure your chronic disease by restoring your health.

Here is a fun and handy acronym to summarize: SAM

S’s - Sweets, Starches, Snacks, Seed oils, Sitting, Stress, (poor) Sleep/Snoring, Salt, Smoking & Sexual Starvation.

Causes:

ADDED - Arterial disease, Diabetes, Dementia, Erectile dysfunction, Depression

Cured by:

M’s - Measure, Motivate, Mentor, Monitor, Maintain Momentum

What is sleep apnea and why should I test for it?

Sleep apnea is characterized by repeated interruptions in breathing during sleep. This can occur when the muscles at the back of the throat fail to keep the airway open, causing an individual to struggle for air. Common symptoms of sleep apnea include loud snoring, daytime sleepiness, morning headaches, and difficulty concentrating. Sleep apnea can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and other health problems. Contrary to common belief, thin people can suffer from sleep apnea and its consequences.

Why should I test for sleep apnea?

Sleep apnea has been found to contribute to:

• High blood pressure (proper treatment of sleep apnea can reduce or eliminate the need for blood pressure medications)

• Metabolic syndrome due to obesity (insulin resistance, prediabetes, Type 2 Diabetes)

• Atrial Fibrillation

• Dementia and other cognitive disorders

• Accidents and injuries

• Daytime fatigue/sleepiness

How do I test for sleep apnea?

Testing is now generally done at home with less expensive, user-friendly methods. In most cases, further testing is not necessary. Click here for a description of our favorite: EZ Slep. However, if additional testing and treatment is needed, we refer you to sleep specialists, including dentists, who focus on sleep and airway disturbances.

What are the treatment options?

Choice of treatment for sleep apnea depends on its severity, underlying causes and patient preference. The goal of general treatment is to improve breathing during sleep and reduce symptoms and risk of complications.

Some common treatments include (but are not limited to):

• Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP), which involves wearing a mask over your nose and mouth during sleep. CPAP opens your airway by delivering a steady stream of air under positive pressure.

• Bi-level Positive Airway Pressure (BiPAP), which is similar to a CPAP but delivers less air while the user is exhaling. This is in contrast to CPAP, which delivers a constant stream of air, sometimes making it difficult for the user to exhale.

• Mandibular advancement devices (MADs), also known as oral appliances, that can be worn in the mouth to help keep the airway open. They often accomplish this by bringing the jaw forward or holding the tongue in place.

• Lifestyle changes such as losing weight, quitting smoking, and avoiding alcohol before bedtime.
  While weight loss is helpful to treat sleep apnea (remove the root cause), often treatment of sleep apnea with CPAP or other measures enables weight loss. The cortisol and other stress consequences of sleep apnea make it harder to lose fat. It is a chicken/egg metaphor: Which comes first? In reality, obesity (even mild) and sleep apnea can be cause-and-effect for one another.

• Nasal Decongestants can sometimes be used to help open airways and improve breathing.

• Positional therapy, which involves using special devices or techniques to encourage sleeping on one’s side.

• Surgery, which is usually a last resort, can be used to treat sleep apnea. In these rare cases, excess tissue is removed from the throat, or the jaw is repositioned to improve breathing during sleep.

• Inspire

Don’t fear the diagnosis or the treatment of sleep apnea. Most who have been through it are grateful for better health and quality of life for themselves and their sleep partner.