Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Two Cardiac Markers To Consider

Brainwashing works.  It’s also really hard to unlearn.  It’s amazing how many conversations I have with potential new clients that are either worried or excited about their cardiac health based on cholesterol levels.  The cholesterol-heart disease connection is about as relevant today as paying for AOL.  That’s an even harder conversation to have with someone.

But I’m guessing you’re savvy.  You are all about the risks associated with elevated homocysteine and CRP in relation to heart disease.  Instead I want to introduce you to two other cardiac markers to consider tracking in relation to the #1 cause of death in America.

Lp-PLA2

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No Symptom Is Stupid – Video

Symptoms are just your body’s attempt at buying you time to escape what is potentially going to cause you great harm. The symptom isn’t stupid. Let’s take a look at many common diagnoses and put them in context of your body doing something intelligent so we can work towards supporting your challenges opposed to suppressing your symptoms.

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Arthritis: The 3 ‘I’s’ of Abnormal Joints and Bones Your Rheumatologist Fails to Mention

Arthritis can be debilitating.  In fact, arthritis and rheumatoid conditions are the leading cause of disability among US adults for the past 15 years.  So when your doctor is assessing your spine and joints and makes mention of ‘normal degenerative changes,’ that should be a clue to find another doctor.

There’s nothing normal about arthritis and join degeneration.  For your body to be in an active destruction of a joint, especially when not trauma induced, there’s a whole mess of ‘not normal’ going on.

The major problem with traditional healthcare is that they see the arthritic changes and resultant pain as the problem.  I would argue they are the effect of many other processes in your body giving you a repeated fighting chance of survival and a breaking point happens.  But for 98% of us, it’s not random chance and we’re not part of the unlucky club.

There are 3 ‘I’s’ that your primary or rheumatologist fail to address when assessing and treating arthritis.  Actually, they talk a lot about one of them, but their solutions actually cause more imbalance and worsen the condition long term.

Intestinal Permeability:

Your rheumatologist may compartmentalize your gut as just a function of digestion.  And if that’s the case, find a new doctor.  The point being is that your gut is one of your first line of defenses in your immune expression.  This is mediated through an expression of one of your immunoglobulins, SIgA (Secretor IgA).

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Obesity: A Sign of Extreme Intelligence but a Monster Ego

This post is for all those fatties out there. You know who I’m talking about…fatty, fatty, fat, fat.  Yeah, I called you fat, look at me I’m skinny.  Never stopped me from getting…slapped in the face.  Before you turn this off or post negative comments, hear me out for 3 seconds.

Being fat is a sign of extreme, high-level intelligence. Yes, that’s right.  When you are assessing that booty and belly shake in the mirror, don’t think disgusting. Think Einstein, Hawking, or even Dwight K. Schrute.

Being fat is a sign of extreme, high-level intelligence. Click To Tweet

Your body NEVER does stupid stuff. It always gives you the absolute best chance of surviving the next 30 seconds, even if it’s at the expense of your next 30 years.

Why would the body take excess energy substrate and convert it to fat?  Because it’s the preferred fuel for your brain and body to operate.  Animals that go into hibernation are living off their fat stores.  Humans don’t hibernate but there is (or was) a great possibility that we would go without food for a lengthy time.

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This Is Your Brain on Inflammation: ADHD, Autism, Depression, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s.

If you were a child of the 80s and 90s like myself, you will remember this commercial.  “This is your brain.  This is drugs.  This is your brain on drugs.  Any questions?”

With the ever rising incidences and diagnoses for ADHD, Autism, Depression, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s and nothing to resolve them in the medical world, I think we can change the 80s drug slogan to make it more applicable for today.  After all, the more we ‘early diagnose and manage/treat’ a condition, the more disability associated with that condition rises.  The best case scenario your doctor provides is to ‘manage’ the symptoms.

But here’s the reality.  Symptoms aren’t stupid.  Your body never does anything stupid.  Symptoms are nothing more than your attempts at buying time to escape what is potentially dangerous or harmful.  That potential danger could be something you ate, a lack of movement, a poor relationship, or chemical influence.  One of those symptoms is inflammation, regardless of the condition or disease process.

“This is your brain.  This is inflammation.  This is your brain on inflammation.  Any questions?”

If there’s a commonality of brain inflammation to all these mental/emotional conditions, then how does the brain get inflamed?  Don’t think of inflammation as an isolated event.  Inflammation is a byproduct of an immune response due to trauma.  And again, don’t look at trauma as just an event.  Trauma is a persistent pattern of dysfunction.  It could be physical,  chemical, or emotional/social/spiritual.

Our immune system (inflammation) gets activated for 2 main reasons.

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Heart Disease: Why We Should Rename Heart Disease to ‘Overloaded Liver Syndrome.’

This is more of a ‘random thoughts’ post.  It’s not lengthy, but hopefully one to get you thinking a bit differently about heart disease and a way to improve your risk assessment, if not for you, for a loved one.

Why do we call heart disFunctional Medicine Colorado Springsease, ‘heart disease?’ We don’t call a car accident, ‘excessive tire tracking.’ Imagine if we did treat a car accident like we do heart disease. Yes, there is an immediate need at the scene to make sure everyone is safe and traffic doesn’t get too backed up but then an investigation happens looking at the series of events that lead to ‘excessive tire tracking.’

There could be texting, speed, substance abuse, deer, or a faulty traffic light.  But policy isn’t made regarding the effect of the accident, the presence of tire tracks.  Policy is made to reduce the root causes of the accident.

With heart disease, the standard of care is to label the scene of the accident, call that the cause, and design national campaigns and policy regarding that finding.  You have high blood pressure. You have clogged arteries. You have thick blood.  You should be screened.

Yet, we ignore the tell tale signs that a heart event is on the horizon.  We know things like inflammation and insulin resistance are major risk factors affecting the heart.  But those are rarely quantified until after the heart event has hit.

Our healthcare system lacks the investigation.  And the more we try and boost heart health and early detection of heart problems, the more heart disease rises.  This happens for every diagnosis.  Cancer is an effect.  Diabetes is an effect.  Arthritis is an effect.  Yes, the current health expression may need immediate attention but that treatment doesn’t ever work to create health.  So I’m proposing we change the name of heart disease to something like ‘liver overload syndrome.’

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Fat and Fabulous or Inflamed and Ignorant

Fat and Fabulous

I was giving a presentation to a group of other doctors and students and in the mental health field last week. One attendee interrupted me when I was talking about insulin resistance.

She was probably 100 pounds overweight but told a story that she has already lost about 30 pounds, had decreased her thyroid med dose by 1/3, and even had regression of ovarian cysts. These were fantastic changes and I praised her.  She said she was fat and fabulous.

But the part that made her over step her boundaries was her statement that I shouldn’t lump all fat people as unhealthy and that all skinny people are healthy.  After all, she was fat (her words not mine) and she is healthy.

First of all, I didn’t; those words never spewed from my mouth nor will they ever. What I was discussing was how certain areas of the body have more or less affinity to store energy (insulin resistance), hence why people gain weight in the butt, gut, and thighs.  It’s an area that is a lot less resistant to insulin than the liver or muscles.  It’s an easy area to store excess energy.

Then she went on to say how healthy she was and that all her labs came out looking good, etc. I didn’t have time to get into why both of those statements are false in front of the group, so I thought I would tackle it here.  She wasn’t looking for my help, just looking to be heard in a crowd.

In my mind, I don’t look at fat as fat. I look at fat as an outward expression of inflammation. You can be fat and fabulous but don’t let that blind you to being inflamed and ignorant.

The fact that she said her labs look good is a huge red flag in my book, especially when she says that other conditions are present, like hypothyroid.  Those ‘normal’ ranges on blood work lump 95% of the population as ‘normal’ and fabulous. When I read them, I tighten and interpret those values in a much more narrow spectrum.  It ends up being more predictive and preventative in nature.

Secondly, the standard lab work is the epitome of lazy healthcare. I doubt that she was tested for anything of value, especially anything that would be measuring levels of inflammation.  If your doctor is only running a TSH to assess thyroid, your cholesterol levels to assess heart disease, or blood glucose to check diabetes, it’s time to go elsewhere.

With that said…

Inflammation

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Heart Smart…Really?

It’s February and with no surprise, the media is all over ‘heart disease’ awareness campaigns.  But if you keep following what the media (and your doctor) push, you will probably get what most of Americans are going to get.

What are Americans going to get?

How about 1 in 3 will die of CardioVascular Disease (CVD)? How about a death from CVD every 40 seconds?

How about every 40 seconds someone has a stroke and about every 4 minutes someone dies from a stroke?

They like to say deaths have decreased from CVD by 31% from 2000 – 2010.  How about an almost 30% increase in heart related surgeries from 2000 to 2010?  I’ll give it to modern medicine for saving your life in the immediate danger but if our healthcare system was truly about health, you shouldn’t be laying on the OR table in the first place.

How about 920,000 Americans having a heart attack this year?  How about 1/2 of those will show no prior symptom?  How about 1/2 of those silent heart attacks have a first symptom of death?

And if you don’t think your health is at risk, how about your wallet?  Since we are shifting to a universal health care system, your taxes go to paying $315 Billion dollars every year.  Don’t think your tax dollars are paying for it?  In 2010, it was estimated that over 2150 Americans died every day of CVD.  That equates to about 785,000 deaths/year in 2010 (today it’s estimated closer to 1 million).  ONLY 150,000 came from people younger than 65.

What rite of passage does a 65 year old have in this country?  They qualify for Medicare, the government funded health plan.  How does the government fund a health plan?  Through your tax dollars.

One of the ways that the media via the government and heart association try to change your behavior is to drill into your head that cholesterol is the enemy and is an early warning sign of CVD and should be controlled…or you will die.

A UCLA study analyzing heart attack patients nationwide found that 75% of the heart attack victims had LDL (supposed bad cholesterol) within the safe limit.  The researchers analyzed data from 136,905 patients whose lipid levels upon hospital admission were documented in the AHA data base. This accounted for 59 percent of total hospital admissions for heart attack at participating hospitals between 2000 and 2006.

UCLA

The deadly irony is that the researchers conclude that maybe cholesterol isn’t low enough?  How about opening your mind to the possibility that the cholesterol – heart disease connection is about as solid as the Iraq War – Weapons of Mass destruction connection?

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