Are You in Control of Your Cardiometabolic Health?
Cardiovascular disease generally refers to conditions involving narrowed or blocked blood vessels that can lead to heart attack, chest pain or stroke. Given the prevalence and severity of these conditions, it is no surprise that reducing cardiovascular risk is the #1 question on patients’ minds.
How We Help Our Clients Control & Reduce Their Cardiometabolic Risk
Given the prevalence and severity of cardiovascular disease, it is no surprise that the number one question patients ask their health care practitioners is, “How do I reduce my risk for cardiovascular disease?”
Oftentimes, the answer to this question is a prescription: a statin for cholesterol, beta blocker for blood pressure or insulin for blood sugar. This style of treatment is called a polypharmacy approach, in that health care practitioners prescribe multiple drugs to help manage certain numbers.
Unfortunately, this approach won’t attack the root cause or consider why these numbers are elevated, leaving patients feeling confused and helpless.
A functional approach to cardiometabolic treatment breaks the polypharmacy mold and puts you in control of your cardiometabolic risk. This approach uses lifestyle medicine to attack the root cause of elevated numbers while considering the connections between them.
We can provide you with a comprehensive and targeted solution for improving cardiometabolic health that looks beyond the numbers and considers the why. Finally, you will have an answer to that number one question and take back control of your health!
Understanding Your Cardiometabolic Risk
Cardiometabolic risk is a collection of factors that help determine a patient’s overall risk for cardiometabolic disease.
Regardless of your risk level, the recommended course of treatment is often focused on drug therapies aimed at reducing an individual lab value (e.g., a statin for high LDL). This type of management is a reactive way of helping you lower your risk, but it clearly does not attack the underlying cause of the problem.
An abnormal lab value is a signal of multiple levels of body functions failing; therefore, simply addressing the lab value will not solve the many layers of dysfunction that continue to persist.
In order to truly improve risk, we must be proactive and attack the underlying cause of the problem. The cause of increased cardiometabolic risk is often a decreased physiological resilience and metabolic reserve caused by chronic inflammation and insulin resistance stemming from poor lifestyle choices such as obesity, physical inactivity, stress, environmental factors, and nutrient deficiencies.
We all have an aunt or uncle who lives a very unhealthy lifestyle and still lived to be 95 years old. On the flip side, we all know someone who practiced a very healthy lifestyle, but unfortunately was diagnosed with cardiometabolic disease before the age of 60.
These two groups of people are anomalies, and they represent a very small portion of the general population. Even though your genes play a role in disease progression, they are not the deciding factor for a majority of the population.
Introducing The Strong and Healthy Heart Program
Your risk for cardiometabolic disease takes years to develop. The cumulative burden of years of poor choices eventually add up to create your risk or health profile. This is called the metabolic continuum. If you’ve made some unhealthy choices over your lifetime, you can change your course. However, if you take no action, the risk for disease will snowball as the years progress.
Our team will help you understand where you fall on the metabolic continuum, and how you can take steps to improve your trajectory as needed.
Chronic inflammation is commonly the cause of your cardiometabolic risk. If unaddressed and unstopped, your risk can then turn into full cardiometabolic disease. Luckily, your risk setting can be significantly improved by using the power of lifestyle medicine to help lower and control chronic inflammation.
Here’s What The Strong and Healthy Heart Program Includes…
Nutrition Plan
Smart food choices do more than just control your body weight. They can improve your cholesterol level, blood sugar levels, blood pressure and ultimately reduce your risk for disease. We will help you customize a nutrition plan that reduces your risk for cardiometabolic disease through one-on-one or group coaching.
Stress Reduction Plan
No one enjoys feeling stressed out. It hurts relationships, hinders productivity, and interferes with our normal healthy routines. Our Strong and Healthy Heart program measures the body’s response to stress through in office testing. We educate our patients about the effects stress has on the body and how best to counter those effects. In addition we use lab work to measure the stress response and monitor the results of the program.
Movement Plan
Sitting is the new smoking. Research shows that being a couch potato or a desk sitter is just as bad for you as smoking. Body weight, cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure are all negatively impacted by inactivity. The goal is to participate in both daily exercise and activity because they are essential for reducing disease risk and maximizing health. We will create an exercise/movement plan for you that is safe, doable, and fun.
Environmental Factors
Did you know the air we breathe, personal care products we use and the water we drink are all risk factors for cardiometabolic disease? You might not know it, but these daily exposures to toxins can place a significant burden on your liver and immune system. Our Strong and Healthy Heart program assesses your risk through a comprehensive history. Testing for toxins can be measured as well. A specific diet or herbal regimen may be prescribed to best support your body’s ability to eliminate environmental and cellular wastes.
Advanced Lipid Testing
All of our program participants will receive advanced cardiometabolic testing through Boston Heart Diagnostics. Testing will include standard lipid and metabolic panels plus advanced testing for lipid particles, inflammation, fatty acid balance, and pancreatic beta cell function.
Further testing is at the discretion of ordering physician and may include:
Salivary hormone testing
Functional Stool Testing
Urinary Toxic Elements
Nutrient Level Testing
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Strong and Healthy Heart Program Right For Me?
If you’re tired of shuffling from doctor to doctor without ever getting to the root of your chronic health issues, and if you want to optimize your health holistically through sound lifestyle modifications, advanced lab testing and mind-body techniques without unnecessary medications, then our program may just be what you’ve been looking for all along. Just know that it takes a serious commitment to make the lifestyle changes necessary to transform your health once and for all.
What About Supplements & Lab Testing?
What Should I Expect From My Free Discovery Call?
What Should I Expect From The Initial Appointment?
Our team at Sophia Natural Health strives to provide you with the most effective and medically advanced techniques available. We are here for you… to help you finally reach your desired health goals.
When we speak over the phone, we’ll assess whether this program is right for you… and answer any questions you may have. Simply pick a time and date that works best for you!