Prevention: Focusing On Overall Health, Wellness and Disease Prevention
As I have mentioned before, prevention is the goal in alternative medicine. On the other hand, conventional medicine focuses on treating disease and symptoms, but they are missing the importance of prevention. If your overall health is good and you are giving your body the right nutrients and what it needs, there won’t be a need for disease treatment and instead the focus will be on staying healthy.
At SOPHIA, prevention is what we focus on and that is the reason why we perform routine exams on all of our patients to determine if there is a risk for a disease or not. Among the examinations we perform are Boston Heart and Digital Pulse Analysis (DPA):
- Boston Heart– This is not your regular cholesterol profile. It is a comprehensive cholesterol specialized test that helps determine what your cardiovascular health looks like. In addition to measuring your cholesterol, this test also measures genetic markers, cholesterol transport/production and absorption, particle sizes, cholesterol balance (the amount of good and bad fats you eat in your diet), inflammation and atherogenic markers, metabolic (glucose profile), pre diabetes assessment, liver and kidney function, among others. This is a very helpful blood test because it gives so much information that lets us approach each individual case and target areas that need adjustment to decrease risk and prevent disease.
- Digital Pulse Analysis (DPA) – DPA is an FDA approved device that provides data about the health of your arteries. It is a painless and simple test that evaluates the changes in pressure, velocity, blood flow and elasticity of small and large arteries. It also measures the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) which has been shown to have a relationship with higher mortality rates in healthy and unhealthy individuals whenever it is low. This can be used to determine disease risk. DPA also measures the balance of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) which is so fundamental because stress has been shown to increase risk of heart disease. Stress is also a major factor in many chronic diseases and being able to determine if there is an autonomic nervous system imbalance with the DPA is very important and useful for treatment.
Get your wellness exam and find out if you are at risk of developing a heart disease. Don’t wait, it is preventable and we are here to help you prevent it and keep your body healthy. Ask us, we are here for you!
Dr. Yarilis Vazquez, ND
Naturopathic Doctor- SOPHIA Natural Health