Remember Tim Russert?

Chief of the Washington Bureau of NBC News and longtime moderator of Meet the Press, he was the preeminent political journalist of his generation. At the age of just 58, Mr. Russert died of a massive heart attack in spite of his seemingly clean bill of health and a “normal” stress test results. According to the press, “he took blood pressure and cholesterol pills, and aspirin, rode an exercise bike, had yearly stress tests and dutifully were trying to lose weight. But he died of a heart attack anyway, leaving 16 million Americans in a state of nervous indignation.”

Just this case alone points to the fact that “normal” or “within normal range” is not the killer it’s been made out to be. The tragedy, though, is that the US and the rest of the Western world has become obsessed with removing substances from the body that nature intended us to have.

Because of this obsession, many medical professionals worry only about cholesterol levels or the percentages of cholesterol-laden plaques in arteries and ignore the other risk factors for coronary vascular disease. 

In 2000, doctors at Harvard University published a series of landmark research studies revealing the central role of inflammation in cardiovascular disease. In 1997, Dr. Paul Ridker, Director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and a primary investigator of the JUPITER Study said that “we have to think of heart disease as an inflammatory disease, just as we think of rheumatoid arthritis as an inflammatory disease.” Ridker’s discovery of a direct link between C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation, and a higher risk of heart disease subsequently led to other far-reaching and complex risk-factors that go beyond the solitary threat of high cholesterol.

That’s why at my clinic, The Life Center for Healthy Aging, I employ the pioneers of inflammatory testing essays – Cleveland Heart Laboratories. Their group of tests covers a patient’s biomarker profile which may result from lifestyle concerns (F2-IsoPs, OxLDL) to the development of metabolic or cardiovascular disease (ADMA/SDMA, Microalbumin, hsCRP) and formation of vulnerable plaque and increased risk for an adverse event (Lp-PLA2 Activity, MPO).

Recently, I was invited to speak at the BaleDoneen Method Preceptorship Convention, a two-day course teaching healthcare providers (MD, DO, NP, PA, DMD, PharmD) the necessary measures to prevent, treat and even eradicate heart attacks, ischemic strokes and type 2 diabetes. The BaleDoneen Method was co-founded by Bradley Bale, MD and Amy Doneen, DNP, ARNP, the pioneers of this rapidly evolving field of medicine. It offers a unique, comprehensive and science-based approach to detecting, preventing and treating CVD that has been shown in two peer-reviewed studies to halt or even reverse the disease and prevent heart attacks and strokes.

I’m truly honored to be a part of this revolutionary movement and am thrilled to be continued to be invited to speak at each of their conferences. But it is only for visionaries like Amy Doneen, Bradley Bale and Cleveland Heart Laboratories that I’m able to detect, treat and even reverse the direful risk of CVD, heart attacks and strokes. 

You can learn more about the BaleDoneen Method on their website https://www.baledoneen.com

To register for the upcoming BaleDoneen Preceptorship Course in November of 2018 go to https://www.baledoneen.com/attend/about-preceptorship/register-for-atlanta-georgia-preceptorship-course See you there!

To learn more about Cleveland Heart Laboratories https://www.clevelandheartlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Artery-Wall-OnePager-CHL-D003e.pdf