Heart disease or cardiovascular disease is the class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels (arteries and veins). While the term technically refers to any disease that affects the cardiovascular system, it is usually used to refer to those related to atherosclerosis (arterial disease).
The great news about cardiovascular disease is that it is reversible. Your body has an innate intelligence that is working to correct underlying imbalances in the heart, arteries and veins. The problem with many peoples’ life style is that it gets in the way of this natural repair mechanism. High levels of stress, poor diet and over consumption of caffeine are intimately connected to the extent of disease and only serve to increase the extent of the disease process. The trick here is to understand what a poor diet is. What may damage one person’s arteries could repair another’s system so this is unique to your individual needs.
It is incredible that the mis-education of America continues at the rate that it does. Not a week passes in my office where I do not have a patient who has been told to follow a low fat diet and is blindly being medicated for a symptom that is completely controllable with simple changes. Worse yet, the statin drugs being used to control the symptom of elevated cholesterol increase the stress on the cardiovascular system. Most people understand that smoking and eating fast food are problems but this is only the tip of the iceberg for the underlying problems.
I was asked to lecture on Health at a hospital in Pittsburgh 7 years ago and there was a dietitian teaching from the model of the old food pyramid. She was discussing with a man the importance of a low fat diet. Sadly 90% of the information she was communicating has been disproven and was wrong. Worse yet, this mis-information only serves to sustain the cardiovascular disease state. She was well informed in telling him that exercise would be of benefit. If you exercise one hour a day though, how can that undo the other 15 waking hours of poor health habits? Really it can’t. That is why identifying the individual health imbalances and functional metabolic changes in your body are imperative.
When working with a Functional Medicine, Certified Clinical Nutritionist you will hear the word functional quite a bit. What we are referring to is that subtle changes in your blood work may not always raise the red flags for your medical doctor and underlying causes of disease may go unaddressed allowing a disease state to continue uninterrupted.
I work in the world of correcting small imbalances to create the environment of self-healing in your body. You may be amazed at the source of your elevated cholesterol or high blood pressure. You may also be amazed to learn that the drugs you are taking could be allowing you to sustain your current level of disease and are doing nothing to promote healing in your body. In fact they may be standing directly in the way of repair. We will use blood work and standard medical analysis to verify that we have reversed the disease process naturally.
I look forward to helping you understand the source of your cardiovascular stress. More importantly I look forward to helping you reverse it naturally. — Dr. Conan Shaw Functional Medicine, Certified Clinical Nutritionist, Pittsburgh PA