Heart Disease & Cardiovascular Wellness
Cardiovascular disease is now the leading cause of death in the US. About 1 of every 3 deaths is due to heart disease! We treat cardiovascular disease with dietary changes, lifestyle changes and supplement regimen. Mainstream doctor’s approaches tries to lower your cholesterol, lower your blood pressure, or lowering your blood sugar with medications like statins, beta blockers, and ACE inhibitors. Using these techniques are treating the symptom, but it is not getting to the root cause of the issue. Heart disease can be due to many different things!
We address multiple different factors like cholesterol, inflammation, oxidative stress, blood clotting genes, endothelial dysfunction, genetics, etc. All of these factors can contribute to cardiac disease, not just cholesterol, blood pressure, or blood sugar! AFM does extensive blood work for each patient to see the comprehensive levels. We use preventative measures for patients that have family histories of cardiovascular disease and strokes. We use a more aggressive treatment protocol for patients already diagnosed with diabetes or heart disease. These holistic treatments have been extremely successful in our practice. We have seen a reversal in heart issues and significant improvements in patients’ overall health and symptoms.
Preventing & Improving Cardiovascular Health
We ask patients to go on an elimination diet. This entails eliminating gluten, diary, soy, corn, and sugar. This may sound like an extreme measure, however, once you eliminate these for 4-6 weeks, huge improvements in markers and symptoms are recorded. We discuss increasing colorful fruits and vegetables, eating low-insulin demand foods, and supplementing your deficiencies.
Increasing movement can drastically decrease your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke! All muscles need exercise, especially your heart! We ask to just start off with 10 minutes a day and slowly work up your tolerance. This will allow your mind and body to get used to daily, consistent movement and better equip your body with all the fuel it needs.
Diet, exercise, and supplements can only do so much. Stress is also a huge factor for cardiovascular disease. It can significantly increase your risk by increasing inflammation and increasing your risk for blood clots. We try to teach you techniques to help de-stress your mind and body by using yoga or breathing techniques.