The Prevention Center for Heart & Brain Health: A New Name, New Office and New Book!
The Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Center has a new home and a new name. Earlier this year, my team and I welcomed the first patients to our new medical offices at 371 E. Fifth Avenue in Spokane, Wash. Upon opening the center, we decided to broaden our name to The Prevention Center for Heart & Brain Health to reflect the current focus of the BaleDoneen Method: protecting and enhancing arterial wellness to help patients of all ages lead longer and healthier lives. The opening of the new center coincided with the release of the new BaleDoneen Method book, Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain: The Personalized Path to Protect Your Memory, Prevent Heart Attacks and Strokes, and Avoid Chronic Illness. Drawing on the latest peer-reviewed science, the book presents an easy-to-implement plan to help readers avoid heart attacks, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, diabetes, peripheral artery disease, cancer, chronic inflammation and other debilitating conditions.
How Standard Care Can Fail Patients
When the Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Center (HASPC) opened in 2001, the original goal was to bridge a dangerous gap in our healthcare system: When we looked for specialists in preventing heart attacks and strokes, we couldn’t find any, even though more than 1.6 million Americans suffer these events each year, and of that number, 775,000 die.
As we recently reported, rates of heart attack and strokes have soared among younger adults (those under age 55). In addition, rates of metabolic disorders — such as insulin resistance, type 2 diabewwtes, obesity and metabolic syndrome (a gang of five cardiovascular villains that triple risk for heart attack and stroke and quadruple it for diabetes) —have reached epidemic levels in the U.S., collectively affecting more than 115 million Americans.
Although all these maladies greatly increase a patient’s risk for developing arterial disease, they often go undiagnosed and untreated until the person has already suffered a heart attack or stroke. Even then, “nearly all cardiology practices are poorly suited” to manage the care of patients with CVD and metabolic disease (a condition typically managed by endocrinologists), according a recent report published in American Journal of Medicine. Its authors, cardiologists Drs. Robert Eckel and Michael Blaha from the Johns Hopkins Ciccarrone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, call for a new medical specialty that they’ve named “cardiometabolic medicine.” It would combine internal medicine, cardiology and endocrinology to improve the care of patients who have CVD and metabolic maladies. Currently, Drs. Eckel and Blaha report, patients with CVD and metabolic disorders are “shunted back and forth among cardiologist, endocrinologist and primary care physician — with uncertain ‘ownership’ of different aspects of the patient’s care.” In other words, the situation is like a football team without a quarterback to call the plays.
ARTERIOLOGY: A Revolutionary New Strategy to Save Hearts, Brains and Lives
Although we applaud Drs. Eckel and Blaha for their desire to provide improved care for the millions of Americans with cardiometabolic disease, we don’t feel this approach goes far enough. Instead, we have advanced the BaleDoneen Method by pioneering a groundbreaking new medical specialty called “arteriology,” which has a more holistic focus. It encompasses the total care of patients with diseased arteries, by optimizing the health of the more than 60,000 miles of blood vessels that nourish every tissue and organ in the body, including the heart and brain. Arteriology is designed to transcend the medical silos that result in incomplete, fragmented care for people with blood-vessel disorders. For example, people who suffer strokes are typically treated by neurologists, while those who have heart attacks are treated by cardiologists. Yet almost all of these events stem from the same cause: plaque that has been growing silently inside the artery walls becomes so inflamed that it ruptures explosively, like a volcano spewing molten lava.
In an attempt to heal the breach, the blood vessel forms a clot. If the clot travels to the brain, the result is a stroke. If the clot obstructs a coronary artery, a heart attack can occur. Arterial disease can also affect the body from head to toe, causing everything from excruciating leg or chest pain to heart failure, vision problems, erectile dysfunction, chronic kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, digestive disorders, vascular dementia and other forms of memory impairment.
Arteriology uses a team approach in which medical and dental providers work together to optimize their patients’ oral-systemic wellness. Large studies have shown that one of the simplest — and most effective — keys to a longer, healthier life is to combine regular dental checkups with excellent self-care. Indeed, one of our recent peer-reviewed publications has been called “landmark” because it was the first to show that oral bacteria from gum disease can cause CVD.
Teaming Up to Stop Arterial Disease in Its Tracks
Arteriology encompasses the work of many specialists, including family physicians, functional and integrative medicine doctors, sleep specialists, psychologists, nutritionists, cardiologists, neurologists, geneticists and other specialists looking to incorporate personalized medicine and genetically guided treatment into their areas of practice. Our new center will serve as a training center for healthcare providers who want to incorporate the BaleDoneen Method’s leading-edge, precision medicine approach into their medical or dental practices.
Recently, a peer-reviewed study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Ciccarrone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, including Dr. Blaha and Dr. Steven Jones, found that the BaleDoneen Method rapidly shrinks and stabilizes arterial plaque, helping people avoid heart attacks and strokes. It was also proven that the method eradicated lipid-rich arterial plaque (the most dangerous kind) in 100 percent of cases.
The study included 328 patients of the HASPC, who were tracked for five years. An earlier peer-reviewed study of 572 patients treated with the BaleDoneen Method, published in 2014 in Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, reported dramatic reductions over an eight-year period in plaque deposits, fasting blood sugar, LDL cholesterol, blood pressure and inflammation.
As an added benefit, our method also helps prevent type 2 diabetes — a condition that affects about 30 million Americans, one-third of whom are undiagnosed, greatly escalating their cardiovascular danger. As we recently reported, there is a very strong link between insulin resistance (IR) — the disorder that leads to diabetes — and greatly increased risk for a heart attack or stroke. Having IR or diabetes also greatly increases risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease, so much so that some experts have proposed renaming Alzheimer’s disease “type 3 diabetes.”
Find Out How to “Fireproof” Your Arteries!
Because our method also extinguishes the chronic inflammation that sparks many debilitating diseases, our arteriology-based approach also helps prevent many of the devastating disorders that result in many people outliving their health. New research reveals that most people spend the last 13 years of their life in an unhealthy state. Perhaps the greatest benefit of the BaleDoneen Method is helping our patients achieve a health span that matches their lifespan.
To learn more about how our unique, holistic approach to arterial wellness can help you avoid chronic illness, protect your memory, and prevent heart attacks and strokes, order your copy of Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain today — and find out why talk show host Ed Mylett credits the BaleDoneen Method with saving his life! The book is available in hardcover, audio and e-book editions at Amazon and many other booksellers.
We also welcome additional reader reviews on our Amazon page, so please share your opinion of the book. Here’s what one reader recently wrote: “Wow! This amazing book can transform anyone’s life for the better, with actionable steps in every chapter to prevent the world’s number one killer: arterial disease. You no longer need to wonder if you’ll suffer a heart attack or stroke — even if these conditions run in your family. This book provides a great roadmap of how to safeguard and enhance the wellness of your entire body!