June 7, 2018

As a doctor myself, I can see it happening all around us. The medical system is failing. But we can reverse it if we’re each able to make one simple change…

I once heard a story of a woman who, after coming back from a run, found a tick on her arm. She was able to get it off intact but was worried it had bitten her. After a few days, she began to feel weak, emotionally exhausted, and achy. The next week, she began experiencing high fevers.
She went to the doctor and explained her symptoms. She also told him she was convinced it was Lyme disease. After all, she’d found that tick. The doctor went down the checklist for diagnosing Lyme disease but told her that while yes, she had some of the symptoms, she didn’t have the “bull’s eye rash” that almost always surrounds the bite location.
So, she went home. A day or two later the symptoms worsened. And, whats more, the bull’s eye rash now presented.

She went to the ER. The doctors finally agreed that it was Lyme disease and put her on an intensive round of antibiotics. Over the next few days, the symptoms begin to decrease, and she was sent on her way. The doctors agreed: She had been healed.

But, she knew something was still wrong. She tried to explain this feeling to her doctor, but he wasn’t convinced. She went home empty-handed and worried.

A week after being “healed,” she began having night sweats, incredibly painful abdominal cramps, and fevers that reached as high as 105 degrees. But, because the doctor had told her the Lyme disease had been cured, she started to wonder if these symptoms were related to something else.

She knew something was wrong, but her doctor was, well, a doctor after all. Surely, he knew best, right?

The Misdiagnoses Epidemic

The results of recent studies are shocking: One in twelve patient cases are misdiagnosed. That statistic accounts for twelve million people each year. Studies of autopsies have shown that doctors seriously misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20 percent of the time.

It gets worse: John Hopkins University recently published a study that shows misdiagnosis and medical mistakes are now the third leading cause of death in the United States. Think about that fact: Only heart disease and cancer kill more people per year than doctors getting it wrong.

Despite all our technological advances, the American Medical Association recently published an article stating that misdiagnosis rates haven’t improved since the 1930s.

So, one thing is clear. We have a problem. But before we start trying to figure out a solution we need to ask another question. Namely, how did we end up here?

Why We’re in This Mess

Doctors care about their patients. Let’s make that clear up front. The problems in our healthcare system aren’t a result of a lack of concern from physicians.

The people involved here aren’t the problem. Instead, it’s a system issue.

The way it works now is that doctors, nurses, and the hospitals themselves aren’t paid to come up with the correct diagnosis. Instead, they’re paid to run tests, hand out prescriptions, and perform surgeries. They aren’t reimbursed for being right. They also aren’t negatively incentivized for being wrong.

Couple that with the necessity of seeing many people each day and having the ethical obligation to do something to treat them, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that misdiagnoses rates are so high.

So, what do we do about it?

The Solution

Back to my friend with Lyme disease. She knew she was still sick… even after getting a clean bill of health from her doctors. And it was getting worse.

She decided to do her own research and eventually found a doctor who knew a lot about Lyme disease. She went to her, got the right treatment, and finally, after years of being sick, was cured.

And in her story, we find the answer to our current healthcare problems. She was her own best doctor. She knew how she felt. She knew the doctors weren’t looking at the whole picture. So, she became her own advocate.

To get to that point, though, she had to be in tune with her body. She had to listen to what her body was telling her. And it’s the same thing for everyone.

If you begin building the habits that provide the foundation for so much of our health—awareness, consideration, transformation (which you can read more about here)—your body will tell you what it needs. It will tell you when you feel great and will communicate when something is wrong.

You are your best doctor. Become an advocate for your own health, and so many of the problems we see in our healthcare system will reverse themselves. Listen to your body. It’s got some great information to share!

The post You Are Your Own Best Doctor appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

December 26, 2017

Most doctors understand medicine. And medication. What they don’t always get trained in, though, is nutrition. Is your doctor approaching your type 2 diabetes care the right way?

Two things surprised me the most after working with members here at the Wellness Training Institute for just a few months.

First, because one in ten Americans now has type 2 diabetes, data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) shows that roughly two percent of Americans are injecting themselves with insulin each day.

That’s 7 million people… and that’s just in our country. For perspective, that’s roughly the populations of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston combined.

The second thing that surprised me was how easy it is to get someone off insulin. And the changes necessary are all lifestyle-related. Building healthy dietary habits to crowd out the old, bad ones, and your type 2 diabetes all but disappear within a matter of months.

So, I wondered. Why are doctors putting people on insulin in the first place? If it’s so easy to get off of it, why not nip it in the bud before you even think about pulling out the prescription pad?

When I asked Dr. Dangovian about this, he told me that it’s not that simple.

Doctors, he said, know medicine. They know medication. That’s what they learned in medical school. They rarely understand how lifestyle changes can affect their patients and if they do, they don’t have a system that is effective in following up with their patients to make sure they are making the appropriate steps to reverse their disease.

And, honestly? It’s not their fault. Not at all.

For one, it’s hard to know something you haven’t been trained in. And the life of a med student, intern, or someone up to their neck trying to fulfill their residency requirements… they’ve got a ton to learn, to remember, and manage.

Also, the medical system isn’t set up for timely follow-ups. Let’s say you’re a doctor and someone comes in with type 2 diabetes. You know you won’t see this person for at least a few months, so NOT treating their condition the best way you know how—i.e., prescribing insulin or other diabetic medication—would be a massive breach of medical ethics. As a doctor, even if you know the lifestyle elements in treating type 2 diabetes, your hands are tied as to what steps you can legitimately take.

So, again, let me be clear: If your doctor doesn’t know how to reverse your type 2 diabetes effectively, it’s not their fault.

But, here’s the thing…

Taking Ownership

It’s not their responsibility anyway. It’s yours.

It’s your health, and you’re responsible for it.

And once you take that responsibility on and educate yourself about how to reverse your type 2 diabetes? Amazing things can happen.

We have a member now who’s A1C levels were off the charts just a few months ago. The A1C (or hemoglobin A1C, or hbA1c) test is a three month average of glucose levels in your blood. If your A1C levels are below 5.7 percent, you’re good to go. No diabetes. If your levels are between 5.7 percent and 6.4 percent, you’re considered prediabetic. Anything 6.5 percent or above and you’re diabetic.

Here at the Wellness Training Institute, we shoot for 5.5 or below and believe prediabetic should be just as big of a red flag as diabetic.
This particular member’s numbers were close to 10.4… which is HIGH.

But through some simple changes in her diet, her A1C is now at 5.8 percent… and it only took four months. AND NO MEDS.

Which is even more amazing when you understand how hard it is to move that number. Since it’s a three-month average, it can take a while for those numbers to come down. Her turnaround is drastic… and it all happened because she educated herself, entered our program, and followed through. Her goal is 5.5 percent, which would mean she’s no longer diabetic. And that goal is in sight!

Type 2 Diabetes is Not Your Fate

The key here is to understand that whether you’re diabetic or pre-diabetic, it could be reversible. And often it can be done without adding more medication. In fact, our goal is always to reduce the number of meds you’re on.

Your doctor may not even know that it’s possible to reverse your diabetes.

But our program members are inspiring examples of the fact that it is possible. And not that hard to do!

The post Is Your Doctor Treating Your Diabetes the Right Way? appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

September 8, 2016

Even after twenty-plus years as a practicing cardiologist, there is one thing that—above all else—drives me nuts.

Before I get to that, though, let me make something very clear.

My Passion

Treating people—seeing sick people become well—is my passion. It’s what gets me out of bed each morning. It’s what drives every healthy habit I’ve built over a lifetime dedicated to teaching others to do the same. It’s the goal of my life.

I love being a cardiologist.

But what I hate is the culture that the medical establishment has created over the last century.

Let me explain…

The “Moderation” Myth

We hear this a lot these days: “Everything in moderation.” It’s the idea that yeah, sure, some things are bad for you. But you can still consume them as long as it’s done in moderation.

Back in the 1960s, for example, if you smoked half a pack of cigarettes a day you would’ve been considered a health nut, simply because every one smoked. Everyone smoked a lot.

So moderation, in this case, would still have killed you decades before an otherwise smoke-free lifestyle would have.

What’s frustrating about this attitude is not so much that so many people have it. Instead, it’s the source. This idea is exactly what the medical establishment has been preaching for almost a century.

And it drives me nuts.

Here’s what “moderation” really means when the medical system uses it. It means that whatever you do, whenever you do it, as long as the thing doesn’t kill you outright, medical science will be able to take care of the consequences.

Turns out, that’s an empty—and highly dangerous—promise.

This is why I have people show up in my office on a weekly basis expecting that I can fix whatever is wrong with their hearts simply by waving a magic medical wand in their general direction. They’ve spent decades eating terribly, drinking heavily, smoking their lungs to a blackened crisp, and carrying around enough belly fat to choke a horse… but the expectation is that I will be able to undo all of that with a simple procedure or a script for few pills.

Want more great information about the foundations of a healthy life? Download the first installment of our NEW 7-part eBook series The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People for FREE right now, right HERE!

This is NOT Your Fault

This, of course, isn’t the patients’ fault. Not at all. They only believe what they’ve been taught, repeatedly and loudly, over the course of their lives. Which is: Medicine and doctors are there to cure whatever is ailing you.

Live however you want to live. There’s a pill to fix everything when your health suddenly goes flying off the rails.

This is the magical answer to a very real problem. This is the end result of our “there’s a pill for that” society.

And it simply doesn’t work that way.

Not even a little, in fact.

This is how it actually works:

How “Healthy” Works

Getting healthy—and staying that way—comes when your bad habits are replaced with good, healthy ones. It happens when you slowly but deliberately gain awareness of what you are doing on daily basis, why you are doing it, and making the choice to replace the unhealthy with the life-giving.

None of this happens in isolation, however. And, like I said, none of it happens quickly.

Just like it took you fifty years for that smoking habit to finally corrode your heart and lungs to the point that it’s now life-threatening, so too does it take a while for new habits to form.

There’s not a pill for that, unfortunately.

But there is a plan.

The post First Do No Harm: The One Things that Drives Me NUTS as a Doctor appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

July 21, 2016

You wouldn’t know it from the way the job title is used these days, but the root word for “doctor”—from the Latin docere (pronounced DO-key-ray)—means “to teach.”

Which sums up nicely one of the biggest problems with today’s American medical system.

When I was a young man—eighteen or nineteen, tops—I went to my doctor and asked him how to be healthy. He looked at me as if I were crazy, and told me to come back when something went wrong.

TO TEACH
That’s not teaching. That’s not even helpful. A doctor should be there— docere— to teach.

Which is one of the foundational reasons for why I started the Wellness Training Institute. To teach. To show my patients and Wellness Program Members how to reverse what’s wrong with them—or to prevent it outright.

I have patients coming in all the time with issues that could’ve been completely eliminated if only they’d known a few key things when they were younger.

And one of the conditions I come across time and time again—and one that breaks my heart simply because it isn’t the inevitable outcome of just getting older—is metabolic syndrome.

WHAT IS METABOLIC SYNDROME?
Metabolic syndrome is a little bit of a touchy area among diagnosticians, only because it can be a little slippery to define. But because I’m a doctor who’s decided to embrace the classical definition of the title itself, I’ll attempt to define it here.

Metabolic syndrome is sort of an umbrella term that covers a number of conditions that lead to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, as well as a wide range of autoimmune disorders. Metabolic syndrome also covers thyroid disease (Grave’s disease, for example, or Hashimoto’s), high blood pressure, dimention, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Osteoporosis. And many others.

The key here is that none of those things that falls underneath this particular umbrella is anything you’d ever want to have. All of this stuff is bad with a capital B.

The other key here is that these conditions account for a huge portion of deaths in America every year.

And each and every one is preventable. They are all lifestyle-related.

Want more great information about the foundations of a healthy life? Download the first installment of our NEW 7-part eBook series The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People for FREE right now, right HERE!

THE 5 SNEAKY SYMPTOMS OF METABOLIC SYNDROME
Here are the five main signs that you might be developing metabolic syndrome. Sometimes people experience each of them. Other times, it’s only a couple. The point is that if any of these apply to you, it’s time to take a good, hard look at what habits have led you this far.

Here are the five symptoms:

1. Abnormal craving for sugar
This goes above and beyond that craving for the occasional Snickers bar. It’s a total and unrelenting desire to stuff yourself with the substance that, when put into a gas tank, completely destroys an automobile.

2. Unexplained belly fat
This doesn’t mean that you wake up one morning to find that aliens have abducted you, stuffed you to the point of popping with goose down, and left with no explanation. No need to contact either Mulder or Scully. This is when you’ve gained weight, tried to get it off in ways that have worked in the past, but that inflatable pool toy you now call a gut just won’t disappear.

3. Brain fog
You might feel a little off. A little slow. Thinking becomes hard. In fact, you often find yourself thinking about thinking, which just makes things worse.

4. Excessive fatigue
Have you ever had mono? Do you remember how tired you felt? This feels the same, only with none of the making out beforehand.

5. Irregular sleep patterns
You are tired. It’s 4 AM. So very tired. But you can’t sleep. But now it’s noon. Let’s get some lunch. Lunch sounds good. But you are still so tired. So very ti…

WARNING SIGNS
By themselves, these conditions are sort of irritating. No one likes brain fog. Nobody would willing want to walk around with an extra tire around their midsection. Irregular sleep sucks.

But when you see these annoyances for what they are—symptoms—you may start to get a glimpse of what’s to come. A glimpse of what’s actually happening inside you. They might not just be little annoyances. They might actually be honest-to-gosh warning signs.

The good news, of course, is that to a great point, metabolic syndrome is reversible. For most people, lifestyle changes—especially if the symptoms are caught early on and new healthy habits are formed—can change course pretty drastically.

TOO LIGHT TO NOTICE/TOO HEAVY TO BE BROKEN
The underlying theme here, of course, is that all kinds of diseases—metabolic or otherwise—are completely preventable. All it takes is education up front. Knowing the end result of what today’s habits are going to lead to is a powerful form of prevention.

Education is key.

But habits are sneaky. You don’t always even know they are habits. Warren Buffet has paraphrased the 18th century British poet Samuel Johnson on a number of occasions to just this point: “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” I think that sums the dilemma up nicely.

It’s the job of the younger person to take care of her older, future self. So, if good habits are formed—and if those habits are shaped by doctors who are doing what they should be, namely, teaching—a whole world of hurt and heartache will be saved down the line.

If you are younger (in your 20s, maybe or 30s) and one or more of these signs is flaring at you, take action now. The younger you are, the easier it is to change direction. Catch it now, act on it, and change your habits, and you will be surprised at how different your future will look.

But maybe you’re past that. Maybe those symptoms are already manifesting in a big way. If so, I would encourage you to begin taking steps to reverse it. Switch to a plant-based diet, join a yoga class, or just quit drinking pop.

Whatever.

Just start somewhere. And then find someone who knows what they’re talking about to help you along through the journey ahead.

THE SIGNS ARE THERE FOR A REASON
Don’t ignore the warning signs. Each of the five symptoms above is unpleasant. But compared to what is coming down the line if you don’t do anything, any one of them will feel comparatively like a vacation.

Don’t be complacent. Don’t be reactive. Be proactive.

Just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you should be feeling any worse.

Give the body what it needs and it will take care of you for a long, long time.

Just remember: No one can give you back your health. That’s why they call it “your health.” It’s yours. You own it. You can throw it away, or you can take a small step right now in the right direction and, even with that first small step forward, begin creating a future that’s much, much brighter.

(If you really want to get serious about preventing or reversing metabolic syndrome, I would encourage to attend one of our FREE educational dinners. It’s a great starting point, and you’ll walk out at the end far more enlightened than when you started. I’d stake my title as Docere on it. Plus, it’s FREE.)

The post The 5 Sneaky Signs of Metabolic Syndrome appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.