Staying Healthy with Preventive Medicine Prevent Disease, Don’t Just Treat It
The BodyLogicMD strategy focuses on preventive medicine. But just what does that mean? And how is it different from traditional medicine? The key lies in maintaining good health and preventing disease through a whole-body approach to medicine.
Understanding Preventive Medicine
The Cost of Prevention Another advantage to preventative medicine is its cost. In traditional medicine, doctors generally just treat the symptom or complaint that caused you to seek them out. However, those symptoms and complaints can resurface. You may come back with the same problem. This kind of reactive treatment can be very costly. It often requires many doctor visits and many lab visits. On the other hand, with preventative medicine, we treat the root of the problem and investigate ways to prevent other problems before they arise. This results in fewer doctor visits and labs with less need for chronic care. And, in many cases, the cost of supplementation can be less than that of reactive prescription medications with all their inherent risks and possible interactions.
In traditional medicine, the patient is often treated as a constellation of symptoms. Preventive medicine, on the other hand, looks at the patient Jeff Donohue, MD as a whole. This different approach to medicine focuses primarily on the potential root causes of the problem, which in many cases is hormone imbalance, rather than just treating the symptoms. We also focus on a variety of treatment interventions. If prescription Finding the medication is needed, we will use Right Supplements it, but we frequently use safer methods with fewer side Supplements can be extremely effective, but it’s important effects. to get a pharmaceutical grade supplement. While no Many conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, high supplement is 100 percent pure, pharmaceutical grade blood pressure and high cholesterol are easier to prevent products, at 99 percent pure, and are far superior than to treat or reverse once they’re already in place. to most over-the-counter products. Standards and But, even when conditions have already taken root, their procedures for manufacturing these over-the-counter symptoms often improve through proper nutrition, fitness vitamins and supplements are often less stringent and and hormone balancing using all natural bioidentical they are not required to be tested for content or purity. hormones. At BodyLogicMD, we only partner with the most qualified
A Safer Form of Medicine Preventive medicine can actually be safer than traditional medicine — largely because the focus is on treating the body as a whole. Modern medicine that didn’t exist a generation ago is offering us opportunities to restore and empower our bodies in ways never before possible. With functional medicine, I’m able to bring my patients the best that science, medicine and nutrition has to offer, which is having a significant effect on their overall health. That’s something they truly appreciate.
pharmaceutical and supplement companies in the industry. When it comes to supplements, there are three definitive necessities. Based on your symptoms, we can certainly build up your regimen from there, but the three supplements I almost always recommend are: n Vitamin D. You need plenty of vitamin D, but not in the doses that you traditionally see. Many vitamin D supplements provide around 400 to 800 IUs, but I recommend anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 IUs.
n Fish
Oil. Many studies have shown the efficacy of fish oil in disease prevention. It may be particularly effective in maintaining digestive and cardiovascular health and may help to lower blood pressure and prevent sudden cardiac death. n Multivitamins. In order to make sure all your enzymes function properly, you need certain amounts of B vitamins, C vitamins and trace minerals. A quality multivitamin is generally a good source of these nutrients.
Beyond Supplementation Preventative medicine extends beyond just supplementation. It’s important to take a whole-body approach to medicine. We also evaluate your overall lifestyle. We offer exercise plans that can work with your life regardless of your current fitness level. If your diet is not ideal, we provide guidance on how to improve your nutrition. Proper fitness and nutrition can go far in improving your overall health and reducing your risk of disease. It’s also important to look at your stress levels and check your cortisol. The stress hormone cortisol is one of the keys to the prevention of disease and cortisol imbalances — whether it’s high or low — can have a serious impact on disease states. So we need to make sure that your levels are within range and, if they’re not, help you get them balanced. Imbalances of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and other hormones can have a significant effect on how you feel, overall. All of your hormones work together, so if your levels of any one hormone are too high or low, the rest of your hormones are affected. We check these hormones as well and help you achieve hormonal balance through bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT).
Preventing Diseases Studies have shown that preventive medicine can reduce the occurrence of many medical conditions, including: n Osteoporosis and related fractures n Cardiovascular disease n Alzheimer’s disease n Parkinson’s disease n Diabetes n High Blood Pressure n High Cholesterol n Crohn’s disease n Many forms of cancer Thanks to modern medicines that did not exist just a generation ago, we can offer you opportunities to restore and empower your body in ways never before possible. Now you can reverse the effects of aging and look and feel better than you have in years.
Practicing Preventive Medicine In preventive medicine, we offer patients a different approach to wellness. My colleagues at BodyLogicMD and I are traditionally-trained doctors, but we’ve spent hundreds of additional hours studying preventative medicine. This adds to what we already know to make us truly among the most highly qualified physicians in this field of medicine. It makes a difference in how we interact with our patients too. Without the constraints of health insurance, we can spend the necessary time with our patients evaluating
how your genetics and family history may affect your risk of various diseases. With this knowledge, we can provide you with supplements, exercise plans or nutritional guidance that may reduce your risks so that you are less likely to develop those diseases. But it’s not just focused on disease. While helping you to reduce your disease risk, we are also working to improve your overall health. We don’t just want you to be diseasefree — we want to help you reach and maintain optimal overall health, so that you can feel your very best.
To learn more about my preventive medicine practice, visit www.bodylogicmd.com or call my office at (866) 460-3246.