You’ve heard about the prevalence of strokes and heart attacks.  Maybe someone you love has faced such a health crisis.

It’s frightening, especially when a person who seems to be the picture of fitness suffers a sudden loss of health, inevitably, we ask, could it happen to me?

At Health Quest Family Medicine, we believe you can avoid such tragedy in your own life.  Here’s why.  Research and treatment outcomes show heart attacks, strokes, and type 2 diabetes – a closely related condition – can be prevented.

While comprehensive testing through our heart attack & stroke prevention program will give you the most precise assessment of your level of risk, there are a number of red flags we look for, such as:

• Personal and family history of cardiovascular disease
• Personal and family history of heart attacks, strokes, or type 2 diabetes
• Elevated cholesterol
• Nicotine use in any form and/or secondary exposure
• Psychosocial issues such as depression, anxiety, or stress           
• Diabetes (risk factor for heart attack and stroke)
• Gestational diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Abdominal obesity
• Sleep problems
• Age (over 40 for men and over 50 for women)
• Gum disease
• Erectile dysfunction
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Lupus
• Psoriasis
• Migraine headaches
• Gout
• Polycystic ovaries
• Hirsutism (facial hair growth in women)
• Oligomenorrhea (changes in menstrual cycles)
• Hispanic or African American descent
• Osteoporosis

Your best means of prevention lie in education and early detection.  Our heart attack & stroke prevention program combines the science of disease-detection with lifestyle counsel and pioneering medical treatment to empower you to protect your health.

These key elements are groundbreaking advancements to halt - and even reverse – the progress of disease.  This method has garnered international attention and other health care providers across North America are receiving training.

Because everything we do starts with patient education, let’s explore the causes and treatment of heart disease, strokes, and diabetes.

Disease in our arteries can begin as early as our teenage years.

Oftentimes, a body’s resistance to insulin – a natural hormone produced by the pancreas – leads to type 2 diabetes and disease in your blood vessels.  Insulin resistance can also eventually result in cardiovascular disease.

Other factors can harm your arteries, as well, and most heart attacks and strokes are the end result of that damaged condition, – however it starts.  Yet, the problem develops so silently, six of every 10 Americans who have suffered a heart attack never knew they had cardiovascular disease.

Blood clots cause the majority of heart attacks and all ischemic strokes; an ischemic stroke happens when an artery in your brain is blocked.

Clot formation is just the end of a long process.  It begins as inflammation in the arteries incited by cholesterol.  In response to the inflammation, plaque pushes its way under the artery lining, causing the arteries to thicken.  A weakened artery will fight to hold in the unstable plaque, but the plaque can rupture without warning, breaking through the vessel wall.  The body senses danger and rushes repair cells to the scene.

What happens next could change a life forever.  Those repair cells form a blood clot, which blocks the artery.  A clot as small as a baby aspirin can stop a heart or trigger a stroke.

Heart attacks and ischemic strokes are preventable, but it takes more than medicine’s current standard of care.  It takes optimal care.

Although cardiologists and heart surgeons across the country have successfully lowered the rate of death from heart attacks, the sheer number of heart attacks and strokes has not dropped.  Treatment methods may have improved, but the health care industry’s approach to prevention has not gone far enough.

Our heart attack and stroke prevention program allows us to analyze your risk in precise detail.  Given that eight out of 10 people with coronary artery disease have the same cholesterol levels as those with no disease; it seems clear that traditional risk assessment tools are not enough.

We’re guided by laboratory data that outlines your unique genetics along with a number of non-invasive structural tests, such as the coronary calcification scores, the ankle-brachial index (ABI), and the carotid intimae media thickness test (CIMT), an ultrasound scan of the carotid artery walls in your neck.  The scan reveals any buildup of dangerous plaque in the walls of your vessels.

Once we analyze your risk, we take a comprehensive treatment approach, with pharmacological; exercise, and nutrition advice based on your specific risk factors.

Should we identify the presence of disease, we’ll tell you why it originated and design a truly individualized treatment program for you, integrating both medical and lifestyle components.

We will provide nutrition and lifestyle coaching to help you combat disease or – if your evaluation indicates you’re free of illness – to help keep you that way.

You’ll find nutritional guidance is both respectful of your food preferences and realistic given how you live your life.  In fact, we will advocate the fewest changes possible to help you achieve your goals for preventing or managing disease.  We will coordinate your nutritional program with your other providers to ensure a thorough, well-organized effort.

Taking your health to heart means doing all you can to make informed choices about the lifestyle factors you control and the genetic factors you inherit.

With Health Quest Family Medicine’ heart attack & stroke prevention program, you can expect us to provide the scientific foundation for those choices – and the attentive, highly individualized care you need once you make them.

Program includes:

• 4 hours of initial history and exam and testing
• Blood drawn and sent to 3 different laboratories
• EKG
• 2 hours oral glucose tolerance test
• CIMT (Carotid intimal media thickening)
• Remaining follow up visits for the year (frequency dependant on risk factors)
• Collection of all previous providers’ records
• All results reported on vital key
• Personalized nutritional counseling via phone 9-18 months

Call 623-465-4627 with questions.