Anti-Aging
Everyone wishes they could turn back the clock to a time when they were younger and healthier. There is an anti-aging movement in modern healthcare and it’s real. We here at Advanced Health NY have been busy researching, studying and testing various anti-aging treatments. We have several very effective treatments and protocols that can turn back your clock.
We have many patients who just aren’t feeling right, maybe they are tired or just have general malaise. They go to their primary care doctor and get some basic tests done, but they all come back normal, so they get some more tests done and they also come back normal. In the end the doctor says they are perfectly normal and they just need to slow down or some other vague suggestion. Are they perfectly healthy or is there a reason they are feeling run down?
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Since they didn’t get an answer from the medical doctor, they now start searching for answers themselves. Then, they will come into our office and will usually ask us something like “Heh, I heard about C0-Q10 or some other vitamin of the week on the Dr. Oz show, should I be taking it?” The answer is yes, no, maybe...
Taking supplements without knowing what your body needs is just like randomly throwing darts a dart board. You might get a bullseye, but you probably won’t.
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We never recommend treatment without knowing what is going on with a patient. A mechanic doesn’t fix your car without first figuring out what is going on. The only way to really see how the body is functioning, is to do proper testing. Without “proper testing,” there is no way to really know what is wrong with you and which supplements will help you. But the doctor did the testing, didn’t he? Before we answer that, let’s talk about another type of patient.
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There are also patients who go to the doctor and they get the basic testing, and certain values are out of the normal range, so the doctor prescribes a medication that lowers or raises that value. For example, high cholesterol.
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Now this patient who was given medication thinks they are fine because their abnormal cholesterol level is controlled by the medication. Unfortunately, the body system that was under stress or inflammation that was causing the altered cholesterol level is still not working correctly and even worse, the drugs are stressing other body systems. The drugs that are prescribed are now affecting other systems. This leads to poorer health and more medication. This is the medical model and the standard of care that most doctors follow. It’s a “treat the symptom, not the patient” approach.
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There are many examples of healthy “looking” people or athletic runners having heart attacks at an early age. The truth is, how you feel is no indicator of your health. In fact, by the time you do feel ill, you may have lost 80% of the function of a body system. Why is that? Your body wants you to survive, so it doesn’t want you feeing run down, but when you reach only 20% function, the body will take resources from less important places, energy, muscles, hair, nails and send them to critical systems like the liver or heart. That’s why you feel ill and by then the problem is a lot worse than you think.
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To understand lab results, you need to know that the ranges are based on averages of people tested. Because more sick people get tested and as a population we have been getting sicker, the normal ranges today are drastically different than the ranges from 20 years ago. Just because a result is common does not mean it is normal.
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Another important aspect is that they are ranges, so you can be just inside the so called normal cholesterol range and then you are declared fine and don’t need drugs. But just because it was in the normal range, doesn’t mean that that number is good. You can be just outside that range and get prescribed a medication, even though your result is not that different from the other person. It’s important to look at overall body function to determine which systems are stressed or inflamed and causing the abnormal values.
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What we do with Foundational Blood Testing and Advanced Diagnostic Analysis, is to first, start with the real normal range, not the common range. Then, we divide that range into thirds. We then color code your report so you can easily see the results. Based on the results, we are able to see how the body is actually functioning and then we can recommend a diet, supplements and/or medications that will help your stressed or inflamed systems get back on track. Because we use follow up testing, we can evaluate how a patient is improving and modify the treatment as they progress. Even though it might cost more initially for complete testing than a regular physical, knowing what is the real problem will lower your future healthcare costs drastically and extend your life span and quality of life.
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What if Advanced Analysis showed that the liver was stressed in the individual with high cholesterol? Wouldn’t it make sense to help the liver function properly and then the liver can control the cholesterol levels the way it is supposed to?
If your lab results show a low vitamin D value, the medical doctor or nutritionist will prescribe vitamin D. But what if Advanced Analysis showed that there was a digestive system issue? Wouldn’t it make sense to take care of the digestive issue first so that the body can absorb the vitamin D?
There have been patients interested in losing weight and even though they had been on a restricted diet, still couldn’t lose weight. Testing showed that the thyroid system was not functioning properly. Addressing the thyroid issue allowed them to easily lose the weight they wanted.
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People with long term and worse problems than most of our patients have been helped using this approach. The earlier you find the problem, the better and faster result you will achieve.
Taking a supplement to treat a specific symptom is no different than the medical model. Taking random vitamins to improve your health may or may not work and it will be wasted money on supplements you don’t need.
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Foundational Blood Testing and Advanced Diagnostic Analysis works by only recommending those diets, supplements and medications that will actually help your body function better by supporting whichever system is stressed or inflamed. This is functional medicine and I believe is the future of healthcare. If you can remove the stress or inflammation that is affecting your health, you can be as healthy as you were before the problem started. That’s the basis for anti-aging.