At the RootCause Journal of Medicine we harp on the belief that optimal health lies in our ancestral past, and that mimicking our evolutionary niche with regard to diet and lifestyle is a good strategy to pursue. Most (younger) people can make meaningful health improvements by simply adopting adopting these changes themselves.
But many older people – particularly the Boomer generation – are quite metabolically damaged. A lifetime of refined carbs, sugar and seed oils has taken its toll. Many are on laundry list of prescription medications that are treating the problems caused by diet – essential hypertension, dyslipidemia, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Unlike the slightly overweight 35 year old, these patients need more care and attention in order to reverse metabolic inflammation and ultimately heal. Under the current model of care in many Western health systems, such a patient would see a physician every 3-6 months, take a blood pressure or blood result test, and often be prescribed a life-time medication based on only a couple of effective data points.
This type of legacy care is sub-optimal for many reasons. Most significantly, important decisions such as initiating pharmaceutical treatments are based on very little information. There is no effort to understand or explore the context of a patients high blood sugar or high blood pressure. This situation lends itself to set-and-forget prescribing, incentivized by the financial paradigm in which mainstream medicine sits.
But things look to be changing. Technology is enabling continuous readings of vital signs from devices that measure and upload data from your home. This includes measurements of weight, blood pressure, and heart rhythm.
Dr Brian Lenzkes and Dr Tro discuss this on a recent episode of LowCarbMD podcast with Mark Prince. They give examples of how remote monitoring of blood pressure gave insight into the situations when a patient’s blood pressure readings were in the red zone.
Wall St trader who was hypertensive during week trading hours, but had normal blood pressure on weekends
Obese man whose blood pressure spiked only during sleep (consistent with his sleep apnea)
Lady whose blood pressure spiked predictably when going home and arguing with spouse
The obvious benefit is incredible data resolution. Unlike a point measurement, continuous remote monitoring gives temporal context of changes in vital signs. The patient and doctor can now understand exactly when and how much the vital sign becomes deranged.
Why is remote care a game changer?
Big Pharma wants doctors to prescribe lifestyle meds with no thought and no further investigation. A one way street with no return. But remote monitoring allows trained clinicians to understand exactly when, and how your blood pressure, blood glucose, heart rate is deranged, and then treat the underlying root causes.
Provided data privacy is respected, these tools could be potent weapons to reverse chronic disease, de-prescribe lifelong medications and prevent a massive amount of suffering.
So what can you do if you or your parent is overweight, hypertensive or metabolically unwell on prescription meds?
Firstly, ask your doctor about reversing metabolic disease using therapeutic carbohydrate + processed food restriction.
If they can’t help you, find a clinic or remote service run by trained metabolic physicians who can.
If remote monitoring is offered, it may help you along your journey of healing.
The Rest Is Up to You…
-RCMD
July 31, 2021