Your teeth can do your heart wonders -- especially when you flash them by smiling more than a dozen times daily.
That's merely one component of Dr. Anand Chockalingam's personal -- and professional -- philosophy toward better heart health for all ages.
Chockalingam specializes in cardiology, cardiometabolic diseases, advanced diastolic heart failure, echocardiography, and nuclear cardiology at CAMC. A staff member there since December, he has begun incorporating some new (and some ancient) strategies for better cardiac -- and overall -- health at the health-care system's new Diastolic Heart Failure Care Center.
Chockalingam's health mission is global, but it draws from his West Virginia roots. "I worked for the last 18 years at the University of Missouri, but, before that, my first job as a cardiologist was in West Virginia. I worked here for two years at South Charleston Cardiology."
Chockalingam encourages people to assess their heart health and undertake lifestyle changes before they experience serious illnesses or conditions that might require major procedures.
"My interest is in getting heart patients healthier," he explained. "Obviously, that's the interest for everybody, but my focus is premature heart failure. This is happening a lot more frequently in recent years, for several reasons. The first grant I got when I went to the University of Missouri was to see how we can evaluate and manage this premature heart failure.
"The heart is supposed to work easily to 100 years all along; that's how nature has designed for us. Unfortunately, because of having high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, heart and kidney failure, the heart ends up becoming stiffer by the 60s or 70s. That's what we call diastolic heart failure."
Diastolic heart failure is a specific cardiac condition, Chockalingam said. "You don't need a balloon or a stent or a heart transplant, but you can't help the patient with any procedures, which is another way to look at it."
The diastolic heart failure care center was launched at CAMC Memorial last month. "I don't know how many other centers in the world have the type of focus that we have, because most cardiologists don't know what can be done. People look at it as it's just a problem of aging and other medical problems. ... We don't have medicines that can reverse it yet. It's not just one condition; a lot of things can happen."
Through his research into diastolic heart failure, he said, he has found it occurs sometimes with individuals in their 40s or younger.
"Why should some hearts that are designed by nature to work up to 100 years start failing in their 30s and 40s?"
He attributes the condition greatly to mental stress and extra weight. "For 20 years, we did protocols that try to evaluate these complex situations and how much of this stiffness we can improve by changing their mindset, by changing their diet and lifestyle, and things like that," he said.
A 'whole patient' approach
Over the past three years, he said, he and like-minded colleagues have starting looking at extra weight and other metabolic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes as "opportunities to help the heart get younger."
How might those results be achieved? "When we are able to make such an improvement in a person's mindset and in their extra weight loss that they generally feel 10, sometimes 20, sometimes even 30 years younger," Chockalingam said.
"This is priceless. We are, basically, giving people confidence to move about and walk a mile for the first time in the last 25 years or so."
He said the results aren't achieved by adding more medicines to individuals' intake regimen. "Many of my patients are already on 35 medicines, eight of them are for the heart, already.
"This comes from engaging people honestly," Chockalingam said. "This is more what I would say is a 'whole patient' or a 'whole health' approach. We can call it personalized patient center care. The central theme of that care is giving them an honest appraisal of their health and telling them that they can participate, give them confidence that no matter what their health situation is, or their circumstances, or what their support is, we want to give them the best chance to move forward toward better health."
He said it starts with telling each patient the truth: that 80 percent of their health is in their hands. "Only 20 percent is in the hands of the health-care system -- the latest medicines, the latest procedures, all that we do -- putting people in helicopters and transferring them, everything technology has to offer, it only adds up to 20 percent.
"Cardiology is an aspect of that 20 percent," Chockalingam continued. "This is hard for most doctors to understand. For the community, once they wake up to this reality, then we're going to have a more honest, informed and collaborative path forward toward health."
Chockalingam said his research into this approach began with exercise studies 20 years ago. "Then I realized the role of diet, but, I'd say in the last 10 years, these have become a minority, maybe 20 to 30 percent of what we do. Seventy-five to 80 percent of our intervention has become focused on positive psychology, empowerment and giving people hope toward their health.
"A lot of times, we include their long-term goals, their families, their children. Sometimes, it's the grandchildren that inspire health in our heart patients. When we see that heart patients get healthier, we see their families doing better. To us, it is very fulfilling and rewarding to practice this way of cardiology.
"CAMC is a very unique place in this day and age," Chockalingam added, "because we have one of the country's largest cardiac centers. We see more volume than most places in the country, so we have the most advanced treatments. And CAMC's cardiology leadership recognizes that along with doing the evidence-based therapies, we need to come up with more integral solutions that help our patients do better.
"This type of approach coincides very much with my own personal philosophy and that's what actually got me here," he said of his recent return to the Mountain State. "Even earlier, because I had worked here for two years, I felt there was so much we need to do. I realized very early in my career that what I learned was going to be useful but that we needed to do more to make a person healthy.
"Working here in West Virginia actually shaped the grants that I wrote once I moved to Missouri. In academics, I was able to collaborate with nephrologists, psychiatrists and psychologists who teach psychology and traditional medicine integrated into medical systems from India. It's called 'Siddha.'"
Siddha is an ancient, traditional treatment system developed in South India. According to its medical system, diet and lifestyle play major roles in maintaining health and curing diseases.
"For that tradition of medicine, people go through medical school, become an M.D. or Ph.D., but it has been there for 5,000 to 10,000 years," Chockalingam said.
Siddha yoga is part of what Chockalingam and his cohorts have taught in the program, he said.
"All these things came together in making our programs over the last 10 years more and more easy for people to adapt to and adopt," he said.
'Heartful Living'
Chockalingam is also the author of "Seeking HUNGER: How Food Shapes Our Thinking Health & Destiny," the first of his HiLife: Heartful Living through Self-Inquiry books. Available via Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle formats, "Seeking HUNGER" explores humankind’s relationship with hunger through the ages -- and why Chockalingam posits people need hunger live fulfilling and healthier lives.
His HiLifeJourney series combines mindfulness, Siddha yoga and positive psychology with the latest cardiology research for holistic wellness. Nine years ago, Chockalingam drew upon his research in stress cardiomyopathy, mental health and heart failure to create a self-inquiry-based program, "Heartful Living," for cardiac patients with hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and heart failure. "The Heartful Living program started in 2015, because I wanted to make myself available to the community," Chockalingam said. Every Friday at noon, he would take eight hours of his personal time to meet with 10 veterans and their spouses at the Harry S Truman Memorial Veterans' Hospital in Columbia, Mo., introducing, guiding and practicing his "whole health" approach and techniques.
"The VA allowed us to get the community in there," he recounted. "Doctors, administrators, anybody who wanted to learn this wellness approach would come. This made me understand so much how we can empower individuals."
To his surprise, the COVID-19 pandemic wound up empowering the fledgling program in an unforeseen manner. "Abruptly, with the onset of the pandemic, we couldn't meet 25 people in a room, so we had to move online. Instead of having 25 people sitting together in one room, we were able to get 200 people to join us on Zoom. It lost its personal touch, because I couldn't see if people were understanding or how they were reacting, but people would still come to spend 30 minutes. I'd show materials and answer their questions."
The final 15 minutes would be spent in mindful practices, including fun exercises the participants could practice in their homes. "In the eight weeks, they would have tried 20 or 40 different things in their own homes with their own families to connect with themselves at a deeper level," Chockalingam said.
Because of the Zoom solution to counter the pandemic restrictions, he was able to offer virtual videos of the course free on the web. "We didn't market it. We made it available and some people benefited from it from all over the world, but we wanted more and more people to take it up."
Over the last two years, he said, efforts were made to transform the HiLifeJourney into a commercial venture called Uvakai. "The word itself comes from the yoga tradition," Chockalingam explained. "It means 'extreme happiness without an underlying reason.' There's no equivalent for that in the language here. You can say it's extreme optimism or extreme energy or happiness or fulfillment in life or gratitude."
Which, in a roundabout way, is a much touted initiative of the nascent CAMC Memorial care program. He encourages people to smile at least 20 times a day, saying research toward better heart health bears the advice out. (A sustained attitude of gratitude tends to improves heart and overall health, too, he said.)
Some of the strategies have been practiced in employee wellness programs with positive health results. "We're used it for primary prevention, which means addressing risk factors, and we've even seen primordial prevention, which means preventing the risk factors from developing," he said. "To make an impact at that level, you need to engage families and allow them to understand these simple concepts, so that they can help their children do better.
"Children, as heart patients, are often three to seven times at higher risk of heart problems than the general community. Our own research into teenagers who are optimistic shows that about 5 percent are actually optimistic; 95 percent of them are in the real world," Chockalingam said with a laugh.
He added those findings were documented approximately 25 years ago but basically remain the same among the subjects when they have been contacted every few years about their current frames of mind and life outlooks.
"Of that 5 percent that are optimistic, they say, 'I have great friends,' 'I like to go to school,' 'I believe I'll have a good future.' The positivity in them translates into reducing their heart attack risk by 70 to 75 percent -- all life long."
Chockalingam said a paper written on the subject drew 94 million views online. "What that means is the public wants to know that there's hope for the world.
"I believe that also shows that people can learn these things at any age and this can be a beautiful legacy that people can leave for their next generation when they lead more holistic lives."
Implementing the new clinic Chockalingam said the new clinic developing at CAMC Memorial is designed to address the challenges faced by residents of Charleston and surrounding communities.
"We're seeing a lot of the premature heart failure I was talking about earlier already here in the few weeks I've been here. Many people are dealing with troubled breathing for five years, 10 years, sometimes 15 years. They're thinking it's just that they're not exercising or it's lymphedema or the smoking habit or because of their weight. The truth is, their heart is getting stiffer and it's contributing to their trouble breathing.
"So, we're putting together protocols that can evaluate this. Sometimes non-invasively, sometimes with a heart catheter, sometimes with some exercise and blood tests. Once we're able to gauge and say how much of the heart involvement is already there in 30- to 55-year-old people, then people get interested. When we show them the results we've been getting over the last 10 years, people are saying, 'Doc, what do I need to turn 10 or 15 years younger?'" Chockalingam said.
Once people are motivated by the possibilities, he said, they can receive materials, such as online videos, from the CAMC Diastolic Heart Failure Care Center.
"Within two or three months, we'll have data on how they can check their blood pressure at home, how their diet can make a difference, on the mindset itself and how to reduce stress," Chockalingam said. "We call them micro-interventions.
"At CAMC, with their leadership support, I feel we can reach way more people than I've done in the last five years, because the system support is there in Charleston.
"If we want to make a difference on the community level," said Chockalingam, "we need more technology, we need to train our other primary and mid-level primary-care providers, specialists and other practitioners. This is a journey that's going to take a long time to become entrenched in the community, to build their confidence.
"We've already started this work, and we're excited to see how much we can bring in the next year or so.
"For the next few months, I'll be focusing on what we're doing here, but for the last 10 years our goal and hope is to reach the entire world. My hope is in the next two to five years to reach more and more people everywhere with the programs we have developed over the last 10 years.
"We are making hearts 10 to 20 years younger. To find your heart age, just Google 'heart age NYC;' New York City has this on its portal. People can find out what their risk is. Often, their hearts are rated five to 15 years older than what their birth certificate says. Go find out what your heart's age is, and then we will help you see how you can get it to beat better. We want people to be motivated to make a difference in their health and their heart's age. That's an aspect of the cardio-metabolic center of excellence that we are creating here from scratch. It will help our community get 'younger,' happier and healthier."
Go to www.camc.org or call the CAMC clinic, located at 3200 MacCorkle Ave., S.E., in Charleston, at 304-388-8928 for more information.
Chockalingam specializes in cardiology, cardiometabolic diseases, advanced diastolic heart failure, echocardiography, and nuclear cardiology at CAMC. A staff member there since December, he has begun incorporating some new (and some ancient) strategies for better cardiac -- and overall -- health at the health-care system's new Diastolic Heart Failure Care Center.
Chockalingam's health mission is global, but it draws from his West Virginia roots. "I worked for the last 18 years at the University of Missouri, but, before that, my first job as a cardiologist was in West Virginia. I worked here for two years at South Charleston Cardiology."
Chockalingam encourages people to assess their heart health and undertake lifestyle changes before they experience serious illnesses or conditions that might require major procedures.
"My interest is in getting heart patients healthier," he explained. "Obviously, that's the interest for everybody, but my focus is premature heart failure. This is happening a lot more frequently in recent years, for several reasons. The first grant I got when I went to the University of Missouri was to see how we can evaluate and manage this premature heart failure.
"The heart is supposed to work easily to 100 years all along; that's how nature has designed for us. Unfortunately, because of having high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, heart and kidney failure, the heart ends up becoming stiffer by the 60s or 70s. That's what we call diastolic heart failure."
Diastolic heart failure is a specific cardiac condition, Chockalingam said. "You don't need a balloon or a stent or a heart transplant, but you can't help the patient with any procedures, which is another way to look at it."
The diastolic heart failure care center was launched at CAMC Memorial last month. "I don't know how many other centers in the world have the type of focus that we have, because most cardiologists don't know what can be done. People look at it as it's just a problem of aging and other medical problems. ... We don't have medicines that can reverse it yet. It's not just one condition; a lot of things can happen."
Through his research into diastolic heart failure, he said, he has found it occurs sometimes with individuals in their 40s or younger.
"Why should some hearts that are designed by nature to work up to 100 years start failing in their 30s and 40s?"
He attributes the condition greatly to mental stress and extra weight. "For 20 years, we did protocols that try to evaluate these complex situations and how much of this stiffness we can improve by changing their mindset, by changing their diet and lifestyle, and things like that," he said.
A 'whole patient' approach
Over the past three years, he said, he and like-minded colleagues have starting looking at extra weight and other metabolic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes as "opportunities to help the heart get younger."
How might those results be achieved? "When we are able to make such an improvement in a person's mindset and in their extra weight loss that they generally feel 10, sometimes 20, sometimes even 30 years younger," Chockalingam said.
"This is priceless. We are, basically, giving people confidence to move about and walk a mile for the first time in the last 25 years or so."
He said the results aren't achieved by adding more medicines to individuals' intake regimen. "Many of my patients are already on 35 medicines, eight of them are for the heart, already.
"This comes from engaging people honestly," Chockalingam said. "This is more what I would say is a 'whole patient' or a 'whole health' approach. We can call it personalized patient center care. The central theme of that care is giving them an honest appraisal of their health and telling them that they can participate, give them confidence that no matter what their health situation is, or their circumstances, or what their support is, we want to give them the best chance to move forward toward better health."
He said it starts with telling each patient the truth: that 80 percent of their health is in their hands. "Only 20 percent is in the hands of the health-care system -- the latest medicines, the latest procedures, all that we do -- putting people in helicopters and transferring them, everything technology has to offer, it only adds up to 20 percent.
"Cardiology is an aspect of that 20 percent," Chockalingam continued. "This is hard for most doctors to understand. For the community, once they wake up to this reality, then we're going to have a more honest, informed and collaborative path forward toward health."
Chockalingam said his research into this approach began with exercise studies 20 years ago. "Then I realized the role of diet, but, I'd say in the last 10 years, these have become a minority, maybe 20 to 30 percent of what we do. Seventy-five to 80 percent of our intervention has become focused on positive psychology, empowerment and giving people hope toward their health.
"A lot of times, we include their long-term goals, their families, their children. Sometimes, it's the grandchildren that inspire health in our heart patients. When we see that heart patients get healthier, we see their families doing better. To us, it is very fulfilling and rewarding to practice this way of cardiology.
"CAMC is a very unique place in this day and age," Chockalingam added, "because we have one of the country's largest cardiac centers. We see more volume than most places in the country, so we have the most advanced treatments. And CAMC's cardiology leadership recognizes that along with doing the evidence-based therapies, we need to come up with more integral solutions that help our patients do better.
"This type of approach coincides very much with my own personal philosophy and that's what actually got me here," he said of his recent return to the Mountain State. "Even earlier, because I had worked here for two years, I felt there was so much we need to do. I realized very early in my career that what I learned was going to be useful but that we needed to do more to make a person healthy.
"Working here in West Virginia actually shaped the grants that I wrote once I moved to Missouri. In academics, I was able to collaborate with nephrologists, psychiatrists and psychologists who teach psychology and traditional medicine integrated into medical systems from India. It's called 'Siddha.'"
Siddha is an ancient, traditional treatment system developed in South India. According to its medical system, diet and lifestyle play major roles in maintaining health and curing diseases.
"For that tradition of medicine, people go through medical school, become an M.D. or Ph.D., but it has been there for 5,000 to 10,000 years," Chockalingam said.
Siddha yoga is part of what Chockalingam and his cohorts have taught in the program, he said.
"All these things came together in making our programs over the last 10 years more and more easy for people to adapt to and adopt," he said.
'Heartful Living'
Chockalingam is also the author of "Seeking HUNGER: How Food Shapes Our Thinking Health & Destiny," the first of his HiLife: Heartful Living through Self-Inquiry books. Available via Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle formats, "Seeking HUNGER" explores humankind’s relationship with hunger through the ages -- and why Chockalingam posits people need hunger live fulfilling and healthier lives.
His HiLifeJourney series combines mindfulness, Siddha yoga and positive psychology with the latest cardiology research for holistic wellness. Nine years ago, Chockalingam drew upon his research in stress cardiomyopathy, mental health and heart failure to create a self-inquiry-based program, "Heartful Living," for cardiac patients with hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and heart failure. "The Heartful Living program started in 2015, because I wanted to make myself available to the community," Chockalingam said. Every Friday at noon, he would take eight hours of his personal time to meet with 10 veterans and their spouses at the Harry S Truman Memorial Veterans' Hospital in Columbia, Mo., introducing, guiding and practicing his "whole health" approach and techniques.
"The VA allowed us to get the community in there," he recounted. "Doctors, administrators, anybody who wanted to learn this wellness approach would come. This made me understand so much how we can empower individuals."
To his surprise, the COVID-19 pandemic wound up empowering the fledgling program in an unforeseen manner. "Abruptly, with the onset of the pandemic, we couldn't meet 25 people in a room, so we had to move online. Instead of having 25 people sitting together in one room, we were able to get 200 people to join us on Zoom. It lost its personal touch, because I couldn't see if people were understanding or how they were reacting, but people would still come to spend 30 minutes. I'd show materials and answer their questions."
The final 15 minutes would be spent in mindful practices, including fun exercises the participants could practice in their homes. "In the eight weeks, they would have tried 20 or 40 different things in their own homes with their own families to connect with themselves at a deeper level," Chockalingam said.
Because of the Zoom solution to counter the pandemic restrictions, he was able to offer virtual videos of the course free on the web. "We didn't market it. We made it available and some people benefited from it from all over the world, but we wanted more and more people to take it up."
Over the last two years, he said, efforts were made to transform the HiLifeJourney into a commercial venture called Uvakai. "The word itself comes from the yoga tradition," Chockalingam explained. "It means 'extreme happiness without an underlying reason.' There's no equivalent for that in the language here. You can say it's extreme optimism or extreme energy or happiness or fulfillment in life or gratitude."
Which, in a roundabout way, is a much touted initiative of the nascent CAMC Memorial care program. He encourages people to smile at least 20 times a day, saying research toward better heart health bears the advice out. (A sustained attitude of gratitude tends to improves heart and overall health, too, he said.)
Some of the strategies have been practiced in employee wellness programs with positive health results. "We're used it for primary prevention, which means addressing risk factors, and we've even seen primordial prevention, which means preventing the risk factors from developing," he said. "To make an impact at that level, you need to engage families and allow them to understand these simple concepts, so that they can help their children do better.
"Children, as heart patients, are often three to seven times at higher risk of heart problems than the general community. Our own research into teenagers who are optimistic shows that about 5 percent are actually optimistic; 95 percent of them are in the real world," Chockalingam said with a laugh.
He added those findings were documented approximately 25 years ago but basically remain the same among the subjects when they have been contacted every few years about their current frames of mind and life outlooks.
"Of that 5 percent that are optimistic, they say, 'I have great friends,' 'I like to go to school,' 'I believe I'll have a good future.' The positivity in them translates into reducing their heart attack risk by 70 to 75 percent -- all life long."
Chockalingam said a paper written on the subject drew 94 million views online. "What that means is the public wants to know that there's hope for the world.
"I believe that also shows that people can learn these things at any age and this can be a beautiful legacy that people can leave for their next generation when they lead more holistic lives."
Implementing the new clinic Chockalingam said the new clinic developing at CAMC Memorial is designed to address the challenges faced by residents of Charleston and surrounding communities.
"We're seeing a lot of the premature heart failure I was talking about earlier already here in the few weeks I've been here. Many people are dealing with troubled breathing for five years, 10 years, sometimes 15 years. They're thinking it's just that they're not exercising or it's lymphedema or the smoking habit or because of their weight. The truth is, their heart is getting stiffer and it's contributing to their trouble breathing.
"So, we're putting together protocols that can evaluate this. Sometimes non-invasively, sometimes with a heart catheter, sometimes with some exercise and blood tests. Once we're able to gauge and say how much of the heart involvement is already there in 30- to 55-year-old people, then people get interested. When we show them the results we've been getting over the last 10 years, people are saying, 'Doc, what do I need to turn 10 or 15 years younger?'" Chockalingam said.
Once people are motivated by the possibilities, he said, they can receive materials, such as online videos, from the CAMC Diastolic Heart Failure Care Center.
"Within two or three months, we'll have data on how they can check their blood pressure at home, how their diet can make a difference, on the mindset itself and how to reduce stress," Chockalingam said. "We call them micro-interventions.
"At CAMC, with their leadership support, I feel we can reach way more people than I've done in the last five years, because the system support is there in Charleston.
"If we want to make a difference on the community level," said Chockalingam, "we need more technology, we need to train our other primary and mid-level primary-care providers, specialists and other practitioners. This is a journey that's going to take a long time to become entrenched in the community, to build their confidence.
"We've already started this work, and we're excited to see how much we can bring in the next year or so.
"For the next few months, I'll be focusing on what we're doing here, but for the last 10 years our goal and hope is to reach the entire world. My hope is in the next two to five years to reach more and more people everywhere with the programs we have developed over the last 10 years.
"We are making hearts 10 to 20 years younger. To find your heart age, just Google 'heart age NYC;' New York City has this on its portal. People can find out what their risk is. Often, their hearts are rated five to 15 years older than what their birth certificate says. Go find out what your heart's age is, and then we will help you see how you can get it to beat better. We want people to be motivated to make a difference in their health and their heart's age. That's an aspect of the cardio-metabolic center of excellence that we are creating here from scratch. It will help our community get 'younger,' happier and healthier."
Go to www.camc.org or call the CAMC clinic, located at 3200 MacCorkle Ave., S.E., in Charleston, at 304-388-8928 for more information.
Comments
Post a Comment