Dr. J. Thomas Heywood observes hearts all day long, but he never thought he would get to look at his own heart in detail.

“I have high blood pressure,” says Haywood, a senior heart failure specialist at Scripps Clinic. “I don’t have cardiovascular disease, but I do have some of these early symptoms, and probably 100 million people have high blood pressure.” There is some understanding of this in the United States. ”

Haywood was diagnosed with cardiorenal metabolic syndrome (CKM).

This is a combination of kidney disease, metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

“This is actually a medical emergency, and we treat these things together rather than treating them individually,” Haywood said.

This is a new way of thinking about the domino effect in which a single health problem can affect the entire body.

“Obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, kidney problems, all of these things are exacerbated in combination,” Haywood says. “They’re like a dysfunctional family, and when they all come together, it gets worse and the patient’s life expectancy is drastically shortened.”

Haywood believes this is just the beginning of CKM and that there will soon be doctors specializing in this syndrome.

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