In this video, Dr. Aarush Manchanda is talking to a gentleman who’s eager to lose weight and improve his heart health. However, being as he suffers from arthritis, he often finds the lifestyle changes many people suggest are difficult for him to carry out. Dr. Manchanda offers him advice on the different ways he can exercise, before describing his long-term plans for health care in general.

As a pre-diabetic, the first thing people will tell you to do is exercise. However, arthritis can be incredibly painful, putting a stop to traditional exercising methods, such as running, aerobics, and even walking. However, Dr. Manchanda suggests cycling because there are recumbent bikes that are easier on your knees.

The idea is to just be a little bit more creative in how you’re exercising. Opt for something that doesn’t hurt your knees or your joints, but still gives you the aerobic capacity your body needs.

Making Heart Health Easy to Understand

The idea of turning complex medical terms and diagnoses into something simple is where Dr. Manchanda’s idea for his book, Your Heart House: An Artisan’s Approach to Heart Health stemmed from. In it, he turns complicated cardiology terms into something a layman can understand.

He uses the analogy that our heart is like our house, breaking down the heart into sections to make it easier for us to get our heads around. For example, when he refers to plumbing or electricity issues, he’s referring to our arteries and veins or heartbeat, respectively.

The Art of Precision Medicine

By making such a complicated organ easier to comprehend, Dr. Manchanda hopes he will resolve the disconnection between patients and their heart doctors. Using this analogy, doctors can easily explain things to their patients, and patients can take more of an active role in their heart health, which creates shared decision making between the two. This goes towards Dr. Manchanda’s ultimate vision of practicing precision medicine – where the standard “one size fits all” approach is eradicated in favor of personalized medicine, which is much more effective.

Dr. Manchanda also hopes he can explore other avenues of medicine, not just heart health. This is a huge project (it took him 24 months to produce and print his first book), which may take a couple of years. But, he intends to expand his ideas further, helping to bring the idea of precision medicine and shared decision making to the forefront of modern health care.