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The Metabolic Optimization Protocol (MOP) is a proprietary program with a single goal: To keep you healthy and disease free far into the future with a low-cost, frictionless platform. Our lives are too busy for some of the ultra-complicated, costly programs. The MOP was born from decades of passion, devotion, genuine curiosity, and experience from over thirty years of practicing medicine as a physician. I have synthesized the critical elements to offer the most direct interventions and access to crucial drivers for outcome assessment and modification.
How is MOP different?
Our current healthcare system does an abysmal job at preventive medicine. The annual blood work prescribed in a traditional primary care setting aims to detect disease after it occurs, not prevent it from occurring in the first place. Traditional laboratory values were developed to detect a disease state when values exceed a predetermined range yet fail to ask the critical questions that drive to the heart of preventive care: What are the value ranges for optimal health? What laboratory values signal the ideal cellular and organ function that elevates our health and prevents the chronic disease so common in old age? The cornerstone of the MOP program is more frequent and relevant bloodwork that provides deep insights into cellular and organ function. Our quarterly bloodwork panel looks at the laboratory markers most pertinent to health optimization and has actionable interventions that can bring them into the optimal range.
Why is bloodwork done so frequently in the MOP program?
There needs to be more than the annual blood work typical to a primary care setting for those interested in fine-tuning their health to a new level. It only provides a single snapshot with the potential to be influenced by external variables like an infection, a poor night’s sleep, or some other transient exogenous factor. The more frequent blood work performed every quarter can establish trends that show us if your individualized program is having an effect, letting us know whether or not we are on the right track. Achieving optimal health is a marathon, not a sprint, and requires “looking under the hood” more frequently to get a truly objective measure of progress.
What is the blood work performed?
The MOP program looks at the laboratory markers that are extensively validated as predictive of your future health. These markers have underappreciated value because they can detect the beginning of cellular and organ system failure, thus opening a window where interventions can have a meaningful impact.
We look at many laboratory markers, but here are some examples:
Homeostatic Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) can give a very early signal that your metabolism is becoming less efficient. It detects insulin resistance, a condition that is a causative factor in almost every chronic illness. Insulin resistance is a common problem, with estimates of over 80 percent of the U.S. population having some degree of insulin resistance. Maintaining insulin sensitivity (the opposite of insulin resistance) optimizes cellular metabolism promoting critical cellular pathways like DNA repair, autophagy, and immune function. The good news is that insulin resistance is easily detectable and highly reversible when caught early.
High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) is a marker of inflammation. Inflammation, like insulin resistance, is a common problem and one of the leading causes of chronic illness. Fortuitously, like insulin resistance, it is highly reversible when detected early with lifestyle, supplement, and pharmaceutical intervention incorporated in the MOP.
The PhenoAge calculator is a new health calculator that takes traditional blood work markers and exponentially leverages their value. Simply put, the PhenoAge calculator gives us a better approximation of our actual physiological age, allowing insights into our overall health that were previously inaccessible.
Undeniably (whether we admit it or not), age is the essential variable to our general health. Age affects everything from our propensity to develop a chronic disease to intangibles like how good we feel throughout the day, resiliency, and our zest for life. Intuitively, everyone knows that when all else is equal, a 20-year-old is in a better state of health and well-being than a 60-year-old.
Yet your age may not be what you think it is.
Every year we have a birthday. The number of birthdays we have had in our lifetime is known as our chronological age. As we age, we often hear people say, “age is just a number.” This statement is usually an attempt to dismiss the fact we are inevitably getting older, yet it is precisely accurate. In other words, your chronological age may reflect something different than your physiological age. Indeed, someone’s chronological age can be uncoupled from their actual physiological age to a surprising degree. Some people may age faster, and some people may age more slowly depending on the genes they inherit from their parents and their lifestyle choices. For example, the actual physiological age of a 50-year-old person with good genetics and a healthy lifestyle maybe 40. Conversely, the basic physiological age of a 50-year-old person with average genetics and an unhealthy lifestyle maybe 60.
A PhenoAge calculator is an indispensable tool in the MOP Program. It allows us to establish a baseline in your health optimization journey and then enables us to measure your progress over time. If your PhenoAge is close to or higher than your chronological age, then our goal is to lower it over time. If your baseline PhenoAge is already lower than your chronological age, we aim to reduce it even further.
Collectively, the MOP blood work panel will provide deep insights into your overall health and empower you to take ownership of your destiny proactively. Additional blood work will assess baseline liver, renal, thyroid, methylation, and bone marrow function. We will also review lipid and fructose metabolism by looking at new, less well-known intermediates. The retail value of the lab panels would exceed 400 dollars should an individual try to purchase directly at sites around the country.
What treatments are part of the MOP program?
Once a baseline picture of your health is established through the MOP blood work panel and onboarding survey, we schedule a video consult to review the findings. Next, we work together to develop an individualized treatment plan. This plan is designed to fit into your lifestyle and not be overly burdensome. In other words, you and I work together to “bite off what you can chew,” understanding that consistency is critical and the program should be something that doesn’t detract from your quality of life.
Modern lifestyles have been overwhelmingly implicated in metabolic dysfunction through numerous well-executed studies. These studies demonstrate that there is often a mismatch between our current lifestyle and the lifestyle that is best matched to our physiology. These lifestyle variables include circadian rhythm disruption (sleep), chronic stress, diet, and activity levels. We will develop a plan to optimize these lifestyle variables proportionately and pragmatically.
Additionally, supplements can play a role. Modern food processing and agricultural practices have left most people’s diets devoid of critical micronutrients. Micronutrient deficiencies force the body to ration vitamins and minerals away from long-term (longevity) needs and toward short-term (immediate survival) needs. This micronutrient “triage” comes at the expense of long-term metabolic processes like DNA repair and optimal immunological function that prevents inflammatory processes like atherosclerotic plaque formation and lung fibrosis. More recent evidence argues for a new class of micronutrients called “longevity vitamins,” which exclusively enhance the metabolic pathways involved in long-term health and are more often than not deficient in our diets. A good diet and carefully targeted supplements can fill this micronutrient void.
Finally, certain pharmaceuticals can play a role. There is overwhelming yet underappreciated evidence for the ability of certain medicines to prevent all-cause mortality. A reduction in all-cause mortality is strong evidence that these pharmaceuticals can intervene in the aging process at a cellular level. We will discuss the potential benefits if your blood work warrants using these agents.
No plan works without execution and accountability but into the process. When you need it, a follow-up coaching call will be built in at 30-40 and then 60–70-day windows to check the status. Repeat labs and M.D. visit again every 90 days will move you forward with reviewing your lab and biometric scores to chart progress. Changes may be made to accommodate your specific needs.
In conclusion:
The MOP program was developed to give people the power to control their health. Many feel the health care system has failed them with little time spent with their busy physician, insufficient blood work, high cost, and long waits for scheduling appointment visits.
The MOP program allows you to see and understand your health on a new level by providing insights into your body that are not typically offered in a traditional healthcare setting while eliminating the high costs and challenges of conventional healthcare. Through your local Quest Lab easy blood draws, a streamlined virtual home platform, best-in-class supplements, and medications sent to your doorstep; the program will easily integrate into your schedule. The MOP program recaptures the most critical parts of preventive health care: an intimate doctor/patient relationship; leveraging the most cutting-edge and actionable diagnostic laboratory tests and technology that increases convenience while reducing cost; allowing the individual to take ownership of their health.
The $800 Quarterly Fee includes the following:
Then Repeat Labs and Reenlist and we suggest looking at labs quarterly for a year to verify trends and improvement.
If you are interested but not sure, set up a call with one of our team by emailing Support@MeakinMetabolicCare.com.