Wellness
Your Trusted Wellness Doctor in NYC
Wellness goes beyond being free from illness or disease. It is an active process of awareness and choices that lead to optimal health, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Dr. Ronald Primas is a concierge functional wellness doctor in NYC focuses on the pillars of wellness to help our patients lead long, happy, fulfilling and disease free lives.
As your caring and trusted concierge team, we will work with you to develop a personalized wellness routine that fully supports your health history and goals. Being overweight, underweight, tired or stressed can lead to an increased risk in many health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease, decreased immune function and much more. When properly managed with the following wellness practices, you can preserve your health, prevent disease and increase your lifespan and healthspan.
Exercise
Being active can have an incredible impact on your health and well being, both physically and mentally. In fact, engaging in regular physical activity can improve health and lengthen life expectancy by helping individuals to achieve and maintain an appropriate weight, become energetic and fit, strengthen the immune system, and have a positive frame of mind. It can also reduce the risk of heart disease and other serious illnesses.
As one proverb says “motion is life, stagnation is death”. Choose life!
We recommend engaging in a variety of activities that include cardio, strength training and stretching daily. Your routine should improve balance and flexibility, strengthen your muscles and improve the body’s immune response. We also recommend tracking devices to give feedback and enhance your health metrics using actionable data about your exercise.
A sample exercise schedule will include 45 minute to 1 hour session of the following:
- 3 days strength training
- 1 day high intensity interval training
- 1 day endurance training
- 1 day stretching and balance training
- 1 day combine a social activity that gives you cardio, strength, balance and plyometics (e.g. martial arts, tennis, golf, bowling)
Sleep
Much like exercise and nutrition, sleep is crucial to overall well being. In fact, poor sleep is linked to higher body weight, low testosterone, elevated cortisol levels, depression and an increased risk for chronic diseases, such as heart disease and dementia. Adequate sleep, however, can help improve immune function, increase productivity, lower inflammation, maximize athletic performance and more.
According to the CDC, adults ages 18 and older need 7+ hours of sleep to function properly. In addition to quantity, quality is equally important. If you are waking up frequently during the night or still feel tired after a full night’s sleep, then you may need to look at ways to improve your sleep hygiene. A few things to try are:
- Going to bed around the same time each night and waking up at the same time daily
- Avoid electronics 1+ hours before bed
- Remove electronics from your bedroom
- Keep your room quiet, dark and at a cool, but comfortable temperature
- Consider weighted, cooling blanket technology
- Spend more time outside during the day
- Exercise regularly
- Avoid large meals, caffeine and alcohol before bed
- Avoid eating at least 4 hours before bedtime and avoid liquids at least 2 hours before bedtime
- Avoid exercise at least 2 hours before bedtime
- Change bulbs in your home to warmer orange colors or get smart lighting technology
- Consider blue light blocking glasses after dusk
You may also want to purchase a sleep tracking app or wearable device to monitor your sleep and help you gauge ways to improve your sleep quality using feedback and actionable metrics from your device.
Nutrition and Supplementation
Proper diet is essential to maintaining good health. Keeping the body well-nourished and at a healthy weight has been proven to improve mood, quality of life and longevity. It may also go a long way in preventing or controlling many serious illnesses.
Generally speaking, a healthy diet is a varied one, containing the balanced nutrition needed for cell growth, cell regeneration and the maintenance of healthy organs and tissues. It includes an appropriate balance of protein, fiber, carbohydrates and fats in reasonable portions. A good diet is one that:
- Mostly plant-based and rich in vegetables and limited fruits
- Includes protein sources such as lean grass-fed meats, wild poultry, line-caught fish, eggs and nuts (if not allergic)
- Choose food that is sustainably-sourced, local, organic and seasonal, as often as possible.
- Is very low in carbohydrates, sodium and sugar
- Contains a balance of appropriate vitamins and minerals
- Time restricted eating of anywhere from 6 to 11 hours daily. (Intermittent fasting is different).
- Fasting mimicking diet at least twice yearly (more frequent is better)(link to Prolon)
Nutritional counseling is invaluable when striving to lead a healthier, longer life. This service includes taking a medical, and sometimes a psychological, history and establishing a customized dietary plan for each individual patient. Anyone can benefit from nutritional counseling, especially patients with food allergies or eating disorders. Ongoing nutritional counseling allows for evolving dietary guidelines. Dr. Primas believes that all nutritional needs should be met with whole foods, however, in certain cases, supplementation may be necessary based on type of diet and genetic makeup. He may recommend broad and/or targeted supplementation to help patients achieve and maintain optimal health.
Stress Reduction
Stress can affect our physical and mental health in so many ways. Long-term exposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can put you at risk for health issues, such as weight gain, high blood pressure, digestive problems, heart disease, cancer and more. While the effects of prolonged stress will manifest differently in everyone, we can all benefit from practicing stress reduction exercises on a daily basis. We recommend trying these different practices to see which one(s) fit your lifestyle and help you manage stress in your everyday life
- Meditation
- Yoga
- Tai Chi
- Qigong
- Breathwork
- Therapeutic Massage
Biohacking
Biohacking isn’t as crazy as the term itself sounds. Simply put, biohacking is do-it-yourself biology that consists of making small changes to your diet and lifestyle to improve your health. This experience-based learning technique uses non-traditional methods proven to enhance a patient’s mental and physical wellness. Dr. Primas will make biohacking recommendations tailored to your health history and goals that may include one or more of the following (many of which we offer at our office):
- Self tracking and monitoring with a wearable device, such as a Fitbit, Oura Ring or Biostrap.
- Sauna (Wet/Dry or Infrared)
- Red Light Therapy (also known as photobiomodulation)
- Cryotherapy
- Vibration Therapy
- LiveO2 Hyperoxygenation Therapy
- Telomere and Telomerase Testing
- Whole Genome Sequencing
- Stem Cell Banking
- Compression Leggings
- IV Therapy Drips
- Senolytic therapy
- NAD+ supplementation
- Methylation Testing (Aging Clock)
- Biological Age Testing
Anti-Aging (Age Deceleration)
Aging is inevitable, however slowing the aging process, increasing lifespan/healthspan and preventing age-related disease can be attainable. Dr. Primas can help you maximize your biological age instead of your chronological age with a combination of the five pillars of proper nutrition, regular exercise, reducing stress, good sleep, and biohacking techniques.
Some of the main causes of aging come from cellular damage caused by free radicals and the shortening of telomeres, which play an important role in cellular division. Our team can also recommend natural supplementation known to have a positive impact on telomere length and healthspan, as well as safely established medications for anti-aging use.
*We prefer to use the word age deceleration until true anti-aging and age reversing technologies become available in the near future.