Preventative Medicine w/ Dr. Dino Prato
In this episode of the Confidence Through Health podcast, host Jerry Snyder interviews Dr. Dino Prato, NMD, founder and CEO of Invita Medical Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. Dr. Prato explains his clinic’s preventative medicine model that combines whole‑body MRI screening with advanced genetic blood tests (including circulating tumor cell analysis) and AI‑assisted imaging to detect early‑stage cancers and other conditions. He describes how the center uses highly personalized, precision interventional treatments—such as catheter‑delivered targeted chemo or immunotherapy—to treat identified lesions while sparing the rest of the body. The conversation contrasts this approach with conventional oncology, highlighting the limitations of standard chemo, radiation, and surgery, and emphasizing the importance of early detection, lifestyle factors (diet, stress, exercise, blue‑zone principles), and holistic health. Dr. Prato also discusses the multidisciplinary team at Invita (oncologists, naturopathic doctors, pharmacists, chemists, interventional radiologists) and the extensive training required to practice precision medicine. He introduces Invita Health, a novel health‑plan that removes insurance barriers, covers preventative screenings, regenerative medicine, and concierge navigation, offering patients freedom to choose conventional, integrative, or combined care. Throughout, both speakers stress patient empowerment, medical freedom, and the vision of “Medicine 3.0” where AI, data analytics, and personalized protocols become the standard of care within the next decade.
Welcome to the Confidence Through Health Podcast. My name is Jerry Snyder. As a health, wellness and sports performance coach, my goal each week is to bring you experts to help you take control of your health and build your self confidence. Thanks for including me today on your journey to better health. As an elite level runner and coach, I'm excited to introduce you to the All In Running Club. The All In Running Club exists to help you become a better runner. Whether you're a beginner, an elite runner or anywhere in between. The mission of the All In Running Club is to give you the tools you need to find your success in running. Join today to take advantage of the 75% off yearly membership rate offer. Click the link below in the show notes to learn more. Thank you for joining me for episode 188 of the Confidence Through Health Podcast. In this episode I speak with Dr. Dino Prado, who is the founder and CEO of Invita Medical center in Scottsdale, Arizona and we talk about preventative medicine when it comes to screening for cancers and for other diseases. Specifically, using MRIs is a full body MRI. And using that in combination with different blood tests and different things to give you this full outlook of what is going on inside the body so that they can then target the treatment and minimize the length of time that treatment has to happen and make sure that it's, like I said, targeted more focused towards what is actually going on, what actually needs to happen versus dousing the whole body with a treatment that maybe isn't necessary for the whole body. We talk about that, we talk about the differences between a more traditional healthcare system and what they are building at Invita, which is a more holistic healing modality of looking at what's actually going to help this individual person and trying to nail down exactly what's going on with this individual person and creating individual treatment plans and taking the time to do that. So these screening tools and using the technology that's available and he talks about the the ability to use AI to help with the screening, to be able to come up with these treatment plans that heal people, that give people more longevity to their life, that help them get back to what they want to do, which is ultimately the biggest challenge with the healthcare system is getting people back to what they want to do. That's what the goal is and that's what should be the outcome. And they're having great success at Nvidia Medical Centers. And so we talk about that. And so I think it's a great episode. He brings so much knowledge and so much information that helps us all understand how we can better take care of ourselves and how we can start looking for solutions to problems that may be starting and maybe brewing that we need to take care of before they get out of hand. So thank you, Dr. Prado, for being a guest on the Confidence Through Health podcast.
Oh, I'm honored. Any. Anything I can do to help.
So there's a couple of things I want to talk to you about. But first off, just to like, you are the, the CEO of Invita Medical center in Scottsdale, and you're doing work with, with cancer patients, with, with, I mean, a wide range of patients. But you've started doing these preventative MRIs. And so tell us what, what is a preventative MRI? How does that work?
Yeah, so it's really simple. You're getting a screening of the body essentially without all the radiation exposure. And it tells you, you know, a number of things. I mean, you get crazy, right? You can find a lot of abnormalities, but essentially it, it helps in finding early lesions, you know, that you can't diagnose normally. But I want to preface that, Jerry, with combining that with blood work, because now we have so much genetic blood tests for oncology. Because the main reason people do it is, you know, they, once you get a late stage cancer, it's spread and it's more difficult, much more difficult to treat. And in the standard model, it's almost impossible. So, you know, in 50 years, like, let's improve 5 or 7% outcome. So people want to find things early and cure them if they can or get rid of them.
Yeah. And so it's, it's basically, it's just a full body scan that gives you the ability to look at hotspots.
Yeah, essentially. And if you think about where it's going in the future with AI, and it really depends on the quality of the equipment, the doctor, you know, the radiologist that's reading the film. That is a big deal, by the way, because you, yeah, you will get different readings from different people. It's just the nature of that field. And, and then the only problem is, you know, people can get scared because they see something they're unsure. But when it's married with blood work, what's nice, like these companies, like, there's a number of them out there now that you can scan for almost 50 plus cancers with just a blood test. Right, right. And when that's combined with the MRI, you get, you know, they're like 92, 95 accurate. And you marry that with the MRI, it's beautiful. Because now you have confirmation. You're not just letting the imaging guide you blindly. So, yeah, the MRI is very powerful in, as part of a tool. Right. Of your toolbox for early detection.
And so who should, who should consider this is it people that get a blood test and something shows up and they're like, okay, now I need to go get this. Or should it, should it be even beyond that of like, okay, my family members had cancer, so I need to get ahead of this and go ahead and start screening.
So that's a great question and I may not give the exact answer you're thinking because it's not always that easy. But the bottom line is our goal here is to what, prevent cancer. Right, Right. So people with family history, when you do these hereditary, you know, buccal screens of cancer, you get like what, 2% are really hereditary? Maybe 2 to 3. And you know, like to screen people that have obviously risks, but in a way where if people want to be more advanced in preventative medicine when they're running blood tests. So the best example I can give without confusing everybody is a mammogram. You know, women go get mammograms to try to prevent breast cancer. They're like 20, 25% inaccurate. And when you do get these like, sometimes density, you've had a loved one or a spouse or somebody who's, who's had these densities, and then they're scared and they have to go get an ultrasound potential biopsy, you can rule a lot of that out with combining very high quality genetic blood tests for cancer and then marrying that to the mri. So if I have a patient who has a positive, I know that there's. In our team, we have about 25 doctors on our team that do nothing but personalized, high level, precision cancer. If I already have data like me, that the cancer is there through blood work and I even can tell if it's metastasized through circulating tumor cells. Yes. Now I'm not wasting time. Now the MRI zeroes me right in and says, let's look at it. And then we'd go to the tumor with a catheter the size of your hair and go right in and genetically deliver the target specific to the genetics of the tumor and immunotherapy and then come out with a band aid or just freeze the tumor. Very Star Wars. It's very precision what we do. So in context to, yeah, I would do earlier, I would, I would combine that with other screenings so that it's not just like, yeah, let Me go get my whole body MRI and oh, you know, your spine is out of alignment and you have this growth and you have cysts in your, you know, it can give you a lot of information. Yeah, but as you know, we don't want a lot of information. We want precise, personalized information so we can actually have a targeted benefit for the patient.
Well, and that's when you, when you look at like what I think a lot of people, especially maybe, you know, 10, 20 years ago, we're going through as far as treatment is like, oh, you have cancer, we're just going to knock your whole body out.
Yeah, right.
We're just going to wipe you out completely and then hopefully build you back up with your immune. You know, hopefully build your immune system back up after we've torn everything apart. But what you're saying is that like you, you're. Once you identify where it is, it, you just go in and you just take care of that piece. It's not necessarily wiping the whole system out anymore.
No, you know, you're. That's a great point. So chemo typically is maximum therapeutic dose. It's. It's basically a cookbook based on the type and stage of cancer. With minor modifications, it's very high dose. There can be neurological damage, later toxicity. So it's too much and it's not targeted. Surgery can be also metastatic, making cancer spread further if it's there. So if you get a lumpectomy or mastectomy, it has inflammatory risk, it's not clean. There's so much involved with the surgery of that and then radiation. With some of the older equipment, you can radiate and burn. So let me, let's, let's reverse engineer this. If we can know exactly which chemo and which immunotherapies to give, which most people don't even really get immunotherapy, we can put it right at the tumor and avoid surgery, avoid radiation. When we use, if and if we ever have to use radiation, sometimes we use beads that are the size of a red blood cell. So it's like we just place them and we're done. It's within 1 millimeter. So the work that we're doing is so personalized. To compare it to conventional is almost like Star wars because we see those patients who fail all the top cancer centers and by the grace of God, most of them respond because of this high level personalization. Well, the same thing should be in the strategy of MRI screening, blood work. As soon as we know what's going on we want to know also what's causing that cancer? Is it high estrogen, is it diet? Obviously diet's a big part, right? Biomarkers, we're looking at infections, chemicals, heavy metals and get those as a long term process out of the body so that if, you know, it helps the person's immune system and their body be able to better, you know, avoid not only cancer but the other as, you know, chronic illnesses that affect people.
Well, and I think that's something that, that, you know, and I don't want to speak for everybody but for the people that I know that have gone through and had cancer and you know, some of the things they tell me is that like, you know, okay, well I went in, I had my surgery, my chemo, they took care of it. You know, I went through all the, the you know, quote unquote rehab to get myself back to normal. And now it's like, okay, well now I'm worried about it coming back because they didn't give me an instructions on how to prevent it. And so I'm like, you know, well, yeah, well if, if like you said, if it was diet and you didn't change your diet, well, guess what, it's probably going to come back in some way, form or fashion.
That's right. And it's interesting because out of all the things we do in preventative medicine and diet and lifestyle, cancer is a little trickier because those mutations can pop up even sometimes in the, in, even patients who try do everything right. Right. They can, it's not, it's not, you know, they're, they're a little, they're a less risk than obviously people with diabetes and glucose irregularities. IGF1, we can go on into all those biomarkers. But. Right. The interesting component is they're just, they're, there's still a place for us monitoring people in a way where we don't have to make this disease scary, life threatening, make it very manageable. Like if you diagnose an early stage breast cancer, the key is we can tell you whether it's spread or not. No other doctors would do that through just a biopsy. But we have circulating tumor cells we can grab right from the bloodstream. Just a simple blood draw. And if those number counts are high, we already know some of that data is even more correlative than imaging, meaning it's telling you this is spreading. So the treatment for that patient would be different than someone who says, hey, this is contained, let's just freeze the tumor. So yes, you can monitor and you don't have to be scared because you can see where the cancer is and where it's going. And you can do things that are very precise and precision to help somebody. You know, diet, lifestyle. We know intermittent fasting, reducing glucose. Those are basics. Right. Everybody, I hope everybody listening to this already knows that, you know, we don't eat refined chemical foods. We eat the food that is healthy. And we, we, you know, we keep moving our bodies and we improve our oxygen. Oxygen is very important for cancer. The Warburg effect. These other things are really important for overall health as well. So, yeah, I think that there has to be. Everything has to be personalized because everybody is different. The risks are different, too.
Right.
So.
So we've talked about cancer, but does. Does a preventative MRI work for any other issues?
Well, you can spot all. I mean, it's like 500 conditions. Right. So you can oftentimes look at circulatory. There's just. It goes on and on. You can look at, is there a cyst, is there a growth, is there a lesion? Is there, you know, a lot of, you know, circulatory patterns, too? If you're looking at, you know, like, blood vessels. So you can see if there's issues with, you know, you know, and then you may have to run further testing. So, for example, like, you know, if you see something around the heart, you're going to definitely want to be referred to cardiology and do proper echo and, you know, proper other studies to see if how much blood is getting into the tissue. So MRI can do a lot, but the problem with it is, at the same time, you want to make sure you're working with the right doctors, because what do you do with all this information? Right. How do you actually put it into an effective plan? Plan? So I think the, the naysayers for whole body MRI are you just scare people. And the data shows it only helps a couple percent of the time. Yeah. And, you know, it doesn't give you directed treatment, but under the hands of a good doctor who is. Knows how to, you know, help the patient, it can be a very powerful tool to say, you know, we found this and we're going to monitor it or we're going to treat it or, you know, in essence, let's, you know, we're going to find that rare thing that we could have never seen without the MRI. So there's that advantage with it, but it's like 500. You know, it's a lot of conditions that MRI can screen for. It doesn't Mean that, you know, the first, the. The MRI itself is conclusive. It's the beginning step, and then you need to do further workups with the patients. But, yeah, I think we're moving into a place where when these MRIs start getting connected to AI, which is happening.
Yeah.
You're going to have higher accuracy on the reads. And then you combine it to the. Like the blood work that I was talking about, where you have zeroed in. Exactly. Oh, these are. These are small. You know, this is. This is small cell carcinoma of the lung. We already know what cell types. I mean, now you're so zoomed in. Yeah, no, it's lung cancer. We know what type it is, we know where it is, and we know it's in such a baby stage that we can just, you know, zap it, for lack of a better word. And the person doesn't have to have lung cancer. You know, that's right. How this evolves, I believe within the next, you know, five to 10 years, you're going to see more and more of this because, you know, all of us have been touched by loved ones one way or another with the, with this disease. And it's scary. And people don't feel like they have any control. And so, you know, they just kind of hold their breath and do the colonoscopy or hold their breath and get their mammograms. And what if you have pancreatic cancer, which is not going to be screened by any of those tools.
Right, right, right. Well, and that's. And that's the thing that I, I've told people as a health coach, I'm like, you know, I can. I. I don't have the tools to do all those screenings, but I know the basics of, like, if we, if we fix your diet, I know I can cut your cravings out. I know I can do different things. And so, like, if we fix your diet, those things that are potentially wrong underneath the skin are going to show up. You know, they're going to start to show up because you're going to start showing symptoms and signs of the real pains that you may not feel now because you just feel bad all the time. And then we can go and get like, okay, now you need to go talk to your doctor about this, this, or this, because these are the things that are starting to show up. But now you're talking about, like, with this, it's like, it's like being able to just look underneath the skin and get a very good idea of what's going on and if nothing's going on, well, at least you've got a baseline, right? Like you've got a baseline to start at. And then, you know, however often you need to get one, if it's five years down the road, you get another one. And then you'll be able to tell this, you know, the dissimilars pieces of it and go like, okay, something changed. What's going on?
Yeah. You know, and I think there's the three. You always look at the big things. We all need to screen for cancer. I think there's. There's just a lot of good evidence to rule out. I mean, even now we have. You have technology like cologuard. If you're worried about colon cancer, you can do this. Do a bowel, send in the stool, and you're, you know, it's a good pre screener. And then you'll need colonoscopy. If it's positive, it's negative, you're 92%. But now what's happening, Jerry, is with these advanced blood tests, you're Screening for like 50 cancers all in one shot. And that's a game changer because that's the, the. There's going to be a higher compliance with a blood draw than somebody sitting in an MRI for an hour or so. Right. To do these procedures because, you know, you're in a tube. Not everybody likes that. But a blood test, like give you an example, like we use this all the time, is that we use a blood test that's. That's a protein, that's 98 accurate for breast cancer. It's a blood test. So why would you do a mammogram? I'm just gonna, you know, when I could. You could literally do the test and if it's positive, run an ultrasound and actually then run a few more tests to see if it's spread or localized or biopsy, you can do all kinds of things. But when you have that cancer where you're like, oh, how many times does a mammogram missed a breast cancer that later than.
Yeah.
In the, in the same year the patient gets diagnosed with breast cancer. It's just. I don't want to say this without offending anyone because I really respect all the works that doc. You know, all the work that other doctors do in. VITA is kind of its own specialist in personalized medicine. But those. Some of that technology is archaic and outdated.
Right.
And it's so funny because you're. You're, you know, B. Gen will say, let's get a Baseline with your mammogram, it's like, really? But it's. You get so many false positives, right? And then you, as a health coach is like, hey, this is estrogen dominance. We gotta get the liver cleaned out. We gotta detox the body. We gotta get the nutrition. Because estrogen dominance causes so much more than just, you know, dense breast tissue, right? It's going to have effects on the liver, cancer risks, etc. So it's just. It's the. And the doctor won't have that conversation like you will with your patients because they don't have the time or that's not, I hate to say it, a billable code for them and insurance, you know, sit down and actually do the work that needs to be done for that patient to go towards living a longer and a better life.
Right. Well. And so, like, when. Why did you decide to create this, like, this different approach? Because it is different. And it's not, you know, it. Like you said, it's not the sit down. And if it's billable, I can do this. And then I've got, like, you know, eight minutes with this patient before I got to move on to the next one. Like, you know, why. Why create this different approach? Like, what was it about it that for you was like, I. I have to do this?
Well, first of all, the other. The other approach doesn't work. So that was the first thing. And we've been doing this for almost 25 years now. And it's like patients came to us after they had failed. I won't name the facilities, but the top cancer centers that have, I mean, all over the country, from the east coast to the west coast, the top where people are like, if I go to get cancer, I'm going to go to these cancer centers. And they all do the same thing, minus the clinical drug trials they offer, because they're all really based on insurance, billable codes, and everybody's following the same situation. Well, if you look in the last five decades, our cancer treatments in general have not improved much at all, right? For cancers that have spread. For cancers that have spread, it has not gotten. So then there was this big advent of immunotherapy when they brought on PD1 inhibitors, which is a category of drugs which have become more popular to helping your natural killer cells. When you have a certain marker, these drugs can help prolong somebody's. But what I learned early on was that it's all about personalization and precision. And whenever we were able to dial everything in, both from the conventional side and the natural side, our outcomes were skyrocketing. Like people that were sent home, I mean just, just this week we had another bell ringing ceremony of a gentleman with prostate cancer all through his bones was sent home to die by a. I won't mention their name, but you would know exactly who I'm saying. And they said, get your affairs in order. And this man read in the Gospel of Luke that all things are possible for God. So he shows up and here he is, you know, in bodies holding, you know, it's cleaned up. His PSA went from like 20 702. 700 to like 1.2.
Oh my gosh.
So just. But how do you do all this? Well, it's, it's one person at a time. Everybody's n of 1. And the more you know about the tumor, the genetics, the targeting, and then we use precision technology. Like we go right into those tumors using like I always say, we use a catheter the size of your hair, it's so small. And we use interventional radiology. But we're delivering high, highly personalized care that we build in our own pharmacies. We have our own pharmacies that make integrative agents. In fact, a lot of the IVs that you, you might see from integrative doctors and they do vitamin C and they do integrated care. We supply a lot of those Doctors with those IVs nationwide through our pharmacies. And when we with within oncology, we custom develop them for each patient based on their target. So it's taking a lot of the guesswork and without saying it, oftentimes oncology is like pin the tail on the donkey. We're going to try this. If it doesn't work, we're going to try that. So what I found when you got personalized, people did better now. And more and more people lived longer and more people had a chance of remission and that it became very clear this was a path forward. Except for early on we had. You always have obstacles when you're pioneering a field, so to speak, or you're one of the pioneers in the field. And we've always done a very good job of giving our patients a full understanding of the approach and letting them make the decision. Because every person deserves to have that choice to really take their health to another level. And they have to be involved in that process too.
Right. And so like you're talking about medical freedom there. Right? And so that's one of the things that I saw on your website, like, and that's something that to me, that was a term I hadn't really. I mean, the definition of it, I was like, okay, that makes sense. But to use it in that way is like, I hadn't really heard that very much. And so that's just like, people need to understand that just because a doctor says something their doctor that they've seen for 20 or 30 years doesn't mean that they can't go somewhere else and get a second opinion or a third opinion or look at a different treatment plan. Like they have the freedom to choose that.
Yeah. And you know, interestingly enough, just make sure that the treatment plan you're getting is not from the same philosophy of medicine because.
Right.
It's going to be the same treatment. You know, it's just going to be a different location.
Yeah.
And I think the more you get targeted and more personalized, I mean, I, I think today, you know, it's been 25 years and the Lord knows it's been a long journey with our team and all the work. And I mean, we have like 200 people and growing on our team. We have chemists, pharmacists, R D, oncology, we have everybody, naturopathic doctors, all working together. The, the, the thing is, it's. The important thing is that we've. It takes us about 1500 hours and one year to train any new coming doctor. It doesn't matter if they're already an oncologist or they're an integrative doctor. It takes that long to train them in precision. And I believe that's the way of the future. Like the precision and targeting. Personalized care for each person is what people really want. And now the biggest obstacle was insurance companies just weren't covering it. Right. So people are out of pocket. Well, this year we just launched a health care plan where now it's cheaper. You can go to any doctor you want. Conventional, natural, we cover everybody. We covered the care at our facility. You can have preventative medicine covered in the plan. Because that's what I mean by healthcare freedom is that oftentimes you're kind of limited to whatever your insurance policy will allow. Right now we've taken those limitations away, we've reduced those costs and we have employers just right and left joining because they're sick of those 20, 30% price hikes every year with their blues, the Blue Cross, United Cigna, and they have no options. You're pretty much stuck in the same model. So I think that's gonna, that provide, that gives you the option to say, you know what I really I want to go conventional. Good. Okay. That's your freedom. But if I want to do integrative care and get personalized medicine, I should have that option as well, Right?
Well, and I want to make sure that people hear that, like, this is not normal. Because to have a naturopathic doctor and a conventional in an oncologist, all these doctors together in the same facility, working together, like that's, that takes an understanding from each doctor to know that like, okay, well, for this patient, my way might not be right, but my colleague can help because their way might be right. And a lot of times doctors get so siloed in. Nope, this is the only way it's going to work. Because this is just what we've been taught. It's the only way it's going to work.
Yeah. You know what's interesting, Jerry, is we have to retrain them all when they arrive and join our team. It's almost like everything they learned, they need to forget it. So even your conventional oncologists are like blown away because once you stop genetic targeting and we have all this advanced blood work and data markers, 90% of all the patients we treat were on the wrong medication when they arrive from the data. So we retrain them. It doesn't matter if they're an oncologist. We have one oncologist was like 40 year expert oncologist, part of multiple high level staff. And he said to me the other day, he said, I wish I would have known this years ago. I would have been able to save so many lives. I said, well, that technology, it's a commitment to constantly evolving the science with the technology and using the data today, not in 10 years from now when people have already not passed on, but using it today. And I think that's the blessing of Nvidia is you get that you're about seven to 10 years ahead of what's available at what you think is the latest cancer centers, because they can't do it. They don't have the freedom to do it, partly because of insurance and other regulatory hurdles, and they don't have the integrative approach on campus at all. They don't really understand it.
Right. Well. And, and one of the things you said there is, it's, and I've, I've, I've read this in so many different areas. And, and when it comes to healthcare is that, you know, the, the cutting edge research that's happening is, doesn't hit your primary care physician's desk for sometimes 30 years. And so like it, it's archaic medicine that you're being treated with when it, when you look at the technology that's available. And so to be able to have someplace that's doing that, like focusing on what is cutting edge, what is out there, what can we do that, that maybe those other places, the traditional places aren't going to even know about for five years.
Yeah, I have another stat you're going to like if you graduate from a specialty in medicine. Yeah, you're outdated already in 18 months just on the big data that's being published from all over the World in 18 Months from your, the latest trained specialist is outdated because of that. So the data that's coming out on targeting. And you know this because you're in the nutrition world and I mean there's so much we're learning about, you know, that we didn't know two decades ago. And you know what? You know what? We, I remember 20 years ago, we, I walked across the path and there was a rheumatologist and his lunch was a slice of cake. And I'm like, what are you doing? Well, this doesn't have anything to do with your health. This is 20 years ago today. It's like, well, hey, I'm at the gym on my lunch break and I'm intermittent fasting and I. Right. And I'm eating hopefully, you know, high quality foods that my body can digest properly so and not process. But that we've come a long way where in Convent in the conventional model of medicine, it was completely ignored. Now there's some, some more attention to this, to this component.
Right, right. Well, and that's, that's as much as I've gotten into researching on my own. Not, not just for me but for my patients or my clients and people I work with in, in for the podcast and talking to people and like I'm learning so much more about where I need to be as a person like physically and in health wise. And I'm always changing what I do with my health to hopefully improve it, which I think I am. And so when people ask me like, why do you eat the way you eat? I'm like, because I hear the stories of what people that like, I see it, I hear the stories. It, it's out there. The data is not. It doesn't lie that, you know, we, while the US has, you know, we always wind up in the top three as far as technology advances in medicine, you know, in the world. But we're like number 40 or something in regards to like overall health.
Yeah.
Is like it was ridiculous, crazy.
There was like this number I saw the other day. 30 of our GDP is health care and it's going to be like 6 or 7 trillion dollars by 2030 because there's so, so between big pharma and big insurance, there's a billy over a billion dollar in lobbying that happens in D.C. so what I'm saying is none of these companies are tasked with helping you live longer and be blessed and you know, reach a healthy old age with your family and. Right. That's not what they're tasked with. They're tasked with their financial institutions. Right. They have stock markets. And so I realized that it really comes from the doctors and health coaches and the, and what we learn from our families on how to eat and take care of ourselves as we're little because obviously it's a, I think we're going to have, you know, generational issues with food. That's a big thing. Right. And then how we manage stress and how does our prayer life and how does our, all those critical aspects play into better sleep, better eating, better exercise, reduction in dementia, Alzheimer's. I think we're moving to those, you know, to use another term, the 3.0 diseases, which is where the medicine that you and, and we do just, we do it on a, you know, very medical technical level. You do it also on a technical lifestyle method that medicine 3.0 is what people deserve to hey, dementia, Alzheimer's, maybe we can stop it, we can slow it down. Maybe we can prevent the cancer from growing altogether and for sure the diabetes and heart disease. So how do we do that? Right. That's really why people are running these whole body MRIs. They're trying to find things early and control them to the best of their ability. But I believe with the technology that's available today, this is all very, very possible.
Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's, it's, it, it, there's, there's really no reason why somebody can't take control of their health and turn it around. And, and I fully believe that, that, that there already is a cure for so many of these diseases. It's just, it's not labeled as a cure because it's not coming from a pharmaceutical company. But you know, the cure is out there. It's in, it's in the, the nature, it's in the natural medicine. It's in avoiding things that are that, that we know not necessarily are cancer causing. Like, I don't want to say they're, they're going to cause cancer, but they feed cancer. Like cancer feeds off of them and grows off of them. And so if you can avoid those things, it. It's going to help you live a longer, healthier life.
It is. And, you know, we know, you know, that this technology that we're talking about, which is, I think, moving into medicine 3.0, it's, you know, it's gonna become the standard of care someday. But by the time that happens, that's, you know, two decades from now. And until they figure out how to sell a medication or something that tries to do the same thing. But I really think there's such a power in being knowledgeable of how to take care of yourself. Like, we all have different bodies, you know, and so from the conversation of, hey, I'm reducing refined sugars, carbohydrates, and all processed food, just those three things, right? Yeah. Tremendous difference in your life, you know, hydrate. Just three little things. Now we go back to what we were talking about originally with this whole body mri. Can that be part of a screening? Yes, with the right blood work and the right doctor that, you know. Absolutely. I don't recommend just going to a whole body mri, you know, marketing center, and just getting a screen and, and then getting all this data and go, where do I go from here? No, be working with a doctor right from the beginning who orders it for you, who can monitor it, has a plan for screening, and prevention is marrying it to very sophisticated, good blood work. So that way you're not just, you know, scared or worried because if we scan our bodies, you know, you're going to find stuff. It's just the nature of being alive. But what we have to do is also lear learn what our body needs to be healthy and to support it from a holistic perspective. Right. And as we can do that, we can be optimal. I mean, I'm at a point, and I don't know about you, but I. I look at energy as the biggest component these days. Oh, yeah. What's your. What's your energy? What's your mental clarity? That's. I think that, you know, that's almost more exciting. You know, being in shape is great and all that, but having energy and mental clarity is so powerful. Right. And makes you feel like you can be creative, do the things that the Lord wants you to do in your life. And I believe that that starts with, as we talked about, diet, exercise, breathing, you know, sleeping well. And so the whole body MRI can't fix all of that. It just gives you, you know, it gives you something that you didn't know is there. And if it marries with the blood work, great. You can get an early diagnosis, get rid of it. But those other things that you're talking about are so critical to living a long, healthy life.
Yep. And. And I want to make sure, like, I. I know I've said this before on my podcast, but, you know, having a doctor that understands, like. Like you said, how to read the results, it's one thing to just go and get these tests done.
And.
And, you know, my wife did this a couple of years ago. We. We. I instructed her. I was like, you know what? There is a problem going on. Go ask your doctor to run this test. And it was an OAT test. And her doctor was like, I've never heard of this. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't want to. Like, And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, just. Just have her run it. Like, you know, in the. Insurance wouldn't cover it because I don't know why. Like, she didn't. She wouldn't code it right or whatever, but. So we paid it out of pocket, got the results. The doctor was like, here you go. I mean, everything looks fine to me, and I get it home. And I'm like, okay, well, your liver is not functioning right, and your lymphatic system's clogged up.
I like.
Because I look at it, I'm like, these are the markers that are off, you know, And I'm like. And I'm not even trained to really read it, but I know enough about what I know about to be able to go, okay, let's. Like, I wouldn't do that if it was some other person, but it's my wife, so I can say like, hey, here we go, you know?
Well, you know.
You know, I'd find a doctor that was, you know, versed in how to read it and have them do it.
But, yeah, now we have something really cool is. So let's say you run a basic lab test. Cbc, chemistry, you know, right? You look at all all those basic labs. There's a number of them. Metabolic labs, right. We now have. In our labs, we have AI data. So automatically, based on all the published literature, this is super cool. We don't look at. You're just in and out of range. We look at the optimal ranges. But if you break down blood tests, there's so much data. It's a lot of work. Right? But if it's. That's a great thing for computers to do. Right? And then it starts to alert you that, wait a minute, you're not breaking down any proteins in your, in your, yeah, you know, you're, you're, you're right, you have the potential sarcopenia process. So you, let's start looking at, okay, this is going on with your liver now, that kind of work. You, you know, it's not standard healthcare, right? Because, but that is so helpful, especially to people that are young and healthy. And the way I've always seen it is, you know, we try to shop healthy, you know, garden organic foods, we try to go to the best places, we exercise. But our health care system, the Blues Blue Cross, that doesn't really, you know, marry into our type of life. So that's why we built the health care plan because it actually covers those things for you instantly. And the reason I'm saying that is because it's built into your plan so you don't have the out of pocket expenses to actually get those labs to get that direction and to elevate your health and be more empowered. Because health care is costing a lot, but people aren't getting this information that can be hugely important to their energy, their quality of life and prevention.
Right. Well, and the beautiful thing is that when you, when you get to the other side of, of health, to where I am, and it's like, okay, well, you know, I, I don't look at a healthcare plan when like my, like my wife told me yesterday, she said, you know, our, our renewal period's coming up because we get healthcare through her work. And, and I said, okay, it, I look at, I don't look at it as like, oh my gosh, okay, I've got to get these, you know, what's my medication, what's my d, all those numbers, it's like, no, what's my trauma care? Like, that's what I look at because I'm like, I, I, I, I know I don't need to go to the doctor for this thing or that thing or you know, any chronic issues. I don't have any medications that I take, so I'm never going to have that. Like, what's it going to happen when I, because I have energy, because I run a lot, because I'm active, it's like, what's going to happen when I break my leg? How much coverage have I got? Right? Like, that's what I want to know. And when you're on that side of it, it, it changes how, for me, I think it changes how you look at your life and live your life because you're not constantly worried about, is my health insurance going to be there for me and cover what I need it to cover, you know, on a daily or weekly basis.
Well, you're absolutely right. And the other aspect of that, Jerry, is you're running, you're active, you get a little older and you're doing all the right stuff. But you may, you may benefit from stem cells from your own body or right, you know, regenerative medicine right in your knee or in your hip so that you can keep running, right. You don't lose that mobility. Well, we cover that, we cover that in our lab because so that's, that, that, that's a, that costs people a lot of money and they don't know where to go. We have concierge navigation and we can send them to the best providers in the country. We know who they are and avoid surgery. You know, so having, you know, you hope that, you know, you never get injured. But let's say you got an injury and, you know, and somebody says, okay, they did an imaging on my knee and I have, you know, wax ligaments, a lot of arthritis building up. And your immediate option is, well, we're going to go to surgery or we're going to go to rehab and you're out. But if we look at the world's best athletes, they don't do that in Europe and in the US they'll use regenerative medicine and they're up and out the next day and it's actually better for them to stay mobile. So why isn't that covered in our healthcare plan? Well, it is within Vita Health, that's in your plan. And your employer's total health care plan can cover you if you go to the hospital. Anywhere you want covers you, any specialist you want, but it also covers these important things. And I bring that up because as I. My big thing too is I like to be active. And it, I guess you get older, you got little stuff that creeps up. You want to work through it, right. And you learn how to stretch and, you know, get your soft tissue, you know, foamer out. But then using regenerative medicine is kind of nice because it gives you that little boost, you know, right. And it gets you, keeps you going. And because we don't, you know, we look at the data like even somebody falling and breaking their hip, right. Their life expectancy goes down quickly. So mobility and keeping active walking is probably the most important exercise on the planet.
Right.
Just keeping the mobility going. So that's why marrying a great like minded Healthcare plan to. We talked about whole body MRIs and these screenings is to your philosophy of living longer. We can take the average lifespan of 77 and easily move that up to the high 90s.
Yeah.
That is not an impossibility, especially if people are eating right, exercising, breathing and, and really stress. If you look at all of these. I don't want to tinker conversation, but blue zones. Right. Where people live longer. Yep. The biggest factor. Nobody's looking at the stress. Yeah. I mean my, my family comes from a blue zone and it's in Italy. It's like a little island of Sicily. And they're. Oh yeah, they're. They eat off the land, you know, but there's no. Relatively zero stress. Yeah. In comparative to the cultures we live in. And they have community that loves one another and supports each other. And so we, you know, these are also part of living longer and a better long and blessed life. So that's where, you know, maybe your church or your, your community in your, in your town and having those friendships are so important part of living longer and healthy as well.
No, I agree. And that's, I mean that's, that's something I talked about a lot on this podcast is because I agree with you that it, I don't. There's no reason why we aren't pushing that 80s and 90s for everybody, you know, and it. Well, I say there's no reason. There is a big reason. It's the food that we eat and, and then it's the activity that we don't do. And in the combination of those two things, you know, and I remember seeing a statistic that if you have one chronic disease, when you hit 50, like you, your likelihood of reaching this, the average lifespan drops like so like you hit 50, you have one chronic disease, you're not likely to make the average lifespan. But if you make 50 and you don't have any chronic disease, you're probably going to live to 95.
Yeah. And with good quality. With good quality too. Not just 95, but moving and active and being able to help the next generation and impacting the world with the gifts that God has given you. Right.
And so it's, it's, it's uber important to take care of yourself early. And, and that's where I think this, that adding all these different tools, like you said, the, the preventative mri, the blood screens, adding all these things in and having a doctor that can read all these things early on for you, when we think we're invincible, when we're in our 20s. But having these tools at our. At our disposal, it. It opens the door for so much more life and so much more. More fun and enjoyment in community as we get older. Because it. It sort of for each individual as you, as you individualize it, it shows you the path that you need to go on to be able to get there.
Yeah. Your body's speaking to you every day. And, you know, sometimes what's uncomfortable is your path to healing. It's just telling you. Right. Whether it's diet, exercise, movement, and we have the wrong understanding of exercise and diet. Sometimes we think you got to go to the gym and use equipment and pound weights. But as we get older, it's really about mobility. Right. As you know, and flexibility. And so as we start paying attention to our body and we work with the right doctors using precision, personalized approaches, you always have an advantage because that doctor or that coach knows exactly what you need and is there to motivate you, support you, give you that blessing. You need to go to the next level in your health and gives you real hope because all the times if you just are told, well, there's nothing you can do, go to this physical, you know, go do this. It's. It's particularly cancer. You go to these high level cancer centers and each floor has a different cancer ward.
Right.
And it's just. I. And this is just riddled with like, depression, sadness. This. I call it the spirit of death is all moving through there. And when you come to. In Vita, it's this. You feel the presence of peace, healing. It's just different. And that in itself, even though the technology, yes, is. Is there and the personalization there, but even that just shifts the ability for somebody's spirit to kind of wake up and say, I'm. I'm gonna live. And my body, I've seen other people now live who had. Next to me, and it creates positive. So same thing with health. If you're around a healthy community or a health coach, they start motivating each other to. To go where you never thought you could go before.
Right.
Do things you never thought you could do. Because our body is magnificently designed and resilient, and we just got to give it the right things and support it, and it can. It can overcome so much.
Right. Well, and. And you're proving that like in Vita's proving that with the. The body can heal itself if you provide it the right stuff. Right. And whether it's. Whether it's. Food or pharmaceuticals or treatment plant, whatever it is that it needs to heal. Your body can do that if you just provide it the tools to be able to fix itself. And one of those tools is obviously the mindset too. Like, you have to believe that, you know, like you and like you were talking about, you have to believe that, okay, I can make it because that person made it. And, and when you provide all those things in one place, I mean, obviously you're going to have good outcomes. Obviously you're going to have people knocking on your door saying, what are you doing? I need to see some of this. I need to. And I hope my, my prayer and hope is that it, it starts to spread across the country as other doctors start to see it and go, okay, this is different. How can I get involved?
Yeah, we're, we're working on that right now. And that's why, you know, so we have the Invita Medical centers, which is a centers of excellence for cancer, but we also. And autoimmune and Lyme disease, which are all kind of immune, kind of related ill diseases. But we have the Invita Health, which is the healthcare plan for as small as five employees, up to thousands that join. And they don't need their Blue Cross United because you can go to any doctor you want nationwide, any hospital you want, any special. We have navigation that takes you to the highest quality score facility. Using AI data, we tell you who's the best doctor, who's the one who has the less remittances to the hospital. We guide you with all the personalized medicine. And let's say they're working with a health coach and you need a lab run. We can do all that AI work, pass it on to the coach. We can pass that right on to their primary care doctor. You have 24 hours telehealth, urgent care, behavioral health, you know, with helping with mood, even dermatology. Take a picture on your phone, send it. We have all these cool things at a fraction of the cost for these employers and with technology that's seven to ten years ahead. You have regenerative medicine, you have oncology screening, you have these two of these things you're talking about today. And that is a big deal because the way we change a system is making it available. Oftentimes, as the doctors get educated in these systems, their next question is, well, is it covered by insurance? So it's very hard because my patients may need this, but for whatever reason, it may not be covered. Now at Nvidia, we have, you know, waiting lists of patients because of the work we've been doing for 20 you know, almost 24 or 25 years now. Yeah, but once you have this available in the insurance model, you're going to see migration like you've never seen before. Because people want personalized medicine. I believe it. I've seen it over the years just grow. But you need to write groups and institutions that have the infrastructure to deliver it. And doctors feel so free when they go into this field because they're like, I can really do what I want to do to help my patient.
Right. Well, so how does somebody find out like where the, how do they get in touch with Nvidia if they're interested in finding out more about either the medical center or the health plan?
Well, it's invita.come n v I T A is the clinic. You know, that's our cancer center and you can go there. I even say if you're not a patient, just go look at the testimonials. They're amazing. Some of these stories will give you lots of hope. Right? And it's real because these patients have overcome very, very chronic, terminal illnesses. Number two is nvidiahealth.com is the insurance plan for your small business or large business even. I even tell people if you have a small family, you know, like you're, you know, you're a small independent family, self employed, you can get insured, right. You run a census data which is basically just your age and you know, family, you don't have to give any Social Security and right away you'll, you know, we get back, gives you a quote and you can see what your savings was. But you can also see you can go to any hospital, any doctor. There's no hmo, no ppo. It's literally your, the world is your oyster, oyster in the sense of healthcare, but you also have concierge guidance, so someone's there to navigate you. So you go to either one of those and you know, our team is, you know, we're always here to help people, but we're excited because this healthcare plan I've, I've already been meeting with, you know, number of companies over the last few years and the migration towards it has been huge because people don't like their health care. No one is in love with their insurance company. And we're building something where they actually can love their insurance company because we got rid of all the wasted spending and garbage and brought the cost down and just given them directly to the patient so they can get the benefit.
That's awesome. Well, Dr. Prater, I greatly appreciate you being on Is there anything else that you would want to share with the listeners about, you know, anything we've talked about or anything else that, like, maybe we didn't hit on that, like maybe you would want to highlight for them?
Yeah, I would just tell them, you know, I, I would. All my years of experience being around some of the sickest patients that you can imagine. Hospice, cancer patients, late stage. All things are possible with God. The technology's there. The earth has the, the ability. We have foods, we have technology. But you just have to, I always tell people, pray and connect with the right people and you'll start seeing things move for you and, and don't lose hope. Don't ever lose hope. And unfortunately, I know we don't want to be negative, but you're not going to find any of this in the big media. You're not going to find it in the, it's just not part of the, the world or big insurance. But you're going to find it in, in like what you're doing, which is these outreaches to people so that they're listening to you and learning from you.
Right.
About what their doctor isn't telling them. And it's in many ways more valuable because it's going to extend their life. So that, that's my. I would just keep encouraging them to listen to the type of things that you're talking about and continue to not lose hope because you can live a long and blessed life. And if you're young, don't take advantage of it. Use that to build a momentum and teach your kids and how to eat healthy and be healthy so they don't have to have all the same mental health, all the other problems that we see so many other people having.
Right. Well, I thank you so much for being a guest. It's been, it's been tremendous. You've taught me some things and I know that listeners are going to truly enjoy the conversation.
Well, thank you. I'm honored that you, you know, that you asked for me to join your show today.
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