WHY LONGEVITY LOGIC: “COMMUNICATION”

American health care innovation has helped reduce human suffering and heralded unprecedented human longevity. However, in the United States, those without health insurance continue at record highs, with between 45-47 million now uninsured.  Those who are under-insured push the numbers even higher. The overall “cost of health” in America also continues spiraling out of control, seemingly with no end in sight. In the United States average health care spending for a family of four now exceeds the entire annual earnings of a minimum-wage worker.

We are now the heaviest population in the history of the planet; more than sixty-five percent of us (20-74 years of age) are overweight and thirty-four percent (72 million Americans) are clinically obese.  Current research associating oral health to general health is revealing. From the New York Times to Sixty Minutes, news organizations have increasingly publicized how tooth loss and oral disease have been linked to nutrition, obesity, diabetes, stroke, and cancer. Periodontal disease has been linked to cancer and is now also well recognized as directly connected to cardiac and other life-threatening vascular diseases.

Emphasizing these fundamental interrelationships between oral health and our nation’s more serious illnesses, LONGEVITY LOGIC – Empowered Health Defense (225 pgs.) provides readers with important insights on oral health and oral health care and serves as a guide to help in the enjoyment of longer and healthier lives. A broader understanding about associated disease processes and related oral treatment opportunities will help these readers unravel the challenge of prioritizing their oral health care and intelligently evaluating suggested dental treatment plans, associated materials, required time durations, and anticipated treatment fees.

In an era of self-empowerment, today's patients have realized that the quality and economics of their personal health depends on a more aggressive knowledge about healthcare delivery systems and a more well-informed level of communication with healthcare providers. Baby boomers, Generations X and Y are all showing a strong desire to become more informed when it comes to their personal health and nutrition. Research surveys, presented at the Academy of General Dentistry has confirmed an overwhelming demand in today’s healthcare consumers for more concise information about their oral health and in particular, how their oral health impacts their general health and longevity.

Films, like Michael Moore’s, Sicko, are also compelling Americans to address our very grim healthcare picture. The commercially successful documentary, while clearly illustrating many of the nation’s healthcare issues, fails to furnish any practical applications to confront our current health and healthcare delivery crisis.

Through the Internet, the dental and medical professions continue their efforts to educate and present current viewpoints. Many print publications have also previously, attempted to raise the public’s oral health consciousness and understanding of dental care. Assuredly, the marketplace remains awash with obesity-management diet books, and websites to provide many competing perspectives. Review of the literature, nevertheless, confirms a dearth of current publications or Internet sites for the lay public, with a succinct oral health/general health focus and including concrete proposals on healthcare and its delivery. Due to confirmed general-health consequences of poor oral health and escalating healthcare costs, nowhere is candid, accurate disease and treatment information more valuable than in the field of dentistry.

Effectual means of dealing with obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and other serious diseases of the body are ineluctably entwined with good oral health. Achievement of a working knowledge of these many important health issues can afford readers and their families, valuable rewards: the reduction of oral disease and of overall dental-care expenditure.

Many of today's healthcare specialties require rigorous expertise in order to realize even the most meager level of patient understanding.  Likewise in dentistry, many of the finer points may also call for a high level of technical training and experience. Fortunately however, a thorough understanding of clearly presented, simple concepts will go a long way in elevating a patient's dental-IQ-coefficient with the enormous benefit of enhancing essential patient-dentist communication.

Longevity Logic – Empowered Health Defense, provides a general historical overview of health and health care. It presents countless dental insights to help readers evaluate their own oral health issues and personal oral health needs. Well-known concepts of “prevention” are more candidly explored. Amalgam fillings, fluoride-use and various other innovative treatment controversies are also given more enlightened and direct perspectives. Questions about choosing a dentist, dental insurance, managed-care choices and prospects for universal-healthcare are conscientiously represented.  (Please see “TABLE OF CONTENTS”.)

Nationally, “universal” healthcare is again a central issue in the politics of our time. Healthcare Reform, Children's Health Initiative, Medicare and Medicaid legislation, all, recently publicized some of the complexities within efforts to improve our nation’s care-quality, broaden healthcare delivery, and reduce existing health and healthcare disparities.

Acknowledging the socioeconomic intricacies of healthcare delivery, Longevity Logic advances distinct perspectives regarding our twenty-first century healthcare systems.
Additional frameworks, for responding to our nation’s more serious illnesses and addressing future healthcare difficulties, will provide readers with valuable suggestions for more effective patient involvement.

For patients individually and society as a whole, our care and wellbeing, now and in the future, are presently at stake. In an increasingly technological world, Longevity Logic – Empowered Health Defense can be a vital asset in your efforts to succeed in the realization of more cost-effective, excellence in oral care, and optimum general health and quality of life for you and for your loved ones.

BOOK FORMAT

Longevity Logic – Empowered Health Defense includes seventeen concise chapters informing the reader of a wide range of general and explicit areas of dentistry and their current health-interrelated medicine. A review of this book’s Table of Contents and its extensive Index, will confirm the in depth scope of specific treatment procedures that are examined within.

A limited number of illustrations are included, often as chapter headings. Chapters one through six educate about some basic scientific theory and presents problematic general health concerns. Chapters seven and eight present a more specific treatment-by-treatment analysis. The complete text provided, gives its readers a chance to take immediate practical steps to improve their oral health or later revisit particular concerns as they may individually arise in future treatments.

Chapters nine through fifteen return to the more generalized approach with candid explorations and a public health orientation.  Included there, are topics on bacterial resistance, human longevity, and confronting persistent fears about dental treatment. In a similarly deconstructed format, chapters fourteen and fifteen conclude with a sensible, “Finding A Good Dentist” and “On Organized Dentistry.” Chapter sixteen’s useful expose: “Confronting the Obesity Crisis” is self-explanatory.  

The final chapter of the book focuses on oral health and general health in a socioeconomic context. The no-nonsense look at current societal managed-care and governmental-responsibility issues of chapter sixteen, “Defend Your Life” concludes with “Patient & Dentist Alert!” and “More Health Defense.” These important chapters not only illuminate the current problems, but also offer very valuable and very practical suggestions for readers. Oral healthcare delivery on an individual and national scale is framed in the context of its potential for better overall health and quality of life.

A series of common sense nutritional and dietary recommendations will be found in the book’s brief “Appendix.”  Finally, there is an extensive and well-organized, fourteen-page, index to enable localization of any specific topic.

In its entirety, Longevity Logic – Empowered Health Defense will enable readers, as patients, to draw many important, personal and beneficial conclusions about their health and healthcare. This book is a thorough, intelligent presentation that is balanced by a sincere and non-judgmental style, giving its readers a strong sense of inclusiveness, self-confidence and educational fulfillment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Chacona maintained a full-service, general dental practice on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for over 25yrs. He advocates a more comprehensive recognition of the oral health general health connections and the recognition of ‘functional’ dentistry. He also remains a strong advocate of cost-effective excellence in dental and oral health and healthcare delivery through better quality patient education.

Dr. Chacona is a respected contributor to various dental magazines, notably Dentistry Today, the most widely read dental periodical, with circulation in excess of 150,000. He has appeared on television several times. A current website, allows viewing of one video presentation: A “Special Report” from CNN on “overcoming dental phobia.” 

The longevitylogic.com site also includes, eight “Book Excerpts.” The complete “TABLE OF CONTENTS” and the extensive fourteen-page book “INDEX” is also linked.  The “REVIEWS” link presents impressions about Longevity Logic – Empowered Health Defense received thus far from several prominent physicians, including the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Columbia University’s Cardiac Research Foundation.