Why CardioAdvocate Exists
A Founder’s Letter
I learned the importance of cardiometabolic prevention long before I ever became a cardiologist.
When I was 15 years old, my father — just 46 — struggled to walk across a stadium during my younger siblings’ track meet. I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I only knew something was wrong.
Soon afterward, I drove with him to Providence Hospital in Seattle. He was admitted immediately. I had to drive home alone across the city on a learner’s permit, not knowing whether he would survive. He underwent five coronary angioplasties — this was before stents existed — and while the procedures helped, they did not cure his disease.
What ultimately saved his life wasn’t the angioplasty.
It was prevention.
Quitting smoking.
The earliest statins.
Years of steady, longitudinal medical care.
Over the decades, as cardiology advanced, his care advanced with it. He later required stents, then bypass surgery, and eventually additional interventions — but he never suffered a heart attack. Today, at 83 years old, he is alive because medicine kept moving forward and prevention worked.
At the time, I didn’t realize it — but that experience planted the seed for my life’s work.
It taught me that coronary disease hides in plain sight.
That early detection changes lives.
That procedures treat events — but prevention treats disease.
And that cardiology’s greatest power lies in what we do before catastrophe occurs.
Service, responsibility, and decision-making
I trained as an Air Force physician through the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where service, discipline, and team-based care shaped my earliest identity as a doctor. I completed internal medicine and cardiology training within the United States Air Force and later spent years as a staff cardiologist and educator at Travis Air Force Base.
During that time, I deployed twice to Afghanistan — first as a Critical Care Air Transport (CCAT) physician, transporting critically wounded service members from the combat zone, and later as the Cardiology Theater Consultant, overseeing cardiovascular care across the region.
Those experiences reinforced a reality that has stayed with me ever since:
timely, expert-level medical decisions — made with incomplete information — can determine whether someone lives or dies.
The hidden risk problem
Around 2009, a professional inflection point mirrored what I had learned from my father years earlier.
Even with modern tools, most cardiometabolic risk remains invisible until it becomes dangerous.
Through focused work in preventive cardiology and lipidology, and mentorship from leaders in the field, I began to recognize how often risk flies under the radar:
in patients with “normal” cholesterol
in CT scans where coronary calcification is noted but ignored
in women with hypertensive pregnancy disorders whose long-term risk is never discussed
in families with clear patterns of Familial Hypercholesterolemia
in athletes incorrectly assumed to be low risk
in Lipoprotein(a) levels that are simply never measured
The problem was not a lack of science.
It was not a lack of talent.
It was not a lack of motivation.
The problem was accessibility.
The problem was understanding.
The problem was navigation.
The problem was a system not built for prevention.
Why CardioAdvocate
I founded CardioAdvocate.com to change that.
Not as another health blog.
Not as a replacement for clinicians or guidelines.
But as a cardiometabolic expertise platform designed to:
democratize elite cardiovascular knowledge
translate complexity into clarity
surface overlooked risk
and empower individuals to advocate for their own health
CardioAdvocate exists because no one should struggle silently the way my father did that day.
It exists because procedures alone are not enough.
It exists because modern prevention is powerful — but only when people understand it.
It exists because expertise should not be limited by geography, access, or health literacy.
This is my life’s work.
This is our mission.
This is CardioAdvocate