Dr. J. Thomas Heywood looks at hearts all day long, and never thought he would be taking a close look at his own.

"I have high blood pressure,” Heywood — an advanced heart failure specialist at the Scripps Clinic — said, “I don't have any cardiovascular disease, but I have some of the beginning parts of this, and probably a hundred million people in the United States have some degree of this.".

Heywood was diagnosed with cardio-kidney-metabolic syndrome, or CKM.

It's an overlap between kidney disease, metabolic disorders like type two diabetes, obesity and heart disease.

“This is, actually, a healthcare emergency that we don't treat these things in isolation, but we treat them together,” Heywood said.

It's a new way of thinking about the domino effect that just one health problem can have on your entire body.

“Obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, renal problems, they all come together to make each other worse,” Heywood said. “They're like a dysfunctional family, and when they're all together, they really make things worse — and they tremendously reduce life expectancy for patients." 

Heywood believes this is just the beginning for CKM, and soon there will be doctors specializing in this syndrome.

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