OK Theta & Wellness

Those compression boots at the gym and EECP look like cousins, but they’re doing completely different jobs. 🦵❤️

One gives your legs a programmed massage. The other syncs every squeeze to your heartbeat using ECG monitoring, inflating while your heart rests and releasing right before it beats again. That timing is the whole difference.

Dr. Chad Glenn breaks down compression socks, Normatec style recovery boots, medical pneumatic compression, and true EECP. What each one is actually designed to do, and how to tell them apart.

If you’ve ever wondered “isn’t that just fancy compression boots?” then this one’s for you. 👇

https://blog.oktheta.com/eecp-vs-compression-boots/

EECP vs. Compression Boots: What’s the Difference? EECP and recovery boots may look similar, but they are designed for very different purposes. Learn how heartbeat timing, ECG monitoring, cuff placement, and treatment goals distinguish true EECP from Normatec-style compression boots.

You've had a stent. But it didn't touch the root cause.

The stent opened the artery. It worked, and during a heart attack, it's the thing that saves your life.

But atherosclerosis isn't a plumbing problem in one location. It's a disease of the entire endothelium, the single-cell lining running through every artery in your body. Inflammation, reduced nitric oxide, stiffened vessels. The blockage that got stented is where the disease became visible. It isn't where the disease lives.

A stent opens one artery. You have sixty thousand miles of them.

That's one of the things EECP works on.

EECP increases pulsatile blood flow through the whole arterial tree, a shear-stress stimulus your body normally only gets from vigorous exercise. Research has shown it improves endothelial function, increases nitric oxide availability, and lowers inflammatory markers. Not at one spot. Everywhere blood flows.

And it matters most for the people who can't get that stimulus on their own. "Exercise is the best medicine for your heart" is true, and useless if angina stops you before the end of the driveway, or your knees won't cooperate, or you're too exhausted to start. EECP delivers the hemodynamic signal without requiring the exertion. Studies in heart failure have shown improved exercise tolerance and quality of life.

Stent the lesion. Treat the vessels.

EECP is FDA-cleared and Medicare-covered for refractory angina. Ask your cardiologist whether it's right for you.

Read more about EECP at https://oktheta.com/eecp-therapy/

I have to share this. I watched two numbers move today that I honestly did not expect, and I cannot stop thinking about them.

First, let me be honest with you. These are different people, and this is not a study. Everybody is different and results vary. I am sharing this because I think it is fascinating, not because I am promising anyone anything.

One of my patients finished their EECP course today. Out of pure curiosity, we had done a CADScor heart scan before they started, and we ran it again today. It is a quick, noninvasive scan that gives you a number tied to heart disease risk, and a lower number is what you want to see. Theirs went from 28 down to 22, and that made my whole day.

Another patient has been wearing a WHOOP (a wearable fitness and recovery tracker)
through their entire EECP course and tracking their HRV. That stands for heart rate variability, and it is the tiny difference in timing between one heartbeat and the next. The interesting part is that you actually want that timing to vary. A heart that ticks along like a stiff metronome is usually stressed and tired, while a heart that naturally speeds up and slows down is flexible and well recovered. So a higher number is better. Theirs started in the high 20s, and now it regularly reaches the 40s and 50s!

Honestly, those two are not all we’ve seen with EECP. One person with long COVID has finally seen their heart rate come down. Another person with kidney disease had labs that improved. One person's chest pain is gone. Others are getting stronger, dealing with less swelling, and seeing better blood pressure, just to name a few.

Let me be real with you about all of that. These are all different people with different things going on, some of it outside what EECP is even meant for. I am simply telling you what I have gotten to watch. EECP is designed to support healthy circulation, and days like today are exactly why I love this work.

If you are curious about EECP or CADScor, send us a message or read more about it at oktheta.com

Last night we had the honor of attending the Luxiere magazine launch party 🥂 (and somehow walked away without a single picture on my phone). But here’s why I’m still floating today:

✨ OK Theta & Wellness is featured in this edition of Luxiere! ✨

Swipe through to read “The Theta Effect.” Michael Kinney told our story so beautifully, and I couldn’t be prouder of how it turned out. 🤍

We also put together a raffle basket for the evening, with every dollar raised going straight to the Hartenstein Foundation, a cause well worth showing up for. Huge thank you to the partners who helped us fill it: Power-House Infusionz, Jackson Integrative Health, LLC, and Eva Peterson. It takes a village, and ours is a good one. 🤍

📖 You can find us on pages 34–37, and read the full digital edition here:

🔗 https://luxiere.co/read/

Grab a copy, give it a read, and let me know what you think! Endlessly grateful to Stacy Johnson and Michael Kinney for shining a light on what we’ve poured our hearts into.

Oklahoma was just ranked number one in the country for heart disease deaths.

Heart disease now accounts for about 27 percent of every death in our state, the highest rate in the nation. We read that headline the way you probably did, with our stomachs dropping. Because to us these are not statistics. They are our neighbors, our patients, the people we sit with every week. And we have made it our mission that the people who walk through our doors do not become one of those numbers.

That mission is a big part of why we are so passionate about EECP.

Enhanced External Counterpulsation is a noninvasive, FDA cleared therapy for angina and heart failure, and there is genuinely nothing else like it in cardiac care. You lie down comfortably while a series of cuffs gently inflate and deflate in rhythm with your heartbeat, sending oxygen rich blood back toward your heart with every single beat.

Here is why that matters. A stent opens one narrowed artery. EECP works on the entire system. In studies, EECP has been shown to help the body build new collateral vessels, the small natural detours that route blood around narrowed arteries. It has been shown to improve endothelial function, the health of the lining of your blood vessels, by stimulating nitric oxide, the same molecule your body relies on to keep vessels open and flexible. And it has been shown to improve microcirculation and blood flow to the heart. Many people describe the experience as a workout for your heart that you can do lying down, which is fitting, because the effects studied look a lot like what sustained exercise gives you.

And we have made it accessible. Through CareCredit, you can finance your full EECP program over 24 months with no interest, which comes out to $375 a month, subject to credit approval. Whether you are managing a cardiac condition or you simply want to be proactive about your heart, it is worth a conversation.

And before you can protect your heart, it helps to understand it. That is where CADScor comes in. It is a quick, noninvasive assessment that listens to the sounds your heart makes to help us understand whether coronary artery disease may be part of your picture. No needles, no radiation, no dye, no IV. If you have had chest discomfort, shortness of breath, or a strong family history, it is one of the simplest first steps you can take.

We did not build this clinic to be ordinary. We built it because Oklahomans deserve real options for their hearts, right here at home.

If you are ready to stop being a bystander to that statistic, let us talk.

Call 405-849-5165 or send us a message.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. A new study puts Oklahoma at the very top in the country for heart disease deaths.

Link to the full story is in the comments below.

"I'm no longer having chest pain."

That's what my patient told me today at the end of their 13th EECP session. They still have 22 sessions to go before finishing the full series of 35, and they’ve already been able to get back to exercising. For someone who was living with chest pain, that's huge.

These are the moments that remind me exactly why we do this.

And it didn't stop there. Another one of our EECP patients came in today after seeing their primary care doctor. Their blood pressure looked great, and the doctor mentioned their nephrologist is going to be very happy with their latest lab results.

Two patients. One day. This is our why.