About HHO
Your health starts with you! Taking personal responsibility for your health is the most important first step to attaining--and sustaining--optimum health. How you look and how you feel reflects strongly on how you live. At Haas Health Online (HHO), it is our mission and our passion to provide you with knowledge and tools to improve your health and wellbeing by teaching you about healthier lifestyle choices and natural approaches to treating illness and improving overall health. Education is the path of the Doctor (from the Latin word “docere” meaning to teach), and applying our knowledge provides power for positive effects on your life.
HHO is an online health information community designed to provide health and wellness information, tips and advice from Dr. Elson Haas (known as the "Lifestyle Doc") and his team of health and wellness professionals.
Dr. Haas has been in practice for more than 35 years and since 1984 he has been the Medical Director of the Preventive Medical Center of Marin (PMCM).
The body has tremendous ability to heal and maintain its own vitality when we provide it what it needs, which are the many nutrients—vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids and phytonutrients—to allow the cells, tissues and organs to function optimally. Plus, we need to understand how to avoid the chemical and metal toxins and stresses that undermine cellular function.
“Given our options therapeutically, our approach to health and treating disease is best, “Lifestyle first, natural therapies next, and drugs last.”
Elson M. Haas, MD
For moderately healthy to healthy individuals we recommend:
- Maintaining your good habits
- Having occasional checkups to include physical exams, laboratory tests and possibly tune-ups in the areas of nutrition and supplements, structural health and body therapies, acupuncture and energy balancing and emotional health.
For individuals who are experiencing symptoms of poor health or disease we recommend the following as a series of first steps:
- There may be prescriptions for acute problems or to gain control of elevated blood sugar, blood pressure or cholesterol levels while we work on improved lifestyle, weight reduction or whatever is needed to improve the body state.
- Then the medicines can be lowered and the health can most often improve when the right lifestyle habits are applied.
- For a wide variety of symptoms and complaints, we may suggest lifestyle changes and natural medicines.
At HHO our "equation for optimal health" is:
Lifestyle first as it relates to Diet and Nutrition + Stress Reduction and Relaxation Techniques + Positive Relationships + Exercise = Better Management of Symptoms and Disease.
When this approach is not enough to reduce or manage the symptoms or disease, then natural therapies and (finally) prescription drugs and/or herbal medicine might need to be prescribed. Referrals to specialists and/or surgery are only recommended as a final course of action or if necessary for advanced problems or to obtain a diagnosis or understanding of the problem. Our philosophy and practical approach to treating medical concerns helps patients improve and maintain their health in a manner that empowers the body's natural healing abilities while minimizing the use of drugs and unnecessary interventions.
