Dr. Alejandro Berenguel Senén
I am Dr. Alejandro Berenguel, a clinical cardiologist with over 25 years of experience, and, in the last decade, I have focused particularly on Sports Cardiology, Preventive Cardiology, and Cardiac Rehabilitation, the latter being the field to which I have dedicated my main research and teaching efforts for the past 10 years. My primary area of expertise is the cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET), which I have performed over 7.000 times on both patients and athletes (amateur and high-performance).
I studied Medicine at the University of Navarra, later training in Cardiology at the Navarra University Clinic. Based in Toledo since 2005, I combine my healthcare work in the public system, at the Toledo University Hospital, where I direct the Preventive Cardiology and Cardiac Rehabilitation Unit since its foundation in 2015, with private activity, currently at the Quirónsalud Toledo Hospital. . In the latter I have been responsible for the implementation of the Sports Cardiology Unit and, as a pioneer in Spain, the first Metabolic Rehabilitation Unit, framed in our new 360 Exercise and Health Clinic.
The concept of Metabolic Rehabilitation has been proposed in recent years by the renowned Spanish physiologist and researcher, based for almost 2 decades in the United States, Iñigo San Millán. Dr. San Millán, the result of his field work with high-performance athletes from multiple sports disciplines, as well as his enormous research work based on the use of exercise therapies to treat various pathologies such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or Alzheimer's, has become one of the world's leading authorities on the subject. As a result of his research, he has been able to verify how mitochondrial dysfunction, a problem due to which mitochondria, key organelles of our cells in the energy production that allows us to carry out any physical activity, is systematically present in various pathologies such as those mentioned above. . And, likewise, he has been able to verify how therapies based on properly prescribed and dimensioned physical exercise are capable of improving, and even reversing, said mitochondrial dysfunction. This concept, based on the use of exercise in a personalized and precise manner, in order to reverse mitochondrial dysfunction, is what is called Metabolic Rehabilitation.
After years of professional and personal relationship with Dr. San Millán, and endorsed by him himself, we have proposed that Metabolic Rehabilitation transcends the healthcare field for the first time, making our innovative Metabolic Rehabilitation programs available to all our patients.
In our 360 Exercise and Health Clinic we offer transversal Metabolic Rehabilitation programs, exquisitely adapted to each patient, with their different clinical conditions, being able to carry out as many different programs as different patients come to our Unit. Just as no two patients are the same, no two Metabolic Rehabilitation programs will be the same.
Finally, apart from providing assistance as a clinical cardiologist, we have a monographic Sports Cardiology consultation, in which we focus on:
- Detection of heart problems that may put sports practice at risk
- Advise heart patients who want to continue practicing sports or start practicing it
- Optimize performance in healthy subjects, regardless of their competitive level (from amateur to elite) by studying the level of training (with special attention to problems derived from overtraining) and providing advice regarding the improvement of sports performance.