April 27, 2025 • 40 mins
We know how serious heart health is - but what can we actually do to help it?
At what point should we start to be worries about how our weight is impacting our hearts - and how much does that really matter when heart issues don't discriminate?
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks, EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The New Astucier, Take just Yesterday, then on My Knees and.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Today we Don't get Pulled Again and a very good afternoon.
If you just joined us, Hi, how are you? This
is the Weekend Collective. You've missed a great hour of politics.
Then you can go and check it out on our podcast.
Look for the Weekend Collective on iHeartRadio and if you did,
(00:50):
you've just joined in. Well you've joined in at a
great moment because it's this is the Health Hub. You're
going to talk about your health and we're going to
talk about We're gonna we're going to take your calls
on anything you want to talk about health wise, but
we like to have a sort of focus from the conversation,
so you can give it a one hundred and eighty
ten eighty. But we're going to kick off with having
a chat around heart health because it's one of those
things that most of the time I hear that someone's
(01:12):
had an issue with their heart health is usually because
they've dodged a bullet. They were just in the right
time when they keeled over, and goodness me, I didn't know,
and all of a sudden they've changed their lifestyle and
they're doing something to take it seriously. But what actually
can we do to look after our hearts without being
paranoid and all that sort of stuff and thinking I
can't eat that because it's gonna I'm keeping eye on this,
but also, you know, there's a obviously a genetic sort
(01:35):
of thing, and what problems you've inherited from your parents
or your grandparents? And is there a point where you
should worry about your weight and the impact on your heart.
But of course there are plenty of people This sounds
like a very crude way of putting it, but plenty
of skinny people have heart attacks too. It's not something
about people who are walking around and think, oh, they
were waiting to happen. Who would know? Because if you've
(01:56):
got a problem with your cholesterol or whatever. I'm now
speaking outside my area of expertise, which means it's the
perfect time to introduce the person who is an expert
on the stuff. He's well known to you all, he's
a GP. He's going to be heading off the Blangladesh.
I think sometimes soon Bangladish not blanked. I was talking
too quickly, and it's John Cameron and he'll be watching
(02:16):
his health there because apparently no ice in your drink
and Bangladesh.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Slowly sewach Sons slowly such make.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
It sound so lovely.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
And I've only been there once before and I managed
to put on three kiloads.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Really that's a victory.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, I know it's very good.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, actually on the but that was my introduction sort
of fair to the consideration and the attitudes we have
towards heart health. We never think about it until someone
close to us has an episode or we do and
are there ways? Are there simple things we should do
look after our health, our heart health.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
When we find it on Monday mornings and suddenly you
get all these young males, you know, thirty forty year
old young dads coming in just coming in for a checkup.
That's one, okay, just coming in for a checkup's just
coming in for Then you work it out, that's some
at the tennis club on Saturday morning, and you go,
Now you go and get it checked out.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Is that seriously you actually do? There's a pattern to it.
There's if you had a graph of people calling in
for that, it peaks on the sort of Monday.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Absolutely, so heart health, we've only got one of them. Yeah,
you need to look after it.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
It's an incredible muscle, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
It's pretty Can you imagine a pump that will work
for eighty ninety years quite often without any other work
being done to it, and just sits here and pumps
every second, every hour, all day moving.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I prefer not to think of it, because I mean,
the only thing we can think of is imagine going
into the gym and doing endless sort of exercises the
same thing. How quickly you'd run out, and yet our
heart is going borm amazing, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So what do we know about heart health?
Speaker 4 (03:50):
Firstly, as you're saying choose your parents, well, that is
the number one thing you need to do, because quite
often heart disease will occur more commonly in families which
have got previous heart disease. Don't smoke. Be a non smoker.
That is probably one of the biggest risk accelerators for
premature heart disease.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Okay, just to interject there so because when I hear
that smoking is a damage, are danger to your heart?
Because I always think that smoke lungs. That's the first thing,
why does smoking impact that? How does it actually impact
your heart health?
Speaker 4 (04:22):
It accelerates the damage to the lining layers of your arteries. Okay,
especially arteries taking blood to the heart muscle.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So we've got two arteries which take blood to our
heart muscle to feed it, left and right coronary arteries,
the first arteries which come off the big main oxygen
rich blood from our aorta, and one of those is
called the left anterior descending artery, which otherwise known as
the widow maker's archery.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So yeah, when that blocks off, it's a.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Great what a great names?
Speaker 5 (04:48):
Good?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Is that the name they give it at med school
or something. It's like, now we're going to discuss such
and such otherwise known as the widow mate.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
So the fact is that can increase your risk of
heart disease. When we're talking about here, we're talking about
a schemic heart disease. Schemia means running short of oxygen,
which which is the commonest thing that we would see.
There are other forms of heart disease, such as in
largely the heart muscle cardiomopathy. There's value of the disease
ordered valve disease mitral valve disease.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
These are other parts.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Which can affect this pumping mechanism. If you're talking about
courentar re artery disease, your risks are worked out on
an algorithm which is age, gender, ethnicity, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, smoking,
family history. Right, So that is a algorithm of someone
who has got no symptoms, nothing else is pointing that
(05:38):
they might have a problem with their heart or scheming
heart disease. And we've basically done the whole country in
the background. When we go in there, we get the
data and we're running through the algorithm and find out
what's happening with you. We know that eighty percent of
premature cardiovascular disease occurs in the twenty percent of the
population with the highest risk.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So that's how we target that.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
If we spend most of our effort trying to assist
people who have got high risk, big return on your investment.
Remembering these are people in primary prevention, never have had
a stroke, never had a heart attack, don't have ANDRONA.
So we're trying to find out in that great unwashed population,
which are the ones that are likely to find those
try and really work on their risk. Factors to minimize
(06:23):
those and that gives us a reasonable return on investment.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
The second part is secondary prevention. In other words, you've
had a stroke, heart attack, something like that and survived.
We know very well that if we can really crunch
your risk factors down, we will reduce your risk of
having a second event by a significant amount. So the
money return on it. Secondary prevention is really good. Primary prevention,
you've got to cast your net a lot wider.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Primary prevention is what really concerns each individual. Each individual
doesn't as an individual. I don't mean this is going
to come out callous, but what I mean is, as
an individual, I don't care about the macro act. I
don't care about the biggest bang for back. I want
to know if I'm going to keel over because there's
something coming by way and I haven't.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Found it that we can't tell you. What about?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Is there anything that can give an indication of that?
As you get older like you blood tests and.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
One of the one of the increasing respectors for heart
diseases getting older.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Well that's a bummer.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
I just so the older you are, the more likely
you are to have What about the whole cholesterol thing.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yep, it's part of the problem.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Okay. So for instance, I mean I've heard about people
who have had their arteries clean up on inside of
the neck because they're at cholesterol. How do you how
would you know if that's a problem for you.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Well, I would pick up in a blood Yeah, if
you're over the age of forty, it's quite likely that
some stage somebody has measured your lipid profile. So if
you're talking about lipid profile, really interesting topics. So we
measure the fats in your blood. That's what the rapid
profile is. Total cholesterol pretty much forget about it. We
used to think that was the complications for a.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
While and everyone, oh, no, there's good cholesterol, there's bad cholesterol,
and then.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Yeah, so your total might give you an indication, but
it's not the be all and end all. So if
we fraction out your cholesterol, we look at which isn't
in cholesterol, which are called triglyph rides. You little fatty
ass join together independent risk factor for heart disease if
they elevate it total cluster. We break it down into
two main fractions. One's called high density lipoprotein HDL. Now
(08:19):
normal HDL more than one point zero, really good HDL
one point five and like my wife superhuman two point zero.
I don't know why I'm working such. She's just going
to spend all my money after I crack it my
heart attack, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
But if you've got a.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Really high HDL married world, Yes she did a nice car,
that was about it. But anyway, so if you've got
a high HDL that can be quite protective. Then we
look at LDL low density lypoprotein. Now, this is the
one which we think creates most of the damage in
your arterial walls.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So we want to grunt that down.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Now, again, it's a numbers game, and I know what
you're saying, your individual risk versus a population risk. We
think of that if we've got to treat thirty forty
people for five years, that's worthwhile doing to stop one event.
So I mentioned treating thirty nine forty nine people for
no reason, simply because you can't identify which that one
is in that population.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
So, and of course there's always the trade off as
to whether the treat, whether the prevention is worse than
the cure.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
US any nation, numbers need to treat versus numbers needed
to harm always trying to balance out the damage that
we could do by treating against the potential benefit that
we could do. So yeah, we say around about forty
fifty people to treat to save one event, So quite
often we're actually treating a risk, not a disease. I
think that's really important to get your head around. This
is primary prevention real.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
But yeah it yeah, yep, yep, yep. What about in
terms of I mean, I think a primary prevention is
just living, having a good, healthy lifestyle and eating the
right foods. What are the things from the modern lifestyle
that are the obvious are You're probably gonna say everything,
but what are the obvious things in life that we
often do without too much thought about it that, you
(10:04):
know what, we could just moderate that a bit and
make a big difference to our outcomes. Exercise exercise wues
that be the first topic something.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So firstly, don't be a non smoker. Please.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
If you're looking at a risk factor and you're come
in and saying I want to take medicine to drop
my cholesterol and I smoke twenty cigarettes a day, I'll
tell you the bagger off. Why should we spend money
on you for drags to stop this when you're piling stuff,
and that's going to totally counteract what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
So be a nonsmoker.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Brief crashing, not smoking, and there we stop smaking.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Every done right, be a non smoker. It's not a
negative thing. As a positive thing.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Your diet, Mediterranean diet seems to be productive, protective, low
fat diet really good. Make sure you don't get diabetes,
really good one that one that really accelerates your risk out.
Get good control of your blood pressure, get good control
of your lipid profile.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Enjoy life.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Treat every day like it it's going to be your last,
because one day you'll be absolutely correct.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Is that balance, isn't it? For instance, it's like, don't
watch your saturated fats, but I do love a good
steak from time to time. It is the okay, here
we go, here we go. By the way, you can
jump in on anytime. I wait one hundred eighty ten
to eighty. If you've got any questions for John Cameron,
doctor John Cameron, I prefer saying doctor John actually because
it was quite a good New Orleans jazz artist. But
that's pinching someone else's territory on that one said John's, yes,
(11:21):
I have, But what about just the everything in moderation.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, it's good idea, be happy number one thing.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, because stress, I mean, if you, I mean you
get people who preoccupied with so many things to do
with their health and stuff, and they're just a ball
of stress. It's like, just good relax, have a here, look,
have a slab of bacon.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Thank you. I wasn't going to quite go that that.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
But what we don't know about corony artery disease is
what creates the damage in the first place. Why do
we get those little intimal tears in the lining layer
of our arteries, which are then blocked up by the
body trying to patch the hole, And it's a patch
on the hole which causes the narrowing in the arteries.
We get cholesterol plaque laid down on those holes, which
then slowly grows and.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
That starts to include the artery.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
So that will give you a thing called angina, which
is chest pain on exercise. Really important to tell us
if you've got that. A heart attack is something quite different.
So when one of those little plaque splits, breaks open,
exposes a waxy mattress to the blood going over the
top forms a clock blocks off that artery, sudden complete
(12:23):
loss of oxygenated blood to an area of heart muscle.
That's when the elephant sits on your chest and won't
get off. So it's a central.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Heavy I m feel like I need to just take
a deep breath because it was you know.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
So I can talk about this out of school.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
The last person we had who had a significant CARDIOK
event was a chap in his mid to late forties,
no previous history on a lipid lowering agent. Already woke
up one had your little twinge, has been playing tennis
a day before, woke up one morning with an elephant
on his chest.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Wow? Would he have been on a Lippard family history
family history slippid profile.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So trying to get in and do something about that.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Are there scans that you can get if you know that,
if if you were so no time that, if you
go check me, I've got a family history and I
need I want to have a give me the CT
scan or whatever. I don't know what you do.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Sure, there's a couple of things we can do for that.
One is this thing called a calcium score, which is
looking It's a CT process which looks at the risk
of looking for calcium deposits in the curry arterial wall.
Now really good. It doesn't tell us do you have
narrow wings or do you have critical plat that it's
(13:34):
going to go off. It can be a decision making
tool to say, would it be a good idea to
put you on a stat in a medicine to drop
your cholesterol? If you've got a really high calcium score,
you'd say it's a reasonable thing to do. So it's
not a diagnostic test, it's more should be or shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We treatd test? The other tests we can do if
we can start to look at the.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Coronary arteries themselves, we can do a thing called a
CT currenty androgram, where it's another CT process which tries
to look at the caliber of the actual arteries taking
blood to your heart muscle in The third and most
definitive thing we can do is what's crony angiography, where
we squit die into the coronia ties and map them out.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
But you wouldn't do some of those tests. You wouldn't
do currenty and geography as a screening test.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
No, it's pretty full on.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
First.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
First, all the test we do is what's called an
exercise test, exercise tolerance test. Jump you on a treadmill,
work you really hard, See what your RecG does, See.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
What you're people having an event when they do that.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
We have resusch right beside you when you're doing yes.
So that's what are the markers.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
One of the markets you need to have is chest
pain on exercise before the exercise test, because otherwise you're
going to get false positives and go down the false
positive line.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
One last question we're going to get into the cause
sugar Now is that more about you know, well that's
diabetes and things like that, but I mean too much sugar.
Is that something that impacts on your heart health directly
or what's the sugar? What's what's the vibe?
Speaker 4 (14:58):
If you're looking at those risk fectors age, gender, ethnicity, diabetes,
high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, family history, weight doesn't
actually come into it as an individual risk factor that
we can work out at the moment. It plays a
role in raising your blood pressure and sometimes you'll be
pushing towards diabetes, and we think we pick up those
(15:18):
impacts through those other diseases that might indicate that something
that's going on behind it rather than weight or sugar
and take itself right.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Let's take some course. This is great stuff. I'm glad
to ask that question. Tell us about the heart, John,
we get into it. We'll take a by the way,
if you're on hold for a call, we're going to
take one call. Then we'll take a break and we'll
be back with the rest of you. There's one spear
line there, so you can jump on it right now,
eight hundred and eighty. Meanwhile, let's kick it off with
hang on a second. Let me click that mouse again.
(15:48):
There we go, Beryl.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Hello, Hello there, good afternoon, Jeans one. Is it Dr Grahams?
Speaker 3 (15:54):
That no, Dr John Cameron.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
I'm sorry. I don't know where I've got the grind
from Dr John. I just I know you're just giving
your opinion. But just a couple of things I want
to ask about Margarineta and milk. I'll try and keep
it short. Apparently the distant nurses when my mum was
in the eighties said that she should have full milk milk,
not the skim stuff. I wanted to ask you about that,
(16:17):
and there's often a debate between I take the low margarine,
but some of my one of my friends had heard
from a doctor you should go for butt and not margarine,
And I'd love your opinion on those three.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, I'm suspicious for Margarine these days. Beerl thank you
for answer asking that question. Let's let's go to.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
John days gone by.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
You had to get Margarine on a prescription BlimE, and
it was made up by the chemist, by the pharmacist,
and you had to write a script for it.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Was that was way better. That's interesting.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
So it all comes down to the fat and take
that you have. Look, if you're eighty eighty five, I'll
just whisper in your.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Ear, enjoy your life. Yeah, yeah, it's don't sweat the
small stuff.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah, and it really doesn't matter that much.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
It's a lovely thing.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
God profess Professor Jackson, cause but calls butter yellow death.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
He's Deputy Mulog.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
I love buttery.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It's great.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
But it's it's probably not a good thing. It's it's
high unsaturated fan. It's probably not the best thing that
you could have. And the whole reason about Marjorie is
it's a little bit more heart friendly. Okay, so it's
not going to push your ldl's and TG's.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Up so much.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Okay, just quickly, wasn't this something I do know that you.
I'm almost waiting for your cynicism on this because there's
always a study saying something. But there was something I
saw recently where they're saying that full fat milk versus
skim milk. There was something that came out that didn't
look like full fat milk wasn't actually so bad. So
it's only a couple of grams per hundred miles, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
What we are after is hard outcomes, not soft outcomes,
And what we're really trying to work out is what
should we be doing so that we minimize premature preventable
heart attacks. Okay, so we're not talking about what your
lipid profile actually looks like. That's a soft outcome, and
Gina's probably a hard outcome. Heart attacks and death's a
(18:04):
hard outcome. That be very careful of studies which just
show soft outcomes, not the be all and indoors.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah. Actually, that would be my cavet that I sort
of picked up from talking to you, is that whatever
the latest headline on health is, if it's one study
reveals such and such, you generally need a bit more.
We're going to take more calls and be back in
just a moment.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Though.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It's a twenty four and a half past four. News
Talk said B. Yes, welcome back. News Talk said B.
This is the Health Hub. My guest is doctor John
Cameron talking about heart health. Let's get into the calls,
(18:45):
shall we? And it Hello?
Speaker 7 (18:47):
Hello, how are you?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
We're all good?
Speaker 7 (18:50):
That's good. Now talk to John. Is it his name?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yes, it's me.
Speaker 7 (18:58):
I went and had a caleistral blood peaste down on
November yep, and all the things were high. The cholestro
was five point eight.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Forget that.
Speaker 7 (19:09):
Glyster rides for two point three, that's okay. The HDL
cholestrol was one point two seven and the LDL was
three point.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Sets it's all right.
Speaker 7 (19:20):
And then the total was four point six yep. Now
when I went to seebe Weary, the caleistro was four
point three yep. Glyster rides were two point two.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
Yep.
Speaker 7 (19:37):
Caleistol hd L was one point oh two.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Oh buggy, you dropped that. That's no fit. Next one's
hd L.
Speaker 7 (19:47):
The caleistro l d L was two point four and
the total was down from four points it's the four
point two.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
It's a brilliant example of trying not to look at
the results identically and trying to mix them up.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Please don't do that.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
There's they've all got statistical eraror in them, they've all
got different timings on them.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
What you're after is what's the average looking like.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Over six, nine, twelve, eighteen months, twenty four months, two years.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Five years.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
So try not to read too much into small changes
in that picture.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
So if I was looking at your picture.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
In my little helicopter looking down, I'd say total forget it.
We're not inteding that TG struggles, Yeah, they're okay, they're
not too bad.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
HDL yeah, HDL is.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
Going to be somewhere in the low ones. Yeah, that's
a genetically determined process. But your LDLs are also low.
And the one thing if we're using that as in
a risk algorithm, what we look at mostly is what's
called your ratio, which is your total total divided by HDL.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And we want that below four point five.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Ok So when we're doing our risk algorithm, that's what
we look at. We don't look at anything in isolation.
So oh, okay, on that picture, I'd be quite happy
with that as long as you don't have any nasty
chest paints.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Are you doing anything just to how's you? What are
you doing to manage your health?
Speaker 7 (21:06):
Just stanton? All right, tams Ye.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Line dancing, Oh, brilliant line dancing or line dancing. Line
danced one sounds dangerous.
Speaker 7 (21:25):
And I do that Monday night and Tuesday and I
do it. Exercise group, sweet.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Good stuff and it well, that sounds good. She just
keep moving, doing things and keeping active.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
It would be interesting to find out what your LDL
level was before you went on to a tour for
Staton ten milligrams. You might need to go back and
have a look at that. But a tour the Stanton
is what's called natg co. A reductis inhibited, otherwise known
as the Stanton, and it drops your ld L. Okay,
And if you've had a heart attack and survived it, man,
we want to put you on a high dose Staton
or something of that nature to push your ldl's below
(21:57):
one point six.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Okay. Now, I'm just going to jump to a text
here just because I sort of feel we might be
able to help someone out of here with just dot
to John, I've always jogged, walked sets of stairs, et
cetera to keep fit. Lately, when pushing up, Hell, a bit,
the chest feels tight. I'm not pushing hard like years back.
So from what you've said, should I see my GP
or where can I get an appointment with you police?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's from Bill yesterday, Bill.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Yesterday, yep, so you need to be seen. So feeling
a chest is a bit tight.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
This is what Bill's got is increasing tightness heaviness in
his chest on exercise. Now, the first thing we need
to rule out is that he's not having angina, which
is a narrowing of the arteries taking blood to the
heart and muscle. So yep, that needs to be followed up.
You know, you don't have to get into the lights
and siren ambulance, but certainly within the next week go
Never talk to your doc.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Well pick up the phone tomorrow, but.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Make online even in these modern days. Yeah, really, yes
you can go.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
And what you'll probably end up with, Bill is an
exercise tolerance test. We put you on the treadmill and
see what's actually going when when you exercise.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
You would also someone like that, would would they be like, well,
before you come in, we'll get some bloods taken or
does that happen subsequently?
Speaker 4 (23:05):
It's not relevant, totally relevant at this stage, as long
as there's no rest pain.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Okay, Bell, you listen to the good doctor's advice there
and good luck. Right, let's take some more calls. Sarah, Hello, Hello,
I hope you good.
Speaker 8 (23:20):
I was just wanting to ask doctor John if what
his opinion on is if with alcohol and your risk
of hot hot.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Disease fascinating one the French paradox.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, yeah, glass of wine.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
The jury prevaricates on this, either for or against alcohol.
Small amount of alcohol tends to raise people's HDL, the
high density live proparating the protecting part of the cholesterol picture.
But alcohol in itself has a lot of other damaging potential,
so we are certainly not endorsing alcohol for cardiac prevention. Okay,
(24:00):
alcohol is a direct cardiac toxin. It will bugger, rize
up your heart muscle in.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Knock that around it.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
You have an alcoholic cardiomopathy, really nasty where the heart
muscle loses pumping capabilities. So you know, unlike myself, I
always tell myself as I poured my second glass of
I'm doing my HDL a real favor. I'm probably doing
the rest of my body a little bit of harm.
So we don't really know. But we're shifting away from
(24:27):
saying what is a safe level of alcohol?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
We don't know. The only safe level is no level.
What is a low risk level? Probably one standard unit
a day.
Speaker 9 (24:37):
Ok.
Speaker 8 (24:38):
Okay, it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
It sounds like it sounds like you've given you news
you don't want to hear. Is that right, Sarah?
Speaker 8 (24:44):
No, no, no, not at all, not at all. I
just there's just so many different opinions on it. I
just was interested in something from the professional.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
We're still learning about it. I think that's where we
leave it.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Thanks for you, course, Sarah. I mean, I think one
thing is fairly you can be fairly relaxed about. Is
no alcohol is not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
M uh. And as for the rest of it, I mean,
actually that's the whole thing. It's like, if you feel
that it maybe once or twice or three times a
week you want a glass of wine because you had
a big week, and it's your signal to yourself to relax.
Maybe not so bad, I don't know, but don't take
it from me. Definitely from you, you know. Okay, look,
(25:26):
he let me just check the time there, right, let's
go to Tania.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
Hello, yeah, Hi, I'm sitting here listening to you guys
talk about heart and it's a chat and I have
been a chest pain at a moment.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Well, if you got chest pain the moment, you need
to be seen. We should stop the call and you
should be seen.
Speaker 9 (25:49):
No. No, I've seen the doctor last week and he
told me that I have a chest flame.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Mason, a chest inflammation, chesting figure la no chest flame Mason.
Speaker 9 (26:02):
Let me like, my heart is fine, okay, and my
lung is fine, but I got chest pain. I think
I understood. Is that from the muscle?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
And I really without knowing what else is going on
or examining you or doing something, I wouldn't know. If
you have got significant chest pain, we need to get
that checked out. So if it's continuing, I would suggest
it gets checked out again.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Okay, okay, okay, yep, please yeah, okay. It sounds like
Taney is not happy with the advice she got. She's
still got chest pain, and that would be that would
be if you still yeah, you're still on the line
there time then then if you're not happy with the advice,
if you've got to see another doctor and get some
advice because it's very difficult for John to give that
anything more really, but continue your That's what I'm reading there.
(26:51):
I think she's seen a doctor. She's still got chest pains,
she's not happy. She's called you go and see someone
with someone else, Right, we'll take a moment. It's twenty
three minutes to five. News Talk said Bees news Talk said,
be taking your course for doctor John Cameron with a
bit of a focus on the heart, but of something
else that's going on your mind. You can't give them
a call. I one eight ten eighty Sally Hello, Hello.
Speaker 10 (27:11):
Well I've got a problem. I've I've been diagnosed with
a jest of heart failure. I have tablets to get
the fluid off my lungs, but my main problem is,
since it's not a bad heart altogether, I feel as
though wins are going off and all the time it's
(27:32):
I've got wind wind wind, and it just gurgles up
off my stomach.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Okay, Well, so heart failure is a horrible thing. It's
basically where the heart doesn't pump so much, and it
can have a whole raft of different symptoms and that
what's happening is that all the large veins in your
chest and your belly are becoming engorged with blood because
it's all building up on the upphill side of the
heart itself. So the a whole range of symptoms including Breton's,
(28:01):
this swelling, tummy, distension, all of these things which can
go along with heart failure. And what we try and
do is take the load off your heart. We try
and get rid of some of the fluid because one
of the things which happens with heart failure is you
don't put enough blood your kidneys, and the kidneys believe
you're bleeding to death. So the kidneys say fluid, which
gives more fluid for your heart to pump, which means
it doesn't pump as much. But let's fluid goes to you.
Can you get into this horrible circle? And so we
(28:24):
try and dry you out with a lovely drug called
flus of mode.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
You still there, sally, yes.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
The only thing it treats, it treats the symptoms.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
There are other drugs that we can use to try
and look after your heart as well.
Speaker 10 (28:40):
Yeah, yes, And there's nothing can to be done for
this embarrassing wind like balloon's going off from my tummy
all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
No, probably not. I'm sorry, Sally.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
It's so right.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Just as long as it's coming up not down.
Speaker 10 (28:54):
You're doing okay, bursting in my stomach.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
That's all all right, Okay, thanks for you course, Sally.
Thanks here out bye bye. Actually, just before you got
to Tim, who's holding I thought this text was quite interesting.
What advice would you give to your twenty two year
old self to look after your health or heart on?
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Twenty two year olds are funny because they've got no
frontal lobes, so they've got no consequences.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
You wouldn't listen, you wouldn't follow advice, nothing to carry on.
You're going to do it anyway.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
I'm immortal, I'm never going to die, and so trying
to tell twenty two year olds what to do is
pretty yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Mixed, okay. So in other words, he wouldn't give it.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
Smoke okay, I'd probably be a bit more careful playing
football and not get my head knocked around quite so
much from the neck broken and things like that.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Did you No, it's not brilliant, but I have my.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
City of the football are you talking about, by the way,
I'm talking about rugby league. Rugby league.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Look at this.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Fun fact, John Cameron rugby league legend really back.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
You wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
That was back when, back and that was in the
day when it was almost the sort of it was
the sort of sport when you were just a deliberate rebel.
I'm not going to play that rugby union. I'm playing
league exactly back in the days of Wally Lewis and
all that. What before Wally. Yeah, just paid your accent,
take some course to move on.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
Tim, Hello, yeah, good guys, how are you? Yeah, I
just switched the app on about five minutes ago. Just
called the end of the call of the lady who
had been to the dock. She was having chest pain,
and I had a similar situation about no one was
(30:48):
at the first of April, he said in the Vahpril,
middle of the night, sharp chest pain. Anyway, ultimately I
got up to the hospital later on the next day
that sort of subsided the web and thought, you know,
I'll get a checked out and and they keep me in.
Then it was on the Wednesday. On the Friday, they
(31:10):
gave me an Andrew Graham and found one artery was
eighty percent block. They put a stent in. So the
moral of the story is I just reiterating what Doc
John said, which was the best advice I'd had, Like,
you get it checked out. Yeah, you don't know. You
don't know un till you know, and you know, you
(31:32):
go to the people who can hook you up to
the machines and find out, and it might save your.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Lives absolutely, Tim, No, you're right there. You know sometimes I.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
Need to check out.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, well we didn't out.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
In primary care, we get a bit ansy because we
sometimes will send people into hospital when we know they're
not having a heart attack, whether you know, they don't
have angina, but we can't tell that in the community
that easily. And there's a little test we do which
is called tropinon test, which is really helpful. It shows
if any heart mustaging damage. But the most important thing
(32:03):
is you listen to your story and so heart paint
is not felt over your heart, it's normally central. Sometimes
it will radiate into your neckl through to your back.
It doesn't make your hands and fingers go tingling, no,
but sometimes the pain will radiate into your left arm.
And if you've got any of those symptoms, yeah, you
need to get checked out. And if someone is a
bit flipping about it and doesn't take it seriously. Move
(32:25):
on and find someone else who might listen to you.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
Well done, Yeah, I mean I had Yeah, I had
the pain going into my neck and my jaw. Yeah,
and that that stint was it was unreal, Like within
an hour probably less of having it done, it was awesome.
Like two days later, I could have won gold at anything.
It's really good.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
And sometimes you don't know that's going on because it
happens slowly. It's a slow progression, right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
And it's sort of leveled off now I'm at a
new level. But it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Do you know what you archy they said? Did they
give it a name?
Speaker 5 (33:01):
I was just looking for my notes so I could
tell you exact fleet, but would appeal them a bit slack.
That's right, very closer hand.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
That's okay, but no problem. But it seems like it's one.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
But I'm working. So yeah, just do what people should do.
What you said, get a checked out. We're not doctors.
We don't know.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
And now the big thing about you is we need
to move on to secondary prevention. In other words, we
need to keep all of your risk factors as low
as we can to stop this happening again.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Okay, excellent.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
I mean I've got I've got a few other things
going on, but I'm managing them and yeah, I'll get there.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Thank you for sharing that. Yeah yeah. What about what
about people who feel occasionally faint from time to time
or they exercising and the sort of stand up too
quickly and they feel a little bit lightheaded?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Is that just it's normally good health?
Speaker 4 (33:51):
It was other words, here the blood pressure is so low,
then when they suddenly stand up, their blood pressure drops
around their boots and all the blood pools and their feet,
and brain goes down to the feet to find out
with the blood is.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Oh, that's good. Actually that was asking for a friend.
That was me Actually exactly, I knew that I can't.
It's because sometimes when I'm stretching that I've done my
warm ups and all that sort of thing, and I've
done a few things and I sort of down on
the floor and I stand up and I go, oh,
hang on a minute.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Films, I'm just trying to No, I don't want to
picture Tim in the gym.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
I tell you what. No, just picture lots of throbbing,
lean muscle and you're there.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Get one.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Muskay, We're going to take a break because Dr John
needs a cup of tine to lie down now, and
we'll be back just to take We'll take more calls
and we've got a bunch of TEXTI we'll try and
get through as much as we can. Twelve and a
half to five, don't I just don't think you don't understand.
And if you tell my heart yes, we're not above
(34:49):
a cliche song choice when we're discussing heart health. To
stop line dancing, no lion dancing. Right, Okay, We're going
to try and squeeze in a couple more calls, so people,
if you're on hold, we'd like a concise discussion because
we only have a few minutes to go.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
Grant Hello, Yeah, hi there, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Hey, a couple of years ago, I had I blecked
out for a few hours. My heart rate dropped right
down and I was diagnosed with left ventriclet hypertrophy I
think it was, and they after that they put me
on statons. I'm just wondering, well, exactly what the hypertrophy
(35:32):
is and Stanton's part of the treatment or are they
treating my cholesterol because my cholesterol I think isn't too bad.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
So hypertrophy hyper meaning increased pertrophy is the muscle thing,
so you get increased muscle thickness. So left ventricul left ventricle,
get my words right. The left ventricle is the main
pump in the heart. Left ventricular hypertrophy is where the
muscle and the main pump of the heart is getting thicker.
And when it gets thicker, it can't pump as effectively
(36:00):
and it's more prone to develop strange a rhythms of
changed rhythm. So in itself won't change that. Normally, we
put people on hypertrophy on either beta blockers or ace
inhibitors or indiotension receptor blockers. The stanton is probably there
just to protect your currenty arteries.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Okay, yep, So this is this something I should be
talking to my doctor about what's my risk?
Speaker 4 (36:26):
I need to know a whole lot more information on that, unfortunately,
but your docs should be on case like that. If
you've been seen being diagnosed with left in trick and
hypertrophy and they know what's going on, putting on a stanton,
you should be fine.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Okay, But if you do have any serious questions that
you're worried about. Yeah, talk to your doctor, okay, Rebecca
lucky last, I think we've got about three minutes.
Speaker 11 (36:48):
Oh, hello, how are you?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
We're good?
Speaker 5 (36:51):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Hey.
Speaker 11 (36:52):
My question is we've got a couple of very active children,
ten and Stephen who heply involved in sports and from
the stuff, how how much sugar on an average day
basis is okay for kids who are very active that
very active lives. There's a lot of stuff that you
read it the sugar is so bad, it's shilling the
(37:14):
kids and all this stuff, and it's it's just there's
so much information out there because food is soap processed
and there's a lot of sugar, Like what should we
be aiming for here?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
So whole foods more than microprocessed foods. Pure sugar in
itself is just energy. It's so cross.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
It's two molecules of sugars joined together. It's instant energy.
It's like putting petrol in your car. But there's a
whole different way of getting complex carbohydrates, which are probably
more for them, which is where you get lots of
sugar molecules joined together. The your starches, your potatoes, your
breads other things like that, to give them a sustained,
slow release of sugar through the day rather than big
sugar hats. Hey, kids have sugar fits a little treat,
(37:55):
that's fine, But trying to minimize the amount of added
sugar into your meals is a reasonably good idea.
Speaker 11 (38:01):
Oh yes, great, ok give us, thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Okay, thanks Rebecca. No, just a reminder on somebody's asked
about what are the primary pain locations for heart problems
lower river cage and a rib cage on the chest,
central chest.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Central chest, right over your breastbone.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
What about the people talking about left arm or right arm?
Speaker 4 (38:20):
So what if the pain can and females are very different,
they can get their pain all over the show, but
generally it is a central chest heaviness, not a pain,
not sharp. It's like an elephant sitting on your chest.
It might radiate up into your neck and too your
jaw line, maybe through to your back, and the pain
may radiate into your left arm. Doesn't make it go
tingly or weak or anything. It's a radiation of pain.
(38:41):
So any pain which is felt like that, we assume
it's heart pain until we can prove otherwise.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Okay, one here says, hi, guys, this is a bit triggering.
I'm a fifty four year old male. My dad passed
away at fifty three and his father at fifty two.
I've been on statins and blood pressure meds for probably
fifteen twenty years. About a year ago, I went to
the hospital with what felt like an elephant on the chest,
had the things put on, was told not a heart attack,
and was left at that Can I get a heart
check or anything like that? The GP just said aims
to brush me off.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yep, course you can get a heart check.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
So what do we do? What does he do?
Speaker 4 (39:10):
We can do a calcium score, which can show you
what's going on from that point of view. We can
refer you through to a cardiologist for review. We could
do a city currenty in giography, all those sorts of things.
There's lots of things that we can do. But you're
on the right stuff for a start, on a stat
and dropping down your LDLs, on a blood pressure medicine
to maintain that. So we're doing all of those primary
(39:30):
preventions at the moment.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
So the last sentence was GP just seems to brush
me off. Get another opinion, get another opinion, or just say, if.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
You're worried about it, it's your body, it's your life health.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Yeah, it's your life. So if you're inconveniencing someone, well,
that's a lot to put your whole sense of well
being and health at stake for the fact you're worried
about offending someone because he's saying one another opinion.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
And it's a discussion. You put the risks down.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Here's what we can do, here's the things which we
might give us more information and we can work it
out together.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Brilliant. Gosh, great saving the studio. Now when are you
off the Bangladesh Thursday? I Thursday? Wow, fantastic. I'm looking
forward to seeing You're the food police for the team,
are you?
Speaker 2 (40:09):
I'm everything.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
It's about forty kilos of medical kit I'm taking with me.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Wow. That does well. Don't carry your own bags Okay.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
I do that as well.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Okay, thanks very much. Look what John, He'll be back
with us in a few weeks time as well, and
we'll look forward to having a chat again soon. Sorr Off.
We didn't get to all your texts and calls, but
great conversation. Right, We'll be back shortly with smart money.
Krista lever is with us, talking about how do you
get your hit around the market volatility and other things.
Back soon it is a little.
Speaker 6 (40:44):
For more from the Weekend Collective.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Listen live to News Talk Said Be weekends from three pm,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks, EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The New Astucier, Take just Yesterday, then on My Knees and.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Today we Don't get Pulled Again and a very good afternoon.
If you just joined us, Hi, how are you? This
is the Weekend Collective. You've missed a great hour of politics.
Then you can go and check it out on our podcast.
Look for the Weekend Collective on iHeartRadio and if you did,
(00:50):
you've just joined in. Well you've joined in at a
great moment because it's this is the Health Hub. You're
going to talk about your health and we're going to
talk about We're gonna we're going to take your calls
on anything you want to talk about health wise, but
we like to have a sort of focus from the conversation,
so you can give it a one hundred and eighty
ten eighty. But we're going to kick off with having
a chat around heart health because it's one of those
things that most of the time I hear that someone's
(01:12):
had an issue with their heart health is usually because
they've dodged a bullet. They were just in the right
time when they keeled over, and goodness me, I didn't know,
and all of a sudden they've changed their lifestyle and
they're doing something to take it seriously. But what actually
can we do to look after our hearts without being
paranoid and all that sort of stuff and thinking I
can't eat that because it's gonna I'm keeping eye on this,
but also, you know, there's a obviously a genetic sort
(01:35):
of thing, and what problems you've inherited from your parents
or your grandparents? And is there a point where you
should worry about your weight and the impact on your heart.
But of course there are plenty of people This sounds
like a very crude way of putting it, but plenty
of skinny people have heart attacks too. It's not something
about people who are walking around and think, oh, they
were waiting to happen. Who would know? Because if you've
(01:56):
got a problem with your cholesterol or whatever. I'm now
speaking outside my area of expertise, which means it's the
perfect time to introduce the person who is an expert
on the stuff. He's well known to you all, he's
a GP. He's going to be heading off the Blangladesh.
I think sometimes soon Bangladish not blanked. I was talking
too quickly, and it's John Cameron and he'll be watching
(02:16):
his health there because apparently no ice in your drink
and Bangladesh.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Slowly sewach Sons slowly such make.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
It sound so lovely.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
And I've only been there once before and I managed
to put on three kiloads.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Really that's a victory.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, I know it's very good.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, actually on the but that was my introduction sort
of fair to the consideration and the attitudes we have
towards heart health. We never think about it until someone
close to us has an episode or we do and
are there ways? Are there simple things we should do
look after our health, our heart health.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
When we find it on Monday mornings and suddenly you
get all these young males, you know, thirty forty year
old young dads coming in just coming in for a checkup.
That's one, okay, just coming in for a checkup's just
coming in for Then you work it out, that's some
at the tennis club on Saturday morning, and you go,
Now you go and get it checked out.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Is that seriously you actually do? There's a pattern to it.
There's if you had a graph of people calling in
for that, it peaks on the sort of Monday.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Absolutely, so heart health, we've only got one of them. Yeah,
you need to look after it.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
It's an incredible muscle, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
It's pretty Can you imagine a pump that will work
for eighty ninety years quite often without any other work
being done to it, and just sits here and pumps
every second, every hour, all day moving.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I prefer not to think of it, because I mean,
the only thing we can think of is imagine going
into the gym and doing endless sort of exercises the
same thing. How quickly you'd run out, and yet our
heart is going borm amazing, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So what do we know about heart health?
Speaker 4 (03:50):
Firstly, as you're saying choose your parents, well, that is
the number one thing you need to do, because quite
often heart disease will occur more commonly in families which
have got previous heart disease. Don't smoke. Be a non smoker.
That is probably one of the biggest risk accelerators for
premature heart disease.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Okay, just to interject there so because when I hear
that smoking is a damage, are danger to your heart?
Because I always think that smoke lungs. That's the first thing,
why does smoking impact that? How does it actually impact
your heart health?
Speaker 4 (04:22):
It accelerates the damage to the lining layers of your arteries. Okay,
especially arteries taking blood to the heart muscle.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So we've got two arteries which take blood to our
heart muscle to feed it, left and right coronary arteries,
the first arteries which come off the big main oxygen
rich blood from our aorta, and one of those is
called the left anterior descending artery, which otherwise known as
the widow maker's archery.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So yeah, when that blocks off, it's a.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Great what a great names?
Speaker 5 (04:48):
Good?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Is that the name they give it at med school
or something. It's like, now we're going to discuss such
and such otherwise known as the widow mate.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
So the fact is that can increase your risk of
heart disease. When we're talking about here, we're talking about
a schemic heart disease. Schemia means running short of oxygen,
which which is the commonest thing that we would see.
There are other forms of heart disease, such as in
largely the heart muscle cardiomopathy. There's value of the disease
ordered valve disease mitral valve disease.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
These are other parts.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Which can affect this pumping mechanism. If you're talking about
courentar re artery disease, your risks are worked out on
an algorithm which is age, gender, ethnicity, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, smoking,
family history. Right, So that is a algorithm of someone
who has got no symptoms, nothing else is pointing that
(05:38):
they might have a problem with their heart or scheming
heart disease. And we've basically done the whole country in
the background. When we go in there, we get the
data and we're running through the algorithm and find out
what's happening with you. We know that eighty percent of
premature cardiovascular disease occurs in the twenty percent of the
population with the highest risk.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So that's how we target that.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
If we spend most of our effort trying to assist
people who have got high risk, big return on your investment.
Remembering these are people in primary prevention, never have had
a stroke, never had a heart attack, don't have ANDRONA.
So we're trying to find out in that great unwashed population,
which are the ones that are likely to find those
try and really work on their risk. Factors to minimize
(06:23):
those and that gives us a reasonable return on investment.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
The second part is secondary prevention. In other words, you've
had a stroke, heart attack, something like that and survived.
We know very well that if we can really crunch
your risk factors down, we will reduce your risk of
having a second event by a significant amount. So the
money return on it. Secondary prevention is really good. Primary prevention,
you've got to cast your net a lot wider.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Primary prevention is what really concerns each individual. Each individual
doesn't as an individual. I don't mean this is going
to come out callous, but what I mean is, as
an individual, I don't care about the macro act. I
don't care about the biggest bang for back. I want
to know if I'm going to keel over because there's
something coming by way and I haven't.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Found it that we can't tell you. What about?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Is there anything that can give an indication of that?
As you get older like you blood tests and.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
One of the one of the increasing respectors for heart
diseases getting older.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Well that's a bummer.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
I just so the older you are, the more likely
you are to have What about the whole cholesterol thing.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yep, it's part of the problem.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Okay. So for instance, I mean I've heard about people
who have had their arteries clean up on inside of
the neck because they're at cholesterol. How do you how
would you know if that's a problem for you.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Well, I would pick up in a blood Yeah, if
you're over the age of forty, it's quite likely that
some stage somebody has measured your lipid profile. So if
you're talking about lipid profile, really interesting topics. So we
measure the fats in your blood. That's what the rapid
profile is. Total cholesterol pretty much forget about it. We
used to think that was the complications for a.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
While and everyone, oh, no, there's good cholesterol, there's bad cholesterol,
and then.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Yeah, so your total might give you an indication, but
it's not the be all and end all. So if
we fraction out your cholesterol, we look at which isn't
in cholesterol, which are called triglyph rides. You little fatty
ass join together independent risk factor for heart disease if
they elevate it total cluster. We break it down into
two main fractions. One's called high density lipoprotein HDL. Now
(08:19):
normal HDL more than one point zero, really good HDL
one point five and like my wife superhuman two point zero.
I don't know why I'm working such. She's just going
to spend all my money after I crack it my
heart attack, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
But if you've got a.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Really high HDL married world, Yes she did a nice car,
that was about it. But anyway, so if you've got
a high HDL that can be quite protective. Then we
look at LDL low density lypoprotein. Now, this is the
one which we think creates most of the damage in
your arterial walls.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So we want to grunt that down.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Now, again, it's a numbers game, and I know what
you're saying, your individual risk versus a population risk. We
think of that if we've got to treat thirty forty
people for five years, that's worthwhile doing to stop one event.
So I mentioned treating thirty nine forty nine people for
no reason, simply because you can't identify which that one
is in that population.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
So, and of course there's always the trade off as
to whether the treat, whether the prevention is worse than
the cure.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
US any nation, numbers need to treat versus numbers needed
to harm always trying to balance out the damage that
we could do by treating against the potential benefit that
we could do. So yeah, we say around about forty
fifty people to treat to save one event, So quite
often we're actually treating a risk, not a disease. I
think that's really important to get your head around. This
is primary prevention real.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
But yeah it yeah, yep, yep, yep. What about in
terms of I mean, I think a primary prevention is
just living, having a good, healthy lifestyle and eating the
right foods. What are the things from the modern lifestyle
that are the obvious are You're probably gonna say everything,
but what are the obvious things in life that we
often do without too much thought about it that, you
(10:04):
know what, we could just moderate that a bit and
make a big difference to our outcomes. Exercise exercise wues
that be the first topic something.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So firstly, don't be a non smoker. Please.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
If you're looking at a risk factor and you're come
in and saying I want to take medicine to drop
my cholesterol and I smoke twenty cigarettes a day, I'll
tell you the bagger off. Why should we spend money
on you for drags to stop this when you're piling stuff,
and that's going to totally counteract what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
So be a nonsmoker.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Brief crashing, not smoking, and there we stop smaking.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Every done right, be a non smoker. It's not a
negative thing. As a positive thing.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Your diet, Mediterranean diet seems to be productive, protective, low
fat diet really good. Make sure you don't get diabetes,
really good one that one that really accelerates your risk out.
Get good control of your blood pressure, get good control
of your lipid profile.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Enjoy life.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Treat every day like it it's going to be your last,
because one day you'll be absolutely correct.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Is that balance, isn't it? For instance, it's like, don't
watch your saturated fats, but I do love a good
steak from time to time. It is the okay, here
we go, here we go. By the way, you can
jump in on anytime. I wait one hundred eighty ten
to eighty. If you've got any questions for John Cameron,
doctor John Cameron, I prefer saying doctor John actually because
it was quite a good New Orleans jazz artist. But
that's pinching someone else's territory on that one said John's, yes,
(11:21):
I have, But what about just the everything in moderation.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, it's good idea, be happy number one thing.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, because stress, I mean, if you, I mean you
get people who preoccupied with so many things to do
with their health and stuff, and they're just a ball
of stress. It's like, just good relax, have a here, look,
have a slab of bacon.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Thank you. I wasn't going to quite go that that.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
But what we don't know about corony artery disease is
what creates the damage in the first place. Why do
we get those little intimal tears in the lining layer
of our arteries, which are then blocked up by the
body trying to patch the hole, And it's a patch
on the hole which causes the narrowing in the arteries.
We get cholesterol plaque laid down on those holes, which
then slowly grows and.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
That starts to include the artery.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
So that will give you a thing called angina, which
is chest pain on exercise. Really important to tell us
if you've got that. A heart attack is something quite different.
So when one of those little plaque splits, breaks open,
exposes a waxy mattress to the blood going over the
top forms a clock blocks off that artery, sudden complete
(12:23):
loss of oxygenated blood to an area of heart muscle.
That's when the elephant sits on your chest and won't
get off. So it's a central.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Heavy I m feel like I need to just take
a deep breath because it was you know.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
So I can talk about this out of school.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
The last person we had who had a significant CARDIOK
event was a chap in his mid to late forties,
no previous history on a lipid lowering agent. Already woke
up one had your little twinge, has been playing tennis
a day before, woke up one morning with an elephant
on his chest.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Wow? Would he have been on a Lippard family history
family history slippid profile.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So trying to get in and do something about that.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Are there scans that you can get if you know that,
if if you were so no time that, if you
go check me, I've got a family history and I
need I want to have a give me the CT
scan or whatever. I don't know what you do.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Sure, there's a couple of things we can do for that.
One is this thing called a calcium score, which is
looking It's a CT process which looks at the risk
of looking for calcium deposits in the curry arterial wall.
Now really good. It doesn't tell us do you have
narrow wings or do you have critical plat that it's
(13:34):
going to go off. It can be a decision making
tool to say, would it be a good idea to
put you on a stat in a medicine to drop
your cholesterol? If you've got a really high calcium score,
you'd say it's a reasonable thing to do. So it's
not a diagnostic test, it's more should be or shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We treatd test? The other tests we can do if
we can start to look at the.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Coronary arteries themselves, we can do a thing called a
CT currenty androgram, where it's another CT process which tries
to look at the caliber of the actual arteries taking
blood to your heart muscle in The third and most
definitive thing we can do is what's crony angiography, where
we squit die into the coronia ties and map them out.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
But you wouldn't do some of those tests. You wouldn't
do currenty and geography as a screening test.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
No, it's pretty full on.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
First.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
First, all the test we do is what's called an
exercise test, exercise tolerance test. Jump you on a treadmill,
work you really hard, See what your RecG does, See.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
What you're people having an event when they do that.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
We have resusch right beside you when you're doing yes.
So that's what are the markers.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
One of the markets you need to have is chest
pain on exercise before the exercise test, because otherwise you're
going to get false positives and go down the false
positive line.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
One last question we're going to get into the cause
sugar Now is that more about you know, well that's
diabetes and things like that, but I mean too much sugar.
Is that something that impacts on your heart health directly
or what's the sugar? What's what's the vibe?
Speaker 4 (14:58):
If you're looking at those risk fectors age, gender, ethnicity, diabetes,
high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, family history, weight doesn't
actually come into it as an individual risk factor that
we can work out at the moment. It plays a
role in raising your blood pressure and sometimes you'll be
pushing towards diabetes, and we think we pick up those
(15:18):
impacts through those other diseases that might indicate that something
that's going on behind it rather than weight or sugar
and take itself right.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Let's take some course. This is great stuff. I'm glad
to ask that question. Tell us about the heart, John,
we get into it. We'll take a by the way,
if you're on hold for a call, we're going to
take one call. Then we'll take a break and we'll
be back with the rest of you. There's one spear
line there, so you can jump on it right now,
eight hundred and eighty. Meanwhile, let's kick it off with
hang on a second. Let me click that mouse again.
(15:48):
There we go, Beryl.
Speaker 6 (15:48):
Hello, Hello there, good afternoon, Jeans one. Is it Dr Grahams?
Speaker 3 (15:54):
That no, Dr John Cameron.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
I'm sorry. I don't know where I've got the grind
from Dr John. I just I know you're just giving
your opinion. But just a couple of things I want
to ask about Margarineta and milk. I'll try and keep
it short. Apparently the distant nurses when my mum was
in the eighties said that she should have full milk milk,
not the skim stuff. I wanted to ask you about that,
(16:17):
and there's often a debate between I take the low margarine,
but some of my one of my friends had heard
from a doctor you should go for butt and not margarine,
And I'd love your opinion on those three.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, I'm suspicious for Margarine these days. Beerl thank you
for answer asking that question. Let's let's go to.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
John days gone by.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
You had to get Margarine on a prescription BlimE, and
it was made up by the chemist, by the pharmacist,
and you had to write a script for it.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Was that was way better. That's interesting.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
So it all comes down to the fat and take
that you have. Look, if you're eighty eighty five, I'll
just whisper in your.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Ear, enjoy your life. Yeah, yeah, it's don't sweat the
small stuff.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah, and it really doesn't matter that much.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
It's a lovely thing.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
God profess Professor Jackson, cause but calls butter yellow death.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
He's Deputy Mulog.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
I love buttery.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It's great.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
But it's it's probably not a good thing. It's it's
high unsaturated fan. It's probably not the best thing that
you could have. And the whole reason about Marjorie is
it's a little bit more heart friendly. Okay, so it's
not going to push your ldl's and TG's.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Up so much.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Okay, just quickly, wasn't this something I do know that you.
I'm almost waiting for your cynicism on this because there's
always a study saying something. But there was something I
saw recently where they're saying that full fat milk versus
skim milk. There was something that came out that didn't
look like full fat milk wasn't actually so bad. So
it's only a couple of grams per hundred miles, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
What we are after is hard outcomes, not soft outcomes,
And what we're really trying to work out is what
should we be doing so that we minimize premature preventable
heart attacks. Okay, so we're not talking about what your
lipid profile actually looks like. That's a soft outcome, and
Gina's probably a hard outcome. Heart attacks and death's a
(18:04):
hard outcome. That be very careful of studies which just
show soft outcomes, not the be all and indoors.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah. Actually, that would be my cavet that I sort
of picked up from talking to you, is that whatever
the latest headline on health is, if it's one study
reveals such and such, you generally need a bit more.
We're going to take more calls and be back in
just a moment.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Though.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It's a twenty four and a half past four. News
Talk said B. Yes, welcome back. News Talk said B.
This is the Health Hub. My guest is doctor John
Cameron talking about heart health. Let's get into the calls,
(18:45):
shall we? And it Hello?
Speaker 7 (18:47):
Hello, how are you?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
We're all good?
Speaker 7 (18:50):
That's good. Now talk to John. Is it his name?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yes, it's me.
Speaker 7 (18:58):
I went and had a caleistral blood peaste down on
November yep, and all the things were high. The cholestro
was five point eight.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Forget that.
Speaker 7 (19:09):
Glyster rides for two point three, that's okay. The HDL
cholestrol was one point two seven and the LDL was
three point.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Sets it's all right.
Speaker 7 (19:20):
And then the total was four point six yep. Now
when I went to seebe Weary, the caleistro was four
point three yep. Glyster rides were two point two.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
Yep.
Speaker 7 (19:37):
Caleistol hd L was one point oh two.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Oh buggy, you dropped that. That's no fit. Next one's
hd L.
Speaker 7 (19:47):
The caleistro l d L was two point four and
the total was down from four points it's the four
point two.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
It's a brilliant example of trying not to look at
the results identically and trying to mix them up.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Please don't do that.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
There's they've all got statistical eraror in them, they've all
got different timings on them.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
What you're after is what's the average looking like.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Over six, nine, twelve, eighteen months, twenty four months, two years.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Five years.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
So try not to read too much into small changes
in that picture.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
So if I was looking at your picture.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
In my little helicopter looking down, I'd say total forget it.
We're not inteding that TG struggles, Yeah, they're okay, they're
not too bad.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
HDL yeah, HDL is.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
Going to be somewhere in the low ones. Yeah, that's
a genetically determined process. But your LDLs are also low.
And the one thing if we're using that as in
a risk algorithm, what we look at mostly is what's
called your ratio, which is your total total divided by HDL.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And we want that below four point five.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Ok So when we're doing our risk algorithm, that's what
we look at. We don't look at anything in isolation.
So oh, okay, on that picture, I'd be quite happy
with that as long as you don't have any nasty
chest paints.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Are you doing anything just to how's you? What are
you doing to manage your health?
Speaker 7 (21:06):
Just stanton? All right, tams Ye.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Line dancing, Oh, brilliant line dancing or line dancing. Line
danced one sounds dangerous.
Speaker 7 (21:25):
And I do that Monday night and Tuesday and I
do it. Exercise group, sweet.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Good stuff and it well, that sounds good. She just
keep moving, doing things and keeping active.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
It would be interesting to find out what your LDL
level was before you went on to a tour for
Staton ten milligrams. You might need to go back and
have a look at that. But a tour the Stanton
is what's called natg co. A reductis inhibited, otherwise known
as the Stanton, and it drops your ld L. Okay,
And if you've had a heart attack and survived it, man,
we want to put you on a high dose Staton
or something of that nature to push your ldl's below
(21:57):
one point six.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Okay. Now, I'm just going to jump to a text
here just because I sort of feel we might be
able to help someone out of here with just dot
to John, I've always jogged, walked sets of stairs, et
cetera to keep fit. Lately, when pushing up, Hell, a bit,
the chest feels tight. I'm not pushing hard like years back.
So from what you've said, should I see my GP
or where can I get an appointment with you police?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's from Bill yesterday, Bill.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Yesterday, yep, so you need to be seen. So feeling
a chest is a bit tight.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
This is what Bill's got is increasing tightness heaviness in
his chest on exercise. Now, the first thing we need
to rule out is that he's not having angina, which
is a narrowing of the arteries taking blood to the
heart and muscle. So yep, that needs to be followed up.
You know, you don't have to get into the lights
and siren ambulance, but certainly within the next week go
Never talk to your doc.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Well pick up the phone tomorrow, but.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Make online even in these modern days. Yeah, really, yes
you can go.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
And what you'll probably end up with, Bill is an
exercise tolerance test. We put you on the treadmill and
see what's actually going when when you exercise.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
You would also someone like that, would would they be like, well,
before you come in, we'll get some bloods taken or
does that happen subsequently?
Speaker 4 (23:05):
It's not relevant, totally relevant at this stage, as long
as there's no rest pain.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Okay, Bell, you listen to the good doctor's advice there
and good luck. Right, let's take some more calls. Sarah, Hello, Hello,
I hope you good.
Speaker 8 (23:20):
I was just wanting to ask doctor John if what
his opinion on is if with alcohol and your risk
of hot hot.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Disease fascinating one the French paradox.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, yeah, glass of wine.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
The jury prevaricates on this, either for or against alcohol.
Small amount of alcohol tends to raise people's HDL, the
high density live proparating the protecting part of the cholesterol picture.
But alcohol in itself has a lot of other damaging potential,
so we are certainly not endorsing alcohol for cardiac prevention. Okay,
(24:00):
alcohol is a direct cardiac toxin. It will bugger, rize
up your heart muscle in.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Knock that around it.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
You have an alcoholic cardiomopathy, really nasty where the heart
muscle loses pumping capabilities. So you know, unlike myself, I
always tell myself as I poured my second glass of
I'm doing my HDL a real favor. I'm probably doing
the rest of my body a little bit of harm.
So we don't really know. But we're shifting away from
(24:27):
saying what is a safe level of alcohol?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
We don't know. The only safe level is no level.
What is a low risk level? Probably one standard unit
a day.
Speaker 9 (24:37):
Ok.
Speaker 8 (24:38):
Okay, it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
It sounds like it sounds like you've given you news
you don't want to hear. Is that right, Sarah?
Speaker 8 (24:44):
No, no, no, not at all, not at all. I
just there's just so many different opinions on it. I
just was interested in something from the professional.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
We're still learning about it. I think that's where we
leave it.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Thanks for you, course, Sarah. I mean, I think one
thing is fairly you can be fairly relaxed about. Is
no alcohol is not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
M uh. And as for the rest of it, I mean,
actually that's the whole thing. It's like, if you feel
that it maybe once or twice or three times a
week you want a glass of wine because you had
a big week, and it's your signal to yourself to relax.
Maybe not so bad, I don't know, but don't take
it from me. Definitely from you, you know. Okay, look,
(25:26):
he let me just check the time there, right, let's
go to Tania.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
Hello, yeah, Hi, I'm sitting here listening to you guys
talk about heart and it's a chat and I have
been a chest pain at a moment.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Well, if you got chest pain the moment, you need
to be seen. We should stop the call and you
should be seen.
Speaker 9 (25:49):
No. No, I've seen the doctor last week and he
told me that I have a chest flame.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Mason, a chest inflammation, chesting figure la no chest flame Mason.
Speaker 9 (26:02):
Let me like, my heart is fine, okay, and my
lung is fine, but I got chest pain. I think
I understood. Is that from the muscle?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
And I really without knowing what else is going on
or examining you or doing something, I wouldn't know. If
you have got significant chest pain, we need to get
that checked out. So if it's continuing, I would suggest
it gets checked out again.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Okay, okay, okay, yep, please yeah, okay. It sounds like
Taney is not happy with the advice she got. She's
still got chest pain, and that would be that would
be if you still yeah, you're still on the line
there time then then if you're not happy with the advice,
if you've got to see another doctor and get some
advice because it's very difficult for John to give that
anything more really, but continue your That's what I'm reading there.
(26:51):
I think she's seen a doctor. She's still got chest pains,
she's not happy. She's called you go and see someone
with someone else, Right, we'll take a moment. It's twenty
three minutes to five. News Talk said Bees news Talk said,
be taking your course for doctor John Cameron with a
bit of a focus on the heart, but of something
else that's going on your mind. You can't give them
a call. I one eight ten eighty Sally Hello, Hello.
Speaker 10 (27:11):
Well I've got a problem. I've I've been diagnosed with
a jest of heart failure. I have tablets to get
the fluid off my lungs, but my main problem is,
since it's not a bad heart altogether, I feel as
though wins are going off and all the time it's
(27:32):
I've got wind wind wind, and it just gurgles up
off my stomach.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Okay, Well, so heart failure is a horrible thing. It's
basically where the heart doesn't pump so much, and it
can have a whole raft of different symptoms and that
what's happening is that all the large veins in your
chest and your belly are becoming engorged with blood because
it's all building up on the upphill side of the
heart itself. So the a whole range of symptoms including Breton's,
(28:01):
this swelling, tummy, distension, all of these things which can
go along with heart failure. And what we try and
do is take the load off your heart. We try
and get rid of some of the fluid because one
of the things which happens with heart failure is you
don't put enough blood your kidneys, and the kidneys believe
you're bleeding to death. So the kidneys say fluid, which
gives more fluid for your heart to pump, which means
it doesn't pump as much. But let's fluid goes to you.
Can you get into this horrible circle? And so we
(28:24):
try and dry you out with a lovely drug called
flus of mode.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
You still there, sally, yes.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
The only thing it treats, it treats the symptoms.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
There are other drugs that we can use to try
and look after your heart as well.
Speaker 10 (28:40):
Yeah, yes, And there's nothing can to be done for
this embarrassing wind like balloon's going off from my tummy
all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
No, probably not. I'm sorry, Sally.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
It's so right.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Just as long as it's coming up not down.
Speaker 10 (28:54):
You're doing okay, bursting in my stomach.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
That's all all right, Okay, thanks for you course, Sally.
Thanks here out bye bye. Actually, just before you got
to Tim, who's holding I thought this text was quite interesting.
What advice would you give to your twenty two year
old self to look after your health or heart on?
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Twenty two year olds are funny because they've got no
frontal lobes, so they've got no consequences.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
You wouldn't listen, you wouldn't follow advice, nothing to carry on.
You're going to do it anyway.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
I'm immortal, I'm never going to die, and so trying
to tell twenty two year olds what to do is
pretty yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Mixed, okay. So in other words, he wouldn't give it.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
Smoke okay, I'd probably be a bit more careful playing
football and not get my head knocked around quite so
much from the neck broken and things like that.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Did you No, it's not brilliant, but I have my.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
City of the football are you talking about, by the way,
I'm talking about rugby league. Rugby league.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Look at this.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Fun fact, John Cameron rugby league legend really back.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
You wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
That was back when, back and that was in the
day when it was almost the sort of it was
the sort of sport when you were just a deliberate rebel.
I'm not going to play that rugby union. I'm playing
league exactly back in the days of Wally Lewis and
all that. What before Wally. Yeah, just paid your accent,
take some course to move on.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
Tim, Hello, yeah, good guys, how are you? Yeah, I
just switched the app on about five minutes ago. Just
called the end of the call of the lady who
had been to the dock. She was having chest pain,
and I had a similar situation about no one was
(30:48):
at the first of April, he said in the Vahpril,
middle of the night, sharp chest pain. Anyway, ultimately I
got up to the hospital later on the next day
that sort of subsided the web and thought, you know,
I'll get a checked out and and they keep me in.
Then it was on the Wednesday. On the Friday, they
(31:10):
gave me an Andrew Graham and found one artery was
eighty percent block. They put a stent in. So the
moral of the story is I just reiterating what Doc
John said, which was the best advice I'd had, Like,
you get it checked out. Yeah, you don't know. You
don't know un till you know, and you know, you
(31:32):
go to the people who can hook you up to
the machines and find out, and it might save your.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Lives absolutely, Tim, No, you're right there. You know sometimes I.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
Need to check out.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, well we didn't out.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
In primary care, we get a bit ansy because we
sometimes will send people into hospital when we know they're
not having a heart attack, whether you know, they don't
have angina, but we can't tell that in the community
that easily. And there's a little test we do which
is called tropinon test, which is really helpful. It shows
if any heart mustaging damage. But the most important thing
(32:03):
is you listen to your story and so heart paint
is not felt over your heart, it's normally central. Sometimes
it will radiate into your neckl through to your back.
It doesn't make your hands and fingers go tingling, no,
but sometimes the pain will radiate into your left arm.
And if you've got any of those symptoms, yeah, you
need to get checked out. And if someone is a
bit flipping about it and doesn't take it seriously. Move
(32:25):
on and find someone else who might listen to you.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
Well done, Yeah, I mean I had Yeah, I had
the pain going into my neck and my jaw. Yeah,
and that that stint was it was unreal, Like within
an hour probably less of having it done, it was awesome.
Like two days later, I could have won gold at anything.
It's really good.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
And sometimes you don't know that's going on because it
happens slowly. It's a slow progression, right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
And it's sort of leveled off now I'm at a
new level. But it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Do you know what you archy they said? Did they
give it a name?
Speaker 5 (33:01):
I was just looking for my notes so I could
tell you exact fleet, but would appeal them a bit slack.
That's right, very closer hand.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
That's okay, but no problem. But it seems like it's one.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
But I'm working. So yeah, just do what people should do.
What you said, get a checked out. We're not doctors.
We don't know.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
And now the big thing about you is we need
to move on to secondary prevention. In other words, we
need to keep all of your risk factors as low
as we can to stop this happening again.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Okay, excellent.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
I mean I've got I've got a few other things
going on, but I'm managing them and yeah, I'll get there.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Thank you for sharing that. Yeah yeah. What about what
about people who feel occasionally faint from time to time
or they exercising and the sort of stand up too
quickly and they feel a little bit lightheaded?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Is that just it's normally good health?
Speaker 4 (33:51):
It was other words, here the blood pressure is so low,
then when they suddenly stand up, their blood pressure drops
around their boots and all the blood pools and their feet,
and brain goes down to the feet to find out
with the blood is.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Oh, that's good. Actually that was asking for a friend.
That was me Actually exactly, I knew that I can't.
It's because sometimes when I'm stretching that I've done my
warm ups and all that sort of thing, and I've
done a few things and I sort of down on
the floor and I stand up and I go, oh,
hang on a minute.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Films, I'm just trying to No, I don't want to
picture Tim in the gym.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
I tell you what. No, just picture lots of throbbing,
lean muscle and you're there.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Get one.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Muskay, We're going to take a break because Dr John
needs a cup of tine to lie down now, and
we'll be back just to take We'll take more calls
and we've got a bunch of TEXTI we'll try and
get through as much as we can. Twelve and a
half to five, don't I just don't think you don't understand.
And if you tell my heart yes, we're not above
(34:49):
a cliche song choice when we're discussing heart health. To
stop line dancing, no lion dancing. Right, Okay, We're going
to try and squeeze in a couple more calls, so people,
if you're on hold, we'd like a concise discussion because
we only have a few minutes to go.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
Grant Hello, Yeah, hi there, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Hey, a couple of years ago, I had I blecked
out for a few hours. My heart rate dropped right
down and I was diagnosed with left ventriclet hypertrophy I
think it was, and they after that they put me
on statons. I'm just wondering, well, exactly what the hypertrophy
(35:32):
is and Stanton's part of the treatment or are they
treating my cholesterol because my cholesterol I think isn't too bad.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
So hypertrophy hyper meaning increased pertrophy is the muscle thing,
so you get increased muscle thickness. So left ventricul left ventricle,
get my words right. The left ventricle is the main
pump in the heart. Left ventricular hypertrophy is where the
muscle and the main pump of the heart is getting thicker.
And when it gets thicker, it can't pump as effectively
(36:00):
and it's more prone to develop strange a rhythms of
changed rhythm. So in itself won't change that. Normally, we
put people on hypertrophy on either beta blockers or ace
inhibitors or indiotension receptor blockers. The stanton is probably there
just to protect your currenty arteries.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Okay, yep, So this is this something I should be
talking to my doctor about what's my risk?
Speaker 4 (36:26):
I need to know a whole lot more information on that, unfortunately,
but your docs should be on case like that. If
you've been seen being diagnosed with left in trick and
hypertrophy and they know what's going on, putting on a stanton,
you should be fine.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Okay, But if you do have any serious questions that
you're worried about. Yeah, talk to your doctor, okay, Rebecca
lucky last, I think we've got about three minutes.
Speaker 11 (36:48):
Oh, hello, how are you?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
We're good?
Speaker 5 (36:51):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Hey.
Speaker 11 (36:52):
My question is we've got a couple of very active children,
ten and Stephen who heply involved in sports and from
the stuff, how how much sugar on an average day
basis is okay for kids who are very active that
very active lives. There's a lot of stuff that you
read it the sugar is so bad, it's shilling the
(37:14):
kids and all this stuff, and it's it's just there's
so much information out there because food is soap processed
and there's a lot of sugar, Like what should we
be aiming for here?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
So whole foods more than microprocessed foods. Pure sugar in
itself is just energy. It's so cross.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
It's two molecules of sugars joined together. It's instant energy.
It's like putting petrol in your car. But there's a
whole different way of getting complex carbohydrates, which are probably
more for them, which is where you get lots of
sugar molecules joined together. The your starches, your potatoes, your
breads other things like that, to give them a sustained,
slow release of sugar through the day rather than big
sugar hats. Hey, kids have sugar fits a little treat,
(37:55):
that's fine, But trying to minimize the amount of added
sugar into your meals is a reasonably good idea.
Speaker 11 (38:01):
Oh yes, great, ok give us, thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Okay, thanks Rebecca. No, just a reminder on somebody's asked
about what are the primary pain locations for heart problems
lower river cage and a rib cage on the chest,
central chest.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Central chest, right over your breastbone.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
What about the people talking about left arm or right arm?
Speaker 4 (38:20):
So what if the pain can and females are very different,
they can get their pain all over the show, but
generally it is a central chest heaviness, not a pain,
not sharp. It's like an elephant sitting on your chest.
It might radiate up into your neck and too your
jaw line, maybe through to your back, and the pain
may radiate into your left arm. Doesn't make it go
tingly or weak or anything. It's a radiation of pain.
(38:41):
So any pain which is felt like that, we assume
it's heart pain until we can prove otherwise.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Okay, one here says, hi, guys, this is a bit triggering.
I'm a fifty four year old male. My dad passed
away at fifty three and his father at fifty two.
I've been on statins and blood pressure meds for probably
fifteen twenty years. About a year ago, I went to
the hospital with what felt like an elephant on the chest,
had the things put on, was told not a heart attack,
and was left at that Can I get a heart
check or anything like that? The GP just said aims
to brush me off.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yep, course you can get a heart check.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
So what do we do? What does he do?
Speaker 4 (39:10):
We can do a calcium score, which can show you
what's going on from that point of view. We can
refer you through to a cardiologist for review. We could
do a city currenty in giography, all those sorts of things.
There's lots of things that we can do. But you're
on the right stuff for a start, on a stat
and dropping down your LDLs, on a blood pressure medicine
to maintain that. So we're doing all of those primary
(39:30):
preventions at the moment.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
So the last sentence was GP just seems to brush
me off. Get another opinion, get another opinion, or just say, if.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
You're worried about it, it's your body, it's your life health.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Yeah, it's your life. So if you're inconveniencing someone, well,
that's a lot to put your whole sense of well
being and health at stake for the fact you're worried
about offending someone because he's saying one another opinion.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
And it's a discussion. You put the risks down.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Here's what we can do, here's the things which we
might give us more information and we can work it
out together.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Brilliant. Gosh, great saving the studio. Now when are you
off the Bangladesh Thursday? I Thursday? Wow, fantastic. I'm looking
forward to seeing You're the food police for the team,
are you?
Speaker 2 (40:09):
I'm everything.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
It's about forty kilos of medical kit I'm taking with me.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Wow. That does well. Don't carry your own bags Okay.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
I do that as well.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Okay, thanks very much. Look what John, He'll be back
with us in a few weeks time as well, and
we'll look forward to having a chat again soon. Sorr Off.
We didn't get to all your texts and calls, but
great conversation. Right, We'll be back shortly with smart money.
Krista lever is with us, talking about how do you
get your hit around the market volatility and other things.
Back soon it is a little.
Speaker 6 (40:44):
For more from the Weekend Collective.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Listen live to News Talk Said Be weekends from three pm,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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