Welcome, my name is Dr. Warrick Bishop. I'm a cardiologist, an author and a keynote speaker. I'm CEO of the Healthy Heart Network. I'm all about trying to help people live as well as possible for as long as possible. Heart disease is huge in Australia. Every 20 minutes someone suffers a heart attack. Most of these could probably have been avoided if only we knew what to do. This podcast is all about helping you understand blood pressure, weight, cholesterol for better health. If you enjoy this podcast, I would be honoured for a five-star review. You can share it with your family and friends. It may well save someone you love. Hi, Warrick Bishop here and welcome to my podcast and videocast station. As always, I'm very grateful that you've taken the time to tune in and have a listen and I hope you find the information... informative. If you do have any suggestions for anything you'd like me to cover, please drop us a note at info at drWarrickbishop.online. Well, today I've got a couple of things to cover. The first of all is a little lesson on happiness. So we all talk about it. We all think about it. It is hugely important. And if we're not here for happiness, then what are we here for? Well, you can figure that out, yeah. figured that out for yourself but let me share with you a piece that has come across my desk on happiness and it's to do with the Harvard study of adult development and this is quite possibly the most comprehensive study ever conducted viewing and following participants through their adult lives. The study actually started in Boston in 1938, so it's nearly been going 100 years and already covers three generations. That obviously includes grandparents, parents and children who are now considered the baby boomers. It has analysed more than 2,000 people throughout its 85 odd years of study time. really provides fantastic information into where our priorities are as we age and grow. So when the study looked at happiness, it transpires that they found two major factors in common throughout the 85 years of research. that happiness, well, where happiness seemed to reside was in individuals who took care of their health. Well, of course, that makes some sense because if you're healthy, you tend to be happier. The second place where happiness was found or the second factor that seemed to be an important ingredient was building loving relationships with others. Well, That also seems to make sense. In fact, both of those make sense, except one of the surprises to, at least to the researchers, and possibly to an innocent bystander, would be that what they found was that in terms of good health prognosis, the very best indicator of that was having a good relationship. So if we were going to prioritize... the two important aspects of happiness. The first is building loving relationships with others. And that not only brings happiness, but brings a better chance of good health into the future. Well, pretty important stuff and a great reminder of how important family, loved ones, friends all are. And it's important also to remember that they... had the opportunity to compare this sort of emotional connection, these relationships with professional success as well. And they did look at professional success, which of its own did not guarantee happiness. It gave gratitude, but not necessarily happiness. And that's, I think, really important. It did transpire that some of the happiest people not only valued and fostered relationships, the education and cultural awareness to maximise those interactions. And further to that, they tended to be certainly in the higher salary groups, adopting better habits and often having better access to healthcare as well. So obviously having some socio-economic advantage is important as well. It turns out that loneliness is a problem. If we don't have someone to vent with, we can be in a lot of trouble. And the study authors or the study researchers have really made a point about recommending that people look to foster and strengthen and broaden relationships throughout community if need be, if they don't have close individual contacts. camaraderie by engaging in sports or supporting sports, hobbies, volunteer work and the like. So pretty interesting stuff. Really important to understand that building relationships is probably the number one priority and then number two, looking after your health. The other point that the researchers made in this study is happiness is not. constant it does ebb and flow and they make this point in light of the social media brouhaha we see these days where people seem almost exclusively to post these worry-free existences well of course there's no truth to that and we all have ups and downs whatever they may be and there is a real importance to have the social skills to contribute to that resilience. But beyond that, it's the relationships with those social skills that will help people build resilience. So, in summary, the importance of having not just social skills, but building relationships and working on health will be your magic ingredients to a happy, healthy life. Well... I'm pretty happy to end that particular on there, but why don't I roll on to colorectal carcinoma? Because an interesting paper came across my desk regarding colorectal carcinoma, and you may or may not be aware, there's an enormous amount of research in the space of looking for blood-based biomarkers to identify colorectal cancer early. Well... Why would we want to do that? Well, imagine how easy it would be if you could go along and get a blood test, say, every year and be sure you've got either colorectal cancer carcinoma excluded or an indication that's present and not have to go through an invasive colonoscopy, which not only carries some risks, costs a fair bit of money, that is inconvenient and just not super palatable. So there's a huge amount of research going on at the moment in the US looking at the ways we might be able to identify colorectal cancer and for that matter other cancers by a simple blood test. Now how could that occur? Well it turns out that as these cancers develop the DNA particles or the DNA fragments can be altered, but so can the messenger RNA fragments be altered. So these particular markers, these abnormal templates for the protein that the cancer is building can end up in the bloodstream. And we're looking to find these particular markers, these particular indicators that there may be cancer there by taking a blood test, multiplying up, those abnormal findings, those abnormal markers, and defining whether there's a problem there or not. So we're not at the stage where blood testing for colorectal cancer, or other cancers for that matter, is broadly used. There are some proprietary private tests available in the US. recommended in australia at this stage i'm not sure if you can even access them to be to be honest i think it might be very hard to access from australia however watch this space because there are going to be many fragments of abnormal cells that do end up in the bloodstream and those fragments will end up being key to the very things that we target to identify whether there's a problem within the body or not. And I'm pretty sure it will go beyond colorectal carcinoma. It will go to multiple different types of cancer. Let's watch that space as it progresses. For now, though, I'm going to wrap up. I feel pretty happy. The relationships are good. And my health is pretty good. So... What more can I need? I'm going to wish you the very best. Again, thank you so much for listening. I would love it if you could share this podcast with family or friends. Could be a great way to build a relationship. Invite them to subscribe. I keep dropping in and out of the top 100 podcasts in Australia. So if we had a few more people subscribing, I'd drop into the top 100 and I'd be very grateful and pleased. Till next time. Please live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now. Hi. Ever wondered what your risk of heart attack is? You should. It's the single biggest killer in the Western world. We're talking one death less than every 30 minutes in Australia. One death less than every 60 seconds in the United States. Nine million deaths globally per annum. Well, how do you check your risk? Well, you can go to www.virtualheartcheck.com.au. You'll find out about your risk and what can be done beyond that to be even more precise.
