Podcast Summary

Welcome to Dr. Warrick's podcast channel. Warrick is a practicing cardiologist and author with a passion for improving care by helping patients understand their heart health through education. Warrick believes educated patients get the best health care. Discover and understand the latest approaches and technology in heart care and how this might apply to you or someone you love. Hi, my name is Dr Warrick Bishop and I'd like to welcome you to my podcast station and to the Healthy Heart Network. Today I'd like to chat a little bit about how we might be able to prevent heart failure on a clinic basis, in a long-term basis, and what you might be able to do with your local doctor. Well, the main things that we're really interested in, because they're the most common causes, are things like coronary artery disease, things like infarction. which is damage to the heart muscle through complete lack of blood supply, so the muscle dies, or ischemia, and ischemia means a relative lack of blood flow to the heart muscle, i.e. narrowed arteries to the muscle so that when the heart's being used, not enough blood is getting through those semi-blocked, narrowed arteries. We call that ischemia. So we want to prevent... ischemic heart disease if we possibly can. We want to keep blood pressure down because we know blood pressure loads the heart and leads to responses which can in the long term lead to failure of the heart. We know that the valves are important so it's really useful for when your doctor checks your blood pressure on a regular basis there does a quick listen to your heart as well. It makes perfect sense and if there is a valve problem there He or she will pick that up without too much trouble at all. There are also certain situations where there are families that have genetic conditions that lead to problems with the heart muscle. And if you or you know of someone in your family who has that sort of condition, then it really is a very sensible thing to have an open and sensible conversation about getting that checked and screened. through the family. It's a very simple thing to screen, your GP will help you. If your GP is able to direct you to a cardiologist for the appropriate testing then those questions can be answered early and if required proper treatment can be put in place early. Another thing that we can address early on in the process is obstructive sleep apnea and increased weight. This constellation of increased weight, poor sleep, raised blood pressure is really bad for your heart. So anything we can do to keep the weight down, to avoid obstructive sleep apnea, to look after the heart while you're asleep at night is a really good thing. In terms of simple things to reduce risk, lifestyle things like quitting smoking to reduce the risk of coronary artery disease. Making sure we're careful with our consumption of alcohol which can push up blood pressure. Making sure we keep our weight under control and regular exercise is just an absolute bonus for good heart health. In terms of therapies we can use in the long term to try and reduce risk of heart failure then of course treating things like cholesterol to reduce risk of coronary disease makes sense and so does treating blood pressure. I can't emphasise enough how important it is to get your blood pressure checked regularly and make sure that is well under control. So these are some simple manoeuvres to try and prevent development of heart failure. One of the really interesting things that's come to light in recent time is specifically around diabetics. And this is a little bit of a side digression, but it is interesting. There are a group of medications called sodium glucose transport. blockers which act in the kidney and actually allow diabetics to lose sugar through their kidneys. Now amazingly these medications have started to show benefit in the reduction of development of heart failure in that group of patients. So I'm going to wrap it up there. What we want to do in terms of preventing heart failure is actually look after you as best as we possibly can way before the problems arise. So look after yourself, don't smoke, exercise, not too much alcohol. Make sure you lock in with your GP and check your blood pressure regularly. If you're snoring at night, get that checked out as well. Make sure your doctor has a listen to your ticker. And if there is problems in the family, please. Get them checked out. I hope that makes a bit of sense to you. As always, if you have any queries or questions, let us know. If you've got any suggestions for future podcasts, we'd love to hear it. And of course, until next time, I wish you the very best health. Take care and goodbye. You have been listening to another podcast from Dr. Warrick. Visit his website at drWarrickbishop.com for the latest news on heart disease. If you love this podcast, feel free to leave us a review.