I believe we can prevent heart attack. We can put in place strategies to reduce risk. We can literally plan to change your future. Welcome. My name is Dr. Oreck Bishop. I'm a cardiologist. I'm an author and a keynote speaker. Together with that, I'm CEO of the Healthy Heart Network and I'm all about trying to help people live as well as possible for as long as possible. You probably know, heart disease is huge in Australia. Every 20 minutes someone suffers a heart attack and we know that over 20 people per day die from heart disease. This is on the backdrop of over 9 million people globally being impacted by this condition. Truthfully, most of these could probably have been avoided if only we knew what to do. This podcast is all about helping you understand better where blood pressure, weight, cholesterol and all the other bits and pieces around there can help together with general health literacy for general better health. I am on a mission to impact not just heart health but general health on a global scale. If you enjoy this podcast, I would be honoured for a five-star review and... You can share it with your family and friends. Who knows? It may well save someone you love. Hi, Warrick Bishop here, and welcome to my podcast and videocast station. Thank you so much for joining me. Look, today I would like to talk about inflammatory bowel disease. Now, I know it's not cardiological, but it does impact a lot of people. And look, it's an important space because this particular aspect of inflammatory bowel disease is all about sugar. And if by sharing with you more information about the potential detrimental effects of sugar, I can influence the way you think about your own dietary pattern, then that would be a good thing. Well, what is inflammatory bowel disease? Well, there are two main types of inflammatory bowel disease. Crohn's disease. The other is called ulcerative colitis. Well, of course, ulcerative colitis is quite a descriptive name and you can probably figure out that it is associated with ulceration of the colon or the large intestine. Ulcerative colitis. Crohn's disease is an inflammatory process again, but tends to potentially affect anywhere within the gastrointestinal tract, from the mouth, mucous membranes, right through to the anus, and it can lead to patchy spots of inflammation. Both conditions are very debilitating. Both conditions tend to occur in younger people, and they often will be stuck with these conditions for life, needing a range of immune-modifying medications, even steroids, and with that, hospital admission. So these are conditions that really do have significant morbidity attached to them. Anyway, I chanced upon an article which looked at sugar consumption and the link to inflammatory bowel disease. Now, a group of researchers looked at over 120,000 UK biobank subjects between 2006 and 2010. The average age was about 55. And they, through survey, invited these participants to rate their sugar content based on sweet beverages daily. Well, the first observation they made was that increased sugar was associated with increased weight, and I think we're all pretty familiar with that anyway. Then they looked a bit deeper and tried to understand if the rate of increased consumption of sugar was associated with an increased likelihood of developing. Crohn's disease, sorry, inflammatory bowel disease, inflammatory bowel disease. And when they looked at the association between sugar and inflammatory bowel disease, they found, interestingly, a split. It turned out that there was no significant increase in the likelihood of developing ulcerative colitis. So the impact of sugary beverages over and above the average population didn't increase ulcerative colitis, the inflammation and ulceration of the colon. However, increased sweet beverages doubled the chance of people developing Crohn's disease. So this is significant. It increased by 100% the number of cases recorded. Well, there are some limitations to this study because the average Age was 56 and often inflammatory bowel diseases seen in younger patients. Still a very important finding and a really nice reminder that throwing sugar into our daily mix probably doesn't offer any upside in terms of the way our body functions and works. The researchers speculated that the reason sugar possibly had an impact was that it altered gut microbiome. And by altering gut microbiome, therefore altered the way the gut, the lining, and the permeability of the gut was affected. So this is really important. And gut microbiome, although we hear it talked about a lot, we don't fully understand it. But I think we're becoming more and more aware that if you don't look after your gut microbiome, you can certainly run into problems, and the most significant problems are related to the sort of loss of integrity of the intestinal wall and therefore movement of compounds across the intestine, in particular inflammatory particles. So, sugar, not artificial sweetener, and not... Fruit juice, sugar, fructose, just straight sugar, had a direct link to increasing Crohn's disease, probably through the microbiome. This particular research doesn't give us the whole story because it doesn't look at younger patients, but I think it's a really salient reminder of how we need to think about what could impact our microbiome. detrimental effect of sugar, and wherever you can, you should be cutting it out. And remember to try and look after your gut microbiome with fiber, soluble and insoluble, a good range of healthy foods. Remember, greens are great. Remember, fermented foods are also supportive of the gut microbiome. And if you can combine all that, with a healthy Mediterranean diet and good lifestyle, then you're doing the best you can. Well, that was it. I was interested in letting you know another way that sugar can be a problem for health. Something for you to think about. I hope you found it informative and interesting. If you've got any queries or questions, please drop us a note at info at drWarrickbishop.online. Again, thank you so much for listening. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and give me a positive rating. If you don't like the podcast, please don't offer a rating. For now, till next time, I wish you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care. Did you know that coronary artery disease kills one in four people? So most of us are likely to carry some risk or know someone who does. If you're interested in finding out more about how to evaluate that risk, check out www.virtualheartcheck.com.au. It'll give you information about risk and what else can be done to be even more precise.
