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 there, hearties. Angela here from Healthy Hearties. I'm here again with Dr. Warrick Bishop, who's kindly given up his time. He is a cardiologist all the way from Australia, so my home country. So he is from Tasmania. He's a very busy man, writing lots of books and recording podcasts, as well as a very busy practice as well. So thank you for giving up your time today. It's a pleasure, Angela. Thank you for inviting me. So today we are talking all about diet. Now this is a little bit of a big topic so I won't keep you for too long but what we wanted to talk about today is just some of your key tips in terms of diet do's and don'ts and what would you tell your patients? Well look obviously patients are constantly asking you know what should I do and I think it's really important that patients understand that they have some ownership and contribute what they can to their best healthcare. And I often say to patients, we build the car for your journey. We put in the stand till we give you the medications that at the end of the day, you drive it and drive, you know, that that's the bit that requires some responsibility and accountability. So it's a really important aspect. So when I'm talking to patients about diet, I say, look, the research tells us that the Mediterranean diet is the best for heart health. It's been clearly shown in primary prevention, in the PREDIMED study, and in secondary prevention with the Leon Heart Study. So there's no question that we know the Mediterranean diet seems a better, proven better than a low-fat diet. for reduced risk of heart attack. Well, what are the key elements of the Mediterranean diet that I want patients to get? I want them to eat lots of greens. So if it's green, eat it. I think broccoli, lettuce, greens are just fantastic. So particularly green vegetables. If you can get other vegetables as well, fine, but particularly greens. I'm not such a huge advocate of telling people to eat fruit because I think fruit has a lot of sugar in it. And particularly for patients who are maybe pre-diabetic or wanting to lose weight, consuming a lot of sugar through fruit may be contrary to their goals and objectives. So I don't really push a lot of fruit. Greens, number one. I'm pretty keen about engaging patients about reducing their carbohydrate consumption. carbs. And you know what carbs are for those who are listening there, anything that break down to sugar, anything that breaks down to sugar is a carbohydrate. So if you said to me, if I said to you, I don't want you eating bricks and you say, Oh, that's okay, doc. I only eat apartment blocks and houses. Well, truth is you're breaking down that apartment block or a house into its smallest component, which is a brick and you're eating bricks. Cause that's what your gut does. So if you're eating anything that breaks down to a simple sugar, you're eating a carbohydrate and you're just delaying the time that that sugar gets into your bloodstream. And the main carbs are bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereal, fruit, and I'm sorry, beer. And all the noughties. They are the noughties. Chocolate and biscuits and things, yeah. So you've got to keep your carbs down. But you can really, you can enjoy nuts, which I think are fantastic. I pour extra virgin olive oil all over the kitchen and all over my own meals. I think extra virgin olive oil is fantastic. I think we probably want to moderate the saturated fat we eat, not get carried away. I think things like garlic, legumes, avocados are fantastic. I have no issue with that. Once you've got that eating together, please exercise as well. please exercise because as Angela's probably said over and over, exercise is key to everything. And once you've had your exercise, then with your Mediterranean diet, you probably deserve a glass of wine. Red or white? Depends what you like. Oh, you're allowed the occasional white as well. We thought it was just the red. No, I think the, of course, there's the antioxidants, the fennels within the red wine, which people advocate as more beneficial. But look, at the end of the day, I think a glass of white lowers your blood pressure just a little. Everyone's very excited here. It enhances your enjoyment of your meal. It enhances your quality of life. And I think a sensible glass of wine with a well-structured eating program and good exercise, just it's the way we should be living. Absolutely. So that's exactly what I promote regularly to all the hearties, the low-carb Mediterranean-style diet, which has, yeah, it's one of the only diets that's been proven to help with lowering risk of heart disease. So absolutely. And the wine, if you tolerate it. So often with AF and things like that, people cannot tolerate any wine. So obviously, you know, work that out for yourselves. But if you do enjoy it, we're very excited to hear a cardiologist encourage us. I shouldn't correct that. I'm not telling people to go and start drinking it. But if a glass of wine is something you enjoy with a meal, I don't think you should. Fabulous. And any final sort of top tip of all of that? If they could just do one thing of all of that, is there anything they should work on first? I think one thing they could do, and we spoke about this before, is I've actually put together a podcast just recently on the 10 commandments for good heart health. And that podcast will be available free, probably be queued up in the next couple of months, but free through the Healthy Heart Network free membership, which I understand you've got a link below. And I've extended the invitation for your hearties to join up. So they may wish to... Oh, fabulous. That sounds absolutely fantastic because then you can think in your head of the 10 commandments, how many am I hitting? And that sounds super exciting. So yeah, so do let us know when that's released as well. And I'll pop an extra reminder for people when that's released. But I'll pop a link to your website where you've got tons of information. It looks absolutely fantastic. And it's all geared up for patients. So it's easy to understand. I've taken a look. some really interesting topics that do come up again and again for us. So thank you for sharing that with us. It's a pleasure, Angela. Absolute pleasure. Well, it looks like it's just turned night there. So have a fabulous evening. And thank you once again for your time. And we'll speak again soon. Thank you. 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.
