**EP254: How Can You Save a Life?**
**Dr. Warwick Bishop:** I believe we can prevent heart attacks. We can put in place strategies to reduce risk. We can literally plan to change your future. Welcome, my name is Dr. Warwick Bishop, and I'm a cardiologist, an author, a keynote speaker, and CEO of the Healthy Heart Network. I'm all about trying to help people live as well as possible for as long as possible, and that includes heart attacks, which impact Australia enormously. We're talking about a heart attack almost every 10 minutes and over 20 people per day dying from a heart attack in Australia. That's on a backdrop of over 9 million people globally being impacted. The sad truth is many of these could have been averted if only we knew what to do. Well, this podcast is all about that: weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, general health, and driving health literacy. I'm on a mission to help not just prevent heart attacks, but improve general health on a global scale.
If you enjoy this podcast, I would be honoured if you could give it a five-star review and share it with your family and friends. It may even lead to saving someone you love. Thank you for tuning in.
Look, today I'd like to have a quick word about what you can do to make a difference for cardiovascular disease. It's all good and well for me to be producing podcasts, websites, and videos, and educating people, but really there needs to be some momentum, some groundswell, some movement, and a call to action.
My own journey began when I realized that we can do better to prevent heart attacks. We can truly have a heads-up, an opportunity to look at people while they're well and evaluate their risk of a heart attack in the future. This is in people who can look perfectly fit and well as they stand in front of you. So, my experience was that of telling a fun runner years ago that he would be fine, only to be involved in his roadside resuscitation when he had a heart attack some 18 months later.
Well, my journey has been about trying to raise awareness, and one of the things I've been able to do is put together a website that allows people to be proactive about their own heart health. The website is virtualheartcheck.com.au.
Well, what is it? What I've realized is that we are complacent about cardiovascular risk. We seem to wait for something to happen before we do anything about it. We wouldn't treat our cars that way. We take our car and we get it serviced. We don't treat breast cancer that way. We are very comfortable with women having screening for breast cancer. We receive in the mail at 50 years of age a test kit for bowel cancer. We are proactive about that.
Well, where is the problem with us being proactive about cardiovascular disease? I don't know either. However, while there is that reluctance to be proactive, while there is that lack of awareness, I'm trying hard to motivate, encourage, educate, and move people towards their best healthcare. And I really think it's time for me to reach out and ask you to help as well.
The virtualheartcheck.com.au is the first site of its kind that we're aware of, not only in Australia but in the world. It allows individuals to literally jump online, get an evaluation of their cardiovascular risk, and if appropriate, there and then book a scan at a local x-ray provider in any of the major centres in Australia. That whole process can be booked and paid for from home. It doesn't require a visit to the GP. It doesn't require a visit to the specialist. An individual can go through the process very simply, qualify or get the information that defines they're appropriate for scanning, and then book and pay for a scan all under $300 at any major centre in Australia.
Now, I've put that together with my business partner, John. We've had that running now for a number of months. We are starting to get some traction and use of this, but in no way are people recognizing the utility or taking advantage and really getting checked out as they should be.
Please, with all the information you will have learned by now, understand how important it is to be an advocate for heart health and how imaging the arteries can be a critical step in being ahead of the game and making sure we know exactly what to do for individuals before a problem arises.
So please, I'm going to ask if I can deputize you to go forward and share the virtualheartcheck.com.au website with people you know, love, or even just friends. Have a chat with people from work, people from your sporting institute. This is an opportunity for us to not be surprised by heart attacks, and it's a way to save a life.
So why don't you find out what it's like to know the joy of having an impact in a positive way on someone's health and well-being? Share virtualheartcheck.com.au with someone and continue that conversation. Raise your awareness about heart attack prevention.
Well, of course, I'm going to wish you the very best. I do hope you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now.
