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 Warrick 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 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 in it health literacy. I'm on a mission to help not just prevent heart attack, 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. video cast station i really am grateful that you've taken the time to tune in and have a listen today i've got what i think is quite an interesting one as we get older we're all wondering what we can do to hack just a little bit more out of life and one of the most important things is how we look after our brain because really no point getting toward that final destination and not being cognitive and cognizant about what's going on. So things like memory, executive function, cognition are all very important. Well, there's plenty of people around examining and studying this at the moment. And fairly recently, there was a trial which released some data. The trial was called the COSMOS study, and it was a... A study really looking at aging and aging brains. This COSMOS study had a subsection or a sub-study within it called COSMOS Mind. And interestingly, the researchers were asking the question, could vitamins or cocoa... C-O-C-O-A, and I'm spelling that for a reason. Could vitamins or cocoa be beneficial for the aging brain? Well, they looked at over 2,000 participants, about 2,200 in fact. They were aged 65 years or more, and they were followed for three years with baseline testing and ongoing serial cognitive evaluation. Well, why would they have evaluated vitamins and cocoa? Well, there is good evidence, certainly theoretical, that there's compounds within cocoa, which is obviously one of the base products of chocolate, which can impact brain function. And so they were expecting that they may have seen either an improvement. or a stabilisation in brain function by using cocoa, they compared that with a multivitamin mineral. And the researchers actually thought that the cocoa was probably going to be the positive arm of the trial. Well, they randomised individuals to vitamin mineral supplement, a simple one, versus placebo. and randomize people to cocoa versus placebo. After those three years of evaluation, it turned out that the vitamin mineral supplement actually offered some benefit and the cocoa did not. So there's an interesting one for you. Now, the researchers haven't jumped on a bandwagon and said, look, everyone should be taking a multivitamin or multivitamin. mineral, a multivitamin and mineral supplement but they did say that in this older population with other comorbidities and that could be diabetes or renal impairment or cardiovascular disease there may well be from time to time situations where people just don't have the vitamins or minerals that they should be either through diet or some other reason. perhaps even through the chronic health, and for that reason, the simple multivitamin mineral supplement may well have been beneficial. Well, what about the old cocoa, and where does our hot chocolate fit in? Well, certainly, one of the interesting things that I think is... really warrants consideration from this study is the difference between cacao and cacao. Now cacao, spelled C-A-C-A-O, is the more raw or less refined product of the cacao bean, which is the base product for the production of chocolate as you're probably aware now if we look at cacao and cacao cacao is a cold temperature fermented ground up product of the cacao bean cacao is a heat treated fermented product now that heat treating in fact does change some of the chemical compounds involved so one could quite reasonably make the argument that if you thought chocolate or at least some of the compounds from chocolate could be beneficial for cognitive function in the longer term then we probably should have compared multivitamins and minerals with cacao c-a-c-a-o the less refined more if you like raw product which would have had more active ingredients in it. My own journey, interestingly, is that I recently bought myself some ceremonial cacao, C-A-C-A-O, from the Cacao Collective, which is an Australian-based company sourcing their cacao from Peru ethically. trying cacao for the very reason that there are these psychoactive compounds in there, which really do help with, supposedly help with stress, calm and good feelings. So vitamins or cocoa, or should it have been vitamins slash minerals versus cocoa versus cacao? Well, I don't know the answer, and we're probably not going to know for some time, but it certainly seems reasonable to think about a multivitamin mineral as you're aging, although the authors didn't suggest that. It doesn't seem unreasonable. I found out myself that I was chromium deficient through a simple blood test. So there you go. Could cacao be more beneficial? Well possibly. I'm certainly enjoying a cup of cacao four or five days a week and certainly find it enjoyable and not sure if it's had any cognitive benefit. One of the things that struck me also is very interesting with this particular analysis is it's trying to isolate single interventions and often humans don't act in single ways. We have lots of things going on and I'd put to you that one of the things that I think is unanswered through this particular work is the role of fish oil. And I know that many people take fish oil and the statistics would tell us that fish oil is probably the single most consumed supplement within Australia. So vitamin minerals. versus cacao, versus cacao, and what's the role of fish, let alone the benefit of regular exercise, particularly aerobic, potentially combined with static or weights, and add in there a bit of meditation. Well, I'd put to you that you want to be putting all possible interventions in your favour. And enjoy a healthy aging journey. I hope you found that interesting. If you are interested in cacao, go and look it up. Enjoy your hot chocolate. Think about your multivitamins. And I'm not sure where fish all fits in, but I think on previous podcasts, you will have noticed I've given it a bit of a wrap. It covers a couple of really positive areas of health. And this sort of information, taking single interventions and making a headline, I think misses some of the greater importance of a holistic approach. Anyway, plenty to think about. I'm going to wish you the very best. If you've got any queries or questions, drop us a note at info.Warrickbishop.online. For now, I'm going to wish you the very best. 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.
