**Podcast Episode: "EP397: Lucky Man"**
**Dr. Auric Bishop:** Welcome, my name's Dr. Auric Bishop. I'm a cardiologist, an author, and a keynote speaker. I'm CEO of the Healthy Heart Network. I'm all about trying to help people live as well as possible for as long as possible. Heart disease is huge in Australia. Every 20 minutes, someone suffers a heart attack. Most of these could probably have been avoided if only we knew what to do. This podcast is all about helping you understand blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol for better health. If you enjoy this podcast, I would be honoured for a five-star review. You can share it with your family and friends. It may well save someone you love.
**Dr. Warwick:** Hi, my name is Dr. Warwick, and welcome to my podcast and videocast station. Today I've got, well, I guess a colleague, a friend. Not quite a patient with me, but someone who's got a story to tell. This is such an important story and 100% reflects what I've been really advocating for about the last decade. So please stay tuned. This is super important. I'm speaking with Chris Henry, who's all the way on the other side of the world in Ontario, Canada. Hi, Chris. How are you?
**Chris Henry:** Well, I'm happy to say, Warwick, that I am doing very well, thank you.
**Dr. Warwick:** Chris will tell you more about that and why he's laughing in just a second. I know Chris because he runs or is part of a group that runs an information resource called Art to Aging. Art to Aging is based out of Canada, but they get information from right around the world. You can check that out. As part of the resource collection that Chris was doing, he and one of his colleagues reached out to me to be someone to speak for the resources they were putting together, podcasts, and so forth. That was at the end of last year.
As anyone who's listened to my podcasts for any length of time would know, I am deeply passionate about trying to stop people dying prematurely from heart attacks. That means that I think all of us should literally, at a certain age—men probably 45 to 50 years of age, women 55 to 60 years of age—as a rite of passage, have a scan on the heart, a calcium score. Now, during that interview with Chris back last year, I made a very strong advocacy for him to go and get a heart scan and gave him all the reasons why. What we can do is talk about what happened from there. So, happy to hear, Chris.
**Chris Henry:** Okay, thanks, Warwick. The Art to Aging, you know, we launched that on Substack a year and a half ago, really to look at what aging means from points of view, one, of course, being physical health. It struck me; I had seen some of your books online and thought you would be an interesting guest being a preventative cardiologist. In fact, that was the first question I asked you: what is a preventative cardiologist?
What came about in that interview was you making a very strong point. I remember one phrase that summed it up that you used: "imaging, imaging, imaging." You talked about this thing called calcium score. You talked about CT scans on the heart, and I thought, well, that's pretty interesting. I didn't at that point think about myself, but I did think that it was good information that you were disseminating.
After that interview, which, as I indicated, was at least a year ago, I began to think, maybe I should do that too. Maybe I'll be proactive. Now, I felt great. I thought I was in great shape. I had no sort of typical symptoms of somebody who might have heart issues. So I reached out to my GP in November 2024 and I said to him, "Steve, I want to be proactive about this. I want to determine my calcium score." He said, "Well, that's great. I really applaud that." He hooked me up with a cardiologist. I went to see that cardiologist. Now, that took a couple of months, you know, the public health care system.
**Dr. Warwick:** Before the cardiologist, Chris, if I can jump in, this is super important for those who are listening. Your age, if you don't mind me sharing, is...
**Chris Henry:** Late 60s, early 70s.
**Dr. Warwick:** 73.
**Chris Henry:** 73. I already alluded to this concept that I think there should be a rite of passage. Everyone should have a heart scan at 45 to 50 for males, 55 to 60 for females, just regardless. But the points you made are incredibly important. Firstly, there was no urgency about getting the scan, and that's preventative strategies.
I've never liked putting out the fire. So if you had a bleeding neck, you'd go straight to the doctor. The fact that I've asked you to do something preventative allowed you to just drop gear and idle, and you didn't do much. We see this all the time when the reality is it's such a simple thing: you should just get it done and get it out of the way. The other thing you mentioned is that you felt well. You didn't think you were at risk. You had no reason or driver.
The bit I want people to understand about that is coronary artery disease doesn't care if you're fit or well or look after yourself. Coronary artery disease selects you for reasons that we still don't fully understand. So this is all about well people staying well, not waiting until a problem arises. So please get that if you're listening to this.
**Chris Henry:** Yeah, that's a very good point, Warwick. Very good. Well, let me just make a point, back up a bit and talk about how I felt, let's say, last November. I mean, I’d do pull-ups, I’d do chin-ups, and in the condo building I'm living in, in the winter, when it's harsh outside, I would walk up flights of stairs. You know, I'd get the heart pumping away, and I was fine. I didn't have a heart attack climbing the stairs; I didn't have a heart attack doing the chin-ups or the pull-ups, whatever.
So when I saw the cardiologist, which I think was in February of this year, 2025, he put me through a few tests in his office, thorough. Then he said, "Okay, I want to set you up for a CT scan because that'll really zero in on any issues that you may have." That was done at a nearby hospital. The CT scan, as it turned out, showed some blockages. He called me the very next day after that CT scan and said, "Well, it looks like the scanner showed up some blockages."
I said, "Really?" He said, "I have to say that not every time is a CT scan accurate. Perhaps 40% of the time, there is some inaccuracy, kind of like a COVID test, I think." I said, "Okay, well, what do you want to do next?" He said, "I'd like to do an angiogram because that'll really nail it. That'll show if you have any blockages or not." I said, "Great, set it up. Let's do it." I was going all the way. The angiogram took about another four or five weeks to go, so that would put us, I think, in May.
I went in for the angiogram, which was at Hamilton General Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton General is part of the Hamilton Health Sciences Complex and is a highly regarded hospital, particularly for cardiac issues. So the surgical team that did the angiogram explained to me what was going to happen, how the procedure would be done, etc. It seemed to be over in no time.
So I thought, well, I'm in the clear. Obviously, they took one look and said, "This guy's golden."
**Dr. Warwick:** I'll jump in momentarily just so people understand the difference between an angiogram and a CT angiogram. So angiogram—angio means vessel, blood vessel—gram means picture, like pictogram. An angiogram just means a picture of the blood vessels. We tend to do it in two main ways in cardiology. We can use a CT scanner to get pictures or an angiogram.
When we think about doing an angiogram using a CT scanner, if we think of the artery as a particular size, then the pixels on the CT are fairly big in comparison. The CT angiogram is fantastic for telling us, yes, there's plaque there or no, there's not plaque there. And if there is plaque there, is it a little bit or a lot or something in between? It's fantastic for that.
The invasive angiogram, which is what Chris was talking about, which was a theatre-based procedure, is where they pop a little tube inside the artery. This is quite invasive. Remember, the CT is done pretty well with your clothes on and a little needle in the arm, but the invasive angiogram is a high-resolution x-ray. We pass a tube from the wrist or the leg right up to the arteries of the heart and squirt dye directly into those arteries. The resolution is extremely high, and this allows us to plan and make the best decisions for that individual based on the clearest images.
So, you had your angiogram. What happened then, Chris?
**Chris Henry:** Well, obviously, when they injected the dye, it didn't go very far. It certainly didn't circulate, you know, throughout my heart. When the procedure was done, I said, "I thought it was pretty quick." The doctor said, "Yeah, yeah, you had blockages." I went, "Oh, I was surprised. I was genuinely surprised."
He said, "In fact, you're totally blocked." I went, "What?" He said, "Yeah, you're totally blocked." I said, "Well, what about a stent?" which would have been the angioplasty version, you know, part two of an angiogram, I guess. I want to think of it that way. He said, "No, no way. There's no way."
So I said, "Well, what happens now?" He said, "Well, likely open heart surgery." Oh, so anyway, he hustled away, and then a cardiologist came along, a young guy, and he said, "So you're probably going to need a quadruple bypass." And this was a Monday morning, by the way. He said, "Unfortunately, we're booked up until Friday. So we're going to send you home."
I said, "Well, hang on a second. If I'm as blocked up as the surgeon doing the angiogram said I was, do you think it's wise to send me home?" He sort of went, "Hmm, let me go and check with my boss." Away he goes, comes back six, seven minutes later, and he says, "Okay, we can admit you today, and we can do surgery on Friday morning."
I said, "Well, okay, if I got to wait, you know, four days in the hospital, eating hospital food, so be it." Then he said, "Hang on a second. Let me check something." He hustles back a couple of minutes later and says, "Okay, we admit you today. Your surgery is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, 1 PM."
**Chris Henry:** Wow.
**Dr. Warwick:** Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I was a mighty lucky puppy, let me tell you.
So again, that's what happened. And the next day, for those listening, I'm sorry to jump in again, Chris, but this is fantastic. Look, for those listening who have not had open heart surgery or a major surgery, this is a really big deal. I've had open heart surgery for non-coronary reasons. I had an abnormal aorta.
I went off from my surgery, and even with all the experience I've had and all the knowledge I've had, it's still a very, very confronting moment. So for yourself, Chris, for anyone who goes through that process, I have incredible empathy. I know the foreboding and the fear as you come to the time of your surgery.
I'm also very aware of the discomfort, the pain, and the recovery process. We won't talk too much about that; it's a different story. But getting your operation the next day was obviously fantastic. And here you are now. Today is really about, well, you recognizing you're a lucky man, and you sent out an email describing your story through Art to Aging, and the title of that email was "I'm a lucky man."
What I really, really want people to recognize is if we can identify people at high risk, people with plaque in their arteries, we've got amazing therapies to help: our cholesterol-lowering agents, our blood-thinning agents like aspirin. We can use stents, and we can even use surgery. All those things can prevent a major event.
So even though you've had a significant surgical procedure, Chris, you haven't had a heart attack.
**Chris Henry:** No, no, this is no. And this is the whole objective. You see, we can manage coronary artery disease. We can't manage death. If you were to have had a heart attack, we know that one in six people will die there and then. One in six—that's Russian roulette. None of us in our right minds would ever play that.
The other thing is that there's a very good chance that through that episode, that heart attack, you end up with damaged heart muscle, and then your functional capacity for the rest of your life is impacted. So your journey, even though you ended up with coronary artery bypass grafting, is a shining example of how we can change a future and make an incredible difference when we've got the knowledge.
**Chris Henry:** Yeah. You know, it's funny when you use the proper term, coronary artery bypass grafting; it was what they called it in the hospital. Their nickname for that is "cabbage."
**Dr. Warwick:** Yes.
**Chris Henry:** Yeah, yeah. So when the doctor's handing me off to the nurse, he says, "Okay, so he's cabbage." Okay. And I'm going, "What does that mean?" Weird term. Artery A, B, bypass G, drafting cabbage.
**Dr. Warwick:** Look, is there anything else in terms of that preventative journey? I mean, if you've read my books, you probably know I've written a book on cardiac rehab. So I hope you've had the chance to have a read and take advantage of some of the learning in that. But sticking with your preventative journey, anything else you want to add, say, or wrap up with before we finish it up? Because this is a great story, Chris.
And the really nice thing is we know that the alternate universe with not knowing could have been a very dark one. We just don't know. But in the current universe, you'll get 10 years minimum out of your grafts, plus you're on therapy, plus you'll be supervised. I can put to you that you've gone from a position of when we first spoke of being one of the people, one of the one in four people who could have died from coronary artery disease. You're now highly, highly unlikely to die from coronary artery disease, and I just think that's why I get up and do what I do every day, actually.
**Chris Henry:** Well, you know, if I want to make one final point, it would be, you know, for anybody listening, it would be: don't assume you're okay.
**Dr. Warwick:** Yeah, 100%.
**Chris Henry:** Yeah, 100%. You can look well on the outside, but that doesn't tell you what your arteries are like. It's like a car. You would not buy a secondhand car without lifting up the bonnet and looking at the engine. It just doesn't make sense.
**Dr. Warwick:** Yeah, no, it's a great analogy. Great analogy, Warwick.
I'm going to have one last shout out. I'm going to thank you so much for hooking up with me, Chris, from the other side of the world. This blows my mind. It's wonderful to be communicating with people on the other side of the world and sharing. So I really do appreciate you making the effort to speak with us today.
**Chris Henry:** Well, my pleasure.
**Dr. Warwick:** I'm going to shout out to anyone listening who has not had a scan or has a loved one, a family member, or a friend who they believe needs a scan. We're talking men 45 to 50 years of age, women 55 to 60 years of age and above.
In Australia, I've got a website called Virtual Heart Check, Virtual Heart Check, exactly as it's spelled. It's virtualheartcheck.com. If you want to organise yourself a heart scan the easiest way possible, jump on that website, put in some of your details, and you can choose to purchase a scan without the need to see a GP or a specialist in any major centre in Australia.
This is an Australian-first initiative, virtualheartcheck.com.au. It's the same price, but without the need to spend time seeing a GP, paying for the GP, leaving work, and then potentially being referred to a cardiologist to do the same again. It really gets the ball rolling. If you'd gone through and done a process like that, Chris, it would have put up a flag. The results would have gone to you, to your GP, and the ball would have got rolling straight away through that.
**Chris Henry:** Yeah, it's a great idea.
**Dr. Warwick:** I'm going to wrap up. Again, always very grateful for guests who spend a little bit of time and give their time to contribute. For those listening, I'm also really grateful that you're listening. I know that our time is so valuable. So if you're choosing to use your valuable time listening to my content, I don't take that for granted. So thank you for that.
I'd love you to check me out on YouTube, share these podcasts or these videocasts. I'd love you to do that. If you've got any queries or questions, drop us a note at info at drwarwickbishop.online. Until next time, I hope you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now.
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. It will give you information about risk and what else can be done to be even more precise.
