**EP400: What A Journey!**
**Dr. Auric Bishop:** Welcome, my name's Dr. Auric Bishop. I'm a cardiologist, an author, and a keynote speaker. I'm the 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, 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 Bishop:** Oh, g'day and welcome to my podcast and videocast station. It's Warwick here, Dr. Warwick. And if you're tuning in, I appreciate your time. Always do. I really hope I can give you something that you find valuable, informative, interesting, and helpful for your best health journey. If you're listening to me on podcast, thank you so much. I want to let you know that I'm simultaneously recording this. So if you do want to catch it on YouTube, you'll be able to. I will be referencing a couple of things I'm going to share for those who are watching.
I'm going to share my screen because this podcast is a bit of a special one. It's my 400th episode, which is quite staggering. To be honest, I'm not really even sure myself if I can believe that I've done so many over such a period of time. I did, out of curiosity, go and have a bit of a look and see how many other series there are out there of 400 podcasts or more in the health space. Turns out there's quite a few podcasts that don't even get to double figures. There's fairly few that get past double figures. There's not many that get beyond 200. And ChatGPT had a bit of a conniption trying to tell me how many had gone over 400.
Either I'm incredibly persistent, or the feedback that people have given me has been enough to keep me going. Either way, this is number 400. I want to just cover some of the bits and pieces that have been central to what it's been all about. First of all, I'd like to say a genuine thank you. If you are listening, I have been surprised and grateful. Yeah, often taken aback by feedback regarding the podcasts from people who I don't even realise are listening to them. I know there's a good number of my patients who will listen and offer feedback, but I've also come across other people who have been in contact through the Healthy Heart Network.
Recently, for example, I did a podcast on the personal pulsed electromagnetic field therapy device called a vibe, and we have people from right around Australia contacting me to explore how to buy, which just blew me away. So first of all, thank you so much for those who listen. I really, really do appreciate it. I have to say, sitting in a room talking into a microphone, you can't help but wonder whether people are finding what you're talking about interesting or not.
Well, it all started, well, you can figure it out, 50 episodes a year. It must have started nearly eight years ago. I had a bee in my bonnet about heart attack prevention because I had found cardiac CT imaging. Now, I can't be so self-indulgent to say that I actually found it, but I learned about it and realized this was a tool that could really save lives. So I wrote a book and I wanted people to know about coronary artery calcium scoring and CT coronary angiography. But that was, you know, eight years ago. We're still here. The really nice thing is people are more aware of coronary artery calcium scoring, and CT coronary angiography is being used broadly. So to a large degree, some of the hope I'd seen for the future has started to come to fruition.
I talked about cholesterol and blood pressure, some of those heart-related basics. I really wanted everyday people to have the practical advice to reduce their risk of having a heart attack. And so that's where it all started. I talked about bits and pieces that interested me. I have to say, I think I may have a touch of attention deficit problems because I do like learning new stuff, and so I couldn't continue to do a podcast on the same topics over and over and started to explore other things.
I've done a podcast on A1 versus A2 milk because I thought that was interesting. I've done one on astronauts, if you want to look that up. I've talked about grain-fed versus grass-fed beef. Check that out if you haven't had a listen. I've talked about saturated fats, eggs. I even did a video for the egg board. It's called, don't tell me, it's called something like "Unscrambling Eggs with Dr. Warwick Bishop." Cholesterol on eggs or cholesterol on unscrambling eggs. Look it up on YouTube if you're curious. Talking about how eating eggs doesn't necessarily change your cholesterol.
I've talked about sugar, ultra-processed food. I've talked about intermittent fasting. I've talked about it all. And well, I still do. In recent times, we've covered air pollution and cardiovascular risk. I did that with Fiona Fu. I've talked about sleep quality, stress, overtraining, cold exposure, heat exposure, interesting stuff like that. I talked about blood pressure a lot because it's a really big deal. And if you are listening and you haven't had your blood pressure checked, please go and get it done. Walking is really good. Exercise. We've touched on all of that. Some of the foundational cardiology stuff. There's lots of information I've covered on coronary calcium scores. Check my books out if you want more.
I've talked about lipids because that's a passion. If you manage your lipids, you can manage heart disease. I've talked about LDL cholesterol, ApoB ratios, LP little a. I've spoken with my good friend, Associate Professor Dr. Karam Kostner about all those things. That's who I'm writing my current book with. I've talked about the medications that control cholesterol: statins, ezetimibe, PCSK9 inhibitors, and more. I've tried to cover the myths and really where those myths fit in with where the truth is because sometimes the myths have actually been only a partial truth.
I've talked about atrial fibrillation and wrote a book, "Atrial Fibrillation Explained." I've talked about heart failure over and over, and I wrote a book about heart failure. Check that out if you're interested. Then I've started to go a little bit beyond hearts. I've started to talk about things like the gut microbiome and how that is associated with inflammation, even with mood, metabolic health, and how that gut microbiome can even impact blood pressure. I touched on mental well-being and cognition. I've had a number of times where I've spoken with James Buckley, particularly around that with meditation and breathing, so really valuable stuff for that holistic health journey.
I've talked with Perry Eckert, who's the master franchisor of OsteoStrong Australia because I'm a franchise holder. We've talked about bone strength and some of the beautiful regenerative technologies associated with a good bone and muscular health journey that you can find through an OsteoStrong centre. I've been talking about VO2 max, strength, longevity. I've been talking about post-electromagnetic field therapy and red light therapy and touching on all the wonderful longevity science we're hoping to incorporate upstairs from our OsteoStrong Centre in Hobart. We're working with that, Shell, my wife, with James and Moon Moon, our wonderful friends. We're super excited about that. We'll tell you more as it progresses.
I've been incredibly lucky because I've also had some fantastic people I've been able to speak to on these podcasts. Pretty recently, Dr. Fiona Fu, a cardiologist in Sydney, Annika Smith, who's a consultant dermatologist in Sydney, we talked about psoriasis. Fiona has been fantastic to speak with about women's related heart issues. If you've missed those, go back and listen. She is an absolute font of knowledge and really passionate about making a difference for women's cardiovascular health.
I've had the chance to talk with Mark Fox, who is, well, he used to be a rocket scientist. He's the founder and creator of Rezona Health, and they make a personal pulsed electromagnetic field therapy device. Fascinating. We have had people here in Hobart take these devices and have incredible change in terms of their well-being, their sleep, their inflammation, their POTS syndrome. So many aspects that completely surprised me. After the most recent Mark Fox podcast, which was about reducing rates of atrial fibrillation, we've had people reach out, as I said, from right around Australia, exploring how we can help them purchase one of those devices. And we can, which is great.
I've spoken with Adam Weir, who's the CEO of Surf Life Saving Australia. What a privilege. I've spoken with Greg Page, the original Yellow Wiggle, who not only we know through being the original Yellow Wiggle, but he had a cardiac event and that sent him on a path to establish Hearts of the Nation, where he is getting defibrillators out into the community broadly. On the same page, Guy Leach established Heart 180. If you don't remember who Guy Leach was, surf lifesaver, Ironman, great athlete, but also someone impacted by his best friend, Charlie, having an event. Guy went out and established Heart 180, bringing automated defibrillators into Australia and really driving the uptake through the community.
I also had the chance to interview Darren Lehmann, who you might have heard nicknamed "Boof." I never called him Boof; I called him Darren Lehmann. I wasn't invited to call him Boof, but that was his nickname apparently in cricket circles. He was a player and coach for the Australian cricket team. He had his own heart health journey and has been helping with the Heart Foundation, advocating for people to look after themselves, be heart conscious, heart aware. Really, he's made some fantastic changes in his own life.
So if you're listening to this as a podcast, then this next slide may not make sense, but let me talk you through it. If you're watching it, it'll make perfect sense. If you want to find an episode, I don't have them indexed. For various reasons, when we set it up, we didn't have an indexing feature. But if you jump online and go to my website, then you'll see in the bottom right-hand corner of my website, a little icon. It says, "Need help?" and it's got a picture of me in the middle. That's my AI. That's my AI helper. That little AI helper, if you click on it, you get basically a short menu that says, "Hi, how can I help?"
If you put in there something like I did just as a test for those who can see this on screen, I put in there, "Tell me about pulsed electromagnetic field therapy." It came up with episode 368 and 369. So then you can go to those and have a listen if that's what you want to find. If you want to put in something else, A1 and A2 milk, whatever it might be, go to that little AI bot in the bottom right-hand corner of my webpage and put in what you're after.
I've been incredibly grateful that I have started to have small inroads and started to make some impact with the objectives I've had. I had the chance to do the St. Luke's Health Coronary Calcium Pilot. Unbelievable opportunity, incredibly blessed to have had that chance to work with St. Luke's Health. We've still got that door open. I've released those results recently. If you're interested, please have a look. Essentially, we took 100 people, we scanned them, and 30% of those people were going to benefit from the introduction of a cholesterol-lowering agent and aspirin.
Out of 130, we really got down to how many scans to save a life. And it's one, sorry, three scans to implement therapy. I think it was down to something like 12 and a half scans to save one life in the next decade. Pretty amazing sort of information. Check it out. My virtual heart check, the webpage I created to allow people to grab a calcium score without the need to see a GP or specialist in any major centre in Australia, is working. It's out there. We've had wonderful stories from listeners. In fact, I've got a podcast that's already been released called "Lucky Man." I won't tell you the long and the short of it, but it's basically someone in Canada who I spoke to advocated for a cardiac CT scan, a calcium score, who contacted me just a couple of months ago to let me know. He's had a quadruple bypass and he wanted to thank me for my encouragement and advocacy for him to get checked out.
I've spent plenty of time debunking myths where I can because one of my objectives has always been to give people just good information, not snippets that people tend to get from the internet. Just so that people can make the best decisions. Because if you've got good information, you can make good decisions. So things like, "I exercise, so I'm safe." That's just not true. "HDL is protective. My HDL is up there, therefore I should be fine." Unfortunately, that's not true either. "Oh, statins can damage your brain and wreck your memory." Well, I'm afraid there really isn't clear data around that. And "diet alone will fix high LDL cholesterol." Well, diet can help, and it's a very important component, but on its own, it's not enough.
Not only have I touched on all those myths through the podcast, but for those interested, we're addressing all of that in the next book, "Cholesterol Explained," which I'm super excited about. This is a great moment to let you know that I'm pivoting as well. The Healthy Heart Network is going to be gradually retired, and we're moving to the Healthy Life Network, partly speaking to my attention deficit disorder, or apparent attention deficit disorder, partly speaking to the fact that my own health journey, I'm really looking to things broader than just heart for my own best health.
As I learn about what I can do for myself, I want to share that with the people listening. So we're going from the Healthy Heart Network to the Healthy Life Network. Please follow us because we're picking up more and more stuff. We're going to be talking about metabolism, bones, VO2 max, recovery, meditation, supplements, IV therapies, vitamins and minerals, NAD+, everything. Stay tuned because we are really looking at the stuff from a selfish perspective for me that will help me live as well as possible. If I can find stuff that I can implement, I want to share that with you.
A quick update, the closed roll book is so, so close to being finished. I know you've probably heard me say that a couple of times now, but it's a bit like trying to finish a house or a big project. Every time you think you get close, you find a bit more and you work through it a bit more. We've just had someone offer some more edits last night, so we've got to do a little bit more, but it's really, really getting there. I'm looking forward to actually putting together a cholesterol challenge or maybe a 10 or 14-day cholesterol educational program for Guy Leach's Younger Longer platform. Super excited about that. I will tell you more about it. That looks like a great opportunity, but I'll be doing some cholesterol stuff there as well.
I'm going to start doing more calls to action on these podcasts because I've really been very slack at it from the get-go. So what I will ask you to do, if you've got this far, then I haven't lost you, so please promise me that you'll follow and subscribe. I'd be really grateful. Do me a favor: just find one person. It can be a kid in the neighborhood, it can be your loved one, it can be a sibling, it can be a friend. I don't mind. Just find one person to share the podcast with and ask them to follow and subscribe as well. I'd be super grateful, and it really means a lot because I've done this now for eight years, and I really want to see the uptake, and I want to see people using the information to their advantage.
My YouTube channel is so close to being able to monetize. It'll be nickels and dimes; it'll be nothing, but it'll be a great milestone. I'd be super excited to be able to say that my YouTube content is being recognized with some advertising. That'd be super cool. So if you actually do want to go back and look at some of the previous podcasts, like, well, the Greg Page one or the Guy Leach one or the Darren Lehmann one, they're actually Zoom calls, and you can see them. So if you're interested, go back and have a look. If you're a bit bored listening to me at normal speed, just listen to me at 1.5. It puts the pitch of my voice up a little bit, but still the same content.
Also, really importantly, if you're a bloke aged 45 to 50, or a female aged 55 to 60, please think about a coronary artery calcium score. Talk to your GP by all means, or if you would like, use my website, which is www.virtualheartcheck.com.au. At Virtual Heart Check, you put in some of your details, you get some information back, a bit of education about where you sit, but then you get to choose to select to purchase a scan. That works in any major centre in Australia. I've got GPs here in Hobart who actually send their patients to that website so that the patient gets some explanation and understanding of what it's all about because the cost is essentially the same as if you went to go and get the scan. You just don't need to see the GP to do it, and we provide the referrals and all that stuff. It's fantastic. Please feel free to use it.
Well, that's the conclusion of my 400th episode podcast. I'm going to wrap up as I usually do. If you've got any queries or questions, drop us a note at info@drwarwickbishop.online. Importantly, I really do appreciate your time. Thank you for listening this long. It does really mean a lot to me that you give me your time because I know how valuable it is. So thank you. What I would like to do is wish you the very best, and I do hope till next time, and I hope you listen to another podcast. Till next time, you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now.
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