EP45: Weight And Fidgeting - Summary

**EP45: Weight And Fidgeting** Welcome to Dr. Warwick's podcast channel. Warwick is a practicing cardiologist and author with a passion for improving care by helping patients understand their heart health through education. Warwick 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, my name is Dr. Warwick Bishop, and I'd like to welcome you to my consulting room. Today, I'd like to tell you a little bit about the Australian Atherosclerosis Society meeting. There were some great speakers right across the board, but I'm going to touch on a couple of things which I thought were pretty interesting. We had one particular speaker, Dr. Clara Chow, who spoke on blood pressure and reminded me of the absolute importance of weight and blood pressure. I'm going to share this with you because I really want you to get it. One kilogram of weight loss equates to about one millimeter of mercury reduction in blood pressure. So, if you lost 10 kilograms in weight, your systolic blood pressure would come down about 10 points. This is pretty good. The significance of that is this: If you can lose 5 to 10 kilograms, that's just about as good as any blood pressure tablet we've got. How helpful is that? It gets better. If you can lose 10 kilograms of weight, assuming you're obese to start with or overweight to start with, if you're overweight and you lose 10 kilograms of weight, you will give yourself a 20% to 25% relative risk reduction of cardiovascular events into the future. How good is that? So, great reminder: don't let the weight creep up too far. If it does, work to get it back down; it is a really important part of the equation for good health. The other presentation that I really want to touch on because it was really interesting was one about exercise. That was given by a researcher called Dr. Bronwyn Kingswell from the, I think she was from the Baker Institute in Melbourne. Her presentation was fascinating because she really looked at the role of exercise, and there's no question that at different weights, different levels of exercise are really beneficial. So, we know exercise is a good thing, but one of the things that really became clear was that for people who are carrying too much weight or are relatively unfit, long periods of sitting are closely linked with worse outcomes. So, there's a real importance to be aware of being sedentary for prolonged periods of time. The recommendation is every 15, 20, or 30 minutes, get up and move around because it makes a huge difference. That prolonged sitting seems to change the way you metabolize and seems to change your cardiovascular risk. Really interesting as well is if you sit and fidget, you probably get some benefit from that. Although just tapping your feet or bouncing your leg may not seem like much, it does require some energy. Interestingly, it probably burns some energy and changes metabolism. So, in summary, please keep your weight down. One kilogram is one millimeter mercury reduction in your blood pressure. Five to 10 kilograms weight loss is like a tablet. A 10-kilogram weight loss for someone who's obese is a 20 to 25% relative risk reduction in cardiovascular events. When it comes to exercise, don't sit for too long. Get up, move around, and maybe from time to time even have a fidget. Perhaps while you're sitting watching the TV, you could bounce your legs, and you could even call it a little bit of exercise. Well, I hope you found that interesting. Until next time, I wish you the very best, and thank you for joining me. Goodbye. You have been listening to another podcast from Dr. Warwick. Visit his website at drwarwickbishop.com for the latest news on heart disease. If you love this podcast, feel free to leave us a review.