14-Day Blood Pressure Challenge

Welcome to the Younger Longer 14-Day Blood Pressure Challenge. My name is Dr. Warrick Bishop. I'm a preventative cardiologist and I'm super excited that you're looking to look after your blood pressure. It is one of the most important and really one of the simplest things you can look after to look after your heart for the rest of your life.

During this 14-Day Challenge I'm going to share with you a whole lot of stuff. Every day, a video, some resources, a challenge or a task for you to complete and a fun fact. Stay tuned, your blood pressure is super important. Let me explain to you how, what you're going to do about it and how you're going to look after yourself for the years ahead 

Transcript

Hi, Dr Warrick here and welcome to day four. Now we're going to talk about measuring blood pressure and how we get around to doing that and why getting it right can make all the difference. 

Well, here's something that might surprise you. Up to 30% of people diagnosed with high blood pressure in the clinic don't actually have it. We call that white coat hypertension where the presence of a doctor or the anxiety of being in a clinic setting itself temporarily elevates blood pressure during that visit. These people will have basically normal readings outside of that clinic. So, we really need to be able to measure these people in a way that allows us to figure that out. 

On the flip side, of course, we find people who have masked hypertension where their clinic readings look okay, but they're often a little bit too high and maybe don't fluctuate overnight or reduce at other times. And therefore, they may be actually running a greater burden than we may have guessed from a clinic measurement. 

Well, that's where 24-hour blood pressure monitoring comes in. These small portable devices, they basically are a blood pressure cuff that you carry around and they go off every 30 minutes during the day and then every hour overnight. By getting multiple data points, we just get a much better picture of what's going on. Most people's blood pressure goes up and down. 

It is quite erratic, not dissimilar to watching the share market during a Trump presidency. But how do you really figure out what's going on with the individual? Well, you track them over time. More data, better information, better decisions. 

So, nighttime blood pressure is actually a better predictor of future heart attack and stroke than daytime readings. So, seeing a nighttime dip, which is what we normally expect with people, that blood pressure sinks overnight to let the body rest is really valuable. 

It's also incredibly useful when someone's blood pressure readings fluctuate a lot. And I get patients who come in from time to time with their home measurements and they're all over the place. 

But a 24-hour monitor gives us a beautiful set of data that we can often put on a graph and gives us really good insights into what's going on over time so we can start to make best decisions. 24-hour blood pressure monitoring is available in Australia with a Medicare rebate once a year. If you're in any doubt whatsoever, please talk to your doctor about it. 

Tomorrow we're talking about food. I look forward to catching up then. Until then, I hope you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now.

Are You at Risk of a Sudden Heart Attack? How Healthy is Your Heart? Really?

Heart disease is the #1 killer in the Western World. In Australia, someone dies every 28 minutes from heart disease. That’s 51 people a day. In the US, someone has a heart attack every 40 SECONDS! Fortunately, many heart attacks are preventable. However, regular exercise and eating healthy are no guarantee you won’t succumb to this silent killer.

Do the free heart check today at www.virtualheartcheck.com.au

Join the Healthy Heart Network and become part of our growing community!

Do You Want to Improve Your Heart’s Health and Reduce Your Risk of Suffering a Heart Attack? Join The Healthy Heart Network For Only $5 Lifetime Access (Valued at over $55)!

The Healthy Heart Network is designed to help members:

Visit https://healthyheartnetwork.com/ and click on the JOIN THE FAMILY BUTTON

Welcome to the Younger Longer 14-Day Blood Pressure Challenge. My name is Dr. Warrick Bishop. I'm a preventative cardiologist and I'm super excited that you're looking to look after your blood pressure. It is one of the most important and really one of the simplest things you can look after to look after your heart for the rest of your life.

During this 14-Day Challenge I'm going to share with you a whole lot of stuff. Every day, a video, some resources, a challenge or a task for you to complete and a fun fact. Stay tuned, your blood pressure is super important. Let me explain to you how, what you're going to do about it and how you're going to look after yourself for the years ahead 

Transcript

Hi, Dr. Warrick here and welcome to day three and we're talking about one of my bug bears which is small increments in blood pressure management can have a huge bearing. Why? Because blood pressure is a direct reflection of how hard your heart is working. Every beat, all day, every day. 

Here's something you may not have thought about. Your heart beats a hundred thousand times a day, seven hundred thousand times a week, nearly three million times a month and 35 million times in a year. Now imagine that with every beat your heart is pushing against more pressure than it needs to, more resistance than it needs to, more effort to get blood where it needs to go. That extra strain doesn't get your heart fitter, it doesn't go away, it accumulates and leads to wear and tear. 

Over time it takes a serious toll on your heart and blood vessels. Look even a modest elevation in blood pressure, say 10 millimeters of mercury higher than it needs to be and we're talking someone whose blood pressure is say 130 when ideally it'd be 120 or less. That might not sound like much and you might have a doctor who says oh look let's just watch it but if you multiply that extra 10 millimeters of mercury over tens of millions of heartbeats, it's profound. 

So we know that lowering systolic blood pressure by as little as 10 millimeters of mercury can reduce the risk of heart attack by as much as 25%, stroke by as much as 40%. That's no small benefit. So I really, really want you to get near enough isn't good enough and someone watching your blood pressure being borderline high is someone not doing you an appropriate service. The really good thing is that blood pressure does respond to intervention things like diet, exercise and really importantly our blood pressure tablets really do work. 

So when we talk about lowering blood pressure we're really talking about reducing the work that your heart's doing and we're talking about reducing the wear and tear on your heart and the blood vessels. Do get that work and that load and that wear and tear down as low as possible. Until next time I look forward to catching up. I hope you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now.

Are You at Risk of a Sudden Heart Attack? How Healthy is Your Heart? Really?

Heart disease is the #1 killer in the Western World. In Australia, someone dies every 28 minutes from heart disease. That’s 51 people a day. In the US, someone has a heart attack every 40 SECONDS! Fortunately, many heart attacks are preventable. However, regular exercise and eating healthy are no guarantee you won’t succumb to this silent killer.

Do the free heart check today at www.virtualheartcheck.com.au

Join the Healthy Heart Network and become part of our growing community!

Do You Want to Improve Your Heart’s Health and Reduce Your Risk of Suffering a Heart Attack? Join The Healthy Heart Network For Only $5 Lifetime Access (Valued at over $55)!

The Healthy Heart Network is designed to help members:

Visit https://healthyheartnetwork.com/ and click on the JOIN THE FAMILY BUTTON

Welcome to the Younger Longer 14-Day Blood Pressure Challenge. My name is Dr. Warrick Bishop. I'm a preventative cardiologist and I'm super excited that you're looking to look after your blood pressure. It is one of the most important and really one of the simplest things you can look after to look after your heart for the rest of your life.

During this 14-Day Challenge I'm going to share with you a whole lot of stuff. Every day, a video, some resources, a challenge or a task for you to complete and a fun fact. Stay tuned, your blood pressure is super important. Let me explain to you how, what you're going to do about it and how you're going to look after yourself for the years ahead 

Transcript

Hi and welcome to day two. It's Dr. Warrick here and we're talking blood pressure. We're talking about something you can't see and you can't feel. It's really important and if it's too high it can be silently harming your body every day. 

So we're talking about raised chronic high blood pressure and the damage it can do. Not just to your heart or your heart arteries but actually your entire body. You probably didn't realize it but if you lined up all the blood vessels in your body they'd stretch over 100,000 kilometres enough to circle the earth twice which is a pretty cool fact. The important thing though if your blood pressure is too high you can have consequences to all of that 100,000 kilometre system. So let's break it down. When your blood pressure is consistently elevated of course it puts strain on your heart. 

That can thicken the heart muscle and make it stiff and a thick stiff heart is no good. That can lead to cardiac failure. Particularly in the later years of life. That raised blood pressure can also affect your kidneys which are full of delicate blood vessels. High blood pressure narrows and weakens those blood vessels and impacts the filtration that the kidneys do and can eventually lead to chronic kidney disease. In fact high blood pressure is the top cause of kidney failure worldwide. 

In the brain, high blood pressure increases the risk of stroke by impacting the large blood vessels that go into the brain leading to plaque development and making those blood vessels more prone to rupture. Unfortunately the impact of blood pressure doesn't stop there either. It can affect your eyes and your memory and it's been linked to dementia and cognitive decline of course. That's right blood pressure. 

Raised blood pressure is linked with progression of dementia. Reducing blood pressure can slow that progression. And yet people feel fine. So this is why it's so dangerous and so important. You can walk around for years with high blood pressure not even being aware. So what's the takeaway? High blood pressure is not just a number. It is the work of your heart and the wear and tear on the entire system. It can damage your organs from head to toe. Please get it checked.

And I look forward to speaking with you tomorrow about the power of small changes.

Are You at Risk of a Sudden Heart Attack? How Healthy is Your Heart? Really?

Heart disease is the #1 killer in the Western World. In Australia, someone dies every 28 minutes from heart disease. That’s 51 people a day. In the US, someone has a heart attack every 40 SECONDS! Fortunately, many heart attacks are preventable. However, regular exercise and eating healthy are no guarantee you won’t succumb to this silent killer.

Do the free heart check today at www.virtualheartcheck.com.au

Join the Healthy Heart Network and become part of our growing community!

Do You Want to Improve Your Heart’s Health and Reduce Your Risk of Suffering a Heart Attack? Join The Healthy Heart Network For Only $5 Lifetime Access (Valued at over $55)!

The Healthy Heart Network is designed to help members:

Visit https://healthyheartnetwork.com/ and click on the JOIN THE FAMILY BUTTON

Welcome to the Younger Longer 14-Day Blood Pressure Challenge. My name is Dr. Warrick Bishop. I'm a preventative cardiologist and I'm super excited that you're looking to look after your blood pressure. It is one of the most important and really one of the simplest things you can look after to look after your heart for the rest of your life.

During this 14-Day Challenge I'm going to share with you a whole lot of stuff. Every day, a video, some resources, a challenge or a task for you to complete and a fun fact. Stay tuned, your blood pressure is super important. Let me explain to you how, what you're going to do about it and how you're going to look after yourself for the years ahead 

Transcript

Hi, Dr. Warrick here, and welcome to day one of our blood pressure series. Well, we are here to unpack what you need to know to take control of your heart health, just one small step at a time. Today's message is simple, but powerful. Know your numbers, because blood pressure isn't just a number, it's a reflection of how hard your heart has to work beat to beat to keep you alive. Blood pressure is the force your heart squeezes with to push blood through and against your artery walls. 

Now, having some blood pressure, of course, is normal, because if you had no blood pressure, you wouldn't be able to get up off the floor. But when it's too high, it's like pumping water through an irrigation system at full blast, day and night. 

Over time, that pressure can cause wear and tear, obviously on an irrigation system, but obviously on your arteries, leading to possibly problems with your coronary arteries, your arteries to the brain, cerebral vascular disease, problems with the heart itself causing atrial fibrillation and cardiac failure, and the arteries within the kidneys causing damage. We even believe blood pressure is directly linked to dementia. 

And so blood pressure is super important. It is a major risk factor for heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, and it can do serious damage while people are not even aware. That's why we call it a silent killer. Well, what's the good news? It's one of the most modifiable risk factors we know, but only if we keep an eye out for it. Only if we know the numbers. 

So what is normal? Well, ideally, we want blood pressure around 120 or below systolic, 180 and below diastolic. And even readings up around 125, 130 over the long term can make your heart work harder and therefore wear it out sooner than ideal. 

So that's why the most important thing is figure out what your numbers are. Don't miss mildly elevated blood pressure because mild elevation over time is still too high. And why do we want early detection? Because if we get on top of that blood pressure, it will respond well to therapy and we can save lives. But even more importantly, improve your quality of life in the longer term. 

Thanks for listening. I hope you live as well as possible for as long as possible. And I look forward to sharing tomorrow.

Are You at Risk of a Sudden Heart Attack? How Healthy is Your Heart? Really?

Heart disease is the #1 killer in the Western World. In Australia, someone dies every 28 minutes from heart disease. That’s 51 people a day. In the US, someone has a heart attack every 40 SECONDS! Fortunately, many heart attacks are preventable. However, regular exercise and eating healthy are no guarantee you won’t succumb to this silent killer.

Do the free heart check today at www.virtualheartcheck.com.au

Join the Healthy Heart Network and become part of our growing community!

Do You Want to Improve Your Heart’s Health and Reduce Your Risk of Suffering a Heart Attack? Join The Healthy Heart Network For Only $5 Lifetime Access (Valued at over $55)!

The Healthy Heart Network is designed to help members:

Visit https://healthyheartnetwork.com/ and click on the JOIN THE FAMILY BUTTON

Welcome to the Younger Longer 14-Day Blood Pressure Challenge. My name is Dr. Warrick Bishop. I'm a preventative cardiologist and I'm super excited that you're looking to look after your blood pressure. It is one of the most important and really one of the simplest things you can look after to look after your heart for the rest of your life.

During this 14-Day Challenge I'm going to share with you a whole lot of stuff. Every day, a video, some resources, a challenge or a task for you to complete and a fun fact. Stay tuned, your blood pressure is super important. Let me explain to you how, what you're going to do about it and how you're going to look after yourself for the years ahead 

Are You at Risk of a Sudden Heart Attack? How Healthy is Your Heart? Really?

Heart disease is the #1 killer in the Western World. In Australia, someone dies every 28 minutes from heart disease. That’s 51 people a day. In the US, someone has a heart attack every 40 SECONDS! Fortunately, many heart attacks are preventable. However, regular exercise and eating healthy are no guarantee you won’t succumb to this silent killer.

Do the free heart check today at www.virtualheartcheck.com.au

Join the Healthy Heart Network and become part of our growing community!

Do You Want to Improve Your Heart’s Health and Reduce Your Risk of Suffering a Heart Attack? Join The Healthy Heart Network For Only $5 Lifetime Access (Valued at over $55)!

The Healthy Heart Network is designed to help members:

Visit https://healthyheartnetwork.com/ and click on the JOIN THE FAMILY BUTTON