Dr. Matthew Barrett

And, you know, one of the things that I always dread as a cardiologist when I'm

down in the emergency department, for example, in Vincent's hospital where I work or on the wards and somebody says, you know, that there's a shock that they had an arsenic because they're the healthiest person in the world.

They've never gone to a doctor.

And, you know, unless you're going to get these things checked out, you won't know about them.

So it's not so much about how you feel and if we're all very good at watching out for symptoms, but actually getting ahead of those symptoms ever developing and making sure that your system is free of significant conditions like, say, unclean cholesterol, diabetes and blood pressure.

Absolutely.

And, you know, we use very, very, again, you know, talking about that data that we have, that kind of delineates what your risk is going to be like.

You know, if you've got a first degree relative, so parents, sibling, et cetera, if they're male and they've had an acute heart problem, like a heart attack, a stroke below the age of 55, or if they're female below the age of 65, absolutely, there's a really good reason to get checked out.

And we know that puts you at slightly higher risk.

You'll often take a sort of a more, a more,

moderate approach to making sure that your cholesterol is kept under control and I'd say we might just check it a little bit more frequently because you can be doing everything right and your genetics can still be working against you, it's not a failing on your part you just need to be aware of it and just be cautious of the fact that your risk is increased that little bit In terms of gender differences, we've heard more I think in recent years about women's heart health but is there still a perception that this is a male issue?

Oh, absolutely.

And women, classically, have been very good at things that there's a lot of awareness around.

I think that self-breast check for breast lumps, going for your cervical screen for cervical cancer, breast check.

All those things are very much coded into our psyches, things we know what we're watching out for.

But again, if you look at the data, for every age group in women from young to middle-aged to elderly, heart disease is still the number one killer in women, far above breast cancer or all the things we usually think of women's health conditions.

It's typically underappreciated.

When you think of a heart patient, you think of a middle-aged man, maybe a little bit unhealthy.

And that's reflected a lot in the research that's been done into heart disease.

About 75% of people in studies around heart health and heart treatments are male.