You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks. I'd be children in New Zealand down about eighty percent, sixty nine percent of MARI. So yeah, an outbreak measles if it was to spread, would be yeah, reasonably, very very serious.
Well, well, saw what it did in samow was it ninety six deaths or ninety two deaths. I mean there's in a small country, you know, not a big country, ninety almost one hundred deaths.
Look, and we can't forget that we had seven hundred admissions of children into hospital here in New Zealand. And yes, we had the eighty deaths and Samaraw So New Zealand was very very lucky not to get away with any deaths at all. But Samoa got hit very badly. So although a lot of people think that measles is a you know, sort of benign childhood type illness, it can have very very serious consequences.
How yeah, how long have we had a vaccination for it?
I can't give you the exact time roughly vaccination, but it's been about twenty fifty sixty years.
I think it's the problem with it that people because there is a generation that's sort of still alive that lived with you know, when the only way you could deal with measles was to hopefully you get through it. But pre vaccination is there sort of is there a frustration that people think, oh, we had measles when we were younger and it wasn't very nice and we got over it and we're fine, sort I think ninety sixty nine by the way, there you go, yeah, yeah.
Look, look there is a little bit of that around. I think there's a couple of things there is that. So that's you're exactly right on what you've said. I think we've come out of COVID where there was a whole lot of immunization misinformation around, and I think that's been been quite quite it's had a big, big impact in people's view of immunization with measles, mumpsonry bellery immunization. There was the case of a physician in England in the late nineties who claimed that it was it was
associated with autism. Oh yeah, now got proven that that that was totally false. You know that the person who did it didn't disclose the financial conflict. They were being paid by lawyers preparing a lawsuit. Number of ethical violations and the fact that that doctor whose name was Andrew Wakefield, was actually struck off in twenty ten over this through serious professional wist conduct and dishonesty. So it was it
was no basis to it whatsoever. There's been very large trials since then that has shown there's no association whatsoever. But I think that's had that that that did have an impact because you.
Made RFKR in the house and.
I know so, so that that sort of adds to everything. And in fact, he was he was around at the time the Sama thing as Sama outbreak happened and there was very low immunization rates and Samara and he had actually been been in Samar around that time. So look, a number of things have been happening, a lot of misinformation on social media about immunization, which is a real problem and it certainly is impacting our munization rates in New Zealand at this point.
I remember once I had I'm hesitant to quote her from back in the days of you know, tomounimanizations for other things, and I had Helen Petusus Harris, who's a vaccinologist, and actually she had a really good she had quite
a nice pragmatic answer because people. Somebody called up and said, oh, look, when I was young, we'd just have a we used to know, some parents used to have chicken pox parties and that have, you know, where someone would come along and she and actually Helen's response was actually quite instant, because you know, parents deliberately choosing Look, if we're going to get chicken pox, then we might as well get
it now sort of thing. And Helen's response simply was, well, yes, people did do that back then, but now we have a better answer.
And I thought it was so simply put.
It was understanding and empathizing with why parents people might make choices. But she said, but now we have a better way, and it's called a vaccine.
Yeah. Look, I totally agree with Helen, and it's a it's a lovely way of putting it that. Yeah, vaccines have been developed for a reason and it's a much better way of doing it because you know, the measles. One thing I'll say about the measles is, you know, for a lot of children, yes, they get unwell and you know they require isolation and they will get better,
but it's not by nine. So there are these serious complications, you know, including dehydration, pneumonia brain swelling, which is potentially very serious. And yeah, for that proportion of kids especially are under one year olds because they don't get vaccinated, they are really at risk. And you know, of the seven hundred that were admitted into New Zealand hospitals in twenty nineteen, you know, sort of one hundred of those were under the age of one and they required really
intensive treatment to deal with the issues. So we put out our little Tamarik at risk with this with low emmorganization rates.
Actually, just before we get onto the question of heart health, which I want to explore, what is the way you mentioned that certain communities I think within did you say within Maria and Pacific Island communities the vaccination rates.
Are are lower.
What if you could click your fingers and come up with a solution for that. What would we be doing better to get communities engaged with that stuff?
Oh, look, look, I think it's the communities themselves, and it's really the communities have got the answer for that. I'd look. I work in Canon's Creek AND's Pirua, and you know there's a huge amount of community engagement going out talking at churches and schools about vaccination contacting parents and really trying to build a trust in vaccination and
the need for it. So I think there's a lot of those things that need to happen, But it's also the communities themselves talking about vaccination, talking about the reasons for it, and freeing up the access to vaccination services becomes really really important, so that the more points of contact you have to be able to get vaccination, to go out into the community and have vaccination carried out is really important.
Yeah, and please if you're not vaccinated against the measles and just it's a pretty simple process, isn't it, Brian, In fact, for adults even what is the process that people aren't sure about getting amminized?
What do they do?
Yeah?
So, so look, you mentioned nineteen sixty nine, which is about that fifty year sixty year mark. If you were born before nineteen sixty nine, or in particular between sixty two and sixty nine, you should think about getting a measles booster. So we sort of recommend that because you may only be partially immunized if it fall into that that that group, Yeah, and going back further, you quite like to have contacted the measles. So there's natural immunity.
But yeah, it's something you should probably talk about with your GP doctor or nurse about whether it's something you should consider if you're in that sort of slightly older age group.
Yeah, okay, let's get onto the heart health. You know, I was one of the things when we were looking at having a chat about heart health. I was just thinking, it's one of those questions that people only really start to care about their heart health when they or someone close to them has keeled over and hopefully like we've survived or there's been a tragedy. Are we cognizant enough in New Zealand of the importance of looking after our heart?
Because I mean, the thing that stuck out to me when you first discover, you know, learn a little bit basics about human biology is just being reminded of the obvious that this is a muscle that never ever stops until it stops.
It stops. Yeah, it's a phenomenal muscle. But yes, art the fact that just you're born, it just beats and it just keeps on going till the day you pass away. Yeah. Look at it's an interesting question you ask, and I mean I think sometimes perhaps people you know, we don't realize the impact of heart disease on New Zealander. So what we do know is about one hundred and eighty thousand New Zealanders live with heart disease. In New Zealand, about ten thousand of us die every year from heart disease.
So that's one person every ninety minutes.
That's carnage.
Well well, look, look you're not wrong with what you say. So and for some people there's no warning. It can be very sudden, and it can be and it's absolutely traumatic obviously for a faro and family that are left behind. So yeah, look, it's a major impact on the health
of New Zealander. Is it's something we should actually think about because a lot of heart disease, not all heart disease, but a lot of it is actually preventable and preventable through lifestyle and what we actually do on a daily basis.
So what percentage of those tenhou arm and gosh, that's a hera in this number, isn't it? But what percentage of those would be preventable as opposed to you've got a predisposition, you.
Know, sure, sure, Look, look, probably probably a good proportion. We know that age is probably the biggest stress factor as you get older.
You can't help that, can you.
Well, you know, you can delay the onset of where the heart gets a bit tired and worn out, but the percentages are quite high in terms of what could potentially be prevented through just thinking about a lifestyle and particular our diets in particular. Physical inactivity is another big, big one that in modern days, you know that that's become a real, real issue and things like smoking and alcohol. You smoking in particular is devastating for increasing the rates
of heart disease. In fact, if you give up smoking, you reduce your rate of dying of heart disease by about fifty percent after about five years. So it's major.
Why Why is that?
Because intuitively, and I'll ask questions from a dumb point one of you, Intuitively we think, well, of course we can understand lung cancer, smoke lungs bad. How does how does it the heart muscle?
Well, look, I mean, you know, basically, we take a whole lot of toxins into our blood system. With smoking, we tend to with nicotine that's in the cigarette smoke, we tend to put up our blood pressure. And blood pressure is one of the big, big risk factors for heart disease, and it tends to just be associated with a whole lot of things like deposition of cholesterol on the artery walls, blood pressure, and yeah, it's got this very very strong association with not just heart disease, but
stroke as well. So yeah, smoking per se, apart from the nicotine, puts pumps into our bodies about one hundred and sixty different toxins of chemicals, and to cut a long story short term, it's basically toxic, poisonous. That's essentially what it does.
Well, I mean, ironically, what smoking does do is cut a long story short, doesn't it, Because yes, I mean potentially long story short. I mean we had the famous the death of a fav very famous New Zealander, Bob Jones, who sort of lived a reasonably long life. But all I could think of was that with the pipe. I was thinking, how long would you have kept going if he had cut that habit out twenty or thirty years before.
I mean, well, look, that's a really interesting question. But we always have these stories of people who have smoked all their lives and live into their nineties or you know, hundred. You always sort of hear those type of stories, they have long lives. However, when you look at smoking as a collective from the people who smoke, what we do
know just shortens life. That's what it actually does. And apart from the effects on the lungs, and again, when you start to get lung damage, the lungs don't work as well, it tends to put pressure on the heart, the part can't pump as well. Tends to lead to things like heart failure and things. And so yeah, all these effects are pretty devastating on the human body. And let's face it, we weren't designed to put a great smoke and toxins into our body. You know, every day
you just think about it. It's not something that the human body was designed to do.
Well, speaking of things we might necessarily necessarily been designed to do. And yet you know, there's the argument about moderation. You probably guess what my next question is going to be, what about where are we at with alcohol consumption and heart health? Because there's one of the things people talk about is stress can impact your heart. When some people think that, well, it lasts of wine maybe three or four times a week at the end.
Of a big day.
Where are we at with alcohol and heart health.
Yeah, no, that's that's a good question because it's probably one of the ones we don't think of too much. And yeah, it's it's an important one.
So so.
Yeah, it's it's one of those ones that that that is quite important. And the more we drink, the more it does tend to affect the heart. Now, one of the ways it can affect the heart, you know how cold can be affected with blood pressures, so put in your blood pressure ups pressure on the heart. But there
is a specific condition that occurs called cardiomopathy. So a lot of alcohol consumption can cause the heart muscle to the heart to actually enlarge, in the heart muscle to actually weaken, and that can lead to problems down the track.
So that with extreme drinking, Yeah, yeah.
When you you're above above what's sort of recommended, you know, So, so drinking and moderation is what we try and push. You know, less is better basically, but if you have an excessive alcohol it can certainly lead to this this cardiomopathy condition where the heart gets enlarged, it doesn't pump as well, it's weaker than it should be, and it leads to heart failure and a whole lot of problems.
Okay, well, look I'm going to throw it out there for people to give you a call as well. On eight hundred eighty ten eighty text nine nine two were having a chat about heart health, Mandy. If you've got any questions around the measles and MMR vaccines and things like that. If you've got any questions, we have doctor Brian Betty is with us GP and also as you will know, he's said chair of General Practice New Zealand.
Give us a call eight hundred eighty ten eighty. But also on the heart thing, if you have gone through a bit of a journey with heart health and you've come out the other side, or what was it that made a difference to you, What was the lesson that you realized about what where you were going wrong? Because sometimes sharing your story can help other people reflect on what they're doing with their last style.
Give us a call. I'd love to hear from you. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty e text on nine two.
If you like nine two nine two, should I say we'll be back in just a moment.
Is twenty three past four news Talks. He'd be.
And welcome back to the weekly collective. This is the Health Hub. My guest is doctor Brian Betty. He's GP and chair of the General Practice New Zealand, talking about heart health and we've got I've got a lot of questions to dig into with but we're going to take some calls as well.
Steph, Hello, Hi, Hello, Hello, Hi.
Where you go?
I've got a few questions about heart health. And so with heart health, how do you deal with that when it's full of injustice?
Right?
Injustice really affects your heart?
Are you talking about stress?
Steph?
Yes, stress and just complete injustice.
Okay, I'll keep that question short, I think, because I'm not sure where it's going. And Brian, but let's let's tie that in with stress, shall we? I think, because injustice sounds a bit political? What do you reckon, Brian?
Stress?
Well, there's no doubt that stress releases basically hormones or doorphins in our body that can increase heart rate and can increase blood pressure. So we know that over time that if you are stressed continually and there's something triggering that stress, that certainly blood pressure can increase. And we know that blood pressure is one of those those factors
that does put stress on the heart. So look, it can have an indirect effect through through blood pressure in terms of what actually actually happens.
Okay, all right, let's take another call Ross.
Hello, Hello mate, there you going good? Yeah, I would like to about cancers and all these sort of things. I think the ten eighty is our biggest problem in New Zealand is coming down into the water. There's trace is found in dairy meat and honey, and it's all the basic stuff that we eat a little bit of. It's all in the stuff we eat.
I think that's a slightly contentious view. Ross, I don't really want to in the ten a debate, but you've got anything to say on that, Brian.
Look, look, I mean you know there's we know that some pesticides are linked to cancer. We do know that ten eighty is a very controversial area in terms of what happens in terms of pest controls. So I think it's it's not there's no clear answer on that.
But I mean it apparently does break down in water.
But actually we're not going to get we're not going to get into the arguments around that because then I have someone targeting my home address when I call it crazy, which has happened before, believe it or not, so stay away ross on the actually just on the question of what I think one of the bigger questions is, and obviously in your role at general Practice New Zealand, is what can and should New Zealanders do look after their heart versus what role does the government have to play
in us making healthier choices? Do you think because I've had a few texts saying we'll get rid of KFC and they always get a hard time despite how many times they advertising can have a healthy choice if you want. But anyway, but how what what do you think when it comes to the government telling us how we should live versus maybe them playing in a role in information we will make our own choices.
Well, look, look, I think information and education is really important. I mean, you know the basics around healthheart are ready two things diet and exercise. That those are the two things, and we don't know we know that we don't exercise enough. Diet is problematic. We live in what we call this a bisogenic environment, so we have a lot of access to processed foods which are high in sugar and high in salt, and they have a direct impact on heart disease.
So there's no doubt that diet plays a big thing, and in particular takeaway food, so you're referred to KFC a whole range of them. So I think awareness about the potential. You know, it's not to say you can't have these things, and I'm a big believer in all things moderation, but it's when it's excessive that's the problem
we start to run into. And I think the government does have a big role to play in terms of education, in terms of what we actually do with that, and we know there's debates over things like, you know, certain suburbs, too many takeaway stores, and access to food, and especially for our children. We're the third highest country in the world for obesity amongst our children. It's it's it's quite phenomenal.
So we've got a real real problem with that. And yeah, the other one that often comes up is tax on sugar. So these things do float around, and that there's two sides to all those arguments. I think the big key thing is actually education and actually us making decisions for ourselves on what we do with us and how are we handle it.
Because the sugar taxes, to me, I don't like the idea of it taxes as a way of doing things. But of course, you know, we have excise taxes and we are doing you know, smoking is a classic example that if it went for the excise tax on or whatever it is, on cigarettes, be well, they'd be cheapest chips. But I would be in favor of, for instance, sugary drinks.
I still remember that when I first learned how much sugar was in a can of coke, I was, you know, and this was as a young man who just drink it, you know, because I don't really care and I never thought about it. That I heard it was like thirteen or fifteen tea spoons. I was, what what I mean? And should we have something around labeling?
Do you think?
I mean?
I know this is on the political side, but if.
You know your role is potentially political, if you want to be lobbying for things, isn't it.
Look look, I think you taped into a really important one. I think one of the big big ones that are talked about are these sugary soda drinks. So these are your soft drinks with very high sugar. Now, the problem with them is that they are packed full of sugar. You're absolutely right, in terms of the amount of sugar.
Often a coke or a lemonade or something could have And the problem with them is when you drink them, they get absorbed into the body very very quickly and overwhelm the body with sugar or glucose that has nowhere to go. So what often happens with that excess sugar it's laid down as fat in the body, and in particular abdominal fat, and that's a big, big risks factor for heart disease. So yeah, there's a lot of debate about access to these sugary soft drinks, especially amongst children.
It's a real issue amongst children and parents need to be aware of.
Do you think most people know drinks?
Do you think most people know They just see a can of the brand and they go yummy, full style, as opposed to this drink has thirteen teaspoons of sugar.
Yeah. Look, look, a lot of people probably don't think about enough. And I'm not aware of that, and I think you're right certainly. What I have seen though is and this is just a comment on what I see in the clinic, there's a lot of people if they are going to drink their cokes or the lemonades or whatever are switching to coke zero or or what's at zero. So so these these sugar free options, which I think is a better option, it is a bit. Yeah, it
is a better option. There's still problems with them, so we have to accept that. But people are making those sort of choice, which I see more of now than I perhaps did a few years ago. So the awareness is probably more there, but we could do a lot more with talking about the problems of these drinks. And actually the other one is things like orange juice and
fruit juice. They're very, very high in fructose, they're very high in concentrated sugars, and again they get absorbed into the body very quickly and the body finds it very difficult to handle them.
All right, let's take some more calls, then let's go to In fact, I think we're two Trevor's on the line, so one after the other.
Trevor, Hello, Oh, good atim and thanks for having the program buying. Yeah, I'm in christ is seventy seven years old, reasonably healthy apart from knocking myself about. But with regard to pre end of like trying to find any problems before they get to a serious stage. What do you should a doctor be able to do a long capacity test for example?
Well, look, look, there's a whole lot of basic tests we have access to. I think one of your big ones, if I'm honest, Trevor, is sort of those routine yearly blood tests, okay, for things like your cholesterol, your sugar, and also checking your blood pressure. One of the biggest, biggest single risk factors for the heart is blood pressure, So monitoring that and keeping an eye on that I
think is really really important. Now, certainly if you've got an issue like you're a smoker, or you've got what we call COPD or asthma or something than spiometry or lung what we call lung function tests are actually often done. They can be done on the clinics. Often we have access to sperometers. So it depends on your individual circumstance. I suppose it's the big, big thing, but I think there's reason So sorry, what was that, Trivall.
We don't have any reason or any concerns, you know. It's just that a person I know who's into his health said, you know, try and get a lung capacity test. I thought, oh, well, that's going to be five minutes and probably a good thing to do, but Adoptor doesn't want to. He says on that we don't do that. Those are outlic.
Sure, but they'll have access to them. But again, unless is a reason for doing it, I wouldn't necessarily be recommending it, but certainly what I would be recommended is what you're saying is that the routine blood tests, the routine check up, and keep an eye on those basics which do do impact the health of our heart, and that's really really important.
Yeah, more specifically then I don't want to take it too much time. But on the heart, what is the in the priority order would be a CT calcium Look.
CT calcium scores are quite controversial. I fall into the camp that I think your metabolic indicators. By that I mean your blood pressure, your sugar levels, your cholesterol levels, and ensuring that your lifestyle is in place. So trying to keep up adequate exercise I think is incredibly important to your age. And in fact, if I was to say something regularly exercise or just going for a walk every day is probably better than any medication or anything
we can do for you. So I think your lifestyle issues are really really the key to it all. I believe a calcium channel score or a calcium score, all that really really does is reinforce the fact that you need to, you know, watch your diet size and do the yearly checkup and stuffs.
Thanks for your call, Trevor.
And also sometimes you do a quick Google on these things and just type the word controversy after it, and it's interesting the facts that you get revealed to you. Anyway, let's, by the way, just quickly salt before we get We've got a bunch of calls. But I thought i'd just throw in the question around. It's the hidden salt which people worry about, it isn't it. But what about just salt for your daily cooking and what does that play a role in blood pressure?
Slash art health.
Yeah, absolutely, so we know that salts associated with blood pressure, and again this is one of the big big risks with heart disease is and we know we've got too much salt in our diet and especially with processed foods. So those processed foods, those takeaway foods, you know, ham, bacon, takeaway foods tend to be full of salt. So yeah, so cooking with salt. Look if you put some salt in your potatoes to boil them. I think that's relatively okay.
And often what I do say to my patients is, look, just look at the basics, Like if you put extra salt on your food at the table, maybe just cutting that out and reducing that has quite an impact on the total amount of salt we take during the day.
So I was wondering about so like bacon and eggs, Okay, forget the bacon and salty.
Let's just say that I walked into that one.
But yeah, you've got eggs on toast and you give it, give it a couple of give it a couple of grinds of salt.
Yummy. Is that the problem? That's the problem? It is yummy? Yeah, you know.
Is it a problem of doing it for taste rather than all the hidden stuff processed foods.
What you do find those people get into the habit of not putting this on the eggs on their toast or whatever, or on their food. They get into the habit of doing it, then they tend to not notice it. So it is often because we're in a habit. We we know the taste, we enjoy the taste, and we keep doing it, so there is a bit of a habit to it, and people do get used to doing it.
It's like having sugar and tea or coffee. If you cut sugar out over time, you just get used to not having sugar and you tea or coffee.
So yeah, salt on your eggs.
I'm not going to answer that.
I go for the everything in moderation sort of thing. But anyway, I'm a big fan of everything in moderation. I love that. That's I can sing from that hymn book all day, Brian. But okay, we'll take another break. We've got a bunch of course I make. We will touch on it. We want to dig into just there's a headline around vaping as well, and we might touch on that. But we have a bunch of people lined up to talk to you brand, so we'll be back
in just a moment. It's ten and a half minutes to five news talks.
He'd be.
Well, that sounds like a modern version of Titler Clips of the Heart.
There, we're sticking with the heart thing with Dr Brian Betty GP and Chair of the General Practice, New Zealand taking your calls. We're going to try and speed up because we've time has shot, but lots of people wanting to pick Brian's brains. And here we go Trevor Hello.
Yes, good evening, doctor Beauty Betty. Yeah, ob seventy nine and very briefly my mother years and years ago passed away. I had a go open heart surgery subride there at Boys you had the pig trens blood, you know. But I've led a pretty physical license then years in the Army, said in Vietnam, exposed to that aded orange crapple lost but daughters through it. But anyway, I've had quite a few heart pop was lately myself and I've been on the chopper a few times, and I've had surgery, you know,
transplant myself. It was two days freight for the heart surgery, so I went up through the they went up through the growing. Doctor Nen from way Kado did it. But I tried to exercise, you know. I bought a knee bike and exercised as much as I could. God damn, I'm still having bloody, really bad turns, passing out nets. So I don't know what the hell's going on. I've got a heart specialist nurse that I see every couple of weeks in firal hospital and then the medical center.
But okay, at seventy nine, you know I have to get out of the art. I worked on a fire with business.
Have you got a question here? What was your question for Brin? Sorry to jump on that, Trevor.
What my question is? What else can I do to sort of get back to the old self?
Okay, fair enough. It's difficult to turn back time, isn't it, Brian? And I guess the question there is also if you have a history of family heart problems, is there you know, can you get ahead of it as well?
Look, I think if you've got a family history of heart problems, I think prevention is better than cure. So in those situations, I think you do need to take note of that family history, and the earlier you take note of things like those dietary changes like salt sugar in the diet, eating lots of fruit and vegetables, and exercising as I keep going back to it daily sort of exercise or four to five times a week, just going for a walk for thirty to forty minutes a
week is the type of thing that's often recommended. Has has a miserable benefit plus getting those regular checkups once a year to check your blood press, to check your bloods, your sugars, your cholesterol in particular, that's really really important. So if you do have that history, I think prevention is actually the thing, and there's there's a lot we can do around that in terms of advice and what we do. So I think that's what's really really important.
Thanks for your call that, Trevor. Thank you, Yeah, thank you, really appreciate it, right, Josh, Hello, Yeah.
Hi guys, high term, Hi doctor. My questions are in regards to cholesterol, fats, and oils.
Good and bad.
That's sort of consensus.
Yeah, well's the consensus there was, like the oils, the fats, and the good and bad question.
Like a nice big slab of bacon versus a bit of olive oil on your pasta.
Let's go with that one, right.
Yeah. Yeah, so look, really good question, thanks, Josh.
Yeah.
No, so not all all fats or oils are bad. We do know that the ones that are particularly bad and the ones that tend to have excess are what we call the saturated fats. So those are the ones that are found in the fat around meat. They're often found in take away foods. And these are the fats that really drive something called LDLs in our blood, our bad cholesterol essentially, and this is a cholesterol that deposits
on vessel walls and leads to heart attacks. However, we have good oils, and in particular olive oil, So we know that olive oil is good, especially virgin of olive oil, and so using olive oil and salads and things like that, especially non cooked olive oil, has a positive effect on cholesterol, and it tends to raise our what are called HDLs, which are considered our good cholesterol, and they are the things that sort of mop up these deposits of fats
on our vessel walls, and they tend to be associated with better outcomes. So certainly olive oil has a big, big tick or plus around it. Things like fats associated with meat particular tend to have a big cross around it in terms of what it does to our cholesterol.
Yeah, just quickly on the oils if they but they still have that thing where they've got a tech on certain oils and you just something else got the tick, I must be all.
Right, or yeah, no, no, no, that that's sort of around I mean the other one that's talked about is fish, fish oil. So fish is very very good for heart health. So it has a lot of very good good oils in it, especially deep sea fish and salmon and things which are actually very very positive for our heart health. So yeah, no, there are definitely positives to certain foods and certain oils within those foods good stuff.
Right, let's go to over Jane.
Hello, Hello, doctor Bryan.
I have a friend and a friend of mine who has got very high blood pressure, very high blood pressure. Andrew doctor gave all the advice like you have done. But the one thing that the curious made us curious was no sugar. She's not had anything with sugar. Water has got to go.
Yes, blood pressure yes, so so yeah so so it's an additional risk factor for putting pressure on the heart. So we know that blood pressure puts puts a puts a puts puts pressure on the heart. It's it's it's one of those things that does. But what we do know that sugar does is it can increase the amount of fat deposits, specially the abdomen that leads to things called insulin resistance and inflammation, which increases our risk of
heart disease. There is thought to be some sort of association with blood pressure through the fact we tend to put on weight if we eat a lot of sugar, so it can affect the bad cholesterols in our blood. It can cause this thing called insulin resistance and inflammation around our abdominal fat and through through putting on weight can can lead to increased blood pressure, which again puts
pressure on the heart. So it's an additional I think risk fact and it's certain one of the things we talk about if you have heart problems or have potential heart problems about reducing sugar intake. It's one of the risk factors.
Okay, thanks for you call over, Jane. We'll be back in just a moment. We're with doctor Brian Betty. It is ten minutes to five. Yes, the news talk said be with doctor Brian Betty. Brian a couple of quick fire text questions for you. Sure, cream and butter still really bad?
Some people say not.
Yeah, No, there's a bit of debate going on around this. Look what I come down to with this, especially with butter, The thing is in moderation. I think the problem we run into is when we have too much of it. So again, I'm a big believer in a balanced diet, big believer in all things in moderation and not trying to exclude things all together.
Well, next time you're in Auckland, you come around and I'll give you one of my homemade cross songs and see how much. See how we go. They had a friend who had two of them, he said, kind of another. I said, well they are quite rich. He said, I didn't need anything for the rest of the day. Now I did mention I want to and time flies because everyone wanted to have a chat with you. Vaping. There's
just some news about vaping. I think it's just worth putting out there because there have been some recent headlines out There has been some bit more research on this now and it's not good for kids or anyone, really, is it.
Yeah, we have a high rate of kids taking up vaping who would otherwise not smoke. So this is a big study out of Oxford, about two hundred and fifty thousand people followed up to see, look, is there a long term problem with vaping, And actually the answer is yes. So what's been discovered is that there's about you know, two and a half times the rate of developing chronic obstructive airways disease otherwise known as mph seema, which is a devastating disease of the lungs where the lungs just
don't work as well. And there's been some association with blood pressure as well. So there are does seem to be emerging some long term effects to and this is a real concern with the rates of vaping we have, especially in our younger adolescents and younger people.
That is where I think there's some room for the government policy to do something about this too. I mean, as we don't like government intervention and things, but if the alternative smoking is you know, not too flash either, is it, well.
Well, I've got to be clear on this as a smokingessation tool, I'm all for it. It's less harmful than smoking, so we've got to be very careful about that. The issue as those who would otherwise not smoke taking up vaping, there seems to be this problem. So I think we need to think about this pretty pretty hard as to what we do about this.
And without inundating GPS. As a result of this show, if people are concerned about their heart health, what are the basic steps they can take to just get a check up. Would it be calling ahead with your GP and saying I want to come in and talk about this and get the blood test aforehand and all that.
Yeah, Look, you don't have to do it tomorrow when you can do it in the next month. You're just booking a check up to get your blood pressure check. They'll either do the blood blood test that point or the loft and audit before you come in. So you want a heart check, they'll do the basic blood test, to the examination. List to the heart, listen to the lungs, take a history. We generally generally do the blood test and the blood pressure. Yeah, so you can book ahead
for that. There's no urgency with it, so don't think it has to be done tomorrow, but it's a good thing to do.
Excellent.
Hey, Brian, I really appreciate your time this stuff and it's such great information for people and I hope we're going to do it again again soon.
Yeah, thanks very much, Tim, I've enjoyed it.
Thanks very much.
That is Dr Brian Betty, the GP and Chair of General Practice New Zealand, and thank for all your feedback. If you missed any of the hour you want to catch it. Lots of good information there. Then go and check out the podcast, which will be loaded pretty quickly after each our concludes, and you go to the News Talks b website for that. Thanks very much to Brian Betty. We'll be back with Smart Money. Shane Sally's with us. We're going to talk about We're going to talk about
money actually, yeah, among other things. We'll be back very shortly News Talks.
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