I said goodbye to my grandfather when I was 8 years old. He had his first heart attack, and my mom was convinced he didn’t have long to live. Turns out he had many, many years ahead of him. Unfortunately, he was riddled with recurring heart problems, Parkinson’s, and a whole host of medical challenges. He lived a long life, but not a healthy one. His rapid decline shook my family, turned my mother into a health fanatic, and she passed the bug onto me.
I wish I could say that pleasure and dreams of excellence motivate me, but it’s pain and fear that drive most of the big moves in my life. “I don’t want to end up in a rocking chair watching Wheel of Fortune,” gets me to my yoga mat much more often than “I want to glow with radiant energy.” I wish I chased carrots, but mostly, I run from the stick. What about you? My guest on this week’s show is a medical doctor who has dedicated most of his work to trying to unravel the complex challenge that is the #1 killer in the world: heart disease.
Listen & Learn:
- How medical advances treating heart disease are largely responsible for extended life expectancy
- Why Lipitor is one of the most prescribed drugs in the world
- How your choices and health goals might shift if you planned to live past 100 in a healthy state
- Healthspan vs. lifespan: What matters most?
- What the “heart-healthy” 1980s got right and what we got wrong
Links & Resources:
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Physician, writer, and clinical researcher Haider Warraich is the author of the new book, State of the Heart - Exploring the History, Science and Future of Cardiac Disease that we’ll be talking about today. He writes for the New York Times but also contributes to the Guardian, the Atlantic, the LA Times and the Boston Globe. He completed internal medicine and cardiology training at Harvard Medical School and Duke University. Haider has appeared on CNN, Fox, CBS, PBS, and shows like Fresh Air, The Diane Rehm Show, The World, Marketplace and the BBC World Service.
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