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John was 45, up before six for the gym, out running at the weekends, cooked nearly every meal from scratch.
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He was the fit one.
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Then one of his mates asked for health advice, and he was sitting across from me when I explained that one of the arches to his heart was badly blocked, and he needed a stent to stop him having a heart attack.
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He kept saying the same thing, but I did everything right, Dr.
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Kelly.
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If you think being fit keeps your heart safe, I want you to meet John because he thought exactly the same thing.
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I have sat across from a lot of John's over the years.
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Fit, disciplined people who are genuinely shocked to be in a cardiologist's office.
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So let me walk through how a man who does everything right still ends up meeting a stint, and more importantly, the one thing I'd want you to go and check in yourself before you decide you're grabbed.
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Stay with me because this part everyone misses is the part that nearly caught John out.
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So let me tell you about John.
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I've changed his name, but the rest is exactly as it happened.
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He was the man everyone envied a little.
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Successful career, loving family.
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He'd run a half martin the year before, he wore the watch that tracked his sleep, his steps, and his heart rate.
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He ate well, he barely drank, and none of the obvious bad habits.
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If you lined up 10 of his friends and asked me which one would land in my clinic first, John is the last one I would have picked from the outside.
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And that's the whole point from the outside.
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Here's the belief that catches so many fit people out.
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I exercise so I'm healthy.
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And I get it, it feels true.
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You put the work in, you feel strong, the scales are kind to you, so surely the heart underneath is gram too.
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But being fit and being free of heart disease are not the same thing.
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I wish they were.
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Exercise does wonderful things for your heart, and I'll never talk you out of it.
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What it doesn't do is promise you that there is no plaque building up inside your arteries.
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When I send people for a scan that looks at the arteries around the heart, I find that the buildup, the fatty stuff that eventually causes a heart attack, is there in lots of them.
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Around six in ten men and four in ten women, and plenty of those people feel totally well.
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They're fit, they're busy, they have no symptoms.
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The buildup is already there doing its work years before anyone thinks to look for it.
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And this is the part that makes it seem so unfair.
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That buildup gives you almost nothing to go on.
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No pain most of the time.
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No warning light on the dash plaque can start forming in your twenties and sit there growing for decades while you feel absolutely fine.
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So the very thing that reassures people that I feel great is the thing that stops them ever getting checked.
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John felt great too, you know, right up until the week that he did not.
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So what was actually going on with John?
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On paper, his life looked healthy.
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Underneath, a few things were working against him that no gym session could cancel out.
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John's real root cause was because he was very stressed and burnt out despite the exercise and the good diet.
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He had a family history of heart disease, and because a friend had become unwell, that triggered him to get checked out.
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In truth, he was under enormous pressure at work.
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He hadn't slept properly in years, and that kind of long-term chronic stress does real damage to your arteries, whatever your diet looks like.
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The gym was helping him to cope with the stress, so he'd decide the stress wasn't hurting him.
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It was.
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By the time he reached me, that artery was badly narrowed.
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He'd been training hard, feeling strong, walking around with a heart that was far closer to the edge than anyone knew.
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So how do you know if you're a bit more like John than you'd like to admit?
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Let me give you a few questions.
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Do you assume you're fine mainly because you exercise?
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That's the big one.
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Being fit is a wonderful thing, but it's not a clean bill of health.
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Are you carrying real stress and not really sleeping?
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But telling yourself that all the exercise cancels it out.
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Has anyone in your family had heart trouble when they're young?
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That matters far more than people think.
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And when did anyone last actually check to look at your heart properly instead of glancing at a couple of numbers and telling you you're graphed?
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If a few of those hit home, that's not a disaster.
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It just means that you're exactly the sort of person who should stop assuming and start checking.
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Because that was how we caught John out.
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Not a lack of effort.
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He had all the effort in the world.
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What he didn't have was anyone looking underneath the fitness to see what his arteries were actually doing.
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And his story has a happy middle.
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We sorted the archery, and then we got to work on the stress and the sleep that got him there in the first place.
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He's still training away, he's just not assuming anymore.
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So here is the one thing I would love you to take from John.
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If you spent years assuming your fitness has your heart covered, treat that as the one assumption worth testing.
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Go and get properly looked at, especially if there's a heart trouble in your family.
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It is a simple thing, and it's the thing John wishes he had done sooner.
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And if you want to know the signs your heart might be asking for help, the ones fit, busy people talk themselves out of all the time, watch this one next.
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I go through the warning signs that people like John miss right up until it's serious.
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If this is the kind of thing you want more of, then subscribe and I'll see you there.
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You can be the fittest person in the room and still have a heart that needs looking at.
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Don't let being healthy on the outside stop you from checking what's going on inside.
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Go and watch that next video and then go and book your checker.