My name is Sunjig Uptime, a consultant cardiologist. Today I wanted to talk to you about the best diet after a heart attack. What is the best diet that can prevent another heart attack after you've already had one? Okay so before we start I just wanted to tell everyone that as you know and I have been publicizing this for a while now I'm going to be in New York on the 4th and 5th August and I will be hosting a seminar there where I'll be talking lots about heart health and you know things like age or fibrillation, heart palpitations, et topics, anything to do with the heart. I'll be talking about and on the 5th of August for those people who attend and there is the option of having a free consultation with me a one-on-one consultation where I go through your history and answer any questions you may have. That's occurring on the 5th of August. This is completely free on the 5th of August but if you wanted to make if you wanted to avail of this opportunity then please consider registering for the the heart health weekend and you can access the details of this on www.hearthealthweekend.com. The closing date for booking is on the 30th of July this year so obviously if you can if you are interested go ahead and reserve your spot now. Right okay so now what I'm going to talk about is I'm going to try and talk about the best diet for people who have had a heart attack. As part of my job I often have to deal with patients who've had a heart attack and one of their obvious questions is okay I've had this heart attack what can I do to prevent a second heart attack from happening because undoubtedly if you've had one heart attack you're risk of having a second heart attack goes up many fold so a lot of people want to know what can I do to prevent another heart attack from happening and of course you know we as doctors are very good at talking about well if you smoke don't smoke and we give patients lots of medicines including aspirin and statins and beta blockers etc. What we are not very good at is trying to talk to patients about diet and the importance of diet and preventing a second heart attack after you've had one and so this is what I wanted to talk to you about there is no doubt that improving your diet can have a significant impact on the heart on the health of your heart and certainly can reduce significantly the likelihood of a second heart attack happening. In terms of diet the diet that is generally considered a very good diet for heart health is a Mediterranean diet what is a Mediterranean diet a Mediterranean diet generally consists of abundant fruits and vegetables olive oil tends to be the principal source of fat you could also use avocado oil a fish and poultry are consumed in sort of low to moderate amounts dairy consumption is largely limited to cheese and yogurt but there's a lot less emphasis on butter and cream red meat should be consumed in low quantities and also red wine can be consumed in low to moderate quantities that is what predominantly consists of a Mediterranean diet in general Mediterranean diets are low in saturated and omega-6 fats but they tend to be high in omega-3 fats as well as oleic acids fiber antioxidants vegetable proteins and B vitamins so that's what a Mediterranean diet is so the next question is well how much of a benefit can you gain by switching to a Mediterranean diet after you've had a heart attack and I'm gonna just tell you of a little study that was published which was really very interesting this study was published in the Lancet in June in 1994 okay and it's in the June the 11th edition in 1994 the lead author is G.E. Lorguerril day Lorguerril and the last author is Mamel a M-A-M-E-D-L-E okay I'm gonna try and put the link on my Facebook page which is your cardiology one if you if you wanted to look at it so basically what these guys did is they took a bunch of people who had had a heart attack and in fact they took let me just tell you exactly how many 605 people okay 10% of these were women 605 people who'd had a heart attack and they randomized them to the usual diet that is recommended after a heart attack which was called an American Heart Association step one diet and then the second group they're randomized to a Mediterranean diet okay and they wanted to see what happens between these two groups what is the incidence of further heart attacks how many people die etc and the study actually had to be terminated early because at four years they found that there was a significant benefit of a Mediterranean diet compared to the usual diet and what they found was that in the people who were taking the usual diet 34 out of 303 patients eight about eight percent of the patients had died okay whereas when you took the Mediterranean diet group only 14 patients compared to 34 in the other group out of 302 patients had died so this is an 8 percent mortality in those people who were taking the usual diet and a 4.6 percent mortality in the group that were taking the Mediterranean diet a substantially lower number of deaths we're dealing with only very small numbers but despite that you know they've done the study and they found that a substantially lower number of people died in the group that was on the Mediterranean diet there was another very interesting finding and that was over the four years how many people were found to develop a new cancer and they found that there were new cancers discovered in a 17 out of the 302 people in the group that were taking the usual diet and only seven in the group that were taking the Mediterranean diet when you look at further heart attacks nonfatal heart attacks they found that 33 people in the usual diet had a nonfatal heart attack compared to only eight people in the Mediterranean diet so they actually found that they had to stop the study early because there was such a substantial benefit of being on a Mediterranean diet in every way so what they found was that actually when you look at it to save a life after a heart attack you only need to treat 30 people on a Mediterranean diet okay compared to 83 people on with a statin so a good Mediterranean diet is three times more effective than a statin at preventing a further heart attack and this is really interesting again very small study you cannot be absolutely confident that this is exactly the result you'll get if a bigger study were done but it's certainly hints to the likelihood that actually changing our diet can have more substantial benefits in terms of preventing a further heart attack than any medications we prescribe we give medications because of pharmaceutical company pressures guidelines etc but changing your behavior changing your diet can be one of the most important things you do after having had a heart attack to prevent a further heart attack happening so I hope you found this useful I will put the link up on my website which is which on my Facebook page which is called your cardiology one thank you so much I hope you found this useful if you found it useful and you think someone else may benefit then please consider sharing it I don't think we emphasize diet as much and to a large extent what happens is the poor patient comes in with a heart attack and very it's very much like being a rabbit caught in headlights you know you don't know what's going on it's okay or take it so incredibly scary and at the end of that what happens is you get given a bunch of pills and you discharge home and very little emphasis tends to be given to the importance of nutrition and changing your behaviors to control your diet to take it to manage your diet better and I think this is really important so if you think someone will benefit from this please consider sharing also consider subscribing to my channel and also please if you did want to visit the heart health we can seminar please consider registering thank you so much all the best