Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Today we're discussing heart health. The heart is at the centre of everything within our bodies, constantly pumping oxygen and nutrients throughout our tissues and organs.

We all know if our heart fails,

we're in trouble. However, we only tend to start thinking about the health of our heart when

we encounter a problem. So how do we prevent a problem from occurring? Dr. Peter Ateer is here

to explain how by making changes to our lifestyle today, we can take control of our heart health

tomorrow.

Let's just talk about cardiovascular disease because it is... It's like heart attacks and strokes.

Heart attacks and strokes, because that's the number one cause of death globally.

And it's the number one cause of death for men and women.

So if you're listening to us, talk today, chances are this is your number one risk factor.

We know from autopsy studies that are conducted on people in their 20s who have died for unrelated causes,

that they already have signs of atherosclerosis, which is the technical name for what happens when cholesterol gets inside

the artery wall and an inflammatory process takes place that ultimately leads to, for example,

a heart attack. And this is sort of the furring up of your artery slowly over. Yeah, and what's really

happening is the body is attacking the inside of the artery where this

cholesterol gets, thinking it's a foreign adversary when in reality it's not.

But in the process of doing so, it creates more of a problem than is warranted. And you're saying that when

they've done autopsies or somebody in their 20s for nothing to do with someone who dies in a car

accident. Car accident, you can already start to see the signs of this damage. You can see evidence that

this, that this process has been a decade in the making. In other words, this process basically begins at birth.

Now, for the average person, that process probably won't reach clinical significance if you're a

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