#30: The Fresh Heart Project with Dr Zarrin Shaikh

Today on the podcast I am speaking to Dr Zarrin Shaikh, a Consultant Cardiologist who specialised in Cardiac Imaging, specifically advanced echocardiography and cardiac MRI, following her PhD in Sleep at Imperial College London and the Royal Brompton Hospital.

We’ll be talking about her exciting new project called Fresh Heart Project, which stands for food, relaxation, exercise, sleep and happiness and how these lifestyle features can help us overcome blood pressure issues, atherosclerosis and look after our hearts.

We’ll be talking about her personal experience of lifestyle medicine, the cardiologists from America who inspired her journey and a particular focus on Atrial fibrillation something that I personally suffered with and why we may be seeing more of it in clinic.

Some of the points that we talked about that I think are really important to consider are below - and don’t forget to check out the show notes here too for the papers that Dr Zarrin discusses:

• Looking at the news in the morning and being aware of what impact that has on your stress levels
• The connection between happiness and cardiovascular disease
• I'll link to the studies that Dr Zarrin mentioned in the notes below
• The nutrition principles that Dr Zarrin stands by - whole grains, quality fats, largely whole and lots of plant based foods
• How lifestyle is an adjunct to therapy - something that we use alongside the current tools that we have

There is A LOT of evidence based, safe dietary and lifestyle change that we as practitioners can be confidently discussing with our patients and that’s what we hope to chat about today. Listen to the end for a summary of our discussion and how to improve your overall wellbeing,

You’ll find the recipe video that I cooked for Dr Zarrin - Pear and Chocolate Overnight Oats with Fresh Berries - on the show on my youtube channel so you can see how delicious and easy it was to make .. even whilst recording a podcast!

And you can find all of this information and more at www.thedoctorskitchen.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter for weekly science based recipes and listen to the end of the pod for a summary of our discussion.