From ablation to arrhythmia, this episode of Big Blend Radio's HEART HEALTHY LIVING WITH DR JACKIE Podcast observes National Health Literacy Month (October) with a discussion on various cardiology terms.
Dr. Jacqueline Eubany is a board-certified cardiologist and electrophysiologist, and author of the best-selling book, "Women and Heart Disease: The Real Story." More: https://womenandheartdiseasebook.com/
New episodes of "Heart Healthy Living with Dr. Jackie" air every 2nd Wednesday. Follow the Podcast: https://hearthealthyliving-drjackie.podbean.com/
Welcome to Heart Healthy Living with Dr. Jackie, a big blend radio podcast that features Dr. Jacqueline Obani, a board-certified cardiologist and electrophysiologist and author of the best-selling book, Women and Heart Disease, the Real Story. Welcome everybody so you know October is National Health Literacy Month and I didn't even know that existed but it does and I think this is really cool because Dr. Jackie's here and you know when you go to the doctor you end up in the ER family member does and stuff happens and they're saying words and there's like reports it's like taking your car in and you don't know what the heck they're talking about right and it's like okay okay do I really have to just eat celery every day or something I can handle that but we really don't know what you're talking about so today we're going to talk about some terms in cardiology in heart health and heart disease so that if you know you go to the doctor you you know end up in an ER or a loved one like I said that we can understand it a little bit more so Dr. Jackie are you ready to give us a you know a class on heart health terms because he has cardiology in his heart I know I'm looking at this list I found this massive list of cardiology terms and I'm like I don't know where these terms came from I don't know who made them up but some of them are interesting so and that's the thing too when you're in an emergency situation when someone comes in has a heart attack and next thing you know they're going to bypass surgery do they really get what's going on half of the time it's really hard huh yeah and I think that's a valid point because when when patients show up and you know they have a serious medical illness and they have doctors coming at them and and just letting trying to explain to the best of their you know ability but it's gets to be overwhelming sometimes because you know from the patient standpoint you're sick and you're you know you're not feeling good and you have somebody here telling you all these things so it's all just coming all at once and you're being bombarded and yeah it's understandable that sometimes you're just not following what's going on when you think you are but yeah that's understandable I always say like you know when you go and something happens right is to have somebody there with you to document because if you're the one in you know if you're the patient you're not a hundred percent there to get everything because you're not well at that point in a ER situation and even going to the doctor is scary so when you're going through fear you're not really getting all the information as you would normally do right if especially if you're not feeling well yeah so yeah I completely agree with that going go with someone so that you can have an additional set of ears to hear what's being said and you can discuss it at home and see if both of you understand what's actually going on and always write your questions down you can always call your doctor back if you know you think of something after the appointment or after you've had this encounter with the doctor I love that you said that it's really true a friend of mine just went to the hospital in the ER and they said like please call with questions later and the nurses actually gave a lot of information they were more available to explain things as things were being done to my friend the nurses I just started asking questions one after the other because they're doing stuff and they're there and and so why why not get the information you can while you're there and you could also record it too so you can go listen back um you and we have all that technology on our phones Dr. Jackie so we could record it too right let the doctor know yeah yes yes you just have to get permission to not allow to record people against their will so yes absolutely all right well I get to record you right we've got a podcast to do here every second Wednesday Dr. Jackie's here so one of the first things and this is actually a friend on Facebook was posting this about a friend and loved one actually think it was a family member saying oh my god we did this we're gonna have to do ablation and I don't know if I'm pronouncing this so it's we're gonna go through the alphabet as quick as we can here what is ablation I mean is that something to do with our abs are they sucking up my stomach fat am I gonna get skinny from this or no no since we're talking about the heart um we can safely deduce that we're not talking about the abdomen but anyway ablation is a procedure that's done in patients who have problems with abnormal heart rhythms usually with fast heart beats so when your heart is racing or going fast you feel palpitations chest pains and shortness of breath and an ablation is a procedure that can be done to potentially cure you from this ailment so basically what happens when your heart's beating fast is it's kind of like a circuit a circuit gone awry you have tissue in your heart that's firing electricity um just out of the kilter and that causes your heart to race so the idea behind the ablation is taking catheters up to the heart and looking for this tissue that's firing out of control and basically destroying that tissue so that it can stop doing that and your normal pacemaker can take over pacing the heart um so that that's just in general terms there are different kinds of ablations depending on the arrhythmia you have and when I talk about the arrhythmia I'm talking about where in the heart this abnormal tissue is so but that's just a general term finding this abnormal tissue that's firing out of control and just you know destroying it whether it be with heat radio frequency energy cold as in cryotherapy or our newest technology now called PFA pulse field it's a different kind of technology used to destroy the tissue wow this is cool now I just watched a documentary didn't interview with the filmmaker the documentary is called The Pitch and it's all about safe the patient safety and it talks about virtual reality and it showcases a lot of hospitals around the country and around the world of how they are even being able to use you know AI and technology and people are scared of it right but when I watched this I was like this is pretty amazing that you can actually go in like they were showing cardiologist being able to see what's going on with your heart and zoom in and almost practice virtually the surgery before the surgery happens like you can go in so this is kind of an interesting thing in your career has has this changed a lot has medicine changed I mean it really has and the technology has changed hasn't it to make it we shouldn't necessarily be too fearful because it seems that the technology the doctors are still doing stuff I think people think a robot is going to go in there and do an amputation or something you know and it's not that way right it's a little bit different it's like doctors are being able to see things what I experience is that hospitals and everything are more connected for patients like the it's like a virtual terminal that we didn't have even you know even right before COVID even I think we're getting better in doctors being able to get records quicker no matter where you are and synchronize them and understand the medicine that you're taking this or not going to have another 10 drugs that don't go together you know what I mean do you think we're on a positive path with all of this yeah no I absolutely agree yeah I mean technology has been improving you know every year something new has come up in the technology it has been improving our procedures improving the success rate and most importantly decreasing complications from procedures so procedures that we do today even you know five years three years ago were had a lot more complications than they do now but as a result of the improvement in technology we're seeing better success rates we're seeing fewer complications for patients and overall it's very good okay so I would before we go to be because apparently we're going to meet Brady and he's a hot dude I don't know but we've talked about we've talked about atrial fibrillation before that's a big word I got it now last month I took I did like whoo I'm getting there but I wanted to touch on about atrial flutter because it kind of sounds like you've got a butterfly in your heart and atrial flutter almost sounds like a good band name um I don't know come on don't you think it's a good band name atrial flutter well when you put it that way it is kind of uh it does sound like a good band name it is it sounds good but it what is that I mean is it just are we because when we think about the heart it's the rhythm and we do a lot of music shows I know you're a music lover too and yeah I just always think people like how did this just magically synchronize with this I go because everything is about the heartbeat everything revolves around the heartbeat nature everything we do the the actual rhythm of life is a heartbeat I believe I mean you're the doctor you're the cardiologist so right so atrial flutter is also another abnormal rhythm that's um associated with the fast heartbeat and there's a particular circuit in the heart that just seems to be firing um it could be in the right right upper chamber of the heart it could be in the left upper chamber of the heart but it's very well defined we know exactly where it's coming from and on EKG it has a distinct look that you look at it you know this is atrial flutter so just like atrial fibrillation because it causes the heart to race or go fast you have the same kind of symptoms you have you know palpitations which is you're feeling your heart racing some people have chest pains with it because if your heart's racing you may not be getting enough oxygen to your heart or other organ systems um it could be shorter breath and things like that and again if you have that rhythm your doctor would would or your electrophysiologist would offer you an ablation as a potential uh treatment for the atrial flutter so the atrial flutter especially if it's coming from the right side of the heart um can have a success rates as high as 99 percent with an ablation therapy so ablation is is is almost curative for atrial flutter but you know you're always given the option of doing an ablation versus being on medications uh but the problems with medications is medications don't actually cure they just suppress they suppress the rhythm they help you feel better in the short term but over long periods of time your body uh doesn't respond as well to the medications so in that particular case where the success rate is very high the complication rate is very low it's just a low brainer that an ablation is a higher option for treatment for atrial flutter especially right side typical atrial flutter this is really interesting because when you think about medication like blood pressure and all of that right and we your big goal with everything we do on this podcast what you write your book women and heart disease the real story is to understand lifestyle change because you know you can reverse having to be on medication if you really focus on it and change your lifestyle and walk 150 minutes a week only five ounces of wine for women just saying i'm getting this here i'm i'm learning yeah you know so we start doing these mediterranean diets and you know actually just get rid of stress relief you know have some releases for your body at laugh be with friends um you know that october is is known as come over october months now it's a new movement come over october yeah come over come on over come on over october and what it is it's about getting to know your neighbor and sitting down and having a dinner or coffee together or whatever and and starting to connect and i think that when we create a sense of community and caring and bonding in a way and we laugh about something or we're we're making our body feel better i think yeah yeah so i would agree i would agree yeah we you know we talk about the mediterranean diet and you know social interaction is actually part of it getting together with friends and family having a nice dinner having a glass of wine um that really helps you know in terms of your mental state as well as your your diet and your health now don't tell anybody but i got nancy to eat kale i'm whispering it so she doesn't hear it i did i got her to eat kale she just doesn't know and i've got her to eat um spaghetti squash she just doesn't know and no i did i mean we're doing we're we're working on it and we're working on things yeah yeah kale is yummy i actually like kale i do too but it's the way it's done and what i've learned is that you want to you need to wrestle the kale you massage it not wrestle it massage it massage the kale because the oils come out and it's not as rough on your body so it just it loosens it up so it's not too hard and over fibrous and too so you massage the kale yeah and then it becomes more yeah massage it so it's gentler on your on your system and you know i i make it into teeny teeny little pieces and i got a teeny broccoli the other day broccoli oh wow you know i'm on a roll i know you have to share some of these recipes with me oh you know what i've i've been taught chef i've been flowers and and peggy fin daca who is the wine lady from ldb winery on our show and you know she's she's all about mediterranean diet um the the whole blue you know the blue zone movement the cut that's how i found out about it's come on over october she's like come on a glass of wine get to know each other and that's how you start going hey yeah i need to walk okay with your neighbor well maybe you're going to take a walk in the morning you know and start getting healthy and then you're building a community which is so important um yes so all these people and the chefs are like they're helping me because like i'm stupid when it comes to cooking at times like really i mean the first time i did spaghetti squash dr jackie it exploded in the microwave like it was like chucky had a new hairdressing you know so it was great so but this an experiment and have fun and so now we've kind of like all right let's look at this as fun and i oh i learned how to cook uh cook butternut squash for the first time with ginger and turmeric and it it was healthy olive oil by the way i know you like that i did this and and all of a sat there friends we were all uh we were friends and we had all this portion and they were like well we don't know how to do this and i'm like i don't know how to do that so we just said well let's just do it and if it sucks oh well you know then just don't eat it it's okay when you're in a family kind of setting of friends and loved ones you can go if it sucks just don't eat it but at least you tried and you're going to learn something from it right so that's what we did and it turned out to be really good it was yeah a little i would say yeah i i love butternut squash i love roasted butternut squash and seasoning it so that's one of the favorite one of the things i really like to cook for Thanksgiving or Christmas because it's very it's very fall it's a very fall fruit or vegetable and yeah and it's really good even even the suits the uh butternut squash soups oh so good oh yeah ginger turmeric which is really good for you and i did paprika on it as well and i put garlic and onion with it yeah it was so good and we couldn't believe it now i think i should have left it in a little longer so it get a little crispier but i i mix it up i got my hands in there with oil olive oil and put it on parchment paper and roasted it and oh my gosh you know that those spices and i put a little sage that was the other thing because i was also listening to what everybody likes and doesn't like too so you're you're trying to you know make everyone happy and eat vegetables and be healthy and we sat down and had this amazing meal and we all just knew like let's just try this let's try that there was two of us cooking and it was fun we all sat there and we laughed we played music while we were cooking and had a glass of wine and we laughed and i just sat there one point you know these are these simple pleasures and lives that actually i think we're in the fall season so we need to embrace these things and yeah now we're going to go back to our alphabet okay so i think we got a and b we did broccoli we did butternut squash right yeah we're doing good we're doing good we can't do the whole alphabet of cardiology term so this is no you more break it up into different um yeah different shows yes absolutely i do want to talk up i want to talk about brady it's not the brady bunch but you have a thing called bradycardia or brady arrhythmia am i saying this anywhere close yeah you know absolutely you're absolutely right bradycardia or brady arrhythmia so they're the opposite of a tachycardia or tachy arrhythmia so we talked about atroflutter and atroflibulation which are tachycardia's which means just fast heartbeat so you have the fast heartbeat like atroflibs and flutter and then you have brady so this is the heavy metal drummer in your heart that's the heavy metal that's the heavy metal it's much slower you know it's slower you can associate a slow bradycardia slow rhythm we're just feeling sluggish and just feeling right here so when you say hard i would thought it would be like really quick so this is like a slow slow yeah slow beats yeah so yeah so yeah so it's when your heart rate is slow and some people can have slow heart beats and not have symptoms and then others can have really slow heart beats and problems with their normal conduction system or electricity in their heart which can be a problem and the therapy for problematic bradycardia's include things like pacemakers that's really the only way that you can help the heart be faster now in going through this list i learned that um we actually have algorithms that are part of pacemakers and our body actually has a natural pacemaker right not just the ones that we need so it's about so when i have new pacem like a machine pacemaker you know you know not a natural pacemaker goes in is it replacing your old one you know are we using the battery out in our body like what's going on no it just when you add an external pacemaker um that what the pacemaker does it it just watches your heart and sees what your heart's doing if your heart is going too slow then it would kick in and take over but if your heart rate comes back up to normal then it stops so it's basically sitting there watching and it acts as a backup if you need it if you don't need it it just sits there but if you need it and it kick in and start pacing for you this is fascinating i'm so glad we're doing this this is so cool because and then you have a great glossary in the back of your book too everyone i'm serious go get it women and heart disease uh the book go get it yeah go get it uh the yeah i'm going on your website dot com but yeah women and heart disease the real story is a bestseller i remember you texting me the night it became a bestseller and we're like yay yes i remember that i know i was like i'm gonna start beating pots and pans but it seems to me when i'm reading all of this it's all about listen we've got to become our own band manager so our heart so i'm looking at this in music because everything i'm reading it just seems that we have to understand who's who in the band and if someone's not doing well in the band we need to help them so it seems like this is all about the rhythm section which is the foundation of the band so your heart is one of your foundation of your body right if you don't have a good rhythm section which is your bass player and your drummer go sing in a coffee shop really good espresso or something but you know what i mean i'm not not being singer songwriters at all but they're all my good friends and i'm one of them but um it's about rhythm right so if you're whatever instrument you're playing your rhythm is so important because you want and people are going to tap their toes and if your rhythm's off well they're not tapping their toes right anymore and then you get lost in the song so there's this one word yes yeah eight okay wait okay you talked about techie cardia techie you talked about that but there's this atrial ventricular node and then one is a synchrony and basically it's just like you're what's going on with this node like it has to do with this this like the conductor going in with with like the the i'm just trying to put it into musical terms for people to like understand how our hearts work so it's like you've got a like a band when you watch a band perform or conductors there the conductor lets the musicians know it's your turn go but if your conductor is faulty then uh oh the the band is gonna suck right yeah no like that it's it's the the av node is part of the conduction system it's it's not the one that generates the electrical activity but it waits for the other the conductor which would be the sinus node to generate the activity so when the conductor or the sinus node generates the activity and pushes it towards the av node then it picks up the activity and then it pushes it down to the rest of the heart so that the rest of the heart can have electricity so it's sort of the middle man but it does control some of the electricity in the heart so the electricity and that is important in music you've got to feel that vibe that electricity can feel the fact yeah oh okay it's all right oh the electricity to pump so that's where you generate the energy for you know for the heart to pump blood out so okay that's why electricity is important okay can we go back to man we're really covering some good ground here you talked about the tachycardia but then there's the anti tachycardia pacing so that's like the they don't want the tachycardia they're they anti are they on strike what's going on like so you can have anti tachycardia pacing which is called ATP that's that's a therapy that's delivered by a pacemaker or defibrillator so yes so when your heart's racing you can try to pace your heart to stop it from doing that so anti tachycardia so for tachycardia you can give anti tachycardia pacing as you say that i just want to go shakakan shakakan and i'm serious that's so funny but okay so okay so basically we're doing A's and B's today okay we got the broccoli's we got the butternut squash everybody's all good for you in the fall yes and so algorithms are all part of this too for our pacemakers and everything that's natural or a defibrillator right and then here's so let's talk about the worst thing which is a rest right that's the bad word we don't want the band to get arrested and put in jail no you don't want that that's actually deadly that's just when the heart stops no electricity and therefore it doesn't pump and it if it doesn't get reversed right away it basically needs to death so if someone has a heart attack right uh-huh like say you're hanging out with you know how anybody can have a heart attack in any situation at any time and all of a sudden it's like you know Samford and son thing right and a woman doesn't present nicely with that eater it's hard to tell I mean it's like oh I've got a little indigestion but you're having a heart attack but it's like oh I just you know feel I ate something or whatever right it's hard with women right um but the arrest part like how fast do you need to get care if you I mean carly if you're having a heart attack is that arrest or is it attack and then arrest yeah so that's that's an important question because that's a term that gets confused by you know the general population um a heart attack is not a cardiac arrest but a heart attack can lead to a cardiac arrest so a heart attack is when you have blockages in your heart that prevent adequate amounts of blood and oxygen to get to your heart for you know nourishment and replenishment so if you're lacking oxygen then the heart can go into an arrest because you know the conduction system stops working so the heart needs oxygen in order to function if it's not getting the oxygen it needs it can just stop functioning which would then which in layman terms would be like a cardiac arrest or something so heart attack is not necessarily a cardiac arrest but a heart attack can lead to um to an arrest if that blood vessel that has the blockage um is not revitalized or it's not opened up so that the heart can get the oxygen that it needs okay so when do you do the zapping thing with the the iron paddley things when the right so when you go into a cardiac arrest so your the electricity basically is we say fibrillating you shock the heart back into a normal rhythm you're basically trying to wake up the the heart's normal pacemaker so that it can take over so you stop the bad fibrillating rhythm um and the and then the normal pacemaker kicks in so that the heart can quote unquote restart back to normal dude it's all about the drummers man we got to take care of the heart it's the beat okay so now i saw this thing here now we're talking about the rhythms right get a rhythm and we all know do not do hard i talked about you on a show recently um our women saving lives we did that and you you were up with Florence Nightingale and harry eckman and i'm like i'm i'm representing dr jackie i know i was like dancing i was sitting there going okay who am i gonna do now you know everybody's bringing a woman and nancy just looks at me she says are you talking about dr jackie what do you what do you mean you're she nancy is like you you represent you know dr jackie because she's doing it now because our women making history podcast is about women of the past present and future because the past helped the present and the present helped the future right yeah so that's what you do and i'm like she saves lives and they all set their everybody's in history mode right and i'm like she's doing it now and you know you have quite a story you served in the military your family came in from another country which i thought was also important just saying yeah and um it's an amazing story that people can be inspired by and women and doctors and so everyone that link uh check that out i'll put in episode notes for you can check out the link with dr jackie talking about becoming a doctor as a woman is an incredible story it's not easy to be a cardiologist as a woman you know come on it's not it's it's been a male dominated world for a while it has been it really really has been it's well i'm now finding that you know doctors you know getting doctor you know nancy and i travel right full time so getting doctors is a whole other deal you know but i was i was looking we need to do doctor stuff you know as we should apparently we need checkups right no is that right uh apparently anyway we're working on it right and they're like would you prefer a woman or a man and Nancy's like woman woman we want a woman doctor i mean who as a woman do you really want you like you're gonna i want i want a girl woman doctor please i mean we need so it's like it's so important and we shouldn't really care about that but it just yeah both genders provide excellent care yeah this is about you and your comfort level you should be with somebody that you feel comfortable with though that this for sure i agree enough to tell all your symptoms to just be honest with it because you need to be honest with your doctor or so they can help you so it's important to be with somebody that you do feel comfortable with but both genders provide excellent medical care okay going real quick anti-arithmic drugs what is this i mean i know musicians from the 70s are going what the heck is that man we didn't have that like it's a what's it against a drug it's a drug but it's an anti-rhythm drug like yes yes that's what it is an anti-rhythm drugs and when your heart decides to you know go into a fast rhythm you get a medication an anti-arithmic drug to help slow your heart back down to normal like i just full spoke about earlier and you have a fast rhythm your options are medications or an ablation therapy so an anti-rhythmic would be an example of a medication that can be prescribed or that you can take for your fast rhythm that's causing you a lot of symptoms well that's what i was talking about on a different show was drugs because i was taught i don't know i was saying you can't do don't let people do drugs early you know because you i was telling people on this show i can't remember which one it was and i said well dr jackie says you do one little thing of cocaine as a kid or a teenager or a young person you could have if you could have a heart attack when you're 70 and they're like what do you mean and i said no it's true dr jackie said so it's toxic you know drugs that are have direct toxic effects on the heart and sometimes they are permanent and you know a lot of times or some of the heart disease that we see now for people who were engaging in a lot of you know drugs fact that when they were younger and they didn't understand that you could have some lasting damage down the line so be careful with yeah just don't do it yeah thank you so much dr jackie always a pleasure and happy fall you know yes so we know better than that swatches your thing walking on the beach is it's still a good i think fall where you are in southern california you get to see levels at this time of year absolutely the sun is still out yeah you can still walk on the beach you can put on a sweater but it's still beautiful awesome that's good for your soul which is good for your heart it's all good everyone thank you so much for joining us dr jackie is here every second wednesday we love our times are there so we got through a and one b we got one brady boy and we'll do more next week uh next month everyone but then i know dr jack is going to get into holidays oh boy whatever with those cookies okay and all of that so we may have to dig into that so she keeps us on the straight and narrow and still having fun that's the thing dr jackie i love about you is you make doing the lifestyle fun because when you change over don't look at it as a diet when just have fun with it and the holidays can be fun and delicious and still healthy because the most important thing is that you're there for them so you know so let's do it do it right thank you so much dr jackie take care and we'll talk soon thank you for having me have a wonderful day you too thanks for joining us on big blend radios heart healthy living show with dr jackie new episodes air every second wednesday at 12 p.m pacific standard time you can keep up with dr jackie at women and heart disease book dot com listen to the shows at big blend radio dot com
