Paarul Chand: How would you describe the vision of your Insta series? It says it's a caregiver's point of view?

Sawan Dutta: “Heart Health For Dummies” is for “heart-health dummies” - like I myself was, until CB, (CB Arun)  my husband, had a heart attack - leading to an open heart quadruple bypass surgery in 2019.

It aims to answer some of the questions that heart patients (with atherosclerosis) and their caregivers keep trying to find answers for, and which most doctors often don’t have the time, energy or inclination to answer.

I myself have faced a million questions, ranging from - Why did no one tell us about heart attack prevention or risk factors BEFORE the attack, CAN blocked arteries get unblocked, COULD we have done something to prevent this, and so on…

My aim is also to SIMPLIFY a lot of medical and complex scientific jargon into a user-friendly format that a lay person without any medical background can grasp and APPLY to their daily lives, should they wish.

Paarul Chand: Your top 3 tips for heart health?

Sawan Dutta: My top tips:

1. Educate yourself about risk factors

2. If you fall in a high-risk category because of non-controllable reasons like genetics, educate yourself about how to control the OTHER risk factors which one CAN control

3. Educate yourself about symptoms and SOS measures.

Paarul Chand: Given the high risk for Asians, especially South Asians, of heart disease, what are the gaps you find in patient engagement and preventative communications about heart disease?

Sawan Dutta: Oh, there is a MASSIVE gap!!! It was shocking for me, to find that every single cardiologist we encountered AFTER CB’s near fatal massive heart attack, told us that this was bound to happen, given his family history - the question that was REPEATEDLY on my mind was, WHY had no doctor ever told us this BEFORE the heart attack??

At the time of discharge from hospitals, after his emergency angioplasty and his CABG, we were given all these files with info about how to manage Atherosclerosis from here onwards.

WHY is this information not given to everyone at a point in their lives when they are actually in a position to PREVENT this from happening??

WHY isn’t invaluable nutrition-related information not a part of everyone’s basic education?

WHY are all non-medical lay people left to “educate “ themselves about health and nutrition from commercial FMCG ads aimed only at selling junk for profit??

Sorry, I could go on about this!

Paarul Chand: What verification process is your information based on?

Sawan Dutta: The first and foremost layers of information have been what our cardiologists, rehab specialists, surgeons and nutritionists have given CB for managing his condition. I waited almost SIX YEARS after his surgery to start sharing some of this info, because the most RELIABLE verification for me was that CB’s been doing okay and his cardiologists have been happy with his ongoing reports, and so I’m assuming that we’ve been doing something right.

Now, to further detail out the nitty gritty of our heart regimen, I also extensively use AI - and my AI sources collect and cross-check their info from the following sources :

American Heart Association, European Society of Cardiology, National Institutes of Health, PubMed / NCBI, medical journals like The Lancet / JAMA / Circulation / BMJ, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, John Hopkins Medicine, FSSAI and others.