Gareth O'Callaghan: It took losing a close friend to realise I need to mind my health
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How often should you make an appointment to see your family doctor? Just asking for a friend.
Earlier this year I quizzed a few colleagues — five men under the age of 60 — to find out when was the last time they visited their GPs. Four of them replied, quite nonchalantly, that they hadn’t been inside a doctor’s office in years; the fifth said he didn’t have a GP.
“I don’t see the point of having one if you lead a healthy life,” he replied.
It’s well known that men tend to hide a shocking ignorance towards their health, which they occasionally let slip, and that included me until recently. I tended to tell myself that if I was feeling well, then the chances were I was healthy: a classic example of the liar paradox, as in Pinocchio’s nose, that “this sentence is false”.
Not many people are likely to have ever heard of the scientist Akira Endo, who died last June at the age of 90. He may even have saved your life. Endo discovered the first cholesterol-lowering drug in 1973 in his Tokyo laboratory, having been inspired by Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928.
Endo’s work paved the way for statins, which work by reducing the level of “bad” cholesterol in the blood, thereafter prolonging the lives of millions who were at risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Endo’s discovery was as important as Fleming’s, but yet there still tends to be a huge level of disregard for the danger of high cholesterol. It's a fact that you can feel remarkably well but still have a high cholesterol count so high it could endanger the life of a small elephant.
During a visit to my doctor earlier this year, my cholesterol was 7.4, which meant absolutely nothing to me; until I realised that the count stopped at 10, at which point you're either dead or just waiting for the curtains.
My 7.4 is in the "dangerously high" category. I was a ticking time bomb, and yet I convinced myself that I felt quite well. Except I didn't, to the point where I could have tripped over my nose such were the lies I was telling myself.
Fact check: I was borderline Class III obese, formerly called morbidly obese, my blood pressure was through the roof, and my cholesterol was almost as high as a tall skyscraper. The doctor looked concerned as he stared into his computer screen at the results of blood tests he had taken days before.
A banger is a colloquial Irish term for a heart attack. Previously it brought to mind a rusty old car, and Halloween fireworks, but now it meant something entirely different and unnerving. He had my full attention. Twenty minutes later I was standing at the pharmacy counter holding a prescription.
I had every good intention to follow through on my promise to the doctor that this would be the beginning of my blood supply’s purification while affording it the respect it deserved. It was time, I decided, to turn my body into a temple, but then Pinocchio’s nose pushed the month’s supply of statins into the back of the car’s glovebox, where it stayed unopened for six months until my wife found it.
Most men don’t visit the doctor often enough, which is why serious conditions, including cancer and depression, remain undiagnosed. One of the five men I quizzed told me he would prefer not to know if there was something seriously wrong with him. This takes ignorance to a whole new level, along with selfish neglect for loved ones.
My wife quite enjoys giving sermons — the type that have reprehensible moral endings, and the one she delivered that afternoon wouldn’t be forgotten in a hurry. She told me, in the most unsubtle way, that she hadn’t married me to bury me, as she slammed the box of pills down on the table under my sheepish nose.
I took them — more as a form of childish protest — and then stopped a week later. I still wasn’t getting the message — until two months ago.
One of my quizzed friends, Dan, had been kicking a football about in his back garden with his 12-year-old son when he collapsed. By the time his wife knelt beside him, Dan was dead. He had suffered a massive heart attack. He was 57.
Dan was the one who didn’t see any point in having a doctor.
Dan spent an hour every morning walking the dog. His weight was admirable, in keeping with his broad stature, and he often boasted about being able to eat whatever he wanted because food never added an extra ounce.
What he failed to consider was his cholesterol and the family’s history of heart disease. His father had died in his 50s, as had two of his uncles.
Cholesterol is a type of fat in our blood which is produced by the liver. We need a certain amount for normal cell function, to aid food digestion and to produce certain hormones. Not all cholesterol is bad.
By lunchtime the following day I was back on the horse — a single statin pill every morning. I returned last week for the results of further blood tests. My cholesterol level had dropped, thankfully, to 4.6 in the short space of six weeks.
I aim to drive it below 4.0.
Doctors call prostate cancer, among others, the silent killer. It’s worth adding cholesterol to that list. It’s mostly a myth that you can lower very high blood cholesterol solely through exercise and eating healthily, especially if there’s a history of cardiovascular disease — any disease involving the heart or blood vessels — in the family.
Before finally resorting to a statin, I was convinced I could lower my cholesterol by changing my eating habits. I gave up sugar and bread, cakes and sweets and as many processed foods as I could, and lost a stone in a month. I drank daily turmeric shots, ate nuts, blueberries, porridge, and plenty of fruit and veg, but there wasn’t even the slightest nanoscopic shift in my bad cholesterol.
In the end, out went the stubbornness and my Pinocchio nose. It took losing a close friend to realise I was being stupid.
Cholesterol is part of our bodily health that we cannot see; and therein lies the danger that while cosmetically we might look as good as we can get, all might not be well with the inner workings of the body. High cholesterol carries no symptoms.
My friend Dan was of the “ignorance is bliss” mindset, as I once was, and he’s not alone. He wasn’t there to see his son starting secondary school three weeks ago, and, as a result of his dubious belief that feeling well equals being well, he’ll also miss his own birthday next week.
When you consider that one in every five men doesn’t know what a prostate is, it’s quite likely that the same statistic — possibly greater — applies to cholesterol.
Many men only realise they have a prostate when it starts to go wrong.
However, the inherent danger of high cholesterol is that, in many cases, there’s no warning. A simple blood test is often the most direct route to a peaceful mind. We owe it to ourselves.