Dr. Nagib Chalfoun is a highly regarded cardiologist with Spectrum Health. This week he joins Lynne on the Money, I’m Home podcast to help us better understand how the heart functions so that we will recognize the early signs of heart disease.

 

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0:00:05.5 Lynne Jarman-Johnson (LJJ): Money, I’m Home. Welcome in. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. From finance to fitness, we have it all. And today we have an extremely special guest with us today. I’ll tell you what, I had the honor of participating in Go Red for Women, which is something that we sponsor here at Consumers. And at the event I met Dr. Nagib Chalfoun. Now, listen to the title and then wait until you hear some of the… What we’re going to talk about, which is… It blew my mind and I think it will yours too, about how our hearts are working. Dr. Chalfoun, listen to this, cardiac electrophysiology, Spectrum Health, Senior Academic Advisor, Frederik Meijer Heart and Vascular Institute, Program Director, cardiovascular disease fellowship, Spectrum Health, Michigan State University, Go Green, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine. Dr. Chalfoun, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. It’s a busy time for you.

0:01:08.0 Dr. Nagib Chalfoun: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the kind words.

0:01:11.2 LJJ: You just mentioned off the recording just a moment ago that your fellowships actually begin again, right? So, that’s a busy, busy time.

0:01:18.9 NC: Absolutely, yup. All fellows and residencies, that’s the first day where they come and join our teams, and so, we’ll be orienting them today and very excited to have them onboard. And we’ve been fortunate for the last several years now to be training the future cardiologists and guiding them through their careers. So, it’s a wonderful place to be, and we’re honored to be able to do that for them.

0:01:40.8 LJJ: Well, and you know, the fact that it’s right here in Medical Mile is just so neat here at downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s just eye-opening to watch all of the training that’s happening, but also really the changes in how we can help our own health, so thank you for talking about that today.

0:01:57.5 NC: Absolutely, thank you.

0:01:58.8 LJJ: So, here’s something fun. So, we were at Go Red and you gave this presentation that I have now told probably five or six people, when I asked them this question, they had never heard about it before, but it makes perfect sense. You broke our hearts into electric and plumbing. You made it make so sense. Explain that a little bit to our listeners.

0:02:22.2 NC: When I see my patients, I try to always differentiate those issues for them, because they really are different things. Now, they’re related, they can affect each other, but I always tell people, think of your heart like a house, and in a house, you have both plumbing and electrical and the heart has the same way. It’s a big chamber, and the muscle of the heart, if you would, is the foundation and the brick and mortar of the house, the valves are the doors in the house, and then you got plumbing, which is actually what people classically think of heart attacks and the blood vessels that bring blood flow to the heart muscle, and then you actually have electrical system, which is actually like your house, is the power box that supplies the electrical system.

0:03:05.4 NC: So, all that can interrelate if you have a bad plumbing leak and it affects water into your electrical box, you can have some problems and issues with electricity and the same if the electricity goes down, you can’t really power the house. So, I feel it’s a simple analogy that people can relate to, and helps me explain the different types of diseases that I deal with.

0:03:28.2 LJJ: Well, we really focused in on Go Red for Women about the differences between women and heart attack symptoms. When you say heart attack, what’s interesting… What I found interesting was the thought that, okay, if it’s an electrical problem, that can be the boom, you just… The lights go out basically. And the plumbing is more like a congestive, you can have congestive heart failure?

0:03:52.2 NC: With the plumbing part, you can have a little bit more warning sign. With electrical abnormalities and a cardiac arrest, if you would, basically, the electricity of the heart goes very, very fast, in general, with a rhythm called ventricular fibrillation or tachycardia. It’s when the heart goes so fast, it can’t even pump blood. And there’s really not much warning sign to that. The only warnings to that is patients with prior history of early sudden death in their family or patients that have had recurrent sudden passing out spells that really have no warning to them. With heart attacks, it’s actually a blockage in the coronary arteries or the blood flow to the heart, the plumbing, if you would. And that can present with multiple different symptoms, shortness of breath with exertion, chest tightness.

0:04:35.4 NC: Sometimes it’ll happen acutely often, and then if you have acute chest tightness, acute shortness of breath, then that gives you some… At least a warning sign to say, “Hey, something’s wrong here. I got to call 911. I got to get into the hospital,” as long as you get in there quickly to us to help open the arteries and fix the blockage. Sometimes the symptoms, especially in women are not as clear. You might have just nausea along with some jaw pain or profound fatigue all of a sudden with those kind of combination of symptoms. And that’s where we’re trying to raise awareness in women and say, “Look, if you all of a sudden are feeling a constellation of symptoms of chest tightness, back pain, jaw pain, or shortness of breath, or profound fatigue, you just don’t feel right, call. Seek some help.

0:05:19.0 LJJ: And don’t be shy.

0:05:21.8 NC: Absolutely.

0:05:22.6 LJJ: I think as women, we try really hard to be the ones that, “Okay, we’re going to keep going,” and that’s really the time to step back and say, “Hey, my health is so important.”

0:05:33.2 NC: Absolutely, absolutely. And actually, in the studies, women tend to not present early, and that’s why actually some of their outcomes with acute coronary disease and myocardial infarction is a little bit worse than it is with men.

0:05:46.6 LJJ: Wow, because we’re just not… We’re not even listening, because they’re not showing up like they do in men?

0:05:52.9 NC: Well, the symptoms can be atypical. It’s not that typical elephant sitting on your chest, so it’s not just the patients presenting sometimes later not recognizing the symptoms, sometimes the physicians don’t pick up on that too. So, it’s important to tell them how poorly you’re feeling, that this is something very unusual for you, that all the symptoms you’re having, especially the atypical ones, like profound nausea or jaw tightness or going down the arm, those are things that you may not necessarily have just the chest pain and pressure that people associate with a heart attack.

0:06:21.7 LJJ: Now, Dr. Chalfoun, when you… When COVID hit, there’s what I think is the fear now is that there were so many individuals that paused on their health. They might have paused on getting testing that they should have been getting on a regular basis. Are you seeing that come back to normal now?

0:06:40.2 NC: Yes, absolutely. We were actually saddened to see that during the COVID times, we actually started seeing diseases that we had not seen in 20 years since we were able to do interventions quickly on hearts. People were delaying their care so long that we saw more of what they call ventricular septal defects, which are holes in the heart that we used to get back in the day when we couldn’t open arteries and the heart attacks would just progress, and so it would create a hole in the heart, which is life threatening. And we started seeing a lot of those again, because people just would not come into the hospital to get care, and so their heart attacks would fully develop, we wouldn’t be able to help them anymore.

0:07:14.3 NC: And now I would say, please do not worry. Come in, we’ll get your testing, we have very safe ways to do that. And remember your heart, once the muscle is damaged, it has some significant consequences, it can lead to bad problems with the electrical system and cardiac arrest down the road as well. It can weaken your heart system over time. That’s if you survive the initial event. And so, it’s very important to get in early, get your testing done, especially if you’re having some of those warning signs with, you used to exercise and you were able to run a mile with no problem, all of a sudden now you’re getting short of breath, winded at the end, kind of can’t really explain why. Don’t just blame it on age, talk to your physician about it.

0:07:57.1 LJJ: Well, Dr. Chalfoun, thank you so much. Such wonderful information and again, congrats on the fellowships that’s starting. And for you, for taking the time to really help us understand, I just love that whole concept of plumbing and electrical. I think it makes so much sense. Once you hear it, you go, “Oh yeah.” And you know what? You care for your house, so care for your heart.

0:08:19.8 NC: Absolutely, absolutely.

0:08:21.3 LJJ: Thank you so much. Hey, if you have a topic that you’d like to share, you know what? You know interesting people just like Dr. Chalfoun, please give us a call, let us know. Thank you, Jake Esselink for your production skills. I hope everybody has a safe and wonderful week. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union, Money, I’m Home.

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