[Whitfield:] All right, to your health now. For his upcoming documentary, "THE LAST HEART ATTACK," CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has spent more than a year looking into heart disease. Along the way, he has uncovered a few common misconceptions about heart attacks.
[Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Cnn Chief Medical Correspondent:] Fred, I'll tell you, there's plenty of misconceptions out there about heart disease. One of them that I think is really important to note is this idea that you can have a warning sign before you have a heart attack. In fact, for the majority of people that's not true. The heart problem comes literally out of the blue, there's no warning sign whatsoever and the first time they have chest pain is while they are having the heart attack. Also, for a lot of people, the symptoms could be more vague. They feel a little more fatigued, they feel like something is just not quite right, and that could be signs that in fact they are starting to have a heart attack. So point is, if you're worried about heart disease and having something unusual happening you should get that checked out. Another myth has to do with your cholesterol number. This is something that people generally know about if they're worried about heart disease, they'll tell you what they're cholesterol number is. But consider this, that about a fifth of people that had heart attacks, in fact, had normal or low cholesterol numbers, LDL levels. So this is an important point, is that cholesterol numbers alone don't give you enough information to try and determine your true heart disease risk. Doctors will now say there's a point of actually looking at your blood vessels trying to figure out are they becoming sort of laden with cholesterol, are they becoming laden with plaque. That's probably a more important indicator. Also, keep in mind that it's not just the amount of cholesterol in your body, it also has to do with the size of the particles. Smaller particles, for example, can really get into the blood vessel wall and cause damage, larger particles not as much. So can have a high cholesterol and high particle level and that might not be as bad as having a low cholesterol and small particle levels. So something to keep in mind. Also, family history, as I've learned, doesn't mean you are doomed. That's another myth. We know two things now. One is that you can literally change your genes, the way your genes are expressed in your body through some lifestyle changes. And also, this idea that once you have plaque, it's there forever is also not true. There's plenty of evidence showing that diet alone can actually start to reverse heart disease. So these are some of the some good news, I think, for people out there who are worried about heart disease. And also, some of the latest news on what we're doing to try and get to the point where we can have the last heart attack. My doctors, incidentally, tell me after this whole journey, that I am heart attack-proof. I bet you want to learn that as well, and we'll have that for you. Back to you for now.
[Whitfield:] For more on your heart health, be sure to watch Dr. Sanjay's Gupta's report, "THE LAST HEART ATTACK," this Sunday night 8:00 Eastern right here on CNN. He talks to doctors on the cutting edge of heart disease prevention, including a former surgeon who has developed a radical diet he says can make anybody heart attack proof in a month.