Shane Warne’s premature death given many of us pause for thought about our own health

“I liked loud music, I smoked, I drank and I bowled a bit of leg spin.” Reflecting on his life in a documentary released two months ago, Shane Warne insisted he had no regrets. But he also had no idea he would be dictating his own epitaph. Many cricket fans have re-watched the film Shane as his death of a suspected heart attack just over a week ago at the age of just 52. As well as reminding us of the spin king’s dazzling talent and charisma, it is striking how many anecdotes revolve around his appetite for junk food, heavy smoking habit, and constant battle with his weight. They do not seem quite so colourful now. “Every day was ten pints, chicken and chips and playing cricket for six months,” Warne said as he cheerily recalled how his weight ballooned from 79kg to 99kg after a summer playing club cricket in South West England when he was 19. The cricketer’s unhealthy love affair with cigarettes, cheese-burgers and Coles lasagne is part of what turned Warne into a superstar we could relate to. But while we mourn the death of the greatest Australian cricketer since Sir Donald Bradman, his premature death has also given many of us pause for thought about our own health. So too, has the recent passing of two other giants of the game, Rod Marsh and Dean Jones. Marsh, from a heart attack in Bundaberg at the age of 74 and Jones, from a stroke in his Mumbai hotel at just 59. Former Australian cricket coach and batsman Darren Lehman, was more lucky. Having survived a heart attack on his 50thbirthday a Gold Coast hotel room, he said Warne’s death could help save lives by raising awareness of cardiovascular health. “Out of a tragedy some good could come, it could save other people’s lives,” Lehman said. “I think his family would be wanting people to get themselves checked too. They wouldn’t want others to suffer a loss like they have.” Speaking to News Corp, he added: “As males we are hopeless at getting ourselves checked. If you are feeling a little bit off don’t delay see a doctor.” Like Warne, Lehman was a smoker, but has given up since having the triple heart bypass surgery which saved his life. Australians can qualify for a heart health check with their GP under Medicare when they reach 45, or 30 if they are an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. This will check everything from their cholesterol, blood pressure, family history of heart disease, diet and alcohol consumption. With so much focus on Covid, it is easy to forget coronary heart disease is the number one killer of Australians. Men are twice as likely to die of it than women, and twice as likely to suffer from a heart attack. Dr Michael Davis, medical director of the Perth Cardiovascular Institute, said it is a common misconception that men are largely to blame because they take less care over what they eat and drink. The primary reason, he said, is genetic. Until they reach menopause, the oestrogen in women’s blood makes them less susceptible to heart disease. “Women get some things that we men don’t but the one thing they’re lucky about is a lower incident of coronary heart disease,” Dr Davis said. Once they hit menopause, women become more vulnerable to heart disease because they lose oestrogen. But they still tend to develop it later in life than men. Warne died of a suspected heart attack on March 4, shortly after arriving in Koh Samui in Thailand for a holiday with friends. He was discovered unconscious by his friend and business partner, Andrew Neophitou who knocked on his room at around 5.15pm to go for dinner and drinks. Neophitou spent around 20 minutes trying to give him CPR and mouth to mouth before paramedics arrived and took over. He was taken off in an ambulance and pronounced dead at around 7pm. Thai police later confirmed there was no sign of foul play and the autopsy concluded he had died of ‘natural causes’. The frantic efforts of his friend to save him struck a chord with former ironman champion and surf lifesaver Guy Leech. His close friend Charles Stewart died of a heart attack at the age of 63 when they were out padding in Manly Cove in Sydney a few years ago. Mr Leech tried to give his friend CPR until an ambulance arrived and a defibrillator brought back a faint heartbeat. But it was too late on this occasion, and Mr Stewart’s life support was switched off six days later. The celebrity fitness trainer, who has trained Madonna and George Clooney, set up a company called Heart180 to distribute defibrillators to homes and businesses across Australia. He believes firms and even families should invest in them to help save lives, as by the time the ambulance arrives it is often too late. “If there had been a defibrillator on hand, Shane would have had a better chance of survival,” Mr Leech said. Shortly after Warne’s death it emerged that before flying off to Thailand, he had seen a doctor in Australia about his heart after suffering from chest pains. His family reportedly told authorities he was also having problems with his asthma. In the week before he collapsed, he complained about sweating excessively. Sweating more than usual, especially if you are not exercising, can be an early sign of heart problems. This is because pumping blood through clogged arteries requires more effort from the heart, so the body sweats more to try to keep its temperature down. “Around half of men know that chest pains is a common heart attack symptom,” Sarah Fordham, chief executive of the Heart Foundation Western Australia said. “But far fewer know the other warning signs, which include jaw, neck pain or back pain, dizziness or light headedness, feeling anxious, nausea or indigestion, sweating or shortness of breath.” Warne’s friends have their own theories as to what may have triggered his heart attack. His manager James Erskine said, contrary to popular belief, Warne was not a big drinker. He tended to favour two or three glasses of fine wines, or a few vodka mixers. And he was anti-drugs. But Erskine conceded he was a heavy smoker and a notoriously unhealthy eater, with a long history of going on ‘ridiculous’ diets. Shortly before his death, Warne had completed a two-week juice fast. “It was always a bit all or nothing,” Erskine told the Channel Nine’s Today Show. “It was either white buns with butter and lasagne stuffed in the middle, or he would be having black and green juices.” “He obviously smoked most of his life (but) I don’t know. I think it was just a massive heart attack.” According to health experts, an extended fluid-only diet can damage the heart as it dilutes essential electrolytes - or salts – in the bloodstream, like potassium, sodium and magnesium. These are responsible for nerve and muscle function, as well as energy production. Potassium is essential for the conduction of electricity, and is crucial for the heart. “No health professional would ever recommend a juice diet,” said Nicole Bando, a dietician at the Nest Family Clinic in Melbourne, said. “An imbalance in salts can lead to heart problems, such as irregular heart-beats and heart attacks”, Ms Bando said, adding the risk does not disappear when the diet ends. “When someone has been on a fluid only diet or extreme low calorie diet for more than five days, and they start to eat normally that can also cause an imbalance in vitamins and salts in the blood. That is known as refeeding syndrome.” Bando stressed these diets are unnecessary, as well as being risky. “We have an incredibly evolved system for detoxing our body so we don’t actively need to detox our body.” Warne had also been in the middle of a fitness drive, which he dubbed “Operation Shred”. Four days before he died, he posted an old photograph of him with his shirt off, informing his 1.3million followers. “Operation shred has started (10 days in) & the goal by July is to get back to this shape from a few years ago! Let’s go.” Warne’s long battle with his weight has been well documented. He was famously barred from cricket for a year in 2003 after taking banned diuretic drugs, which he later revealed were diet pills given to him by his mother. Well known for being vain and sensitive about his weight, Warne’s drastic efforts to lose the pounds were often driven by his desire to look good rather than to boost performance. Jackson Warne once revealed his father would go on 30-day fasting tea diets when “he looks in the mirror and doesn’t like what he looks like”. His latest efforts to shed the pounds on holiday may have been inspired in part by an unflattering shirtless photograph published of him on the balcony of a Sydney hotel in January. “I get papped with my shirt off…I’ve got my big fat guts out on the balcony,” Warne would later complain. His appearance memorably underwent a dramatic transformation when he lost more than 10kg a decade ago, while dating British Hollywood star Liz Hurley. His friend St Kilda veteran Steven Baker took the credit, saying he had signed him up for an organic weight loss drink. But for all the talk about his dieting, the fact was Warne was always at high risk of high disease because he was heavy smoker who ate too much junk food. He even carried an emergency packet of cigarettes in his socks in case he ran out and had an ash tray next to his bed. Former captain Michael Clarke would fondly recall how his mate would have a crafty cigarette before stepping onto the field of play. “Unfortunately having a heart attack is quite a good cure for smoking is it scares the shit out of people and they give up, cardiologist Dr Michael Davis said. “We know that even one or two cigarettes increases the stickiness of blood, and the risk of blood clots forming. Blood clots in coronary arteries causes heart attacks.” According to the Heart Foundation, giving up smoking is the single most effective way protect your heart, as smoking damages the blood vessels to the heart, brain and other parts of the body. Smokers are three times more likely than non smokers to die of a heart attack, two times more likely to die of a stroke and three times more likely to die of a sudden cardiac arrest. Poor diet, such as too much highly processed, fatty foods, sugary drinks and red meat, is also one of the leading causes of heart disease as it drives up blood pressure, and cholesterol, as well as leading to obesity and diabetes. Like most of us, Warne would have been fully aware of all this. But there is a big difference between knowing something is bad for you and doing something about it. Up to 35 per cent of the average Australian’s diet is currently made up of highly processed foods. According to his former doctor, Warne’s unhealthy lifestyle meant the risk of a major heart attack had been building for a long time. Peter Brukner, who was the Australian men’s cricket team doctor during Warne’s playing career, said: “Warnie, if he had heart disease, which sounds like he did, you know that didn’t happen overnight in Thailand.” “It’s been happening for 20, 30 years from smoking, poor diet etc,” he said in an interview with Triple M Perth. But could there have been other factors at play? There has been speculation that Warne’s heart may have sustained further damage from two bouts of COVID. He was briefly put on a ventilator in August last year after catching the virus in London, despite taking two doses of the vaccine. He later revealed that this was to speed up his recovery, after suffering from pounding headaches, shivers and sweats - rather than because he could not breathe. Another milder bout of the virus followed. A recent study by the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis found people who contract Covid-19 have a 72 per cent increased chance of heart failure. Researchers found the virus can also heighten the risk of cardiovascular problems such as strokes and heart attacks for up to a year. Then, there is stress. After his holiday to Thailand, Warne had also been due to take a three-month sabbatical to recharge his batteries, get fit, play some golf and poker, and spend more time with his family. Feeling burnt out from his hectic, globe-trotting schedule of TV commitments and poker tournaments, he had wanted to take a full year off but his manager advised him against it. Warne admitted that his relentless schedule sometimes “scared him a bit”. His stress levels are unlikely to have been eased by having to spent much of the last two years overseas in hotel rooms or going from match to match in Covid containment bubbles, and being locked down while back home in Melbourne. There is a well-established link between prolonged levels of high stress and an increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. A study by scientists at Harvard University in 2017 found that people with higher activity in the amygdala region of the brain, the part associated with stress, were 59pc more likely to develop heart failure of angina or suffer a heart attack or stroke. Scans also showed people with an over-active amygdala also had more clotting in the aorta – the main artery to the heart. “Stress is not good for your body or your emotional well-being,” John Rich, chairman of charity Men’s Health and Wellbeing Western Australia, said We may never know exactly what triggered Warne’s heart attack. But, as his former team mate Darren ‘Boof’ Lehman said, the hope is that we will all pay a little more attention to our heart health from now on.

Shane Warne’s premature death given many of us pause for thought about our own health

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