'Heartstrong': Mumbai-based cardiologist releases book on heart-health

Mumbai: Can a heartbreak actually kill you? Should I run the marathon? Can a toothbrush save your life? Can pet ownership decrease the chances of a heart attack? Is smoking one or two cigarettes a day safe?

Over the years, renowned Mumbai-based interventional cardiologist Dr Kaushal Chhatrapati faced such questions from his patients and started writing these answers—sometimes on Facebook, sometimes in the Notes app on his phone.

“One day, while revisiting those notes, I realised I already had enough real-world, practical material to shape into a book that could help far beyond my clinic,” says Dr. Chhatrapati.

“If we buy a car, or a phone, we get an instruction manual. No such luck with heart, though! This, I felt, needed to be remedied,” he adds.

The book - Heart Strong (Heartstrong) -- is patient-friendly guide designed to build heart-health awareness and help people make smarter decisions before it becomes an emergency.

The book by Dr Chhatrapati, a Senior Interventional Cardiologist at Saifee Hospital, Breach Candy Hospital and Bhatia Hospital, was released in Mumbai.

“In my 21 years as a cardiologist, I have been constantly bombarded with questions that people are often too afraid or too confused to ask openly,” he said, explaining the necessity of such a book.

“But what truly pushed me into action was a moment I will never forget. A 39-year-old man came to me with a heart attack, and I saved his life with an emergency angioplasty. His wife, distraught and trembling, looked at me and asked, ‘My husband was so healthy… why did he get a heart attack?’,” he said.

Dr Chhatrapati went on to add: “That question revealed a dangerous misunderstanding: people confuse being ‘fit’ with being ‘healthy’. Six-pack abs may look fit, but steroids can destroy health. A marathon runner may be fit, but poor sleep, high cholesterol, alcohol and smoking can still be fatal. Heartstrong is my effort to change this mindset—an owner’s manual that God forgot to give you.”

Unlike technical medical textbooks written for doctors, Heartstrong is written deliberately for the common reader — using simple language, relatable stories, and a conversational tone.

Dr Chhatrapati explains that the book is a compilation of the same explanations he gives his patients every day — especially when they ask the same life-changing questions year after year.

In the introduction, he calls it “an owner’s manual that God forgot to give you,” reinforcing the idea that while we receive manuals for cars and phones, most people never learn how to care for the one organ they cannot replace.

“The need for such a book is urgent. Globally, cardiovascular disease remains the number one cause of death, with WHO estimates consistently showing heart-related conditions account for nearly 18 million deaths annually. In India, the burden is rising rapidly due to lifestyle diseases, stress, diabetes, hypertension, smoking, and misinformation.”

In Heartstrong, Dr. Chhatrapati addresses these risks head-on — covering topics like blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, cholesterol, smoking, stress, sleep, diet, CPR awareness, and even myths and scepticism around modern cardiology treatments. He makes a special appeal that every reader must read the chapter on heart attacks, stating clearly that it “can actually save lives.”

Dr. Farokh E. Udwadia called it “patient-friendly” and “easily understandable by lay people,” while Dr. Ashwin Mehta praised its “lucid writing and completeness”.