July 26, 2026 • 34 mins
Tonight, On Your Health First, Dr. Galati has a number of new articles he wants to weigh in on. The first is a New York Times article titled Missed Vaccines, Skipped Colonoscopies: Preventive Care Plummets. There is another about an 87-year-old lady dealing with a prescribing cascade. Dr. Galati ends with a study on the impact alcohol has on blood pressure and one more article on artifical sweetners.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Initial life sequence.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Coming to you live from Houston, Texas, home to the
world's largest medical centery, Approach ras everything. Look, this is
your Health First, the most beneficial health program on radio
(00:24):
with doctor Joe Bellotti. During the next hour, you'll learn
about health, wellness and the prevention of disease. Now, here's
your host, doctor Joe Bellotti.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well, a fine Sunday evening to everybody. I'm doctor Joe Galotti.
Your radio was tuned into Your Health First. We're here
every Sunday evening between seven and eight pm bringing everybody,
all of our listeners the best in health and wellness.
And our mission week after week after week, year after year,
(01:04):
is to make you better consumers of healthcare, period, end
of story. Making you a better consumer of healthcare. Now,
a lot of people will ask me when they see
me as a patient, or when they see me out
at an event, or stop me in the neighborhood. They'll say,
what is it that you really mean when you say
(01:26):
you want your listeners everybody around you to be a
better consumer of healthcare. Well, it's pretty simple because the
patience that I see and what I'm saying to everybody
tonight and every night that I'm on.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The Radio.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Is absolutely rooted in personal experience, experience seeing patients, talking
with family members, and what happens is people will have
a certain pain, they will have something that's bothering them.
There's short of breath, they have a headache, their vision
is blurry, they're drinking more water than usual, they're having diarrhea,
(02:04):
they're constipated. Whatever the situation may be, and they will
assign it very inappropriately to something else that's going on
in their life. They ate too much Mexican last night
and they have a belly ache, or they've got an
upset stomach, or that gave them a headache, or they
drink too much. But really, these problems have been going
(02:27):
on for weeks or months, and the proverbial red light
did not go off in their head to say, you
know what, I've had abdominal pain for a week. Now,
I better go to the doctor. It may be my gallbladder.
I could have an ulcer, maybe I have an infection,
maybe I have something more severe. But people tend to
(02:52):
ignore things that they don't fully understand. And so what
we want to do with this program is give you
the tools to understand, to realize the clues to understand
how your body works. You have to realize if you
know any other circumstance in the world. And this is
(03:13):
a very ridiculous example or analogy that I'm giving you.
If you were home and you hear the fire detector
going off, you know that there may be a fire.
You don't think that there's somebody at the front door.
You don't think it's time to take the brownies out
(03:35):
of your oven. You don't think it's time to call
mom in California. No, it is a damn fire or
a possible fire, and you have to get out of
the house. How do you know that you're aware of
what a fire detector, smoke detector does. There's so much
(03:56):
that we know that we respond to threats and things otherwise,
But when it comes to your body, a lot of
people are given in broad daylight in their face these signals.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Be it pain, be.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
It shortness of breath, be it palpitations, be it trouble
with their vision, trouble with a limb, their shoulder doesn't move,
or their back hurts, or they've got some sort of
urinary problem. These are real things. These are real things
that are happening and Unfortunately, the saddest part of my
day and when is when I see somebody, when I
(04:37):
see a patient that they have had symptoms not very obscure,
rare diseases. Common things are common. You know the old saying,
when you hear hoof beats, it's a horse, not a zebra.
When you have chest pain, you have to worry that
it may be a heart attack or something along those lines.
(05:00):
But we want to by listening along and following our lead,
we want you to be better consumers. Now to follow along.
Doctor Joegalotti dot com. Doctor Joglotti dot com is our website.
You can take a look at all the social media information.
We have articles that we've written, links to the radio program,
(05:21):
podcasts of past radio episodes you could look at. There
is YouTube and Instagram and Facebook. Everything is there. By
going to doctor Joglotti dot com. And if you want
to send me a note, I am all about getting notes.
A lot of people communicate with me through the website.
Just send me a message and I will get back
(05:44):
with you. Now for tonight on the program, We're not
going to have any special experts on the program. But
what I want to do during the week I collated
a number of news articles. Some are good, some are mediocre,
and some outright are silly. But these are the things
(06:04):
that everybody is reading and talking about, and I want
to weigh in on some of these and again give
you some direction on what you really need to believe,
what you sort of may not need to believe or
needs more work, and things that you almost need to ignore.
So that's what we're going to do. Buckle up, don't move.
(06:27):
We're here for the next hour and we are happy
to be here. What we're going to do is take
a quick break, and when we come back, we're going
to start reviewing some of the articles I have selected.
As I said, if you go to doctor Jogolati dot com,
they are and you link out to the Facebook page.
(06:51):
The articles are posted there for you to look at
and share. While you're on the doctor Joglotti website. Sign
up for our newsletter. All there, All right, take a
cook break, get a glass of water. Maybe you could
do ten, fifteen sit ups, a couple of push ups.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I'm doctor Joe Glotti. We will be right back.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Welcome back, everybody, Thanks for tuning into your hell. First,
I'm dot to Joe Golotti. Hey now, The question for
you is who remembers what you were doing in nineteen
eighty five when this MTV video came out. This was
the most amazing thing. These five women that all looked
like robots with bright red lips, not moving emotionless. But
(07:38):
there was something about this video that you just couldn't
take your eyes off it. And Robert palmer Man, he
looked like he was singing at a wedding that he
just got up to sing a song. He was in
black pants, white shirt, skinny white tie. But this was
(08:12):
I thought this was a groundbreaking video and even today
from nineteen eighty five, it has held up. And if
you haven't seen it, check it out. It's an awesome video,
awesome song, I should say. All right, well back to reality.
(08:48):
Don't forget doctor Joeglotti dot com is our website, all right.
So the first article is titled miss vaccines, skipped colon
oscobs Preventive care plummets, and this is something that I
have been talking about since the beginning of this COVID pandemic. Now,
(09:10):
the gist of the article is that because people are
so scared, they are so fearful to step outside their house,
let alone go to the doctor. They are not getting
the medical care that they need, and so the problem
(09:34):
is in The statistics here are pretty impressive. And the
story goes on to say, when the coronavirus pandemic hit,
Americans vastly scaled back their preventive healthcare. And there's a
little sign that this deferred care will be made up,
meaning you cannot make up for the missed tests that
(09:57):
you went for. Vaccineations dropped by nearly sixty percent in April,
and almost no one has been getting kolonoscopies, according to
new data from the nonprofit Healthcare Cost Institute. Now what
we now, I do colonoscovies, and I could tell you
that patients are not coming in. They are scheduled and
(10:21):
for many people, while for some, the colonoscoby is everybody
should know. If you're African, American screening starts at forty
five screening that means you have no symptoms, and typically
for everybody else, it's been fifty years old, though a
couple of years ago the American Cancer Society moved back
(10:44):
screening colonoscoby to forty five years old. For everybody separate story.
I've talked about it before. It has to do with
younger people coming in with polyps and colorectal cancer, and
so what we are concerned about. So really I got
a little sidetracked here. What we are concerned about people
(11:05):
that have had symptoms, They have had some sort of
gastro intestinal bleeding, abdominal pain, weight loss, family history of
colon cancer. And we see them and say, okay, let's
schedule colonoscoby in the next week or two, and they
refuse to come. They are fearful. Even though the facilities
(11:29):
where we're doing these procedures, at the colonoscopies and endoscopes,
we're screening everybody for COVID before you come. We are
taking extra precautions with our staff. The staff is being tested.
We are not letting miscellaneous people come up to the
unit and.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
To be with you. We drop you off with your.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Family downstairs in the valet. And so we are doing
everything to reduce the exposure. Get in quick, get the procedure,
and go back home. But yet people are not doing this.
The other thing is prostate screenings, all right, So a
(12:12):
lot of men are not going for the appropriate prostate screening.
The other thing is mammograms. Okay, now we don't know,
So really, let me just get to the kolmon askabis.
They have declined by eighty eight percent in mid April
and we're still thirty three percent lower by the end
(12:33):
of June. Mammograms fell by seventy seven percent at the
high of pandemic and are still down twenty three percent. Now,
you may say, well, twenty three percent, what's the big deal. Well,
if you're the woman that has a lump or a
discharge out of their nipple, or a family history of
breast cancer and you're supposed to get a mammogram, and
(12:54):
your doctor has been recommending that you get a mammogram,
and you decide not to, that early stage cancer, god forbid,
is now going to be a later stage cancer, and
the likelihood of a cure goes out the window all
(13:14):
over COVID. And what we have been saying since the
beginning is that the fear of COVID is far greater
than the fear of the disease that they're going to
get screened for. And so if you have symptoms, if
you have something wrong with you, abnormal blood work, abnormal skin,
(13:36):
and you are fearful to go for the test or procedure,
whatever it may be, that certainly is a greater risk
to your health and livelihood than the chance of getting
COVID and dying. And that's what doesn't make sense. The
other thing is with the vaccinations. So measles is already
(13:56):
on the rise in the United States because of this
this anti vaccination movement, which has been pretty much debunked.
But now you have people walking around with measles. Kids
are not getting vaccinated for measles. Tell me what's gonna happen.
(14:16):
It's going to be an outbreak of measles. And so
the bottom line here is talk with your doctor, talk
with your health care team, figure out a strategy to
get this testing done. It is absolutely vital that you
get this done. And it is it is so hard
(14:40):
to talk to patients sometimes when you try to reason
with them, but there is this fear of God in
them that if they step out their little square of
their house, that coronavirus is just going to swoop in
and attack them. But again, that is not the way
(15:01):
it is done, especially now that the numbers around the
country are slowly on the decline. We have to be
smart about the risk and benefit. All right, all right,
We're gonna take a break. The news is coming up.
(15:22):
I hope you are having a great Sunday evening tomorrow,
back to work, back to school, the fun begins. I'm
doctor Joe Glotti will be back in just a minute,
raising your Health IQ, one listener at a time. I'm
doctor Joe Golotti. Every Sunday between seven and a PM,
Your Health First is on the air, broadcasting from our
(15:43):
flag ship station seven forty KTRH and heard around the
country on the iHeartRadio appon no matter where you are,
Your Health First Sunday Evening Central time, of course, is
of available now. At the beginning of the program, I
was talking about the whole notion of making you better
(16:08):
consumers of healthcare. This article is shocking. Okay, this is
the story of an eighty seven year old woman in
North Carolina. This is an article that was in the
New York Times, and so what happened? And pay attention
here because this could happen to any of us. So
(16:29):
this eighty seven year old lady, okay, eighty seven. If
any of you listening have an eighty seven year old relative,
your mom, your dad, your brother, your cousin, the guy
next door to you, yourself. We have a lot of
eighty year olds that listen to this program. I think
(16:49):
the oldest is my father in ninety almost ninety six.
He's been listening from the first day we went on
the air alone with my mom. But anyway, eighty six
years that is a red flag, a freaking huge red flag.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
And she goes to the emergency room because she fell
and had some lingering back pain in her back and
her buttocks. She went to the EUROS told that she
had sciatica, and she was prescribed predmasone, which is a
steroid and a muscle relaxant, double red flag predoszone in
(17:31):
an old person is going to make them get crazy,
all right, It will get them as crazy as a
cot on a hot tin roof number one, number two
muscle relaxance. These tend to sedate people. So on one end,
(17:52):
you got an eighty seven year old lady that's on
prednizone that's going to be all hopped up. Then the
muscle relaxing is going to alter her mental status. Okay, Well,
guess what. Three days later she comes in with delirium, confusion,
altered mental status.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
She returns to the er and is.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Admitted and discharged two days later when the drug induced
delirium resolves. Okay, so the message here this is like
medical school, Like we're making rounds. Eighty seven year old lady.
Big red flag, second red flag, premosone, third red flag
muscle relaxant. The next red flag is the two of
(18:33):
them together. But thank god, lady gets better. She goes home,
same lady. A few weeks later, stomach pain develops.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
She makes a.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Third trip to the er and she's prescribed an antibiotic
and a proton pump inhibitor nexium omprazol prevaced any of
those purple pill type drugs. Within a week, she develops
severe diarrhea, lasting several days.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Back to the er.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
This time she was given a prescription for dicyclamine to
relieve intestinal spasms, which, drum roll everybody, triggered another bout
of delirium and three more days in the hospital. She
was discharged after lab test and imaging studies revealed nothing
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So here you are.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
The lady has stomach pain, probably from the steroids. Okay,
pregnosone and those steroids will eat up your stomach. She
is incorrectly given antibiotics which will give you diarrhea. Luckily
she did not get c deficile diarrhea, which we could
(19:45):
kill an eighty seven year old woman.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So the.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Message here is that you have to be your own advocate,
you have to be a better consumer of healthcare.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
We have to raise your health IQ.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
And so what they describe this phenomena is a prescribing cascade,
meaning you go in for one thing and you get
a medicine, come back or call in and say, hey,
now I got another problem. Well, instead of realizing that
the drug, the medicine was the root of the problem,
(20:24):
you get piled on another medicine, which then itself causes
another problem, a side effect, adverse event as we would say,
and what does that do? It triggers another round of medications.
And so this is incredibly dangerous and this is what
I see every day in my practice now while I
(20:46):
am a specialist, I get to look at patients and
the care that they received from other providers and they
come in with a darn shopping bag full of prescriptions.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
They don't know what they're on.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Drugs are interacting and it is a disaster and it's
very very unsafe, not only for young people, middle aged
but it's especially dangerous for the elderly. And so what
is really the take home here tonight? What is it
(21:23):
that you need to be aware of?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Well?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
First of all, and it really is a shame that you,
a non medical person other than you listen to your
health first and you know a lot. What did doctor
Glotti say? But you, as the non medical trained person,
have to be the watchdog for yourself, your immediate family,
(21:50):
your mother, your aunts, and have to be on absolute guard.
But unfortunately this is the way it is. Trust me,
you need to get to that level of oversight where
you are questioning every single thing that's going on. You
(22:11):
go to the er, you go to the doctor, whatever
the situation is, whatever interface you have with your healthcare team,
you have to question number one, why am I taking this?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Number two?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Is there a lower dose or is there something about
my situation doctor, I have heart disease, I have cancer,
I have one kidney, I've got livid disease that the
dose should be reduced. The next question is what are
the side effects? What can I anticipate?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Now?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
A lot of the times, what I hear and what
I see is that a lot of doctors are not
willing to sit and explain all of this to them.
They may dish it off to their medicalists, which may
be totally fine, but you have to make sure that
you leave that office with the answers to those three questions,
(23:09):
do I need it? Is there something about me or
mom that they should be on either a different drug,
a different formulation or different dose, And what are the
side effects that we need to watch out for? And
really the other one is to make sure that there
(23:30):
is no drug drug interaction. Now, with the electronic medical
records that we have, a lot of these warnings pop up.
But it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a
good relationship with your pharmacist.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Okay, And so.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
This is an ongoing battle for all of you, But
it takes a little bit of nerve to look at
your doctor or pa ordinar's practitioner in the face and say, now,
wait a second before I leave here, do I really
need this? Now? If they cop an attitude and say me, doctor,
(24:14):
you patient, do as I say and leave it at that,
that might not be the right place for you. I
could tell you that, but it doesn't hurt if your
questions were pretty much answered and you feel like you
got an okay answer. I still think it behooves you
(24:37):
to go home, especially if you are not in the
medical field. You're not used to this stuff. You don't
know the terms, you don't know the jargon. You have
to go home and go to the best tool that
you have, which is your computer, and look it up
and if questions come up, call the pharmacy, call your
(25:00):
doctor and get clarification. And it's okay to say, look,
I look something up and I'm not quite sure. What
do you think and get it clarified. That's the best
thing you can do.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
All right.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Final segment coming up. I'm doctor Joe Glotti. I think
I've got a bunch of articles, but we were going
way slower. But I believe these articles need to be
discussed in the detail that we are talking about tonight.
So I hope you're getting something out of it. But
big red flag from what I just said eighty seven
(25:35):
years old fireworks should be going off that these individuals
older people do not tolerate medicines that a forty year
old would take.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
All right.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Final segment coming up. Don't forget doctor Joegalotti dot Com.
I'll write back.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
All right.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Final segment of this week's Your Health First. I'm doctor
Joe Galotti, and as we say every evening, go to
doctor Joegalotti dot com. Sound for newsletters, send me an email,
let me know what's on your mind, let me know
what you think about the program. We a few weeks
ago we did a segment with research for fatty liver disease,
(26:17):
and that's still we are still enrolling patients. And so
if you have been told or you know that you
have a fatty liver related to your weight, type two diabetes,
high cholesterol, do send me a message and we may
be able to enroll you in one of our research
studies for fatty liver. It's a very exciting time now
(26:39):
speaking about liver disease and alcohol. Alcohol is something people
love to hear about, and so this particular study is
based on a research study that the American Heart Association
just released this past week, and it has to do
(27:02):
with consuming alcohol and its impact on blood pressure. Now,
keep in mind with blood pressure, the reason blood pressure
is so important is because when it is high, when
it's elevated, when you have hypertension, for the most part,
you have absolutely no symptoms. You feel good, nothing really
(27:25):
is going on. And that's why they call it the
silent killer because next thing you know, you're watching an
Astros game on TV and you keel over from a
stroke or a massive heart attack, and they'll say, wow,
how did Bob die?
Speaker 1 (27:37):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Well, he had untreated hypertension or neglected hypertension for ten years.
And so what the American Heart Association did. They wanted
to see what the impact of alcohol was on high
blood pressure, and so they looked at about ten thousand
(28:00):
adults with type two diabetes, this is the adult onset diabetes.
And what they found is that those individuals that consumed
moderate amounts of alcohol, like eight or more beverages per week,
(28:22):
had an increased risk of high blood pressure or a
rise in high blood pressure, especially in those people with
type two diabetes. Now, as a reference, we need to
go over what a drink is, because I'll talk to
a patient. They say, yeah, I have one drink every night,
(28:44):
but they fill up a stadium cup with Jack daniels
and that is their drink interpretation. That's six drinks, that's
six shots of liquor. But anyway, one drink is twelve
ounce beerve ounces of wine or one and a half
ounces of hard liquor some sort of distilled spirit. Okay,
(29:09):
so what they categorize patients as having none no alcohol.
Light drinkers were one to seven drinks per week. Moderate
was eight to fourteen. Now you figure eight to fourteen.
A lot of patients they have a drink every night,
they have a glass of wine or a glass and
(29:30):
a half of wine, and so it adds up rather quickly.
Or they have a beer at lunch and then a
glass of wine at dinner. So that's two. So in
a week they're having fourteen. Heavy is fifteen or more
drinks per week. And so you need to right now
learning point here, is you a light, moderate or heavy drinker?
(29:54):
The heck with this research study. But that's what you
have to ask yourself. And so those that did not
drink or light drinkers, it did not impact their blood pressure.
Moderate drinkers were associated with an increased likelihood of elevated
blood pressure by seventy nine percent. Heavy drinkers was linked
(30:14):
to an increased likelihood of elebratevated blood pressure by ninety
one percent. And so the bottom line here, if you
have type two diabetes, you do not want to be drinking.
If you don't drink, don't start, and certainly if you
don't have type two diabetes, you need to limit your alcohol. Anyway,
(30:36):
if you go back to our podcast site, we had
Ana Had O'Connor from the New York Times on and
we talked about a recent study where basically they're saying
no alcohol is safe and as a part of that
that I agree with. Okay, so beware type two diabetes
drinking is associated with high blood pressure, the silent killer
(31:01):
and the final article will probably squeeze in here today
speaking of Anahad O'Connor from the New York Times, this
is an article from about a month ago. Can artificial
sweeteners keep us from gaining weight? And this is the
age old controversy as to whether or not these artificial
sweeteners actually are they actually responsible for making us gain weight?
(31:27):
And the answer is beware. I would just.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Say, as a top level.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Answer to a question is it safe to have artificial sweeteners?
I would say, if you were overweight, stay away from
these things. So what they found is that the artificial
sweeteners do have an effect on hormones and blood sugar.
They really are tricking your metabolism. And what the research
(32:02):
found is that the individuals that consumed the artificial sweeteners.
If you were of normal weight and you switched to
an artificial sweetener, you probably would lose a pound or two.
(32:23):
But if you have belly fat, you're obese and you
have a big belly, and it really is that abdominal
belly fat that is metabolically actor for you. In this
particular study, after consuming artificial sweeteners for a year, you
gained ten pounds. And so try to figure that one out.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
And so.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
There is a lot of confusion around the use of sweeteners.
I believe that you have look at sweetness sweet foods,
as they mentioned in the article, as a treat This
should not be an everyday sort of thing. From an
(33:11):
evolutionary standpoint, sweetness is something really really relatively new on
the grand scheme of human civilization, but limiting you know, Look,
if you want to have an occasional beverage that is
(33:32):
artificially sweetened, that is fine. But a regular dose and
I hear people drinking four and five diet cokes a day,
or diet pepsis or some other flavor drink that really
is not going to work. All right, Well, let's wrap
it up for this Sunday evening. I appreciate everybody tuning
in and spending the hour with me and my team.
(33:53):
Don't forget doctor Joglotti dot com. Do take care of yourself,
be a consumer, ask questions of you or doctors and
your care team, but come involved. That's the key thing.
We'll see you again next Sunday night. Take care everybody.
Thanks for listening to your health first with doctor Joe Galotti.
(34:13):
For more information on this program, doctor Galotti's practice, or
seeing him as a patient, go to doctor Joe Galotti
dot com. Hope to see you all again next Sunday
evening at seven o'clock
Initial life sequence.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Coming to you live from Houston, Texas, home to the
world's largest medical centery, Approach ras everything. Look, this is
your Health First, the most beneficial health program on radio
(00:24):
with doctor Joe Bellotti. During the next hour, you'll learn
about health, wellness and the prevention of disease. Now, here's
your host, doctor Joe Bellotti.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well, a fine Sunday evening to everybody. I'm doctor Joe Galotti.
Your radio was tuned into Your Health First. We're here
every Sunday evening between seven and eight pm bringing everybody,
all of our listeners the best in health and wellness.
And our mission week after week after week, year after year,
(01:04):
is to make you better consumers of healthcare, period, end
of story. Making you a better consumer of healthcare. Now,
a lot of people will ask me when they see
me as a patient, or when they see me out
at an event, or stop me in the neighborhood. They'll say,
what is it that you really mean when you say
(01:26):
you want your listeners everybody around you to be a
better consumer of healthcare. Well, it's pretty simple because the
patience that I see and what I'm saying to everybody
tonight and every night that I'm on.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The Radio.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Is absolutely rooted in personal experience, experience seeing patients, talking
with family members, and what happens is people will have
a certain pain, they will have something that's bothering them.
There's short of breath, they have a headache, their vision
is blurry, they're drinking more water than usual, they're having diarrhea,
(02:04):
they're constipated. Whatever the situation may be, and they will
assign it very inappropriately to something else that's going on
in their life. They ate too much Mexican last night
and they have a belly ache, or they've got an
upset stomach, or that gave them a headache, or they
drink too much. But really, these problems have been going
(02:27):
on for weeks or months, and the proverbial red light
did not go off in their head to say, you
know what, I've had abdominal pain for a week. Now,
I better go to the doctor. It may be my gallbladder.
I could have an ulcer, maybe I have an infection,
maybe I have something more severe. But people tend to
(02:52):
ignore things that they don't fully understand. And so what
we want to do with this program is give you
the tools to understand, to realize the clues to understand
how your body works. You have to realize if you
know any other circumstance in the world. And this is
(03:13):
a very ridiculous example or analogy that I'm giving you.
If you were home and you hear the fire detector
going off, you know that there may be a fire.
You don't think that there's somebody at the front door.
You don't think it's time to take the brownies out
(03:35):
of your oven. You don't think it's time to call
mom in California. No, it is a damn fire or
a possible fire, and you have to get out of
the house. How do you know that you're aware of
what a fire detector, smoke detector does. There's so much
(03:56):
that we know that we respond to threats and things otherwise,
But when it comes to your body, a lot of
people are given in broad daylight in their face these signals.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Be it pain, be.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
It shortness of breath, be it palpitations, be it trouble
with their vision, trouble with a limb, their shoulder doesn't move,
or their back hurts, or they've got some sort of
urinary problem. These are real things. These are real things
that are happening and Unfortunately, the saddest part of my
day and when is when I see somebody, when I
(04:37):
see a patient that they have had symptoms not very obscure,
rare diseases. Common things are common. You know the old saying,
when you hear hoof beats, it's a horse, not a zebra.
When you have chest pain, you have to worry that
it may be a heart attack or something along those lines.
(05:00):
But we want to by listening along and following our lead,
we want you to be better consumers. Now to follow along.
Doctor Joegalotti dot com. Doctor Joglotti dot com is our website.
You can take a look at all the social media information.
We have articles that we've written, links to the radio program,
(05:21):
podcasts of past radio episodes you could look at. There
is YouTube and Instagram and Facebook. Everything is there. By
going to doctor Joglotti dot com. And if you want
to send me a note, I am all about getting notes.
A lot of people communicate with me through the website.
Just send me a message and I will get back
(05:44):
with you. Now for tonight on the program, We're not
going to have any special experts on the program. But
what I want to do during the week I collated
a number of news articles. Some are good, some are mediocre,
and some outright are silly. But these are the things
(06:04):
that everybody is reading and talking about, and I want
to weigh in on some of these and again give
you some direction on what you really need to believe,
what you sort of may not need to believe or
needs more work, and things that you almost need to ignore.
So that's what we're going to do. Buckle up, don't move.
(06:27):
We're here for the next hour and we are happy
to be here. What we're going to do is take
a quick break, and when we come back, we're going
to start reviewing some of the articles I have selected.
As I said, if you go to doctor Jogolati dot com,
they are and you link out to the Facebook page.
(06:51):
The articles are posted there for you to look at
and share. While you're on the doctor Joglotti website. Sign
up for our newsletter. All there, All right, take a
cook break, get a glass of water. Maybe you could
do ten, fifteen sit ups, a couple of push ups.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I'm doctor Joe Glotti. We will be right back.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Welcome back, everybody, Thanks for tuning into your hell. First,
I'm dot to Joe Golotti. Hey now, The question for
you is who remembers what you were doing in nineteen
eighty five when this MTV video came out. This was
the most amazing thing. These five women that all looked
like robots with bright red lips, not moving emotionless. But
(07:38):
there was something about this video that you just couldn't
take your eyes off it. And Robert palmer Man, he
looked like he was singing at a wedding that he
just got up to sing a song. He was in
black pants, white shirt, skinny white tie. But this was
(08:12):
I thought this was a groundbreaking video and even today
from nineteen eighty five, it has held up. And if
you haven't seen it, check it out. It's an awesome video,
awesome song, I should say. All right, well back to reality.
(08:48):
Don't forget doctor Joeglotti dot com is our website, all right.
So the first article is titled miss vaccines, skipped colon
oscobs Preventive care plummets, and this is something that I
have been talking about since the beginning of this COVID pandemic. Now,
(09:10):
the gist of the article is that because people are
so scared, they are so fearful to step outside their house,
let alone go to the doctor. They are not getting
the medical care that they need, and so the problem
(09:34):
is in The statistics here are pretty impressive. And the
story goes on to say, when the coronavirus pandemic hit,
Americans vastly scaled back their preventive healthcare. And there's a
little sign that this deferred care will be made up,
meaning you cannot make up for the missed tests that
(09:57):
you went for. Vaccineations dropped by nearly sixty percent in April,
and almost no one has been getting kolonoscopies, according to
new data from the nonprofit Healthcare Cost Institute. Now what
we now, I do colonoscovies, and I could tell you
that patients are not coming in. They are scheduled and
(10:21):
for many people, while for some, the colonoscoby is everybody
should know. If you're African, American screening starts at forty
five screening that means you have no symptoms, and typically
for everybody else, it's been fifty years old, though a
couple of years ago the American Cancer Society moved back
(10:44):
screening colonoscoby to forty five years old. For everybody separate story.
I've talked about it before. It has to do with
younger people coming in with polyps and colorectal cancer, and
so what we are concerned about. So really I got
a little sidetracked here. What we are concerned about people
(11:05):
that have had symptoms, They have had some sort of
gastro intestinal bleeding, abdominal pain, weight loss, family history of
colon cancer. And we see them and say, okay, let's
schedule colonoscoby in the next week or two, and they
refuse to come. They are fearful. Even though the facilities
(11:29):
where we're doing these procedures, at the colonoscopies and endoscopes,
we're screening everybody for COVID before you come. We are
taking extra precautions with our staff. The staff is being tested.
We are not letting miscellaneous people come up to the
unit and.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
To be with you. We drop you off with your.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Family downstairs in the valet. And so we are doing
everything to reduce the exposure. Get in quick, get the procedure,
and go back home. But yet people are not doing this.
The other thing is prostate screenings, all right, So a
(12:12):
lot of men are not going for the appropriate prostate screening.
The other thing is mammograms. Okay, now we don't know,
So really, let me just get to the kolmon askabis.
They have declined by eighty eight percent in mid April
and we're still thirty three percent lower by the end
(12:33):
of June. Mammograms fell by seventy seven percent at the
high of pandemic and are still down twenty three percent. Now,
you may say, well, twenty three percent, what's the big deal. Well,
if you're the woman that has a lump or a
discharge out of their nipple, or a family history of
breast cancer and you're supposed to get a mammogram, and
(12:54):
your doctor has been recommending that you get a mammogram,
and you decide not to, that early stage cancer, god forbid,
is now going to be a later stage cancer, and
the likelihood of a cure goes out the window all
(13:14):
over COVID. And what we have been saying since the
beginning is that the fear of COVID is far greater
than the fear of the disease that they're going to
get screened for. And so if you have symptoms, if
you have something wrong with you, abnormal blood work, abnormal skin,
(13:36):
and you are fearful to go for the test or procedure,
whatever it may be, that certainly is a greater risk
to your health and livelihood than the chance of getting
COVID and dying. And that's what doesn't make sense. The
other thing is with the vaccinations. So measles is already
(13:56):
on the rise in the United States because of this
this anti vaccination movement, which has been pretty much debunked.
But now you have people walking around with measles. Kids
are not getting vaccinated for measles. Tell me what's gonna happen.
(14:16):
It's going to be an outbreak of measles. And so
the bottom line here is talk with your doctor, talk
with your health care team, figure out a strategy to
get this testing done. It is absolutely vital that you
get this done. And it is it is so hard
(14:40):
to talk to patients sometimes when you try to reason
with them, but there is this fear of God in
them that if they step out their little square of
their house, that coronavirus is just going to swoop in
and attack them. But again, that is not the way
(15:01):
it is done, especially now that the numbers around the
country are slowly on the decline. We have to be
smart about the risk and benefit. All right, all right,
We're gonna take a break. The news is coming up.
(15:22):
I hope you are having a great Sunday evening tomorrow,
back to work, back to school, the fun begins. I'm
doctor Joe Glotti will be back in just a minute,
raising your Health IQ, one listener at a time. I'm
doctor Joe Golotti. Every Sunday between seven and a PM,
Your Health First is on the air, broadcasting from our
(15:43):
flag ship station seven forty KTRH and heard around the
country on the iHeartRadio appon no matter where you are,
Your Health First Sunday Evening Central time, of course, is
of available now. At the beginning of the program, I
was talking about the whole notion of making you better
(16:08):
consumers of healthcare. This article is shocking. Okay, this is
the story of an eighty seven year old woman in
North Carolina. This is an article that was in the
New York Times, and so what happened? And pay attention
here because this could happen to any of us. So
(16:29):
this eighty seven year old lady, okay, eighty seven. If
any of you listening have an eighty seven year old relative,
your mom, your dad, your brother, your cousin, the guy
next door to you, yourself. We have a lot of
eighty year olds that listen to this program. I think
(16:49):
the oldest is my father in ninety almost ninety six.
He's been listening from the first day we went on
the air alone with my mom. But anyway, eighty six
years that is a red flag, a freaking huge red flag.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
And she goes to the emergency room because she fell
and had some lingering back pain in her back and
her buttocks. She went to the EUROS told that she
had sciatica, and she was prescribed predmasone, which is a
steroid and a muscle relaxant, double red flag predoszone in
(17:31):
an old person is going to make them get crazy,
all right, It will get them as crazy as a
cot on a hot tin roof number one, number two
muscle relaxance. These tend to sedate people. So on one end,
(17:52):
you got an eighty seven year old lady that's on
prednizone that's going to be all hopped up. Then the
muscle relaxing is going to alter her mental status. Okay, Well,
guess what. Three days later she comes in with delirium, confusion,
altered mental status.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
She returns to the er and is.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Admitted and discharged two days later when the drug induced
delirium resolves. Okay, so the message here this is like
medical school, Like we're making rounds. Eighty seven year old lady.
Big red flag, second red flag, premosone, third red flag
muscle relaxant. The next red flag is the two of
(18:33):
them together. But thank god, lady gets better. She goes home,
same lady. A few weeks later, stomach pain develops.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
She makes a.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Third trip to the er and she's prescribed an antibiotic
and a proton pump inhibitor nexium omprazol prevaced any of
those purple pill type drugs. Within a week, she develops
severe diarrhea, lasting several days.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Back to the er.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
This time she was given a prescription for dicyclamine to
relieve intestinal spasms, which, drum roll everybody, triggered another bout
of delirium and three more days in the hospital. She
was discharged after lab test and imaging studies revealed nothing
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So here you are.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
The lady has stomach pain, probably from the steroids. Okay,
pregnosone and those steroids will eat up your stomach. She
is incorrectly given antibiotics which will give you diarrhea. Luckily
she did not get c deficile diarrhea, which we could
(19:45):
kill an eighty seven year old woman.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So the.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Message here is that you have to be your own advocate,
you have to be a better consumer of healthcare.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
We have to raise your health IQ.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
And so what they describe this phenomena is a prescribing cascade,
meaning you go in for one thing and you get
a medicine, come back or call in and say, hey,
now I got another problem. Well, instead of realizing that
the drug, the medicine was the root of the problem,
(20:24):
you get piled on another medicine, which then itself causes
another problem, a side effect, adverse event as we would say,
and what does that do? It triggers another round of medications.
And so this is incredibly dangerous and this is what
I see every day in my practice now while I
(20:46):
am a specialist, I get to look at patients and
the care that they received from other providers and they
come in with a darn shopping bag full of prescriptions.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
They don't know what they're on.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Drugs are interacting and it is a disaster and it's
very very unsafe, not only for young people, middle aged
but it's especially dangerous for the elderly. And so what
is really the take home here tonight? What is it
(21:23):
that you need to be aware of?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Well?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
First of all, and it really is a shame that you,
a non medical person other than you listen to your
health first and you know a lot. What did doctor
Glotti say? But you, as the non medical trained person,
have to be the watchdog for yourself, your immediate family,
(21:50):
your mother, your aunts, and have to be on absolute guard.
But unfortunately this is the way it is. Trust me,
you need to get to that level of oversight where
you are questioning every single thing that's going on. You
(22:11):
go to the er, you go to the doctor, whatever
the situation is, whatever interface you have with your healthcare team,
you have to question number one, why am I taking this?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Number two?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Is there a lower dose or is there something about
my situation doctor, I have heart disease, I have cancer,
I have one kidney, I've got livid disease that the
dose should be reduced. The next question is what are
the side effects? What can I anticipate?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Now?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
A lot of the times, what I hear and what
I see is that a lot of doctors are not
willing to sit and explain all of this to them.
They may dish it off to their medicalists, which may
be totally fine, but you have to make sure that
you leave that office with the answers to those three questions,
(23:09):
do I need it? Is there something about me or
mom that they should be on either a different drug,
a different formulation or different dose, And what are the
side effects that we need to watch out for? And
really the other one is to make sure that there
(23:30):
is no drug drug interaction. Now, with the electronic medical
records that we have, a lot of these warnings pop up.
But it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a
good relationship with your pharmacist.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Okay, And so.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
This is an ongoing battle for all of you, But
it takes a little bit of nerve to look at
your doctor or pa ordinar's practitioner in the face and say, now,
wait a second before I leave here, do I really
need this? Now? If they cop an attitude and say me, doctor,
(24:14):
you patient, do as I say and leave it at that,
that might not be the right place for you. I
could tell you that, but it doesn't hurt if your
questions were pretty much answered and you feel like you
got an okay answer. I still think it behooves you
(24:37):
to go home, especially if you are not in the
medical field. You're not used to this stuff. You don't
know the terms, you don't know the jargon. You have
to go home and go to the best tool that
you have, which is your computer, and look it up
and if questions come up, call the pharmacy, call your
(25:00):
doctor and get clarification. And it's okay to say, look,
I look something up and I'm not quite sure. What
do you think and get it clarified. That's the best
thing you can do.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
All right.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Final segment coming up. I'm doctor Joe Glotti. I think
I've got a bunch of articles, but we were going
way slower. But I believe these articles need to be
discussed in the detail that we are talking about tonight.
So I hope you're getting something out of it. But
big red flag from what I just said eighty seven
(25:35):
years old fireworks should be going off that these individuals
older people do not tolerate medicines that a forty year
old would take.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
All right.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Final segment coming up. Don't forget doctor Joegalotti dot Com.
I'll write back.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
All right.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Final segment of this week's Your Health First. I'm doctor
Joe Galotti, and as we say every evening, go to
doctor Joegalotti dot com. Sound for newsletters, send me an email,
let me know what's on your mind, let me know
what you think about the program. We a few weeks
ago we did a segment with research for fatty liver disease,
(26:17):
and that's still we are still enrolling patients. And so
if you have been told or you know that you
have a fatty liver related to your weight, type two diabetes,
high cholesterol, do send me a message and we may
be able to enroll you in one of our research
studies for fatty liver. It's a very exciting time now
(26:39):
speaking about liver disease and alcohol. Alcohol is something people
love to hear about, and so this particular study is
based on a research study that the American Heart Association
just released this past week, and it has to do
(27:02):
with consuming alcohol and its impact on blood pressure. Now,
keep in mind with blood pressure, the reason blood pressure
is so important is because when it is high, when
it's elevated, when you have hypertension, for the most part,
you have absolutely no symptoms. You feel good, nothing really
(27:25):
is going on. And that's why they call it the
silent killer because next thing you know, you're watching an
Astros game on TV and you keel over from a
stroke or a massive heart attack, and they'll say, wow,
how did Bob die?
Speaker 1 (27:37):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Well, he had untreated hypertension or neglected hypertension for ten years.
And so what the American Heart Association did. They wanted
to see what the impact of alcohol was on high
blood pressure, and so they looked at about ten thousand
(28:00):
adults with type two diabetes, this is the adult onset diabetes.
And what they found is that those individuals that consumed
moderate amounts of alcohol, like eight or more beverages per week,
(28:22):
had an increased risk of high blood pressure or a
rise in high blood pressure, especially in those people with
type two diabetes. Now, as a reference, we need to
go over what a drink is, because I'll talk to
a patient. They say, yeah, I have one drink every night,
(28:44):
but they fill up a stadium cup with Jack daniels
and that is their drink interpretation. That's six drinks, that's
six shots of liquor. But anyway, one drink is twelve
ounce beerve ounces of wine or one and a half
ounces of hard liquor some sort of distilled spirit. Okay,
(29:09):
so what they categorize patients as having none no alcohol.
Light drinkers were one to seven drinks per week. Moderate
was eight to fourteen. Now you figure eight to fourteen.
A lot of patients they have a drink every night,
they have a glass of wine or a glass and
(29:30):
a half of wine, and so it adds up rather quickly.
Or they have a beer at lunch and then a
glass of wine at dinner. So that's two. So in
a week they're having fourteen. Heavy is fifteen or more
drinks per week. And so you need to right now
learning point here, is you a light, moderate or heavy drinker?
(29:54):
The heck with this research study. But that's what you
have to ask yourself. And so those that did not
drink or light drinkers, it did not impact their blood pressure.
Moderate drinkers were associated with an increased likelihood of elevated
blood pressure by seventy nine percent. Heavy drinkers was linked
(30:14):
to an increased likelihood of elebratevated blood pressure by ninety
one percent. And so the bottom line here, if you
have type two diabetes, you do not want to be drinking.
If you don't drink, don't start, and certainly if you
don't have type two diabetes, you need to limit your alcohol. Anyway,
(30:36):
if you go back to our podcast site, we had
Ana Had O'Connor from the New York Times on and
we talked about a recent study where basically they're saying
no alcohol is safe and as a part of that
that I agree with. Okay, so beware type two diabetes
drinking is associated with high blood pressure, the silent killer
(31:01):
and the final article will probably squeeze in here today
speaking of Anahad O'Connor from the New York Times, this
is an article from about a month ago. Can artificial
sweeteners keep us from gaining weight? And this is the
age old controversy as to whether or not these artificial
sweeteners actually are they actually responsible for making us gain weight?
(31:27):
And the answer is beware. I would just.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Say, as a top level.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Answer to a question is it safe to have artificial sweeteners?
I would say, if you were overweight, stay away from
these things. So what they found is that the artificial
sweeteners do have an effect on hormones and blood sugar.
They really are tricking your metabolism. And what the research
(32:02):
found is that the individuals that consumed the artificial sweeteners.
If you were of normal weight and you switched to
an artificial sweetener, you probably would lose a pound or two.
(32:23):
But if you have belly fat, you're obese and you
have a big belly, and it really is that abdominal
belly fat that is metabolically actor for you. In this
particular study, after consuming artificial sweeteners for a year, you
gained ten pounds. And so try to figure that one out.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
And so.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
There is a lot of confusion around the use of sweeteners.
I believe that you have look at sweetness sweet foods,
as they mentioned in the article, as a treat This
should not be an everyday sort of thing. From an
(33:11):
evolutionary standpoint, sweetness is something really really relatively new on
the grand scheme of human civilization, but limiting you know, Look,
if you want to have an occasional beverage that is
(33:32):
artificially sweetened, that is fine. But a regular dose and
I hear people drinking four and five diet cokes a day,
or diet pepsis or some other flavor drink that really
is not going to work. All right, Well, let's wrap
it up for this Sunday evening. I appreciate everybody tuning
in and spending the hour with me and my team.
(33:53):
Don't forget doctor Joglotti dot com. Do take care of yourself,
be a consumer, ask questions of you or doctors and
your care team, but come involved. That's the key thing.
We'll see you again next Sunday night. Take care everybody.
Thanks for listening to your health first with doctor Joe Galotti.
(34:13):
For more information on this program, doctor Galotti's practice, or
seeing him as a patient, go to doctor Joe Galotti
dot com. Hope to see you all again next Sunday
evening at seven o'clock
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