February 2, 2026 • 43 mins
- Listen Saturday mornings at 8 as Dr. Msonthi Levine discusses medical issues and takes your calls on News Talk 560 KLVI. Dr Levine is board certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics. His office is located at 3080 Milam in Beaumont, Texas. He can be reached at 409-347-3621.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, Welcome to South these Sex's Internet radio listeners. Welcome, Welcome,
walk towards another edition of the Doctor Levine Medical Hour.
I am your weekly host, Doctor Levine, coming to you
live from the studios of KLVI here in Beaumont, Texas,
cross the street from Parkdale Mall, taking your phone calls,
answering questions about healthcare and decisions about healthcare to keep
(00:23):
you live, stay alive, and as healthy as possible. We're
here to try and help you answer those questions. They
can be difficult, they can be confusing. I'm sort of
on an inside see this every day talking with hundreds
thousands of patients and sort of pick up a few
(00:44):
ideas and a few clues in terms of what's good,
what's bad, what works, what really doesn't work. There's so
much advice out there now that patients sort of have
their own information highways set up up to get them
their answers, including listening to the show. Phone lines are
(01:06):
open eight nine to six klv I one one hundred
and three three zero klv I. We'd love to hear
from you, so give us a call and we can
discuss what's on your mind and answer those questions to
make this easy, because for me, it is pretty straightforward.
It's pretty obvious what you need to do. It's just
(01:29):
getting it done. It's so many distractions, so many obstacles
to getting it done that sometimes we just can't. Days
and months go by, years go by and just no
change with those lifestyle habits, and you find yourself one
day having to go to the er with your first
(01:52):
event and hopefully that'll be your last event. We don't
want you to have repeated events, but sometimes that is
the issue. Your health gets so bad that you have
to go back and forth to the hospital, or you're
going back and forth to multiple physicians, doctors offices, pharmacy visits,
(02:16):
getting prescriptions, getting your sack full of mets. Yes, sometimes
it does get that way. Unfortunately through no fault of
your own. Sometimes you get dealt that bad card. But again,
we're just trying to reduce your risk. Just like automobile accidents.
It's sort of my way to compare the state of
(02:41):
affairs with your health in terms of your health crises.
If you get one, sometimes it's just one of those
things that happens, meaning you've done everything correctly, you've been
to your doctor, visits. You've done everything, doctor Levine says,
and man, you still end up in the hospital. Which, again,
the world is not perfect. And I know we want
(03:02):
a perfect world. We strive for that. We strive for
that in healthcare, and we are a lot better with that.
But it's difficult to make it zero risk and make
it perfect every single encounter, every visit, every single day
at every hospital in this country. But you want to
(03:24):
try and reduce your risk. And that's really what most
advice is all about, is how can I reduce my
risk of having to have that experience, Just like driving
the speed limit, putting on your seat belt, it reduces
your risk of being in an accident. But again, cannot
be zero percent. Just a lot of things out of
(03:47):
your control that are outside the vehicle, just like with
healthcare and your health, a lot of things you just
cannot control. But certainly you can do your part. And
if you've listened to I show, you know that it's
not just one thing you have to do. You know,
it's a few things that you have to do. Certainly
there are things that are more important than others. And
(04:09):
this whole drink a glass of wine. Things still comes
up sometimes with my patients asking if that is a
healthy option for them, and I think if you listen
to my show, you know there's a lot of things
you can do to be healthy, and drinking a glass
(04:29):
of wine, I think for most patient I'm sorry, most physicians,
most healthcare professionals, it's not something they're recommending as a
top priority.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And that got started.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
A long time ago with some literature that came out
comparing the health of Europeans to the health of Americans
and looking at some habits of Europeans and the fact
that their heart diseases not as high, but they consume beer,
(05:04):
they consume wine, So maybe it's the ingredient in the
wine that is protecting you from cardiovascular disease. And I
guess if we try to dumb this thing down and
keep it simple in terms of if you can do
A and B, then that will guarantee your health and
(05:26):
improve your health and lessen the chances of having to
go to the hospital versus the other guy who's not
doing it. He's not drinking wine, so because I am,
I'm healthier than him. And it is sort of interesting
to talk to patients and see kind of the landscape
(05:48):
out there and how patients are trying to position themselves
with their own health against the other person who's not
doing it, who hasn't discovered the medicine or liquid or
tablet or magic substance that they saw somewhere that some
person said was good for them and they took it,
(06:09):
and because they took it, there now feeling the way
they should sort of the success story that you normally
get with most of these dietary supplements. You know, I
sometimes talk about these dietary supplements and yeah, it's interesting
to listen to patients who get these various substances over
(06:34):
the counter online, have it mailed to them, and start
taking these things and thinking that it's putting them in
a good advantage, it's helping preserve their health, it's helping
keep them out of doctor Levine's office. And you know,
they have sort of bought into that idea that this
(06:55):
liquid or substance or package of substances, if you will,
will give me that health that I'm looking for, the
vigor that I'm looking for. I want to preserve my memory.
A lot of people used to ask for how can
I boost my immune system? But now we get a
lot of those conversations about your memory, how can you
(07:15):
boost your memory, how can you preserve your memory? And
there are a couple of products out there that have
been promoted that patients have sort of bought into that
idea that if I take this and I'm doing myself
some good, not really understanding that you can do that,
that's fine, nobody's going to fault you for that. But
(07:38):
you must be doing the basic things as well. And
if you listen to the show, you know what the
basic things are. You got to do the basic stuff first.
You can't just think that if you're just going to
go out and by this product that all of a
sudden it's just going to evaporate all the things that
you have not been doing, all of the things that
you've been doing that injure the body. Because that's how
(08:01):
you have to think about this as injury, which is
again what a bad diet does to your body. It
injures your body very slowly, methodically, if you will, in
my opinion, by again activating the I'm sorry, the inflammatory system,
which is a system that we're born with, which is
(08:24):
there in the background sort of like a fire station,
if you will, sort of waiting for something to happen,
and if it does, then they activate themselves to go
out and put out the fire. If you will, like
an acute injury, maybe you fail and hurt yourself or
you get an infection, the inflammatory system turns on. It
(08:48):
goes out and supposedly does its job to protect you
and to treat the acute illness, treat the acute injury,
and then go back to its original position and churn
off and again wait for the next entry. The idea, however,
is again living a healthy lifestyle, which, as you know,
(09:12):
means you're not eating well and you're not exercising. Those
are the two big components of your lifestyle, is what
you're eating and drinking and your activity level when you
don't do that consistently, because yeah, sometimes all of us
find ourselves where we're grabbing things that are not good
for us. We know it as we're buying it and
(09:35):
eating it. We know it, and we know that we
may have to pay a price later that day or
the next day. But you were in a rush, you
didn't have time, you didn't have any money, and you're
hungry and you're just trying to reach for something, and
so you reach for sort of one of these ultra
processed food items that are just sort of everywhere that
(09:57):
sit on the shelf, they're in the freezer second, just
sort of waiting for you to purchase it so that
you can consume it. With the understanding that the food
industry as a remarkable industry and very smart, very intuitive
in terms of how to do this, and they have
(10:19):
really discovered some ways in terms of how to preserve
food and keep it on the shelf for a long time. Again,
when you're trying to feed the masses. America is a
very wealthy nation and a lot of people to feed
every single day. You want to keep them fed. How
do you do that? And that's sort of what the
food industry has pioneered over the past years, is how
(10:44):
do you keep food available and ready to eat for
its masses so that they don't go hungry, so that
you don't develop any nutritional deficiencies. And so they have
all of these deservatives and additives that are put in
the food, not just solid food, but beverages as well
(11:07):
to give you a certain experience when you eat it
and drink it. So they're just a phenomenal industry, and
again they're just trying to keep the masses fed. That's
all they're trying to do is keep you in a
position where you're not hungry, and you're getting all your
vitamins and your minerals everything your body needs to function
(11:28):
very well. The problem is that again these materials that
they put in the food, these sort of preservatives and
all these stabilizers and emulsifiers. Again, you can read the packaging.
It's there for you to read and educate yourself. Most
of the time package food they have that long list
of ingredients. You can look all that stuff up on
(11:49):
the internet. That's why they put it on there, because
they want you to be knowledgeable about what you're eating
and be aware about what you're eating. Sometimes are a
lot of times it doesn't matter, right, just hungry. It's available,
The FDA approved it, it's quote safe because it's being sold.
If it wasn't safe, then it wouldn't be on the market.
(12:11):
I mean that's the idea, certainly. But again, a lot
of nutrition experts, a lot of epidemiologists, healthcare professionals who
really look into the link between what you eat and
drink and your health, are really concerned, really presenting some good,
(12:31):
strong evidence that man this food is not good for us,
and if you want to be healthy, right, you have
to do your part to try and steer away from
consuming a lot of these ultra processed foods that are cheap,
that are readily available. You can store it in your
home for days, for weeks, and just let it sit
(12:55):
there until you're ready to eat. And again, you have
a big family, maybe they're some financial constraints. You just
a lot of times do not have the wherewithal to
purchase real food, fresh food, because that tends to be
priced at a point that makes it hard to keep
(13:17):
your kitchen full of fresh food all the time. Makes
it very, very difficult, and there's a lot of deterrent
to doing it that way and steering more towards food
that's more ultra process because it tends to be cheaper.
You know it, can buy more of it and just
sort of have it ready for your family, just like
America has this highly preserved ultra processed food to feed
(13:42):
the masses, keep everybody fed every day, which can be
a difficult task if you're talking about fresh food.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Not that we couldn't do it.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
We're smart people. We're a very wealthy country. We very
have a lot of smart people here. I guess we
could do it good if we were doing it, but
unfortunately that's not the way things have evolved. I remember
back in the day sometimes I like talking with my
patients who grew up in the fifties in the sixties,
(14:11):
where really people were really eating fresh food every day, right,
they didn't have all this preserved food as much as
we have now. Again, this is why a lot of
the grocery stores now so huge, is there's all this
just ultra process preserved food available to you, and they
(14:32):
have to store it just like you put it in
your pantry. And you have all this food just waiting
to be consumed or what we're calling food. Whereas before
that industry took off and they've pionateed, it just wasn't
a whole lot to store, right, you know, your fresh
meat and your fresh vegetables and potatoes and whole grains
and fruit. I mean, it's not a lot, right, So
(14:54):
your stores didn't have to be super huge. But now
with all the beverages and the food item that can
be preserved using all these ingredients, again, the food industry
have figured out how to do this, and so now
you have all this food and you see commercials sometimes
with a new version of this one or a new version
(15:15):
of that one. You know, understanding that really in terms
of discovery, there's not really any new fresh whole foods
out there. Does that make sense? The same foods that
you see now they were available years ago, never will change. Typically,
they figured out how to sometimes make whole food lasts
(15:37):
longer or grow a year every year throughout the year
they've done that, and it's just gotten to a point
where man food is available all the time. But a
lot of experts claim or feel like, we have to
be careful with what we consume because it can turn
that inflammatory system on the fire truck, right. The whole
(16:01):
idea is it's supposed to turn on then turn off.
But unfortunately, if you're consuming these food items and beverages,
that again trigger the inflammatory system because these are sort
of foreign materials that the body is having to fight
or it's being exposed to. It sees it as injury,
it sees it as harm, sees it as sort of
(16:22):
a negative thing, and turns on inflammation. And what you
feel is just achiness. Maybe you have headache, nausea, maybe
your energy level is down you just don't feel as
good as you used to, and just the understanding that
maybe it's what you're eating, so you always have to
look and see what you're eating and go over that.
(16:46):
Phone lines are opened eight nine to six kalv I
one one hundred and three to three zero kV I
be back in two minutes. All right, welcome back to
the doctor Living the metical our phone lines I opened
eight nine to six kalva one one hundred and three
three zero kalvia. Sitting here chatting talking about food items
(17:09):
that may not be so good for you. That also
goes with beverage items that may not be so good
for you. Because again, what's crystal clear to me as
a physician of over twenty years talking with patients, reading
articles treating patients with some of the chronic common illnesses
(17:31):
that most Americans are faced with, it's very clear to
me and understandable to me that your diet, your diet,
what you're eating every day, what you're drinking every day,
is truly the most impactful aspect of your health. It's
where it really is. It's not the exercising, it's the
(17:54):
fuel that you're putting in your body that tends to
generate health or generate disease. And it's a personal, conscious
habit decision every single day in terms of what you're
eating and drinking. And that's really all you have to
do is before you eat or drink something, make a
(18:14):
decision is this good or bad for me?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
It's really that simple.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
And if you are consuming things that you know are
not good for you, then you know you must expect
some disease to present itself at some point. I mean,
that's that's a simple thing. Most of the listeners have
been parents of children, or you've been in a position
where you're giving advice to other people. You know, because
(18:42):
you've lived your life and you've experienced a lot of things,
and you know that if you put yourself in a
position of harm, you're engaging in activity that increases the
risk of harm, that probably at some point something's going
to happen. Just you know when is it going to happen?
We don't know. And in my opinion, that's what consuming
(19:06):
sugar has to do with. That's what eating ultra processed
foods has to do with all of the burgers and
fries and the fry this and the fry that, and
the frozen this and the frozen that that tends to
generate poor health. Same thing with the beverages, all of
the diet beverages out there that people are consuming. I'm
(19:30):
in the hospital every day and a sort of briefly
kind of look and see what most of my patients
are drinking, what their families are drinking. And to me,
it seems fairly clear. There's a lot of Doctor pepper,
there's a lot of Coca cola. There's a lot of
these sugary beverages out there. And it's been very clear
(19:52):
with experts that, again, consuming sugar in a liquid form,
which normally has synthetic sugar in right, ultra processed sugar
tastes good, Yes, very good. Tay, you can't even hardly
give it up, right. I have my sometimes sixty seventy
year old patients who they have to drink this every day.
(20:15):
They can't go a day without drinking these sugary beverages
or they feel bad, you know, they just it's almost
like they're withdrawing from a substance, a toxic substance, and
they just have to drink it to feel neutral to
some degree. There's a lot of experts have looked at
that such that again, if you're drinking sugar in this form,
(20:40):
it has been undoubtedly linked to a lot of diseases,
in particular dementia. There's been a lot of conversation, a
lot of growing concern that sugar exposure or I should
say high sugar are frequent. Sugar spikes in your bloodstream
(21:01):
tend to start injuring the nervous system. And I think
we all are familiar with alcohol, and we talked a
little bit about the issue of drinking red wine. A
glass of red wine at night for cardiovascular health. It
doesn't really say anything about neurological health. It only mentions
(21:23):
cardiovascual health. How can you reduce your chance of having
a heart attack? Okay, drink a glass of wine. It
doesn't really say which wine. I think red red wine
is the only distinction that they have. But you know
which red wine and what amount and all of those
sort of questions. There's other things you can do to
(21:43):
improve your cardiovascar health versus drinking glass of wine. Again,
and I'm gonna keep saying this because you gotta get this,
gotta eat, gotta eat right first, meaning you can't be
eating a lot of ultra processed foods, eating a lot
of sugar, and then drinking a glass of wine at
night thinking that you're doing yourself a favor. You can't
(22:04):
drink a glass of wine at night and then not
exercise and be thirty pounds overweight and eating ultra processes.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
You can't do it.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
That's backwards. So you got to do number one and
number two first bar none. You know, you got to
get that done if you really want to do some
good in terms of your health. And a lot of
experts for like, exposure to sugar really accelerates the decline
of the nervous system, Like it's toxic to the nervous system,
(22:37):
and I would agree to that. If you've ever had diabetes,
you've ever had high sugar, A lot of times you
are presenting with neurological complaints, you know, whether it be
numbness or tingling, or dizziness or some sort of neurological
event like a stroke, which is injury to the brain system,
(22:59):
because because when your sugar is spiking and running high
in the blood system, it generates inflammation. Remember the fire
engines turns on, and the thing that happens, you know
when the fire folks come by, you know, they're sort
of there's water everywhere, and there's things everywhere. I mean,
it's kind of messy to a certain degree. Well, the
(23:21):
blood system gets kind of messy, and one thing that
happens is it gets very turbulent, It gets very sticky,
and it's more prone to forming blood clots in the
blood vessels. Such that again, when your sugars are high,
you have more clots. Clots means you have more strokes,
you have more heart attacks, you have more what we
call DVTs, you have more pees. This is just the
(23:46):
coagulation system sort of running amok again because it's being
irritated by this inflammatory system that's being churned on because
of that exposure to all this sugar, which, according to
the ex spurts, our bodies are just not conditioned, designed
to have that constant daily exposure to this particular substance. Yeah,
(24:10):
every now and then, it's fine, doesn't typically cause any injury,
but certainly if you're hitting it every single day, then
your body reacts to that and sort of the constant
exposure to inflammation to the human body, yes, that's when
you will start to have these physical symptoms and the
list is quite long in terms of what causes that.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
So certainly you want.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
To reduce your exposure to these substances, these preserved liquids,
if you will, that have sort of these weird scientific
names to them. That again, the industries, the beverage industry,
the food industry, they have to put it in there
so they can sit on a shelf for weeks months,
(24:58):
ready to go, so that when you get thirsty you
want to have a beverage boom. It's right there, and
it tastes good. The experience is exciting. You know, life
can sometimes be boring, not a lot to do, but
oh yes, I'm going to drink my drink and that's
going to give me some excitement today. I'm gonna I'm
looking forward to it. It gives you purpose, right, so
(25:20):
that you can go in and get your beverage and drink that.
I get it right, You're not a bad person. It's
just the way it is. But you have to understand
the link between consuming that on a regular basis and
increasing your chances of having some sort of acute medical crisis,
which is a heart attack of strokes. So got to
(25:41):
do your part, and it cannot be blanketed. It cannot
be neutralized by just consuming some substance or liquid that
you saw online. It's not going to evaporate that. You
got to do your part. Phone lines are open eight
nine to six kvy I won in one hundred and three
three zero o kVA. You're back in two minutes. All right,
(26:21):
welcome back to the doctor Levine Medical. Our phone lines
are open eight nine to six k one one hundred
and three to three zero KLVI. This is the beginning
of the new year. Normally there is a focus and
a prioritization.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Of your health. Right.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
You know, you need to get healthy. You want to
get healthy. You don't want to be in the hospital.
You don't want to take a sack of meds.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
You don't want to be back.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And forth to the pharmacy, fighting with the doctor's office
and the pharmacy and spending all your hard earned money
on prescription medications. We all know how expensive that stuff
is out there. Sticker shock, right, five hundred dollars six
hundred dollars a month for prescription medications, I mean outrageous,
(27:09):
But the stuff works, right, It helps you feel better,
it helps neutralize the acute illness.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Whatever that is, these are.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Blockbuster medications that can really get you back to your health.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And you need to.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Get back to your health because now you're retired, you
want to travel, you want to have fun, you want
to feel good because you've worked all your life. You've
put in your thirty years, your thirty five years, forty years,
whatever it is, and now it's time to enjoy, right,
It's time to cash in if you will. And it's
(27:44):
just a drag when your health, your health, because that
really is the main commodity as you get older. In
my opinion, you want to be healthy. You do not
want to be back and forth to the doctor's office,
paying all your money to the doctor and to the
pharmaceutical companies. Can't go on your trips, can't go on
(28:06):
your cruises, can't visit with your family and maybe do
some vacations, things like that or whatever. A second career,
a third career. I see that a lot of my patients,
because you're plagued with a bunch of medical problems. But
it starts with you got to eat your vegetables. Steve,
(28:27):
how you doing this morning? How can we help you?
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yes, sir, well, I just a little advice. I guess.
But I'm actually in the hospital right now in Lake Charles.
But I came down with the flu, and then I
got medication for then, and I came home. After about
a week. I just got short of breath and I
(28:51):
waited about a week. I didn't know what was going
going on. Finally, when I got to the hospital, my
hockey level was in the low sixties and I was
in septis too. But I've been here about two weeks,
but probably be here a few days more. But I
just didn't know what to do, what was happening to me,
(29:14):
you know. And one thing a person ought to have
at it was an oxygen meeter. I didn't realize the
oxygen level was so low. But I'm getting better, David Day,
Thank the Lord. I just want to pass that, pass
that on, all.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Right, Steve. Well, yeah, I get luck to you, and
I'm glad that you're getting better.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Absolutely all right, Thank you, doctor l Ben Enjoy your show, all.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Right, brother, appreciate it. Get better soon. So an oxygen meter,
which is also called a pulse oximeter. We heard about
those a lot during COVID. We were trying to use
that to help make decisions about how to trioge patients
if they had COVID, with the understanding that if their
(30:04):
pulse oximeter reading was less than ninety percent, that that
would indicate a probably more severe form of acute COVID
and maybe they needed to be hospitalized versus going home.
So it was popularized during that time, and don't hear
too much about it, but they have become more available
(30:24):
and certainly more affordable to anyone who feels like they
need to check their oxygen level. And yes, a lot
of times if you're coming down with an acute infection
or sepsis again medical term to describe the body's reaction
to an acute infection, whether it be viral or bacterial,
(30:47):
or fungal or parasitic. These are the microorganisms that can
infect the human body, and when the human body gets infected,
that fire system turns on, the inflammatble system, and a
lot of specific hormones get released in the bloodstream to
sort of waken up your body to more of an
(31:10):
inflammatory state, a state that it can protect itself from
and help heal itself from. But one of the things
is one of the things that is happening is sometimes yes,
that can cause a low oxygen level because of how
the lung tissue reacts to sepsis, and we have some
(31:30):
fancy terms for that, but that can be one of
the symptoms of sepsis. If I don't talk a lot
about this, but we have a term used called vital
signs VS for short. And if you've ever been to
any healthcare professional or most healthcare professionals, they're checking your
(31:52):
blood pressure, they're checking your heart rate, and they check
your temperature, and they should be checking your oxygen level
as well. These are what we call vital signs, and
doctors are trained to review vital signs and to try
and see patterns of those vital signs, and the pattern
(32:15):
of vital signs sort of alerts most healthcare professionals in
terms of what's going on. Are you sick? Are you stable?
So we do that all the time, every day, every
four hours. Normally, if you're in the hospital, you're getting
vital signs. If you're in the ice, you're probably getting
them every hour to check your vital signs. Again, it
(32:39):
gives us a very quick, expedited way to determine if
you're sick, if you're getting sick getting better. We talk
a lot about this. If we're talking with family members
about their loved one, we sort of bring up the
vital signs. So oxygen level is a part of that
vital sign group. And you can get these pulse like
(33:03):
simmeters online normally maybe one hundred dollars two hundred dollars.
Most people can't afford that these days, and you can
use that, especially if you have chronic lung disease. If
you have asthma, you have bronchitis, you have COPD or
cystic fibrosis, or a lot of the other autoimmune diseases, sarcodosis.
(33:25):
If you have lupus and you have lupus in your lungs,
you have what we call pulmonary fibrosis, which is this
idiopathic disease that causes scar tissue formation in your lungs.
You are prone to acute lung infections, and you are
prone to a reduced oxygen level, which we call hypoxia
(33:48):
is a term that we use, so that yes, you
may need to have that as a part of your tools.
You have your blood sugar machine, you have your blood
pressure machine, you have your polse aximmeter. Again, technology is
getting to a point where a lot of these monitoring
devices that really only used to be available to healthcare professionals, hospitals.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Ers.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Now it's entering the open market and you can go
and purchase this equipment for your use at home so
that you can monitor yourself to alert your healthcare professional
to when something's happening. There's a lot of this technology
out there where you have some equipment at home and
it's sort of communicating to either your healthcare professional, it's
(34:35):
going to some database where someone's watching it, and if
anything starts going in the wrong direction, that can alert you,
That can alert your healthcare professional that maybe need to
go in and get to the hospital. And I can
only see that this technology will expand and get easier
and easier so that, yes, if you have a chronic
(34:56):
condition like a lung disease or a heart disease, or
even like I said, diabetes, high blood pressure, it's more
easy to monitor it and more easy to stay on
top of it, because again, a lot of times being
hospitalized has to do with being behind the eight ball,
meaning things started happening, you couldn't.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Really pick up on it. Maybe you felt a little awe.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Or it wasn't that big of a deal and it
just sort of kept going and going and then boom,
you wake up with a big event.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
When if we could have.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Caught it earlier and maybe done something about it, maybe hospitalized,
maybe not, maybe change some medications that it would have
saved a hospital visit or a hospital stay. If you've
ever been in the hospital, you know it's sort of
a traumatic event because there's just a lot of things
that happened to you in the hospital that can really
(35:52):
shake your confidence about yourself and cause some disorientation.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
And you know, if you do have a bit event, you're.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
In the hospital for a week, I saman it could
take two, three weeks a month to get back on
your feet. So really the goal is to try and
stay out of the hospital as much as possible. And
all of this monitoring equipment, including the pulse oximeter, which
is just put it on your finger and look at
your pulse. You want it ninety or above. When it
(36:22):
starts dipping down, sometimes that's indication that something is brewing,
something horrific is going and maybe you need to go
and get checked out. So maybe yeah, it's something that
you can go and purchase again. Normally, affordable phone lines
are open eight nine to six kalv.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I want to hundred three three zero kale via.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
I'll be back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
All right, welcome back to the doc Lavine. The medical
phone lines to open eight nine to six kalvy, I
want a hundred three three zero k last segment of
the show. Time goes by so quickly. Remember if there's
a question or concern that you would like me to discuss,
either call the station and leave with them, or you
can call my office three four seven three six two one.
It's four o nine. You can leave a message with
(37:17):
my staff and we'd be more than happy to talk
about your subject matter. Because the show is for you again.
I'm a doctor of internal medicine, been doing it for
over twenty years. Can't believe it, man, it's just by
lying by and have gained some insight into what works,
(37:38):
what doesn't work? What's everyone doing out there? What are
some habits that tend to increase your risk of being
hostilized of having to see a doctor in a regular basis,
spend all your money on medications and doctor visits.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
I picked up a few.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Little common denominators and would like to share that with you.
It's the genesis of the show against it stay alive
and to stay as healthy as possible. So give us
a call and well we can talk about that to
help you out. Again, we sort of discussed today that
if you truly want to be healthy, number one, class
(38:12):
class gotta eat right right, more whole foods, less processed foods,
less ultra processed foods, less sugary beverages, Drink more water, coffee, tea. Again,
if you go to the big supermarkets, it's a whole
(38:34):
aisle just full of coffees from every part of the world.
I mean, just unimaginable choices. You could spend all day
just in one aisle looking at all the coffees and
the teas, even.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Water as basic as it is. They got all these
water beverages out there.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Now it's insane. I mean it is very overwhelming. It's
incredible to think that this country has been able to
provide it's citizens with so many options as it pertains
to food and beverage.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I mean, you need a degree just to know.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
What to buy, especially if you're drinking and eating ultra
processed foods, which is what the experts is saying is
try to keep the foods and beverages you're consuming to
a minimum in terms of the ingredients. If it's over
two or three ingredients, don't drink it, don't eat it.
(39:39):
It's a very simple little rule. Yes, every now and then, yeah,
get a bergin fries. We're all in that situation every
now and then. But you should be trying to cook
this stuff yourself at home, make this stuff yourself at home. Again,
we're all busy. Yes, it's time consuming, but as you
get older, you get into retirement age, it's your health.
(40:03):
That's the number one commodity, your.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Health, and you have to do your part. You gotta
do it. You gotta do it, just like.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
When you were young and you wanted to be successful
and you need it to stay out of trouble. You
gotta do your part, stay out of the streets, do
your homework, go to bed. It's no different. It's the
same thought.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
When you get older, you gotta eat right, you gotta exercise.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
You gotta stay away from foods and beverages that generate illness.
We all know what they are out there, but so
hard to say no to my sugary beverage every day
that I look forward to. I need two or three
a day. I just can't do without it. I get it,
I really do, because I'm a foodie. I love eating,
(40:55):
I really do. But I'm at an age now where
if I don't eat, I just don't function as well.
And I can feel it. And I'm in a position
right now where I have to function. You know, it's
a duty the way I see it, So I prioritize
eating the right things and avoiding the wrong things. Do
(41:17):
I slip up occasionally, absolutely, we all do that, But
certainly every single day I'm making a note it mentally
about what's good, what's bad, and trying to stick to
that game plan so that I am unlikely to have
to be in the hospital, unlikely to have to take
a ton of medications.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Because it does start with you.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Because yeah, when you retire, you want to Hey, you
want to have fun, you want to do whatever you
want to do.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
You've been sacrificing all these years.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Now it's time to cash in and pay off and
just have fun the golden years, Right, that's what they
told us. We believe in it, but they didn't tell
us how much.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Work it would be.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
And even the person who does everything right, yeah, you
might have some aches.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
And pains.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Yeah, you might take one medication, but we're trying to
put it to a minimum in that situation. And yes,
sometimes you might get sick and you might need to
get your pulse like scimiter out and check your oxygen,
check your blood pressure, check your sugars. All this equipment
is out there. We've talked about the watches now that
can monitor your blood pressure, monitor your heart rate. That's
(42:29):
a good item in my opinion, you're sixty five and above,
that's a good item to have. It's convenient, you just
wear it and it's just sort of there in the
background monitoring you. I think that's a great idea because
things like hual fibrillation and hypertension, these are just diseases
of age.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
You made it to sixty five, you made it.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
To seventy, I mean you're gonna have to have something.
And blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, these are just some of
the degenerative changes that happen as you get older. But
there's good medicines and we want to try and stay
on top of that as much as possible. So maybe
look into that watch. Thank you for joining us on
(43:10):
the edition of the show. Remember don't drink and drive,
have a good day.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
We'll see you next week.
All right, Welcome to South these Sex's Internet radio listeners. Welcome, Welcome,
walk towards another edition of the Doctor Levine Medical Hour.
I am your weekly host, Doctor Levine, coming to you
live from the studios of KLVI here in Beaumont, Texas,
cross the street from Parkdale Mall, taking your phone calls,
answering questions about healthcare and decisions about healthcare to keep
(00:23):
you live, stay alive, and as healthy as possible. We're
here to try and help you answer those questions. They
can be difficult, they can be confusing. I'm sort of
on an inside see this every day talking with hundreds
thousands of patients and sort of pick up a few
(00:44):
ideas and a few clues in terms of what's good,
what's bad, what works, what really doesn't work. There's so
much advice out there now that patients sort of have
their own information highways set up up to get them
their answers, including listening to the show. Phone lines are
(01:06):
open eight nine to six klv I one one hundred
and three three zero klv I. We'd love to hear
from you, so give us a call and we can
discuss what's on your mind and answer those questions to
make this easy, because for me, it is pretty straightforward.
It's pretty obvious what you need to do. It's just
(01:29):
getting it done. It's so many distractions, so many obstacles
to getting it done that sometimes we just can't. Days
and months go by, years go by and just no
change with those lifestyle habits, and you find yourself one
day having to go to the er with your first
(01:52):
event and hopefully that'll be your last event. We don't
want you to have repeated events, but sometimes that is
the issue. Your health gets so bad that you have
to go back and forth to the hospital, or you're
going back and forth to multiple physicians, doctors offices, pharmacy visits,
(02:16):
getting prescriptions, getting your sack full of mets. Yes, sometimes
it does get that way. Unfortunately through no fault of
your own. Sometimes you get dealt that bad card. But again,
we're just trying to reduce your risk. Just like automobile accidents.
It's sort of my way to compare the state of
(02:41):
affairs with your health in terms of your health crises.
If you get one, sometimes it's just one of those
things that happens, meaning you've done everything correctly, you've been
to your doctor, visits. You've done everything, doctor Levine says,
and man, you still end up in the hospital. Which, again,
the world is not perfect. And I know we want
(03:02):
a perfect world. We strive for that. We strive for
that in healthcare, and we are a lot better with that.
But it's difficult to make it zero risk and make
it perfect every single encounter, every visit, every single day
at every hospital in this country. But you want to
(03:24):
try and reduce your risk. And that's really what most
advice is all about, is how can I reduce my
risk of having to have that experience, Just like driving
the speed limit, putting on your seat belt, it reduces
your risk of being in an accident. But again, cannot
be zero percent. Just a lot of things out of
(03:47):
your control that are outside the vehicle, just like with
healthcare and your health, a lot of things you just
cannot control. But certainly you can do your part. And
if you've listened to I show, you know that it's
not just one thing you have to do. You know,
it's a few things that you have to do. Certainly
there are things that are more important than others. And
(04:09):
this whole drink a glass of wine. Things still comes
up sometimes with my patients asking if that is a
healthy option for them, and I think if you listen
to my show, you know there's a lot of things
you can do to be healthy, and drinking a glass
(04:29):
of wine, I think for most patient I'm sorry, most physicians,
most healthcare professionals, it's not something they're recommending as a
top priority.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And that got started.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
A long time ago with some literature that came out
comparing the health of Europeans to the health of Americans
and looking at some habits of Europeans and the fact
that their heart diseases not as high, but they consume beer,
(05:04):
they consume wine, So maybe it's the ingredient in the
wine that is protecting you from cardiovascular disease. And I
guess if we try to dumb this thing down and
keep it simple in terms of if you can do
A and B, then that will guarantee your health and
(05:26):
improve your health and lessen the chances of having to
go to the hospital versus the other guy who's not
doing it. He's not drinking wine, so because I am,
I'm healthier than him. And it is sort of interesting
to talk to patients and see kind of the landscape
(05:48):
out there and how patients are trying to position themselves
with their own health against the other person who's not
doing it, who hasn't discovered the medicine or liquid or
tablet or magic substance that they saw somewhere that some
person said was good for them and they took it,
(06:09):
and because they took it, there now feeling the way
they should sort of the success story that you normally
get with most of these dietary supplements. You know, I
sometimes talk about these dietary supplements and yeah, it's interesting
to listen to patients who get these various substances over
(06:34):
the counter online, have it mailed to them, and start
taking these things and thinking that it's putting them in
a good advantage, it's helping preserve their health, it's helping
keep them out of doctor Levine's office. And you know,
they have sort of bought into that idea that this
(06:55):
liquid or substance or package of substances, if you will,
will give me that health that I'm looking for, the
vigor that I'm looking for. I want to preserve my memory.
A lot of people used to ask for how can
I boost my immune system? But now we get a
lot of those conversations about your memory, how can you
(07:15):
boost your memory, how can you preserve your memory? And
there are a couple of products out there that have
been promoted that patients have sort of bought into that
idea that if I take this and I'm doing myself
some good, not really understanding that you can do that,
that's fine, nobody's going to fault you for that. But
(07:38):
you must be doing the basic things as well. And
if you listen to the show, you know what the
basic things are. You got to do the basic stuff first.
You can't just think that if you're just going to
go out and by this product that all of a
sudden it's just going to evaporate all the things that
you have not been doing, all of the things that
you've been doing that injure the body. Because that's how
(08:01):
you have to think about this as injury, which is
again what a bad diet does to your body. It
injures your body very slowly, methodically, if you will, in
my opinion, by again activating the I'm sorry, the inflammatory system,
which is a system that we're born with, which is
(08:24):
there in the background sort of like a fire station,
if you will, sort of waiting for something to happen,
and if it does, then they activate themselves to go
out and put out the fire. If you will, like
an acute injury, maybe you fail and hurt yourself or
you get an infection, the inflammatory system turns on. It
(08:48):
goes out and supposedly does its job to protect you
and to treat the acute illness, treat the acute injury,
and then go back to its original position and churn
off and again wait for the next entry. The idea, however,
is again living a healthy lifestyle, which, as you know,
(09:12):
means you're not eating well and you're not exercising. Those
are the two big components of your lifestyle, is what
you're eating and drinking and your activity level when you
don't do that consistently, because yeah, sometimes all of us
find ourselves where we're grabbing things that are not good
for us. We know it as we're buying it and
(09:35):
eating it. We know it, and we know that we
may have to pay a price later that day or
the next day. But you were in a rush, you
didn't have time, you didn't have any money, and you're
hungry and you're just trying to reach for something, and
so you reach for sort of one of these ultra
processed food items that are just sort of everywhere that
(09:57):
sit on the shelf, they're in the freezer second, just
sort of waiting for you to purchase it so that
you can consume it. With the understanding that the food
industry as a remarkable industry and very smart, very intuitive
in terms of how to do this, and they have
(10:19):
really discovered some ways in terms of how to preserve
food and keep it on the shelf for a long time. Again,
when you're trying to feed the masses. America is a
very wealthy nation and a lot of people to feed
every single day. You want to keep them fed. How
do you do that? And that's sort of what the
food industry has pioneered over the past years, is how
(10:44):
do you keep food available and ready to eat for
its masses so that they don't go hungry, so that
you don't develop any nutritional deficiencies. And so they have
all of these deservatives and additives that are put in
the food, not just solid food, but beverages as well
(11:07):
to give you a certain experience when you eat it
and drink it. So they're just a phenomenal industry, and
again they're just trying to keep the masses fed. That's
all they're trying to do is keep you in a
position where you're not hungry, and you're getting all your
vitamins and your minerals everything your body needs to function
(11:28):
very well. The problem is that again these materials that
they put in the food, these sort of preservatives and
all these stabilizers and emulsifiers. Again, you can read the packaging.
It's there for you to read and educate yourself. Most
of the time package food they have that long list
of ingredients. You can look all that stuff up on
(11:49):
the internet. That's why they put it on there, because
they want you to be knowledgeable about what you're eating
and be aware about what you're eating. Sometimes are a
lot of times it doesn't matter, right, just hungry. It's available,
The FDA approved it, it's quote safe because it's being sold.
If it wasn't safe, then it wouldn't be on the market.
(12:11):
I mean that's the idea, certainly. But again, a lot
of nutrition experts, a lot of epidemiologists, healthcare professionals who
really look into the link between what you eat and
drink and your health, are really concerned, really presenting some good,
(12:31):
strong evidence that man this food is not good for us,
and if you want to be healthy, right, you have
to do your part to try and steer away from
consuming a lot of these ultra processed foods that are cheap,
that are readily available. You can store it in your
home for days, for weeks, and just let it sit
(12:55):
there until you're ready to eat. And again, you have
a big family, maybe they're some financial constraints. You just
a lot of times do not have the wherewithal to
purchase real food, fresh food, because that tends to be
priced at a point that makes it hard to keep
(13:17):
your kitchen full of fresh food all the time. Makes
it very, very difficult, and there's a lot of deterrent
to doing it that way and steering more towards food
that's more ultra process because it tends to be cheaper.
You know it, can buy more of it and just
sort of have it ready for your family, just like
America has this highly preserved ultra processed food to feed
(13:42):
the masses, keep everybody fed every day, which can be
a difficult task if you're talking about fresh food.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Not that we couldn't do it.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
We're smart people. We're a very wealthy country. We very
have a lot of smart people here. I guess we
could do it good if we were doing it, but
unfortunately that's not the way things have evolved. I remember
back in the day sometimes I like talking with my
patients who grew up in the fifties in the sixties,
(14:11):
where really people were really eating fresh food every day, right,
they didn't have all this preserved food as much as
we have now. Again, this is why a lot of
the grocery stores now so huge, is there's all this
just ultra process preserved food available to you, and they
(14:32):
have to store it just like you put it in
your pantry. And you have all this food just waiting
to be consumed or what we're calling food. Whereas before
that industry took off and they've pionateed, it just wasn't
a whole lot to store, right, you know, your fresh
meat and your fresh vegetables and potatoes and whole grains
and fruit. I mean, it's not a lot, right, So
(14:54):
your stores didn't have to be super huge. But now
with all the beverages and the food item that can
be preserved using all these ingredients, again, the food industry
have figured out how to do this, and so now
you have all this food and you see commercials sometimes
with a new version of this one or a new version
(15:15):
of that one. You know, understanding that really in terms
of discovery, there's not really any new fresh whole foods
out there. Does that make sense? The same foods that
you see now they were available years ago, never will change. Typically,
they figured out how to sometimes make whole food lasts
(15:37):
longer or grow a year every year throughout the year
they've done that, and it's just gotten to a point
where man food is available all the time. But a
lot of experts claim or feel like, we have to
be careful with what we consume because it can turn
that inflammatory system on the fire truck, right. The whole
(16:01):
idea is it's supposed to turn on then turn off.
But unfortunately, if you're consuming these food items and beverages,
that again trigger the inflammatory system because these are sort
of foreign materials that the body is having to fight
or it's being exposed to. It sees it as injury,
it sees it as harm, sees it as sort of
(16:22):
a negative thing, and turns on inflammation. And what you
feel is just achiness. Maybe you have headache, nausea, maybe
your energy level is down you just don't feel as
good as you used to, and just the understanding that
maybe it's what you're eating, so you always have to
look and see what you're eating and go over that.
(16:46):
Phone lines are opened eight nine to six kalv I
one one hundred and three to three zero kV I
be back in two minutes. All right, welcome back to
the doctor Living the metical our phone lines I opened
eight nine to six kalva one one hundred and three
three zero kalvia. Sitting here chatting talking about food items
(17:09):
that may not be so good for you. That also
goes with beverage items that may not be so good
for you. Because again, what's crystal clear to me as
a physician of over twenty years talking with patients, reading
articles treating patients with some of the chronic common illnesses
(17:31):
that most Americans are faced with, it's very clear to
me and understandable to me that your diet, your diet,
what you're eating every day, what you're drinking every day,
is truly the most impactful aspect of your health. It's
where it really is. It's not the exercising, it's the
(17:54):
fuel that you're putting in your body that tends to
generate health or generate disease. And it's a personal, conscious
habit decision every single day in terms of what you're
eating and drinking. And that's really all you have to
do is before you eat or drink something, make a
(18:14):
decision is this good or bad for me?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
It's really that simple.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
And if you are consuming things that you know are
not good for you, then you know you must expect
some disease to present itself at some point. I mean,
that's that's a simple thing. Most of the listeners have
been parents of children, or you've been in a position
where you're giving advice to other people. You know, because
(18:42):
you've lived your life and you've experienced a lot of things,
and you know that if you put yourself in a
position of harm, you're engaging in activity that increases the
risk of harm, that probably at some point something's going
to happen. Just you know when is it going to happen?
We don't know. And in my opinion, that's what consuming
(19:06):
sugar has to do with. That's what eating ultra processed
foods has to do with all of the burgers and
fries and the fry this and the fry that, and
the frozen this and the frozen that that tends to
generate poor health. Same thing with the beverages, all of
the diet beverages out there that people are consuming. I'm
(19:30):
in the hospital every day and a sort of briefly
kind of look and see what most of my patients
are drinking, what their families are drinking. And to me,
it seems fairly clear. There's a lot of Doctor pepper,
there's a lot of Coca cola. There's a lot of
these sugary beverages out there. And it's been very clear
(19:52):
with experts that, again, consuming sugar in a liquid form,
which normally has synthetic sugar in right, ultra processed sugar
tastes good, Yes, very good. Tay, you can't even hardly
give it up, right. I have my sometimes sixty seventy
year old patients who they have to drink this every day.
(20:15):
They can't go a day without drinking these sugary beverages
or they feel bad, you know, they just it's almost
like they're withdrawing from a substance, a toxic substance, and
they just have to drink it to feel neutral to
some degree. There's a lot of experts have looked at
that such that again, if you're drinking sugar in this form,
(20:40):
it has been undoubtedly linked to a lot of diseases,
in particular dementia. There's been a lot of conversation, a
lot of growing concern that sugar exposure or I should
say high sugar are frequent. Sugar spikes in your bloodstream
(21:01):
tend to start injuring the nervous system. And I think
we all are familiar with alcohol, and we talked a
little bit about the issue of drinking red wine. A
glass of red wine at night for cardiovascular health. It
doesn't really say anything about neurological health. It only mentions
(21:23):
cardiovascual health. How can you reduce your chance of having
a heart attack? Okay, drink a glass of wine. It
doesn't really say which wine. I think red red wine
is the only distinction that they have. But you know
which red wine and what amount and all of those
sort of questions. There's other things you can do to
(21:43):
improve your cardiovascar health versus drinking glass of wine. Again,
and I'm gonna keep saying this because you gotta get this,
gotta eat, gotta eat right first, meaning you can't be
eating a lot of ultra processed foods, eating a lot
of sugar, and then drinking a glass of wine at
night thinking that you're doing yourself a favor. You can't
(22:04):
drink a glass of wine at night and then not
exercise and be thirty pounds overweight and eating ultra processes.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
You can't do it.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
That's backwards. So you got to do number one and
number two first bar none. You know, you got to
get that done if you really want to do some
good in terms of your health. And a lot of
experts for like, exposure to sugar really accelerates the decline
of the nervous system, Like it's toxic to the nervous system,
(22:37):
and I would agree to that. If you've ever had diabetes,
you've ever had high sugar, A lot of times you
are presenting with neurological complaints, you know, whether it be
numbness or tingling, or dizziness or some sort of neurological
event like a stroke, which is injury to the brain system,
(22:59):
because because when your sugar is spiking and running high
in the blood system, it generates inflammation. Remember the fire
engines turns on, and the thing that happens, you know
when the fire folks come by, you know, they're sort
of there's water everywhere, and there's things everywhere. I mean,
it's kind of messy to a certain degree. Well, the
(23:21):
blood system gets kind of messy, and one thing that
happens is it gets very turbulent, It gets very sticky,
and it's more prone to forming blood clots in the
blood vessels. Such that again, when your sugars are high,
you have more clots. Clots means you have more strokes,
you have more heart attacks, you have more what we
call DVTs, you have more pees. This is just the
(23:46):
coagulation system sort of running amok again because it's being
irritated by this inflammatory system that's being churned on because
of that exposure to all this sugar, which, according to
the ex spurts, our bodies are just not conditioned, designed
to have that constant daily exposure to this particular substance. Yeah,
(24:10):
every now and then, it's fine, doesn't typically cause any injury,
but certainly if you're hitting it every single day, then
your body reacts to that and sort of the constant
exposure to inflammation to the human body, yes, that's when
you will start to have these physical symptoms and the
list is quite long in terms of what causes that.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
So certainly you want.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
To reduce your exposure to these substances, these preserved liquids,
if you will, that have sort of these weird scientific
names to them. That again, the industries, the beverage industry,
the food industry, they have to put it in there
so they can sit on a shelf for weeks months,
(24:58):
ready to go, so that when you get thirsty you
want to have a beverage boom. It's right there, and
it tastes good. The experience is exciting. You know, life
can sometimes be boring, not a lot to do, but
oh yes, I'm going to drink my drink and that's
going to give me some excitement today. I'm gonna I'm
looking forward to it. It gives you purpose, right, so
(25:20):
that you can go in and get your beverage and drink that.
I get it right, You're not a bad person. It's
just the way it is. But you have to understand
the link between consuming that on a regular basis and
increasing your chances of having some sort of acute medical crisis,
which is a heart attack of strokes. So got to
(25:41):
do your part, and it cannot be blanketed. It cannot
be neutralized by just consuming some substance or liquid that
you saw online. It's not going to evaporate that. You
got to do your part. Phone lines are open eight
nine to six kvy I won in one hundred and three
three zero o kVA. You're back in two minutes. All right,
(26:21):
welcome back to the doctor Levine Medical. Our phone lines
are open eight nine to six k one one hundred
and three to three zero KLVI. This is the beginning
of the new year. Normally there is a focus and
a prioritization.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Of your health. Right.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
You know, you need to get healthy. You want to
get healthy. You don't want to be in the hospital.
You don't want to take a sack of meds.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
You don't want to be back.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And forth to the pharmacy, fighting with the doctor's office
and the pharmacy and spending all your hard earned money
on prescription medications. We all know how expensive that stuff
is out there. Sticker shock, right, five hundred dollars six
hundred dollars a month for prescription medications, I mean outrageous,
(27:09):
But the stuff works, right, It helps you feel better,
it helps neutralize the acute illness.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Whatever that is, these are.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Blockbuster medications that can really get you back to your health.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And you need to.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Get back to your health because now you're retired, you
want to travel, you want to have fun, you want
to feel good because you've worked all your life. You've
put in your thirty years, your thirty five years, forty years,
whatever it is, and now it's time to enjoy, right,
It's time to cash in if you will. And it's
(27:44):
just a drag when your health, your health, because that
really is the main commodity as you get older. In
my opinion, you want to be healthy. You do not
want to be back and forth to the doctor's office,
paying all your money to the doctor and to the
pharmaceutical companies. Can't go on your trips, can't go on
(28:06):
your cruises, can't visit with your family and maybe do
some vacations, things like that or whatever. A second career,
a third career. I see that a lot of my patients,
because you're plagued with a bunch of medical problems. But
it starts with you got to eat your vegetables. Steve,
(28:27):
how you doing this morning? How can we help you?
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yes, sir, well, I just a little advice. I guess.
But I'm actually in the hospital right now in Lake Charles.
But I came down with the flu, and then I
got medication for then, and I came home. After about
a week. I just got short of breath and I
(28:51):
waited about a week. I didn't know what was going
going on. Finally, when I got to the hospital, my
hockey level was in the low sixties and I was
in septis too. But I've been here about two weeks,
but probably be here a few days more. But I
just didn't know what to do, what was happening to me,
(29:14):
you know. And one thing a person ought to have
at it was an oxygen meeter. I didn't realize the
oxygen level was so low. But I'm getting better, David Day,
Thank the Lord. I just want to pass that, pass
that on, all.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Right, Steve. Well, yeah, I get luck to you, and
I'm glad that you're getting better.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Absolutely all right, Thank you, doctor l Ben Enjoy your show, all.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Right, brother, appreciate it. Get better soon. So an oxygen meter,
which is also called a pulse oximeter. We heard about
those a lot during COVID. We were trying to use
that to help make decisions about how to trioge patients
if they had COVID, with the understanding that if their
(30:04):
pulse oximeter reading was less than ninety percent, that that
would indicate a probably more severe form of acute COVID
and maybe they needed to be hospitalized versus going home.
So it was popularized during that time, and don't hear
too much about it, but they have become more available
(30:24):
and certainly more affordable to anyone who feels like they
need to check their oxygen level. And yes, a lot
of times if you're coming down with an acute infection
or sepsis again medical term to describe the body's reaction
to an acute infection, whether it be viral or bacterial,
(30:47):
or fungal or parasitic. These are the microorganisms that can
infect the human body, and when the human body gets infected,
that fire system turns on, the inflammatble system, and a
lot of specific hormones get released in the bloodstream to
sort of waken up your body to more of an
(31:10):
inflammatory state, a state that it can protect itself from
and help heal itself from. But one of the things
is one of the things that is happening is sometimes yes,
that can cause a low oxygen level because of how
the lung tissue reacts to sepsis, and we have some
(31:30):
fancy terms for that, but that can be one of
the symptoms of sepsis. If I don't talk a lot
about this, but we have a term used called vital
signs VS for short. And if you've ever been to
any healthcare professional or most healthcare professionals, they're checking your
(31:52):
blood pressure, they're checking your heart rate, and they check
your temperature, and they should be checking your oxygen level
as well. These are what we call vital signs, and
doctors are trained to review vital signs and to try
and see patterns of those vital signs, and the pattern
(32:15):
of vital signs sort of alerts most healthcare professionals in
terms of what's going on. Are you sick? Are you stable?
So we do that all the time, every day, every
four hours. Normally, if you're in the hospital, you're getting
vital signs. If you're in the ice, you're probably getting
them every hour to check your vital signs. Again, it
(32:39):
gives us a very quick, expedited way to determine if
you're sick, if you're getting sick getting better. We talk
a lot about this. If we're talking with family members
about their loved one, we sort of bring up the
vital signs. So oxygen level is a part of that
vital sign group. And you can get these pulse like
(33:03):
simmeters online normally maybe one hundred dollars two hundred dollars.
Most people can't afford that these days, and you can
use that, especially if you have chronic lung disease. If
you have asthma, you have bronchitis, you have COPD or
cystic fibrosis, or a lot of the other autoimmune diseases, sarcodosis.
(33:25):
If you have lupus and you have lupus in your lungs,
you have what we call pulmonary fibrosis, which is this
idiopathic disease that causes scar tissue formation in your lungs.
You are prone to acute lung infections, and you are
prone to a reduced oxygen level, which we call hypoxia
(33:48):
is a term that we use, so that yes, you
may need to have that as a part of your tools.
You have your blood sugar machine, you have your blood
pressure machine, you have your polse aximmeter. Again, technology is
getting to a point where a lot of these monitoring
devices that really only used to be available to healthcare professionals, hospitals.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Ers.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Now it's entering the open market and you can go
and purchase this equipment for your use at home so
that you can monitor yourself to alert your healthcare professional
to when something's happening. There's a lot of this technology
out there where you have some equipment at home and
it's sort of communicating to either your healthcare professional, it's
(34:35):
going to some database where someone's watching it, and if
anything starts going in the wrong direction, that can alert you,
That can alert your healthcare professional that maybe need to
go in and get to the hospital. And I can
only see that this technology will expand and get easier
and easier so that, yes, if you have a chronic
(34:56):
condition like a lung disease or a heart disease, or
even like I said, diabetes, high blood pressure, it's more
easy to monitor it and more easy to stay on
top of it, because again, a lot of times being
hospitalized has to do with being behind the eight ball,
meaning things started happening, you couldn't.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Really pick up on it. Maybe you felt a little awe.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Or it wasn't that big of a deal and it
just sort of kept going and going and then boom,
you wake up with a big event.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
When if we could have.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Caught it earlier and maybe done something about it, maybe hospitalized,
maybe not, maybe change some medications that it would have
saved a hospital visit or a hospital stay. If you've
ever been in the hospital, you know it's sort of
a traumatic event because there's just a lot of things
that happened to you in the hospital that can really
(35:52):
shake your confidence about yourself and cause some disorientation.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
And you know, if you do have a bit event, you're.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
In the hospital for a week, I saman it could
take two, three weeks a month to get back on
your feet. So really the goal is to try and
stay out of the hospital as much as possible. And
all of this monitoring equipment, including the pulse oximeter, which
is just put it on your finger and look at
your pulse. You want it ninety or above. When it
(36:22):
starts dipping down, sometimes that's indication that something is brewing,
something horrific is going and maybe you need to go
and get checked out. So maybe yeah, it's something that
you can go and purchase again. Normally, affordable phone lines
are open eight nine to six kalv.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I want to hundred three three zero kale via.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
I'll be back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
All right, welcome back to the doc Lavine. The medical
phone lines to open eight nine to six kalvy, I
want a hundred three three zero k last segment of
the show. Time goes by so quickly. Remember if there's
a question or concern that you would like me to discuss,
either call the station and leave with them, or you
can call my office three four seven three six two one.
It's four o nine. You can leave a message with
(37:17):
my staff and we'd be more than happy to talk
about your subject matter. Because the show is for you again.
I'm a doctor of internal medicine, been doing it for
over twenty years. Can't believe it, man, it's just by
lying by and have gained some insight into what works,
(37:38):
what doesn't work? What's everyone doing out there? What are
some habits that tend to increase your risk of being
hostilized of having to see a doctor in a regular basis,
spend all your money on medications and doctor visits.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
I picked up a few.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Little common denominators and would like to share that with you.
It's the genesis of the show against it stay alive
and to stay as healthy as possible. So give us
a call and well we can talk about that to
help you out. Again, we sort of discussed today that
if you truly want to be healthy, number one, class
(38:12):
class gotta eat right right, more whole foods, less processed foods,
less ultra processed foods, less sugary beverages, Drink more water, coffee, tea. Again,
if you go to the big supermarkets, it's a whole
(38:34):
aisle just full of coffees from every part of the world.
I mean, just unimaginable choices. You could spend all day
just in one aisle looking at all the coffees and
the teas, even.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Water as basic as it is. They got all these
water beverages out there.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Now it's insane. I mean it is very overwhelming. It's
incredible to think that this country has been able to
provide it's citizens with so many options as it pertains
to food and beverage.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I mean, you need a degree just to know.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
What to buy, especially if you're drinking and eating ultra
processed foods, which is what the experts is saying is
try to keep the foods and beverages you're consuming to
a minimum in terms of the ingredients. If it's over
two or three ingredients, don't drink it, don't eat it.
(39:39):
It's a very simple little rule. Yes, every now and then, yeah,
get a bergin fries. We're all in that situation every
now and then. But you should be trying to cook
this stuff yourself at home, make this stuff yourself at home. Again,
we're all busy. Yes, it's time consuming, but as you
get older, you get into retirement age, it's your health.
(40:03):
That's the number one commodity, your.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Health, and you have to do your part. You gotta
do it. You gotta do it, just like.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
When you were young and you wanted to be successful
and you need it to stay out of trouble. You
gotta do your part, stay out of the streets, do
your homework, go to bed. It's no different. It's the
same thought.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
When you get older, you gotta eat right, you gotta exercise.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
You gotta stay away from foods and beverages that generate illness.
We all know what they are out there, but so
hard to say no to my sugary beverage every day
that I look forward to. I need two or three
a day. I just can't do without it. I get it,
I really do, because I'm a foodie. I love eating,
(40:55):
I really do. But I'm at an age now where
if I don't eat, I just don't function as well.
And I can feel it. And I'm in a position
right now where I have to function. You know, it's
a duty the way I see it, So I prioritize
eating the right things and avoiding the wrong things. Do
(41:17):
I slip up occasionally, absolutely, we all do that, But
certainly every single day I'm making a note it mentally
about what's good, what's bad, and trying to stick to
that game plan so that I am unlikely to have
to be in the hospital, unlikely to have to take
a ton of medications.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Because it does start with you.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Because yeah, when you retire, you want to Hey, you
want to have fun, you want to do whatever you
want to do.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
You've been sacrificing all these years.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Now it's time to cash in and pay off and
just have fun the golden years, Right, that's what they
told us. We believe in it, but they didn't tell
us how much.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Work it would be.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
And even the person who does everything right, yeah, you
might have some aches.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
And pains.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Yeah, you might take one medication, but we're trying to
put it to a minimum in that situation. And yes,
sometimes you might get sick and you might need to
get your pulse like scimiter out and check your oxygen,
check your blood pressure, check your sugars. All this equipment
is out there. We've talked about the watches now that
can monitor your blood pressure, monitor your heart rate. That's
(42:29):
a good item in my opinion, you're sixty five and above,
that's a good item to have. It's convenient, you just
wear it and it's just sort of there in the
background monitoring you. I think that's a great idea because
things like hual fibrillation and hypertension, these are just diseases
of age.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
You made it to sixty five, you made it.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
To seventy, I mean you're gonna have to have something.
And blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, these are just some of
the degenerative changes that happen as you get older. But
there's good medicines and we want to try and stay
on top of that as much as possible. So maybe
look into that watch. Thank you for joining us on
(43:10):
the edition of the show. Remember don't drink and drive,
have a good day.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
We'll see you next week.
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