March 10, 2025 • 42 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, good morning, Southeast Sex is Internet Radio listeners.
This is Doctor Levine Golden Triangle, Internal Medicine and Geriatrics.
I'm your weekly host taking your phone calls cross Street
from Parkdale Mall live in studio, So give us a
call eight nine to six kVA one hundred three three
(00:22):
zero kalviyall. We'd love hit listening or listening from you
and answering your questions. That's the genesis of the show,
to help you stay alive as long as possible and
to make things clearer. It's confusing out there. Every day
We're getting inundated with all sorts of information about how
to stay alive and what's the right thing, what's the
(00:44):
wrong thing. All these influencers out there that apparently have
credentials that allow them to give advice about your health
care and what's right for you and what's wrong for you.
It's confusing because influencers disagree all the time. Are they
(01:05):
promote this or that, and we just don't know what
to do. Just need some direction. So I'm here to
try and help, just try to get you some basic
information based on my understanding of health and wellness and
sickness and disease. I'm in it every day office, hospital,
(01:27):
every day, so I feel like I have a little
bit of insight into that issue. And what do I
see talking to patients. What are things that typically work,
what are things that don't work? What are the things
you don't have to worry about? Just because there is
a lot of paranoia that floats throughout society. If you
(01:51):
turn on the TV, TV is scary, you know. It's
just always a lot of inflammatory news, almost like things
are always coming to an end, are going to explode,
or it's got to be nervous all the time. And
sometimes I tell my patients just turn that stuff off
and go watch a comedy or a good movie that
(02:11):
you like, or listen to some good music that you like.
I do that sometimes. The music I grew up on
Staying Alive. I used to listen to that growing up,
so that's why I like it. But it has a
good message anyway. Phone lines open eight, nine to six, kalvy.
I want to hundred three three zero kalvy. I just
(02:33):
we had our taping of Acid Doc yesterday, so thought
I would go over some of the topics there, some
interesting topics. What was about orange juice? And the question
of whether or not if you do fresh squeeze at
home versus if you get the fresh squeezed in a
container at the grocery store, which one's better. And I
(02:57):
guess a lot of people drink orange juice in the
morning as they're chosen chosen beverage. The way orange juice
has been presented to us in terms of what you
see on TV, maybe what you read is it's a
healthy beverage. You know, if you get sick, you get
a cold or flu, man, you just go get a
(03:18):
gallon of orange juice with the pulp, right versus no
pulp in the orange juice. That's the difference maker, right there,
no pulp, some pulp. But yeah, you get sick, you
need to drink orange juice has that vitamin C in it,
and the in vitamin C is going to help you
(03:39):
get better. So do I squeeze it? You know, get
a machine which they have a lot of those machines
now where you put the fruit in the machine and
it's sort of pulverizes it and turns it into juice
and gets rid of the pulp, and it's freshly squeezed
or freshly processed, and you drink it, or some of
(04:01):
the grocery stores have that are available as well, and
they bottle it themselves. Which one's better? So I thought
that was an interesting question, just because when you go
to the grocery stores, as you know, the groceries are
so big now and it's just all these food items
and beverage items this manly. The choices are just endless.
(04:25):
You know, it can be exciting going in there, just
because all these different things that maybe if not even
known about, are just all the possibilities of eating and drinking.
Just it's almost like an amusement park, if you will.
At the grocery stores. What has become, you know, and
(04:46):
you don't know which decision to make because there's really
no one telling you which one is better or worse.
So I thought that was a sort of a good
question in my opinion, in terms of what I tell
my patients, you know, choose any sort of fruit juice,
whether it be apple or grape or pineapple or grapefruit juice.
(05:08):
That's another popular fruit juice that a lot of people drink.
Is that it can be enjoyed, but I would recommend
not drinking it every day. That would be my own
personal recommendation, and it's only because of the sugar content
typically in any fruit juice, which again, when I was
(05:32):
growing up, the fruit box kraze is when it started,
the little boxes with a little plastic straw that was
attached to it and had a fruit juice in it,
and it was sort of this convenient beverage that again
I get it sort of targeted kids, but anybody could
(05:53):
drink it, right, but you could. It was small enough
and convenient enough you can put in a lunch box
with the sandwich and the chips and the cookie and
all these starches. And at that time, right, the villain
was fat. Right, you didn't want any fat in your diet.
Fat kills you. And so everybody got away from fat,
(06:13):
and we just loaded up on the cars, right, And
that it was for many years. That's when that craze started.
When I was sort of in high school, junior high
so we got all these packaged starches that were convenient
and ready to go, and you could eat it at anytime.
You could pack it into all sorts of containers and
(06:34):
take it with you on the go, whether or not
it was a road trip or we can get away,
or the lunch box, right, And so that's when that
whole craze started, was the fruit box that you could drink.
And certainly fresh squeeze has a good sound to it, right.
It sounds healthy, it's fresh, and we squeeze it ourselves,
(06:55):
and it's got all that vitamin C in there to
protect you from disease. It's a great beverage and you
need to be drinking this every day. Is sort of
what we pick up on TV or just everything we read.
But from my point of view and based on talking
to patients and seeing what happens when you drink a
(07:17):
lot of juice every day, it doesn't happen to everyone, right,
But in my opinion, because of the sugar content and
the calories from the sugar, that drinking that beverage every
day tends to generate some weight gain. What I hear
from a lot of people, they want to get healthy, right,
(07:38):
They're like, Okay, finally I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna
buckle down, I'm gonna lose this weight, I'm gonna be healthy.
I don't want to take all these meds. I don't
like going to the doctor's office paying all these copays
and I can't hardly do anything. I don't like the
way I look and feel. My clothes are not fitting.
I'm gonna buckle down. Okay. The first thing I'm gonna
do is I'm just I'm gonna drink juice. It's healthy
(08:01):
for you. It's not that soda water stuff, you know,
that processed stuff. It's a great beverage, and I'm just
gonna drink I'm gonna drink it every morning. I'm gonna
drink it throughout the day because I want to get healthy.
So I hear that a lot from patients, which means
there's still some disorientation and confusion about what's the best beverage,
(08:22):
what's not so good for you, which is why I
thought it was a good question. So, in my opin,
orange juice is not something you should be reaching for
if you want to be healthy because of the sugar
content in a freshly squeezed glass of orange juice or
whatever you'd pick up from the store. Not that it's
(08:44):
not fresh, it's just that it's got too much sugar
in it. And based on my experience in what I read,
drinking sugar every day tends to not be healthy for you.
And there's a lot of ways to do that. There's
so many beverages out there that are available to us
at the grocery store, at an nvenience store that contains
sugar that you have to be conscious of your daily
(09:07):
consumption that and your daily exposure to sugar in a
beverage because it tends to be highly concentrated, a lot
of it's processed, and even the artificial sweeteners which are
not necessarily sugar but just artificial sweeteners. Again, the experts
are raising awareness that these are not good for you
(09:27):
either that you know. Now, we have these sugar monitors, right,
dex Colm, We have Freestyle Libre where you can just
monitor your sugar all day long. It talks to your
phone and it's an investigation of what foods and what
beverage items can spike your sugar. Right, That's really how
that works. And people are finding out when they drink
(09:50):
a diet coke that there's sugar spikes even though there's
no sugar in it. They drink these beverages with zero
sugar on the can and normally they just put artificial
sweetness in it. There's multiple ones on the market. The food
industry very smart and very intuitive about how to make
(10:11):
this work. I mean they're feeding us, they're giving us
the beverages that we drink. So they're in business, right,
They want to be successful, so they invest a lot
of time into figuring this stuff out. They're not bad people.
They're just trying to give us what we want. And certainly,
if we're at the grocery store and we're buying the
fresh Squeeze juice and it's making money, they're going to
(10:31):
keep doing it. Not that they're trying to generate poor health.
They're just trying to provide the item that the customers want.
But again, with all the confusion out there, you know,
it's hard to know what to do. So exposing yourself
to sugary beverages every day, in my opinion, isn't unhealthy.
It's just unhealthy. And there's really no difference between that.
(10:56):
If the grocery store does it or if you do it.
To me, the impact from the sugar is the same,
and neither one is better, and it's neither one I
would recommend for you to consume every day. I mean,
maybe on Saturday morning and you're off from work and
it's a leisure day and you just want to taste
some orange juice, you hadn't had any all week, and
(11:19):
you do it once in the morning. I can't argue
with that one. But again, in trying to be healthy,
a lot of people will include that into their routine
and so they're drinking it every day thinking that this
is doing some good for me. But again, because of
that sugar content and that sugar exposure every day, it
(11:40):
tends to generate some weight gain and tends to generate
some medical problems. Not in everyone. Right, I have patients
that they drink it every morning. They're not heavy, they
don't really gain weight, and it's just part of their routine.
You can always find that that can do that. I mean,
(12:02):
really that doesn't really eat healthy, doesn't exercize, and they
don't take any medicines, and they don't go to the
doctor and they're fine. I mean, you can find that person.
But in general, most of us will have some negative
impact from that. So again, if you want orange juice,
(12:23):
just eat the orange. Remember, I mean, how many oranges
does it take to actually generate a you know, one
average glass of juice. I mean, it probably takes about
five or six oranges, right, I don't know if you've
ever done that before. But it takes about five or
six oranges to make one medium sized glass of juice,
(12:47):
and all of that juice, all that sugar that's in
that orange gets super duper concentrated into that glass of
orange juice, and just the mount tends to be excessive
for the human body. And that's my argument that exposing
your body to that every day tends to be unhealthy,
(13:10):
tends to generate inflammation. You've heard that term from me
before and something you should know about. But enjoying it periodically,
I can't find any problems with that. And again, if
people want to have exposure to some orange juice to strinth,
just eat the orange, right, just eat the whole apple,
(13:34):
eat the whole grape. Because it's got a little fiber
in it, that pulp that you try to extract from it.
Some of the machines do that, they get rid of
the pulp and it's just the juice. Experts say, hey,
the pulp is good for you. It's fiber. It slows
down the absorption of that sugar. Because a lot of
the food items and beverage items that we consume because
(13:55):
of the way it's made and what it contains, like
I said, whether it be an art official man made
sugar or an artificial sweetener, the sugar gets processed or
it gets absorbed very rapidly into the bloodstream and it
spikes the sugar very high. And sugar spikes is what
(14:15):
generates inflammation in the human body. When it gets into
the blood, it perceives that as a sort of toxic event,
and the inflammatory system it's there to protect us, right,
So when the body gets injured, it turns on the
inflammatory system to sort of repair it or protect us.
And so this happens every day, and so that inflamma
(14:39):
system is just sort of humming in the background, generating
all these inflammatory hormones that then circulate through your body.
And that's when you start gaining weight. You don't feel well,
maybe fatigue, mental fogginess, sugar's going up, blood pressure is
going up. That that's joint pain, that's the inflammatory system.
(15:00):
Those are the symptoms of the inflammatory system. You just
don't feel good. You're not quite sure where it's coming from.
We don't necessarily have a monitor for the inflammatory system
that you can buy at the grocery store and check yourself.
We just don't have that yet. Maybe we will in
the future. I mean with all of these gadgets coming
out with your watches and your phones and rings. They're
(15:24):
coming out with rings now that you can kind of
monitor yourself. Maybe there'll be something to monitor inflammatory system.
But we don't have that yet. I mean, all you
know is that you feel sluggish, your joints all of
a sudden hurting. Maybe your mind's not as crisp as
it used to be. That's inflammation. So in my opinion,
neither is good. Try to avoid such a sugar beverage
(15:48):
every day. The best beverage you know, listen to my show.
You know what it is, right, drink that water? Are
coffee is a good beverage. Our tea just no sweetener. No,
they have a lot of flavored coffees and teas out
there that are good for you. But water is always
number one. And yes, it gets boring to just drink
(16:10):
water every day long. I like to enjoy my water
with some fresh squeezed lemon. I do that every day.
Lemon water. That's my chosen beverage every day. I enjoy it.
And you can dress it up as well, all sorts
of ways. I have recipes online to just dress up
your water and make it taste good and more enjoyable.
(16:32):
But it's so fresh, it's light on your throat, and
that will be my chosen beverage. Phone lines are open
eight and on six scalvy I one in one hundred three
three zero O kalvy I'll be back in two minutes.
All right, welcome back to Doca me Medical. Our phone
line to open eight and on six kalvy I one
(16:54):
one hundred three three zero oklv I. Talking about juice
fresh squeezed or not fresh squeeze? Which one is better?
Water is the best thing? Too much sugar in my opinion.
Another question we had yesterday on our taping of Acidox
about earwax. Not something we talk about a lot, right.
(17:14):
I don't get a lot of phone calls on earwax.
I will get a lot of questions there in the office.
But the question was trying to remove all of the earwax?
How do we do that? They were using some products
over the counter and just still had felt like they
had a lot of ear wax in their ear canal
(17:36):
and how to get rid of it. Not such a
pleasant conversation. When's the last time you had a conversation
one about ear wax, right, But yeah, we get a
little bit of that in our ear canal and it's
a normal actually production of a little bit of wax
in your ear. It sort of helps keep the ear
(17:57):
canal moist and the skin and the environment in a
healthy sort of manner. So ear wax is sort of
a normal thing, a normal development in most patients' ears,
and it's it's nothing that you have to completely remove.
And I know, years ago with the whole introduction of
(18:19):
Q tips, and I remember the commercials myself, just getting
that sort of stick in your ear and just getting
all of it out right was something commonly recommended back
in the day years ago and was considered you know,
part of your normal hygiene. Brush your teeth, take a bath,
(18:40):
clean the ears out right. We had this nice little
device here where you just put it in that canal
and you can just clean it all out, scrub it
and get it all out right. So that was really
taught to a whole generation of people, and I was
one of them right that that was taught to. But actually,
(19:00):
when you get into medicine, you talk to specialist ear, nose,
and throat doctors who study the ear and the air
canal and how to keep the ear canal healthy, et cetera.
You know, their understanding is that again, a little wax
is okay, it's it's normal, it's a healthy thing. I
(19:21):
know some people feel sort of disgusted that there's wax
in the ear and that they got to get rid
of it. Again, it's sort of part of what we
were taught or what we were sort of made to
believe about ear wax is that it's a it's a
symptom of being unclean and and being dirty. You know,
you got wax and you need to clean it out.
It needs to be completely clean. No wax is the
(19:44):
way it should be. And we have this little device
that you can use every day to just clean it out.
So come to find out that that is untrue. That's
my understanding talking with the ear, nose and throat doctors,
that a little wax is okay, it's actually healthy for
your ear. It helps keep down infections, it helps keep
(20:08):
the skin lubricated and moist, and it helps keep that
skin layer healthy. And that when you're try and remove
the protective wax, the healthy lubricant, if you will, and
I guess let's call it that just say ear lubricant
that sometimes it can cause trauma to the layer of
(20:29):
the skin. It can increase the risk of infections, you
can cause bleeding. They're in the skin when you're putting
that Q tip in there, so and a lot of
times the wax that you have, again, it's sort of
the way it's positioned in your ear. It's it's positioned
a way that it's not going to normally generate any
(20:49):
problems with your hearing. But when you sort of jam
the Q tip in there and try to roll it
around and dig it out, it actually compacts rest is
the wax into sort of a boulder of wax, and
that can sometimes cause hearing problems, just because the wax
is sort of blocking the sound waves to get to
(21:13):
your middle ear, which is where our ability to hear
is generated. Little mechanism in there that generates our hearing,
and when you sort of pack the wax in there,
it can sometimes prevent you from hearing normally. Now, some
people generate a lot of wax in the ear, and
I've certainly seen that, and it can become impacted as
(21:36):
we say, meaning that when you look there in the
air canal and maybe if you've had an ear exam.
You know that we have these little instruments that normally
are on the sitting on the wall, are something we grab.
It's a handheld little instrument that has a light on
the end, and it allows us to sort of look
inside the ear canal. There's an outer air canal, and
(21:57):
there's an inner part of your ear. We're just only
looking at the outer part, which is where normally wax resides.
And yes, sometimes when you look in all you see
is wax. I mean, that's it just total annihilation of
just wax here. So yes, we call that an impaction
(22:17):
because the wax is completely blocking the canal itself. Just
a little tunnel is what we see. And it's supposed
to have little wax in air but not causing blockage
of anything normal. But some people, because of their body
chemistry and their metaboloxist and they generate a whole lot
(22:38):
of wax, and so yes, it impacts that air canal.
And most of the time when patients come in, they're
just saying, you know, something's wrong with my ear. I
can't hear as well. It hurts, it's a little painful,
it feels tight. Maybe it feels like something's air feels full,
and sometimes when I rub my ear, I can hear,
and then other times I can't. That's normally the complaint
(23:03):
that patients have when they come in is really not
being able to hear, or it's a little painful when
you develop that amount of wax. And again, some people
just generate a lot of wax. And again, unless it's
causing you problems, you don't have to dig it out
of there. We just don't recommend using those Q tips
to do that again, because it generally causes more problems
(23:25):
in what it's worth, It can sort of traumatize or
it can cause an imbalance with the environment of the
ear canal by doing that, because again wax formation is normal,
it sort of again protects that skin layer, reduces infections,
reduces dryness. You know, some people have itchy ears and
(23:48):
they're constantly sort of rubbing it and sometimes there's a
low grade inflammation of the ear canal. Again, wax can
reduce the presence of that, so you want to sort
of keep it around. You don't want to have just
a completely wax free ear, but some people have that.
When I look inside of the ear, I don't see
(24:08):
any wax at all, which is okay if you don't
have any. But all I'm saying is if you have some,
you don't necessarily have to get rid of it. The
only time that doctors want to get rid of it
is when it causes an impaction, which some people get.
And it's normally not dangerous. It's not like something's going
to blow up or explode. It's just you can't hear
(24:31):
as well. It's uncomfortable, and we have various instruments that
we use it where we can extract it and remove
it so that you can then hear. We have one
in the office a lot of times if the device
we have doesn't work. We've seen into the ear nos
and throat doctor they have one just to clean that out. Now,
there is a product over the counter called d bros.
(24:54):
D E D is in dog e b r o
x B as in boy b X. It's a liquid
and you basically drop it in your ear a couple
of times a day for several days. We a lot
of times recommend that for patients who have a large
volume of wax in the ear almost close to impaction,
to sort of eliminate some of the volume and get
(25:17):
rid of it, but we're not telling them to introduce
a Q tip or any other device to dig in there. Again,
just the risk of trauma bleeding is high, so we
just don't recommend that. And just to reiterate that having
little wax is okay, it's healthy, but don't stick anything
in your ears. What our main recommendation is. And if
(25:41):
you want something to maybe cut down the wax, they
have this d BROC solution d ebr exits over the
counter at most pharmacies and just drop it in there
a few times a day, do it for about a
week or so and it should help reduce the wax
in ear. But if not, go to your primary follow
up with your NT doctor and it can clean most
of it out. But it's okay to have a little bit.
(26:04):
Phone lines are open eight on six kvy I won
in one hundred and three to three zero kov. I'll
be back in two minutes. All right, welcome back talking
(26:25):
to me. Metacrot. Phone lines are open eight nine six
kV I one one hundred three three zero klv I
taking your phone calls this morning, talking about jews, talking
about earwax and joint pain. It was another question that
we had question, was a person of male who was
(26:46):
concerned about the joint pain that he had. He was
at the lead when he was growing up, and remember
not having any pain and doing very well. And now
he's in his fifties and he's starting to have joint
pain concern. Was it from the sports events that he
involved himself with? Was that the cause? And now that
(27:06):
he's got all this joint pain. You're there from a
lot of my men patients who maybe played high school
ball or college ball, and now they're having joint pain,
and they're like, hey, it's just from all those sports
I played and those things I did when I was
growing up, weightlifting, That's why I'm having joint pain now.
And sometimes it is they injured themselves in some way,
(27:30):
maybe they have major surgery, and certainly we all know
how that is. When you have an event on your
human body and scar tissue developed. Sometimes, yes, it can
bother you for the rest of your life, like a
burn on your skin. It's healed, but you can still
see it. And so sometimes with your joints, you had
(27:51):
a big joint injury, you had a surgery, just doesn't
always work the same for the rest of your life.
But yes, as we get older, and you may hear
this periodically when I'm talking on this show that sometimes, yeah,
that joint pain complaint will start to pick up and
pace as we all get older, sort of a natural
(28:12):
process where the joint system, which we call muscular skeletal
system tends to you know, generate some more symptoms, just
as the degenerative joint process sort of takes over normally
about the age of forty, that process sort of starts
to get repped up a little bit, such that, yes,
(28:33):
now you have little shoulder pain, Now you have a
little back pain, now you have little knee pain. And
you know, previous activities against can sometimes predispose you to
the development of that or it's more premature, meaning it
comes maybe in your early forties versus later and your fifties.
(28:53):
But again, it for most of us, we will have
some sort of benign just sort of coming and going
joint pain. And it could be anywhere right the foot,
the ankle, like I said, the back, the neck, the shoulders,
the hands, and wrists. I mean, we see it all,
(29:15):
but it's at the back pain you know, pain in
sort of your chest area when you twist when you're
leaning over or when you're churning, you get that pain
there on the side of your chest. We hear a
lot of that, and we see a lot of that,
and it becomes a bigger complaint as you get older,
and it's really just because of the aging process and
(29:36):
what we call degenerative joint disease or primary osteo arthritis
is another term that we use for that process. We
have random from Lake Charles. How can we help you?
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Hello, doctor, I just have a quick comment for anyone
that is maybe soon to be in the market for
a hearing aid, they should always have their ears claimed,
you know, by a doctor areadyology or something before they
take that test because it can affect your results and
consequently uh uh effect uh you know what you spend
(30:12):
for your hearing aids. So that's it's just a comment
and another question and I'm gonna hang up and listen
to your spots, all.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Right, Randon. We appreciate that comment, brother, Yeah, uh, as
I mentioned to you, when you get sort of a
earwax impaction, and we call earwax sir rumen c E
R E m U in something like that, sir roumin
see are you in me in that's what it is,
sir Rumen And yeah, and then you know it looks
like you know that, I guess you'd have to be
(30:44):
a mechanic, but just that heavy, thick brown grease that
you see a lot of mechanics using when they're putting
gears together or transmissions. Just that it's a real, real thick, greasy,
constant traded dense grease that they use there in the
(31:05):
automobile industry. That's sort of what earwax looks like you
look at it with the naked eye. And as this
caller was mentioning to you, you know, if your hearing
goes down, that can be a symptom of serumin impaction
or ear wax impaction. And yeah, you need to get
your ears cleaned out to make sure that there's no
obstruction of the hearing apparatus that's in the middle part
(31:30):
of your ear. And so most audiologists, let's say you
want to get your hearing checked out, that's really part
of the audiologist or ear nose and throat doctor's assessment
is they look in the ear. I mean, it makes sense, right,
you come in with the physical complaint, doctors try to
examine that anatomical site to see if it feels or
(31:54):
looks normal or abnormal. So it's certainly a great recommendation
for anyone who's having some hearing losses to have someone
look in your ear to see if there's anything causing that. Sometimes, yeah,
we find things like wax, but that can be other
things infection or tumors or blood or yeah, you just
(32:17):
got to look, you know, before you spend thousands of
dollars in hearing aids, which at this point, hearing aids
are normally not covered by your insurance. It's normally something
you have to pay for out of pocket. And as
far as I know, and hearing aids are expensive or
two three thousand dollars for a pair of hearing aids,
And just like with eyeglasses or any sort of device
(32:40):
that you have to be fitted with, sometimes you have
to tweak the device and how it fits and how
it works for you. And certainly if there's wax there,
it can impact how the device works and how it's
programmed or tuned if you will, by the person who
does that. So, as far as I know that that's
sort of a basic step that's taken anytime hearing aids
(33:05):
are considered or being placed as they look in your
ear and if they don't look in here, just be
polite and ask them to look in here. But that
typically happens just because they the practitioner who deals with
hearing HS knows that looking in that ear canal is
the most basic thing that they can do, because right
(33:26):
sometimes it can be an easy fix and not take,
you know, five thousand dollars from your pocket. Hey, Steve
from LA, what's up?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Hey, No, I just have a question. I have trouble
breathing through my nose. You know, I just wondering what
I need to do about that meat. You know, I
don't know if I need a roller router or something.
But anyway, hang up and listen to it. What kind
of procedures you recommend?
Speaker 1 (33:54):
All right, Steve, we appreciate that phone call. Yeah, it's
not being able to breathe through your nose very I'm
a complain in most healthcare profess primary care physician's offices,
and here in Southeast Texas with the topography the way
it is and just the industries in our area. Sometimes, yes,
it can be a little irritating to the sinuses and
(34:14):
the nose and generates inflammation of the nostrils and edema
of the nostrils such that the area that the air
goes through is more narrow, it's constricted, and so you
feel like, hey, I can't breathe in my nose. You can. Actually,
(34:35):
it's a physical sensation that you have, and it's just
from inflammation in the nose again, from exposure to certain
environmental irritants that are that are in your environment. And
most of the time that can be cleared up with
some nose sprays. The the one that we use a
lot over the counter is called naser cord or flutikozone.
(34:58):
It's just a nasal stick. Steroids. Steroids are anti inflammatory.
So a lot of times you can just go to
the pharmacy and go get you some flow nase or
some naser cord and use that for about a week
or so and see if it helps. Along the same lines,
allergies are just being allergic to your environment can cause
a dema or inflammation of the nostrils and the sinuses
(35:23):
and the throat. Again, it restricts airflow in that area,
and just trying a trial of an antihistamine. We know
them as allegra or clariton or Zyrtec. There's no head
to head studies on any of these products, so just
pick one and try it, and you could theoretically be
(35:43):
on the nasal steroid and the tablet antihistamine for a
week or so to see if you can sort of
improve your symptoms, because that's a very common issue in
the Golden Triangle area. It's just the environment is irritating
to a lot of people and then get that congestion
beyond that. A lot of times if those fail, and
(36:05):
most people sort of know that those products are there
and they'll go try them out. If that fails and
they still have the congestion, that's when they come into
the doctor's office. Infections, bacterial infections can certainly generate that.
So you might have a trial of antibiotics or even
steroids tablet steroids. The flownase is a spray steroid, but
(36:28):
we have tablet steroids, you know them as pretinozone or
dexamethasone or solu medrol. We use them a lot. You
maybe try a trial of a pretinozone and antabotic again
to see if there's any infectious component to causing the
obstruction of airflow in your sinuses. I remember, sinus is
(36:48):
a big sort of filter. You have the little hair
hair elements there which is supposed to sort of brush
the air that's coming through of the when you see
a sunlight beam coming through the winter, you sort of
sell these particles floating in the air. There's still floating
in the air, just can't see them. But nonetheless, those
(37:11):
hair in the nostrils, the hair pieces in your nostrils
sort of filter all that out, and bacteria can get
in there, and viruses can get in there, and it
just cause an infection. And sometimes you typically have some
fever and some production of green yellow sputum or you
(37:31):
blow your nose and it's bloody and it's green, it's yellow.
That sometimes indicates infection, and so antibiotics and steroids work
very well for that. Beyond that, we can do X
rays of the nose and the sinuses again looking for tumors, polyps,
deviation of the nose. Sometimes just from congenital issues or
(37:55):
previous trauma to your nose, you can sort of bend
the middle part of the ear I'm sorry, the nose
to one side or the other. It makes that area
more narrow and doesn't allow you to breathe or use
the airflow going through your nose very well, and so
it feels restricted. And yes, earnos and throat doctors have
(38:17):
techniques that they can use to correct that so that
everything is open and not constricted. Are what we call stenoutic.
So getting an X ray of that area can help.
If that all fails, then yes, we then send you
to that your nose and throat doctor. They actually have
devices where they can actually look inside the nose and
(38:37):
look for any anatomical problems that might be causing that.
You know, if the cat skin doesn't pick up anything.
So there's several steps to go through, but certainly you
can try the over the counter products first a lot
of times that'll relieve those symptoms. Phone lines are open
eight nine six kov I one hundred and three three
zero kov I'll be back in two minutes and welcome
(39:11):
back to doctor. We metagal. Phone lines opening nan six kalvy.
I want to hundred three three zero kill if yall.
At the end of the show, time goes by so
so fast. Talking about orange juice and those joint pain
problems that we all get as we get older. Again,
part of that is just a natural process. Of getting older,
and most of that can be sort of treated with
(39:33):
anti inflammatories. We have Rick from Beaumont. How you doing, Hello, Hello,
how can we help you?
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Yeah? I turned it away. But what do you think
about putting salt on your foot? I heard a radio
show a doctor said, Uh, if a doctor puts you
on a falt free diet, get another doctor. What do
you think about that?
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, you know, we've been Rick, We've been looking for
the things that cause a lot of disease and illness.
So yeah, changes over and over again, right, fat, salt, sugar, starches,
and sometimes yes, doctors do believe in certain recommendations about
how to eat or drink. I would say salt free
(40:19):
is unpalatable, meaning most people cannot eat food without a
little seasoning. And if you do have hypertension or chronic
kidney disease, which a lot of experts feel like consuming
salt might exacerbate those issues, that they have a lot
of what they call salt substitutes, which really are almost
(40:41):
like artificial sweetness. But we're talking about seasonings that you
can take to sort of season your food. So I
would say salt free is a little extreme, and that
if you do really have a problem with your blood
pressure or your heart or chronic kidney disease, that there
are salt alternatives that you can consume. That Missus Dash
(41:05):
is the most popular brand of salt substitutes that you
can enjoy seasoned food. Because we want you to still
enjoy your food. We just want you to understand the
connection between salt and hypertension heart failure. You know, there
was a time where when people sat down to eat
their dinner, they automatically put more salt on their food.
(41:28):
So it was just sort of a behavior that Americans
did years ago. Most people these days are not doing that.
It's already in the food already, so you don't have
to add more. And again, if you eat out a lot,
there might be more salt than what is good for you.
So that's why we recommend you cook at home. But
(41:49):
I see a little salt is okay. You just don't
want to consume a lot of salt on your food.
And again, there's a lot of salt substitutes if you
do have a problem, so normally we can get around that. Okay,
thank you, all right, Rick, We appreciate that's a good question.
Just came a little late again. It's not just one thing,
(42:11):
it's several things. I've tried to impress upon you about
that in terms of your health, a lot of things
that impact your health, and certainly the salt consumption is
one of them, and we certainly want you to be
reasonable and limit your salt intake. And again when you
if you eat out a lot, it's going to be
salt in there, right, that's just what happens. Are not
(42:32):
bad people, and that's why we again recommend you have
when you cook yourself, you can control a lot of
what goes in your food, which, in my opinion, based
on my experience, impacts your health the most, the most.
Thank you for joining on the show. Don't drink or dry.
We'll see you next week.
All right, good morning, Southeast Sex is Internet Radio listeners.
This is Doctor Levine Golden Triangle, Internal Medicine and Geriatrics.
I'm your weekly host taking your phone calls cross Street
from Parkdale Mall live in studio, So give us a
call eight nine to six kVA one hundred three three
(00:22):
zero kalviyall. We'd love hit listening or listening from you
and answering your questions. That's the genesis of the show,
to help you stay alive as long as possible and
to make things clearer. It's confusing out there. Every day
We're getting inundated with all sorts of information about how
to stay alive and what's the right thing, what's the
(00:44):
wrong thing. All these influencers out there that apparently have
credentials that allow them to give advice about your health
care and what's right for you and what's wrong for you.
It's confusing because influencers disagree all the time. Are they
(01:05):
promote this or that, and we just don't know what
to do. Just need some direction. So I'm here to
try and help, just try to get you some basic
information based on my understanding of health and wellness and
sickness and disease. I'm in it every day office, hospital,
(01:27):
every day, so I feel like I have a little
bit of insight into that issue. And what do I
see talking to patients. What are things that typically work,
what are things that don't work? What are the things
you don't have to worry about? Just because there is
a lot of paranoia that floats throughout society. If you
(01:51):
turn on the TV, TV is scary, you know. It's
just always a lot of inflammatory news, almost like things
are always coming to an end, are going to explode,
or it's got to be nervous all the time. And
sometimes I tell my patients just turn that stuff off
and go watch a comedy or a good movie that
(02:11):
you like, or listen to some good music that you like.
I do that sometimes. The music I grew up on
Staying Alive. I used to listen to that growing up,
so that's why I like it. But it has a
good message anyway. Phone lines open eight, nine to six, kalvy.
I want to hundred three three zero kalvy. I just
(02:33):
we had our taping of Acid Doc yesterday, so thought
I would go over some of the topics there, some
interesting topics. What was about orange juice? And the question
of whether or not if you do fresh squeeze at
home versus if you get the fresh squeezed in a
container at the grocery store, which one's better. And I
(02:57):
guess a lot of people drink orange juice in the
morning as they're chosen chosen beverage. The way orange juice
has been presented to us in terms of what you
see on TV, maybe what you read is it's a
healthy beverage. You know, if you get sick, you get
a cold or flu, man, you just go get a
(03:18):
gallon of orange juice with the pulp, right versus no
pulp in the orange juice. That's the difference maker, right there,
no pulp, some pulp. But yeah, you get sick, you
need to drink orange juice has that vitamin C in it,
and the in vitamin C is going to help you
(03:39):
get better. So do I squeeze it? You know, get
a machine which they have a lot of those machines
now where you put the fruit in the machine and
it's sort of pulverizes it and turns it into juice
and gets rid of the pulp, and it's freshly squeezed
or freshly processed, and you drink it, or some of
(04:01):
the grocery stores have that are available as well, and
they bottle it themselves. Which one's better? So I thought
that was an interesting question, just because when you go
to the grocery stores, as you know, the groceries are
so big now and it's just all these food items
and beverage items this manly. The choices are just endless.
(04:25):
You know, it can be exciting going in there, just
because all these different things that maybe if not even
known about, are just all the possibilities of eating and drinking.
Just it's almost like an amusement park, if you will.
At the grocery stores. What has become, you know, and
(04:46):
you don't know which decision to make because there's really
no one telling you which one is better or worse.
So I thought that was a sort of a good
question in my opinion, in terms of what I tell
my patients, you know, choose any sort of fruit juice,
whether it be apple or grape or pineapple or grapefruit juice.
(05:08):
That's another popular fruit juice that a lot of people drink.
Is that it can be enjoyed, but I would recommend
not drinking it every day. That would be my own
personal recommendation, and it's only because of the sugar content
typically in any fruit juice, which again, when I was
(05:32):
growing up, the fruit box kraze is when it started,
the little boxes with a little plastic straw that was
attached to it and had a fruit juice in it,
and it was sort of this convenient beverage that again
I get it sort of targeted kids, but anybody could
(05:53):
drink it, right, but you could. It was small enough
and convenient enough you can put in a lunch box
with the sandwich and the chips and the cookie and
all these starches. And at that time, right, the villain
was fat. Right, you didn't want any fat in your diet.
Fat kills you. And so everybody got away from fat,
(06:13):
and we just loaded up on the cars, right, And
that it was for many years. That's when that craze started.
When I was sort of in high school, junior high
so we got all these packaged starches that were convenient
and ready to go, and you could eat it at anytime.
You could pack it into all sorts of containers and
(06:34):
take it with you on the go, whether or not
it was a road trip or we can get away,
or the lunch box, right, And so that's when that
whole craze started, was the fruit box that you could drink.
And certainly fresh squeeze has a good sound to it, right.
It sounds healthy, it's fresh, and we squeeze it ourselves,
(06:55):
and it's got all that vitamin C in there to
protect you from disease. It's a great beverage and you
need to be drinking this every day. Is sort of
what we pick up on TV or just everything we read.
But from my point of view and based on talking
to patients and seeing what happens when you drink a
(07:17):
lot of juice every day, it doesn't happen to everyone, right,
But in my opinion, because of the sugar content and
the calories from the sugar, that drinking that beverage every
day tends to generate some weight gain. What I hear
from a lot of people, they want to get healthy, right,
(07:38):
They're like, Okay, finally I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna
buckle down, I'm gonna lose this weight, I'm gonna be healthy.
I don't want to take all these meds. I don't
like going to the doctor's office paying all these copays
and I can't hardly do anything. I don't like the
way I look and feel. My clothes are not fitting.
I'm gonna buckle down. Okay. The first thing I'm gonna
do is I'm just I'm gonna drink juice. It's healthy
(08:01):
for you. It's not that soda water stuff, you know,
that processed stuff. It's a great beverage, and I'm just
gonna drink I'm gonna drink it every morning. I'm gonna
drink it throughout the day because I want to get healthy.
So I hear that a lot from patients, which means
there's still some disorientation and confusion about what's the best beverage,
(08:22):
what's not so good for you, which is why I
thought it was a good question. So, in my opin,
orange juice is not something you should be reaching for
if you want to be healthy because of the sugar
content in a freshly squeezed glass of orange juice or
whatever you'd pick up from the store. Not that it's
(08:44):
not fresh, it's just that it's got too much sugar
in it. And based on my experience in what I read,
drinking sugar every day tends to not be healthy for you.
And there's a lot of ways to do that. There's
so many beverages out there that are available to us
at the grocery store, at an nvenience store that contains
sugar that you have to be conscious of your daily
(09:07):
consumption that and your daily exposure to sugar in a
beverage because it tends to be highly concentrated, a lot
of it's processed, and even the artificial sweeteners which are
not necessarily sugar but just artificial sweeteners. Again, the experts
are raising awareness that these are not good for you
(09:27):
either that you know. Now, we have these sugar monitors, right,
dex Colm, We have Freestyle Libre where you can just
monitor your sugar all day long. It talks to your
phone and it's an investigation of what foods and what
beverage items can spike your sugar. Right, That's really how
that works. And people are finding out when they drink
(09:50):
a diet coke that there's sugar spikes even though there's
no sugar in it. They drink these beverages with zero
sugar on the can and normally they just put artificial
sweetness in it. There's multiple ones on the market. The food
industry very smart and very intuitive about how to make
(10:11):
this work. I mean they're feeding us, they're giving us
the beverages that we drink. So they're in business, right,
They want to be successful, so they invest a lot
of time into figuring this stuff out. They're not bad people.
They're just trying to give us what we want. And certainly,
if we're at the grocery store and we're buying the
fresh Squeeze juice and it's making money, they're going to
(10:31):
keep doing it. Not that they're trying to generate poor health.
They're just trying to provide the item that the customers want.
But again, with all the confusion out there, you know,
it's hard to know what to do. So exposing yourself
to sugary beverages every day, in my opinion, isn't unhealthy.
It's just unhealthy. And there's really no difference between that.
(10:56):
If the grocery store does it or if you do it.
To me, the impact from the sugar is the same,
and neither one is better, and it's neither one I
would recommend for you to consume every day. I mean,
maybe on Saturday morning and you're off from work and
it's a leisure day and you just want to taste
some orange juice, you hadn't had any all week, and
(11:19):
you do it once in the morning. I can't argue
with that one. But again, in trying to be healthy,
a lot of people will include that into their routine
and so they're drinking it every day thinking that this
is doing some good for me. But again, because of
that sugar content and that sugar exposure every day, it
(11:40):
tends to generate some weight gain and tends to generate
some medical problems. Not in everyone. Right, I have patients
that they drink it every morning. They're not heavy, they
don't really gain weight, and it's just part of their routine.
You can always find that that can do that. I mean,
(12:02):
really that doesn't really eat healthy, doesn't exercize, and they
don't take any medicines, and they don't go to the
doctor and they're fine. I mean, you can find that person.
But in general, most of us will have some negative
impact from that. So again, if you want orange juice,
(12:23):
just eat the orange. Remember, I mean, how many oranges
does it take to actually generate a you know, one
average glass of juice. I mean, it probably takes about
five or six oranges, right, I don't know if you've
ever done that before. But it takes about five or
six oranges to make one medium sized glass of juice,
(12:47):
and all of that juice, all that sugar that's in
that orange gets super duper concentrated into that glass of
orange juice, and just the mount tends to be excessive
for the human body. And that's my argument that exposing
your body to that every day tends to be unhealthy,
(13:10):
tends to generate inflammation. You've heard that term from me
before and something you should know about. But enjoying it periodically,
I can't find any problems with that. And again, if
people want to have exposure to some orange juice to strinth,
just eat the orange, right, just eat the whole apple,
(13:34):
eat the whole grape. Because it's got a little fiber
in it, that pulp that you try to extract from it.
Some of the machines do that, they get rid of
the pulp and it's just the juice. Experts say, hey,
the pulp is good for you. It's fiber. It slows
down the absorption of that sugar. Because a lot of
the food items and beverage items that we consume because
(13:55):
of the way it's made and what it contains, like
I said, whether it be an art official man made
sugar or an artificial sweetener, the sugar gets processed or
it gets absorbed very rapidly into the bloodstream and it
spikes the sugar very high. And sugar spikes is what
(14:15):
generates inflammation in the human body. When it gets into
the blood, it perceives that as a sort of toxic event,
and the inflammatory system it's there to protect us, right,
So when the body gets injured, it turns on the
inflammatory system to sort of repair it or protect us.
And so this happens every day, and so that inflamma
(14:39):
system is just sort of humming in the background, generating
all these inflammatory hormones that then circulate through your body.
And that's when you start gaining weight. You don't feel well,
maybe fatigue, mental fogginess, sugar's going up, blood pressure is
going up. That that's joint pain, that's the inflammatory system.
(15:00):
Those are the symptoms of the inflammatory system. You just
don't feel good. You're not quite sure where it's coming from.
We don't necessarily have a monitor for the inflammatory system
that you can buy at the grocery store and check yourself.
We just don't have that yet. Maybe we will in
the future. I mean with all of these gadgets coming
out with your watches and your phones and rings. They're
(15:24):
coming out with rings now that you can kind of
monitor yourself. Maybe there'll be something to monitor inflammatory system.
But we don't have that yet. I mean, all you
know is that you feel sluggish, your joints all of
a sudden hurting. Maybe your mind's not as crisp as
it used to be. That's inflammation. So in my opinion,
neither is good. Try to avoid such a sugar beverage
(15:48):
every day. The best beverage you know, listen to my show.
You know what it is, right, drink that water? Are
coffee is a good beverage. Our tea just no sweetener. No,
they have a lot of flavored coffees and teas out
there that are good for you. But water is always
number one. And yes, it gets boring to just drink
(16:10):
water every day long. I like to enjoy my water
with some fresh squeezed lemon. I do that every day.
Lemon water. That's my chosen beverage every day. I enjoy it.
And you can dress it up as well, all sorts
of ways. I have recipes online to just dress up
your water and make it taste good and more enjoyable.
(16:32):
But it's so fresh, it's light on your throat, and
that will be my chosen beverage. Phone lines are open
eight and on six scalvy I one in one hundred three
three zero O kalvy I'll be back in two minutes.
All right, welcome back to Doca me Medical. Our phone
line to open eight and on six kalvy I one
(16:54):
one hundred three three zero oklv I. Talking about juice
fresh squeezed or not fresh squeeze? Which one is better?
Water is the best thing? Too much sugar in my opinion.
Another question we had yesterday on our taping of Acidox
about earwax. Not something we talk about a lot, right.
(17:14):
I don't get a lot of phone calls on earwax.
I will get a lot of questions there in the office.
But the question was trying to remove all of the earwax?
How do we do that? They were using some products
over the counter and just still had felt like they
had a lot of ear wax in their ear canal
(17:36):
and how to get rid of it. Not such a
pleasant conversation. When's the last time you had a conversation
one about ear wax, right, But yeah, we get a
little bit of that in our ear canal and it's
a normal actually production of a little bit of wax
in your ear. It sort of helps keep the ear
(17:57):
canal moist and the skin and the environment in a
healthy sort of manner. So ear wax is sort of
a normal thing, a normal development in most patients' ears,
and it's it's nothing that you have to completely remove.
And I know, years ago with the whole introduction of
(18:19):
Q tips, and I remember the commercials myself, just getting
that sort of stick in your ear and just getting
all of it out right was something commonly recommended back
in the day years ago and was considered you know,
part of your normal hygiene. Brush your teeth, take a bath,
(18:40):
clean the ears out right. We had this nice little
device here where you just put it in that canal
and you can just clean it all out, scrub it
and get it all out right. So that was really
taught to a whole generation of people, and I was
one of them right that that was taught to. But actually,
(19:00):
when you get into medicine, you talk to specialist ear, nose,
and throat doctors who study the ear and the air
canal and how to keep the ear canal healthy, et cetera.
You know, their understanding is that again, a little wax
is okay, it's it's normal, it's a healthy thing. I
(19:21):
know some people feel sort of disgusted that there's wax
in the ear and that they got to get rid
of it. Again, it's sort of part of what we
were taught or what we were sort of made to
believe about ear wax is that it's a it's a
symptom of being unclean and and being dirty. You know,
you got wax and you need to clean it out.
It needs to be completely clean. No wax is the
(19:44):
way it should be. And we have this little device
that you can use every day to just clean it out.
So come to find out that that is untrue. That's
my understanding talking with the ear, nose and throat doctors,
that a little wax is okay, it's actually healthy for
your ear. It helps keep down infections, it helps keep
(20:08):
the skin lubricated and moist, and it helps keep that
skin layer healthy. And that when you're try and remove
the protective wax, the healthy lubricant, if you will, and
I guess let's call it that just say ear lubricant
that sometimes it can cause trauma to the layer of
(20:29):
the skin. It can increase the risk of infections, you
can cause bleeding. They're in the skin when you're putting
that Q tip in there, so and a lot of
times the wax that you have, again, it's sort of
the way it's positioned in your ear. It's it's positioned
a way that it's not going to normally generate any
(20:49):
problems with your hearing. But when you sort of jam
the Q tip in there and try to roll it
around and dig it out, it actually compacts rest is
the wax into sort of a boulder of wax, and
that can sometimes cause hearing problems, just because the wax
is sort of blocking the sound waves to get to
(21:13):
your middle ear, which is where our ability to hear
is generated. Little mechanism in there that generates our hearing,
and when you sort of pack the wax in there,
it can sometimes prevent you from hearing normally. Now, some
people generate a lot of wax in the ear, and
I've certainly seen that, and it can become impacted as
(21:36):
we say, meaning that when you look there in the
air canal and maybe if you've had an ear exam.
You know that we have these little instruments that normally
are on the sitting on the wall, are something we grab.
It's a handheld little instrument that has a light on
the end, and it allows us to sort of look
inside the ear canal. There's an outer air canal, and
(21:57):
there's an inner part of your ear. We're just only
looking at the outer part, which is where normally wax resides.
And yes, sometimes when you look in all you see
is wax. I mean, that's it just total annihilation of
just wax here. So yes, we call that an impaction
(22:17):
because the wax is completely blocking the canal itself. Just
a little tunnel is what we see. And it's supposed
to have little wax in air but not causing blockage
of anything normal. But some people, because of their body
chemistry and their metaboloxist and they generate a whole lot
(22:38):
of wax, and so yes, it impacts that air canal.
And most of the time when patients come in, they're
just saying, you know, something's wrong with my ear. I
can't hear as well. It hurts, it's a little painful,
it feels tight. Maybe it feels like something's air feels full,
and sometimes when I rub my ear, I can hear,
and then other times I can't. That's normally the complaint
(23:03):
that patients have when they come in is really not
being able to hear, or it's a little painful when
you develop that amount of wax. And again, some people
just generate a lot of wax. And again, unless it's
causing you problems, you don't have to dig it out
of there. We just don't recommend using those Q tips
to do that again, because it generally causes more problems
(23:25):
in what it's worth, It can sort of traumatize or
it can cause an imbalance with the environment of the
ear canal by doing that, because again wax formation is normal,
it sort of again protects that skin layer, reduces infections,
reduces dryness. You know, some people have itchy ears and
(23:48):
they're constantly sort of rubbing it and sometimes there's a
low grade inflammation of the ear canal. Again, wax can
reduce the presence of that, so you want to sort
of keep it around. You don't want to have just
a completely wax free ear, but some people have that.
When I look inside of the ear, I don't see
(24:08):
any wax at all, which is okay if you don't
have any. But all I'm saying is if you have some,
you don't necessarily have to get rid of it. The
only time that doctors want to get rid of it
is when it causes an impaction, which some people get.
And it's normally not dangerous. It's not like something's going
to blow up or explode. It's just you can't hear
(24:31):
as well. It's uncomfortable, and we have various instruments that
we use it where we can extract it and remove
it so that you can then hear. We have one
in the office a lot of times if the device
we have doesn't work. We've seen into the ear nos
and throat doctor they have one just to clean that out. Now,
there is a product over the counter called d bros.
(24:54):
D E D is in dog e b r o
x B as in boy b X. It's a liquid
and you basically drop it in your ear a couple
of times a day for several days. We a lot
of times recommend that for patients who have a large
volume of wax in the ear almost close to impaction,
to sort of eliminate some of the volume and get
(25:17):
rid of it, but we're not telling them to introduce
a Q tip or any other device to dig in there. Again,
just the risk of trauma bleeding is high, so we
just don't recommend that. And just to reiterate that having
little wax is okay, it's healthy, but don't stick anything
in your ears. What our main recommendation is. And if
(25:41):
you want something to maybe cut down the wax, they
have this d BROC solution d ebr exits over the
counter at most pharmacies and just drop it in there
a few times a day, do it for about a
week or so and it should help reduce the wax
in ear. But if not, go to your primary follow
up with your NT doctor and it can clean most
of it out. But it's okay to have a little bit.
(26:04):
Phone lines are open eight on six kvy I won
in one hundred and three to three zero kov. I'll
be back in two minutes. All right, welcome back talking
(26:25):
to me. Metacrot. Phone lines are open eight nine six
kV I one one hundred three three zero klv I
taking your phone calls this morning, talking about jews, talking
about earwax and joint pain. It was another question that
we had question, was a person of male who was
(26:46):
concerned about the joint pain that he had. He was
at the lead when he was growing up, and remember
not having any pain and doing very well. And now
he's in his fifties and he's starting to have joint
pain concern. Was it from the sports events that he
involved himself with? Was that the cause? And now that
(27:06):
he's got all this joint pain. You're there from a
lot of my men patients who maybe played high school
ball or college ball, and now they're having joint pain,
and they're like, hey, it's just from all those sports
I played and those things I did when I was
growing up, weightlifting, That's why I'm having joint pain now.
And sometimes it is they injured themselves in some way,
(27:30):
maybe they have major surgery, and certainly we all know
how that is. When you have an event on your
human body and scar tissue developed. Sometimes, yes, it can
bother you for the rest of your life, like a
burn on your skin. It's healed, but you can still
see it. And so sometimes with your joints, you had
(27:51):
a big joint injury, you had a surgery, just doesn't
always work the same for the rest of your life.
But yes, as we get older, and you may hear
this periodically when I'm talking on this show that sometimes, yeah,
that joint pain complaint will start to pick up and
pace as we all get older, sort of a natural
(28:12):
process where the joint system, which we call muscular skeletal
system tends to you know, generate some more symptoms, just
as the degenerative joint process sort of takes over normally
about the age of forty, that process sort of starts
to get repped up a little bit, such that, yes,
(28:33):
now you have little shoulder pain, Now you have a
little back pain, now you have little knee pain. And
you know, previous activities against can sometimes predispose you to
the development of that or it's more premature, meaning it
comes maybe in your early forties versus later and your fifties.
(28:53):
But again, it for most of us, we will have
some sort of benign just sort of coming and going
joint pain. And it could be anywhere right the foot,
the ankle, like I said, the back, the neck, the shoulders,
the hands, and wrists. I mean, we see it all,
(29:15):
but it's at the back pain you know, pain in
sort of your chest area when you twist when you're
leaning over or when you're churning, you get that pain
there on the side of your chest. We hear a
lot of that, and we see a lot of that,
and it becomes a bigger complaint as you get older,
and it's really just because of the aging process and
(29:36):
what we call degenerative joint disease or primary osteo arthritis
is another term that we use for that process. We
have random from Lake Charles. How can we help you?
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Hello, doctor, I just have a quick comment for anyone
that is maybe soon to be in the market for
a hearing aid, they should always have their ears claimed,
you know, by a doctor areadyology or something before they
take that test because it can affect your results and
consequently uh uh effect uh you know what you spend
(30:12):
for your hearing aids. So that's it's just a comment
and another question and I'm gonna hang up and listen
to your spots, all.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Right, Randon. We appreciate that comment, brother, Yeah, uh, as
I mentioned to you, when you get sort of a
earwax impaction, and we call earwax sir rumen c E
R E m U in something like that, sir roumin
see are you in me in that's what it is,
sir Rumen And yeah, and then you know it looks
like you know that, I guess you'd have to be
(30:44):
a mechanic, but just that heavy, thick brown grease that
you see a lot of mechanics using when they're putting
gears together or transmissions. Just that it's a real, real thick, greasy,
constant traded dense grease that they use there in the
(31:05):
automobile industry. That's sort of what earwax looks like you
look at it with the naked eye. And as this
caller was mentioning to you, you know, if your hearing
goes down, that can be a symptom of serumin impaction
or ear wax impaction. And yeah, you need to get
your ears cleaned out to make sure that there's no
obstruction of the hearing apparatus that's in the middle part
(31:30):
of your ear. And so most audiologists, let's say you
want to get your hearing checked out, that's really part
of the audiologist or ear nose and throat doctor's assessment
is they look in the ear. I mean, it makes sense, right,
you come in with the physical complaint, doctors try to
examine that anatomical site to see if it feels or
(31:54):
looks normal or abnormal. So it's certainly a great recommendation
for anyone who's having some hearing losses to have someone
look in your ear to see if there's anything causing that. Sometimes, yeah,
we find things like wax, but that can be other
things infection or tumors or blood or yeah, you just
(32:17):
got to look, you know, before you spend thousands of
dollars in hearing aids, which at this point, hearing aids
are normally not covered by your insurance. It's normally something
you have to pay for out of pocket. And as
far as I know, and hearing aids are expensive or
two three thousand dollars for a pair of hearing aids,
And just like with eyeglasses or any sort of device
(32:40):
that you have to be fitted with, sometimes you have
to tweak the device and how it fits and how
it works for you. And certainly if there's wax there,
it can impact how the device works and how it's
programmed or tuned if you will, by the person who
does that. So, as far as I know that that's
sort of a basic step that's taken anytime hearing aids
(33:05):
are considered or being placed as they look in your
ear and if they don't look in here, just be
polite and ask them to look in here. But that
typically happens just because they the practitioner who deals with
hearing HS knows that looking in that ear canal is
the most basic thing that they can do, because right
(33:26):
sometimes it can be an easy fix and not take,
you know, five thousand dollars from your pocket. Hey, Steve
from LA, what's up?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Hey, No, I just have a question. I have trouble
breathing through my nose. You know, I just wondering what
I need to do about that meat. You know, I
don't know if I need a roller router or something.
But anyway, hang up and listen to it. What kind
of procedures you recommend?
Speaker 1 (33:54):
All right, Steve, we appreciate that phone call. Yeah, it's
not being able to breathe through your nose very I'm
a complain in most healthcare profess primary care physician's offices,
and here in Southeast Texas with the topography the way
it is and just the industries in our area. Sometimes, yes,
it can be a little irritating to the sinuses and
(34:14):
the nose and generates inflammation of the nostrils and edema
of the nostrils such that the area that the air
goes through is more narrow, it's constricted, and so you
feel like, hey, I can't breathe in my nose. You can. Actually,
(34:35):
it's a physical sensation that you have, and it's just
from inflammation in the nose again, from exposure to certain
environmental irritants that are that are in your environment. And
most of the time that can be cleared up with
some nose sprays. The the one that we use a
lot over the counter is called naser cord or flutikozone.
(34:58):
It's just a nasal stick. Steroids. Steroids are anti inflammatory.
So a lot of times you can just go to
the pharmacy and go get you some flow nase or
some naser cord and use that for about a week
or so and see if it helps. Along the same lines,
allergies are just being allergic to your environment can cause
a dema or inflammation of the nostrils and the sinuses
(35:23):
and the throat. Again, it restricts airflow in that area,
and just trying a trial of an antihistamine. We know
them as allegra or clariton or Zyrtec. There's no head
to head studies on any of these products, so just
pick one and try it, and you could theoretically be
(35:43):
on the nasal steroid and the tablet antihistamine for a
week or so to see if you can sort of
improve your symptoms, because that's a very common issue in
the Golden Triangle area. It's just the environment is irritating
to a lot of people and then get that congestion
beyond that. A lot of times if those fail, and
(36:05):
most people sort of know that those products are there
and they'll go try them out. If that fails and
they still have the congestion, that's when they come into
the doctor's office. Infections, bacterial infections can certainly generate that.
So you might have a trial of antibiotics or even
steroids tablet steroids. The flownase is a spray steroid, but
(36:28):
we have tablet steroids, you know them as pretinozone or
dexamethasone or solu medrol. We use them a lot. You
maybe try a trial of a pretinozone and antabotic again
to see if there's any infectious component to causing the
obstruction of airflow in your sinuses. I remember, sinus is
(36:48):
a big sort of filter. You have the little hair
hair elements there which is supposed to sort of brush
the air that's coming through of the when you see
a sunlight beam coming through the winter, you sort of
sell these particles floating in the air. There's still floating
in the air, just can't see them. But nonetheless, those
(37:11):
hair in the nostrils, the hair pieces in your nostrils
sort of filter all that out, and bacteria can get
in there, and viruses can get in there, and it
just cause an infection. And sometimes you typically have some
fever and some production of green yellow sputum or you
(37:31):
blow your nose and it's bloody and it's green, it's yellow.
That sometimes indicates infection, and so antibiotics and steroids work
very well for that. Beyond that, we can do X
rays of the nose and the sinuses again looking for tumors, polyps,
deviation of the nose. Sometimes just from congenital issues or
(37:55):
previous trauma to your nose, you can sort of bend
the middle part of the ear I'm sorry, the nose
to one side or the other. It makes that area
more narrow and doesn't allow you to breathe or use
the airflow going through your nose very well, and so
it feels restricted. And yes, earnos and throat doctors have
(38:17):
techniques that they can use to correct that so that
everything is open and not constricted. Are what we call stenoutic.
So getting an X ray of that area can help.
If that all fails, then yes, we then send you
to that your nose and throat doctor. They actually have
devices where they can actually look inside the nose and
(38:37):
look for any anatomical problems that might be causing that.
You know, if the cat skin doesn't pick up anything.
So there's several steps to go through, but certainly you
can try the over the counter products first a lot
of times that'll relieve those symptoms. Phone lines are open
eight nine six kov I one hundred and three three
zero kov I'll be back in two minutes and welcome
(39:11):
back to doctor. We metagal. Phone lines opening nan six kalvy.
I want to hundred three three zero kill if yall.
At the end of the show, time goes by so
so fast. Talking about orange juice and those joint pain
problems that we all get as we get older. Again,
part of that is just a natural process. Of getting older,
and most of that can be sort of treated with
(39:33):
anti inflammatories. We have Rick from Beaumont. How you doing, Hello, Hello,
how can we help you?
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Yeah? I turned it away. But what do you think
about putting salt on your foot? I heard a radio
show a doctor said, Uh, if a doctor puts you
on a falt free diet, get another doctor. What do
you think about that?
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, you know, we've been Rick, We've been looking for
the things that cause a lot of disease and illness.
So yeah, changes over and over again, right, fat, salt, sugar, starches,
and sometimes yes, doctors do believe in certain recommendations about
how to eat or drink. I would say salt free
(40:19):
is unpalatable, meaning most people cannot eat food without a
little seasoning. And if you do have hypertension or chronic
kidney disease, which a lot of experts feel like consuming
salt might exacerbate those issues, that they have a lot
of what they call salt substitutes, which really are almost
(40:41):
like artificial sweetness. But we're talking about seasonings that you
can take to sort of season your food. So I
would say salt free is a little extreme, and that
if you do really have a problem with your blood
pressure or your heart or chronic kidney disease, that there
are salt alternatives that you can consume. That Missus Dash
(41:05):
is the most popular brand of salt substitutes that you
can enjoy seasoned food. Because we want you to still
enjoy your food. We just want you to understand the
connection between salt and hypertension heart failure. You know, there
was a time where when people sat down to eat
their dinner, they automatically put more salt on their food.
(41:28):
So it was just sort of a behavior that Americans
did years ago. Most people these days are not doing that.
It's already in the food already, so you don't have
to add more. And again, if you eat out a lot,
there might be more salt than what is good for you.
So that's why we recommend you cook at home. But
(41:49):
I see a little salt is okay. You just don't
want to consume a lot of salt on your food.
And again, there's a lot of salt substitutes if you
do have a problem, so normally we can get around that. Okay,
thank you, all right, Rick, We appreciate that's a good question.
Just came a little late again. It's not just one thing,
(42:11):
it's several things. I've tried to impress upon you about
that in terms of your health, a lot of things
that impact your health, and certainly the salt consumption is
one of them, and we certainly want you to be
reasonable and limit your salt intake. And again when you
if you eat out a lot, it's going to be
salt in there, right, that's just what happens. Are not
(42:32):
bad people, and that's why we again recommend you have
when you cook yourself, you can control a lot of
what goes in your food, which, in my opinion, based
on my experience, impacts your health the most, the most.
Thank you for joining on the show. Don't drink or dry.
We'll see you next week.
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