July 7, 2025 • 44 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
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, welcome South Eat second, isn't it ready? Listeners? Welcome, Welcome,
Welcome Doctor Levigne here live in the studos of KOV
I hear about my Texas cross the street from Park
the I'm all taking your phone calls about healthcare, medicine
and trying to stay alive as long as possible. Absolutely,
who wants to be sick when you're alive? Running back
(00:20):
and forth at the hospital in doctors' offices, Man, what
a drag. So yeah, we're here to talk about how
to do that, what's the best way to do it,
how to do it? So much information out there, it
is confusing sometimes to figure that out in terms of
what is the right way, or what's the right beverage,
(00:42):
or what's the right supplement, or is this good? Is
that bad?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Man?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
We hear so much every single day it gets super,
super confusing to kind of figure that out. So, Hey,
I'm a doctor of internal medicine, which means I'm not
a surgeon. I don't perform surgery, but I am in
the middle of it every single day, and I do
my own reading every single day, so I kind of
(01:08):
have some ideas about whether or not this stuff really
works or doesn't work or is it who? We so
give us a call eight nine to six kov I won,
one hundred and three to three zero Kovi I. We
would love to hear from you to try and figure
out what works best for you. Remember that a lot
(01:30):
of what you hear are general recommendations. That includes things
that I might say, general recommendations about your health and
maybe what should work for you. But honestly, the personal
discovery that sometimes patients get into when they finally decide, hey,
(01:50):
I'm going to figure this out. They have the time,
they have the effort, and they commit to figuring out
what works for them what doesn't work for them, such
as when diabetic patients get those continuous glucose monitors or
CGM and they put it on their arm or their
torso and they wear it all the time, and they
(02:12):
really really discover, man, this is what spikes my sugar,
this is what doesn't spike my sugar. And every person
is different. The same thing with medications. A lot of patients,
once they get a little disease or a little chronic
medical problem, they get put on prescription medication. They sort
of share their information with their friends and their family.
(02:34):
They sort of discuss that openly, and they will try
to ask other people, Hey, what works for you, what
are you doing? What medicines are you being given? And
patients sometimes come to the office wanting certain medicines just
because their friend is using it, their mother is using it,
their father is using it, their spouse is using it,
(02:55):
and it's working for them, and they want to try
it because it's working for someone else. I'm all for that,
that's fine, But at the end of the day, everybody's
system is totally different, and just because it works one
person doesn't mean it's going to work for another person.
And that's what I have sort of figured out over
(03:16):
the years. But if it's within certain boundaries, I'm not
opposed to trying the medication to see if it does
work for this particular individual. So I will try that,
just because again, there is some degree of trying this
or trying that. As it pertains to prescription medications. Some
(03:39):
people call it experimentation. I wouldn't call it that. Just
sometimes it takes a while to figure out what's going
to work for a particular patient or not. And that's
the practice of medications, and that's the whole idea behind
that is being a doctor is that you have to
(04:00):
try things. We all get the same basic information, we
all take the same basic tests, but you'd be surprised
they can't figure out everything in all these studies that
you read about, and when you expose it to the
open market, to the open community, just things come up,
(04:20):
things that were not figured out, and it's up to
the clinician to try and do his own sort of
research and figure out what truly works or what doesn't work.
And that's the whole idea, is that if a particular
medicine or particular method of doing things doesn't work, most
clinicians will change their ways, change their habits, change their
(04:41):
prescribing to a medication or to a method that typically
works not for everyone, right, So you got to be
careful when you want to try medication that maybe someone
is using and it's working for them. You might even
be on a medication that seems to be working for you,
but you just want to try it because you heard
(05:04):
someone else being successful with it and you want to
try a different medication. You have to be careful because
it can be very disruptive when you start changing your medications.
There can be unforeseen issues that come up with those medications,
and that could be very disruptive, might even put you
(05:26):
in the hospital, might even not allow you to go
to work for a week or so. It can be
really disruptive, So you've got to be careful with that.
Doctors and prescribers of prescription medications. Normally, if everything is
going well, you know, we don't really want to change anything.
We want to keep everything the same, just rocking along again,
(05:49):
because we're just like anybody else. We want to keep
things simple. We don't want to complicate things. And if
you're on a particular mediction or particular method that's working
for you, and you're happy, you don't have any symptoms
and you have some good momentum in terms of your health.
If you've ever been hospitalized, you sort of know what
(06:12):
I mean. You go to the hospital and you might
spend a week or maybe even a few days in
the hospital. When you come home, sometimes you just feel off,
you know, you don't you don't feel the same. Maybe
you have some weakness or some nausea or some headache,
or you just your energy level is not where it
needs to be and you just don't feel strong. And
(06:34):
it might take a week or so to recover from that.
And again it's the same thing with medications. If you
take a particular medication that your friend is taking. I mean,
you're you're on something and you're doing good, but you
had a conversation. You want to try something, and your
friend convinces you that maybe it's good for you. So
(06:57):
you go to your health care provider, Hey, I want
to try this medicine, and and they try it. You know,
they they're trying to or actually say, most healthcare providers
are trying to be a partner a shared decision making.
It's what they call that now in the healthcare world,
shared decision making. And just when I came out of
(07:19):
my medical training, the relationship between doctor and patient was
sort of changing. Before me, you know, a long time ago.
As you may or may not know, the relationship was
totally one sided, right. The doctor sort of controlled everything,
ruled everything. Whatever they said was the truth. It was,
(07:41):
couldn't question it. It's the truth, all right, and you
just did it. You didn't you didn't even ask them
for alternatives. It's what they recommended. And that's the way
it was. That was a system as opposed to now
the system is wide open in the sense that it's
it's more shared. Whatever you decide to do wherever you go,
(08:04):
if you want a procedure or not, it's really a
conversation you have with your health care provider so that
you're more involved and you get a choice, which I'm
fine with. I agree with it again because sometimes with
medications or procedures or just what we call plan of care,
(08:27):
it's not black and white. There is a little gray
to it. And it is your health, it is your body,
it is your future. We're there to help as much
as we can give you the information you need to
make that decision and try to help you feel better,
to feel stronger. And I certainly agree with this style
that we have. Now you've listened to me before, you're
(08:49):
getting all this information handed to you to educate yourself.
It's still very complex terms and concepts, and again, if
you don't hear this every day, you've never studied it.
It's still very foreign, and you still need a person
who's in the middle of it to guide you to
make that decision. But again, you're being pulled in as
(09:13):
a consumer of healthcare products right as I tell doctors
that I work with and doctors who are training that.
I supervise that this is more of sort of a
service industry that we're in now in the healthcare sector.
(09:33):
It's a service industry. It is a commodity that has
changed over the years, and we're providing a service to
the community. So we're now in a position where we're
trying to educate more and help that person make the
best decisions. So again, you're probably if you're doing well
with your medications, probably stick to it and try to
(09:56):
get it changed too much and cause a huge disruption.
And a lot of our hospitalizations are just related to
adverse reaction from medication side effects, just antabotics. You know,
I have sort of given my two cents about the
use of antibotics in our country. You know, we are
(10:18):
a little bit sloppy with it. I'm guilty of that
as well. A lot of practitioners are guilty of that.
Just again because of this consumer industry that we're in,
which we call the healthcare industry of America. We again
sometimes are prescribing antibotics when really we don't feel like
it's necessary. But you know, we have someone come to
(10:39):
the office to the hospital, they're super concerned about infection.
They got work to do, they got to take care
of the family, got a job. It's the weekends coming.
They feel sick and they sort of have some ideas
about what's wrong with them. And it's sort of within
our scope of practice to try and help patients again
achieve health and reassure them. And sometimes, yes, we do
(11:01):
use a medication called an antibiotic that maybe is not necessary.
We see this with respiratory infections all the time. Right,
you get a little achiness, nasal drainage, sore throat, maybe
even coughing up some sputum and you say, hey, I
know what I need. I need an antabotic, but man,
I can't prescribe it to myself. As opposed to other countries.
(11:25):
There are other countries in the world where antibiotics are
over the counter. Yeah, you just your penicillins and xythromacs,
Z packs, all that stuff. You just go to the
pharmacy and you just pick it up. You don't even
need a doctor. Isn't that amazing? But here in this country, yeah,
(11:47):
you need a healthcare profession with a license to get
those antabotics. So you gotta go in, you gotta go
to the Monarcare you have to get on your computer,
and you have to get permission to get that antabotic right.
So a lot of times, again it's hard to tell
if something is viral or bacterial. The research said, it's
(12:09):
mainly viral.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Though.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
You know all those respiratory infections you get the coughing, achiness,
sore throat, They said, training it's mainly viral. There's a
ton of viruses out there that are floating around all
the time that cause a lot of these infections. But
you got work to do, right, You got a project,
(12:32):
you're going out of town, you go on a trip,
you're going on a cruise. You don't want to be sick, right,
So you need something right now to get that done
with you. You've convinced yourself the only thing that's going
to work is antabotic. So you go to doc Levine like, hey,
I need my antabotic, and certainly, working with patients filling
(12:52):
pretty time, you get to know them, your friends, part
of the family, and hey, you just want them to
feel better, you want them to feel positive walking out
the door. You're just trying to help them. And sometimes yes,
we will prescribe that antibiotic when really they probably don't
need it, and two days later they have a rash,
(13:13):
two days later they have diarrhea, two days later they're
vomiting or throwing up because of that medication. It's no
different with diabetes medicines, blood pressure medicines, pain medicines. They
come in with a headache, Well give them medicine, and
two days later you get the callback right that something's wrong,
(13:36):
the medication is causing problems with them. Whereas before I
may have prescribed this medicine twenty thirty times, never got
a call back, and then one time it happens. And
that is the risk of any of these prescription medications.
And sometimes reaction is bad enough. Man, you got to
go to the er. You gotta be hospitalized. I mean,
(14:00):
just because you had an adverse reaction to a medication.
And sometimes it causes kidney failure, liver failure, your blood
pressure to fall, dizziness, passing out. I mean, this stuff
is real. We see it every day. One issue we
see every day. I mean this is like super super common.
(14:22):
I mean every single day we're seeing. This particular patient
is the patient who had a cardiovascular event, a stroke,
a heart attack. They got a stint placed in one
of their blood vessels of their heart. Maybe they got
what they call DVT deep vein throng boses and one
(14:44):
of the blood vessels in their legs, and they get
put on the assortment of blood thinners that we have now.
You know, when I finished residency, we had maybe a
couple of blood thinners, you know, just maybe three. Honestly,
that was it. Three blood thinners. Now we have about ten,
(15:09):
maybe even more than that. I hadn't actually sat down
and actually counted them out, but I think we have
about ten blood dinners out there now. So, as you
may or may not know, you listen to my show,
the number one cause of morbidity mortality in America is
cardiovascular disease, right, and you have to understand, and hopefully
(15:32):
you do understand that at this point, plaque plaque development
in the circulation is the number one cause of morbidity
mortality in this country. And you know, listen to my show.
You know what's causing it. Right, Those foods and those
beverages that we love to eat that it's hard to
(15:54):
say no to. Oh my god, it's in our face,
it's cheap, it's ready to go, it's packaged, its frozen.
He's got to heat it up and it's done fast, easy, quick.
I mean a lot of the experts are have raised
the flag and they have written articles, books, they've written
(16:15):
position papers on how ultra processed foods right, ultra process
all that packet stuff you see in the grocery stores,
in the freezers, just waiting for you to pick it
up and take it home and put it in your
air fire, put it in your microwave, put it in
(16:35):
the oven, and eat it. I mean, like within what
ten minutes? I mean, how can you avoid that? Is
so super convenient, And when you eat it, it tastes
like it's supposed to taste right, even though it's been
sitting in your freezer for a month, deep frozen. But
(16:56):
you know it's ready to go. It's cheap, it's fast.
You got man, you're busy, got things to do, got
kids to take care of, we got job responsibilities, and
just all this stuff's popping and you don't have time
to go to grocey store every three or four days
and pick up fresh produce and cook it and prepare
it and clean the kitchen and put it away and
(17:19):
reheated and so much work. Whereas just this super convenient
ultra processed food that has been provided to us by
the food industry. Remember they're not bad people, they're just
in business hands, just in business providing food to the country.
(17:39):
You know, a necessity, a big country, very productive country,
and who has time to be doing all that cooking
when you got all this other production to be involved
with every single day. They've provided us with all these
substances and items that you can run to the store
and get. I mean the stores are monster stores now,
(18:01):
I mean rows and rows of frozen goods and frozen
foods and beverages that excite us when we drink it
and eat it. But there's a price to pay. According
to a lot of the experts that study nutrition, these
are people that study the trajectory of diseases, epidemiologists that
(18:25):
have sat down and looked at all that data and
tried to figure out and help Americans figure out how
does this start from point A to point Z? How
does this happen? And it's very very clear to me
reading it and then seeing it with my own naked
eyes in my own office in the hospital. The ultra
(18:50):
processed foods that we so readily eat and not just
at the grocer store. You're talking about a lot of
the food restaurants out there that are provided this fuit. Again,
they're not bad people, they're just in business. They're just
providing food that we're eating. We're buying it every day
all the time. We love it, can't get rid of it, right,
(19:12):
But what does it do? In my opinion, and based
on what the experts are saying, it generates inflamation of
the human body. Remember when you fall, or you cut yourself,
or you get sick and you feel that fever, you
feel that achiness, you feel that fatigue when you get sick.
(19:34):
That's inflammatory system. That's what makes you feel that way.
And normally in those acute limited illnesses like a respiratory infection,
like you feil and maybe cut yourself or maybe had
a fracture of a bone, and you have that pain,
but it doesn't last forever. Right after a couple of
weeks agoes away. You feel better, you're back to baseline.
(19:57):
But in most instances, when we're consuming ultra processed foods
that we all know of, that inflammatory system never turns off.
It stays on, and so you get used to that fatigue,
you get used to not feeling strong. You get used
to headaches, rashes, joint pain, just don't feel good. And
(20:21):
then you start gaining weight and your blow pressure starts
going up, your cholesterol's up. Maybe that sugar starts going up.
That's the inflammatory system. A lot of the diabetic patients
out there, you know what I mean. Right, you're going
along your A one c's look good, your sugars look great.
I mean, you just got a good report from your doctor.
Everything is good. Then you get an infection, right, pneumonia, cellulitis,
(20:45):
down on, infection, toe, infection, whatever. What happens to that sugar?
It starts going up. Inflammatory system turns on and you're
one of like, why's my sugar up? I just had
a good report where doctor Levine, My one sea was great.
Now I'm a little sick and that sugar is high.
What's going on? He Leonard from Houston. How can we
(21:05):
help you? WHOA Hello, you're live brother? How can we
help you?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
A couple of weeks ago, I told you I'd fire
I fired my foot doctor because he couldn't tell time.
I went to the new doctor, and the new doctor
prescribed a drug call GAPA print G A B A
t E N T I N. One of the guys
at the office said, this stuff is really bad for you.
(21:32):
Don't take it. Would you have an opinion on.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
That, Gaba Penton, Yes, Oh, man, I love that stuff,
wasn't it. That is a great, great product. I mean,
aside from a you know, lippotour and all the kolesterol medicine,
the blood thiners, I'm talking about gaba Penson is a
(21:57):
major major drug in this country. I mean it is
prescribed for several different indications, and I would say it's
a very commonly prescribed medication. I always say it's a
top five prescribed medication in this country. This is just
my own rough estimation based on seeing patient in the
(22:18):
hospital as well as my own patients in the office.
Gabapenton is a major drug and the only reason that
it's popular that it's a top five medications because it
works with causing minimal side effects. But it's not zero
side effects. There are some people who cannot tolerate this stuff.
(22:41):
I've seen them. And so maybe your friend had a
similar episode of being given gabapenson and he didn't do
so well on it. So now his impressions at the
medicine's terrible. It's a dangerous drug. And he's telling you
his own personal experience, which that's fair. But as I
(23:03):
was mentioning to you, Leonard, everybody's system is different, meaning
and this is from my own personal experience as a
prescriber for over twenty years. I can give a medicine
to one person and it's the best drug they've ever taken.
I can give it to their son, or their mother
or their brother and it's the worst medicine they've ever taken.
(23:26):
It's just the way it is, unfortunately. So I love
Gavit Pinson. I've learned to use it and incorporate into
my prescribing habits, so I'm a fan of it.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Okay, Well this was prescribed for me to me for
my footpaint inner opacy, and I've taken two or three
that seems to be doing okay. And I was just
concerned that Dan said it was bad, and you know,
I was wanting to get it checked out.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
No, I, Leonard, I think it's a great drug. And
I would say if you can't take the drug, then
obviously stop it. But if it's working for you, then yeah,
you just keep taking the drug and Your friend's not
trying to purposely say something negative. It's just his opinion
you and you asked him, so he gave it to you.
(24:19):
But if you're doctor, the new doctor that gave you
the medicine, and you're working well for you to keep
taking it, that's what I would do, and that's what
you have to do a lot. And I know it's
sometimes hard to ignore what your friends and family are
telling you about a particular drug. I mean, it's just
(24:40):
human nature to reach out to someone you trust or love,
or whose opinion you respect, and you ask them what
they think. It's not anything bad, it's just human nature.
And sometimes you have to turn off the outside interference
that would include me, and listen to your own o
gut and decide for yourself which you want to do,
(25:03):
because at the end of the day, it is your body.
It is your decision. As it pertains. Even we're talking
about gabapentin, which was a drug that was sort of
new when I became a doctor. It's Gabapentson is actually
a seizure medication. That's the category of pharmaceutical agents that
it is in, but we very rarely use it for
(25:28):
seizure activity. We have other medicines on the market for that,
so we're not really grabbing it for seizure activity. We're
just grabbing it for other neurological complaints. Which neurological complaints
is rampant in our country. I mean it is rampant
for the reason I feel like it's rampant. Inflammation, inflammation
(25:53):
that I mentioned to you. The inflammatory system is kicked
on and does not turn off because of Americans lifestyle.
What we're eating and drinking generates inflammation of the human body,
and when the human body is inflamed at some point,
(26:14):
it irritates the nervous system and generates neurological problems, which
gabapentin helps mitigate the nervous system irritation that is brought
on by inflammation. It helps mitigate those things and control
those symptoms while someone works on their lifestyle. Headaches, all
(26:40):
sorts of pain issues, the numbness and the burning and
then tingling that sometimes happens, low back pain, neck pain,
chest pain, torso pain, I mean just pain. Pain. Pain.
That's another common problem in our country for various reasons. Again,
I feel like, yes, inflammation has a lot to do
(27:02):
with that because just sort of slowly cooking the body
is how I like to think of it. I had
a commerce that I wanted I think. Yeah, I did
do a commercial way back in the day. You may
have seen that one. I've made several commercials with KFD
on Channel six. But this is the woman. I was
in my backyard with a grill cooking some chicken, some
(27:26):
chicken breast, trying to incorporate this concept of inflammation and
how when you cook something you sort of break the
skin down and you sort of cook it and it
just breaks everything down. It kills it, right, and then
you have to turn that inflammation off by various habits.
Get you some lemon water, which that was the follow
(27:48):
up commercial, to sort of refresh your body so that
you don't slowly, slowly cause deterioration of the human system,
which aging is one component of it, but certainly when
your inflammatory system is on, that's a second component. It
accelerates aging, right, it makes you older faster. Yeah, and
(28:10):
against them, I've been saying this for the past week.
They've been a light. They lied to us about getting older.
Everybody they say it was a golden years. I don't know.
I work with a lot of people up in age,
and man, it can get pretty bad. I mean, you
gotta work at it. You know, you can't just wake
(28:32):
up and do whatever and feel good. As as an
older one. You gotta work at it. For most of us,
I mean you gotta eat right, you got extra I
mean you really got to take care of yourself. Phone
lines are open eight done six kovy I won one
hundred and three to three zero, OK, but I'll be
back in two minutes. All right, welcome back to Dogaly metag.
(29:06):
Our phone line to open eight nine to six K
one hundred and three three zero O ko via. Talking
about adverse reaction to medications. Big problem in our country.
Why because a lot of patients are taking prescription medications.
It's over the counter medication for various reasons. Membor cardiovas
disease is the big problem in our country because of plaque.
Plaque that develops in the circulation over time, which causes
(29:32):
narrowing of the blood flow, which then increases the chance
of a blood clot being formally called that a thrombus.
Blood cannot flow forward and so that particular part of
the body receives no blood flow. Then that causes what
we call a schemia, and depending on the vital organ
or the bed of blood vessels that is affected, you
(29:56):
have certain symptoms. If it's the hard you have chests.
If it's stroke, you can't see, you can't walk. And
one of the major treatments for this is blood thinners.
Now we have more blood thinners that are on the market.
I would say ten roughly, it might be higher. But
one of the things that happens with blood tennis, and
(30:18):
again we're talking about side effect issues of medications that
we see all the time, very common, is you bleed. Yeah,
you start bleeding, duh, that's what blood tinis do. Right.
Then they don't allow your blood system to work as well.
It's not as strong. It's weakened, if you will, and
so it generates bleeding, and so we get a lot
(30:41):
of admissions to the hospital for bleeding. Patients were hospitalized
for their first heart attack, stroke and they go home happy,
they're better, and then three weeks later, four weeks later,
a year later, man not bleeding. They go to the
resume blood in the toilet or when they urinate, that's
(31:02):
blood in their urine, or they start throwing up blood,
or they feel weak, super super weak, man, they just
can't get out of bed. They don't know what's wrong,
and they go to their doctor's office or they go
to the ear and their hemoglobein is really low. We
call that anemia. And most of the time that's from bleeding.
(31:23):
So we see that every single day in the hospital.
And the most common location of the bleeding that happens
when we place patients on blood thinners like clo pedigrill, plavix, relent,
to cumindin, eloquist, surreal toe prolouent, just all these bloodthinners.
(31:47):
Aspen forgot Aspino standby been there for years. Is the
GIS system starts bleeding, whether it be in your colon
or your stomach or the small intestine, and we have
to figure out where it is and plug up the
whole and fix it. In the meantimeel sometimes you have
to stop the blood thinners. You got to get blood
transfusions and have to be in hospital for several days.
(32:12):
Sometimes it cause kidney failure and low blood pressure. I mean, man,
it's just unlimited just from blood dinners, from plaque, from
eating ultra processed foods and drinking sugary beverages. All your
live livelihood or your lifelong doing that, exposing your body
to that, that's the American lifestyle. So you have to
(32:35):
try and fix that as much as you can to
reduce the chance of having to be put on blood
thinners and again so that you don't have any adverse
reaction to that. And just because it's over the counter
does not mean it's free of side effects either. There's
this sort of misconception that hey, I can get it
over the counter, it's not as strong. It can't hurt me.
(32:58):
It can't harm me. But that prescription stuff, man, that
that can really really hurt. It's prescribed, it's strong. My
friend told me not to take it. But let me
go to CVS or Walmart or wherever I get my
medications and get my over the counter medicine and take that.
It can't hurt me. It's not true. Even our friend
(33:21):
acetamenaforn or talanol that we use a lot of people
are using that right can cause harm. Anything that you
put in your mouth or you swallow as a medicinal
product can cause harm. Even all of these supplements, these
that we see on TV being advertised for all sorts
(33:42):
of various physical elements can cause harm. And most of
these types of harm are pretty minimal. I mean just
maybe some nausea, upset, stomach, headache, dizziness, maybe rash. Dietary supplements,
That's what I'm trying to say, that you can just
purchase without a prescription, without the advisement of your healthcare provider.
(34:06):
You start taking this because maybe your manhood that doesn't work,
or you just don't feel a strong as a man,
or maybe you're concerned about dementia and you saw an
advertisement for some sort of supplement that preserves your memory
or improves your memory. And again, in terms of the
product called priviagen, I get that question a lot in
the office p R E VEG and prevagen. I think
(34:30):
that's a very popular dietary supplement for memory and the
possibility of preventing Alzheimer's. Does the research exist for most
American doctors to prescribe that or recommend that to all
its patients. My understanding is no. But I certainly understand
(34:52):
the desire to be proactive and try and do what
you can to reduce your chances of developing Alzheimer's dementia.
And I know it seems seductive that all I have
to do is take this product, and that will help
me get better, and that will reduce my chances of
(35:15):
developing dementia. I know it sounds cool and too easy
to be true, right, Meaning you're overweight, you don't exercise,
you're eating ultra processed foods every day, but you're going
to sort of wipe all that away with this little
(35:35):
product that you sell on TV or in the mail
or on your phone, and you're purchased it and you're
taking two capsules every day. All the power in the
world is in that capsule, in that tablet, and it's
just going to evaporate all these other things that I
should be doing that my doctor told me I should
be doing, but I'm not doing. But I don't want
(35:57):
to develop dementia. So I'm going to take this capsule
of hope. Yes. No, that's a fantasy. You can't believe
in that. Phone lines opened eight nine six Kalvy. I
want to hundrer three three zero ok V. I be
back in two minutes. All right, welcome back to talk
(36:25):
with me America. Our phone lines open eight one six kalvy.
I want to hud your three three zero Kyvia. We
have Michael from Pasadena. How can we help you.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Oh, thank you for taking my call and appreciate everything
you do. Yes, sir, on this plaque, how do you
what can you do to prevent it? I know you
talk about not eating processed foods. I don't do that
most of the time. But uh, supposedly I've got a
(36:57):
little plaque. And what what what can you do? What
kind of diet or is there something you can eat
or do to get rid of the plaque that's there?
What's the answer?
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, I think they've done their best to try and
figure out how to reverse plaque. And well, let me
let me back up. If you can get to your
eighties and nineties in this country, you're going to have
some plaque. I mean you, I don't think you can
really avoid that. To be honest with you, we're just
(37:32):
trying to keep it to a minimum. Michael, the you know,
plaque in your blood vessel wall. There certainly are patients
when we do testing ultrasounds things like that that the
plaque is very very minimal. So what can you do again, Michael?
It's all about your lifestyle. It's all about what you
eat and drink, and so, as I've mentioned here today
(37:55):
as well as before. Unfortunately, The typical American diet is
a plaque generating diet. So again, consuming ultra processed foods,
drinking sugary beverages generates plaque in my opinion because of
the inflammatory system as well as the sugar content that
(38:16):
it contains and all of the sort of man made
chemicals that are in these foods. They tend to be
very irritating to the human body and it generates inflammation.
Anytime a human body feels injured by anything that it's
exposed to, it turns on inflammation. Inflammation then accelerates plaque formation.
(38:38):
So you have to eat better. Number one. You got
to eat better, and that again means more vegetables, more freshness,
less processed and you want to decrease your exposure to
starches and sugars in your diet, which is hard because
our diet is high sugar, high starch, the American diet,
(39:02):
and that's the way our system is geared. That's why
it's set up. So to go against the grain, to
do different, you have to find ways to avoid that.
It's super duper hard in this country. So first diet,
then number two exercise and it doesn't have to be
like this marathon running, gut busting, high intensity type of exercise.
(39:25):
You know, we're talking about just twenty minutes of some
sustained activity mild to moderate intensity, maybe three times a
week would be sufficient. You can do more if you
want to, but you don't have to. But it first
starts with the diet. Eating more vegetables, not to exposing
yourself to sugary beverages like the juices and the sweet teas,
(39:50):
all of the sports beverages out there, water, coffee, tea,
in my opinion, without sweetener, is the beverage that's good
for you, doesn't typically elicit the inflammatory system. But first
eat right now. It doesn't mean you can have a
hot dog or burger every now and then, but you
have to send people eating this stuff every day. I mean,
(40:12):
it's just their diet. They're getting out the frozen food section.
They put it out, put in the air fryer, heat
it up, and they eat. It's just ultra processed and
the amount of chemicals and substances and additives that the
food industry has to put in the food to stabilize it,
preserve it, make it look good, make it taste the
(40:34):
way it's supposed to taste. Even though it's been sitting
in a package for three months a year. In my opinion,
as well as other experts with more degrees and more knowledge,
are saying that this stuff is not good for us.
It generates injury to the human body, and plaque is
part of that injury.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Did you get that, mic I did, Thank you very much, all.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Right, brother, we appreciate that. And yeah, you know it
based on when I was growing up. I mean, yeah,
that's sort of when the food industry was sort of
taking off, just because I mean, man, we used to
eat at home all the time. We never really went
out to eat periodically. It was always a treat to
(41:19):
go get a burger or get some pizza, go to
a restaurant. I mean it was sort of a treat.
You did that sparingly. Otherwise everything was at the house.
I mean, you went to the grocery store more frequently,
and you ate leftovers more frequently, but it was something
that was cooked fresh. I loved talking with my patients
(41:40):
who are in their eighties that can still remember those
days when the grocery stores were tiny, tiny, tiny. They
were owned by some family in the community and everything
was just super fresh. I mean, most people sometimes had
chickens in the backyard, or the meat that they were
(42:00):
eating was super fresh. And I think the food was
better back in the day, no question. We just even
our exposure to sugar was a lot less. You know
that sugar was a treat. Our ability to to get
desserts and candies and all those substances that we love
to eat, donuts, you know, it was a little bit harder,
(42:23):
but now it's super super easy. It's sort of in
the community everywhere, and we're just exposed in so many
different ways when we go out to eat and go
to lunch, or there's a at the job site, there's
a there's a talk and it gets catered and all
this delicious food, food that normally is not that healthy
(42:44):
for you, And how can you say no to it? Right?
It's delicious cakes, pies, cookies, desserts, all that stuff just
sitting there. It's free. You can eat as many as
you want, right, and you just you indulge and then
you go to your desk and you sit there for
eight hours or five hours, or you get up, you
(43:06):
go get in your car, you sit, get out of
that and go to your house. You sit and you're
just sort of sitting all day, whereas if you just
take a little detour, go put some walking shoes on
and go outside and you just walk for twenty minutes
in your neighborhood at a nice little pace, that's a
(43:26):
lot better. And then you know, don't indulge at night
time when you're about to eat your supper. I mean
a lot of people have this idea of supper and
they're going to eat a starch or a couple of starch.
They're gonna get a protein, they have a salad, and
you can have some bread service and then yeah, maybe
some ice cream for dessert or some cookies for dessert,
and then go right to bed. Right. That's sort of
(43:47):
the typical thing that we do most Americans in terms
of how we perceive or conceive our diet and what
we're supposed to eat. In my pin, it's excessive. We
eat too much America. We're not bad, that's just what
we're taught. I was taught the same stuff, But eat
(44:08):
too much, don't exercise enough. That's the imbalance. Anyway, I
appreciate your joining fro another edition of the show. Don't
drink or drive, eat some vegetables and we'll see you
in a couple of weeks. Take care
All right, welcome South Eat second, isn't it ready? Listeners? Welcome, Welcome,
Welcome Doctor Levigne here live in the studos of KOV
I hear about my Texas cross the street from Park
the I'm all taking your phone calls about healthcare, medicine
and trying to stay alive as long as possible. Absolutely,
who wants to be sick when you're alive? Running back
(00:20):
and forth at the hospital in doctors' offices, Man, what
a drag. So yeah, we're here to talk about how
to do that, what's the best way to do it,
how to do it? So much information out there, it
is confusing sometimes to figure that out in terms of
what is the right way, or what's the right beverage,
(00:42):
or what's the right supplement, or is this good? Is
that bad?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Man?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
We hear so much every single day it gets super,
super confusing to kind of figure that out. So, Hey,
I'm a doctor of internal medicine, which means I'm not
a surgeon. I don't perform surgery, but I am in
the middle of it every single day, and I do
my own reading every single day, so I kind of
(01:08):
have some ideas about whether or not this stuff really
works or doesn't work or is it who? We so
give us a call eight nine to six kov I won,
one hundred and three to three zero Kovi I. We
would love to hear from you to try and figure
out what works best for you. Remember that a lot
(01:30):
of what you hear are general recommendations. That includes things
that I might say, general recommendations about your health and
maybe what should work for you. But honestly, the personal
discovery that sometimes patients get into when they finally decide, hey,
(01:50):
I'm going to figure this out. They have the time,
they have the effort, and they commit to figuring out
what works for them what doesn't work for them, such
as when diabetic patients get those continuous glucose monitors or
CGM and they put it on their arm or their
torso and they wear it all the time, and they
(02:12):
really really discover, man, this is what spikes my sugar,
this is what doesn't spike my sugar. And every person
is different. The same thing with medications. A lot of patients,
once they get a little disease or a little chronic
medical problem, they get put on prescription medication. They sort
of share their information with their friends and their family.
(02:34):
They sort of discuss that openly, and they will try
to ask other people, Hey, what works for you, what
are you doing? What medicines are you being given? And
patients sometimes come to the office wanting certain medicines just
because their friend is using it, their mother is using it,
their father is using it, their spouse is using it,
(02:55):
and it's working for them, and they want to try
it because it's working for someone else. I'm all for that,
that's fine, But at the end of the day, everybody's
system is totally different, and just because it works one
person doesn't mean it's going to work for another person.
And that's what I have sort of figured out over
(03:16):
the years. But if it's within certain boundaries, I'm not
opposed to trying the medication to see if it does
work for this particular individual. So I will try that,
just because again, there is some degree of trying this
or trying that. As it pertains to prescription medications. Some
(03:39):
people call it experimentation. I wouldn't call it that. Just
sometimes it takes a while to figure out what's going
to work for a particular patient or not. And that's
the practice of medications, and that's the whole idea behind
that is being a doctor is that you have to
(04:00):
try things. We all get the same basic information, we
all take the same basic tests, but you'd be surprised
they can't figure out everything in all these studies that
you read about, and when you expose it to the
open market, to the open community, just things come up,
(04:20):
things that were not figured out, and it's up to
the clinician to try and do his own sort of
research and figure out what truly works or what doesn't work.
And that's the whole idea, is that if a particular
medicine or particular method of doing things doesn't work, most
clinicians will change their ways, change their habits, change their
(04:41):
prescribing to a medication or to a method that typically
works not for everyone, right, So you got to be
careful when you want to try medication that maybe someone
is using and it's working for them. You might even
be on a medication that seems to be working for you,
but you just want to try it because you heard
(05:04):
someone else being successful with it and you want to
try a different medication. You have to be careful because
it can be very disruptive when you start changing your medications.
There can be unforeseen issues that come up with those medications,
and that could be very disruptive, might even put you
(05:26):
in the hospital, might even not allow you to go
to work for a week or so. It can be
really disruptive, So you've got to be careful with that.
Doctors and prescribers of prescription medications. Normally, if everything is
going well, you know, we don't really want to change anything.
We want to keep everything the same, just rocking along again,
(05:49):
because we're just like anybody else. We want to keep
things simple. We don't want to complicate things. And if
you're on a particular mediction or particular method that's working
for you, and you're happy, you don't have any symptoms
and you have some good momentum in terms of your health.
If you've ever been hospitalized, you sort of know what
(06:12):
I mean. You go to the hospital and you might
spend a week or maybe even a few days in
the hospital. When you come home, sometimes you just feel off,
you know, you don't you don't feel the same. Maybe
you have some weakness or some nausea or some headache,
or you just your energy level is not where it
needs to be and you just don't feel strong. And
(06:34):
it might take a week or so to recover from that.
And again it's the same thing with medications. If you
take a particular medication that your friend is taking. I mean,
you're you're on something and you're doing good, but you
had a conversation. You want to try something, and your
friend convinces you that maybe it's good for you. So
(06:57):
you go to your health care provider, Hey, I want
to try this medicine, and and they try it. You know,
they they're trying to or actually say, most healthcare providers
are trying to be a partner a shared decision making.
It's what they call that now in the healthcare world,
shared decision making. And just when I came out of
(07:19):
my medical training, the relationship between doctor and patient was
sort of changing. Before me, you know, a long time ago.
As you may or may not know, the relationship was
totally one sided, right. The doctor sort of controlled everything,
ruled everything. Whatever they said was the truth. It was,
(07:41):
couldn't question it. It's the truth, all right, and you
just did it. You didn't you didn't even ask them
for alternatives. It's what they recommended. And that's the way
it was. That was a system as opposed to now
the system is wide open in the sense that it's
it's more shared. Whatever you decide to do wherever you go,
(08:04):
if you want a procedure or not, it's really a
conversation you have with your health care provider so that
you're more involved and you get a choice, which I'm
fine with. I agree with it again because sometimes with
medications or procedures or just what we call plan of care,
(08:27):
it's not black and white. There is a little gray
to it. And it is your health, it is your body,
it is your future. We're there to help as much
as we can give you the information you need to
make that decision and try to help you feel better,
to feel stronger. And I certainly agree with this style
that we have. Now you've listened to me before, you're
(08:49):
getting all this information handed to you to educate yourself.
It's still very complex terms and concepts, and again, if
you don't hear this every day, you've never studied it.
It's still very foreign, and you still need a person
who's in the middle of it to guide you to
make that decision. But again, you're being pulled in as
(09:13):
a consumer of healthcare products right as I tell doctors
that I work with and doctors who are training that.
I supervise that this is more of sort of a
service industry that we're in now in the healthcare sector.
(09:33):
It's a service industry. It is a commodity that has
changed over the years, and we're providing a service to
the community. So we're now in a position where we're
trying to educate more and help that person make the
best decisions. So again, you're probably if you're doing well
with your medications, probably stick to it and try to
(09:56):
get it changed too much and cause a huge disruption.
And a lot of our hospitalizations are just related to
adverse reaction from medication side effects, just antabotics. You know,
I have sort of given my two cents about the
use of antibotics in our country. You know, we are
(10:18):
a little bit sloppy with it. I'm guilty of that
as well. A lot of practitioners are guilty of that.
Just again because of this consumer industry that we're in,
which we call the healthcare industry of America. We again
sometimes are prescribing antibotics when really we don't feel like
it's necessary. But you know, we have someone come to
(10:39):
the office to the hospital, they're super concerned about infection.
They got work to do, they got to take care
of the family, got a job. It's the weekends coming.
They feel sick and they sort of have some ideas
about what's wrong with them. And it's sort of within
our scope of practice to try and help patients again
achieve health and reassure them. And sometimes, yes, we do
(11:01):
use a medication called an antibiotic that maybe is not necessary.
We see this with respiratory infections all the time. Right,
you get a little achiness, nasal drainage, sore throat, maybe
even coughing up some sputum and you say, hey, I
know what I need. I need an antabotic, but man,
I can't prescribe it to myself. As opposed to other countries.
(11:25):
There are other countries in the world where antibiotics are
over the counter. Yeah, you just your penicillins and xythromacs,
Z packs, all that stuff. You just go to the
pharmacy and you just pick it up. You don't even
need a doctor. Isn't that amazing? But here in this country, yeah,
(11:47):
you need a healthcare profession with a license to get
those antabotics. So you gotta go in, you gotta go
to the Monarcare you have to get on your computer,
and you have to get permission to get that antabotic right.
So a lot of times, again it's hard to tell
if something is viral or bacterial. The research said, it's
(12:09):
mainly viral.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Though.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
You know all those respiratory infections you get the coughing, achiness,
sore throat, They said, training it's mainly viral. There's a
ton of viruses out there that are floating around all
the time that cause a lot of these infections. But
you got work to do, right, You got a project,
(12:32):
you're going out of town, you go on a trip,
you're going on a cruise. You don't want to be sick, right,
So you need something right now to get that done
with you. You've convinced yourself the only thing that's going
to work is antabotic. So you go to doc Levine like, hey,
I need my antabotic, and certainly, working with patients filling
(12:52):
pretty time, you get to know them, your friends, part
of the family, and hey, you just want them to
feel better, you want them to feel positive walking out
the door. You're just trying to help them. And sometimes yes,
we will prescribe that antibiotic when really they probably don't
need it, and two days later they have a rash,
(13:13):
two days later they have diarrhea, two days later they're
vomiting or throwing up because of that medication. It's no
different with diabetes medicines, blood pressure medicines, pain medicines. They
come in with a headache, Well give them medicine, and
two days later you get the callback right that something's wrong,
(13:36):
the medication is causing problems with them. Whereas before I
may have prescribed this medicine twenty thirty times, never got
a call back, and then one time it happens. And
that is the risk of any of these prescription medications.
And sometimes reaction is bad enough. Man, you got to
go to the er. You gotta be hospitalized. I mean,
(14:00):
just because you had an adverse reaction to a medication.
And sometimes it causes kidney failure, liver failure, your blood
pressure to fall, dizziness, passing out. I mean, this stuff
is real. We see it every day. One issue we
see every day. I mean this is like super super common.
(14:22):
I mean every single day we're seeing. This particular patient
is the patient who had a cardiovascular event, a stroke,
a heart attack. They got a stint placed in one
of their blood vessels of their heart. Maybe they got
what they call DVT deep vein throng boses and one
(14:44):
of the blood vessels in their legs, and they get
put on the assortment of blood thinners that we have now.
You know, when I finished residency, we had maybe a
couple of blood thinners, you know, just maybe three. Honestly,
that was it. Three blood thinners. Now we have about ten,
(15:09):
maybe even more than that. I hadn't actually sat down
and actually counted them out, but I think we have
about ten blood dinners out there now. So, as you
may or may not know, you listen to my show,
the number one cause of morbidity mortality in America is
cardiovascular disease, right, and you have to understand, and hopefully
(15:32):
you do understand that at this point, plaque plaque development
in the circulation is the number one cause of morbidity
mortality in this country. And you know, listen to my show.
You know what's causing it. Right, Those foods and those
beverages that we love to eat that it's hard to
(15:54):
say no to. Oh my god, it's in our face,
it's cheap, it's ready to go, it's packaged, its frozen.
He's got to heat it up and it's done fast, easy, quick.
I mean a lot of the experts are have raised
the flag and they have written articles, books, they've written
(16:15):
position papers on how ultra processed foods right, ultra process
all that packet stuff you see in the grocery stores,
in the freezers, just waiting for you to pick it
up and take it home and put it in your
air fire, put it in your microwave, put it in
(16:35):
the oven, and eat it. I mean, like within what
ten minutes? I mean, how can you avoid that? Is
so super convenient, And when you eat it, it tastes
like it's supposed to taste right, even though it's been
sitting in your freezer for a month, deep frozen. But
(16:56):
you know it's ready to go. It's cheap, it's fast.
You got man, you're busy, got things to do, got
kids to take care of, we got job responsibilities, and
just all this stuff's popping and you don't have time
to go to grocey store every three or four days
and pick up fresh produce and cook it and prepare
it and clean the kitchen and put it away and
(17:19):
reheated and so much work. Whereas just this super convenient
ultra processed food that has been provided to us by
the food industry. Remember they're not bad people, they're just
in business hands, just in business providing food to the country.
(17:39):
You know, a necessity, a big country, very productive country,
and who has time to be doing all that cooking
when you got all this other production to be involved
with every single day. They've provided us with all these
substances and items that you can run to the store
and get. I mean the stores are monster stores now,
(18:01):
I mean rows and rows of frozen goods and frozen
foods and beverages that excite us when we drink it
and eat it. But there's a price to pay. According
to a lot of the experts that study nutrition, these
are people that study the trajectory of diseases, epidemiologists that
(18:25):
have sat down and looked at all that data and
tried to figure out and help Americans figure out how
does this start from point A to point Z? How
does this happen? And it's very very clear to me
reading it and then seeing it with my own naked
eyes in my own office in the hospital. The ultra
(18:50):
processed foods that we so readily eat and not just
at the grocer store. You're talking about a lot of
the food restaurants out there that are provided this fuit. Again,
they're not bad people, they're just in business. They're just
providing food that we're eating. We're buying it every day
all the time. We love it, can't get rid of it, right,
(19:12):
But what does it do? In my opinion, and based
on what the experts are saying, it generates inflamation of
the human body. Remember when you fall, or you cut yourself,
or you get sick and you feel that fever, you
feel that achiness, you feel that fatigue when you get sick.
(19:34):
That's inflammatory system. That's what makes you feel that way.
And normally in those acute limited illnesses like a respiratory infection,
like you feil and maybe cut yourself or maybe had
a fracture of a bone, and you have that pain,
but it doesn't last forever. Right after a couple of
weeks agoes away. You feel better, you're back to baseline.
(19:57):
But in most instances, when we're consuming ultra processed foods
that we all know of, that inflammatory system never turns off.
It stays on, and so you get used to that fatigue,
you get used to not feeling strong. You get used
to headaches, rashes, joint pain, just don't feel good. And
(20:21):
then you start gaining weight and your blow pressure starts
going up, your cholesterol's up. Maybe that sugar starts going up.
That's the inflammatory system. A lot of the diabetic patients
out there, you know what I mean. Right, you're going
along your A one c's look good, your sugars look great.
I mean, you just got a good report from your doctor.
Everything is good. Then you get an infection, right, pneumonia, cellulitis,
(20:45):
down on, infection, toe, infection, whatever. What happens to that sugar?
It starts going up. Inflammatory system turns on and you're
one of like, why's my sugar up? I just had
a good report where doctor Levine, My one sea was great.
Now I'm a little sick and that sugar is high.
What's going on? He Leonard from Houston. How can we
(21:05):
help you? WHOA Hello, you're live brother? How can we
help you?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
A couple of weeks ago, I told you I'd fire
I fired my foot doctor because he couldn't tell time.
I went to the new doctor, and the new doctor
prescribed a drug call GAPA print G A B A
t E N T I N. One of the guys
at the office said, this stuff is really bad for you.
(21:32):
Don't take it. Would you have an opinion on.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
That, Gaba Penton, Yes, Oh, man, I love that stuff,
wasn't it. That is a great, great product. I mean,
aside from a you know, lippotour and all the kolesterol medicine,
the blood thiners, I'm talking about gaba Penson is a
(21:57):
major major drug in this country. I mean it is
prescribed for several different indications, and I would say it's
a very commonly prescribed medication. I always say it's a
top five prescribed medication in this country. This is just
my own rough estimation based on seeing patient in the
(22:18):
hospital as well as my own patients in the office.
Gabapenton is a major drug and the only reason that
it's popular that it's a top five medications because it
works with causing minimal side effects. But it's not zero
side effects. There are some people who cannot tolerate this stuff.
(22:41):
I've seen them. And so maybe your friend had a
similar episode of being given gabapenson and he didn't do
so well on it. So now his impressions at the
medicine's terrible. It's a dangerous drug. And he's telling you
his own personal experience, which that's fair. But as I
(23:03):
was mentioning to you, Leonard, everybody's system is different, meaning
and this is from my own personal experience as a
prescriber for over twenty years. I can give a medicine
to one person and it's the best drug they've ever taken.
I can give it to their son, or their mother
or their brother and it's the worst medicine they've ever taken.
(23:26):
It's just the way it is, unfortunately. So I love
Gavit Pinson. I've learned to use it and incorporate into
my prescribing habits, so I'm a fan of it.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Okay, Well this was prescribed for me to me for
my footpaint inner opacy, and I've taken two or three
that seems to be doing okay. And I was just
concerned that Dan said it was bad, and you know,
I was wanting to get it checked out.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
No, I, Leonard, I think it's a great drug. And
I would say if you can't take the drug, then
obviously stop it. But if it's working for you, then yeah,
you just keep taking the drug and Your friend's not
trying to purposely say something negative. It's just his opinion
you and you asked him, so he gave it to you.
(24:19):
But if you're doctor, the new doctor that gave you
the medicine, and you're working well for you to keep
taking it, that's what I would do, and that's what
you have to do a lot. And I know it's
sometimes hard to ignore what your friends and family are
telling you about a particular drug. I mean, it's just
(24:40):
human nature to reach out to someone you trust or love,
or whose opinion you respect, and you ask them what
they think. It's not anything bad, it's just human nature.
And sometimes you have to turn off the outside interference
that would include me, and listen to your own o
gut and decide for yourself which you want to do,
(25:03):
because at the end of the day, it is your body.
It is your decision. As it pertains. Even we're talking
about gabapentin, which was a drug that was sort of
new when I became a doctor. It's Gabapentson is actually
a seizure medication. That's the category of pharmaceutical agents that
it is in, but we very rarely use it for
(25:28):
seizure activity. We have other medicines on the market for that,
so we're not really grabbing it for seizure activity. We're
just grabbing it for other neurological complaints. Which neurological complaints
is rampant in our country. I mean it is rampant
for the reason I feel like it's rampant. Inflammation, inflammation
(25:53):
that I mentioned to you. The inflammatory system is kicked
on and does not turn off because of Americans lifestyle.
What we're eating and drinking generates inflammation of the human body,
and when the human body is inflamed at some point,
(26:14):
it irritates the nervous system and generates neurological problems, which
gabapentin helps mitigate the nervous system irritation that is brought
on by inflammation. It helps mitigate those things and control
those symptoms while someone works on their lifestyle. Headaches, all
(26:40):
sorts of pain issues, the numbness and the burning and
then tingling that sometimes happens, low back pain, neck pain,
chest pain, torso pain, I mean just pain. Pain. Pain.
That's another common problem in our country for various reasons. Again,
I feel like, yes, inflammation has a lot to do
(27:02):
with that because just sort of slowly cooking the body
is how I like to think of it. I had
a commerce that I wanted I think. Yeah, I did
do a commercial way back in the day. You may
have seen that one. I've made several commercials with KFD
on Channel six. But this is the woman. I was
in my backyard with a grill cooking some chicken, some
(27:26):
chicken breast, trying to incorporate this concept of inflammation and
how when you cook something you sort of break the
skin down and you sort of cook it and it
just breaks everything down. It kills it, right, and then
you have to turn that inflammation off by various habits.
Get you some lemon water, which that was the follow
(27:48):
up commercial, to sort of refresh your body so that
you don't slowly, slowly cause deterioration of the human system,
which aging is one component of it, but certainly when
your inflammatory system is on, that's a second component. It
accelerates aging, right, it makes you older faster. Yeah, and
(28:10):
against them, I've been saying this for the past week.
They've been a light. They lied to us about getting older.
Everybody they say it was a golden years. I don't know.
I work with a lot of people up in age,
and man, it can get pretty bad. I mean, you
gotta work at it. You know, you can't just wake
(28:32):
up and do whatever and feel good. As as an
older one. You gotta work at it. For most of us,
I mean you gotta eat right, you got extra I
mean you really got to take care of yourself. Phone
lines are open eight done six kovy I won one
hundred and three to three zero, OK, but I'll be
back in two minutes. All right, welcome back to Dogaly metag.
(29:06):
Our phone line to open eight nine to six K
one hundred and three three zero O ko via. Talking
about adverse reaction to medications. Big problem in our country.
Why because a lot of patients are taking prescription medications.
It's over the counter medication for various reasons. Membor cardiovas
disease is the big problem in our country because of plaque.
Plaque that develops in the circulation over time, which causes
(29:32):
narrowing of the blood flow, which then increases the chance
of a blood clot being formally called that a thrombus.
Blood cannot flow forward and so that particular part of
the body receives no blood flow. Then that causes what
we call a schemia, and depending on the vital organ
or the bed of blood vessels that is affected, you
(29:56):
have certain symptoms. If it's the hard you have chests.
If it's stroke, you can't see, you can't walk. And
one of the major treatments for this is blood thinners.
Now we have more blood thinners that are on the market.
I would say ten roughly, it might be higher. But
one of the things that happens with blood tennis, and
(30:18):
again we're talking about side effect issues of medications that
we see all the time, very common, is you bleed. Yeah,
you start bleeding, duh, that's what blood tinis do. Right.
Then they don't allow your blood system to work as well.
It's not as strong. It's weakened, if you will, and
so it generates bleeding, and so we get a lot
(30:41):
of admissions to the hospital for bleeding. Patients were hospitalized
for their first heart attack, stroke and they go home happy,
they're better, and then three weeks later, four weeks later,
a year later, man not bleeding. They go to the
resume blood in the toilet or when they urinate, that's
(31:02):
blood in their urine, or they start throwing up blood,
or they feel weak, super super weak, man, they just
can't get out of bed. They don't know what's wrong,
and they go to their doctor's office or they go
to the ear and their hemoglobein is really low. We
call that anemia. And most of the time that's from bleeding.
(31:23):
So we see that every single day in the hospital.
And the most common location of the bleeding that happens
when we place patients on blood thinners like clo pedigrill, plavix, relent,
to cumindin, eloquist, surreal toe prolouent, just all these bloodthinners.
(31:47):
Aspen forgot Aspino standby been there for years. Is the
GIS system starts bleeding, whether it be in your colon
or your stomach or the small intestine, and we have
to figure out where it is and plug up the
whole and fix it. In the meantimeel sometimes you have
to stop the blood thinners. You got to get blood
transfusions and have to be in hospital for several days.
(32:12):
Sometimes it cause kidney failure and low blood pressure. I mean, man,
it's just unlimited just from blood dinners, from plaque, from
eating ultra processed foods and drinking sugary beverages. All your
live livelihood or your lifelong doing that, exposing your body
to that, that's the American lifestyle. So you have to
(32:35):
try and fix that as much as you can to
reduce the chance of having to be put on blood
thinners and again so that you don't have any adverse
reaction to that. And just because it's over the counter
does not mean it's free of side effects either. There's
this sort of misconception that hey, I can get it
over the counter, it's not as strong. It can't hurt me.
(32:58):
It can't harm me. But that prescription stuff, man, that
that can really really hurt. It's prescribed, it's strong. My
friend told me not to take it. But let me
go to CVS or Walmart or wherever I get my
medications and get my over the counter medicine and take that.
It can't hurt me. It's not true. Even our friend
(33:21):
acetamenaforn or talanol that we use a lot of people
are using that right can cause harm. Anything that you
put in your mouth or you swallow as a medicinal
product can cause harm. Even all of these supplements, these
that we see on TV being advertised for all sorts
(33:42):
of various physical elements can cause harm. And most of
these types of harm are pretty minimal. I mean just
maybe some nausea, upset, stomach, headache, dizziness, maybe rash. Dietary supplements,
That's what I'm trying to say, that you can just
purchase without a prescription, without the advisement of your healthcare provider.
(34:06):
You start taking this because maybe your manhood that doesn't work,
or you just don't feel a strong as a man,
or maybe you're concerned about dementia and you saw an
advertisement for some sort of supplement that preserves your memory
or improves your memory. And again, in terms of the
product called priviagen, I get that question a lot in
the office p R E VEG and prevagen. I think
(34:30):
that's a very popular dietary supplement for memory and the
possibility of preventing Alzheimer's. Does the research exist for most
American doctors to prescribe that or recommend that to all
its patients. My understanding is no. But I certainly understand
(34:52):
the desire to be proactive and try and do what
you can to reduce your chances of developing Alzheimer's dementia.
And I know it seems seductive that all I have
to do is take this product, and that will help
me get better, and that will reduce my chances of
(35:15):
developing dementia. I know it sounds cool and too easy
to be true, right, Meaning you're overweight, you don't exercise,
you're eating ultra processed foods every day, but you're going
to sort of wipe all that away with this little
(35:35):
product that you sell on TV or in the mail
or on your phone, and you're purchased it and you're
taking two capsules every day. All the power in the
world is in that capsule, in that tablet, and it's
just going to evaporate all these other things that I
should be doing that my doctor told me I should
be doing, but I'm not doing. But I don't want
(35:57):
to develop dementia. So I'm going to take this capsule
of hope. Yes. No, that's a fantasy. You can't believe
in that. Phone lines opened eight nine six Kalvy. I
want to hundrer three three zero ok V. I be
back in two minutes. All right, welcome back to talk
(36:25):
with me America. Our phone lines open eight one six kalvy.
I want to hud your three three zero Kyvia. We
have Michael from Pasadena. How can we help you.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Oh, thank you for taking my call and appreciate everything
you do. Yes, sir, on this plaque, how do you
what can you do to prevent it? I know you
talk about not eating processed foods. I don't do that
most of the time. But uh, supposedly I've got a
(36:57):
little plaque. And what what what can you do? What
kind of diet or is there something you can eat
or do to get rid of the plaque that's there?
What's the answer?
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, I think they've done their best to try and
figure out how to reverse plaque. And well, let me
let me back up. If you can get to your
eighties and nineties in this country, you're going to have
some plaque. I mean you, I don't think you can
really avoid that. To be honest with you, we're just
(37:32):
trying to keep it to a minimum. Michael, the you know,
plaque in your blood vessel wall. There certainly are patients
when we do testing ultrasounds things like that that the
plaque is very very minimal. So what can you do again, Michael?
It's all about your lifestyle. It's all about what you
eat and drink, and so, as I've mentioned here today
(37:55):
as well as before. Unfortunately, The typical American diet is
a plaque generating diet. So again, consuming ultra processed foods,
drinking sugary beverages generates plaque in my opinion because of
the inflammatory system as well as the sugar content that
(38:16):
it contains and all of the sort of man made
chemicals that are in these foods. They tend to be
very irritating to the human body and it generates inflammation.
Anytime a human body feels injured by anything that it's
exposed to, it turns on inflammation. Inflammation then accelerates plaque formation.
(38:38):
So you have to eat better. Number one. You got
to eat better, and that again means more vegetables, more freshness,
less processed and you want to decrease your exposure to
starches and sugars in your diet, which is hard because
our diet is high sugar, high starch, the American diet,
(39:02):
and that's the way our system is geared. That's why
it's set up. So to go against the grain, to
do different, you have to find ways to avoid that.
It's super duper hard in this country. So first diet,
then number two exercise and it doesn't have to be
like this marathon running, gut busting, high intensity type of exercise.
(39:25):
You know, we're talking about just twenty minutes of some
sustained activity mild to moderate intensity, maybe three times a
week would be sufficient. You can do more if you
want to, but you don't have to. But it first
starts with the diet. Eating more vegetables, not to exposing
yourself to sugary beverages like the juices and the sweet teas,
(39:50):
all of the sports beverages out there, water, coffee, tea,
in my opinion, without sweetener, is the beverage that's good
for you, doesn't typically elicit the inflammatory system. But first
eat right now. It doesn't mean you can have a
hot dog or burger every now and then, but you
have to send people eating this stuff every day. I mean,
(40:12):
it's just their diet. They're getting out the frozen food section.
They put it out, put in the air fryer, heat
it up, and they eat. It's just ultra processed and
the amount of chemicals and substances and additives that the
food industry has to put in the food to stabilize it,
preserve it, make it look good, make it taste the
(40:34):
way it's supposed to taste. Even though it's been sitting
in a package for three months a year. In my opinion,
as well as other experts with more degrees and more knowledge,
are saying that this stuff is not good for us.
It generates injury to the human body, and plaque is
part of that injury.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Did you get that, mic I did, Thank you very much, all.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Right, brother, we appreciate that. And yeah, you know it
based on when I was growing up. I mean, yeah,
that's sort of when the food industry was sort of
taking off, just because I mean, man, we used to
eat at home all the time. We never really went
out to eat periodically. It was always a treat to
(41:19):
go get a burger or get some pizza, go to
a restaurant. I mean it was sort of a treat.
You did that sparingly. Otherwise everything was at the house.
I mean, you went to the grocery store more frequently,
and you ate leftovers more frequently, but it was something
that was cooked fresh. I loved talking with my patients
(41:40):
who are in their eighties that can still remember those
days when the grocery stores were tiny, tiny, tiny. They
were owned by some family in the community and everything
was just super fresh. I mean, most people sometimes had
chickens in the backyard, or the meat that they were
(42:00):
eating was super fresh. And I think the food was
better back in the day, no question. We just even
our exposure to sugar was a lot less. You know
that sugar was a treat. Our ability to to get
desserts and candies and all those substances that we love
to eat, donuts, you know, it was a little bit harder,
(42:23):
but now it's super super easy. It's sort of in
the community everywhere, and we're just exposed in so many
different ways when we go out to eat and go
to lunch, or there's a at the job site, there's
a there's a talk and it gets catered and all
this delicious food, food that normally is not that healthy
(42:44):
for you, And how can you say no to it? Right?
It's delicious cakes, pies, cookies, desserts, all that stuff just
sitting there. It's free. You can eat as many as
you want, right, and you just you indulge and then
you go to your desk and you sit there for
eight hours or five hours, or you get up, you
(43:06):
go get in your car, you sit, get out of
that and go to your house. You sit and you're
just sort of sitting all day, whereas if you just
take a little detour, go put some walking shoes on
and go outside and you just walk for twenty minutes
in your neighborhood at a nice little pace, that's a
(43:26):
lot better. And then you know, don't indulge at night
time when you're about to eat your supper. I mean
a lot of people have this idea of supper and
they're going to eat a starch or a couple of starch.
They're gonna get a protein, they have a salad, and
you can have some bread service and then yeah, maybe
some ice cream for dessert or some cookies for dessert,
and then go right to bed. Right. That's sort of
(43:47):
the typical thing that we do most Americans in terms
of how we perceive or conceive our diet and what
we're supposed to eat. In my pin, it's excessive. We
eat too much America. We're not bad, that's just what
we're taught. I was taught the same stuff, But eat
(44:08):
too much, don't exercise enough. That's the imbalance. Anyway, I
appreciate your joining fro another edition of the show. Don't
drink or drive, eat some vegetables and we'll see you
in a couple of weeks. Take care
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