September 22, 2025 • 40 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, welcomes out these sexist internet radio listeners. Welcome,
good morning. This is doctor Levine, your weekly host of
the Doctor Levigne Medical Hour. I am here every Saturday
between eight and nine across the street from Park to
m All talking about health care and health care delivery
(00:20):
and trying to keep you alive and stay alive as
long as possible and as healthy as possible. It's a
lot of decisions to make every single day. It's complicated
out there, and man, you need some help, need some guidance,
And here we are taking phone calls eight nine to
six kV I one one hundred and three to three
(00:42):
zero klv. I love to hear from you and chat
and see what we can do to help you out
and get you some answers for you and your family
to make better decisions about your health care. So please
give us a call so we can chat about that.
And in the meantime, yeah, it's flu season. It's here
(01:06):
and everyone is familiar with getting vaccines during this time,
so we're heavily promoting those We give vaccines throughout the year,
but this is flu season. That's when we get a
lot of the respiratory infections at least a spike of
respiratory infections during this time of year. Every year we
(01:27):
see it, So this is a time to try and
get on the bandwagon and get those vaccines to limit
the spread of this virus. But again, throughout the year
we see respiratory viruses and yeah, there's a new respiratory
virus on the block RSV. It's not that new, it's
(01:49):
kind of old. But the virus has been around for
a long time. It's just the vaccine is kind of new.
Maybe it's been out a year and a half, two years.
But the respiratory sensition virus, I heard about that when
I was in when I was in medical school actually
on the pediatric rotation and patient That's when I first
(02:11):
heard about respiratories and the sitio virus RSV. It's this
very hacky cough, shortness of breath, fever, you know, those
viral symptoms that everyone is familiar with, considering our expertise
as it pertains to COVID and all the terms that
get thrown around when we're watching television about the virus
(02:36):
and how it behaves and the incubation period and all
that stuff. Right, And I think most businesses and companies
have sort of gotten to the point where you don't
you I mean, you may have to quarantine, but I
don't think it's that long anymore. I mean, I think
it's possible to get COVID and actually come back to
(02:56):
work within a day or two, as long as you
having a whole lot of symptoms, no fever, no coughing.
Maybe wear a mask. Maybe some people do, some people don't,
because it's getting to the point where it's it's almost
like the flu. I mean, everyone remembers that before COVID hit.
When you get to flu, I mean, you just go
(03:18):
right back to work. You don't even think about it.
Go to Doc Levine's office, get some medicine, and you
go right back to work, coughing and hacking and shaking
hands and talking to your colleagues and even give it
a thought. And we're probably getting like that towards COVID.
Although I think we all have some PTSD towards COVID.
(03:40):
I think that's a big reason we honor it and
respect it and put those masks on. I still have
a few patients coming in the office wearing masks. You know,
that was a big deal for you know, two three
years the world was captivated by this infection, and man,
(04:00):
it wasn't too long ago. And so I do have
some patients still walking in with wearing masks, and we
still do that occasionally there in the hospital for other
various respiratory issues, such as there's a concern for tuberculosis.
You know, we don't really talk a whole lot about tuberculosis,
(04:23):
but that's say bacteria. It's not a virus, and this
bacteria can cause infection in all sorts of anatomical sites.
The most common is the lung, and tuberculosis is still
out there. It's a bacteria, but it likes to infect
(04:43):
the lung and cause a lot of destruction of the
lung tissue, which is normally what we see on X
ray and why we even think about it when someone
comes in to the hospital, because it normally causes a
pattern of just instruction on the X ray which we
(05:03):
can characterize as maybe having tuberculosis. But to diagnose that
requires cumbersome testing, in particular checking your sputum, maybe some
blood tests, and these organisms the way they grow, they
don't grow very rapidly and it takes time for them
(05:27):
to present themselves. If a lab tries to grow it
in the lab. So it's just a very cumbersome process
of elimination when we're thinking about tuberculosis. But it's still
out there. It's normally in certain special populations such as
prison populations or if you're homeless, if sometimes you take
(05:52):
certain medications like steroids or a lot of these biological
agents out there used for all sorts of autoimmune diseases
like lupus and psoriasis and inflammatory biod disease rum charthi fritus.
You know, they sort of the way they work to
kind of suppress your immune systems, so immune systems not
(06:14):
fully operational, and when that happens, you get what they
call opportunistic infections. We hear that that well, we heard
that term a lot with HIV when HIV and AIDS
hit the scene. I was in high school, a freshman
in high school when that hit the scene. Still remember
a lot of that, and again, just like COVID, just
(06:38):
the fear of how does it spread, who gets infected,
and just the concern of if you do get that, man,
there's no treatment for it. But now as it pertains
even to tuberculosis. Yes, there was one time maybe where
the medical world wasn't quite up to speed with how
(07:00):
to diagnose it, how to manage it. And yes, people
died from tuberculosis, and that fear still has not left
even though in my experience as a hospital doctor and
a community doctor. Again, it's not like we're diagnosing tuberculosis
every single day, multiple times a day. We're just not
(07:22):
doing that. It comes through periodically and normally it's it's
not the type of thing where it just rapidly kills
someone before your eyes. I mean, yes, they get they
can get very ill, they can get sick, but it's
it's normally not that type of bacterial infection that just
(07:42):
rapidly kills you. I mean, we do see that in
the hospital. Other bacterial infections like pneumonia that comes from
certain bacteria that we see all the time, which we
call Streptococcus pneumonia. That's a very common back that causes pneumonia,
which is why we endorse getting the pneumonia vaccine right
(08:08):
they I think it's up to Prevnar twenty now or
make could be thirteen twenty, I can't remember, but they've
been updating that particular vaccine for the past several years,
which again I want to say. In my experience, my
understanding of vaccine physiology is it's it's hard to overdose
(08:31):
on a vaccine. We since I talk a lot about
vaccines in my office, it comes up a lot. I
think I may have had that vaccine a year ago
or two years ago, and I'm not sure. And then
I tell the most patients, well, I mean, if you're
not quite sure, just you know, go get another vaccine.
And I think there's this concern that I don't want
(08:52):
to get too much vaccine. I might overdose on the vaccine.
That that's sort of a comment in my opinionsions understanding
about those vaccines is oding on the vaccine. If I
get too much, I might cause some home which personally
I've never seen. Yeah, we know about sort of the
local reaction to vaccines of the arm pain and the soreness, redness.
(09:15):
Sometimes and yes, sometimes patients do get these systemic impact
from the vaccine. They get fever, they get aky, they
feel bad, maybe even nausey, vomiting. They might even have
to stay home for a few days. And I get it,
you know, if they have a reaction that they're not
(09:37):
happy about getting another one. I get that whole thing,
and certainly the manufacturers of vaccines are working all the
time to try and limit adverse reaction to vaccines, just
like they are with all of the pharmaceutical prescription medication
on the market that they're providing to us. They really
(09:59):
try their as to keep adverse reaction to a minimum
so that we can increase compliance. One question that's come
up often in the practice or in the clinic is
some patients have heard about having to have a prescription
(10:19):
in order to get certain vaccines, which would not make
sense to me, you know, having to have it before
you could get any vaccine. You have to have a
prescription from a healthcare provider, which would not make any
sense to me, because the one goal that America has
been trying to do is maximize compliance with these vaccines
(10:43):
as high as possible to one hundred percent. Which some
of that yes, especially some of these vaccines you get
when you're younger, if you want to go to public schools,
a lot of it, the law says you have to
take it. I mean it's mandatory. I don't know exactly.
Because we talk about measles. There's some sort of reasons
(11:06):
why sometimes you can avoid getting vaccines. Religious reasons, et cetera.
I'm not clear on that at this point, but that's
our goal, is to try and get everyone to get
these vaccines. But again, because we love this country so much,
it's a free thinking country. It's your own personal decision
(11:26):
about that. That's what we love about it and that's
why we like being here. But it sort of generates
a lot of inconsistency when you're trying to come together
as a nation or country and sort of do one
thing for the country, for your neighbor, for your friend,
where these sort of personal ideas and personal decisions conflict
(11:47):
with that and you don't get the compliance that you
would like. Because again, the higher the compliance, the better
control of these organisms, and normally the more you can
sort of control, you know, the spread and the emergence
of these mutations. You hear that term all the time,
where it mutates and it changes and it started as
(12:10):
one organism and then it changes into another. It's sort
of the normal growth pattern of a lot of these organisms.
They change when they grow, and that's why you want
to try and prevent it from infecting, because that's when
it starts to mutate, and you need one hundred percent
compliance a lot of times, or a high percentage. I
(12:30):
think they try to reach for seventy percent of the
country with certain vaccines, but to get a prescription, it
seems like that would make the compliance plummet because we
you know, we all talk about it, especially in this show,
how easy it is to get in to see a
doctor these days, right man, It's hard. I mean it
(12:52):
is hard. You gotta find one first. It almost like
we're hiding, especially on Friday evening. On the weekend, you
can't find any practices. We're all gone. I just think
that would tear the compliance issue up. So I think
that would be the wrong way to go with that.
I mean, you have to make it as super convenient
as possible. Again, I was talking about having the pharmaceutical
(13:16):
company produce a tablet or a pill or a capsule
where you just pop one of them and boom your immunise.
I mean, that would be super convenient. I think in
that situation you might be able to get an even
higher compliance. I mean a lot of people have phobias
toward needles, and if you've ever gotten a vaccine, you
see that needle coming toward you. It's a little painful.
(13:38):
That needle's kind of long too, But to swallow something
that's pretty easy and it doesn't hurt, it seems like
that would improve compliance. I'm sure they've tried capsules and tablets,
but just can't get the physiology right and the chemistry
right on that one. So that's a little bit harder
to do, but it seems like that would help with
(13:59):
the compliance issue. But if you haven't gotten your vaccines,
certainly get those at your doctor's office, are your local pharmacy.
This is vaccine time, so something good to do today
if you're off, so get vaccined up, protect you and
protect your family member. As we all get older, that
(14:21):
immune system doesn't work as much. And we talk a
lot about cancer, and we talk about cardiovasc disease, but
man infections, they kill people every day, absolutely, pneumonia, ladder infections,
bloodstream infections, colon infections. I mean, this stuff is rampant
(14:45):
in all the hospitals in this country every single day.
And your immune system is a central part of that.
So you want to make your immune system as strong
as possible. Vaccines is the way to do. It's not
the only way, but it does help. Phone lines open
eight on six scal I want one hundred three three
zero Kalovia. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
(15:09):
welcome back to the Blchahy Medical Our phone lines are
open eight nine to six Kalova one, one hundred and
three to three zero Kova. I'm talking about flu season.
We are in the middle of it. It's getting cranked up,
starting to get those respiratory infections coffin, sneezing, chest congestion,
body aches. Right, I can't breathe. And again, the whole
(15:33):
idea of getting these vaccines is to boost your immune
systems so that you're sort of ready to go. Your
body is primed to fight these infections which are happening
throughout the year. But we just get this sort of
super concentrated rise in these infections during the wintertime. And
(15:56):
this is sort of when we start getting them. As
you know, we've we've had a few cold I shouldn't
say cold, but the weather is up cooling off a
little bit, so we're starting to get into sort of
those winter months. This is only the last month before
we get in October November. That's sort of when our
(16:16):
winter weather respiratory time starts to kick up and we
need to all sort of get ready for that with
these vaccines, and RSV is a new one on the
block relatively speaking. And still the flu. And then we
have our COVID boosters again. I have sort of lost
(16:38):
count with all the boosters and mutations and everything. I
don't really follow it every single day, but they're recommending
just have a thought and maybe get every sixth sister
or so months get your COVID boosters, just because of
all the mutations out there. And then we had that pneumonia,
the prevnar I think again it's up to twenty Prevnar
(17:00):
thirteen it was at one time, now it's twenty. That's
for bacterial pneumonia again, which is a very very common
way that elderly patients get infected and get sick. It's
just you get a lung infection and it can just
happen all of a sudden. A lot of times when
patients get these infections, they kind of want to know,
why did this happen to me? What did I do wrong?
(17:23):
And really, you didn't really do anything wrong. It's just
you know, you're sixty five or you're seventy five or
eighty five. I mean, you have to really really understand
that this is an active process. As we all get older,
things just don't work as well, things start breaking down,
(17:43):
and everyone's process is different in terms of how your
body's going to affect you. And it's not anything that
you did wrong or right. It's just it's that time.
It's if you ever get into your deep eighties, I mean,
it's hard to not have some physical deficit of some type.
(18:05):
It's really hard to get to your eighties and not
have zero wrong with you. Chances are something will start
to bother you. We talk a lot about the muscular
skeletal disease because that one is the one that bothers
is a lot as we get up in age forties, fifties, sixties,
start having that little tension and tightness in your lower
(18:28):
back or shoulder don't quite work as well, or your
neck or your knees. I mean, it's just multiple areas
of your body that can start to break down on you.
With the muscular skeletal system. We don't quite think of
it that way, but yeah, it's a natural aging process.
(18:49):
I say the term degenitive joint disease often throughout the
day in my practice because that is a lot of times.
What generates a lot of the neck pain and shoulder
and back and knees is just sort of your muscular scale.
Your joint system basically is it ages, it wears out
depending on your health and depending on what you do
(19:13):
for a living and how you're treating your body. Some
patients may have more, some patients may have less, but
certainly it's active and getting older. Yes, I recommend trying
to stay thin. It's hard to carry heavy weight as
you get older. This is again a trend that I
(19:33):
see and interacting with my patients, interacting with hospitalized patients.
If you are carrying a lot of weight as you
get older, it tends to generate even more problems. So
you want to try and stay thin versus heavy as
you get older. Now that may be difficult for some
patients to lose weight, but again just in terms of
(19:57):
the trend and your blood pressure, your cholesterol, just experiencing
joint pain. If you've ever been overweight and you've lost weight,
I think most people will say that that's one aspect
of weight loss that they like is that they don't
hurt as much. They feel like their body works better.
(20:18):
You know, they're not as stiff and when you gain weight,
you get more pain in your joints. You hurt more,
you're more stiff, you're more tired. I mean you can
feel it. You know you're not healthy. You just don't
feel the best. And normally that pill count will start
(20:38):
to climb. I mean it goes from one prescription medicine
to ten prescription medicines. And it's all being generated by
weight gain. And again, weight gain biochemically hormonally changes you,
(21:00):
changes your system to generate, in my opinion, pain, to
generate fatigue, to generate hypertension, high cholesterol. We call that
the metabolic syndrome. It's a hormonal reaction to weight gain.
And when you lose weight, you feel better. I mean
(21:20):
you feel a whole lot better because that inflammatory engine
has been cut off. When you gain weight, you have inflammation.
Hey Leonard, what's going on?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
A couple of weeks ago, I spent eleven days in
the hospital. Since I've been released, I can't walk fifty feet.
You know, I want to sit down and take a nap.
How do I gain my strength back? Is there a trick?
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Hey Leonard? No, there's not really a trick, right, I mean,
eleven days is a long time to be in the hospital,
and normally that would indicate some severe acute medical crisis
that you went through. And anytime that happens to anybody,
(22:07):
there is going to be a recovery phase of the
acute medical crises that you have to go through. Now,
certainly when you're younger, that recovery phase is shorter again
because your body is stronger, it's more resilient and can
recover more easily. That kind of makes sense. And as
(22:29):
your body ages, you know, guess what, that whole recovery
process is a lot slower. It doesn't work as well.
And so if you get some sort of acute medical crises,
whatever that is, cute infection, heart attack, stroke, whatever case
may be, and your body is exposed to that crisis, yeah,
(22:50):
it's going to take maybe two weeks, a month, half
a year to recover from what has happened to the
trauma that your body went through. It's a medical trauma.
It's not a physical trauma. It's only a medical trauma
that your body has gone through. Now lit it a
lot of times in patients your age seventies eighties, we
(23:15):
would normally offer a facility such as a rehab facility
or what they call a skilled nursing facility where you
can go after discharge from the hospital. You can be
transferred to these facilities to stay there for two weeks
three weeks where the focus is really to regain your function,
(23:37):
and that's normally is offered to you. If you feel
like you can't be discharged home, but if you want
to go home, you certainly can. There are physical therapists
that can come to your house. There's also physical therapy
businesses where somebody can bring you to their business every
day to get physical therapy. So if physical therapists can
(23:59):
work with you to get your strength back, so there
are a few options. Nothing you did wrong, This is
just par for the course. Whenever you stay in the
hospital for ten days.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I have a physical therapist comes behind cansby, walk around
and push and you know those kinds of things. And
every day at four o'clock the hospital send somebody over
to give me a shot of antibiotics. Yeah, and I
do seem to be getting better. It used to be
I could walk twenty feet and want to sit down
and take a nap. Now it's fifty feet and I
assume in a couple of weeks, it'll be one hundred feet.
(24:32):
But I'm just trying what do I do to get
to go to go faster.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I don't have any other special recommendations, Leonard, other than
obviously you know, eat a healthy diet and you know,
take your medications and make sure your other diseases are controlled,
and be an active participate with the physical therapist. And
(24:59):
I think that's the most you can do. I don't
think there's any rush that you have to walk five
hundred feet right down. I think the main thing is
to not cause any other crises to happen, which a
lot of times can happen. When you're recovering from one
medical crisis. Your body is still vulnerable for other complications
(25:21):
and other medical crisises, and sometimes another one will jump
on top of you, and that certainly will postpone your
recovery because then your body has to shift gears and
now it's in crises mode again, and the recovery phase
has been shut down, and your entire recovery process is
going to be even longer because now you have another
(25:45):
acute medical crisis that you have to deal with. So
sometimes people will have to go back into the hospital
after they've been admitted for ten days, stay there for
another five days, and then come back out, and sometimes
it knocks them down again and it can just sort
of snowball to the point that they actually never recover.
(26:06):
So I do see that often. So Lennard, I'm glad
that you got out of there and you are recovering.
And yes, everyone's expectation is that in the next couple
of weeks you'll be back to your baseline. So I
don't think you need to do anything else.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Okay, So it's not special any now I would be
doing okay, just checking.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Thanks, good guy, all right, brother, appreciate it, and you
know it brings up an interesting point. I have conversations
with families all the time, and if you don't do
this for a living, it's really hard to see it.
But I see it very clearly. Is again, and I
(26:50):
try to endorse this all the time to my patients
in the hospital as well as to my clinic patients.
Is getting old is not easy. They lie to us,
they really lie to us. They say it's supposed to
be the golden years and it's supposed to have fun,
and yeah, that's all good, but man, you gotta work
(27:13):
at it. You really do. And there's so many things
that can happen to you just out of nowhere. Right
just because you're older. Your body just doesn't function well.
It's shutting down. Literally, it's shutting down. It's part of
our program, if you will, that we're born with. At
(27:38):
some point, the body starts shutting down. Immune system doesn't work,
nervous system doesn't work as well, cardiovascular kidney system, nervous system, whatever.
Everybody's different. But if you get an acute medical crisis
thrown on that aging body, like pneumonia, like bladder infection,
(28:01):
like covid, like pneumonia, are flu I'm sorry, UTI's appendicitis, diverticulitis,
steps is all that. Sometimes it's hard to recover, it
really is, and it could be taking a month a
year to recover from that. Because the human body is
(28:24):
not as strong as when you're in your twenties or thirties.
You might have other chronic medical issues that get in
the way, like a bad heard, bad kidneys, bad lung.
It's hard to recover. I sort of hear this refrain,
you know. All the time they were out in the
yard two days ago, they very active and they cut
(28:47):
their grass all the time, and they drive everywhere and
they run circles around me until you get a big
time infection in your system. Again, because immune system doesn't
work and your body's not as strong, you can't recover.
You lay in bed a few days. Man, you're looking
(29:08):
at two months of recovery. And thank I mean, and
be hopeful that nothing else happens while you're recovering, because
that'll delay it even more. And again sometimes you just
you're out of time. Phone lines are open eight one
six k v I one one hundred three three zero
k o V. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
(29:41):
welcome back to the dark living matter of our Phone
lines are open. Eight nine six k v I one
one hundred three three zero OKOVI. I would love to
hear from you and talk with you. And yes, getting
older is hard. You really have to do your part.
It's not something that's automatic, right, and just things don't
(30:03):
work as well, they don't recover as well. And the
things that you have to do to stay in shape,
you all know it, right, that lifestyle right, You got
to eat right. You have to eat right, and if
you eat right most of the time, your body will
stay as strong as possible, it'll be as resilient as possible.
(30:28):
Excuse me, it's not about the exercising in my opinion,
it's the diet. And I know it's confusing out there.
Just you get all these messages. But again, no one
disagrees about vegetables. No one disagrees about that. So you
want to try and eat that as much as possible. Again,
(30:48):
think of it as your medication, like your aspirin, your
blood pressure medicine, your diabetes medicine. You take it every
day right religiously because you want to better. You want
your sugar to stay control, your blood pressure to stay control.
And that's how you should look at food and beverages.
(31:09):
You eating the food every day that's going to help
you be healthy, stay out of troubles, reduce your risk
of cancer, reduce your risk of having to be hospitalized.
That's how you should look at that. Is this what
I'm putting in my mouth helping or hurting? Is this
generating inflammation or is this controlling inflammation? Right? You hear
(31:35):
about certain food items, spices, things that nature that are
antioxidants and typically treat inflammation. Right, No one disagrees about vegetables.
You can eat it as much as you want and
as frequently as you want. Doesn't matter if it's after
(31:55):
seven pm, or if it's in the morning, or it's
two o'clock in the morning. I mean, if you're eating
broccoli and cauliflyer two o'clock in the morning, who cares, honestly,
And you can eat as much as you want of it,
and you can prepare it in so many different ways,
and a lot of times, if you're eating vegetables, the
(32:16):
cooking is pretty easy because there's not many steps to it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
You pretty much go to the produce section, take it home,
and maybe one or two steps and you're ready to
eat it. It doesn't really require a lot of that.
It's not time consuming, which is awesome when a lot
of times when you're eating healthy, you don't have to
wait a long time for your food. I kind of
hear that a lot from my patients. You know, I'm
(32:43):
just busy, and I gotta go here and there. I'm
on the run, and I just can't eat healthy. And
there's so many healthy foods that are ready to be eaten.
All you got to do is put it in your
hand and put in your mouth. It's all you gotta do,
just got to get it. And a lot of times
that most produce sections or grocery storts. Yeah, it's ready
(33:05):
to go. Talking about even raw vegetables, cucumbers, carrots, that
stuffs ready to go. You just cut it and eat it.
You don't have to cook it. You can carry it,
you can bring it everywhere with you. Yeah, I mean,
it doesn't really require a whole lot. That stuff's good
for you. Nuts and seeds like walnuts and pistachios, almonds,
(33:29):
they're the best pecans. That stuff's ready to go. You
can take it anywhere. I eat that stuff all the time.
It's my bag, it's in my car all it's ready
to go, even though I'm on the run. Just as
much as anybody else. You just have to put that
stuff around you and eat it and consume it, and
it just it takes your appetite away, and you know
(33:52):
that you did your body good by giving it some
vitamins and some fiber. You know, again, these are the
items that normally will help you fight infections, help you
fight arthritis because it does not rev up your inflammatory system.
Drinking sugar, there's a lot of sugary beverages out there
(34:14):
we get in so many different forms. Tends to increase inflammation.
Inflammation tends to suppress your immune system. When you suppress
the immune system, your risk of infections go up. Right,
spontaneous infections kind of like we talked about HIV, Right,
(34:36):
The virus suppresses your immune system, and thus you get
these opportunistic infections like tuberculosis and like other viruses that
normally don't attack you because your immune system is working.
But when the inflammatory system is up because you're eating
(34:57):
an inflammatory diet or your drink king sugary beverages, which
experts agree generate inflammation, your risk of infections go up.
It makes sense, right, And then this sugar that you've
been exposed to is very irritating to the blood vessel system.
Tends to accelerate plaque. Tends to make the blood system
(35:20):
more thick, so that you get clots more. And what
is the big problem in our country strokes, heart attacks,
peripheral vascal disease, blood clots. Right, inflammation generates blood clots,
Sugar increases inflammation, increases blood clots, increases risk of strokes.
(35:44):
So try to avoid your exposure to sugar, especially the
type that you drink that we love and just drink
more water. It's that easy. You can lighten water up
with some lemons, some lime, even fresh querce. It's so
refreshing to do. It may require a little bit of
extra effort, but man, who wants to be stuck in
(36:06):
hospital for ten days? Right? Phone lines are open eight
nine six KALV I want to hundred three three zero
O kovy. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
welcome back to the Dcaphine and metical. Our phone lines
are open eight nine to six kV. I want to
hundred three to three zero O ko three I. At
(36:26):
the end of the show, time goes by so so fast.
When you're having fun and we're all having fun up
here trying to get you to figure out what's the
best thing for you and your family. Again, if there's
a topic that you would like me to discuss, either
call my office or you can call the radio station
and we can dive down into it and see what
(36:48):
we can do to help you out. Remember, this is
a vaccine time. Scratch that, this is flu season time,
and so we're prioritizing vaccines.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Again.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
We talk about it throughout the year, but we really
try to hit it hard during this time of years,
that winter months start to pick up and those respiratory
infections pick up. And again you've got to do your
part to make your body strong and keep it healthy
and keep it running. Right. It's not automatic. It's not automatic, honestly,
(37:16):
and we want you to try and expose your body
to food items and beverages that increase your health. And
I know because of the messaging it can be a
little confusing, but honestly, nobody disagrees about eating vegetables and
consuming vegetables, and no one disagrees that water is the
best beverage. No one disagrees about that. So you can
(37:38):
be safe with that right, drink your water and each
of vegetables. It really comes down to that. The exercising
compliments your body. Again, you don't have to be out
there running marathons unless you want to do that. You
don't have to be a triathlete unless you want to
do that. That stuff is high intensity. In my experience,
I'm a former athlete here South East Sexes. I know
(38:01):
a little bit about exercising and competition and pushing your
body to the limit. It's not fun, it hurts, and
again if you're trying to get into your deep seventies, eighties, nineties,
you don't have to do all that stuff unless you
want to. It's stressful to expose your body to all that,
and your body does not need that, but it does
(38:22):
need the proper nutrition. And again, a lot of times,
even if you're busy, you're on the run, this stuff
does not require a lot of time to consume. You
just go into the HB, you go to Walmart, you
go to the produce section, you grab it, you pay
for it, you eat it. It's ready to be eaten.
(38:43):
You don't have to put it in a blender or
a processor, or you don't have to bake it, broil it,
cook it. It's ready to be eaten in its raw form.
And you know, there's some experts out there who say, oh,
we should be eating everything wrong, you shouldn't be cooking anything.
I'm not that far with it, right. I mean, I'm
(39:06):
like anybody else. I like some red meat every now
and then, I eat baking every now and then. I'm
not hammering that every single day. I have some patience
every day they're eating it. I'm not like that, because again,
it's not a healthy meat. But I grew up eating that.
It's sort of part of my culture. So I engage
in that periodically, not every day, but certainly. Yes. I'm
(39:29):
hammering vegetables every single day because it's good for you. It's
my medicine. I'm drinking water every single day. It's my medicine.
That's how I see it. Like you take your aspirin
and your blood pressure medication because you know it's good
for you. Your doctor's going to get upset at you
if you don't take it. You're going to end up
in the hospital. Right, You get that, And your food
(39:51):
should be the same that. If you are consuming something
that generates illness. We all know that stuff for the
ultra processed foods and TV dinners, all the sort of
snack items out there, the cookies, the pies, the chips
that we love so much. It's just sort of sitting
around in our house calling us at eight o'clock at night,
(40:14):
the ice creams, the sodas, all that. We want to
limit that and try to eat what's right for you
and get out and move around and get your blood flowing. Anyway,
Thank you for joining us in the edition of the show.
Remember don't drink and drive. Drink some water and some
eat some cucumbers. We'll see next week. Take care,
All right, welcomes out these sexist internet radio listeners. Welcome,
good morning. This is doctor Levine, your weekly host of
the Doctor Levigne Medical Hour. I am here every Saturday
between eight and nine across the street from Park to
m All talking about health care and health care delivery
(00:20):
and trying to keep you alive and stay alive as
long as possible and as healthy as possible. It's a
lot of decisions to make every single day. It's complicated
out there, and man, you need some help, need some guidance,
And here we are taking phone calls eight nine to
six kV I one one hundred and three to three
(00:42):
zero klv. I love to hear from you and chat
and see what we can do to help you out
and get you some answers for you and your family
to make better decisions about your health care. So please
give us a call so we can chat about that.
And in the meantime, yeah, it's flu season. It's here
(01:06):
and everyone is familiar with getting vaccines during this time,
so we're heavily promoting those We give vaccines throughout the year,
but this is flu season. That's when we get a
lot of the respiratory infections at least a spike of
respiratory infections during this time of year. Every year we
(01:27):
see it, So this is a time to try and
get on the bandwagon and get those vaccines to limit
the spread of this virus. But again, throughout the year
we see respiratory viruses and yeah, there's a new respiratory
virus on the block RSV. It's not that new, it's
(01:49):
kind of old. But the virus has been around for
a long time. It's just the vaccine is kind of new.
Maybe it's been out a year and a half, two years.
But the respiratory sensition virus, I heard about that when
I was in when I was in medical school actually
on the pediatric rotation and patient That's when I first
(02:11):
heard about respiratories and the sitio virus RSV. It's this
very hacky cough, shortness of breath, fever, you know, those
viral symptoms that everyone is familiar with, considering our expertise
as it pertains to COVID and all the terms that
get thrown around when we're watching television about the virus
(02:36):
and how it behaves and the incubation period and all
that stuff. Right, And I think most businesses and companies
have sort of gotten to the point where you don't
you I mean, you may have to quarantine, but I
don't think it's that long anymore. I mean, I think
it's possible to get COVID and actually come back to
(02:56):
work within a day or two, as long as you
having a whole lot of symptoms, no fever, no coughing.
Maybe wear a mask. Maybe some people do, some people don't,
because it's getting to the point where it's it's almost
like the flu. I mean, everyone remembers that before COVID hit.
When you get to flu, I mean, you just go
(03:18):
right back to work. You don't even think about it.
Go to Doc Levine's office, get some medicine, and you
go right back to work, coughing and hacking and shaking
hands and talking to your colleagues and even give it
a thought. And we're probably getting like that towards COVID.
Although I think we all have some PTSD towards COVID.
(03:40):
I think that's a big reason we honor it and
respect it and put those masks on. I still have
a few patients coming in the office wearing masks. You know,
that was a big deal for you know, two three
years the world was captivated by this infection, and man,
(04:00):
it wasn't too long ago. And so I do have
some patients still walking in with wearing masks, and we
still do that occasionally there in the hospital for other
various respiratory issues, such as there's a concern for tuberculosis.
You know, we don't really talk a whole lot about tuberculosis,
(04:23):
but that's say bacteria. It's not a virus, and this
bacteria can cause infection in all sorts of anatomical sites.
The most common is the lung, and tuberculosis is still
out there. It's a bacteria, but it likes to infect
(04:43):
the lung and cause a lot of destruction of the
lung tissue, which is normally what we see on X
ray and why we even think about it when someone
comes in to the hospital, because it normally causes a
pattern of just instruction on the X ray which we
(05:03):
can characterize as maybe having tuberculosis. But to diagnose that
requires cumbersome testing, in particular checking your sputum, maybe some
blood tests, and these organisms the way they grow, they
don't grow very rapidly and it takes time for them
(05:27):
to present themselves. If a lab tries to grow it
in the lab. So it's just a very cumbersome process
of elimination when we're thinking about tuberculosis. But it's still
out there. It's normally in certain special populations such as
prison populations or if you're homeless, if sometimes you take
(05:52):
certain medications like steroids or a lot of these biological
agents out there used for all sorts of autoimmune diseases
like lupus and psoriasis and inflammatory biod disease rum charthi fritus.
You know, they sort of the way they work to
kind of suppress your immune systems, so immune systems not
(06:14):
fully operational, and when that happens, you get what they
call opportunistic infections. We hear that that well, we heard
that term a lot with HIV when HIV and AIDS
hit the scene. I was in high school, a freshman
in high school when that hit the scene. Still remember
a lot of that, and again, just like COVID, just
(06:38):
the fear of how does it spread, who gets infected,
and just the concern of if you do get that, man,
there's no treatment for it. But now as it pertains
even to tuberculosis. Yes, there was one time maybe where
the medical world wasn't quite up to speed with how
(07:00):
to diagnose it, how to manage it. And yes, people
died from tuberculosis, and that fear still has not left
even though in my experience as a hospital doctor and
a community doctor. Again, it's not like we're diagnosing tuberculosis
every single day, multiple times a day. We're just not
(07:22):
doing that. It comes through periodically and normally it's it's
not the type of thing where it just rapidly kills
someone before your eyes. I mean, yes, they get they
can get very ill, they can get sick, but it's
it's normally not that type of bacterial infection that just
(07:42):
rapidly kills you. I mean, we do see that in
the hospital. Other bacterial infections like pneumonia that comes from
certain bacteria that we see all the time, which we
call Streptococcus pneumonia. That's a very common back that causes pneumonia,
which is why we endorse getting the pneumonia vaccine right
(08:08):
they I think it's up to Prevnar twenty now or
make could be thirteen twenty, I can't remember, but they've
been updating that particular vaccine for the past several years,
which again I want to say. In my experience, my
understanding of vaccine physiology is it's it's hard to overdose
(08:31):
on a vaccine. We since I talk a lot about
vaccines in my office, it comes up a lot. I
think I may have had that vaccine a year ago
or two years ago, and I'm not sure. And then
I tell the most patients, well, I mean, if you're
not quite sure, just you know, go get another vaccine.
And I think there's this concern that I don't want
(08:52):
to get too much vaccine. I might overdose on the vaccine.
That that's sort of a comment in my opinionsions understanding
about those vaccines is oding on the vaccine. If I
get too much, I might cause some home which personally
I've never seen. Yeah, we know about sort of the
local reaction to vaccines of the arm pain and the soreness, redness.
(09:15):
Sometimes and yes, sometimes patients do get these systemic impact
from the vaccine. They get fever, they get aky, they
feel bad, maybe even nausey, vomiting. They might even have
to stay home for a few days. And I get it,
you know, if they have a reaction that they're not
(09:37):
happy about getting another one. I get that whole thing,
and certainly the manufacturers of vaccines are working all the
time to try and limit adverse reaction to vaccines, just
like they are with all of the pharmaceutical prescription medication
on the market that they're providing to us. They really
(09:59):
try their as to keep adverse reaction to a minimum
so that we can increase compliance. One question that's come
up often in the practice or in the clinic is
some patients have heard about having to have a prescription
(10:19):
in order to get certain vaccines, which would not make
sense to me, you know, having to have it before
you could get any vaccine. You have to have a
prescription from a healthcare provider, which would not make any
sense to me, because the one goal that America has
been trying to do is maximize compliance with these vaccines
(10:43):
as high as possible to one hundred percent. Which some
of that yes, especially some of these vaccines you get
when you're younger, if you want to go to public schools,
a lot of it, the law says you have to
take it. I mean it's mandatory. I don't know exactly.
Because we talk about measles. There's some sort of reasons
(11:06):
why sometimes you can avoid getting vaccines. Religious reasons, et cetera.
I'm not clear on that at this point, but that's
our goal, is to try and get everyone to get
these vaccines. But again, because we love this country so much,
it's a free thinking country. It's your own personal decision
(11:26):
about that. That's what we love about it and that's
why we like being here. But it sort of generates
a lot of inconsistency when you're trying to come together
as a nation or country and sort of do one
thing for the country, for your neighbor, for your friend,
where these sort of personal ideas and personal decisions conflict
(11:47):
with that and you don't get the compliance that you
would like. Because again, the higher the compliance, the better
control of these organisms, and normally the more you can
sort of control, you know, the spread and the emergence
of these mutations. You hear that term all the time,
where it mutates and it changes and it started as
(12:10):
one organism and then it changes into another. It's sort
of the normal growth pattern of a lot of these organisms.
They change when they grow, and that's why you want
to try and prevent it from infecting, because that's when
it starts to mutate, and you need one hundred percent
compliance a lot of times, or a high percentage. I
(12:30):
think they try to reach for seventy percent of the
country with certain vaccines, but to get a prescription, it
seems like that would make the compliance plummet because we
you know, we all talk about it, especially in this show,
how easy it is to get in to see a
doctor these days, right man, It's hard. I mean it
(12:52):
is hard. You gotta find one first. It almost like
we're hiding, especially on Friday evening. On the weekend, you
can't find any practices. We're all gone. I just think
that would tear the compliance issue up. So I think
that would be the wrong way to go with that.
I mean, you have to make it as super convenient
as possible. Again, I was talking about having the pharmaceutical
(13:16):
company produce a tablet or a pill or a capsule
where you just pop one of them and boom your immunise.
I mean, that would be super convenient. I think in
that situation you might be able to get an even
higher compliance. I mean a lot of people have phobias
toward needles, and if you've ever gotten a vaccine, you
see that needle coming toward you. It's a little painful.
(13:38):
That needle's kind of long too, But to swallow something
that's pretty easy and it doesn't hurt, it seems like
that would improve compliance. I'm sure they've tried capsules and tablets,
but just can't get the physiology right and the chemistry
right on that one. So that's a little bit harder
to do, but it seems like that would help with
(13:59):
the compliance issue. But if you haven't gotten your vaccines,
certainly get those at your doctor's office, are your local pharmacy.
This is vaccine time, so something good to do today
if you're off, so get vaccined up, protect you and
protect your family member. As we all get older, that
(14:21):
immune system doesn't work as much. And we talk a
lot about cancer, and we talk about cardiovasc disease, but
man infections, they kill people every day, absolutely, pneumonia, ladder infections,
bloodstream infections, colon infections. I mean, this stuff is rampant
(14:45):
in all the hospitals in this country every single day.
And your immune system is a central part of that.
So you want to make your immune system as strong
as possible. Vaccines is the way to do. It's not
the only way, but it does help. Phone lines open
eight on six scal I want one hundred three three
zero Kalovia. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
(15:09):
welcome back to the Blchahy Medical Our phone lines are
open eight nine to six Kalova one, one hundred and
three to three zero Kova. I'm talking about flu season.
We are in the middle of it. It's getting cranked up,
starting to get those respiratory infections coffin, sneezing, chest congestion,
body aches. Right, I can't breathe. And again, the whole
(15:33):
idea of getting these vaccines is to boost your immune
systems so that you're sort of ready to go. Your
body is primed to fight these infections which are happening
throughout the year. But we just get this sort of
super concentrated rise in these infections during the wintertime. And
(15:56):
this is sort of when we start getting them. As
you know, we've we've had a few cold I shouldn't
say cold, but the weather is up cooling off a
little bit, so we're starting to get into sort of
those winter months. This is only the last month before
we get in October November. That's sort of when our
(16:16):
winter weather respiratory time starts to kick up and we
need to all sort of get ready for that with
these vaccines, and RSV is a new one on the
block relatively speaking. And still the flu. And then we
have our COVID boosters again. I have sort of lost
(16:38):
count with all the boosters and mutations and everything. I
don't really follow it every single day, but they're recommending
just have a thought and maybe get every sixth sister
or so months get your COVID boosters, just because of
all the mutations out there. And then we had that pneumonia,
the prevnar I think again it's up to twenty Prevnar
(17:00):
thirteen it was at one time, now it's twenty. That's
for bacterial pneumonia again, which is a very very common
way that elderly patients get infected and get sick. It's
just you get a lung infection and it can just
happen all of a sudden. A lot of times when
patients get these infections, they kind of want to know,
why did this happen to me? What did I do wrong?
(17:23):
And really, you didn't really do anything wrong. It's just
you know, you're sixty five or you're seventy five or
eighty five. I mean, you have to really really understand
that this is an active process. As we all get older,
things just don't work as well, things start breaking down,
(17:43):
and everyone's process is different in terms of how your
body's going to affect you. And it's not anything that
you did wrong or right. It's just it's that time.
It's if you ever get into your deep eighties, I mean,
it's hard to not have some physical deficit of some type.
(18:05):
It's really hard to get to your eighties and not
have zero wrong with you. Chances are something will start
to bother you. We talk a lot about the muscular
skeletal disease because that one is the one that bothers
is a lot as we get up in age forties, fifties, sixties,
start having that little tension and tightness in your lower
(18:28):
back or shoulder don't quite work as well, or your
neck or your knees. I mean, it's just multiple areas
of your body that can start to break down on you.
With the muscular skeletal system. We don't quite think of
it that way, but yeah, it's a natural aging process.
(18:49):
I say the term degenitive joint disease often throughout the
day in my practice because that is a lot of times.
What generates a lot of the neck pain and shoulder
and back and knees is just sort of your muscular scale.
Your joint system basically is it ages, it wears out
depending on your health and depending on what you do
(19:13):
for a living and how you're treating your body. Some
patients may have more, some patients may have less, but
certainly it's active and getting older. Yes, I recommend trying
to stay thin. It's hard to carry heavy weight as
you get older. This is again a trend that I
(19:33):
see and interacting with my patients, interacting with hospitalized patients.
If you are carrying a lot of weight as you
get older, it tends to generate even more problems. So
you want to try and stay thin versus heavy as
you get older. Now that may be difficult for some
patients to lose weight, but again just in terms of
(19:57):
the trend and your blood pressure, your cholesterol, just experiencing
joint pain. If you've ever been overweight and you've lost weight,
I think most people will say that that's one aspect
of weight loss that they like is that they don't
hurt as much. They feel like their body works better.
(20:18):
You know, they're not as stiff and when you gain weight,
you get more pain in your joints. You hurt more,
you're more stiff, you're more tired. I mean you can
feel it. You know you're not healthy. You just don't
feel the best. And normally that pill count will start
(20:38):
to climb. I mean it goes from one prescription medicine
to ten prescription medicines. And it's all being generated by
weight gain. And again, weight gain biochemically hormonally changes you,
(21:00):
changes your system to generate, in my opinion, pain, to
generate fatigue, to generate hypertension, high cholesterol. We call that
the metabolic syndrome. It's a hormonal reaction to weight gain.
And when you lose weight, you feel better. I mean
(21:20):
you feel a whole lot better because that inflammatory engine
has been cut off. When you gain weight, you have inflammation.
Hey Leonard, what's going on?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
A couple of weeks ago, I spent eleven days in
the hospital. Since I've been released, I can't walk fifty feet.
You know, I want to sit down and take a nap.
How do I gain my strength back? Is there a trick?
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Hey Leonard? No, there's not really a trick, right, I mean,
eleven days is a long time to be in the hospital,
and normally that would indicate some severe acute medical crisis
that you went through. And anytime that happens to anybody,
(22:07):
there is going to be a recovery phase of the
acute medical crises that you have to go through. Now,
certainly when you're younger, that recovery phase is shorter again
because your body is stronger, it's more resilient and can
recover more easily. That kind of makes sense. And as
(22:29):
your body ages, you know, guess what, that whole recovery
process is a lot slower. It doesn't work as well.
And so if you get some sort of acute medical crises,
whatever that is, cute infection, heart attack, stroke, whatever case
may be, and your body is exposed to that crisis, yeah,
(22:50):
it's going to take maybe two weeks, a month, half
a year to recover from what has happened to the
trauma that your body went through. It's a medical trauma.
It's not a physical trauma. It's only a medical trauma
that your body has gone through. Now lit it a
lot of times in patients your age seventies eighties, we
(23:15):
would normally offer a facility such as a rehab facility
or what they call a skilled nursing facility where you
can go after discharge from the hospital. You can be
transferred to these facilities to stay there for two weeks
three weeks where the focus is really to regain your function,
(23:37):
and that's normally is offered to you. If you feel
like you can't be discharged home, but if you want
to go home, you certainly can. There are physical therapists
that can come to your house. There's also physical therapy
businesses where somebody can bring you to their business every
day to get physical therapy. So if physical therapists can
(23:59):
work with you to get your strength back, so there
are a few options. Nothing you did wrong, This is
just par for the course. Whenever you stay in the
hospital for ten days.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I have a physical therapist comes behind cansby, walk around
and push and you know those kinds of things. And
every day at four o'clock the hospital send somebody over
to give me a shot of antibiotics. Yeah, and I
do seem to be getting better. It used to be
I could walk twenty feet and want to sit down
and take a nap. Now it's fifty feet and I
assume in a couple of weeks, it'll be one hundred feet.
(24:32):
But I'm just trying what do I do to get
to go to go faster.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I don't have any other special recommendations, Leonard, other than
obviously you know, eat a healthy diet and you know,
take your medications and make sure your other diseases are controlled,
and be an active participate with the physical therapist. And
(24:59):
I think that's the most you can do. I don't
think there's any rush that you have to walk five
hundred feet right down. I think the main thing is
to not cause any other crises to happen, which a
lot of times can happen. When you're recovering from one
medical crisis. Your body is still vulnerable for other complications
(25:21):
and other medical crisises, and sometimes another one will jump
on top of you, and that certainly will postpone your
recovery because then your body has to shift gears and
now it's in crises mode again, and the recovery phase
has been shut down, and your entire recovery process is
going to be even longer because now you have another
(25:45):
acute medical crisis that you have to deal with. So
sometimes people will have to go back into the hospital
after they've been admitted for ten days, stay there for
another five days, and then come back out, and sometimes
it knocks them down again and it can just sort
of snowball to the point that they actually never recover.
(26:06):
So I do see that often. So Lennard, I'm glad
that you got out of there and you are recovering.
And yes, everyone's expectation is that in the next couple
of weeks you'll be back to your baseline. So I
don't think you need to do anything else.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Okay, So it's not special any now I would be
doing okay, just checking.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Thanks, good guy, all right, brother, appreciate it, and you
know it brings up an interesting point. I have conversations
with families all the time, and if you don't do
this for a living, it's really hard to see it.
But I see it very clearly. Is again, and I
(26:50):
try to endorse this all the time to my patients
in the hospital as well as to my clinic patients.
Is getting old is not easy. They lie to us,
they really lie to us. They say it's supposed to
be the golden years and it's supposed to have fun,
and yeah, that's all good, but man, you gotta work
(27:13):
at it. You really do. And there's so many things
that can happen to you just out of nowhere. Right
just because you're older. Your body just doesn't function well.
It's shutting down. Literally, it's shutting down. It's part of
our program, if you will, that we're born with. At
(27:38):
some point, the body starts shutting down. Immune system doesn't work,
nervous system doesn't work as well, cardiovascular kidney system, nervous system, whatever.
Everybody's different. But if you get an acute medical crisis
thrown on that aging body, like pneumonia, like bladder infection,
(28:01):
like covid, like pneumonia, are flu I'm sorry, UTI's appendicitis, diverticulitis,
steps is all that. Sometimes it's hard to recover, it
really is, and it could be taking a month a
year to recover from that. Because the human body is
(28:24):
not as strong as when you're in your twenties or thirties.
You might have other chronic medical issues that get in
the way, like a bad heard, bad kidneys, bad lung.
It's hard to recover. I sort of hear this refrain,
you know. All the time they were out in the
yard two days ago, they very active and they cut
(28:47):
their grass all the time, and they drive everywhere and
they run circles around me until you get a big
time infection in your system. Again, because immune system doesn't
work and your body's not as strong, you can't recover.
You lay in bed a few days. Man, you're looking
(29:08):
at two months of recovery. And thank I mean, and
be hopeful that nothing else happens while you're recovering, because
that'll delay it even more. And again sometimes you just
you're out of time. Phone lines are open eight one
six k v I one one hundred three three zero
k o V. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
(29:41):
welcome back to the dark living matter of our Phone
lines are open. Eight nine six k v I one
one hundred three three zero OKOVI. I would love to
hear from you and talk with you. And yes, getting
older is hard. You really have to do your part.
It's not something that's automatic, right, and just things don't
(30:03):
work as well, they don't recover as well. And the
things that you have to do to stay in shape,
you all know it, right, that lifestyle right, You got
to eat right. You have to eat right, and if
you eat right most of the time, your body will
stay as strong as possible, it'll be as resilient as possible.
(30:28):
Excuse me, it's not about the exercising in my opinion,
it's the diet. And I know it's confusing out there.
Just you get all these messages. But again, no one
disagrees about vegetables. No one disagrees about that. So you
want to try and eat that as much as possible. Again,
(30:48):
think of it as your medication, like your aspirin, your
blood pressure medicine, your diabetes medicine. You take it every
day right religiously because you want to better. You want
your sugar to stay control, your blood pressure to stay control.
And that's how you should look at food and beverages.
(31:09):
You eating the food every day that's going to help
you be healthy, stay out of troubles, reduce your risk
of cancer, reduce your risk of having to be hospitalized.
That's how you should look at that. Is this what
I'm putting in my mouth helping or hurting? Is this
generating inflammation or is this controlling inflammation? Right? You hear
(31:35):
about certain food items, spices, things that nature that are
antioxidants and typically treat inflammation. Right, No one disagrees about vegetables.
You can eat it as much as you want and
as frequently as you want. Doesn't matter if it's after
(31:55):
seven pm, or if it's in the morning, or it's
two o'clock in the morning. I mean, if you're eating
broccoli and cauliflyer two o'clock in the morning, who cares, honestly,
And you can eat as much as you want of it,
and you can prepare it in so many different ways,
and a lot of times, if you're eating vegetables, the
(32:16):
cooking is pretty easy because there's not many steps to it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
You pretty much go to the produce section, take it home,
and maybe one or two steps and you're ready to
eat it. It doesn't really require a lot of that.
It's not time consuming, which is awesome when a lot
of times when you're eating healthy, you don't have to
wait a long time for your food. I kind of
hear that a lot from my patients. You know, I'm
(32:43):
just busy, and I gotta go here and there. I'm
on the run, and I just can't eat healthy. And
there's so many healthy foods that are ready to be eaten.
All you got to do is put it in your
hand and put in your mouth. It's all you gotta do,
just got to get it. And a lot of times
that most produce sections or grocery storts. Yeah, it's ready
(33:05):
to go. Talking about even raw vegetables, cucumbers, carrots, that
stuffs ready to go. You just cut it and eat it.
You don't have to cook it. You can carry it,
you can bring it everywhere with you. Yeah, I mean,
it doesn't really require a whole lot. That stuff's good
for you. Nuts and seeds like walnuts and pistachios, almonds,
(33:29):
they're the best pecans. That stuff's ready to go. You
can take it anywhere. I eat that stuff all the time.
It's my bag, it's in my car all it's ready
to go, even though I'm on the run. Just as
much as anybody else. You just have to put that
stuff around you and eat it and consume it, and
it just it takes your appetite away, and you know
(33:52):
that you did your body good by giving it some
vitamins and some fiber. You know, again, these are the
items that normally will help you fight infections, help you
fight arthritis because it does not rev up your inflammatory system.
Drinking sugar, there's a lot of sugary beverages out there
(34:14):
we get in so many different forms. Tends to increase inflammation.
Inflammation tends to suppress your immune system. When you suppress
the immune system, your risk of infections go up. Right,
spontaneous infections kind of like we talked about HIV, Right,
(34:36):
The virus suppresses your immune system, and thus you get
these opportunistic infections like tuberculosis and like other viruses that
normally don't attack you because your immune system is working.
But when the inflammatory system is up because you're eating
(34:57):
an inflammatory diet or your drink king sugary beverages, which
experts agree generate inflammation, your risk of infections go up.
It makes sense, right, And then this sugar that you've
been exposed to is very irritating to the blood vessel system.
Tends to accelerate plaque. Tends to make the blood system
(35:20):
more thick, so that you get clots more. And what
is the big problem in our country strokes, heart attacks,
peripheral vascal disease, blood clots. Right, inflammation generates blood clots,
Sugar increases inflammation, increases blood clots, increases risk of strokes.
(35:44):
So try to avoid your exposure to sugar, especially the
type that you drink that we love and just drink
more water. It's that easy. You can lighten water up
with some lemons, some lime, even fresh querce. It's so
refreshing to do. It may require a little bit of
extra effort, but man, who wants to be stuck in
(36:06):
hospital for ten days? Right? Phone lines are open eight
nine six KALV I want to hundred three three zero
O kovy. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
welcome back to the Dcaphine and metical. Our phone lines
are open eight nine to six kV. I want to
hundred three to three zero O ko three I. At
(36:26):
the end of the show, time goes by so so fast.
When you're having fun and we're all having fun up
here trying to get you to figure out what's the
best thing for you and your family. Again, if there's
a topic that you would like me to discuss, either
call my office or you can call the radio station
and we can dive down into it and see what
(36:48):
we can do to help you out. Remember, this is
a vaccine time. Scratch that, this is flu season time,
and so we're prioritizing vaccines.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Again.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
We talk about it throughout the year, but we really
try to hit it hard during this time of years,
that winter months start to pick up and those respiratory
infections pick up. And again you've got to do your
part to make your body strong and keep it healthy
and keep it running. Right. It's not automatic. It's not automatic, honestly,
(37:16):
and we want you to try and expose your body
to food items and beverages that increase your health. And
I know because of the messaging it can be a
little confusing, but honestly, nobody disagrees about eating vegetables and
consuming vegetables, and no one disagrees that water is the
best beverage. No one disagrees about that. So you can
(37:38):
be safe with that right, drink your water and each
of vegetables. It really comes down to that. The exercising
compliments your body. Again, you don't have to be out
there running marathons unless you want to do that. You
don't have to be a triathlete unless you want to
do that. That stuff is high intensity. In my experience,
I'm a former athlete here South East Sexes. I know
(38:01):
a little bit about exercising and competition and pushing your
body to the limit. It's not fun, it hurts, and
again if you're trying to get into your deep seventies, eighties, nineties,
you don't have to do all that stuff unless you
want to. It's stressful to expose your body to all that,
and your body does not need that, but it does
(38:22):
need the proper nutrition. And again, a lot of times,
even if you're busy, you're on the run, this stuff
does not require a lot of time to consume. You
just go into the HB, you go to Walmart, you
go to the produce section, you grab it, you pay
for it, you eat it. It's ready to be eaten.
(38:43):
You don't have to put it in a blender or
a processor, or you don't have to bake it, broil it,
cook it. It's ready to be eaten in its raw form.
And you know, there's some experts out there who say, oh,
we should be eating everything wrong, you shouldn't be cooking anything.
I'm not that far with it, right. I mean, I'm
(39:06):
like anybody else. I like some red meat every now
and then, I eat baking every now and then. I'm
not hammering that every single day. I have some patience
every day they're eating it. I'm not like that, because again,
it's not a healthy meat. But I grew up eating that.
It's sort of part of my culture. So I engage
in that periodically, not every day, but certainly. Yes. I'm
(39:29):
hammering vegetables every single day because it's good for you. It's
my medicine. I'm drinking water every single day. It's my medicine.
That's how I see it. Like you take your aspirin
and your blood pressure medication because you know it's good
for you. Your doctor's going to get upset at you
if you don't take it. You're going to end up
in the hospital. Right, You get that, And your food
(39:51):
should be the same that. If you are consuming something
that generates illness. We all know that stuff for the
ultra processed foods and TV dinners, all the sort of
snack items out there, the cookies, the pies, the chips
that we love so much. It's just sort of sitting
around in our house calling us at eight o'clock at night,
(40:14):
the ice creams, the sodas, all that. We want to
limit that and try to eat what's right for you
and get out and move around and get your blood flowing. Anyway,
Thank you for joining us in the edition of the show.
Remember don't drink and drive. Drink some water and some
eat some cucumbers. We'll see next week. Take care,
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