October 14, 2025 • 42 mins
- Listen Saturday mornings at 8 as Dr. Msonthi Levine discusses medical issues and takes your calls on News Talk 560 KLVI. Dr Levine is board certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics. His office is located at 3080 Milam in Beaumont, Texas. He can be reached at 409-347-3621.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, Southeast Sexers Internet radio listeners, Welcome and good
morning to another edition of the Doctor Lavigne Medical Hour.
I am your host, Doctor Levine, taking phone calls live
in the service of k LVI here in Beauemint, Texas,
across the street from Parkdale Mall. Ohone lines are open
eight nine six klv I one one hundred and three
(00:22):
three zero klv I. We're here just about every Saturday
morning between eight and nine trying to help you answer
questions about yes, your health and what it is you
need to do to stay alive as long as possible
and as healthy as possible, and staying out of the hospital,
(00:45):
staying out of the doctor's offices, keeping your medication list
to a minimum. Yeah, so it does take some effort
on your part typically, Actually, as you get older above
I would say about forty or so, things start to
(01:07):
change metabolically, physiologically. Some people can feel it. For others
it sneaks up on them. But you're not young anymore.
So it does require some effort on your part if
you want to stay alive and you want to be healthy.
And it's so confusing out there because you hear so
(01:28):
many contradictory recommendations. But I'm on the inside. I see
this stuff every day. I talk to a lot of
people every day.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I read a little.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I don't have as much time to read as I
did when I was younger, and not as busy. But yeah,
talking with patients and seeing all these sort of common denominators,
it kind of makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So give us a buzz.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
We'd love to hear from you and chat about your
particular situation. Weather is awesome outside. It's getting cooler. Yes,
we're getting into the holiday months and the winter months.
This is the part of the time that I tend
to like, you know, because I like the colder weather.
(02:20):
Although the summer went by pretty quickly for me.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I didn't, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I'm indoors just about all day. It's my house or
my office or the hospital, you know, and really not
staying outside for a long periods of time anymore. So,
But the summer went by pretty fast for me. But
now we're getting into the winter, so it gets cold.
(02:47):
They don't get too cold here, but it gets cold enough.
We we're not getting into all that snow. Who wants
that mess? I mean it looks pretty, but man, it
can be messy. And we've had our short bursts of
snow and ice in this general area. We didn't do
(03:08):
too well. I mean, after you wake up and look out,
they're like, oh my god, it's so beautiful. Go make
a few snowballs and maybe a snow man snow woman.
But then that's the fund's over after that because this
is closed. That's closed. Can't do this, can't do that.
And it's it's tough driving on the road too, slippery,
(03:35):
accidents and cargets all messed up. So yeah, it's cold enough,
but I think it gets cold enough here and we're good.
So anyway, give us a buzz. Phone lines. Phone lines
are open the you know, this is vaccine time, so
get those flu vaccines. We have them there at the office.
(03:56):
And it's good that most people have gotten on board
with the vaccines just because yeah, I mean it's normally
viruses and we have to sort of do that to
protect each other. COVID's here, and we still see those infections,
(04:19):
but certainly not the way it used to be. My god,
that's over with. And you can take medicine for COVID
as well, called pax lovid PA X L O v
I D. We're using that a lot, as well as
maybe some xyitromacs or some steroids. I still see some
(04:40):
practitioners doing some odd things, but again because it's in
relatively new infection and the research is still developing. Still
see some inconsistency out there, and some people have these
sort of residual symptoms long term, you know, physical symptoms
(05:05):
like fatigue or can't smell, headaches, mental fogginess. There are
a long list of physical complaints that patients have had with,
as they say, long COVID syndrome. That's what it's been
titled for now, but we'll have to see if that
(05:27):
name changes over the years to something else, something more specific.
But you shouldn't be afraid of it. I'm sort of
the CDC. If you look on their website, they've really
relaxed their quarantine recommendations, and I think most businesses they've
relaxed their quarantine recommendations as well, in terms of how
(05:50):
long you have to sit out. I still have a
few patients come in wearing masks, which is fine. They
want to feel protected. It's fine with me. But yeah,
I think we're getting to the point we don't really
worry about it anymore. Just keep going, just like we
did with the flu, because there's medicines for the influenza
A and B called Tammy flu. It works very well.
(06:14):
But I'm seeing a lot of patients come in with
viral like syndromes. You know, they feel achy, they have
sore throat, they have a little temperature. But the influenza
A and B tests are negative, COVID test is negative,
strep is negative. I'm seeing a lot of that recently
(06:36):
because there's a lot of other viruses out there that
can cause these respiratory symptoms. You know, speaking of respiratory
viruses again, the RSV, which has been our for a
long time. They just came out with that vaccine maybe
a year or two ago. You know, they might continue
to come out with the more vaccines as again, the
(06:57):
ability to track viruses and change vaccines depending on what
we find, that's gotten faster and more efficient. They're getting
better at it, and that again protects us from having
severe infections. You can still get these infections, but it's
not severe, and that's the main thing is we don't
(07:20):
want you to have to be hospitalized. We want to
reduce your chance of dying from these infections, which when
you don't have any immunity, you're more likely to have that,
you know, because you get the cytokine storm and your
immune system just reacts in a very aggressive way. We
(07:42):
call that sepsis. A lot of you out there are
becoming more familiar with that term sepsis, and it has
a lot to do with describing what happens when the
body is infected, how the body react to it, how
the immune system reacts to it, and that's basically all
(08:03):
that term means. A lot of people when they hear
that term in the hospital, they it frightens them. And
I guess because they've heard a lot of things about sepsis,
they're not quite sure what it is, but they know
it's serious. But that's really all it is is a
medical terminology system that's actually I remember when I first
(08:25):
heard it, I was in medical school, just describes what
happens when the human body reacts to infection. It's been
going on for many years, but it's just a way
to categorize it so that doctors and nurses and researchers
can sort of categorize this disease process and have the
(08:49):
best descriptive terminology that they can have. So that we're
all on the same page. So patients are getting these
terms and not sure what to make of it. So
I have to explain that a lot when I'm in
the hospital. But a lot of times when you have
a flu or you have a COVID, you never come
(09:11):
to the hospital. Maybe you don't even you still go
to your office. You have fever, you have high heart rate,
that equal sepsis, that sepsis. There can be certainly more
severe forms of sepsis, which we call sepsis with shock
(09:32):
or refractory sepsis.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
That's when and.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Shock only means when your blood pressure goes below certain
agreed upon number, and it goes below that, then we
call that shock. So yes, sepsis. Yeah, it can cause harm.
It can kill you, no question. But I didn't want
you to think that if you get diagnosed with it,
(09:57):
it means that you're going to end up in the hospital,
it means you're going to die, it means you're going
to get super sick, because that's not true. A lot
of our ladies come into the office with urinary tract
infections and kidney infections. They have a temperature, their heart
rate is up a little bit, that is really sepsis.
(10:20):
It's the body's reaction to an infection. And for most
of you, you never even go to the hospital when
you have sepsis because the threshold to diagnose someone with
sepsis is pretty low. You need just a couple of
positive variables that we look at, and you have sepsis.
(10:43):
But a lot of people certainly get admitted with that diagnosis,
and it can be very severe. It can lead you
to the ICU, be on a machine, be on a
bunch of drips. As we say, yeah, it can get
pretty bad. So that's why we're big on vaccines to
(11:06):
keep the severity to a minimum so that it does
not happen to you. And again, don't want to remind
you about the aging process. We never shouldn't say never,
but we don't highlight it enough. As we all get older.
The human body is not designed for a lot of stress,
(11:28):
a lot of physiological stress that would include an infection.
Just it starts to not be able to defend itself
when it gets sick. And the repair process or the
healing process, which is very robust when you're young, but
(11:49):
when you get older, it slows down a lot such
that if you get injured, it may not be able
to heal itself or repair itself, which is why I
hear this refrain often in the hospital. Well, you know,
they were doing so good two days ago. I mean
they were driving and washing dishes and traveling and playing
golf and they active. And I mean and now they're
(12:13):
in the ICU on a machine fighting for their lives.
Because we're all get vulnerable as we get older. We're
all vulnerable that advancing age you get into seventies and eighties,
I mean, you're super vulnerable. Yes, hopefully nothing happens to you.
And as long as you don't get an acute illness,
(12:34):
yeah you can kind of keep going. But God forbid
you get some sort of infection or some sort of
other physiological trauma just because the body just doesn't heal
like it. Shit, man, it can really pull you down
and not allow you to get better. So running, get
those vaccines today, and be sure and protect yourself from
(13:00):
that and keep yourself out of trouble as much as possible. Anyway,
Phone lines are open eight nine to six kalv at
one one hundred three three zero kov. I'll be back
in two minutes, all right, Welcome back, to the doctor
(13:23):
Levina Medical. Our phone lines are open eight nine six
kov at one one hundred three three zero O kof
I just sitting here chatting, waiting for some phone calls.
You know a lot of times we have as we
get old to have issues with high blood pressure or hypertension.
It's one of the more common diseases that most medical
(13:45):
doctors in this country are treating. Just when your pressure
gets high above a certain point, which normally is above
one hundred and twenty over eighty. We don't normally start
treating with medications unlessage one hundred and thirty over ninety
and above. So it is a very very common issue
as we get older in this country and one of
(14:08):
the main risk factors for the cardiovascular conundrum that we
can get into as we get older, leading to strokes,
heart failure, kidney failure, dementia, which we talk about periodically
on the show. But certainly the older you get, your
chances of getting dementia do go up exponentially, So we
(14:32):
try to work on these risk factors and how blood
pressure is no different.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Good thing is.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
That we have a lot of good medications on board
that we can prescribe to you, but again, trying to
limit the prescription medication list. Again. Your diet, your beverage choices,
and your activity level will dictate significantly the nature or
(14:58):
state of your blood press sure situation meaning you could
be on medications but your blood pressure can still be high,
and that is sort of a common reason to go
back to your doctor's office is to figure out why
the blood pressure is still high even though you're taking medications.
(15:19):
I have a lot of patients who do not check
their blood pressure, and their common refrain is, well, I
just take my medication, I feel okay.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
And I'm fine.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Well, you still need to check it and make sure
it's staying controlled. Not that you have to check it
multiple times a day, but periodically, just need to check it,
make sure it's staying within a certain boundary.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That it's supposed to.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
But doctors and healthcare professionals out there, this is really
what involves a lot of their day is adjusting blood pressure,
medications up, down, stopping, starting. I mean, it's a very
common practice for most primary care physicians. But I thought
I've mentioned some exacerbating factors to your high blood pressure management,
(16:08):
meaning what order some things that maybe I'm doing other
than what I've mentioned, But what are some other things
that may be going on that's keeping my blood pressure high.
I'm going to the doctor's office, I'm eating ride, I'm
taking my medicines. I don't miss you know, what is
the problem? I mean, why is my blood pressure still high?
(16:30):
And there are a few things that doctors sort of
look at to make sure that there's nothing else contributing
to your hypertension. And I'm going to mention a few
of those. One is the undiagnosed issue with obstructive sleep
apnea URSA as an acronym. Again, most of this stuff
(16:56):
that we talked about is a package deal. Right as
you get older, as you gain weight, as you consume
a lot of these ultra processed foods and high sugary beverages,
it tends to change your metabolic system. The engine that
(17:16):
we call the human body runs different. It changes, and
it can normally be associated with other disease processes that
are going on in the background. So normally, when you
gain weight, a lot of that weight goes to the
soft tissue of your neck area. And that's how a
(17:36):
lot of times you can tell when someone is skinny
or overweight. You can just kind of look at their
neck area right, you can see their collarbone or you
can't see their collarbone, or their face is full or
their neck is full. And as you lose weight, all
of it gets skinny. You can start seeing the bone
structures underneath. Well. Anyway, that soft tissue enlargement goes to
(18:00):
the throat area, the tongue area, and when we go
to sleep, because of all that excessive tissue in the
size of the throat and all those structures in that area,
as you go to sleep and your muscles relax to
a semi paralyzed state, it can make the area and
(18:21):
the throat very very small, so that the air cannot
flow very well, very well, and it causes obstruction or
blockage of airflow, our reduction of airflow to the point
that your breathing is affected and can all always I'm sorry.
It can also get to the point where you don't
(18:43):
breathe at all. We call that apnea, and so common.
I get patients and spouses coming to the office saying, oh, yes,
I have to wake my husband up or I have
to wake my wife up because they snore, they stop breathing.
It's very loud, but they don't really do anything else
(19:04):
about it. They let this sort of thing go on
for years without doing anything about it. They don't even
bring it up because they don't really think anything of it.
But that is very abnormal breathing. It's a very abnormal
sleep cycle. As we say, and I don't mention enough
(19:24):
on this show, but you need to sleep well. I
know I talk a lot about eating rite and drinking
the right things, but man, you need to be able
to sleep at night, just because that's where your body
does most of its healing to get ready for the
next day. It repairs itself at nighttime, which if you've
(19:48):
ever tried to stay up for a long period of time,
it's torture. I mean, it is very painful. Your body
has to shut its eyes and sort of go in
a silent mode for several hours to sort of heal itself.
If not, you will start to get sick. There's no
question about that. You will not feel well and your
(20:11):
body will not function well. There's no question about that.
So you kind of understand that if you go to
bed at night and you're not getting that restorative sleep
every single night, it's going to cause some metabolic and
physiological changes that are negative that are not good for
you and one of those that can generate or aggravate hypertension.
(20:35):
So if you're overweight, and I've mentioned to you before,
how to decide that, I mean, I think most people
are smart and they kind of know when they're a
little bit bigger than they.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Need to be.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
And I try to be as sensitive as possible in
the office about that. Some people don't like that term.
They don't want to be confronted with the fact that
they're overweight. So I tread lightly when it comes to
reminding someone that you are overweight, you are plus size.
Trying not to use the term obesity, but that is
(21:08):
the medical term that we normally use to describe when
someone is overweight. We also use a acronym called BMI
b as in boy body mass index, which is a
ratio of your weight and your height. It's a nice
little thumbprint of a measurement where we can very quickly
(21:33):
assess someone and decide if they're carrying too much weight
or not. Is it perfect? Is it a perfect measurement? No,
but it's it's enough, it's good enough. You're just trying
to get some information to try and help you make
some decisions, and normally a BMI of twenty five or
less is sort of considered a good healthy range. And
(21:55):
as you start creeping above twenty five, that's when you
start getting into the more old bees definitions. Certainly at
thirty and above, yes, you're probably OBEs. You're probably heavier
than you need to be. Are there some patients out
there who have a b and my thirty but they're
very healthy. You know, they're exercising, they're fit. Absolutely, But
(22:16):
for most people that be in my thirty represents an
issue with your weight and your height, meaning if you
are smaller or shorter, you should wait less write. For
some people that's hard to do, but that is sort
of the idea that if your frame is big, then
(22:39):
it's going to typically generate some physiological changes, and lack
of sleep or poor sleep is one of those. So
if you're being mis thirty above and they have these
simple little calculators, you can go online, you can weigh yourself,
maybe get a nice little rough measurement of your height
and plug it in and find out what your being
(23:01):
my is. We do them all the time in the office.
That's sort of a standard vital sign check that we
have in office. Insurance companies are wanting that, so we
typically know that they're in the office to try and
prioritize patients who's being my is overweight. So if you're
a spouse to watching your spouse snore at night not
(23:23):
breathe that night, Hey, get them into the doctor's office,
get him into the healthcare profession's office, and get an
official sleep study. The good thing now is that to
get a docnosed has gotten very easy. They now have
these devices that patients can wear at home. You don't
(23:45):
have to go to the sleep lab. That was at
one point the only way to kind of do this,
you know, which was super inconvenient. A lot of people
don't have the time to go somewhere basically into like
this little hotel apartment looking room somewhere normally attached to
(24:05):
the hospital. You show up there at night and go in,
go into this little rooms, got a TV in a
bed and I mean it looks like a little sweet
right and you go to bed. And they used to
attach all these wires and gadgety I mean, very uncomfortable
sort of thing, but that was the way it was
done back in the day, and we were missing a
(24:27):
lot of patients just because they could not do it
for various reasons. The room was uncomfortable, it was hot,
it wasn't there bed all these wires, you know, they
their schedules didn't allow it. Maybe they have to take
care of kids. I mean, it's just a ton of
(24:48):
reasons why patients really couldn't get officially diagnosed. But now
they have these little devices. You can wear them at home,
so most people just take them home, put the device
on it, and it's not very cumbersome. I think something
fits on your finger and then something goes around your chest.
I mean, it's very simple stuff. You just put it
(25:08):
on and then you bring it back and we analyze
it and it gives us a rough idea of where
you're at with your sleeping architecture. And I know, for
the most part, when I order a test, that's if
someone's going to be positive or not, I pretty much
already know that I've been doing it long enough. And
(25:31):
if you are positive, then yeah, then you get this
machine called a SEAPAP, which stands for a continuous positive
airway pressure, and it's this little device and that's gotten
better too. The technology on these seapap machines have gotten better.
It looks like a little toaster, maybe even smaller than
an average toaster, and it's got a plastic tube that
(25:56):
is connected to it, and it's connected to a mask.
M Ask are a facial appliance of some sort. There's
a few different styles out there that you put on,
turn the machine on, and you just press the button.
When I first came out, you had to really calibrate
the machine a lot, so that was another obstacle, just
(26:19):
finding doctors who know how to calibrate it, and then
the follow up and how to adjust it, and you
had to get orders and just all this mess. Now
the technology is caught up and has dumbed it down
significantly so that most of these machines, they're small, they're quiet.
You just press on and that's all you got to
(26:42):
do and put the mask on. That's all you have
to do, and it's sort of auto t traits is
the term that we use in the medical world, because before,
when you got diagnosed with sleep apnea again, you would
have to go to the lab. They would have to
put everything on the machine and then sort of play
(27:03):
with the numbers to see exactly what you needed for
your machine because everybody was different, right, and then you'd
have to get an order, then you have to get
the machine, and sometimes the mask wasn't the right fit.
You had to try different masks, and I mean it
was bad. But now it's a lot better to get
(27:25):
tested is better, the machine is better. But we still
we still have patients that don't tolerate these machines as
well as we would like, and that is unfortunate. We
still have a small percentage of patients that don't use
the machine. They turn it back in because they don't
like it for whatever reason. They just they just can't
(27:45):
get it to where it needs to be to be comfortable.
And that's unfortunate because really the real way to treat
most obstructive sleep appening is as to.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
What lose weight. But how easy is that? It's hard?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Phone lines are open eight nine six klv I want
one hundred three three zero klvy.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I'll be back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
All right, welcome back to the Doc Leavie Medical. Our
phone lines are open eight nine six klvy. I want
one hundred three three zero KLVW We have Frank from Beaumont.
How can we help you?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Hey, doctor Levine. I always call you about all my
beat up joints from athletics, absolutely, but I want you
to talk about something that's very important, I think, and
we've always heard for years about the heart and all
the good things that can be done for to keep
it maintained and all that. But one of the big
things here in the last twenty thirty years has been
(28:59):
the talk of a fi palpitations and all that. Can
you discuss a little of that or what you think
about that. What's the best way to treat that. I
know they got all the shock treatments of the heart
and all that to try to get rid of it
to maintain it. But that and then we talk about
(29:20):
what it takes to stay healthy, and you do a
good job talking about that, but I'm like for you
to kind of rate. I always try to live the
three most important things are rest, diet, and exercise, and
I like for you to kind of rate what you
think the top three are in what order they're in,
And I'll hang up and listen.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
All right, Frank, we appreciate that. That's a big question
right there. That's a show that's three shows. So what's
the rest, diet and exercise that's a good one my ranking,
and based on what I know in my understanding, certainly
number one is going to be the diet. I would
(30:02):
probably say two is exercise in three as the rest
would be my sort of hierarchy of that. And again,
the diet dictates just about everything in my book, based
on what I've seen, what I've read, that's got to happen,
(30:24):
especially as you get older.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You got to eat right, you got to drink right too.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
A lot of people don't understand the connection of drinking
beverages and drinking items that are unhealthy for you. And
the main thing right there is just sugar. We just
have so many sugary beverages out there. It's just insane.
You go down the aisle there at the grocery store,
(30:48):
and I mean it's just piled high, and most of
it is about the same, right, It's just some sort
of water and some flavoring and sugar. And they put
other additives in and maybe some vitamins just to kind
of beef up the marketing angle. But and that's pretty
(31:08):
much about it. Maybe I got some other stuff in there,
but a lot of these substances, a lot of these
additives are unhealthy for It's a lot of experts are
trying to raise awareness, but it's difficult out there just
because it's clouded and crowded and confusing, and they taste good,
and we got a lot of stress and we're distracted,
(31:29):
and you know, we just we don't care a lot
of times. We just want what we want. We want
our beverage of choice. But again from my side, yet
it does contribute in my opinion, based on my position,
it does contribute to poor health when you're consuming these
substances every single day. These are chemicals, these are additives,
(31:50):
these are active compounds that your body has to process.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
And deal with.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
So you want to try and keep that sort of
beverage choice to them. And yes, water is the best one.
It's boring, It has no life to it. It's just dead.
I mean, how can you drink that every day? And
got all this fun, fizzy, colorful, flavorful beverages out there,
and they're cool containers and they got cool names, and
(32:18):
there's normally commercials with a story attached to it. And yeah,
it's exciting, you know, because I'm bored, I don't have
nothing to do, and I just need some excitement.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
In my life.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Let me go down the store and let me go
buy some excitement. I mean, that's that's really a lot
how that happens. Right, Just drinking water every day is boring.
There's no excitement. I don't feel anything. And that is
my point is, yes, you want to have a boring life.
You don't want to feel anything, because when you start
(32:51):
drinking liquids that have a lot of that in there,
that that's when you start getting sick and ill. So
diet number one. Number two. Exercise, yes, just because it
is so positive to the cardiovascular system. We talk about
the immune system all the time. It's so positive for
you immune system as well. With exercise, it helps control appetite,
(33:17):
it helps with your bowel function, your immune system, your
cardiovast system is huge, huge, huge, huge. But I don't
like to put exercise in number one. Can't do that.
It's got to be number two. Number two complements number one.
Is how I see that a lot of people are
(33:38):
a little still confused with that. Is they want to
be healthy, and they'll go out and join a gym
and start exercising. Then they'll go right to the pizza parlor,
or they'll go right and get a burgin fries or
drink a sugary beverage or right after the exercise. You
just can't maybe when you're young, right when you're young.
(34:00):
But if you look at the young athletes now, let's say,
for instance, football, I played college football at Rice University,
and yes, we did sort of eat in a special
diner where the food was prepared for us. But the
connection between performance and longevity and injury and recovery and
(34:24):
all of that performance stuff wasn't quite where it is today.
It was just sort of starting to get kicked off
when I was in playing college football. But now they know,
and most big programs you talk about Texas or A
and M or some of these big football programs I'm
talking about college we know the professionals are doing that now.
(34:47):
They mainly hire all sorts of dietitians and they're hiring
chefs to specifically prepare food for these athletes because they
get the connection with the fuel you're putting in your
body and how your body performs. Now, most of us
have never been a professional athlete. I've never been in
(35:08):
competitive sports. That's okay, but the connection is there. You know,
you do have to perform to some degree. Right, we
all have those daily responsibilities that we have to finish. Right,
you're a mother, your a father, you have a job.
What maybe you're taking care of your elderly sister or
your elderly mother or father. You have to be there
(35:31):
in order to do this. You don't have time to
be sick. You have to perform right. Well, it's no different.
You got to put in the right fuel so your
body can be ready to do its thing, and also
protect you from disease and illness i e. Sepsis and infections.
When your body is not working well and it's unprotected,
(35:56):
it's vulnerable, you get more infections. Right, and you're diet
feeds into that. So exercise, yes number two to complement
that diet because we want cardiovascular health. And then yes,
you've had your vegetables. You did a little jog for
about twenty minutes, and now it's time for rest. Yes,
(36:19):
at the end of the day. You got to get
that rest. And it feeds in very well to my
talk about obstructive sleep appne if you see your spouse
sleeping like that, don't allow that to happen night after night,
week after week. Go get that checked out. And get
on that machine, the SEAPAP machine. Sometimes you have to
(36:42):
do what we call a BiPAP machine, which is just
structured a little bit differently. The air blows in at
different pressures. We call it buy two versus SEAPAP continuous single.
But the main thing is to get the weigh down, right,
So got to start getting on a program, eat better, exercise.
It's a slow process. Again, a lot of patients are
(37:03):
getting success with these injectable diabetes medicines at JLP ones. Hey,
if you need to get on something and get that
weight down, I'm all for it because we've got to
get that weight down because if we can do that
a lot of times, all this metabolic derangement improves automatically.
So that's my top three. That's the sort of unofficial
(37:26):
recommendation on that, based on my knowledge of how the
body works and what's good and what's bad.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
So I hope you like that.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
We'll go on our last break and come back talk
about a FIB. We'll be right back, all right, Welcome
back to the doctor V and medical phone lines that
(37:56):
open eight nine six koviy one eight hundred and three
to three zero kill A few minutes left in the show.
I want to think all the callers and listeners again,
if there's a topic you'd like me to discuss, you
need to call the station or you can call my
office and leave that message and we'll get into that
as much as we can. Caller on the previous segment
called about atrial fibrillation, just wanted to have some general
(38:20):
comments about that. It's a very super super common cardiac
electrical what we call a rhythmia, meaning that the way
the heart is beating is abnormal. So the heart beats
in sort of a normal fashion. We call that normal
sinus rhythm or NSR. And the most common a rhythmia
(38:45):
are abnormal electrical activity that we see in this country,
especially as one gets older, is a trial fibrillation. We
call it a trial just because it normally involves the
top half of the heart, which we call the atrium,
and the lower part of the heart we call the ventricle.
(39:06):
So normally this heart abnormal beating starts in the top
chamber of the heart, the atrium, so that's what I
call it. Atriol fibrillation is the description of what we
see the activity electrical activity of what we see on
the EKG and it's a very chaotic heart rhythm. Fibrillation
(39:33):
is the term that we use. Sometimes it's a flutter
f l u tt er, which looks a little bit
more in rhythm, but it again is abnormal sort of
beating of the electrical activity of the heart. So those
are like a sister and a cousin atriol flutter and
(39:55):
atrial fibrillation. Those can sometimes coexist, or you can go
for from atrial flutter to atrial fibrillation. But yes, as
the color mentioned, most of us feel palpitations in our
chest just the heart is sort of pounding or pumping
on your chest. You can kind of feel that something
(40:16):
is going on, and sometimes it can be constant, sometimes
it can come and go, and yes, sometimes you can
get other physical symptoms such as chest pain or shortness
of breath with It just depends on your condition, and
for the most part it's related to age, but certainly
other comorbid diseases, hypertension, diabetes, lung disease, being overweight, smoking,
(40:43):
alcohol abuse, American lifestyle right big big risk factors, but
age is the biggest one. Just getting older. If you
can get to your eighties eighty five years old, your
risk is kind of high the electrical system of the
heart wears out and you can get these fluttering conditions
(41:04):
of the top part of the heart, which we call
atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter. The good thing is that
there's a lot of options as the call of mention.
Depending on which heart doctor you go to, you might
get this medicine versus that medicine. And there is a
procedure now called ablation therapy where heart specialists can go
in and sort of map out the origin of the
(41:26):
atrial fibrillation nature flutter and then burn it so that
it goes away and you're now back in normal sinus rhythm.
So we always try to achieve sinus rhythm, normal sinus
rhythm with medications as well as with the blation. Yes,
sometimes you have to get what they call a cardio
version where they just sort of shock your heart a
(41:47):
little bit to kind of reset it, and a lot
of times that helps. But again, the genesis of the
atual flutter or atre fibllation is still there. Something is
still there, and that's what ablation therapy is for, to
try and cure it and fix it so that it
doesn't come back. So most people get on medicines first,
and then considerate sort of progressed to a cardioversion and
(42:10):
then an oblation. I think that was a pretty good
explanation anyway. Thank you for joining from the edition of
the show. Remember don't drink and drive, eat some vegetables.
We'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Take care,
All right, Southeast Sexers Internet radio listeners, Welcome and good
morning to another edition of the Doctor Lavigne Medical Hour.
I am your host, Doctor Levine, taking phone calls live
in the service of k LVI here in Beauemint, Texas,
across the street from Parkdale Mall. Ohone lines are open
eight nine six klv I one one hundred and three
(00:22):
three zero klv I. We're here just about every Saturday
morning between eight and nine trying to help you answer
questions about yes, your health and what it is you
need to do to stay alive as long as possible
and as healthy as possible, and staying out of the hospital,
(00:45):
staying out of the doctor's offices, keeping your medication list
to a minimum. Yeah, so it does take some effort
on your part typically, Actually, as you get older above
I would say about forty or so, things start to
(01:07):
change metabolically, physiologically. Some people can feel it. For others
it sneaks up on them. But you're not young anymore.
So it does require some effort on your part if
you want to stay alive and you want to be healthy.
And it's so confusing out there because you hear so
(01:28):
many contradictory recommendations. But I'm on the inside. I see
this stuff every day. I talk to a lot of
people every day.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I read a little.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I don't have as much time to read as I
did when I was younger, and not as busy. But yeah,
talking with patients and seeing all these sort of common denominators,
it kind of makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So give us a buzz.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
We'd love to hear from you and chat about your
particular situation. Weather is awesome outside. It's getting cooler. Yes,
we're getting into the holiday months and the winter months.
This is the part of the time that I tend
to like, you know, because I like the colder weather.
(02:20):
Although the summer went by pretty quickly for me.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I didn't, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I'm indoors just about all day. It's my house or
my office or the hospital, you know, and really not
staying outside for a long periods of time anymore. So,
But the summer went by pretty fast for me. But
now we're getting into the winter, so it gets cold.
(02:47):
They don't get too cold here, but it gets cold enough.
We we're not getting into all that snow. Who wants
that mess? I mean it looks pretty, but man, it
can be messy. And we've had our short bursts of
snow and ice in this general area. We didn't do
(03:08):
too well. I mean, after you wake up and look out,
they're like, oh my god, it's so beautiful. Go make
a few snowballs and maybe a snow man snow woman.
But then that's the fund's over after that because this
is closed. That's closed. Can't do this, can't do that.
And it's it's tough driving on the road too, slippery,
(03:35):
accidents and cargets all messed up. So yeah, it's cold enough,
but I think it gets cold enough here and we're good.
So anyway, give us a buzz. Phone lines. Phone lines
are open the you know, this is vaccine time, so
get those flu vaccines. We have them there at the office.
(03:56):
And it's good that most people have gotten on board
with the vaccines just because yeah, I mean it's normally
viruses and we have to sort of do that to
protect each other. COVID's here, and we still see those infections,
(04:19):
but certainly not the way it used to be. My god,
that's over with. And you can take medicine for COVID
as well, called pax lovid PA X L O v
I D. We're using that a lot, as well as
maybe some xyitromacs or some steroids. I still see some
(04:40):
practitioners doing some odd things, but again because it's in
relatively new infection and the research is still developing. Still
see some inconsistency out there, and some people have these
sort of residual symptoms long term, you know, physical symptoms
(05:05):
like fatigue or can't smell, headaches, mental fogginess. There are
a long list of physical complaints that patients have had with,
as they say, long COVID syndrome. That's what it's been
titled for now, but we'll have to see if that
(05:27):
name changes over the years to something else, something more specific.
But you shouldn't be afraid of it. I'm sort of
the CDC. If you look on their website, they've really
relaxed their quarantine recommendations, and I think most businesses they've
relaxed their quarantine recommendations as well, in terms of how
(05:50):
long you have to sit out. I still have a
few patients come in wearing masks, which is fine. They
want to feel protected. It's fine with me. But yeah,
I think we're getting to the point we don't really
worry about it anymore. Just keep going, just like we
did with the flu, because there's medicines for the influenza
A and B called Tammy flu. It works very well.
(06:14):
But I'm seeing a lot of patients come in with
viral like syndromes. You know, they feel achy, they have
sore throat, they have a little temperature. But the influenza
A and B tests are negative, COVID test is negative,
strep is negative. I'm seeing a lot of that recently
(06:36):
because there's a lot of other viruses out there that
can cause these respiratory symptoms. You know, speaking of respiratory
viruses again, the RSV, which has been our for a
long time. They just came out with that vaccine maybe
a year or two ago. You know, they might continue
to come out with the more vaccines as again, the
(06:57):
ability to track viruses and change vaccines depending on what
we find, that's gotten faster and more efficient. They're getting
better at it, and that again protects us from having
severe infections. You can still get these infections, but it's
not severe, and that's the main thing is we don't
(07:20):
want you to have to be hospitalized. We want to
reduce your chance of dying from these infections, which when
you don't have any immunity, you're more likely to have that,
you know, because you get the cytokine storm and your
immune system just reacts in a very aggressive way. We
(07:42):
call that sepsis. A lot of you out there are
becoming more familiar with that term sepsis, and it has
a lot to do with describing what happens when the
body is infected, how the body react to it, how
the immune system reacts to it, and that's basically all
(08:03):
that term means. A lot of people when they hear
that term in the hospital, they it frightens them. And
I guess because they've heard a lot of things about sepsis,
they're not quite sure what it is, but they know
it's serious. But that's really all it is is a
medical terminology system that's actually I remember when I first
(08:25):
heard it, I was in medical school, just describes what
happens when the human body reacts to infection. It's been
going on for many years, but it's just a way
to categorize it so that doctors and nurses and researchers
can sort of categorize this disease process and have the
(08:49):
best descriptive terminology that they can have. So that we're
all on the same page. So patients are getting these
terms and not sure what to make of it. So
I have to explain that a lot when I'm in
the hospital. But a lot of times when you have
a flu or you have a COVID, you never come
(09:11):
to the hospital. Maybe you don't even you still go
to your office. You have fever, you have high heart rate,
that equal sepsis, that sepsis. There can be certainly more
severe forms of sepsis, which we call sepsis with shock
(09:32):
or refractory sepsis.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
That's when and.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Shock only means when your blood pressure goes below certain
agreed upon number, and it goes below that, then we
call that shock. So yes, sepsis. Yeah, it can cause harm.
It can kill you, no question. But I didn't want
you to think that if you get diagnosed with it,
(09:57):
it means that you're going to end up in the hospital,
it means you're going to die, it means you're going
to get super sick, because that's not true. A lot
of our ladies come into the office with urinary tract
infections and kidney infections. They have a temperature, their heart
rate is up a little bit, that is really sepsis.
(10:20):
It's the body's reaction to an infection. And for most
of you, you never even go to the hospital when
you have sepsis because the threshold to diagnose someone with
sepsis is pretty low. You need just a couple of
positive variables that we look at, and you have sepsis.
(10:43):
But a lot of people certainly get admitted with that diagnosis,
and it can be very severe. It can lead you
to the ICU, be on a machine, be on a
bunch of drips. As we say, yeah, it can get
pretty bad. So that's why we're big on vaccines to
(11:06):
keep the severity to a minimum so that it does
not happen to you. And again, don't want to remind
you about the aging process. We never shouldn't say never,
but we don't highlight it enough. As we all get older.
The human body is not designed for a lot of stress,
(11:28):
a lot of physiological stress that would include an infection.
Just it starts to not be able to defend itself
when it gets sick. And the repair process or the
healing process, which is very robust when you're young, but
(11:49):
when you get older, it slows down a lot such
that if you get injured, it may not be able
to heal itself or repair itself, which is why I
hear this refrain often in the hospital. Well, you know,
they were doing so good two days ago. I mean
they were driving and washing dishes and traveling and playing
golf and they active. And I mean and now they're
(12:13):
in the ICU on a machine fighting for their lives.
Because we're all get vulnerable as we get older. We're
all vulnerable that advancing age you get into seventies and eighties,
I mean, you're super vulnerable. Yes, hopefully nothing happens to you.
And as long as you don't get an acute illness,
(12:34):
yeah you can kind of keep going. But God forbid
you get some sort of infection or some sort of
other physiological trauma just because the body just doesn't heal
like it. Shit, man, it can really pull you down
and not allow you to get better. So running, get
those vaccines today, and be sure and protect yourself from
(13:00):
that and keep yourself out of trouble as much as possible. Anyway,
Phone lines are open eight nine to six kalv at
one one hundred three three zero kov. I'll be back
in two minutes, all right, Welcome back, to the doctor
(13:23):
Levina Medical. Our phone lines are open eight nine six
kov at one one hundred three three zero O kof
I just sitting here chatting, waiting for some phone calls.
You know a lot of times we have as we
get old to have issues with high blood pressure or hypertension.
It's one of the more common diseases that most medical
(13:45):
doctors in this country are treating. Just when your pressure
gets high above a certain point, which normally is above
one hundred and twenty over eighty. We don't normally start
treating with medications unlessage one hundred and thirty over ninety
and above. So it is a very very common issue
as we get older in this country and one of
(14:08):
the main risk factors for the cardiovascular conundrum that we
can get into as we get older, leading to strokes,
heart failure, kidney failure, dementia, which we talk about periodically
on the show. But certainly the older you get, your
chances of getting dementia do go up exponentially, So we
(14:32):
try to work on these risk factors and how blood
pressure is no different.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Good thing is.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
That we have a lot of good medications on board
that we can prescribe to you, but again, trying to
limit the prescription medication list. Again. Your diet, your beverage choices,
and your activity level will dictate significantly the nature or
(14:58):
state of your blood press sure situation meaning you could
be on medications but your blood pressure can still be high,
and that is sort of a common reason to go
back to your doctor's office is to figure out why
the blood pressure is still high even though you're taking medications.
(15:19):
I have a lot of patients who do not check
their blood pressure, and their common refrain is, well, I
just take my medication, I feel okay.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
And I'm fine.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Well, you still need to check it and make sure
it's staying controlled. Not that you have to check it
multiple times a day, but periodically, just need to check it,
make sure it's staying within a certain boundary.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That it's supposed to.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
But doctors and healthcare professionals out there, this is really
what involves a lot of their day is adjusting blood pressure,
medications up, down, stopping, starting. I mean, it's a very
common practice for most primary care physicians. But I thought
I've mentioned some exacerbating factors to your high blood pressure management,
(16:08):
meaning what order some things that maybe I'm doing other
than what I've mentioned, But what are some other things
that may be going on that's keeping my blood pressure high.
I'm going to the doctor's office, I'm eating ride, I'm
taking my medicines. I don't miss you know, what is
the problem? I mean, why is my blood pressure still high?
(16:30):
And there are a few things that doctors sort of
look at to make sure that there's nothing else contributing
to your hypertension. And I'm going to mention a few
of those. One is the undiagnosed issue with obstructive sleep
apnea URSA as an acronym. Again, most of this stuff
(16:56):
that we talked about is a package deal. Right as
you get older, as you gain weight, as you consume
a lot of these ultra processed foods and high sugary beverages,
it tends to change your metabolic system. The engine that
(17:16):
we call the human body runs different. It changes, and
it can normally be associated with other disease processes that
are going on in the background. So normally, when you
gain weight, a lot of that weight goes to the
soft tissue of your neck area. And that's how a
(17:36):
lot of times you can tell when someone is skinny
or overweight. You can just kind of look at their
neck area right, you can see their collarbone or you
can't see their collarbone, or their face is full or
their neck is full. And as you lose weight, all
of it gets skinny. You can start seeing the bone
structures underneath. Well. Anyway, that soft tissue enlargement goes to
(18:00):
the throat area, the tongue area, and when we go
to sleep, because of all that excessive tissue in the
size of the throat and all those structures in that area,
as you go to sleep and your muscles relax to
a semi paralyzed state, it can make the area and
(18:21):
the throat very very small, so that the air cannot
flow very well, very well, and it causes obstruction or
blockage of airflow, our reduction of airflow to the point
that your breathing is affected and can all always I'm sorry.
It can also get to the point where you don't
(18:43):
breathe at all. We call that apnea, and so common.
I get patients and spouses coming to the office saying, oh, yes,
I have to wake my husband up or I have
to wake my wife up because they snore, they stop breathing.
It's very loud, but they don't really do anything else
(19:04):
about it. They let this sort of thing go on
for years without doing anything about it. They don't even
bring it up because they don't really think anything of it.
But that is very abnormal breathing. It's a very abnormal
sleep cycle. As we say, and I don't mention enough
(19:24):
on this show, but you need to sleep well. I
know I talk a lot about eating rite and drinking
the right things, but man, you need to be able
to sleep at night, just because that's where your body
does most of its healing to get ready for the
next day. It repairs itself at nighttime, which if you've
(19:48):
ever tried to stay up for a long period of time,
it's torture. I mean, it is very painful. Your body
has to shut its eyes and sort of go in
a silent mode for several hours to sort of heal itself.
If not, you will start to get sick. There's no
question about that. You will not feel well and your
(20:11):
body will not function well. There's no question about that.
So you kind of understand that if you go to
bed at night and you're not getting that restorative sleep
every single night, it's going to cause some metabolic and
physiological changes that are negative that are not good for
you and one of those that can generate or aggravate hypertension.
(20:35):
So if you're overweight, and I've mentioned to you before,
how to decide that, I mean, I think most people
are smart and they kind of know when they're a
little bit bigger than they.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Need to be.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
And I try to be as sensitive as possible in
the office about that. Some people don't like that term.
They don't want to be confronted with the fact that
they're overweight. So I tread lightly when it comes to
reminding someone that you are overweight, you are plus size.
Trying not to use the term obesity, but that is
(21:08):
the medical term that we normally use to describe when
someone is overweight. We also use a acronym called BMI
b as in boy body mass index, which is a
ratio of your weight and your height. It's a nice
little thumbprint of a measurement where we can very quickly
(21:33):
assess someone and decide if they're carrying too much weight
or not. Is it perfect? Is it a perfect measurement? No,
but it's it's enough, it's good enough. You're just trying
to get some information to try and help you make
some decisions, and normally a BMI of twenty five or
less is sort of considered a good healthy range. And
(21:55):
as you start creeping above twenty five, that's when you
start getting into the more old bees definitions. Certainly at
thirty and above, yes, you're probably OBEs. You're probably heavier
than you need to be. Are there some patients out
there who have a b and my thirty but they're
very healthy. You know, they're exercising, they're fit. Absolutely, But
(22:16):
for most people that be in my thirty represents an
issue with your weight and your height, meaning if you
are smaller or shorter, you should wait less write. For
some people that's hard to do, but that is sort
of the idea that if your frame is big, then
(22:39):
it's going to typically generate some physiological changes, and lack
of sleep or poor sleep is one of those. So
if you're being mis thirty above and they have these
simple little calculators, you can go online, you can weigh yourself,
maybe get a nice little rough measurement of your height
and plug it in and find out what your being
(23:01):
my is. We do them all the time in the office.
That's sort of a standard vital sign check that we
have in office. Insurance companies are wanting that, so we
typically know that they're in the office to try and
prioritize patients who's being my is overweight. So if you're
a spouse to watching your spouse snore at night not
(23:23):
breathe that night, Hey, get them into the doctor's office,
get him into the healthcare profession's office, and get an
official sleep study. The good thing now is that to
get a docnosed has gotten very easy. They now have
these devices that patients can wear at home. You don't
(23:45):
have to go to the sleep lab. That was at
one point the only way to kind of do this,
you know, which was super inconvenient. A lot of people
don't have the time to go somewhere basically into like
this little hotel apartment looking room somewhere normally attached to
(24:05):
the hospital. You show up there at night and go in,
go into this little rooms, got a TV in a
bed and I mean it looks like a little sweet
right and you go to bed. And they used to
attach all these wires and gadgety I mean, very uncomfortable
sort of thing, but that was the way it was
done back in the day, and we were missing a
(24:27):
lot of patients just because they could not do it
for various reasons. The room was uncomfortable, it was hot,
it wasn't there bed all these wires, you know, they
their schedules didn't allow it. Maybe they have to take
care of kids. I mean, it's just a ton of
(24:48):
reasons why patients really couldn't get officially diagnosed. But now
they have these little devices. You can wear them at home,
so most people just take them home, put the device
on it, and it's not very cumbersome. I think something
fits on your finger and then something goes around your chest.
I mean, it's very simple stuff. You just put it
(25:08):
on and then you bring it back and we analyze
it and it gives us a rough idea of where
you're at with your sleeping architecture. And I know, for
the most part, when I order a test, that's if
someone's going to be positive or not, I pretty much
already know that I've been doing it long enough. And
(25:31):
if you are positive, then yeah, then you get this
machine called a SEAPAP, which stands for a continuous positive
airway pressure, and it's this little device and that's gotten
better too. The technology on these seapap machines have gotten better.
It looks like a little toaster, maybe even smaller than
an average toaster, and it's got a plastic tube that
(25:56):
is connected to it, and it's connected to a mask.
M Ask are a facial appliance of some sort. There's
a few different styles out there that you put on,
turn the machine on, and you just press the button.
When I first came out, you had to really calibrate
the machine a lot, so that was another obstacle, just
(26:19):
finding doctors who know how to calibrate it, and then
the follow up and how to adjust it, and you
had to get orders and just all this mess. Now
the technology is caught up and has dumbed it down
significantly so that most of these machines, they're small, they're quiet.
You just press on and that's all you got to
(26:42):
do and put the mask on. That's all you have
to do, and it's sort of auto t traits is
the term that we use in the medical world, because before,
when you got diagnosed with sleep apnea again, you would
have to go to the lab. They would have to
put everything on the machine and then sort of play
(27:03):
with the numbers to see exactly what you needed for
your machine because everybody was different, right, and then you'd
have to get an order, then you have to get
the machine, and sometimes the mask wasn't the right fit.
You had to try different masks, and I mean it
was bad. But now it's a lot better to get
(27:25):
tested is better, the machine is better. But we still
we still have patients that don't tolerate these machines as
well as we would like, and that is unfortunate. We
still have a small percentage of patients that don't use
the machine. They turn it back in because they don't
like it for whatever reason. They just they just can't
(27:45):
get it to where it needs to be to be comfortable.
And that's unfortunate because really the real way to treat
most obstructive sleep appening is as to.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
What lose weight. But how easy is that? It's hard?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Phone lines are open eight nine six klv I want
one hundred three three zero klvy.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I'll be back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
All right, welcome back to the Doc Leavie Medical. Our
phone lines are open eight nine six klvy. I want
one hundred three three zero KLVW We have Frank from Beaumont.
How can we help you?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Hey, doctor Levine. I always call you about all my
beat up joints from athletics, absolutely, but I want you
to talk about something that's very important, I think, and
we've always heard for years about the heart and all
the good things that can be done for to keep
it maintained and all that. But one of the big
things here in the last twenty thirty years has been
(28:59):
the talk of a fi palpitations and all that. Can
you discuss a little of that or what you think
about that. What's the best way to treat that. I
know they got all the shock treatments of the heart
and all that to try to get rid of it
to maintain it. But that and then we talk about
(29:20):
what it takes to stay healthy, and you do a
good job talking about that, but I'm like for you
to kind of rate. I always try to live the
three most important things are rest, diet, and exercise, and
I like for you to kind of rate what you
think the top three are in what order they're in,
And I'll hang up and listen.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
All right, Frank, we appreciate that. That's a big question
right there. That's a show that's three shows. So what's
the rest, diet and exercise that's a good one my ranking,
and based on what I know in my understanding, certainly
number one is going to be the diet. I would
(30:02):
probably say two is exercise in three as the rest
would be my sort of hierarchy of that. And again,
the diet dictates just about everything in my book, based
on what I've seen, what I've read, that's got to happen,
(30:24):
especially as you get older.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You got to eat right, you got to drink right too.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
A lot of people don't understand the connection of drinking
beverages and drinking items that are unhealthy for you. And
the main thing right there is just sugar. We just
have so many sugary beverages out there. It's just insane.
You go down the aisle there at the grocery store,
(30:48):
and I mean it's just piled high, and most of
it is about the same, right, It's just some sort
of water and some flavoring and sugar. And they put
other additives in and maybe some vitamins just to kind
of beef up the marketing angle. But and that's pretty
(31:08):
much about it. Maybe I got some other stuff in there,
but a lot of these substances, a lot of these
additives are unhealthy for It's a lot of experts are
trying to raise awareness, but it's difficult out there just
because it's clouded and crowded and confusing, and they taste good,
and we got a lot of stress and we're distracted,
(31:29):
and you know, we just we don't care a lot
of times. We just want what we want. We want
our beverage of choice. But again from my side, yet
it does contribute in my opinion, based on my position,
it does contribute to poor health when you're consuming these
substances every single day. These are chemicals, these are additives,
(31:50):
these are active compounds that your body has to process.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
And deal with.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
So you want to try and keep that sort of
beverage choice to them. And yes, water is the best one.
It's boring, It has no life to it. It's just dead.
I mean, how can you drink that every day? And
got all this fun, fizzy, colorful, flavorful beverages out there,
and they're cool containers and they got cool names, and
(32:18):
there's normally commercials with a story attached to it. And yeah,
it's exciting, you know, because I'm bored, I don't have
nothing to do, and I just need some excitement.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
In my life.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Let me go down the store and let me go
buy some excitement. I mean, that's that's really a lot
how that happens. Right, Just drinking water every day is boring.
There's no excitement. I don't feel anything. And that is
my point is, yes, you want to have a boring life.
You don't want to feel anything, because when you start
(32:51):
drinking liquids that have a lot of that in there,
that that's when you start getting sick and ill. So
diet number one. Number two. Exercise, yes, just because it
is so positive to the cardiovascular system. We talk about
the immune system all the time. It's so positive for
you immune system as well. With exercise, it helps control appetite,
(33:17):
it helps with your bowel function, your immune system, your
cardiovast system is huge, huge, huge, huge. But I don't
like to put exercise in number one. Can't do that.
It's got to be number two. Number two complements number one.
Is how I see that a lot of people are
(33:38):
a little still confused with that. Is they want to
be healthy, and they'll go out and join a gym
and start exercising. Then they'll go right to the pizza parlor,
or they'll go right and get a burgin fries or
drink a sugary beverage or right after the exercise. You
just can't maybe when you're young, right when you're young.
(34:00):
But if you look at the young athletes now, let's say,
for instance, football, I played college football at Rice University,
and yes, we did sort of eat in a special
diner where the food was prepared for us. But the
connection between performance and longevity and injury and recovery and
(34:24):
all of that performance stuff wasn't quite where it is today.
It was just sort of starting to get kicked off
when I was in playing college football. But now they know,
and most big programs you talk about Texas or A
and M or some of these big football programs I'm
talking about college we know the professionals are doing that now.
(34:47):
They mainly hire all sorts of dietitians and they're hiring
chefs to specifically prepare food for these athletes because they
get the connection with the fuel you're putting in your
body and how your body performs. Now, most of us
have never been a professional athlete. I've never been in
(35:08):
competitive sports. That's okay, but the connection is there. You know,
you do have to perform to some degree. Right, we
all have those daily responsibilities that we have to finish. Right,
you're a mother, your a father, you have a job.
What maybe you're taking care of your elderly sister or
your elderly mother or father. You have to be there
(35:31):
in order to do this. You don't have time to
be sick. You have to perform right. Well, it's no different.
You got to put in the right fuel so your
body can be ready to do its thing, and also
protect you from disease and illness i e. Sepsis and infections.
When your body is not working well and it's unprotected,
(35:56):
it's vulnerable, you get more infections. Right, and you're diet
feeds into that. So exercise, yes number two to complement
that diet because we want cardiovascular health. And then yes,
you've had your vegetables. You did a little jog for
about twenty minutes, and now it's time for rest. Yes,
(36:19):
at the end of the day. You got to get
that rest. And it feeds in very well to my
talk about obstructive sleep appne if you see your spouse
sleeping like that, don't allow that to happen night after night,
week after week. Go get that checked out. And get
on that machine, the SEAPAP machine. Sometimes you have to
(36:42):
do what we call a BiPAP machine, which is just
structured a little bit differently. The air blows in at
different pressures. We call it buy two versus SEAPAP continuous single.
But the main thing is to get the weigh down, right,
So got to start getting on a program, eat better, exercise.
It's a slow process. Again, a lot of patients are
(37:03):
getting success with these injectable diabetes medicines at JLP ones. Hey,
if you need to get on something and get that
weight down, I'm all for it because we've got to
get that weight down because if we can do that
a lot of times, all this metabolic derangement improves automatically.
So that's my top three. That's the sort of unofficial
(37:26):
recommendation on that, based on my knowledge of how the
body works and what's good and what's bad.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
So I hope you like that.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
We'll go on our last break and come back talk
about a FIB. We'll be right back, all right, Welcome
back to the doctor V and medical phone lines that
(37:56):
open eight nine six koviy one eight hundred and three
to three zero kill A few minutes left in the show.
I want to think all the callers and listeners again,
if there's a topic you'd like me to discuss, you
need to call the station or you can call my
office and leave that message and we'll get into that
as much as we can. Caller on the previous segment
called about atrial fibrillation, just wanted to have some general
(38:20):
comments about that. It's a very super super common cardiac
electrical what we call a rhythmia, meaning that the way
the heart is beating is abnormal. So the heart beats
in sort of a normal fashion. We call that normal
sinus rhythm or NSR. And the most common a rhythmia
(38:45):
are abnormal electrical activity that we see in this country,
especially as one gets older, is a trial fibrillation. We
call it a trial just because it normally involves the
top half of the heart, which we call the atrium,
and the lower part of the heart we call the ventricle.
(39:06):
So normally this heart abnormal beating starts in the top
chamber of the heart, the atrium, so that's what I
call it. Atriol fibrillation is the description of what we
see the activity electrical activity of what we see on
the EKG and it's a very chaotic heart rhythm. Fibrillation
(39:33):
is the term that we use. Sometimes it's a flutter
f l u tt er, which looks a little bit
more in rhythm, but it again is abnormal sort of
beating of the electrical activity of the heart. So those
are like a sister and a cousin atriol flutter and
(39:55):
atrial fibrillation. Those can sometimes coexist, or you can go
for from atrial flutter to atrial fibrillation. But yes, as
the color mentioned, most of us feel palpitations in our
chest just the heart is sort of pounding or pumping
on your chest. You can kind of feel that something
(40:16):
is going on, and sometimes it can be constant, sometimes
it can come and go, and yes, sometimes you can
get other physical symptoms such as chest pain or shortness
of breath with It just depends on your condition, and
for the most part it's related to age, but certainly
other comorbid diseases, hypertension, diabetes, lung disease, being overweight, smoking,
(40:43):
alcohol abuse, American lifestyle right big big risk factors, but
age is the biggest one. Just getting older. If you
can get to your eighties eighty five years old, your
risk is kind of high the electrical system of the
heart wears out and you can get these fluttering conditions
(41:04):
of the top part of the heart, which we call
atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter. The good thing is that
there's a lot of options as the call of mention.
Depending on which heart doctor you go to, you might
get this medicine versus that medicine. And there is a
procedure now called ablation therapy where heart specialists can go
in and sort of map out the origin of the
(41:26):
atrial fibrillation nature flutter and then burn it so that
it goes away and you're now back in normal sinus rhythm.
So we always try to achieve sinus rhythm, normal sinus
rhythm with medications as well as with the blation. Yes,
sometimes you have to get what they call a cardio
version where they just sort of shock your heart a
(41:47):
little bit to kind of reset it, and a lot
of times that helps. But again, the genesis of the
atual flutter or atre fibllation is still there. Something is
still there, and that's what ablation therapy is for, to
try and cure it and fix it so that it
doesn't come back. So most people get on medicines first,
and then considerate sort of progressed to a cardioversion and
(42:10):
then an oblation. I think that was a pretty good
explanation anyway. Thank you for joining from the edition of
the show. Remember don't drink and drive, eat some vegetables.
We'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Take care,
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