Dr Levine's Medical Hour 10/25/25--topics include low blood pressure

• 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.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right sought these sex is Innet radio listeners, Welcome
to another edition of the Doctor Lavine Medical Hour. I'm
here your host, Doctor Levine, every Saturday between eight and
nine at kov I S Videos here in Beaumont, Texas.
Across you from park to im all checking your phone, calls,
answering questions. Antine, if we can figure out what's wrong

(00:21):
with you, get you some information so you can stay alive.
Let's right and enjoy the holidays coming up. This is
holidays season, right, Halloween? Just what next week? Right? Then
we'll be moving into Thanksgiving and then Christmas. So a
lot of activity normally during this time of year, and

(00:43):
normally a lot of weight gain as we're engaging in
the festivities of the holidays. Can't say no to those
pastries and those cookies, and those cakes and pies and
candy treats and sugary beverages that we all engage in

(01:04):
as the end of the year nears. We look forward
to it. Actually, right, go into those family gatherings and
those office parties, wanting some of that cake, that pie minut.
It's hard to resist, right, taste so good. Here's a

(01:24):
period of time where we typically will allow ourselves to
purposely overindulge. It's the festive time of year, end of
the year where you sort of recount the entire year
and just trying to have a good time. Who cares
about diet and exercise and health. I just want to

(01:49):
have a good time. I certainly get it in my
practice when interacting with some of my patients. Some of
my patients have been able to get to their deep
eighties early nineties unscathed, meaning they may have been in
the hospital a few times, they take a few medicines.

(02:10):
I mean, we have those patients. And yes, the diet
changes as one gets older. You just don't care for
the vegetables and protein anymore. This is as you get older, right,
your palate changes, Your desires to eat certain things change.

(02:30):
As you get older. We sort of revert back to
some of those same desires we had we were younger,
when we were toddlers or when we were teenagers. We
prefer the ultrip processed foods, the starches, the cakes, the

(02:50):
cookies and the pies. Yes, we prefer that. As we
get older, the palate changes. We don't want green beans
and broccoli and nich Yeah, who wants that stuff? At
least that's what I see talking with my elderly patients
in their eighties and nineties, and to some degree I

(03:12):
get it. I really do a lot of the medical
research papers. Honestly, if you look at to dive down
into it in terms of the age of the participants,
there's not really a lot of eighty year old patients
and research projects these days or seventy year olds. All

(03:33):
of this information that doctors read and all of the
guidelines that doctors have, a lot of this is sort
of projections or conjectures, or we're sort of taking information
that we currently have using younger patients, younger being fifties, forties,

(03:54):
maybe sixties, and assuming that yes, it's probablyrobably a good
thing for eighty year old or a ninety year old.
But there's not a whole lot of research out there
involving eighty or ninety year olds. So all these things
you hear about clestral medicines and blood pressure and blood

(04:15):
sugar and got to get the numbers down, got to
tightly control well. There is some suggestion in the medical
lida to that maybe we're not sure if that really
helps someone who is eighty five or eighty eight or
ninety because we're just not sure. But it sounds good, right,

(04:35):
It makes everybody feel good. You go to the doctor
for your checkup, want to see how you're doing, sort
of get a physical assessment of your health and what
to look forward to. Are you in the right position,
have you had all your testing. That's a lot of
what I do every day, and I enjoy it. Again,

(04:58):
just trying to get patients right, get them oriented, help
them out, just because again a lot of distractions out there,
and it's confusing about what to do and what to
eat and what to drink. And that's why we're here
to try and help you. But it seems pretty straightforward
to me what you need to do. But yeah, when

(05:19):
you get into your eighties and nineties, I mean, no
matter who you are, everybody sort of has the expiration days.
And it's getting pretty close. I mean, yes, we do
hear these rare patients that are beyond one hundred years old.
But man, that's really pushing a boundary. Just our bodies

(05:41):
are not designed to go that far, honestly, And what
does it matter if you eat some cookies or some
pods or cakes, you know, what does it matter? Yeah?
I mean I really get that. Or if someone develops
a and they can't really chew, or they can't really

(06:03):
eat all those healthy things, but they can eat or
shrink these nutritional beverages that are out there, the boosts
and the insures and the various sort of nutritional protein
beverages out there. They really maybe their appetite is not
that strong that they don't want to eat chicken breasts,

(06:26):
grilled fish and broccoli with spinach like dux lavine mentioned,
and eating my nuts and seeds. It's like they don't
want that, but they have to eat something otherwise they're
losing a lot of weight. And I'll tell you that
if you cannot maintain your nutrition in some way, your

(06:49):
body just cannot work right. It needs that fuel in
order to work, especially your immune systems. Oh almost forgot it.
Go get your vaccines. It's fact same time of year,
so go get your vaccines. It's a sort of damp
day this morning, and rain this morning so and last
night it's thunderstorms. I mean at nighttime, it's good. It's

(07:14):
just raining outside and you're safe and secure in your house.
It's quiet, but you can hear the rain drops from outside.
Not so good. When you have to get out in
and drive in and go to work the next day.
It's all wet, damp, car accident stuff like that. Man
just want to stay indoors. But nonetheless, go get your

(07:36):
vaccine blue pneumonia, shingles, COVID, and I'm assuming RSV forgot
that one. I'm assuming the list will continue to grow
as time goes on, as the technology keeps pace with
the organisms out there causing all these infections. And again

(07:57):
I still have to remind patients that we just trying
to keep the severity down. That's all we're trying to
do with these vaccines, with these common organisms that I mentioned,
We're trying to keep it down. People still are getting
upset that I took it. I braved getting my arm

(08:18):
poked and looking for some side effects because some people
guess I've had side effect issues with achiness or fever.
They couldn't go to work for a couple of days,
and like, I'm not going to do that. In a way,
it's like when I don't take the vaccine, I don't
get sick. I've never had this. I've never had Why
don't want to get the flu vaccine? But nonetheless they decide, Okay, doctor,

(08:43):
you've convinced me, I'm gonna go ahead and take it.
So they take it right because their doctor told them
to take them. They're trying to be a good person,
trying to be compliant. I'm not a doctor. You tell
me what to do, I'll do it. So they do it,
and then six weeks later they're sick with the flu
or covid or something like. Aha. I told you, see

(09:07):
this stuff doesn't work. But I'm like, you're not in
the hospital though, And when you had the infection, you
only were sick a couple of days, and maybe you
came here. We gave you some medication and you went
home and everything was fine. You didn't have to go
to the hospital. You're good. And that's the whole idea
behind these vaccines is it sort of gives you a

(09:30):
leg up on these organisms just in case it does
decide to infect you. It's just not a severe, severe case.
It's a mild case, something you can tolerate. As I've
mentioned to you over and over again, you have to
get this. You have to understand this as you get older.
Just it's not as strong, not as resilient. I have

(09:52):
these conversations open over again with family members in dealing
with loved ones who come to the hospital for a
cute medical riceses. You know, two weeks ago they were
cutting the grass. They were driving to Houston. You know,
that's that's another thing that whatever reason, as we get older,
we don't want to drive too far, and we don't

(10:14):
want to drive at night, and nighttime is terrorizing. You know,
as you get older, just can't see things. Things are
moving too fast and driving long distances like driving to
Houston driving a gallason that that becomes a huge, huge
task for someone who gets older. You know, you just

(10:36):
don't want to do that until you want. You just
only want to drive during the daytime and not at nighttime.
No way. So we just are not as resilient as
we get older. So in order to stay healthy, stay
driving during the day short distances. These vaccines help, right,

(11:02):
because you don't want any sort of acute crises to
jump on you just because your body is just not
as strong. You want to stay out of trouble as
much as possible. Because again these sepsis episodes, people are
becoming more familiar with terms sepsis and it's a terrifying term.

(11:23):
It's almost like saying you have cancer. There's a few
terms out there that people are familiar with and they
strike fear in their hearts when they hear these terms,
and sepsis has gotten to that point for good reason.
As I've mentioned to you, we hear a lot about cancer,
we hear a lot about cardiovascular disease. But infections are

(11:48):
serious illnesses that cause a lot of problems as we
get older. It's a very common cause of morbidity and
mortality as one gets older is infection from all sorts
of sources. But again, it's that old immune system not
seeing as strong as it needs to be, and it's

(12:11):
that cardiovascular system, it's that nervous system, it's the kidney
system again because of the program that our body has,
the hardware that our bodies have program to get weaker
as one gets older, and when you need to be
strong in an acute medical crises like sepsis, just unfortunately,

(12:37):
depending on your current health metabolically, you might not be
able to tolerate the acute episode, or it might cause
some other medical problem to rise up. And sometimes these
things are irreversible. The issue that comes up while you're

(12:57):
sick and you just kind of get drug down, almost
like an anchor. It's almost like you can't stop it.
It's a snowball that keeps going and going. You might
have gone into the hospital with one problem, but man,
before you know it, in a few days, you've got
three or four problems because it's all a systemic reaction
to when you get a infection, normally from bacteria, but

(13:19):
viruses can cause sepsis as well. We saw a lot
of that during the COVID pandemic when patients would have
fever and costs and their labs were abnormal and three
days later they couldn't breathe on their own and they
had to be placed on a breathing machine that is
called sepsis and we do see that every single day

(13:42):
in the major hospitals. So it is something to be
afraid of. But again, doing what you can to keep
the immune system working and ready to go, and that's
where vaccines come into play. And still get it. But
it's supposed to minimize the acute medical crisis. That's my

(14:02):
term today, minimize because you want to try and stay
out of the hospital as much as possible, and that's
what all these other suggestions that we have normally go
to your primary care physician's office is to minimize the
risk of having an acute medical crisis. Again, it's never
a zero right. You can go to your doctor all

(14:25):
the time. You can take all your medicines and still
have an acute medical crisis. It's not one hundred percent,
but it certainly reduces the odds that you will have
something happened to you. And a lot of times if
you're doing your job, when you do have a medical crisis,

(14:46):
it's a mild sort of episode. It's not severe and
the rest of your body works well, so you can
tolerate it. Again, just trying to stay strong as getting older,
it makes you weaker, depressing. Right, Phone lines are open
eight nine six kalv I one in one hundred three

(15:07):
three zero Kalova. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
welcome back. Phone lines are open eight nine six Kalevai
one in one hundred three to three zero kalov I.
Doc levine talking about your vaccines and certainly your diet
and how important that is as you get older. But
certainly our palate changes as we get older, and just

(15:30):
all of those vegetables and all that healthy food that
we talk about. It's just not as fun anymore. We
are coming to the holiday week I'm sorry, holiday season
where we tend to sort of open up our diet
and we sort of eat more than things that we
know are not so good for us. It's only for

(15:51):
a short period of time where the New Year's is
right around the corner, where we sort of agree that, hey,
we're going to do it this time. We're going to
get those pounds down and we're going to make it. Yes,
we are going to make it. That's always a struggle
every year, is to figure out how to get the

(16:11):
weight down. And a couple of popular things right now
that patients are trying. We have all heard of these injections,
these weekly injections. The most familiar with that is ozimpic,
also called generic semagluetide, which again from birth as an American,

(16:33):
you sort of taught that you need to eat three
times a day, right, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, just sort
of this feast all day of just eating and shrinking
non stop. I was taught that despite everybody else, the
food table, the food triangle, the food square, you remember that, right,

(16:56):
and junior high or elementary getting introduced to that. But
I would have to say at this point, based on
what I know, what I see, I think three times
stands a little too much. To be honest with you,
I think at least twice a day would be sufficient.

(17:16):
Maybe something in the morning, maybe something in the evening.
Everyone does it a little bit differently or can do
it differently. But these medications, these GLP one agonists, that's
the category that these medications are in. What Govi Munjaro, Truelicity,

(17:38):
ozipic by Eta Sictoza's a ton of them, right, Belsas.
That's a tablet. I've used that one before. It doesn't
seem to be quite as strong as I would like
it to. But again it's an option for those who
are struggling with their health. They're not quite sure what

(17:59):
to do. For some answers, And yes, these medications can
be very helpful to help you lose weight again because
it allows you to go the entire day without eating.
It's hard to do in this country. Line number two,
how you doing, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Oh yes, I'm calling blood pressure.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yes, sir Leonard, what's going on this morning? Budding?

Speaker 2 (18:26):
It's too low I'm getting numbers one hundred and six
over fifty. Yesterday I was one on one over forty seven,
and it's just lower than.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
I want it to be.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
What do I do about it?

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Well, Leonard, thank you for checking your blood pressure on
the regular face. I still have fatients that don't want
to check their blood pressure. So anytime you get put
on medications, yeah, we would like to monitor your response.
So your body's reaction to the medication. And again, you
might take a medication for years and nothing's going on,

(19:03):
and all of a sudden something happens, like maybe the
blood pressure falls. You don't necessarily need all that blood
pressure medicine anymore, Leonard. That will be my first idea
is that you've done your job. You've limited your calorie intake,
you're exercising. Now you've lost some weight, and your body

(19:24):
is rewarding you and doing what it's supposed to do.
It's functioning normally. Now you don't need assistance from pharmaceutical medications,
and so your blood pressure falls, and now you can
get off the medication because that made a little blood pressure.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
But I'm not taking any blood pressure medication. About three
weeks ago, my doctor started me out on kid you pills,
not kidding pills, iron pills and I've been taking three
a day for three weeks. Does iron pills have anything
to do with blood pressure?

Speaker 1 (19:58):
As far as I know, they do not. I don't
use iron pills often just because they now have IV
are intravenious iron infusions that normally you can get from
an infusion center. They typically have them in most major cities,
whether it's attached to the hospital or they have freestanding

(20:21):
infusion centers where you can go and get specific IVY
infusions of different medications like iron. So that's normal what
I use leonards, But the tablets yet, those were around
when I was training as a doctor, just somewhat cumbersome
to take. You have to do it three times a day,
and it's constipating and it's slower, whereas the IV is

(20:43):
more instantaneous, it's in your system, it's a bigger dose,
very convenient, and maybe get another injection in two or
three weeks. But as far as I know, it should
not cause your blood pressure to be low. And I'm
sorry I didn't understand your complete history. So you're not
on blood pressure medicines. That's good. So when someone is

(21:03):
not on blood pressure medicines, but their blood pressure is low.
There are a couple of other things we look at. Again,
I don't think it's related to the iron, but you
can never know. So you can certainly discontinue the iron
after talking with your doctor for a couple of weeks
and see if the blood pressure level does go up.
But other things we think about our dehydration. We think

(21:25):
about bleeding. Is you know, when you start bleeding, that's
one of the symptoms of that is you're losing blood.
Your blood pressure will fall. If none of that is
going on, then we start thinking about cardiovascular problems, because
your heart's goal is to produce a certain normal blood pressure,

(21:46):
and if it cannot do that, then maybe there is
a cardiovascular problem, such as your heart muscle might be weak,
or one of your heart valves may not allow proper
blood float through their heart and so the amount of
blood being ejected from your heart each beat is lower,

(22:07):
and then when that happens, your blood pressure falls. Or
maybe you have a narrowing of one of your blood
vessels somewhere so that the blood cannot flow to your arm,
which would give it an artificial low reading. So Normally
you're gonna need some lab You're gonna need some X rays,
like a chest X ray, maybe a cat scan, and

(22:29):
sometimes we'll start off with fluids that can be put
in your ivy. Normally have to have an IVY put in,
Go to the hospital or emergency department, get some fluids,
do a little check up, check your labs, do some
X rays, and just sort of try and see why
your blood pressure is a little bit low. The last
consideration is sometimes our nervous system does not function. It

(22:53):
gets weaker as we get older. We call that autonomic dysfunction.
Diabags get this particular problem a lot. It's sort of
like a neuropathy of your autonomic nervous system. That's a
nervous system that's sort of in the background, just on
autopilot making sure everything is working. But sometimes that system

(23:16):
doesn't work as well. Because when you stand up, your
blood pressure should be steady. When you lay down, when
you lay flat, when you squat, when you get up instantly,
all of that blood pressure should remain stable. But as
we get older, that autonomic nervous system that's responsible for
that tends to wear out too, so you can get
low blood pressures. High blood pressures, you can get fast

(23:38):
hard rate just it becomes very chaotic, and it's because
this autonomic nervous system is not functioning. So again, it's
good that you don't have symptoms, but if you do
start developing symptoms, then it needs to be looked into.
And Leonard, I almost forgot one other cause of low
blood pressure. That would be infections.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
I have an infected foot. I do, and the doctor's
been treating on it.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
But it's better.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Oh yeah, it used to be you know, the size
of a half dollar. Now it's like the you said,
what's like a pencil and raser on a pencil?

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Right, No, when you have an acute infection. I was
talking a little bit about sepsis during the first segment.
That's one of the physical symptoms of sepsis is a
low blood pressure, but typically you're having other symptoms of infection.
Says that if the foot was causing the low blood pressure,
it should be red and swollen. Maybe it has a

(24:41):
bad odor to it, maybe it's changing colors, it has drainage,
that would indicate that there's an active infection of the foot.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
It is red, but it is not. It does the
smell phony and it's not sore.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's not yea, the l some time I went to
my cardiologists.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
You said you're doing fine time singing.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
In six months, so that very good.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
That's all I know about the heart.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Yes, okay, Well you know, things change learned, So if
your blove pressure is new is if it's now low
and that's a new thing, then you deserve to get
an evaluation. So need to let your healthcare provider know,
and maybe, like I say, go in and get checked
out by someone, either today, tomorrow or wait until Monday. Certainly,

(25:27):
the seriousness can depend on how you feel. I guess
if you feel okay, then you can kind of wait.
But if you start getting dizzy or weak or wanting
to pass out, calling you to go ahead and get
checked out sooner rather than.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Later, which doctor do I go?

Speaker 1 (25:44):
See? Well, I always start with your primary care physicians.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
I can do that.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, okay, all right, Lea, yes, sir, appreciate it. And
a lot of good topics to discuss with that low
blood pressure man. That happens a lot. Hey Lisa from Louisiana,
how can we help you?

Speaker 4 (26:06):
Yeah, I have a question. I was going to a
general practitioner, and then I changed. I didn't change doctors,
but I went to a different doctor for the GLP
one injection and she ended up raising my thyroid medicine.

(26:27):
I've been on thyroid medicine since ninety one, so I'm
trying to find out. I went just recently and had
my thyroid checked and it's normal. When she increased it,
my general practitioner was telling me, well, you don't want

(26:49):
to try to lose weight if you're increasing your thyroid.
But then I've been on it three months and my
thyroid's normal. How can it be normal if it was
normal before.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
It would just depend on how much she increased it.
They are several incremental levels that you can decrease or increase,
so just depends on what she increased it to, and
it depends on what your levels were looking like at
the time she increased it. Did the auxiliary practitioner increase

(27:30):
the thyroid just to help you lose weight, or did
she see he or she see something that was abnormal.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
She told me it was low, but I had had
my thyroid check six months earlier and they told me
everything was normal at sixty mg. And then she raised
it to ninety and you know, I was scared because
I'm like, I don't want to take higher thyroid medicine

(27:57):
if I'm hurting my system, or I don't want to
take it just to lose weight. I thought that's what
the golp one injection was for, not necessarily changing hormonal issues.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, you know, one symptom of your thyroid not being
properly replaced is weight gain. So maybe this second practitioner
was thinking that this patient's not losing weight. Let me
check the thyroids. Aha, it's low, so let me increase

(28:34):
it to normalize the thyroid function to assist with your
weight loss. Not that she was just raising it to
get your weight down. So I think that was their
impression when they increased it, is that you needed it
to normalize your thyroid function. And yes, thyroid function when
you're on replacement can change from month to month, every

(28:58):
six months, every year. That's why you go in and
get your labs checked, just to make sure you're getting
the proper amount our bodies or machines. It needs. Its
needs change with time such that your current dose might
not be sufficient now. So I think that the second

(29:19):
auxiliary practitioner was just trying their best to get your
weight down and identified to them that your thyroid was
just not enough based on your numbers. I don't know
what you numbers look like, but was not enough and said, hey,
let's go ahead and increase it and maybe with the
increase and getting sufficient thyroid in your body that will

(29:43):
assist with your weight loss. Does that make sense, Yes,
it sure does.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Is there a chance to take to where you get
all your hormones checked, I mean if they're at the
correct level, because I am I'm turning sixty five.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, they're blood tests for all of the major hormones
in the human body. Just have to ask your provider
to check them. Because for a general examination, I think
most practitioners are just checking thyroid hormones. But other hormones
like your female hormones, testosterone, cortisol, DHGA, some of these

(30:28):
other hormones that prolact and some of these other hormones
that are floating around in a system is normally not
part of our general examination. So you would have to
just ask a provider that you want certain hormones and
they can check them. It's very easy. It's just bloodwork.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
Awesome, all right, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
All right, Lisa, good luck to you and thanks for
the phone call. Phone lines are open eight nine six
Kovia one hundred three three zero, Kioga. We have Emma
waiting from Beaumont. We'll be with her in two minutes.

(31:10):
All right, welcome back to the dark, las met I
by Our phone lines are open eight nine to six
kalfy I one one hundred and three three zero. Okal
I Emma from Boma. Thank you for waiting. How can
we help you?

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yes, I want to ask you a question about macular degeneration.
The last time I was in your office, you asked
me if I had had a eye exam, and the
year prior, I said, I've had the catalac. So I
came home and I made it immediately it had been
a year, made an appointment and went in and so

(31:42):
when he checked my eyes, he said, you have the
starting of macula and it is right, you know, just
right at the starting, and it's the drive and you
need to be on pressor vision or one of those fights.
Deal what I asking you? If I am elderly and

(32:04):
since fairly healthy and I'm very uh, get my appointments,
keep my appointments, and do what I think I should do,
and I'm a diabetic, I'm coll Why do we not
know as elderly that because smackler kind of I have
as caused by nutritional problems not eating the right type

(32:29):
of diet, obviously because of what you were talking about
before being elderly, So why do we not know that
we just need to be on them when we reach
a certain age. The presidi yes, I.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Mean, I think certainly. The vitamins are what we consider antioxidants,
and the process of injury, death, dying has lots to
do with oxidation. It's a metabolic process that tends to
harm human tissue. That would be eye tissue, brain tissue,

(33:11):
any sort of tissue in the human body. Oxidation. Think
of it as rust, if you will, That's how I
think of it. It tends to injure the particular part
of the body. So in this particular part, we're talking
about the eye and a certain part of the eye
that's important for your vision. Macular degeneration. I don't keep
up with the research on that as much as I

(33:32):
do other diseases like diabetes and hypertension. But my understanding
of macular degeneration is that just as the name indicates
it's a part of aging, a degeniture process that some
patients get afflicted with, and it harms their internal part

(33:52):
of their eye that is responsible for vision. And the
most that they've come up with at this time is
that these vitamins, which are like I say, are antioxidants,
they help fight that process, tend to slow down the
process of macular degeneration and slow the progression down significantly.

(34:14):
These vitamin supplements. Certainly, you can get vitamins in your food,
and we talk about that all the time. Is to
try and eat your vegetables, try and eat your fresh fruit, nuts,
and seeds, because that's where all those vitamins are is
in that type of food. But these supplements that I've
heard a lot of the eye doctors recommend, they appear

(34:36):
to work well in this particular disease process as well
in terms of fighting macular degeneration the dry form. I
wouldn't say that I'm a macular degeneration expert, but that's
sort of my basic understanding when I was introduced to
macular degeneration that oxidation and inflammation is a part of

(34:59):
that process, and vitamins are good fighters of inflammation, good
fighters of oxidation. So we want patients to get that
into their system so that their body can fight this
particular process. Certainly with food, absolutely, but it's difficult for
a lot of patients to eat that every day, whether

(35:20):
it be expense or maybe they can't chew correctly, they
can't swallow correctly, they can't prepare it on a regular basis.
There's a lot of obstacles to eating a proper diet
when you get older, so a tablet, maybe even a
liquid is a lot easier. So I think that's what
we fall to.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Well, it looks like it, you know, I read what
was in them, think in a copper and more minerals sing.
But I was just thinking, at a certain age, should
we routinely just automatically replaced on needs to prevent that
as our drops off at our older agg emma.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
That's a good question. I don't think it's been looked
into enough because not everyone gets macular degeneration. And again,
based on the latest research, this is the best idea
we have in terms of treating macular degeneration. Are these supplements,
But does everyone respond to them? Not really, So we

(36:25):
just don't want to commit the entire nation to consuming
products that really we're not quite sure if everyone needs it.
It's almost like the aspirin issue. We used to put
everybody on aspirin back in the day, but then patients
started bleeding and having complications. So that is the fear
when we say everybody needs to be on this one thing.

(36:46):
That's the fear is that there's going to be an
adverse reaction to it or it's not going to help.
So it's hard for us to say everybody needs to
be on this because everyone is a little different, or
research is not strong enough to tell everybody to do that.
But certainly consuming vegetables that have all of these antioxidants

(37:07):
and all these minerals in them is certainly no one
disagrees about that. That is certainly the one thing you
can do for yourself that works.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Well.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
You know, I just thank you. It's a that you
reminded me that I needed that. It's been a year
and then I need it to go becau it's then
I caught it.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Oh absolutely, And that's one reason you go to your
doctor periodically six months, one year, just to see what's
out there and make sure you're up to date with everything.
And if you're not, then go in and get that
checked out. Absolutely so everything works.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
It's safe. Thank you, sir, Thank you for the program.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Absolutely, Emma. You have a good day, and thank you
for the phone call. All right, we're going to last
break soon. Lines open eight nine six KVY. I won
one hundred and three three zero o kV. I'll be
back in two minutes.

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Speaker 6 (39:57):
You're listening to Doctor Levine's Medical Hour on news Talk
five sixty KLBI. To join the conversation, call eight nine
six KLBI are eight hundred three three zero KLBI.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
All right, welcome back to the doc Livsion Medical Hour.
Phone lines open at the end of the show. I
want to thank all the callers and the listeners of
the Doc Living Medical Hour. Again. Remember, if there is
a topic that you would like me to discuss, or
particular issue that you'd like me to talk about, you
can either call my office or nine three four seven

(40:47):
three six two one, or you can call the radio
station and provide that information and we can try and
talk about that again. That's the genesis of the show,
is just to get some information and a nice calm atmosphere,
as opposed to when you go to your doctor's office,
it's all there's pressure. Time you sit and wait for

(41:09):
an hour and then you only got five minutes ten
minutes tops to talk to your provider. You've got to
get it in. You forgot this, you forgot that again.
It's always a good idea to write things down, or
you can always have someone go with you to sort
of remember those things. Sometimes it's just a lot to remember.
I remember when I first started as a doctor, we

(41:33):
didn't really hand a whole lot of patients. We gave
them prescriptions, that was about it, and they were written
on prescription pads. But in terms of the direct instructions,
nothing was written down, and patients would leave the office
and sort of forget what to do. And it was

(41:53):
so much better now. I mean, anytime you interact with
a healthcare professional, you're getting paperwork about what happened, what
were your vitals, what medicines were given, what's your diagnosis.
Presumably I can keep your mind open about getting reassessed.
Remember I've talked to you about that before. Don't get upset.

(42:16):
If you don't get better, just go back in, get
another assessment. Sometimes we didn't get it right and you
need another evaluation, so just go back in. I know
it's got to wait in the waiting room. You got
to get back in your car or call the ambulance.
But these diseases are very tricky and it's not always

(42:39):
apparent exactly what's going on on the first assessment. You
have to go back in and get reassessed, so don't
get upset about that. Just go ahead and do it
so you can get to your right diagnosis. But anyway, yeah,
low blood pressure, we talked a little bit about that.

(43:00):
That's normally not a good thing. Most of the time.
It's just because maybe on too many medicines, or maybe
you're dehydrated, you might be bleeding, you might have a
cardiovascular problem like heart failure, or yeah, sepsis might be
starting up. But normally, if you have low blood pressure
from sepsis, you feel terrible, and plus you're normally having

(43:23):
some other symptom fever, maybe you're vomiting, maybe have pain somewhere,
you're coughing because the sepsis might be from pneumonia. We
get a lot of abdominal causes of sepsis, like pancread
titis or appendicitis, or your gallbladders infected. But normally you
have you're vomiting, you have pain, it's not just low

(43:45):
blood pressure. But yes, that will autonomic nervous system. Sometimes
it just doesn't work as well. It's worn out and
it cannot generate a high blood pressure and starts going low.
People start passing out, getting and weak when they're walking.
We do have medication to that budget need to work up.
We need some blood work, some X rays, maybe even

(44:08):
a stress test or even an ultra sound of your
heart to figure that out. But certainly that's an abnormal
thing if you're checking that. And again, remember the blood
pressure monitoring devices are getting easier. I saw a watch
recently that worked pretty well to this where they're watching
press blood pressure. I mean, that's pretty neat stuff. Christmas
is around the corner. Maybe that's a good gift for you,

(44:28):
a little stocking stuff. Anyway, thanks for joining for another
edition of the show. Remember don't drink and drive. Drink
some water, drink some and eat some cups. Sorry, we'll
see ya later.