Dr Levine's Medical Hour 11/29/25-topics include AFib

• 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, Southeast Texas and already our listeners, Welcome to
another edition of the Doctor Levine Medical Hour. I'm your host,
Doctor Levine, coming to you live from the studios of
kov here. But my text is taking your phone calls
cross street from Parkdale Mall. We are here every Saturday
trying to help you answer questions about your health and yes,

(00:21):
how to stay alive longer and longer. We're coming to
the end of the year and looking forward to a
new year, and normally at this time we rehash the
previous year and sort of double down on some efforts
to get better the next year. Right, new Year's resolutions.

(00:44):
I'm going to resolve those deficiencies and those issues that
I couldn't accomplish last year. But it's a new year,
it's a new day, and I want to get better.
I know I need to get better. I know that
there's some issues with me and my choices, and I

(01:05):
want to I'm a good person and I know it's
right and I'm going to do it. And we always
talk about that at this part of the year. Just
what can you do? And phone lines are open eight
nine six Kalva I Winn one hundred three three zero, Kalva, Man,
what about the football games this past week? As you know,

(01:27):
I played some high school and college ball here Westbrook
and Rice University, so I'm kind of a fan. But man,
I have some great football this past week. Dallas is
Man won those games when they've been struggling this year.
And then Texas, my god, A and M was just

(01:49):
hammering through their season, I think, undefeated, and then Texas
pulled out that big win yesterday and Austin, Man, I
wish I could have been there. What else a tremendous atmosphere,
I bet. I mean, I remember the days when I
did play high school in college football and when it
was a big rivalry. I played in the first bow

(02:12):
in my bowl. I don't know if you guys ever
remember that one. They're at lu Stadium. It was just
hyped up the whole week and it was just packed.
It was standing room only. It came down to the
last few plays. I mean, it's just great drama, right,
and just the atmosphere was just incredible, and I remember

(02:33):
it just about every bit of it. You never forget
those those times in your life. And the same thing
last night. I bet the atmosphere was just electric and
you know, after Thanksgiving. It was in Austin and just
the whole tradition of A and M in Texas and
they pulled it out. Man, incredible. So I didn't even

(02:53):
see the game. I was busy with some other things.
But it just woke up this morning and saw all
the news. So hopefully you're a UT fan. And my
sister went to UT. I wasn't able to go there.
I went to Rice down the street in Houston, Texas,
so much smaller atmosphere. I did play football, but we
weren't on the big stage. We struggled a little bit

(03:17):
during my career there. But nonetheless, how was your Thanksgiving?
I'm sure it was wonderful. Just the one time you
can just eat and eat and eat all the things
that doctor Levine tells you natat you can eat it
your one free day right, almost like Monopoly, right, get

(03:39):
out of jail free card, right, remember that one that
you would sometimes get. It's your little ticket to get
out of jail. That's sort of what Thanksgiving is. It's
your get out of jail free card to eat whatever
you want on one day, you know, and normally it's okay,
it's just one day. It's not every day. We use

(04:01):
the term moderation all the time to help us figure
out how we can sneak in those treats and not
feel bad about ourselves. But yeah, hopefully you had a
wonderful Thanksgiving. The weather was just incredible, right, It was
just the perfect weather for a holiday. It was just sunny,

(04:25):
it was bright, it was dry, had a little coolness
to it. It was great to be outside throwing the
ball around, hanging out with your family, cooking your turkey
or frying your turkey, whatever you like to do. And
then yesterday was beautiful too, post Thanksgiving, Yesterday was a
beautiful day as well. So hopefully everything went well with

(04:49):
your holiday, your Thanksgiving. Now we're moving on the Christmas, yes,
the big day later this what's not December yet, it
will be in a day or two, and then moving
on to our New Year's So a lot of festivities
and a lot of eating, a lot of drinking, and
we all have to be careful with those choices. I

(05:10):
guess we're waking up every day trying to figure out
what is right, what is wrong, and how can I
get around that? So we are here for your phone
line to open eight nine six kov I win one
hundred three three zero kov I. We we'll try to
help you figure that out. As you know, there's I've
talked before. Since we are heading into Christmas, that's normally

(05:32):
the gift giving time of year. Sometimes a little overboard,
but anyway, that's when we think about trading gifts or
giving gifts. What are some good stocking stuffers. I mentioned
a few sessions ago. That's what this is. This is
a session. You're in session with the doctor, like you're

(05:56):
going to the office our therapy. You're in se ession.
But anyway, I mentioned a few sessions to go some
stocking suffers that you might want to think about to
receive or even to give that might be beneficial to
the person you're giving it to. I mentioned one these

(06:19):
risk watches. Now that I know number one, they can
monitor your pulse or your heart rate, and then I
think beyond that number two, that can indicate to you
if it's beating irregularly. And then someone a patient mentioned
a risk watch that checked your blood pressure. I mean,

(06:42):
I think that's awesome technology that you can just sort
of wrap this device on your wrist to go about
your day. It's not cumbersome. It's not heavy, it's not ugly,
it's not up tous, and it's just sort of in
the background monitoring you, which these are very important aspects

(07:03):
of monitoring how your body is working. Remember, in this country,
cardiovascal disease is still the number one issue that we're
fighting despite despite all of the knowledge we have about
health and the connection with poor decision making about your

(07:25):
health and the development of poor health, cardiovascal disease, right,
we still struggle with that despite all the medicines that
are on the market available to patients, just there are
obstacles and individual patients to get those medicines and to
keep taking those medicines and to get routine followed. A

(07:48):
lot of obstacles doesn't mean you're a bad person, just
things going on and just can't make it happen, and anyway,
it increases your risk of developing these cardiovascals. So that's
one good idea heading into the holiday gift giving season

(08:09):
which we call Christmas. Is one of these watches. I
don't know what all the varieties are out there, and
I think they're fairly affordable, but anyway, it's a good investment.
You think about spending your money wise. I mean, that's
a great investment to allow someone to know what's going

(08:29):
on with their heart and their blood pressure at all times.
The most common cardiac irregularity or rhythm irregularity is a
trio fibrillation. We have mentioned that before on this show,
a fib for short. I think if you are sixty
five and above and you have friends and family, there's

(08:51):
probably two or three people that have already been diagnosed
with hual fibrillation. And the thing about atrifibrillation from my experience,
is that normally it's silent. When it starts, you don't
feel anything. How you feel normal actually, and as the

(09:13):
disease are the a we call it an A rhythmia
is the medical term we use a rhythmia when the
rhythm is abnormal. A rhythmia, it's silent, but as it
progresses it becomes a bit more symptomatic. And for most
people it's just it can be very non specific, like

(09:35):
they don't feel strong anymore. Maybe they can feel their
heart or their chest fluttering or beating out a rhythm.
Maybe they feel dizzy sometimes maybe when they try to
physically exert themselves, they don't feel the best. These are
some sort of common presentations of aturefibillation. Some times it

(10:00):
could be as catastrophic as a stroke, because that is
one of the main concerns about atrial fibrillation is it
generates chaotic blood flow in the top chamber of the heart.
We call that the atrium atria atrium, and then the

(10:20):
lower part of the heart is called the ventricle. It's
made of four chambers, right the heart, two on top too,
on the bottom, one on the left, I mean two
on the left to and the right kind of like
a box, if you will, kind of a square box.
But the top part of the heart. Because of this,
a arrhythmia starts to beat chaotically. And when the heart

(10:43):
does not beat chaotically, then the flow of blood flowing
through the heart becomes abnormal. And I guess if you're
a mechanic, are you work on cars, are you an engineer,
and you've studied the flow of liquids or the physics
of liquid flow, you can very easily understand that if

(11:06):
the pump, which is what the heart is, it's pumping blood.
It's a muscle, it's pumping your blood all the time.
If the pump is broken or it's not beating efficiently,
then the flow of the blood will be impacted. Makes sense.
And when the blood does not flow like it should
because of this chaotic heart rhythm which we call atrial fibrillation,

(11:29):
which again is silent typically at the beginning, until it
becomes more symptomatic, and then you might have these physical symptoms.
But when the blood is not flowing well, the blood
can sort of clump together. We call that coagulate, and

(11:50):
when it clumps together, it forms these little clot boulders
or balls of clots, which we call thrombus. That's what
we call it, sort of a little blood clout as
a thrombus, and this normally forms in the top chamber
of the hart because that's why all the chaos is happening,
right The blood's not flowing. The blood's sort of slushing

(12:13):
around because of this choty blood flow, and the blood
will start to form clumps because it's not flowing the
way it should. It changes the mechanics and the physics
of how it's flowing and promotes sort of this clump
to form, and initially the thrombus will sort of hang

(12:33):
around in the in the chamber of the heart, but
eventually typically at some point unpredictable, it will be ejected
out of that chamber and into your circulation highway right
and it'll find itself or it'll start traveling. It'll go

(12:57):
wherever it wants to go, and a lot of times
it will cause a blockage of blood flow in whatever
area that it decides to go, and you don't get
blood flow to a certain part of your body. We
call that eschemia. And yes, it's one of the reasons

(13:17):
for someone to have a stroke, a major stroke, typically
because the thrombus typically takes out a larger part of
the brain and so you get affected more. So I've
seen this patients go to bed normal and then the
next morning they wake up, they can't talk, they can't

(13:37):
move their armored leg. I mean, it's a very very
sudden sort of event. And normally these thrombus related strokes
from silent atual fibrillation again normally a very impactful because
of that thrombus. And again most people don't know they

(13:58):
have it. It's silence. So that's why about these watches
that are now monitoring a patient's heart rate. Is a
good idea for a stocking stuff or for a good
holiday gift. To someone who could really impact their life.
And again, it's affordable, it's easy to use. You just
sort of my understanding as you just sort of strap

(14:21):
it on and press go, and it's monitoring it at
all times. I've had several patients come in who've already
had these like, hey, it's going off, it's beeping. They said,
it's irregular, and we do proper cardiac testing and whila,
we find it and we get them on medications and

(14:42):
they've dodged another bullet in life. Right, so many to
dodge just walking out of your room in the morning,
so many bullets to dodge. This is one way you
can do that. Plus it's monitoring how fast your heart
is beating. So some patients, again, as we get older,
we're all prone to these cardiac arrhythmius, cardiac your regularities

(15:05):
almost just mentioning hr fiblation because it is super duper common.
As all of us get old, we're at risk for that.
And I would say at sixty five you should probably
get your watch or even sooner. We see them earlier. Again,
they can be solent initially, but another thing that can
happen with the heart is it can beat too slowly.

(15:27):
We call that brady cardia. When the heart rate dips
below sixty, that's called brady cardia. And most people will
feel that one when it's happening, or as it's happening,
they'll feel that one because the heart's beating very slow,
so again sluggish blood flow, and most people feel tired, weak,

(15:52):
just fatigue. They don't have that energy, stamina, maybe dizzy,
maybe want to pass out again. Most people feel that one,
and most people come in sooner rather than later with
the Brady cardian. Normally, if you go to any sort
of medical outlet or facility, they're checking what they call
your vital signs. As soon as you get there. They're

(16:15):
putting a blood pressure cuff around your arm, they're checking
your temperature, and they're wanting to know what your blood
pressure on your heart rate is. It's a vital sign.
So most of the time the Brady cardio one gets
picked up fairly easily, meaning with even I talk about
this atrial fibrillation. You could have normal vital signs but

(16:38):
have atrial fibrillation, and it would require the doctor or
health professional to listen to your heart and a lot
of times we can hear it. We don't necessarily do
a lot of what we call manual pulse checks where
we put our fingertips on your pulse and feel it,

(17:00):
but we listen all the time, and then there's most
of the time if you go into one of these
places they're putting sort of cardiac monitoring on you that
can pick up those things. So we have a lot
of different ways we can pick up on it, but
braided cardio is normally one that we pick up on
fairly easily. And then certainly your heart rate can become
too rapid. It's beating fast. Now most people feel that

(17:22):
too again, almost like the age fibrillation dizzy. They fill
the sort of palpitations on their chest, the thumping of
the chest, maybe shortness of breads, feel like you're running
a marathon, right, which you are, because when you run,
your heart rate gets high, and that's what happens with
a lot of these what we call tachi arrhythmia is

(17:45):
so when your heart rate is low, we call that
brady cardia, and when it's fast, normally anything above one hundred,
we call that tachy cardia tha chy. Most people will
feel the tax cardio pretty easily and normally, like I said,
there's diseases that cause that, there's cardiac things that we

(18:09):
have to look into, but these watches can be pretty
easy to use to help with that, and certainly with
blood pressure. I mean the silent killer, right, they still
call it that, just because you can have some mildly
elevated blood pressure. It's causing damage slowly, but feel fine

(18:29):
because your body is protecting you to some degree. And
if you have the ability to very easily conveniently check
your pressure, I mean, why not. I mean that would
be tremendous and awesome. So again, some good gift ideas
heading into the Christmas holiday. All the gift giving phone

(18:50):
lines are open eight nine to six Scalva one, one
hundred and three to three zero. Okayovy, I'll be back
in two minutes. All right, Welcome back to doc Ovi

(19:14):
and Medical our phone lines I open eight nine six,
Kalova I one one hundred and three to three zero.
Kovia chatting about Christmas and the gift giving and maybe
some gift ideas for you. Some medical gifts that might
be good for you are a family member that you know,
help them monitor themselves, help them save their lives. Another

(19:37):
one that has come out are these CGM monitors. I'm
sure you've seen commercials for them. Continuous glucose monitors are
continuous sugar monitors, if you will, the technology that's been
around for many years but now becoming more mainstream because

(19:57):
a part of our issue with giovascular disease. There's risk
factors for cardiovascal disease, and certainly diabetes type two is
normally what we call the adult onset version of diabetes.
We have a type one which is more geared or

(20:19):
more related to a young person developing diabetes, different what
we call pathophysiology that causes that versus a type two,
and it is a big risk factor for cardiovascal disease.
Is when these sugars are not controlled, it is very
irritating to the cardiovascular system. Normally leads to a lot

(20:42):
of plaque formation. That's sort of the material that develops
in the wall of the blood vessel that over time
can narrow the what we call lumen of the blood vessel,
the opening. I guess think of it as bad plumbing
when you have to call the plumber to get that

(21:03):
rotoruter thing and just wiggle its way and clean all
that gunk out of your pipes. It's the same concept
as plaque. That's really what plaque is, and it happens
over years of just high blood pressure, high sugar, high cholesterol, stress, tobacco,

(21:23):
alcohol consumption, and activity, ultra processed foods just develops into
that gunk in the wall of the blood vessel and
gets very narrow. But again, trying to help patients find
solutions to monitor themselves easier, more convenient. These CGM devices

(21:46):
have come out are continuous glucose monitors. I believe there's
two two main ones competitors right now. There's the dex
Com dx COM and then there's the Freestyle Libre l
I b R, and I think they've made some updates
with both of those, so they're getting easier to use.

(22:07):
They're more compatible with most phones, whether you have Android,
you have Apple, very easy to set up. There's multiple
videos and how to set it up, and most insurances
are now paying for it, making it more affordable for
those who have diabetes, so that again you just can

(22:28):
monitor your sugar and see what's going on before you
it was sort of a multi step process where you
had your little device, you had your lancets, you had
your test strips, and you had to do this and
that and this and another thing to check your sugar,
and you had to take it out and put it up,
and maybe you're out of this, you're out of that.
So the CGM, like I said, it is just sort

(22:51):
of this sugar sensor, and I guess you just put
the sensor on and you leave it on for a week,
almost two weeks, and it just talks to your phone
and at any time you can look at your phone
and it tells you what your sugar is doing. So
a lot of people are certainly surprised to find out

(23:11):
that certain food items and certain beverage items will spike
their sugar. Food items that they didn't know should spike
their sugar, it does. And so it educates them on
maybe things that they can avoid and things that they
can maybe reduce their consumption of, because that's what it's

(23:32):
all about, is exposure and trying to limit your exposure
to food items that spike that sugar. Most people know
bread does that, and white rice, mashed potatoes, pasta flour
is huge. A lot of people don't realize. They don't
look at flours sugar. They think of table sugar. Right,

(23:55):
they get that one, don't put a table sugar in
my coffee. I don't want to eat anything with sugar
on it. Okay, I got that. But I'm gonna go
kill a plate of pasta or I'm gonna go have
my role are my bread, my sandwiches, my wheat bread

(24:17):
that I love so much, and eat that psich psich
No no, no no. That flour and that bread are
just boom skyrocketed pizza dough. Same thing. So, flour is
another food item that if it's in the food, it
normally will spike your sugar. And a lot of times

(24:37):
you don't know that. But with this continuous glucos monitor,
you can figure that out pretty quickly, and you just
learn how to avoid things and make better choices. And again,
same thing with beverages. There's a lot of people who

(24:58):
are getting into drinking diet beverages and oh, it has
no sugar and it shouldn't spik my sugar, and I
can just drink that all day long. A lot of
folks are finding out that diet beverages, yes it does
say zero calories, zero sugar. It's great. I mean, this

(25:22):
is lovely. I finally found a beverage I can I
can drink and I like it and it's not going
to spike my sugar. Some people are finding out that yes,
these non sugary diet beverages actually spike sugar. But you
would know that if you didn't have your CGM. So

(25:43):
I think it's a great tool. What I've seen and
using it, especially helping or working with patients, that it
does help them manage their debetes better because they just
have the understanding the knowledge of what is going on
with this sugar. To see the sugar high like that
can be a little frightening. I mean, we don't know

(26:06):
what it is. You can sort of go on with
your day and not know anything. But when you see
it high like that, you get it and it just
allows you to avoid those things that you know are
going to spike that sugar. So it's another good gift idea.

(26:26):
I don't even know that you have to have diabetes
to get it. It probably insurance company won't pay for it, right,
But another good gift idea for someone who has diabetes
or has pre diabetes, or it runs in the family
and you just kind of want to know what's going on. Yeah,
you can get this device and wear it and set
it up and help someone figure out what's going on

(26:49):
with their disease process. So that's another gift item that
you can think about in terms of helping someone out
doing this Christmas holiday anyway, phone lines are open eight
nine six k v I one hundred three three zero
kov I be back from our second break. All right,

(27:38):
welcome back to the doctor von matter. Our phone lines
are open eight nine six klv AT one one hundred
three three zero Kova. I'm just talking about the Christmas
holidays going into that, the gift giving that normally happens
during that time, and just some ideas that if you're
not thinking about that, but some ideas that if you

(28:00):
want to help another loved one out and their health,
and if they're struggling financially with their health or you're
just concerned about their health, some neat little gifts that
you might want to give them. Like I said, there's
these devices that watches basically where you can wrap around
the wrists and they can monitor heart rate and heart

(28:22):
pulse and even if the heart is beating irregularly. Again,
a lot of these things happen as one gets old,
especially sixty five and above and certainly, these continuous glucose
monitors have become really really game changers in terms of
allowing someone to check their heart rate, I'm sorry, check

(28:45):
their blood getting stuck, check their blood sugar very easily
in the morning. At night, it has all sorts of
alarms on it when it gets too high, when it
gets too low. Can just sort of be there tapping
you on this shoulder again to help you make better
choices about food, just because unfortunately, most of the food

(29:06):
items that Americans consume are sort of standard ultra processed
food items that again they're achieved, they're convenient, they're everywhere,
and it's hard to avoid eating this stuff. You're not
a bad person, it's just that that's where our country
is set up at this point in time. You know,

(29:27):
no one's really out in the back with a garden
and fertilizer and growing this and not growing that, and
you know, you have your own livestock, and that's the
way I was back in the day. But it's no
longer like that. So we're sort of fed, if you will,
by these these big major food companies, and again they

(29:48):
have to find a way to take you know, take
food and sort of preserve it so that it can
be transported, it can and be shelved, and then it
can be consumed at some point, you know, for the masses, right.
I mean it it takes a lot of food to

(30:09):
make sure that your citizens are well fed. It takes
a lot of food. And it's just it could all
of it cannot just be with with our preservatives. I mean,
that's that would be very difficult to achieve. It'd be
nice if it was that way, but it's not. So
we rely a lot on this sort of ready to

(30:31):
eat process food, but to preserve it so that whenever
you decide to eat it, it tastes the way it's
supposed to. It looks the way it's supposed to. It,
it sounds the way it's supposed to, right, has the
right colors and the right feel in your mouth. I mean,
there's a lot of food chemistry, a lot of food

(30:53):
knowledge in terms of how to do that. And one
of the ingredients that they liked include is sugar. Unfortunately,
and start arches and other sort of mad mate preservatives,
and people are having a hard time with these substances
according to the latest information, and again, checking sugar is
just one of those things that always seems to be

(31:14):
something that we need to check other than the blood pressure,
which for most of us, it's going to be a
blood pressure cuff. Again, that's another item that you can
purchase for a friend or family, not necessarily the watch,
but just a blood pressure cuff. There's a couple of
different versions out there. That's the one that goes around

(31:35):
your arm, which is the one we promote just because
it's a more traditional way of checking your blood pressure.
The technology is pretty good. Just about everybody can use
it on themselves. You don't need a friend. You can
just get the cuff, put it on and press a
button and it checks your blood pressure, records it and
sometimes it's sometimes you can communicate with your phone. You

(31:56):
can download it, bring the print out to your or
doctor and they can look at it. But that would
be another good gift idea is to get a blood
pressure machine a cuff normally, and normally, again, the one
that goes around the arm is the one I recommend
they have. The one that goes around the wrist, the

(32:19):
risk blood pressure cuffs, which I'm not a big fan of,
but again they tend to be a little bit more affordable,
so if that's all you can afford by all means,
you know, get that one, just because we need some
kind of information that it can be useful to help
us decide if we need to make an adjustments with

(32:39):
your medication or if you've never been diagnosed with these
particular problems. Again, as we all get older, some of
these things creep in there, like blood pressure. The blood
vessels get a little bit more stiff, the kidneys don't
work as well, and it just sort of generates sort
of this issue with hypertension, and unless you check it,

(33:01):
you wouldn't know that it was there. So we've talked
before about know your numbers, so that would be a
good thing to know the blood pressure, the sugar, and cholesterol.
As of right now, we don't have any personal cholesterol
sort of devices that you can check it home. Maybe

(33:22):
in the next few years they'll have something like that.
But again, just thinking about gift ideas, I mean, a
lot of times medicines can be kind of expensive for patients.
A lot of these medicines that are new on the
market normally work very well there once a day, have
minimal side effects, but can be kind of pricey. That

(33:45):
is another idea for you or your family has maybe
given them sort of a gift card or committing to
a few months of paying for certain medications. I've seen
family members do. That is sort of the idea of
a gift card, if you will, maybe in CVS or

(34:06):
Walmart or something like this, where you can go get
a gift card and it can sort of pay for
the expense of medications. That's another thing that I've seen
some family members do for those who are struggling with
their health. Again, I mentioned obstacles, and financial obstacles are
certainly a reason why a lot of patients don't reach

(34:28):
their goals with their health is again, when the money
is not flowing. The cash it's not flowing the way
you should normally, you eating and drinking a certain way.
It's normally tough to get to healthcare professionals, you have
to keep your job, and it just sort of can
put you in a position where you're more likely to

(34:49):
be unhealthy unfortunately because of the lifestyle that you're exposed to,
again because of maybe inconsistency with cash flow and maybe
financially not in the position to be for various reasons.
You know, sitting at a doctor's office for you know,
two hours where you need to be at work, you
can't take off you just got this new job. And

(35:10):
then just getting insurance. A lot of times most patients
when they get hired on there's like a ninety day
sort of period where you don't have insurance, you're just working.
And then beyond that you can get on their insurance plan,
which is where a lot of people have their insurances.
That employers offer an insurance plan, and it just sort

(35:32):
of goes hand in hand. Right, you're not working, you
have no insurance, no cash flow, you can't take a mask,
I mean, just sort of snowballs. And that would be
a neat or good idea if you do have a
loved one that you need some help with their medications,
their health, you know, again just giving them a gift

(35:53):
card or paying for a few months, four months, half
a year of medications, you know, rather than going out
and buying them you know, clothes or something that's really
not that useful. You could just commit to paying for
their medications for a few months or Yeah, I have
seen that in other families when it comes to that,

(36:16):
because sometimes these medicines can be very critical. I'll see
that a lot we talk about atrifibillation. As I mentioned
that the blood is turbulent and you can form these
thrombas and you get these clots well. But the one
way we prevent these clots other than diagnosis atri fibillation
is we place patients on blood dinners. And they have

(36:38):
this new category of blood thinners. It has been out
for several years, but still for some people it's still
kind of expensive. You know, eloquists and Zerelato and products,
it's still kind of expensive. But these are great, great medications.
They make it very easy to be on blood thinners
and get yourself out of trouble with these thramba's traveling everywhere,

(37:02):
but a lot of times because of the expense, they
can't afford it. It will be great, a great idea if
you know someone in that situation, family member, friend, and
they just need a little help with that, just hey,
I'll take care of that for the next four months,
first four months of the year. What have a case
and I'll give you a gift card or something like that.
You know, that would be just a great, great win

(37:24):
for everyone. You feel good about helping someone out and
then again safe a lot because these medicines are life
savers when it comes to that anyway. Phone lines are
open eight nine to six Kelvy, I won one hundred
three to three zero kov I were going to last
break me back in two minutes. All right, welcome back

(37:52):
to the doctor, Leavie medify. Our phone lines are open
eight nine to six Kalva, I want one hundred and
three three zero oko ya. Man. Time goes by so fast.
An hour just streams by quickly, quickly. I can remember.
If there's a topic that you would like me to
talk about, you can call the radio station, you can
call my office, and we can put that on the

(38:13):
agenda and talk about that. Remember, the show is for you.
We're trying to help you understand what it is that's
good for you and your family. Remember that everybody's an individual.
Just because Uncle Joe is taking this or ain't Sally
is taking that, it's working for them does not mean
it's going to work for you. I sort of have

(38:33):
that conversation often in the office for a particular problem,
let's say blood pressure, and they say, oh, my wife
is taking this one, my girlfriend has taken something else.
It doesn't mean it's going to work for you. And
just because it's new. I know we like new and improve, right,
those new and improve medicines, which normally are more expensive,

(38:57):
doesn't mean it's good for you either. Just because it's new, Man,
if your old medicine's working, then I wouldn't change anything.
And yes, generic medications are supposed to be equivalent in
terms of the potency and how they work. When a
name brand medicine eventually goes generic, it's supposed to be

(39:19):
the same. However, I do have patients that just claim
that no, no, no, that's not the case. This is different.
I feel different. And so yeah, some patients can only
take name brand medications, they cannot take the generic format
of the medications. While a lot of times you go
to the pharmacy, you're used to seeing the tablet shaped

(39:42):
a certain way, maybe it's a certain color, and then
all of a sudden, you know it was long and rectanglar.
Now it's a triangle, or now it's a circle, and
now it's green when it was blue. That's just sort
of how g formularies are in terms of where the

(40:03):
pharmacists getting the medication. There's a lot of companies generating
these various generic medications and Again, the standards are supposed
to be across the board, so that you're getting what
you're supposed to get. At least that's what I've been taught,
and they're inexpensive. So a lot of the blood pressure
medicines right now are pretty much generic. The diabetes medications,

(40:25):
there's still name brand issues. These these medicines are great,
these golp one medications that you hear about all the time,
Ozimpic and wagov step bound trulicity. They're still name brand
to be great when they become generic. But there's still

(40:45):
the old standby with diabetes medforman glyposide, pioglitosomee. These are
medicines that were named brand when I was a young
doctor are just coming out now they're generic and more affordable.
Some people have to exist on those medications and again
until maybe that job gets landed or they get back

(41:09):
on their feet, so you know, don't sort of ignore generics.
I remember I was talking to someone about the Walmart
four dollar list. I don't know if you guys remember
that back in the day when Walmart sort of pioneered
this list of generic medications typically or just this four
dollar list of medicines that had all these different categories,

(41:32):
tons of meds and different categories blood pressure or cholesterol pain,
I mean, you name it, and everything was four dollars.
It was a great, great move for you know, a
big company like Walmart, let's face it, one of the
biggest companies in our country and just trying to stay
ahead of the game and helping its citizens afford some

(41:55):
of these medications. I don't know if it still exists.
I hadn't heard a lot about it at this point,
but the four dollars medication list, a lot of other
pharmacies fall asup. Maybe it's an eight dollar list or
a ten dollar list, but nonetheless, just this group of
meds generic, you didn't have to have insurance that you
could afford, that you could afford to take care of

(42:19):
your body and your health. Just as we know, sometimes
even good food is more pricey. It takes more time
to prepare, can't really store it while you got to
buy it and eat it. And a lot of people
just don't have time to run back and forth at
the grocery store every day. I mean it's you're busy,

(42:39):
you got a lot of things to do, and then
this this food is just sitting there waiting for you.
Going to the big supermarkets and the food is just there,
like even Thanksgiving. We're two days out from Thanksgiving. Sometimes
ask my patience, why not just buy a Thanksgiving dinner.
It's already made. You don't have to be in the
kitchen all day and with your back hurting, your knees hurting,

(43:02):
and waking up at four o'clock in the morning. You
just go down to the local grocery store and boom,
there's a Thanksgiving meal for a certain amount. You just
buy it and it's all ready to go. How can
you say no to stuff like that? It tastes pretty
good too, It's not terrible anyway. Thank you for joining
another edition of the Dog Living Medical Hour. Remember don't

(43:25):
drink and drive, and drink some water and eat some vegetables. Again,
we're heading into the new year. You don't have to
eat vegetables all the time, but certainly just try to
include it into your routine and get healthier for next year.
Take care, have a good days.