April 15, 2025 • 41 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, welcome South East Texas Internet radio listeners. This
is your weekly host, Doctor Levine of the Doctor Levine
Medical Hour, coming to you live from the studios of
klv I here in Beaumont, Texas, across the street from
Parkdale Mall. Phone lines are open eight nine to six
klv I one in one hundred and three three zero
(00:21):
klv I. We'd love to hear from you and talk
with you and try to help you understand what's right
for you and what's right for your family, and what's
up and what's down as it pertains to the healthcare world,
which is a very complex, multi layered system. As we've
talked about before. I don't think it's going to get
(00:44):
any easier. So that's the genesis of the show. We'd
love to hear from you. Give us a call so
that we have plenty of time to discuss your particular
situation as it pertains to your family or yourself, any
questions and a few time to answer it right, like
(01:04):
going to a healthcare professional's visit. We don't a lot
of times have the time to do it, man, we try,
so give us a call anyway. The weather is perfect outside,
it's beautiful and not too hot, not too called, just right.
So if you haven't gotten outside today, get outside, walk around,
(01:26):
get that exercise program going. As we talk about all
the time, just a brisk walk will do, or pedaling
a bicycle or just getting on a treadmill. But something
to be said about being outdoors and letting the sun
hit your skin and then feeling that warmth. It's very
(01:48):
rejuvenating as we come out of our winter break, if
that's what you want to call it. Winter wasn't that cold,
didn't didn't caused too much problems. Did snow a few
times and that was fun. But we're heading into our
spring and this is pollen season, so we're obviously seeing
(02:11):
a lot of our allergy sufferers coming in at this
time with the nasal drainage and stuff he knows and sneezing,
watery eyes, respiratory complaints such as shortens of breath, chest congestion,
those are always coming around this here. It's interesting how
(02:31):
cyclical the healthcare industry is in terms of what time
of year it is and what diseases we see that
spike doing that time or doing this time. So it's
normally this kind of allergy season and allergy sufferers come
in a lot, but the market is responded to that
over the years, and there's a lot of medication that
(02:53):
they can get over the counter that was prescription at
one time. These what we call no sedating anti histamines.
You know them as Alivert or clariton or zertech Allegra,
wonderful medications. When I came out as a medical student
(03:13):
as a resident, these medicines were just hitting the market
because prior to that it was just our good old
friend benadryl, which is still a powerhouse medication in terms
of things that it allows a person to do. Just
that one tablet has a lot of indications just benadryl
(03:33):
by itself or what we call anti histamines, and there's
several antihistamines. But the one big issue with the benadryl
version is it caused a lot of sleepiness or sedation.
As we say in the medical world. It would fix
your nasal drainage or your running nose, but you would
(03:57):
go to sleep. It's hard to do during the day. Hey,
Michael from passing and I can help you.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh, good morning. I First of all, let me tell
you thanks for all you do. We always learn a
lot from you.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I'm going to give you a little bit of an upday.
I had an ablation on October thirtieth for acril flutter
and on March sixth I've got it's come back. And
so I'm going to have another oblation on the sixteenth
(04:35):
next Wednesday or this coming Wednesday, and uh, they're going
to do what they call Paul's field ablation, which is
for the left side of the heart this time, and
they're going to check the right side of the heart again.
But my question is this is when I keep wondering
(04:58):
what causes this? What is the weakness in the heart
that's causing these electrical problems. And I've always taken care
of myself and exercise and walked a lot and not
still doing that. But what's going wrong? Is there's something
(05:24):
wrong with the heart muscle itself, tissue in the heart
or what I keep asking people. And I've been looking
up on the internet to see all the different problems
that causes this, and nobody ever really talks about what's
(05:47):
going on with the heart. And I know you know
about aging and work with older people. So that's what
my question is. And if we get cut up, oh, heart.
Just want to thank you again for everything you do.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Okay, all right, Michael, we appreciate that, yes, sir, and
I'll do my best to answer that question. Good question
about atrial flutter and atrial fibrillation. As you know, the
heart is a muscle and it's got four chambers, two
on the bottom, two on the top. The top chambers
(06:25):
are called atria and the bottom chambers are called ventricles.
And atrial fibrillation is a very chaotic heart electrical activity
that is probably the most common electrical abdimality of the
heart in the United States, in my opinion, because we
(06:47):
see it most the most commonly in patients who have
risk factors for heart disease. And his main question is
what is going on with the heart itself that generates
atrial fibrillation, And just like with anything, there's certain risk
(07:09):
factors that generate the disturbance of the electrical system of
the heart. It's almost like, in my opinion, the electrical
system of a house. Brand new, It works and does
not trip up, but the older it gets, the more
likely things start to deteriorate and just don't work very
(07:32):
well and are more prone to shorting or sparking. Are
not delivering the current that it's supposed to deliver in
a very systemic, controlled rhythm, which is what we call
sinus rhythm. That's the term we give when the heart
is beating in a nice regular rhythm like it's opposed
(07:55):
to that's what we call normal. And they have an
assortment of all of these rhythms that occur when it's
not beating in a nice rhythmic, controlled fashion. So hr
fibrillation is one of the most common sorts of electrical
cardiac abnormalities that we see as doctors and what is
(08:19):
going on with the heart at the time that that happens. Again,
it's common and it's researched a lot, but there's certain
risk factors that cause a degenerative process of the electrical
system of the heart right and you probably already know
all those risk factors. Our call already mentioned one. Age
(08:42):
Age the most common risk factor in my opinion, just
because in my experience, there is a linear progression for
developing atrire fibllation as you get older, just spontaneously.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
As you know. I try to.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Talk about age and aging all the time just to
let you know that it is an active process that
we are born with. It's in our human program, if
you will, that at a certain age, the human body
starts to decline, physiologically, immune, neurologically, all the systems starts
(09:23):
a sort of natural decline, and the representation or the
manifestation of that decline can look different in everyone. So
for some people it's cardiac, for some people it's neurological,
for others it's something else. But as I've mentioned to
you before in the past, for most of us, something's
(09:45):
bound to happen as we get older. We're going to
have some sort of physical problem that we've got to
deal with. There are a few patients that can get
through their eighties without much going on. They don't take
any medications, everything's working. You see those patients in my practice,
and it's wonderful to see, but they are very rare.
(10:07):
They're in the minority of patients. The majority of us
will suffer some sort of physiological or physical issue as
we get older. And so for some it's the heart,
and for some, like I said, it's the electrical system
of the heart that starts to decline and become more
(10:28):
haywire and becomes more chaotic and atrial fibrillation atrial flutter
is one of these sort of chaotic electrical abortabilities that
can occur with the electrical system of the heart as
we get older. It's a degenitive process the wiring of
the heart. It starts to become more chaotic and generates
(10:51):
these sort of electrical problems. But risk factors other than
age can go into it. And you know these, right, smoking, hypertension, diabetes,
previous heart disease, obesity, poor diet, these are other risk
factors that can contribute to h fibllation and forgot, chronic
(11:12):
lung disease in particular inmphysma. Chronic bronchitis can also generate
these problems as well. We do see patients that have
no risk factors, and it happens because again, things are
just not perfect all the time. You could eat the
right foods, exercise, do everything, doctor Levine says, and still
(11:37):
you can have an illness or a sickness. I mean,
we do see patients like that. However, those patients are
more likely to respond very well to medicines. They tend
to have very easily controlled issues, and they do better
in terms of responding and staying controlled with the medications
(11:58):
that we give them. Patients who have multiple illnesses tend
to not do as well just because they're already in
a weekened state, they already taking other medicines, their system
is already sort of on a decline, and adding another
problem to the already multitude of issues just makes the
(12:20):
situation worse. So you still want to do the right
things because those patients tend to do better than those
who have five or six medical problems. So just getting
up an age seventy eighty ninety, your chances of developing
atrial fibrillation nature flutter are high. It's welcome to that
(12:44):
age is really the way you have to look at that,
and we've gotten a lot better at managing it.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
As this call of mention.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
There's a procedure called oblation where heart specialists call electoral
physiologists use their skill and their knowledge about the electrical
system of the heart and where the issue is in
the top chamber of the heart, and they try to
map out where the focus of the electric craft malady
(13:15):
started or where is it being reciprocated, and then try
to eliminate that using a procedure caliblation basically heat or
electrical activity to sort of burn that spot or disrupt
that spot so that they can't generate that electrical current anymore,
and then that sort of kind of kills everything. And sometimes, yes,
(13:39):
you have to undergo two, sometimes three procedures to finally
get rid of the focus of the abermalacy that's causing
the ature of fibillation. And it has been very successful
in a lot of patients, and because more doctors are
coming out that know the procedure, we're getting a lot
(14:00):
more practitioners that can perform the procedure, and so it's
sort of being moved up in terms of the process
of elimination. In terms of medicines, we use first, second, third, fourth, fifth,
So oblation used to be sort of a down the
stream option for a lot of patients, but now it's
being moved up to maybe a third option after medications
(14:23):
that certain medicines don't work. They're moving it up just
because it works very well. There's more practitioners available, and
they know more about it, they're more successful, so it's
a great option, especially let's say if you're a young person,
which we do see these in young people, and again
(14:44):
most of the time the young person has some sort
of risk factor in particular hypertension, or they're obese, or
they have what we call obstructive sleep apnea. We see
that a lot some older, younger person that has high potension.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
And it's poorly controlled.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Maybe their sugars are high and they're not controlling that
they're unhealthy basic, but again in general, yes, something is
irritated in the electrical system of the heart other than age,
and this rhythm starts and most a lot of people
don't even know they have it, to be honest with you, when.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
You first get it.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It's found coincidentally, maybe at a doctor's visit or a
lot of people are wearing these apple watches or smart
watches that monitor your pulse and they get sort of
an alarm that your pulse is either rapid or it's irregular,
and it just lets you know that something is wrong,
(15:42):
and then they go in and get checked They feel fine,
something is wrong. They go and get checked out, and
they get diagnosed with this atrial flutter or atrial fibrillation
again a chaotic heart rhythm that occurs in the upper
chamber of the heart, the atria, which you have two
on each side.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
One of the left, one on the right.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And a ventricle one on the left one on the
right at the bottom of the heart, and it just
causes this chaotic heart rhythm. So you might feel palpitations,
you might feel dizziness, you might be short of breath,
you might even develop symptoms of heart fare because the
blood flow is not proper. It's sluggish when the heart
(16:24):
is beating chaotically like that. That makes sense, almost like
a washing machine, if you will, when you hear a
washing machine going around sort of, that's how the heart
is beating this in a very chaotic, poor rhythm that
develops this sluggish blood flow. And so the shortness of breath, palpitations,
(16:48):
the dizzness that you might feel is because of blood
is not flowing farewell. And a lot of times you
have to come into the er, you have to be
put on a medication again, because a lot of times
this heart rhythm causes the heart to beat rapidly. We
call that tachycardia. And again, when the blood cannot flow
(17:09):
efficiently to the human body, you will start to have
physical symptoms from that. So a lot of times this
causes very rapid heartbeat and that's when people feel it
just because it's like when you're running or when you're
excited and your heart's beating raply, you feel that right,
But this sensation doesn't go away, I mean can go hours,
(17:31):
and most people know something is wrong, so they come in.
We check it out, and we find that their heart
is beating rapidly and it's beating chaotically. But again, we're
a lot better at treating this particular heart rhythm. We
see it every single day, multiple times a day, super
super common.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
So most of the time.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Again, it's the age that is the biggest risk factor. Again,
a more of a degenitive issue going on in the
heart electrical system and other heart muscle. But there are
other risk factors heart pertension, the ones that we mentioned
that caused this injury. Damage inflammation to the heart muscle
electrical system which generates this chaoticness, this focus of chaoticness
(18:14):
of the heart electrical system. But we're a lot better
at treating it now as this collar mentioned. Phone lines
are open eight nine six klv I win one hundred
three three zero Kalvia. I'll be back in two minutes, all.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Right, welcome back to doctor me metag.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Our phone lines are open eight nine six kov I
won one hundred three three zero Kova talking about atrial fibrillation,
atrial tachycardia palpitations, very very common cardiac disorder that we
see all the time. An other problem that we see
in atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter, as I mentioned to you,
(19:09):
because the heart is beating chaotically, the blood ain't flowing
the way it should, and so the heart becomes or
can become congested, and because the blood is not flowing
as I mentioned, it can become what we call hypercoaggonable,
meaning blood clots form. When the heart is not flowing
(19:31):
like it should, or if it's flowing slowly, it starts
to clump up and cause little clots, which we call thrombus.
And then when those clots move around in the system
and go somewhere else and cause plugging of the blood vessel,
we call that imbolie. And that's one of the main
(19:52):
issues with atrial flutter or atrial fibrillation or big concerns
other than the heart beating rapidly, which we call tachycardia
makes you feel bad. The blood is not flowing as
well in the heart and causes these thrombus to develop,
which can then leave the heart and travel everywhere and
(20:14):
block blood flow, and we call that an embalie, and
some common presentations would be a stroke. It's a very
very common presentation of unknown or untreated trual fibrillation is
a stroke because the blood clot or thrombus which we
(20:37):
call that, leaves the heart and it goes right to
the brain. Because the heart and the brain are very
close together, and when the blood exits the heart, it
goes through the aorta, and the blood vessels that feed
the heart feed right off the order as it's leaving
the heart, so a lot of blood flow goes to
the brain. And so the chances of a thrombus being
(20:59):
in the heart and then traveling to the brain are
very high just because of the location and just the
volume of blood that the brain is getting every heartbeat.
The chances is that it's going to go there, and
when it does go there, it finds a little blood
vessel to lodge itself in this little boulder of blood
(21:19):
or blood clot, and then no blood flows beyond that point,
and that is when you have a stroke. Can't see,
can't talk, can't move your arm, just because the brain
tissue that's responsible for that function, cannot function without blood,
so it dies. We call that a schemia. So most
(21:42):
patients who present to the er with a stroke, or
when you have a stroke, is called an a schemic stroke,
and that's the medical term for lack of blood flow
or no blood flow, and that's when you get your symptoms.
A lot of people go to bed normal and wake
up not being able to talk or move or do anything.
(22:06):
Because these strokes normally are very large strokes. They a
lot of times will take out a big section of
the brain again because of its plotforms, and it can
be a very very devastating situation, very devastating crisis overnight, immediate,
big time. And so that's why these watches and these
(22:27):
monitoring devices are helping a lot of patients out because again,
as atrial fibrillation normally starts, it's it normally kind of
comes and goes, meaning you might have and then it
goes away. You might have then it goes away, but
you don't feel anything. You don't feel anything. But a
lot of patients are coming in with these watches and
these phones and because they're being monitored, the watch is
(22:50):
monitoring while the phone is monitoring it and they're picking
up atri fibillation a lot sooner, so it's you know,
a lot of elder patients are being gifted these watches
by family members knowing this and just having them wear
the watch so it can monitor their heart rhythm and
their heart rate. And I think it's a good idea
(23:11):
as you get older, to be honest with you, because again,
if you can get through your sixties, are you in
your sixties seventies, that's sort of when these cardiac issues
starts showing up. Having this watch on your wrist and
being monitored all the time can be extremely helpful. And
I sometimes do recommend these watches to my patience to
(23:36):
have because we're sort of expecting this stuff to happen,
and if we can catch it and we can do
something about it prior to having a stroke or prior
to having this big event, then that's a much better situation.
Because normally, when we find someone who has agent fibrillation,
(23:56):
a couple of things that we're prioritizing. One is to
make sure the heart is not beating rapidly, because again,
sometimes patients come in for general medical exam or they're
just coming for their routine visit and we listen to
their heart, and we can hear the chaoticness. Yes, you
can hear it, and you can also feel it. Just
(24:17):
by palpating your wrist or your neck. You can feel
sort of the pulses of the blood flow. That's something
they teach us in medical school. But we can feel
the chaoticness of the blood and how it's pumping, and
then we can listen as well, and then we can
do a very simple EKG. Most doctors have an EKG
(24:38):
machine in their office to confirm that is what it is.
If we're unsure what it is, we can also do
what they call a Holter monitor. If you've ever been
in the hospital or an emergency center, they put all
those things on your chest with all those wires in
that little rectangular box. It's just telemetry monitoring. But again,
(25:01):
the phones and the watches that are out now, they
are monitoring our heart in terms of how slow or
how fast, as well as if it's chaotic or not.
And so this can be a very useful tool for
someone in their late fifties or early sixties. Maybe you
(25:21):
have some hypertension or some other medical issues already and
you just sort of want to stay on top of things.
That is a very convenient way of doing things and
can be very very helpful because you don't want to
wake up not being able to use your arm or
your leg or not talk, which can happen with these
(25:41):
what we call embolic schemic strokes from atual fibrillation. They
can really prevent you from having to go through that
because other than the heart rate being high, the other
thing that we want to make sure is that patients
are what we call anti coagulated. Right, as I mentioned
(26:01):
to you, the other big issue other than the beat,
the heart beating fast is causing these imbali, these thrombus
to leave the heart and go throughout the arterial system
of the body and cause a plugging of the blood vessel,
which again does not allow blood to flow beyond that
point causes eschemia. We can put you on blood thinners,
(26:24):
and you know some of these bloodthaters while you've seen
commercials on TV, the Eloquists and Surrelto and Prodoxa, those
are the common blood thinners that we use and belongs
to a class of new blood thinners. They've been out
for a while, but they're relatively new compared to when
I first came out because prior to these new blood thinners,
(26:47):
it was our old buddy, warfrin, our cuminin, our jentavin
is some other names, or rat poison as somebody calls it.
That was our old friend. And that's what patients needed
to be on if they had atrial fibrillation. They had
to be put on kuminin or warfarin, and you had
(27:09):
to check your blood counts every week or every two weeks,
and you had to up this and stop this and
hold this and restart and get another milligram. Oh my god,
all over the place. I mean that what has its
own had It had its own chaos associated with it
with checking this blood thinner level because it was a
(27:32):
very narrow therapeutic window when you're on kuminin. We wanted
to be within a certain window of levels, and sometimes
that can be difficult to achieve because that's the terrible
thing about kuminin is so many things can affect its potency.
Are so many things that can make it weak, in
(27:54):
particular foods and beverages, and so a lot of times
people would have to change completely the way they're eating.
The one big thing that they told you to avoid
are what they call green leafy vegetables, right, spinach, kale.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Or anything green, any green.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Vegetable because it had what we call vitamin K and
a lot of these vegetables which would counteract the kuminin,
and it can weaken the kuminin, so your blood blood
thinness would decline and then you would be more vulnerable
for one of these imboli or these thrambas from it.
So it was just really this very tight rope situation
(28:37):
that patients were in. And other than the blood being
too thick, it can also be too thin, right, It
can increase the risk of bleeding. And so man, we
were seeing a lot of patients coming to the hospital
the er just bleeding, bleeding in the geo system, bleeding
in the nose, bleeding in the bladder, bleeding on their skin,
(28:58):
bleeding intra eb nominally because the couman level got a
little out of hand very quickly, which it could happen.
You could have checked your coumanin level maybe four or
five days ago. Then all of a sudden it spikes
for whatever reason, and now you're bleeding spontaneously in some
anatomical site, whether it be your bladder, gi just system,
(29:20):
just system being the most common, and you have to
be hospitalized and go through all that, get needles and
blood transfusions and procedures, and I mean.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
It was it was a mess.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
And for some patients it still is who maybe cannot
afford the new medicines or maybe they had an adverse
reaction from the new medications and they can't do it.
But for those who can get these new medicines, eloquist
zrelto Prodoxa, which we call direct oral anticoagulants, which safer,
(29:56):
it's more effective, in my opinion, impacted by a lot
of things that you eat or drink, so it's more stable,
meaning you take it. It does what it's supposed to do,
but it's not causing all these other issues. And personally,
I see it cause less bleeding episodes. I honestly do.
You can still bleed on these medicines because they're blood dinners,
(30:19):
but I just see less episodes of the blood denders
getting out of hand and just sort of causing these
spontaneous bleeding episodes. But we still see bleeding with these drugs.
I mean, it's it's almost impossible to not have some
patients who have the bleeding episodes. But in my experience,
we see a lot less so and that was sort
(30:41):
of the big issue with h fibrillation when you got
that had to be put on that kuman a man,
very disruptive. But now they have home monitoring devices where
you can check your coon level at home, making it's
super super convenient if you unfortunately have to be put
on these mads, but certainly try Even if you're on
(31:02):
coming in now and you want to try these mats,
it's something you should talk.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
To your healthcare provider about.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
If you have atient fibilation, ate your flutter, you've been
on cooming in for a long time. I mean, you
might want to try out these mats. It might work
for you better anyway. Phone lines are opened eight nine
to six kalvia one one hundred and three to three
zero KLVA. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
welcome back to the doctor ViOn Medical Hour. We have
(31:30):
Joe from Houston. How can we help you?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Jill?
Speaker 4 (31:35):
Thank you pretty much. Uh, you've had a lot of
information from them from the person earlier. But is that
the same thing for are your heartbeat that's detective through
a KG that's the same thing you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, that's correct, Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Great.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, this particular heart rhythm called atrial flutter or atrial
fibrillation does generate an abnormal heart rhythm. And but there
are other heart rhythms that are deemed abnormal that are
not atrial fibrillation atrual flutter, and they are not open
to ablation. So it's part of the irregular heartbeat syndrome.
(32:22):
But it's there's other types that we experience, but we
don't do any sort of ablation. Ablation is for typically
atrial fiblation and atrial flutter.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Let's learn through like.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Zagan Joe Hello, all right with Joe Wax.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Ask you to call back and we can finish that conversation.
We have Leonard from Houston.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
How can we help you fonkitty? Doctor says my kitty
functions down at twenty seven percent in general? Is right?
Anything I can do about it?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Well.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Most of the time with decline in kidney function, we
try to look for a reversible cause of the decline
of your kidney function, and in this country, the most
common causes would be hypertension and diabetes. You could also
have an enlarged prostate. Being a man and that can
(33:25):
cause a blockage of your inflow, and that then will
cause some decline of your kidney function. So we always
try to look for a cause of kidney function decline
and then we work on that cause, so that if
your blood pressure is high, treat your blood pressure. If
your blood sugar is the problem, let's work in your
blood sugar. If it's the prostate, then let's fix that,
(33:48):
and then in doing so that can either preserve your
kidney function or prevented from getting worse, or even improve it.
So that's normally the first order business with most doctors
when they see what we call kidney failure is why
are the kidneys failing? Just like anything, can we fix it?
(34:11):
And we spend time looking for a reversible cause, whatever
that is, And in this particular situation, you're kidneys, we
try to look for what's causing injury. Now, as we
all get older, Leonard, I know you've called the show before,
and we know that you're up in age, getting older
by itself. I keep saying this again, the human program,
(34:35):
our body functions will start to decline. This a lot
of the vital organ I'm yes, vital organs will start
to decline. Naturally heart, brain, immune system, kidney function. It
just starts to go down just because it's hardwired into us,
and that could be the only reason for a decline
in your kidney function. You can't really do anything with age,
(34:58):
So the main thing is to make sure that the
kidney is protected as much as possible, that all these
other risk factors are controlled, and continue to follow up
with your doctor, and you know, treat your your body
like it's a temple and treated well, eat, write, exercise,
keep your way down. I know you know all these things,
but the main thing is why is it happening?
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And try to fix that.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
Well, he's done two things for me. One, he took
me off my form and put me on Parsiga and
he said that's going to help. And then he enrolled
me as a guinea pig and some kind of a
kidney study. I'm just getting started with that. I don't
know what they're going to do about that, but maybe
that's that'll do some good. The only thing I do
(35:46):
that I know that it's possibly bad for me is
I have one doctor pepper every day. Is that bad
for me?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (35:54):
Is it deadly? And all that?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Well?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, I mean you've you've listened to the show before.
You know that sugary beverages, which what is a Doctor Pepper,
That's what that is, is a sugar beverage. Having that
exposure to sugar every day has been deemed very unhealthy
by most experts. And if you're trying to be as
(36:17):
healthy as possible and maximize your healthiness, then consuming that
sugary beverage every day is not the best thing to
do and can increase the chances of something happening too.
You remember sugar at that level in these sugary beverages,
the amount and a lot of times there's synthetic sugars.
(36:40):
It's very irritating to the human body when it gets
exposed to that every single day. Toxic if you will,
by some experts opinions. So you're consuming a toxic beverage
every single day. You're exposing your body to that. So
you would have to expect something to happen because you're
exposing it to that that toxic substance. And yes, there's
(37:04):
patients who drink these beverages every day, nothing ever happens
to them. But people drive their cars fast every day
and they never get an accident. But the chances of
you getting an accident are higher if you're speeding all
the time. Same thing with your consumption of toxic substances
alcohol and certain amounts sugary beverages, and we have a
(37:25):
slew of them on the market, so I always try
to encourage my patients to avoid sugary beverages just because
it tends to increase the chance of disease and illness.
So you have kidney failure. If I were you, yes,
you're trying to do everything possible. That is not a
beverage that I would consume.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
Okay, well, sorry, Well to me, it sounds like a
balancing act. Whether I enjoy Doctor Pepper's enough to assume the.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Risk exactly, Absolutely, Leonard. It's always up to you. You're
a grown man and you can decide whatever you want
to do. But again, based on my observation being a
doctor and seeing how things develop, Doctor Pepper is not friendly.
So you're healthy, that is my opinion.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
All right, Well, thanks big guy, All right.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Leonard, we'll appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
And I know, man, it's hard giving up those convenient beverages,
those things that would look forward to. It's hard and
can unfortunately increase the chances of something happening. We see
it every day there in the hospital. Patients coming in
with rotten feet and massive strokes and massive heart attacks.
And you walk into the room and there's sugary beverages.
(38:48):
There's starches everywhere, chips, potatoes, cakes, pies. So phone lines
are open eight nine to six kV I win one
hundred and three to three zero klv I will be
on last break. All right, welcome back to The Doctor,
(39:09):
Living Medical. Our phone lines are open. Heading towards the
end of the show. We appreciate all the phone callers
and all the listeners.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Every week.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Again, if there's a topic that you would like me
to discuss that you would like me to dive down into,
just let us know. You can either call the station
or you can call my office four nine three four
seven three six two one and we'd be more than
happy to talk about it. Today we spend some time
talking about a trial fibrillation or a trial flutter, which,
(39:39):
again in my opinion, we see it every single day
in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Every day.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
I mean, it's just a massive amount of this stuff
going on. And again, if you want to catch it early,
if you're someone in your late fifties, early sixties, seventies, eighties,
These smart watches might be a good invent investment for you. Honestly,
one of the callers talked about atriol, I'm sorry, tachycardia,
(40:06):
and irregular heart rhythms. There are other types of irregular
heart rhythms that happen as you get older again as
a degenerative process of the human heart, you get into
all these electrical abnormalities and the heart muscles itself will
start to degenerate and be more prone to causing abnormal
(40:27):
electrical rhythms. But these smart watches might be a good
investment for you to start wearing to pick up on
these problems so that you can go in and get
checked out and be on top of these sort of
heart rhythms which can cause harm and can cause injury.
So might think about that on your next birthday or
(40:48):
Christmas time, getting one of those watches that a lot
of times can talk to your phone. Have your grandchildren
or your mother, your father sort of help you with that.
So we'll appreciate all the listeners on the Dark Lavine Medicallower.
Remember don't drink and drive, Drink some water and try
to eat some vegetables every day, just some broccoli or
(41:10):
some cauliflower, and again exercise a little bit. We'll see
you guys next week. Have a good day.
All right, welcome South East Texas Internet radio listeners. This
is your weekly host, Doctor Levine of the Doctor Levine
Medical Hour, coming to you live from the studios of
klv I here in Beaumont, Texas, across the street from
Parkdale Mall. Phone lines are open eight nine to six
klv I one in one hundred and three three zero
(00:21):
klv I. We'd love to hear from you and talk
with you and try to help you understand what's right
for you and what's right for your family, and what's
up and what's down as it pertains to the healthcare world,
which is a very complex, multi layered system. As we've
talked about before. I don't think it's going to get
(00:44):
any easier. So that's the genesis of the show. We'd
love to hear from you. Give us a call so
that we have plenty of time to discuss your particular
situation as it pertains to your family or yourself, any
questions and a few time to answer it right, like
(01:04):
going to a healthcare professional's visit. We don't a lot
of times have the time to do it, man, we try,
so give us a call anyway. The weather is perfect outside,
it's beautiful and not too hot, not too called, just right.
So if you haven't gotten outside today, get outside, walk around,
(01:26):
get that exercise program going. As we talk about all
the time, just a brisk walk will do, or pedaling
a bicycle or just getting on a treadmill. But something
to be said about being outdoors and letting the sun
hit your skin and then feeling that warmth. It's very
(01:48):
rejuvenating as we come out of our winter break, if
that's what you want to call it. Winter wasn't that cold,
didn't didn't caused too much problems. Did snow a few
times and that was fun. But we're heading into our
spring and this is pollen season, so we're obviously seeing
(02:11):
a lot of our allergy sufferers coming in at this
time with the nasal drainage and stuff he knows and sneezing,
watery eyes, respiratory complaints such as shortens of breath, chest congestion,
those are always coming around this here. It's interesting how
(02:31):
cyclical the healthcare industry is in terms of what time
of year it is and what diseases we see that
spike doing that time or doing this time. So it's
normally this kind of allergy season and allergy sufferers come
in a lot, but the market is responded to that
over the years, and there's a lot of medication that
(02:53):
they can get over the counter that was prescription at
one time. These what we call no sedating anti histamines.
You know them as Alivert or clariton or zertech Allegra,
wonderful medications. When I came out as a medical student
(03:13):
as a resident, these medicines were just hitting the market
because prior to that it was just our good old
friend benadryl, which is still a powerhouse medication in terms
of things that it allows a person to do. Just
that one tablet has a lot of indications just benadryl
(03:33):
by itself or what we call anti histamines, and there's
several antihistamines. But the one big issue with the benadryl
version is it caused a lot of sleepiness or sedation.
As we say in the medical world. It would fix
your nasal drainage or your running nose, but you would
(03:57):
go to sleep. It's hard to do during the day. Hey,
Michael from passing and I can help you.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh, good morning. I First of all, let me tell
you thanks for all you do. We always learn a
lot from you.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I'm going to give you a little bit of an upday.
I had an ablation on October thirtieth for acril flutter
and on March sixth I've got it's come back. And
so I'm going to have another oblation on the sixteenth
(04:35):
next Wednesday or this coming Wednesday, and uh, they're going
to do what they call Paul's field ablation, which is
for the left side of the heart this time, and
they're going to check the right side of the heart again.
But my question is this is when I keep wondering
(04:58):
what causes this? What is the weakness in the heart
that's causing these electrical problems. And I've always taken care
of myself and exercise and walked a lot and not
still doing that. But what's going wrong? Is there's something
(05:24):
wrong with the heart muscle itself, tissue in the heart
or what I keep asking people. And I've been looking
up on the internet to see all the different problems
that causes this, and nobody ever really talks about what's
(05:47):
going on with the heart. And I know you know
about aging and work with older people. So that's what
my question is. And if we get cut up, oh, heart.
Just want to thank you again for everything you do.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Okay, all right, Michael, we appreciate that, yes, sir, and
I'll do my best to answer that question. Good question
about atrial flutter and atrial fibrillation. As you know, the
heart is a muscle and it's got four chambers, two
on the bottom, two on the top. The top chambers
(06:25):
are called atria and the bottom chambers are called ventricles.
And atrial fibrillation is a very chaotic heart electrical activity
that is probably the most common electrical abdimality of the
heart in the United States, in my opinion, because we
(06:47):
see it most the most commonly in patients who have
risk factors for heart disease. And his main question is
what is going on with the heart itself that generates
atrial fibrillation, And just like with anything, there's certain risk
(07:09):
factors that generate the disturbance of the electrical system of
the heart. It's almost like, in my opinion, the electrical
system of a house. Brand new, It works and does
not trip up, but the older it gets, the more
likely things start to deteriorate and just don't work very
(07:32):
well and are more prone to shorting or sparking. Are
not delivering the current that it's supposed to deliver in
a very systemic, controlled rhythm, which is what we call
sinus rhythm. That's the term we give when the heart
is beating in a nice regular rhythm like it's opposed
(07:55):
to that's what we call normal. And they have an
assortment of all of these rhythms that occur when it's
not beating in a nice rhythmic, controlled fashion. So hr
fibrillation is one of the most common sorts of electrical
cardiac abnormalities that we see as doctors and what is
(08:19):
going on with the heart at the time that that happens. Again,
it's common and it's researched a lot, but there's certain
risk factors that cause a degenerative process of the electrical
system of the heart right and you probably already know
all those risk factors. Our call already mentioned one. Age
(08:42):
Age the most common risk factor in my opinion, just
because in my experience, there is a linear progression for
developing atrire fibllation as you get older, just spontaneously.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
As you know. I try to.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Talk about age and aging all the time just to
let you know that it is an active process that
we are born with. It's in our human program, if
you will, that at a certain age, the human body
starts to decline, physiologically, immune, neurologically, all the systems starts
(09:23):
a sort of natural decline, and the representation or the
manifestation of that decline can look different in everyone. So
for some people it's cardiac, for some people it's neurological,
for others it's something else. But as I've mentioned to
you before in the past, for most of us, something's
(09:45):
bound to happen as we get older. We're going to
have some sort of physical problem that we've got to
deal with. There are a few patients that can get
through their eighties without much going on. They don't take
any medications, everything's working. You see those patients in my practice,
and it's wonderful to see, but they are very rare.
(10:07):
They're in the minority of patients. The majority of us
will suffer some sort of physiological or physical issue as
we get older. And so for some it's the heart,
and for some, like I said, it's the electrical system
of the heart that starts to decline and become more
(10:28):
haywire and becomes more chaotic and atrial fibrillation atrial flutter
is one of these sort of chaotic electrical abortabilities that
can occur with the electrical system of the heart as
we get older. It's a degenitive process the wiring of
the heart. It starts to become more chaotic and generates
(10:51):
these sort of electrical problems. But risk factors other than
age can go into it. And you know these, right, smoking, hypertension, diabetes,
previous heart disease, obesity, poor diet, these are other risk
factors that can contribute to h fibllation and forgot, chronic
(11:12):
lung disease in particular inmphysma. Chronic bronchitis can also generate
these problems as well. We do see patients that have
no risk factors, and it happens because again, things are
just not perfect all the time. You could eat the
right foods, exercise, do everything, doctor Levine says, and still
(11:37):
you can have an illness or a sickness. I mean,
we do see patients like that. However, those patients are
more likely to respond very well to medicines. They tend
to have very easily controlled issues, and they do better
in terms of responding and staying controlled with the medications
(11:58):
that we give them. Patients who have multiple illnesses tend
to not do as well just because they're already in
a weekened state, they already taking other medicines, their system
is already sort of on a decline, and adding another
problem to the already multitude of issues just makes the
(12:20):
situation worse. So you still want to do the right
things because those patients tend to do better than those
who have five or six medical problems. So just getting
up an age seventy eighty ninety, your chances of developing
atrial fibrillation nature flutter are high. It's welcome to that
(12:44):
age is really the way you have to look at that,
and we've gotten a lot better at managing it.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
As this call of mention.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
There's a procedure called oblation where heart specialists call electoral
physiologists use their skill and their knowledge about the electrical
system of the heart and where the issue is in
the top chamber of the heart, and they try to
map out where the focus of the electric craft malady
(13:15):
started or where is it being reciprocated, and then try
to eliminate that using a procedure caliblation basically heat or
electrical activity to sort of burn that spot or disrupt
that spot so that they can't generate that electrical current anymore,
and then that sort of kind of kills everything. And sometimes, yes,
(13:39):
you have to undergo two, sometimes three procedures to finally
get rid of the focus of the abermalacy that's causing
the ature of fibillation. And it has been very successful
in a lot of patients, and because more doctors are
coming out that know the procedure, we're getting a lot
(14:00):
more practitioners that can perform the procedure, and so it's
sort of being moved up in terms of the process
of elimination. In terms of medicines, we use first, second, third, fourth, fifth,
So oblation used to be sort of a down the
stream option for a lot of patients, but now it's
being moved up to maybe a third option after medications
(14:23):
that certain medicines don't work. They're moving it up just
because it works very well. There's more practitioners available, and
they know more about it, they're more successful, so it's
a great option, especially let's say if you're a young person,
which we do see these in young people, and again
(14:44):
most of the time the young person has some sort
of risk factor in particular hypertension, or they're obese, or
they have what we call obstructive sleep apnea. We see
that a lot some older, younger person that has high potension.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
And it's poorly controlled.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Maybe their sugars are high and they're not controlling that
they're unhealthy basic, but again in general, yes, something is
irritated in the electrical system of the heart other than age,
and this rhythm starts and most a lot of people
don't even know they have it, to be honest with you, when.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
You first get it.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It's found coincidentally, maybe at a doctor's visit or a
lot of people are wearing these apple watches or smart
watches that monitor your pulse and they get sort of
an alarm that your pulse is either rapid or it's irregular,
and it just lets you know that something is wrong,
(15:42):
and then they go in and get checked They feel fine,
something is wrong. They go and get checked out, and
they get diagnosed with this atrial flutter or atrial fibrillation
again a chaotic heart rhythm that occurs in the upper
chamber of the heart, the atria, which you have two
on each side.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
One of the left, one on the right.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And a ventricle one on the left one on the
right at the bottom of the heart, and it just
causes this chaotic heart rhythm. So you might feel palpitations,
you might feel dizziness, you might be short of breath,
you might even develop symptoms of heart fare because the
blood flow is not proper. It's sluggish when the heart
(16:24):
is beating chaotically like that. That makes sense, almost like
a washing machine, if you will, when you hear a
washing machine going around sort of, that's how the heart
is beating this in a very chaotic, poor rhythm that
develops this sluggish blood flow. And so the shortness of breath, palpitations,
(16:48):
the dizzness that you might feel is because of blood
is not flowing farewell. And a lot of times you
have to come into the er, you have to be
put on a medication again, because a lot of times
this heart rhythm causes the heart to beat rapidly. We
call that tachycardia. And again, when the blood cannot flow
(17:09):
efficiently to the human body, you will start to have
physical symptoms from that. So a lot of times this
causes very rapid heartbeat and that's when people feel it
just because it's like when you're running or when you're
excited and your heart's beating raply, you feel that right,
But this sensation doesn't go away, I mean can go hours,
(17:31):
and most people know something is wrong, so they come in.
We check it out, and we find that their heart
is beating rapidly and it's beating chaotically. But again, we're
a lot better at treating this particular heart rhythm. We
see it every single day, multiple times a day, super
super common.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
So most of the time.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Again, it's the age that is the biggest risk factor. Again,
a more of a degenitive issue going on in the
heart electrical system and other heart muscle. But there are
other risk factors heart pertension, the ones that we mentioned
that caused this injury. Damage inflammation to the heart muscle
electrical system which generates this chaoticness, this focus of chaoticness
(18:14):
of the heart electrical system. But we're a lot better
at treating it now as this collar mentioned. Phone lines
are open eight nine six klv I win one hundred
three three zero Kalvia. I'll be back in two minutes, all.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Right, welcome back to doctor me metag.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Our phone lines are open eight nine six kov I
won one hundred three three zero Kova talking about atrial fibrillation,
atrial tachycardia palpitations, very very common cardiac disorder that we
see all the time. An other problem that we see
in atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter, as I mentioned to you,
(19:09):
because the heart is beating chaotically, the blood ain't flowing
the way it should, and so the heart becomes or
can become congested, and because the blood is not flowing
as I mentioned, it can become what we call hypercoaggonable,
meaning blood clots form. When the heart is not flowing
(19:31):
like it should, or if it's flowing slowly, it starts
to clump up and cause little clots, which we call thrombus.
And then when those clots move around in the system
and go somewhere else and cause plugging of the blood vessel,
we call that imbolie. And that's one of the main
(19:52):
issues with atrial flutter or atrial fibrillation or big concerns
other than the heart beating rapidly, which we call tachycardia
makes you feel bad. The blood is not flowing as
well in the heart and causes these thrombus to develop,
which can then leave the heart and travel everywhere and
(20:14):
block blood flow, and we call that an embalie, and
some common presentations would be a stroke. It's a very
very common presentation of unknown or untreated trual fibrillation is
a stroke because the blood clot or thrombus which we
(20:37):
call that, leaves the heart and it goes right to
the brain. Because the heart and the brain are very
close together, and when the blood exits the heart, it
goes through the aorta, and the blood vessels that feed
the heart feed right off the order as it's leaving
the heart, so a lot of blood flow goes to
the brain. And so the chances of a thrombus being
(20:59):
in the heart and then traveling to the brain are
very high just because of the location and just the
volume of blood that the brain is getting every heartbeat.
The chances is that it's going to go there, and
when it does go there, it finds a little blood
vessel to lodge itself in this little boulder of blood
(21:19):
or blood clot, and then no blood flows beyond that point,
and that is when you have a stroke. Can't see,
can't talk, can't move your arm, just because the brain
tissue that's responsible for that function, cannot function without blood,
so it dies. We call that a schemia. So most
(21:42):
patients who present to the er with a stroke, or
when you have a stroke, is called an a schemic stroke,
and that's the medical term for lack of blood flow
or no blood flow, and that's when you get your symptoms.
A lot of people go to bed normal and wake
up not being able to talk or move or do anything.
(22:06):
Because these strokes normally are very large strokes. They a
lot of times will take out a big section of
the brain again because of its plotforms, and it can
be a very very devastating situation, very devastating crisis overnight, immediate,
big time. And so that's why these watches and these
(22:27):
monitoring devices are helping a lot of patients out because again,
as atrial fibrillation normally starts, it's it normally kind of
comes and goes, meaning you might have and then it
goes away. You might have then it goes away, but
you don't feel anything. You don't feel anything. But a
lot of patients are coming in with these watches and
these phones and because they're being monitored, the watch is
(22:50):
monitoring while the phone is monitoring it and they're picking
up atri fibillation a lot sooner, so it's you know,
a lot of elder patients are being gifted these watches
by family members knowing this and just having them wear
the watch so it can monitor their heart rhythm and
their heart rate. And I think it's a good idea
(23:11):
as you get older, to be honest with you, because again,
if you can get through your sixties, are you in
your sixties seventies, that's sort of when these cardiac issues
starts showing up. Having this watch on your wrist and
being monitored all the time can be extremely helpful. And
I sometimes do recommend these watches to my patience to
(23:36):
have because we're sort of expecting this stuff to happen,
and if we can catch it and we can do
something about it prior to having a stroke or prior
to having this big event, then that's a much better situation.
Because normally, when we find someone who has agent fibrillation,
(23:56):
a couple of things that we're prioritizing. One is to
make sure the heart is not beating rapidly, because again,
sometimes patients come in for general medical exam or they're
just coming for their routine visit and we listen to
their heart, and we can hear the chaoticness. Yes, you
can hear it, and you can also feel it. Just
(24:17):
by palpating your wrist or your neck. You can feel
sort of the pulses of the blood flow. That's something
they teach us in medical school. But we can feel
the chaoticness of the blood and how it's pumping, and
then we can listen as well, and then we can
do a very simple EKG. Most doctors have an EKG
(24:38):
machine in their office to confirm that is what it is.
If we're unsure what it is, we can also do
what they call a Holter monitor. If you've ever been
in the hospital or an emergency center, they put all
those things on your chest with all those wires in
that little rectangular box. It's just telemetry monitoring. But again,
(25:01):
the phones and the watches that are out now, they
are monitoring our heart in terms of how slow or
how fast, as well as if it's chaotic or not.
And so this can be a very useful tool for
someone in their late fifties or early sixties. Maybe you
(25:21):
have some hypertension or some other medical issues already and
you just sort of want to stay on top of things.
That is a very convenient way of doing things and
can be very very helpful because you don't want to
wake up not being able to use your arm or
your leg or not talk, which can happen with these
(25:41):
what we call embolic schemic strokes from atual fibrillation. They
can really prevent you from having to go through that
because other than the heart rate being high, the other
thing that we want to make sure is that patients
are what we call anti coagulated. Right, as I mentioned
(26:01):
to you, the other big issue other than the beat,
the heart beating fast is causing these imbali, these thrombus
to leave the heart and go throughout the arterial system
of the body and cause a plugging of the blood vessel,
which again does not allow blood to flow beyond that
point causes eschemia. We can put you on blood thinners,
(26:24):
and you know some of these bloodthaters while you've seen
commercials on TV, the Eloquists and Surrelto and Prodoxa, those
are the common blood thinners that we use and belongs
to a class of new blood thinners. They've been out
for a while, but they're relatively new compared to when
I first came out because prior to these new blood thinners,
(26:47):
it was our old buddy, warfrin, our cuminin, our jentavin
is some other names, or rat poison as somebody calls it.
That was our old friend. And that's what patients needed
to be on if they had atrial fibrillation. They had
to be put on kuminin or warfarin, and you had
(27:09):
to check your blood counts every week or every two weeks,
and you had to up this and stop this and
hold this and restart and get another milligram. Oh my god,
all over the place. I mean that what has its
own had It had its own chaos associated with it
with checking this blood thinner level because it was a
(27:32):
very narrow therapeutic window when you're on kuminin. We wanted
to be within a certain window of levels, and sometimes
that can be difficult to achieve because that's the terrible
thing about kuminin is so many things can affect its potency.
Are so many things that can make it weak, in
(27:54):
particular foods and beverages, and so a lot of times
people would have to change completely the way they're eating.
The one big thing that they told you to avoid
are what they call green leafy vegetables, right, spinach, kale.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Or anything green, any green.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Vegetable because it had what we call vitamin K and
a lot of these vegetables which would counteract the kuminin,
and it can weaken the kuminin, so your blood blood
thinness would decline and then you would be more vulnerable
for one of these imboli or these thrambas from it.
So it was just really this very tight rope situation
(28:37):
that patients were in. And other than the blood being
too thick, it can also be too thin, right, It
can increase the risk of bleeding. And so man, we
were seeing a lot of patients coming to the hospital
the er just bleeding, bleeding in the geo system, bleeding
in the nose, bleeding in the bladder, bleeding on their skin,
(28:58):
bleeding intra eb nominally because the couman level got a
little out of hand very quickly, which it could happen.
You could have checked your coumanin level maybe four or
five days ago. Then all of a sudden it spikes
for whatever reason, and now you're bleeding spontaneously in some
anatomical site, whether it be your bladder, gi just system,
(29:20):
just system being the most common, and you have to
be hospitalized and go through all that, get needles and
blood transfusions and procedures, and I mean.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
It was it was a mess.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
And for some patients it still is who maybe cannot
afford the new medicines or maybe they had an adverse
reaction from the new medications and they can't do it.
But for those who can get these new medicines, eloquist
zrelto Prodoxa, which we call direct oral anticoagulants, which safer,
(29:56):
it's more effective, in my opinion, impacted by a lot
of things that you eat or drink, so it's more stable,
meaning you take it. It does what it's supposed to do,
but it's not causing all these other issues. And personally,
I see it cause less bleeding episodes. I honestly do.
You can still bleed on these medicines because they're blood dinners,
(30:19):
but I just see less episodes of the blood denders
getting out of hand and just sort of causing these
spontaneous bleeding episodes. But we still see bleeding with these drugs.
I mean, it's it's almost impossible to not have some
patients who have the bleeding episodes. But in my experience,
we see a lot less so and that was sort
(30:41):
of the big issue with h fibrillation when you got
that had to be put on that kuman a man,
very disruptive. But now they have home monitoring devices where
you can check your coon level at home, making it's
super super convenient if you unfortunately have to be put
on these mads, but certainly try Even if you're on
(31:02):
coming in now and you want to try these mats,
it's something you should talk.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
To your healthcare provider about.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
If you have atient fibilation, ate your flutter, you've been
on cooming in for a long time. I mean, you
might want to try out these mats. It might work
for you better anyway. Phone lines are opened eight nine
to six kalvia one one hundred and three to three
zero KLVA. I'll be back in two minutes. All right,
welcome back to the doctor ViOn Medical Hour. We have
(31:30):
Joe from Houston. How can we help you?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Jill?
Speaker 4 (31:35):
Thank you pretty much. Uh, you've had a lot of
information from them from the person earlier. But is that
the same thing for are your heartbeat that's detective through
a KG that's the same thing you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, that's correct, Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Great.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, this particular heart rhythm called atrial flutter or atrial
fibrillation does generate an abnormal heart rhythm. And but there
are other heart rhythms that are deemed abnormal that are
not atrial fibrillation atrual flutter, and they are not open
to ablation. So it's part of the irregular heartbeat syndrome.
(32:22):
But it's there's other types that we experience, but we
don't do any sort of ablation. Ablation is for typically
atrial fiblation and atrial flutter.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Let's learn through like.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Zagan Joe Hello, all right with Joe Wax.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Ask you to call back and we can finish that conversation.
We have Leonard from Houston.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
How can we help you fonkitty? Doctor says my kitty
functions down at twenty seven percent in general? Is right?
Anything I can do about it?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Well.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Most of the time with decline in kidney function, we
try to look for a reversible cause of the decline
of your kidney function, and in this country, the most
common causes would be hypertension and diabetes. You could also
have an enlarged prostate. Being a man and that can
(33:25):
cause a blockage of your inflow, and that then will
cause some decline of your kidney function. So we always
try to look for a cause of kidney function decline
and then we work on that cause, so that if
your blood pressure is high, treat your blood pressure. If
your blood sugar is the problem, let's work in your
blood sugar. If it's the prostate, then let's fix that,
(33:48):
and then in doing so that can either preserve your
kidney function or prevented from getting worse, or even improve it.
So that's normally the first order business with most doctors
when they see what we call kidney failure is why
are the kidneys failing? Just like anything, can we fix it?
(34:11):
And we spend time looking for a reversible cause, whatever
that is, And in this particular situation, you're kidneys, we
try to look for what's causing injury. Now, as we
all get older, Leonard, I know you've called the show before,
and we know that you're up in age, getting older
by itself. I keep saying this again, the human program,
(34:35):
our body functions will start to decline. This a lot
of the vital organ I'm yes, vital organs will start
to decline. Naturally heart, brain, immune system, kidney function. It
just starts to go down just because it's hardwired into us,
and that could be the only reason for a decline
in your kidney function. You can't really do anything with age,
(34:58):
So the main thing is to make sure that the
kidney is protected as much as possible, that all these
other risk factors are controlled, and continue to follow up
with your doctor, and you know, treat your your body
like it's a temple and treated well, eat, write, exercise,
keep your way down. I know you know all these things,
but the main thing is why is it happening?
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And try to fix that.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
Well, he's done two things for me. One, he took
me off my form and put me on Parsiga and
he said that's going to help. And then he enrolled
me as a guinea pig and some kind of a
kidney study. I'm just getting started with that. I don't
know what they're going to do about that, but maybe
that's that'll do some good. The only thing I do
(35:46):
that I know that it's possibly bad for me is
I have one doctor pepper every day. Is that bad
for me?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (35:54):
Is it deadly? And all that?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Well?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, I mean you've you've listened to the show before.
You know that sugary beverages, which what is a Doctor Pepper,
That's what that is, is a sugar beverage. Having that
exposure to sugar every day has been deemed very unhealthy
by most experts. And if you're trying to be as
(36:17):
healthy as possible and maximize your healthiness, then consuming that
sugary beverage every day is not the best thing to
do and can increase the chances of something happening too.
You remember sugar at that level in these sugary beverages,
the amount and a lot of times there's synthetic sugars.
(36:40):
It's very irritating to the human body when it gets
exposed to that every single day. Toxic if you will,
by some experts opinions. So you're consuming a toxic beverage
every single day. You're exposing your body to that. So
you would have to expect something to happen because you're
exposing it to that that toxic substance. And yes, there's
(37:04):
patients who drink these beverages every day, nothing ever happens
to them. But people drive their cars fast every day
and they never get an accident. But the chances of
you getting an accident are higher if you're speeding all
the time. Same thing with your consumption of toxic substances
alcohol and certain amounts sugary beverages, and we have a
(37:25):
slew of them on the market, so I always try
to encourage my patients to avoid sugary beverages just because
it tends to increase the chance of disease and illness.
So you have kidney failure. If I were you, yes,
you're trying to do everything possible. That is not a
beverage that I would consume.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
Okay, well, sorry, Well to me, it sounds like a
balancing act. Whether I enjoy Doctor Pepper's enough to assume the.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Risk exactly, Absolutely, Leonard. It's always up to you. You're
a grown man and you can decide whatever you want
to do. But again, based on my observation being a
doctor and seeing how things develop, Doctor Pepper is not friendly.
So you're healthy, that is my opinion.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
All right, Well, thanks big guy, All right.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Leonard, we'll appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
And I know, man, it's hard giving up those convenient beverages,
those things that would look forward to. It's hard and
can unfortunately increase the chances of something happening. We see
it every day there in the hospital. Patients coming in
with rotten feet and massive strokes and massive heart attacks.
And you walk into the room and there's sugary beverages.
(38:48):
There's starches everywhere, chips, potatoes, cakes, pies. So phone lines
are open eight nine to six kV I win one
hundred and three to three zero klv I will be
on last break. All right, welcome back to The Doctor,
(39:09):
Living Medical. Our phone lines are open. Heading towards the
end of the show. We appreciate all the phone callers
and all the listeners.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Every week.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Again, if there's a topic that you would like me
to discuss that you would like me to dive down into,
just let us know. You can either call the station
or you can call my office four nine three four
seven three six two one and we'd be more than
happy to talk about it. Today we spend some time
talking about a trial fibrillation or a trial flutter, which,
(39:39):
again in my opinion, we see it every single day
in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Every day.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
I mean, it's just a massive amount of this stuff
going on. And again, if you want to catch it early,
if you're someone in your late fifties, early sixties, seventies, eighties,
These smart watches might be a good invent investment for you. Honestly,
one of the callers talked about atriol, I'm sorry, tachycardia,
(40:06):
and irregular heart rhythms. There are other types of irregular
heart rhythms that happen as you get older again as
a degenerative process of the human heart, you get into
all these electrical abnormalities and the heart muscles itself will
start to degenerate and be more prone to causing abnormal
(40:27):
electrical rhythms. But these smart watches might be a good
investment for you to start wearing to pick up on
these problems so that you can go in and get
checked out and be on top of these sort of
heart rhythms which can cause harm and can cause injury.
So might think about that on your next birthday or
(40:48):
Christmas time, getting one of those watches that a lot
of times can talk to your phone. Have your grandchildren
or your mother, your father sort of help you with that.
So we'll appreciate all the listeners on the Dark Lavine Medicallower.
Remember don't drink and drive, Drink some water and try
to eat some vegetables every day, just some broccoli or
(41:10):
some cauliflower, and again exercise a little bit. We'll see
you guys next week. Have a good day.
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