Initialize sequencing coming to you live from Houston, Texas, home to the world's
largest medical center in the Approach bras everything looking at GM to. This is
Your Health First, the most beneficial health program on radio with doctor Joe Bellotti.
During the next hour, you'll learn about health, wellness and the prevention
of disease. Now here's your host, doctor Joe Bellotti. Well, a
good Sunday evening to everybody. I'm doctor Joe Galotti. Thanks for tuning into
Your Health First. We're here every single Sunday evening between the hour of seven
and eight pm. And our single minded goal that I tip start every program
off with is to make you better consumers of healthcare, raising your health IQ
so that you can take controls, take the reins of your health and stay
healthy. That is it. That is our single mission. It's a big
order, but that's what we are looking for now. Our website, it's
very easy to communicate with me and my team. Find out what we're all
about. Simplest our website Doctor Joegalotti dot com, d R J O E
G A L A t I dot com, Doctor Joegalotti dot com and you
can sign up for our newsletter. Check out our podcast episodes, all of
our learning and educational material that's there be it, things that are you know,
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website which is Texasliver dot com. We take care of patients with various liver
disease ailments and digestive disorders when we are not on the radio. So it's
all there. You could find it by going to doctor Joegalatti dot com.
Well, unfortunately, the Texans took a tough one on the chin this evening.
If you are football fans, they were in New York playing the Jets,
and the Jets are not really that great of a team, and the
Texans have certainly had a lot of steam and a momentum going into the game,
but they sort of fell apart and so that sort of that sort of
stinks. But nonetheless, hope you all had a good Sunday. It was
plenty nice out and hopefully you had some time to get out and recreate and
exercise and take care yourselves. All right, So on the program now,
you know, here we are with the with Christmas a few weeks away.
Traditionally I have we have during the season, we've talked about holiday gift ideas
and those types of things, how to handle holiday stress, and how to
not overeat, over drink and get sick at the multitude of holiday parties that
you'll be going to if you are part of that crowd. But but for
tonight instead, what I want to try to talk about is really, at
this point in time, it's a little premature and and and you know,
of course, when New Year's comes around, it's New Year's resolutions, and
now's the time that I'm going to lose weight, and I'm going to exercise,
I'm going to start walking, I'm going to ride a bike, et
cetera. I was thinking, why not just start talking about this now?
All right? Really, every day that I see patients, I am talking
about things that they need to do now. And we don't necessarily have a
date and a timeline. Yes, I know this is a tough time of
the year, the new year's coming in. Traditionally we will make a plan
for the new year, new year planning. Okay, I get that,
But I do believe that in our quiet time, when we are reflecting on
ourselves, we can start thinking about our own health. And the reason I
do this and it is the premise of the radio program. It is the
background, the back bone of my practice as a practicing physician is because so
much of what I see and I say this all the time and I try
really do mean it, and anybody that is on my team, people that
I work with, you will see a steady, steady stream of patients that
come and see us for the first time, and they are very, very
sick. And it is not taking a cheap shot at anybody that was taking
care of these patients prior to them coming to see me. But these are
things. These are diseases, conditions, syndromes that could have been either diagnosed
and treated with an intervention years earlier. And I am not exaggerating when I
say years earlier. So now when they see me, they are so far
gone that the options for treatment, the options for a cure, the options
for recovery are less, not zo or oh, but they're far less.
And it just creates a lot of angst for the patient and all of us.
And so my goal here is to try to forecast years ahead of time
what may happen if you have a problem right now that needs to be addressed.
It is that simple. So I have carved out a bit of a
structure for you to think about. And for those that are regular listeners,
those that know me, they've come to see me, whatever the case may
be. This is a representation of my core beliefs. And the key thing
here is for you, those of you listening tonight, those of you that
follow us, is really to take ownership. And it is my true belief
that good health people that are health. And you may be looking at coworkers
or a friend or neighbor and you look at somebody and say, hey,
that guy looks healthy. That lady, look at her, she looks fit.
I'll tell you it is no accident. They have invested and worked on
this. So look, we're getting signs. We've got to take a quick
break here. So let's take a break. When we come back, we
will start thinking about twenty twenty four and the takeaways that you all need to
think about. So doctor Joegalotti dot com is our website. Stay tuned,
don't go away. We will write back. Welcome back everybody, Doctor Joe
Galotti. Every Sunday between seven and a pm, we are here trying to
be your guiding light on your own personal health and wellness and the really the
health and wellness of the people you love, your family, your kids,
your grandkids, your coworkers, your neighbor, your best friend, Bob.
We're all in is together. If any of you could share information to help
somebody else out, why wouldn't you do it? And that's what we're here
for every Sunday between seven and eight pm our website doctor Joegalotti dot com and
to email me directly. Now you can send me a message through the doctor
Joe Galotti website. That's easy to do, but the direct shortcut radio at
doctor Joegalotti dot com. Radio at doctor Joeglotti dot com. Now we have
been giving away. Last weekend, we gave away two books. They're in
the mail, so if you are listening from last week, they are signed.
You'll probably get them at the end of the week. But I will
give away again two signed books Eating Yourself my book and email me at radio
at doctor Joegalotti dot com. Radio. I talked to Joe Galotti dot com
and let's just say the first two first two people that email me will get
a signed book. You have to tell me in the message the email message
who you want the book sent to. You know, you know to mom,
or to your wife, or to yourself or to a kid, and
your address where we can mail you the number, and if you want to
throw in your phone number, we could give you a call as well.
But two free books of eating yourself sick. If you're not so lucky,
you could also go to the website and buy one on Amazon or any of
the other online sources. All right, so let us start off. So
we were talking the last segment about an approach for twenty twenty four and and
your health, and so for everybody listening tonight, you are probably aware that
you may be dealing with a current health problem or an impending health problem.
You know something just is not right, But the worst thing in the world
is to call yourself out on it, which is tough, or let alone
be called out by a relative, spouse, a significant other, to be
told, hey, you better check this out, and it really is one
of the worst things you could go through. But I'd like to think in
the end, the key is identification. Early. Identification early of a problem
is always going to be to your advantage. So in no particular order,
these are the things that you need to be aware of. Some are very
obvious and you may say, is this guy kidding me? He really wants
me to write this down. But anyway, here we go. Take,
first of all, take an honest look at your weight. Now, with
so many people being overweight or significantly obese, it almost has gotten to the
point where we have dumbed down the entire weight discussion to everybody's overweight. Everybody
is fat. Come on, why are you picking on me? Well,
I'm not picking on you, and we're not signaling you out. But the
amount of disease and misery that develops from obesity is certainly an indication that we
need to address this. And again, we're not here to fat shame anybody
or or poke at people, or think that everybody has to look as if
they're coming out of GQ magazine or the Sports Illustrated Bathing Suit Edition. I'm
talking just the health and wellness aspect. I don't care what you look like
in a bathing suit. I worry about all of the downstream complications. And
so one way to decide am I overweight or not? You know, or
how overweighted I am it is to calculate your body mass index, and there
are calculators online BMI calculators. Now, there are probably the naysayers out there
that say, well, you know, BMI really doesn't indicate if I'm overweight
or not. I'm not going to get down into the weeds with you,
but it's a good start. I would say BMI captures eighty five ninety percent
of the people, and lucky you if you're in the ten percent that have
a high BMI but you're not overweight or obese. But start with your BMI
calculation. Okay, it's a great first start, very easy to determine just
where you are. Are you overweight or are you obese? Or are you
morbidly obese? Number two the other numbers you need to know. Now you
may say, well where do I get these numbers from? Well, first
I would say, if you don't already have copies of your lab work,
right, you go to the doctor, they draw lab and you may get
a message, hey, hey, bob, everything is okay. You need
to get copies of these labs and make a little file so either you have
them. If you don't have them, contact your doctor, your nurse practitioner,
your physician assistant, whoever you're seeing, whatever clinic office, hospital you're
going to and request these labs, these lab results. You want to know
your cholesterol, okay, your cholesterol. You want to know your blood sugar,
your glucose. Now, you want to make sure the glucose was taken
while you were fasting, meaning right not right after a big meal. You
want to know your liver numbers. This is the ALT and the ast.
Okay, these are very important. I'll tell you why. And you want
to know your blood pressure now, hopefully, and we've talked about this a
bunch. Hopefully everybody has a blood pressure cuff at home and you should have
an idea of what your blood pressure is. Realizing that the American Heart Association
and others have lowered the blood pressure normal range to about one hundred and twenty
over seventy I believe, so it used to be one thirty, one hundred
and thirty. The top number over seventy. Patients that are walking around blood
pressure one fifty one sixty, and they're telling me that their doctor is still
watching it. That is insane. So what I want you to do,
and we got to take a break for news, weather or traffic, know
your weight or your BMI, cholesterol, blood sugar, your living numbers and
your blood pressure will come back after this. Nobody leave. Get a pencil,
sharpen it up, get a piece of paper. Call your best friend
on the radio, tell them to tune into your house first with doctor Golotti
and join along in the conversation. But we'll be back. Don't forget doctor
Joeglotti dot com. Stay tuned. We'll be back rolling along with everybody on
this Sunday evening. We're in the Christmas spirit Hanukkah, all the holidays,
the joy and festivities. Thanks for taking a little bit of your time.
Maybe you're driving home from a party or driving home from the mall or store.
We're always glad to have everybody here your health first, every Sunday between
seven and a pm. Doctor Jogalotti dot com. Doctor Jogalotti dot com.
And as I said at the last segment, to signed copies of my book
Eating Yourself sick inscribe to whoever you would like your secret love, but you
have to email me radio at doctor Joeglotti dot com. Radio at doctor Joglotti
dot com, include your name and address and where you want the books sent
to. But we'll get them out in the mail probably tomorrow Monday, morning.
I've already alerted my team to get some books pulled aside for me to
sign and put them in a brown envelope and get them off to your address.
All right, what we have been talking about, and don't forget when
you go to the website doctor Joglotti dot com. Follow us along on all
the social media the video on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and soner.
For our newsletter, it's every Saturday morning we send out a newsletter across the
country with all kinds of health and wellness and exercise in food tips, recipes,
a lot of fun stuff. But it's all at doctor Joeglotti dot com.
All right, So planning for twenty twenty four, we are breaking ranks
and starting off a little earlier. We're not waiting for New Year's We're doing
it here in December. So last segment as a reminder, take an honest
look at your weights, as hard and terrible as it is. We need
to do that. Know your cholesterol, your blood sugar, your liver numbers.
And again that's what I do. I'm a hepatologist, a liver specialist,
and so we look at these liver numbers, the alt and the ast
and then know your blood pressure. Now these one, two, three,
four, five, These five things I would say to you and the rationale
behind it. If you know these five numbers are values, you are going
to cover yourself for the majority of health problems that you may have right now,
or health problems that may be lurking in your future, that most importantly
you can act on. All right, we don't want you to just simply
get these numbers and say, ah, you know my blood sugar is up.
Now what and you see the other problem here? And this is why
I have always, just about my entire career, been a very big advocate,
a very big fan of speaking two and speaking with patients the consumers directly.
Now, I do a lot of physician and nursing education. That is
a big part of our mission, but an even bigger part is speaking directly
to the public. Because if you are going to rely one hundred percent on
your medical team to address all of these issues, I am sorry, you
will be disappointed in a lot of the cases. Now, physicians may be
listening, and a lot of physicians do listen to the program, and they
may get a bit pissed off with what I'm saying. Pardon my French.
But the truth is not because they are not good people, not because they
are not good providers, not because they are well trained. The system is
working against them and all of us, including me. To keep moving,
move fast. You've got to get people in. The reimbursements are lower,
you're not getting paid as much, so you have to sort of see more
patients and you can't spend the amount of time that everybody deserves. And so
the shift, and this is what I've been really preaching for thirty years.
The shift has to be to the patient, the patient's family, the whole
community taking interest and understanding what the heck is going on. So that's why
you need to do that and really work as a team with your healthcare providers.
So if you find that your weight is going up, you have to
sit with the doctor and say, hey, look, I need a plan.
We're not just going to kick the can down the road. So just
a few sobering numbers. Why it is important to know the ramification of all
of these numbers. Now, your elevated blood sugar is a potential indication that
you may have diabetes. Okay, you're all familiar with that. There are
thirty eight million people in America with diabetes. That's about twelve percent of the
population, So twelve out of one hundred people are going to have diabetes.
It may be one of you. Now let's talk about pre diabetes. So
this is where your blood sugar is elevated, but you're not quite meeting all
of the requirements to call somebody diabetic, so you're instead of saying it's pre
diabetic, let's say almost diabetic. Well that's not a comfortable position to be
in because when you're almost diabetic, if you do nothing, you will become
diabetic. So that is not good. A whopping one hundred million people have
pre diabetes, which represents about thirty eight percent of the population. So for
everybody listening tonight, there is even a greater chance that you may be pre
diabetic if you're not one of the thirty eight million that are already diabetic.
Okay, now why do we care? Well, Diabetes is a savage disease.
It will put you at risk for heart disease, heart attack, stroke,
high blood pressure, kidney disease, kidney failure, end up on dialysis,
increase risk of cancer, and so other neurologic problems. You go blind,
you will lose circulation to your extremities and start having your toes chopped off
or amputations. Not a very good disease to have, and a lot of
it can be prevented with early interventions. So again it behooves you to know
your numbers. Number two high blood pressure. That's where we want you to
know your blood pressure well. According to World Health Organization, in nineteen ninety,
there were six hundred and fifty million people with hypertension. If you go
to twenty nineteen, there are one point three billion people one point three billion
would it be that have hypertension, which has doubled so in the from nineteen
ninety to twenty nineteen, that's almost thirty years. With all the with all
of the information on the internet, social media, access to information, yet
again our health is going in the wrong direction. So about a third of
everybody in the world has hypertension. It is a silent disease. You may
not have any symptoms, and so you need to know your blood pressure.
Get a decent quality blood pressure cuff. Hey, that is a great Christmas
present. I would say, get a good blood pressure cuff, not the
junkie ones on your wrist. You want one that goes over your arm,
and knowing your blood pressure, you may say, hey, I feel okay,
I'm sleeping, Okay, I don't look bad, but I have high
blood pressure. Holy crap. I need to get this addressed again, only
because you know your numbers and the last one is and I got to take
a break. Final second in coming up, elevated cholesterol. Seventy one million
Americans have high cholesterol. High cholesterol is going to lead to advancing cardiovascular disease,
heart attack, stroke, kidney problems. And again, you may feel
absolutely fine, you may look good, as I like to say, you
passed the eyeball test, but nonetheless it's a problem. So you need to
know what your labs to look like. All right, Doctor Joe Galotti,
Doctor Joegalotti dot com. Stay tuned, don't forget if you want a book
radio at doctor Joegalotti dot com. Stay tuned. Final segment coming right out.
Final segment. Everybody for this week's your health First, Doctor Joe Galotti,
thanks for tuning in and sharing a part of your evening your holiday season
with us every Sunday between seven and eight pm. Don't forget our website,
Doctor Joegalotti dot com. Sogna for a newsletter. Our social media is there.
Want to send me a question, you need a consultation with a specialist,
wherever you are, we will try to help you. This is a
coast to coast program on the iHeartRadio app. We're broadcasting out of Houston,
but we have friends, colleagues, connections all around the country. So if
you need help with getting a specialist or getting some feedback, that is a
resource of the program. And don't forget we are giving away some signed books
Eating Yourself Sick Radio at doctor Joeglotti dot com. Email me Radio at doctor
Joeglotti dot com. All right, so we have been talking about trying to
strategize for twenty twenty four and it may seem a bit overwhelming, and I'll
keep talking about this, which I do all the time, but the more
you become familiar with the numbers and the things that you need to know,
but also the sheer number of people that have these different disc So we left
off with cholesterol elevated cholesterol affecting seventy one million Americans. And when you talk
about obesity, greater than eighty percent of the population is overweight, obese,
or severely overweight. Severely obese, and so I would say that without obesity,
many of these diseases would not occur. With regard to fatty liver,
that's something that you're going to continue to hear a lot about something called fatty
liver. Eighty to one hundred million people have fatty liver, and fatty liver
in a subset of patients will lead to cirrhosis, scarring of the liver,
liver failure, liver cancer, may need a liver transplant. These are not
completely benign diseases. Well, you know, look, I'm overweighed. My
mother was big, my father was big. It runs into family. Uh
huh. This is this is a whole new era. Other things. Other
diseases that are common reflux, heartburn, indigestion. Thirty percent of the adult
population has gird ges rosophageal reflux disease, and I would say directly related to
our diet and obesity. And lastly, constipation a great topic to talk about
on Sunday evening, maybe while you're making lunch for your kids tomorrow. Sixteen
percent of adults have constipation, but if you're over sixty, over sixty years
old, about thirty three percent of the population is constipated again directly related to
diet and diabetes and obesity. All right, so there's a lot of I
would say, misery out there that people aren't feeling well. And I see
this every day in the practice of medicine. People come and speak with me,
they speak with my colleagues, and adults are not feeling well. If
you're thirty five forty years old and you have heartburn and your bowels and distension,
and you're fatigued and you're short of breath, this is not good.
But it is taking ownership of these numbers. And so when you look at
the numbers that you need to do and write them down, knowing what your
weight is, your cholesterol, blood sugar, liver numbers, and blood pressure.
Most of these you can get yourself. So you know your weight,
you know your blood pressure. It's the cholesterol, the blood sugar, and
the liver numbers that you need to talk with your So for many people,
you may want to say, all right, this week my objective, and
maybe you're calling for a spouse, or you're calling for a family member or
helping a friend get these numbers because trying to navigate the medical bureaucracy is tough,
and I know that. But what you would want to do is contact
your doctor's office and say, look, I believe I had blood work done
a month ago, six months ago, or whenever it was at the time
on my last visit. Can you send me these results. So they may
say, okay, we'll put them in a mail, or they'll email them
to you, or they'll fax them to you. People still get stuff faxed
over. Or they may say, you know, we have a patient portal,
and so you may need to sign up for the patient portal where you
can communicate with your doctor's office. But you want to get these numbers,
and once you get them, if any are abnormal, even by a point
or two, you want to set up an appointment review these with your doctor
or nur's practitioner or a physician assistant, your treatment team, and try to
understand what the plan is. How are you going to address my blood pressure?
Is it diet? Is it weight loss? Is it exercise? Is
it cutting out salt? Is it a combination of all of them? If
you are sitting here tonight saying you know, I think I've got a touch
of blood pressure, but the doctor really didn't say anything, sort of blew
me off. You need to nail them down and in a sense, in
a nice way, confront them to say I need some help. And so
the goal here you do not want to fall victim to chronic disease. And
what happens here is most of the time when patients come, it is not
just a single problem. It is they are overweight and have high blood pressure
in the early stages of diabetes. Or they have diabetes and they have high
blood pressure and they have shortness of breath, or they have high blood pressure
and some kidney problems and their liver numbers are up. So it is rare
that you will just have a single lab abnormalities. These things tend to run
together like a pack of wolves, all right. And so that is the
very very big message for tonight for many And I am not trying to make
this more difficult for everybody. It may seem absolutely overwhelming. How do I
begin to process all this? Where do I start? Well, start with
your doctor's office. If there is a nurse or a nurse practitioner or PA
or some other staff member that you have befriended over time, their medical assistant,
you may want to work with them as a go between between you and
the office and the doctor. But you need to get these numbers out there
and a dialogue. It is really, really key. I wish I could
personally help each and every one of you. I would think that in the
year to come. And I'm actually no kidding, I'm actually going to make
a note to myself when I'm done here to say we need to produce some
online material, some videos to help people navigate their own health. That's what
it's all about, all right. Well, once again the hour has flown
by. Get to drive home. It's a cool evening, but hopefully the
weather stays good now through the holidays. And don't forget doctor Joeglati dot com
is our website, plenty of information, video, social media for you to
look at. Send me a message if I could help any of you in
any way. Our entire team is geared up to help our patients and help
our radio listeners and our followers on social media. I say that with an
absolute sincere voice and message in our heart. So in this Christmas and holiday
season, God bless everybody, and you know what, We'll see you next
Sunday evening.