Donna Lee: 0:00
The Armor Men’s Health Hour is brought to you by Urology Specialists for questions during the week. Call us at (512) 238-0762 or visit our website at armormenshealth.com. The Armor Men’s Health Hour is a show dedicated to providing information on a variety of medical topics, some of which may include sensitive subject material about penises. All cases discussed have been done with the permission of the people involved and their penises.

Dr. Mistry: 0:35
Welcome to the Armor Men’s Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee. Hello and welcome to the Armor Men’s Health Hour. I’m Dr. Mistry, your host here with my co-host, Donna Lee. How are you doing Donna?

Donna Lee: 0:49
I’m good. How are you? You sounded so radio-like just now.

Dr. Mistry: 0:52
I’m trying.

Donna Lee: 0:54
You have such a wonderful radio voice today.

Dr. Mistry: 0:56
You have to fake it to make it, they say. This is a men’s health show. I’m a board certified urologist and I started a urology practice 13 years ago here in Austin, Texas called NAU Urology Specialists. It’s got a weird name because it used to be called North Austin Urology, but that didn’t work when we opened our South Austin and Dripping Springs locations.

Donna Lee: 1:17
People don’t like traveling past that river. Do they? The distinction between North Austin and South Austin.

Dr. Mistry: 1:22
The river of Austin.

Donna Lee: 1:25
We would tell them too, you will see the most amazing specialists on the planet if you just drive North of the river.

Dr. Mistry: 1:29
If you could please just go over the bridge.

Donna Lee: 1:29
And they said, “No.”

Dr. Mistry: 1:29
No, thank you.

Donna Lee: 1:32
So we had to open our South location.

Dr. Mistry: 1:33
Like there was going to be a troll down on the bridge, causing them a toll.

Donna Lee: 1:35
There might be. 2019 has been challenging.

Dr. Mistry: 1:40
It’s been challenging. So this is a men’s health show. We talk about a variety of men’s health issues, those that are specifically related to urology. And also we are very fortunate enough to have a number of guests. These are usually acclaimed physicians in the Austin area that we have that talk about issues that range from orthopedics to cancer to dermatology to a variety of different topics that may be just outside of exactly where a urologist might end their scope of practice. But we do like talk about a lot of urology stuff here.

Donna Lee: 2:11
Lots of penis talks, you know, the insides, the parts, the pieces and the parts of the man.

Dr. Mistry: 2:15
The pieces and the parts, huh?

Donna Lee: 2:17
Was that appropriate?

Dr. Mistry: 2:18
I guess. I think the first word was the one that’ll probably get thrown out. So I thought we’d start with a little review of our practice and our locations and then maybe get into some urology myths.

Donna Lee: 2:29
Awesome. That sounds like a fun day today. So we’ve got four locations. Dr Mistry touched on a couple of them. Round Rock is our main hub where he opened this amazing, flourishing, fabulous practice, 12 years ago. It was just Dr. Mistry and our clinic supervisor Liz, maybe one other person.

Dr. Mistry: 2:44
That’s right, one other person.

: 2:46
That’s it. So now we have about 30 amazing humans that we just adore and they’re super amazing and sweet every day at work. Round Rock, North Austin, South Austin and Dripping Springs. We have a super cute little location there. You can reach us during the week at 512-238-0762. You can even ask for me, if you’d like. Our website is armormenshealth.com and you can send us an email. Ask Dr. MIstry, anything you want to ask a urologist and you don’t have time for an office visit, you can email him at armormenshealth@gmail.com.

Dr. Mistry: 3:15
We love your questions. They really keep us thriving and the show growing. If you want to hear the show not on the radio, you can search for our podcast, the Armor Men’s Health Hour. Yeah, we have all of our episodes uploaded and we’re frantically trying to get show notes and little summaries up so you know what they are talking about. But usually the title is going to talk about what the topic is and we certainly encourage you to go to that resource so you can hear about some of our, you can hear some of our previous epsiodes.

Donna Lee: 3:45
You can also see Dr. Mistry’s handsome face at armormenshealth.com.

Dr. Mistry: 3:50
Well, I appreciate that.

Donna Lee: 3:51
Yeah. Well you’re welcome.

Dr. Mistry: 3:52
And you can see our banana logo.

Donna Lee: 3:53
Yeah, that’s right. We have a cute banana logo with a little stethoscope. I’ve got some myths I thought were really interesting…

Dr. Mistry: 4:00
Let’s do it.

Donna Lee: 4:00
…and it would apply to most men. The first one on this particular site that I was checking out earlier, “Men hit their sexual peak at 18.” I don’t know if that’s true. Is that true? I’ve always heard that.

Dr. Mistry: 4:08
I think that that’s probably an interesting kind of myths. It’s a question of whether or not they’re peaking at their sexual capabilities, or their drive, or whatnot. But I think that leads to some great points. So when it comes to sexual abilities, if you divide up whether or not you mean somebody’s sex drive, their sexual capability, meaning their ability to get and maintain an erection. To have a really good sex drive requires an intact psyche as well as an intact hormonal system, and it also has a lot to do with self esteem, relationship issues. Libido or sex drive can be much bigger than whether or not you can or can’t get an erection. Erections similarly depend on a number of different factors that work together. Your nervous system has to be working, your vascular system has to be working. Your psychology again, has to be working and your hormonal system has to be intact. When it comes to all those things, clearly the younger you are, the healthier you’re going to be from a vascular and neurologic standpoint. But you may not have sorted out your self esteem or your psyche or you may not even have a sexual partner by 18, so whether or not you are going to be at your peak at that age or any age is debatable. But what is not debatable is that every man can take steps to improve their sexual ability by realizing that a lot of it is in their hands. You got to keep your diabetes under control. You can’t have high blood pressure that’s uncontrolled. You got to make sure that your nervous system is intact. You need to understand that relationship issues can affect your libido and your erections and if there’s a problem, seek help specifically to toward that end. So I think that’s a great question and a myth, but really kind of lends itself to this message that your sexual health is really in your hands.

Donna Lee: 5:53
Mmhmm, no pun intended. Here’s a good one about fertility. I’ve never really thought about this first part, but “Squats are bad for guys trying to get their wives pregnant or specific types of underwear.”

Dr. Mistry: 6:03
So you’re asking if different kinds of exercise or different kinds of underwear affect fertility.

Donna Lee: 6:08
Right?

Dr. Mistry: 6:09
Both those questions get to this point of whether or not lifestyle has a big impact on fertility or not. And what I would say is increasingly so, because as men and women are delaying their decision to have children later into life, when you’re in your early twenties, perhaps you could do anything and have really great sperm counts. But when you’re starting to have your first child in your mid to late thirties now you can think of a lot of little lifestyle things could be affecting your sperm in a little way that causes a big problem in aggregate. And so heat is a big issue that we talk about. So things that heat up the testicles can lead to diminishing sperm count and quality.

Donna Lee: 6:52
Like a hot tub.

Dr. Mistry: 6:54
That’s right, it’s why our testicles are outside of our body in a scrotum is because they’re ideally functioning when they’re a little cooler than the rest of the body.

Donna Lee: 7:05
That makes sense.

Dr. Mistry: 7:06
So anything that heats it up, so really, really tight fitting underwear or jobs that puts you in really hot environments for an extended period of time, or regular hot tubbing or sauna-ing, all of these things are going to have small incremental things. None of them are huge, but they can all have small incremental effects. Similarly wearing you know, your cell phone in your pocket or a laptop on your lap…all of these have small impacts. The exercise thing similarly could have something to do with temperature, but also, if you’re doing a lot of heavy weightbearing and you have a condition called a varicocele, which is the veins that are draining the testicle are enlarged and don’t carry blood as efficiently as they should. If you have that, then perhaps doing prolonged weight bearing exercises can cause blood to actually pull down in the scrotum. Thus, again, raising the temperature. But I don’t think that necessarily you should stop doing squats unless you’re squatting for two hours during the day somehow.

Donna Lee: 8:09
Squat addict.

Dr. Mistry: 8:09
You know, that’s funny. One of the very first I had this question on my personnel, my intake for fertility and that’s do you sauna or hot tub regularly? And you know, after the first couple of years of asking this question, I was like, everybody always answers, no, this is dumb. And then the guy, the guy came in and he goes, yeah, I wear a trash bag and I sit in a sauna at least two hours a day. And I was like, “Really?” He said, “Yes. Is that bad?” And I said, “Probably!”

Donna Lee: 8:38
If you’re trying to have a baby, maybe.

Dr. Mistry: 8:38
So. That’s right. So I kept that on. And both of those points really speak to this issue of lifestyle. So when you come and see us for a fertility evaluation, you’re going to be asked about your diet, about your occupation, you know, what kinds of other environmental or lifestyle risk factors can really lead to some fertility problems. We’ve had patients that had improved fertility from dietary modifications, definitely from weight loss. We see it in better control of their other metabolic health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure. And so all of those things, I consider lifestyle choices–drinking, smoking, marijuana use, all of those things can have an impact. And so, if you think that a fertility evaluation is just about getting a sperm count, you’re wrong. It’s about making those lifestyle changes, use of supplements, things of that nature that can really cause your overall health to improve, and thus your fertility to improve. I think it would be natural for us to say, you know, if you’re a woman trying to get pregnant, you need to be healthy? The opposite is completely true. If you’re a man trying to get someone pregnant, you need to be healthy or else the quality of your sperm and the likelihood of getting pregnant goes down. So a comprehensive lifestyle eval is an integral part of a fertility evaluation. So, you know, great points and I’m glad you brought a up today.

Donna Lee: 10:05
Yeah, I’m just glad we talked about fertility because I know we have a ton of fertility patients.

Dr. Mistry: 10:09
We sure do, we sure do. This is, this is the town for fertility. We have some great IVF doctors in town. And we have some, you know, really motivated patients who are choosing to get pregnant later and later in life. So you’re going to need fertility coverage in that sense. Donna why don’t you tell people how to get ahold of us.

Donna Lee: 10:25
You can call us at (512) 238-0762 during the week. You can also visit our website, armormenshealth.com. Our email address for Dr. Mistry for any question on your mind is armormenshealth@gmail.com. That’s armormenshealth@gmail.com. And looks like we will be right back.

: 10:43
Dr. Mistry wants to hear from you. Email questions to armormenshealth@gmail.com. We’ll be right back with the Armor Men’s Health Hour.

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