Head-to-Toe Care: Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee Discuss Lifestyle Factors That Can Impact Urologic and Overall Health
Donna Lee:
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.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the Armor Men’s Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee.
Dr. Mistry:
Hello and welcome to the Armor Men’s Health Hour. I’m Dr. Mistry, your host, here with my cohost in quarantine, Donna Lee.
Donna Lee:
We need to get out of here. Hi!
Dr. Mistry:
You know, these are going to sound really funny in 20 years when people are downloading the podcast.
Donna Lee:
They’ll be like, “Why were they in quarantine for so long?”
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. The aliens are going to wonder. I hope everybody’s safe, socially distancing. We as healthcare providers are still responsible for seeing a number of what we consider urgent cases. Providing you entertainment and information is absolutely something that we’re really happy to continue to be doing.
Donna Lee:
Mhmm. Non-Covid entertainment.
Dr. Mistry:
Non-Covid, that’s right.
Donna Lee:
Pass the Corona beer.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. We really appreciate continued involvement and engagement from our listeners and our patients. We’re still getting lots of great questions and this week alone I had a number of patients reach out with prostate cancer and other cancer related questions after listening to us on the show.
Donna Lee:
Oh, that’s nice. Well, shout out to them, and shout out to my friend Jerry who doesn’t live in Texas anymore. He’s a high school buddy/friend of mine and he listened to the show last week and he was like, “Hey, I listened to your show!” So he’s up North. So shout out to Jerry.
Dr. Mistry:
Alright, Jerry. I thought that we would talk about our practice a little bit today and really highlight what I think are some differences that a holistic approach to urologic care can provide for you. I’m a board certified urologist. Our practice has 4 urologists and 7 providers overall. We also include nutrition, health, biomechanical therapy, and a number of other resources that maximize your urologic health.
Donna Lee:
And what do you mean by holistic approach for urology? Tell people what that means.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s great. You know, I think that it’s very easy to simply break down what your specialty is, and only treat things that deal with your specialty, either with medicine or surgery. It takes, I think, a different viewpoint to take a step back–how is this particular condition impacted by your overall health? I think that there’s no other topic that we deal with daily that illustrates this more than erectile dysfunction.
Donna Lee:
Mhmm. That’s what we deal with all day long.
Dr. Mistry:
We do. And so, I thought I’d highlight a recent study that was just sent out by our urologic association that showed that there was an increased risk of early death in men between the age of 40 to 79 who had erectile dysfunction.
Donna Lee:
What a party pooper discussion this is.
Dr. Mistry:
…If erectile dysfunction weren’t bad enough. And this has been absolutely a topic that I’ve harped on within our own practice and really put some meat behind it. So, almost all urologists and cardiologists will tell you that early cardiovascular death and erectile dysfunction are known risk factors together. But how does your urologist or how did your cardiologist take that information and put it into practice? So what we do is if you’re seen in our practice with erectile dysfunction, we’re going to take a step back and not only give you treatments but also try to give you an assessment of what are some changes that you could make in your lifestyle and health that are going to make your erections better and make your health better? You’re going to need your high cholesterol treated, you’re going to need to lose weight, you’re going to need your testosterone levels managed. These are all going to be components that are going to both help your erections and help you stave off early death.
Donna Lee:
Bonus!
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right.
Donna Lee:
What a nice side effect–stay alive.
Dr. Mistry:
Because you know, if we’re going to fix your erections, you might as well stick around and enjoy it.
Donna Lee:
A bonus.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. Donna Lee, why don’t you tell people about our practice?
Donna Lee:
We are located in Round Rock, North Austin by Lakeline Mall, in South Austin on South Congress at the corner of William Cannon and South Congress, and also in Dripping Springs. You can call us during the week at (512) 238-0762. Our email address for all of these amazing questions is always the same. It’s armormenshealth@gmail.com. That’s armormenshealth@gmail.com. We will answer your question anonymously. I’ll respond to the email to let you know that we received it. And our website is armormenshealth.com.
Dr. Mistry:
And so you’re not confused, although the name of our show is the Armor Men’s Health Hour, our practice name is NAU Urology Specialists. We deal with all urologic conditions, not just those that you may think are related to men’s health. We deal with cancer of all urologic types. We treat both men and women for urology issues as well as advanced sexual issues. And we’d love to take care of you. So if you’re looking for an appointment or a second opinion, we’d love to be able to give you some insight.
Donna Lee:
You know, I noticed a lot on our sex therapist schedule is mostly men. That always surprises me a little bit.
Dr. Mistry:
It’s actually really interesting because you know, in the, in the public, you would think, and for many years, many people have associated psychological issues with female sexual problems.
Donna Lee:
Crazy women?
Dr. Mistry:
You’re not allowed to say that, you understand.
Donna Lee:
Us being a little bit off our rockers?
Dr. Mistry:
Oftentimes, and even in the past, women that have sexual problems or libido problems or orgasmic problems, a lot of times they’d be told that they need to see a therapist, a psychotherapist. When you wouldn’t say that same thing to a man necessarily.
Donna Lee:
Right.
Dr. Mistry:
Right? I mean, if a man was having trouble getting an erection, you wouldn’t say, “You know what? You need to get your head checked.” But we used to do that, and until we understood the biologic basis better, and we are getting that understanding in women better. And we have a lot of tools that we can use for women with sexual problems.
Donna Lee:
Right. And our sex therapist is pretty busy. We have an onsite sex therapist…
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right.
Donna Lee:
…and she’s pretty amazing, as well as pelvic floor physical therapy, which is also mostly men patients.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. That’s right.
Donna Lee:
We have a lot going on over here, Dr. Mistry.
Dr. Mistry:
We sure do. Do we have any questions from anybody?
Donna Lee:
Oh, we do. Let’s see here. We’ve got–again armormenshealth@gmail.com. This is kind of a general one and probably meant more for the main website, but it came in through Armor Men’s Health, so I wanted to make sure that he knows where listening. “New to the area, looking for a doctor to continue medical help for bladder problems, constant urination, back pain, loss of a full night’s sleep…” I thought, well that is a whole segment right there.
Dr. Mistry:
It sure is.
Donna Lee:
We treat that guy all day long.
Dr. Mistry:
You know, a lot of times we think of urinary frequency and getting up frequently at night to be a lifestyle issue, but really it can really greatly affect your health and wellbeing. I mean, getting up 3 or 4 or 5 times a night can really interrupt your sleep, it can make it uncomfortable for you with fatigue during the day, and it’s definitely a big part of what we see.
Donna Lee:
Right. And we have a sleep coordinator onsite!
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right.
Donna Lee:
And people always go, “Why do you have sleep coordinator? You’re a urology clinic?”
Dr. Mistry:
Well, it is a big component. Obstructive sleep apnea, if you’ve been listening to the show, has a lot of urologic consequences including getting up frequently at night to urinate. And it’s something that, you know, if you’re coming to us with a complaint, and if you still have that complaint, if you’ve been seeing a urologist for years and they haven’t fixed the problem, then I think that’s a great opportunity to get a second opinion. And if you’ve recently moved to the area and you’re looking for somebody to manage these things, I’m guessing you’re not looking for just somebody to refill your meds. I think you’re looking for someone to take what has been done for you in the past and improve on that. So when it comes to frequent urination, there are many different avenues that we will, that we will approach. One of them is what we call a behavioral modification. So this is going to be an evaluation of what you’re eating, what your diet looks like, and then also biomechanically–are there things that are happening from a neuromuscular standpoint that could be affecting your bladder’s ability to hold urine, or the perception that your body has on how full your bladder is? And so that’s a big part of what we do. And that may not be something that has been addressed in a real strong way before. There are medications that we can use for urinary frequency in a man–either we’re going to try to address your prostate, maybe blocking your bladder, or your bladder being overactive. And there’s a number of medicines that can be used for those. And then we have another complete grouping of things, which is surgical interventions. And all of that may sound scary. A lot of those types of interventions are minimally invasive, outpatient, some of them can be done in the office. We can do things that can actually modulate and change the way the nerves of the bladder are sensing urine fullness. And that’s the kind of approach we’re gonna take. We’re not going to give up until you’re happy with how you’re peeing.
Donna Lee:
Wow, that’s true. And then I always, you know, going back to the sleep study people, I know we have a lot of patients on testosterone. Most of those patients have never been checked for their sleep.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right.
Donna Lee:
And how does that directly correlate to testosterone?
Dr. Mistry:
Well, there’s many different overlaps. So having low testosterone gives you fatigue as a symptom, but there’s a big overlap between patients with obstructive sleep apnea and low testosterone, because the risk factors are the same: getting older, being overweight, and these kinds of overlaps mean that you should be tested if you have low testosterone and you’re on testosterone therapy. You should also know that if you have underlying sleep apnea, it’ll get worse with testosterone therapy. So if you snore, if you get up fatigued, if you’ve been quote unquote told you have sleep apnea but don’t use your C-PAP…these are areas that we’re going to address pretty aggressively, because we’re not going to make you feel better unless we take care of you from head to toe.
Donna Lee:
And if you don’t like the CPAP, the group we’re partnered with, Austin sleep solutions, they have all sorts of amazing options. They fitted my husband with an oral applianc, because he couldn’t do the C-PAP and his snoring went away like 90%.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. And he feels better, and hopefully we’ll keep [him from] having another cardiovascular event.
Donna Lee:
A big giant heart attack.
Dr. Mistry:
Why don’t tell people how to get ahold of us?
Donna Lee:
You can call us during the week at (512) 238-0762. Our email address again is armormenshealth@gmail.com. That’s armormenshealth@gmail.com. Please send us these questions. We’ll get them answered as soon as we can. And our website is armormenshealth.com. We’ll be right back.
:
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.