Getting Back To Business: The Role of Routine in the Age of Corona Virus
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 Armour 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 as always with my cohost, Donna Lee.
Donna Lee:
That’s me. Hello. Welcome everybody.
Dr. Mistry:
Donna Lee, I think you’re more famous than me.
Donna Lee:
I think so. Especially when people call the clinic.
Dr. Mistry:
They seem really excited about talking to you.
Donna Lee:
Yeah, I’ll say, “Urology Specialists. This is Donna Lee,” and I hear, “Is this the same Donna Lee from the radio show?” I’m like, “That’s right! Dr. Mistry who?”
Dr. Mistry:
Well, good for you. I am a board certified urologist. This is a show that focuses on men’s health topics and hopefully a little welcome break from all the Corona craziness that all of us are experiencing.
Donna Lee:
I am done. I’m ready to get back to normal. I want to go sit at a restaurant. I want to go shopping…I’m ready. This is ridiculous!
Dr. Mistry:
Your poor husband.
Donna Lee:
Yeah, my poor husband.
Dr. Mistry:
He’s going to pay a bill.
Donna Lee:
He is going to pay a bill.
Dr. Mistry:
I think I’m going to pay a bill, too. My wife’s going to, she’s going to do something…
Donna Lee:
…to make up for all this?
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right.
Donna Lee:
All of our debit charges are fast food restaurants and Amazon.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. She’s going to want at least teacher pay for having to teach all those kids at home.
Donna Lee:
All those six kids. You have five little kids at home.
Dr. Mistry:
She’s going to take summer off. I’m going up to take care of all those kids at home.
Donna Lee:
Every time I come home, my husband goes, “Big girl walking in!” I’m just trying not to eat, but I can’t help it.
Dr. Mistry:
Well, I’m a board certified urologist, as mentioned. Our practice is an NAU Urology Specialists. We are a urology practice. We started the practice in 2007, so this makes almost the completion of our 13th year.
Donna Lee:
Right? Look at that!
Dr. Mistry:
I wouldn’t say lucky number 13.
Donna Lee:
No. 13 is our lucky number though. When we go to Vegas, we always gamble on 13 and it always works out, so…
Dr. Mistry:
Well there you go, there you go.
Donna Lee:
There you go. 13’s good.
Dr. Mistry:
Donna Lee, why don’t you tell people about our practice?
Donna Lee:
You can call us during the week at (512) 238-0762. We are located in Round Rock, North Austin, South Austin and Dripping Springs. It’s beautiful out there. Have you been out there lately?
Dr. Mistry:
I have. It’s gorgeous.
Donna Lee:
There’s like a thousand restaurants that are ready to open back up…
Dr. Mistry:
I hope so.
Donna Lee:
…just in Dripping Springs. Our website is armormenshealth.com and you can send your questions that we will answer anonymously every single week to armormenshealth@gmail.com.
Dr. Mistry:
Well, we really appreciate all the engagement from our listeners. We’ve heard excellent feedback from our patients, our new patients, and just listeners and even other physicians that listen to the show. We really appreciate that feedback. Trying to provide information that is relevant to you, trying to answer questions about conditions that you may feel embarrassed or uncertain about contacting a professional about, or to provide second opinions for people who have handled a complex medical or urologic issues that may be…
Donna Lee:
You’re going to be the king of second opinions.
Dr. Mistry:
I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a thing. It’s the king of hindsight. I don’t think that’s a, that’s you know, it’s a lot, it’s a lot easier after you’ve gone through something to go back and talk about what you could have done differently. We love providing medical care. Our offices are open for a combination of both inpatient as well as telemedicine visits. And I think what we’re going to talk about during this segment is kind of how do we reconnect with our health when we’ve gone through such a major both physical and psychological trauma as quarantine can do. Personally, working out at the gym was a daily exercise…
Donna Lee:
Oh, that’s right. You were doing that all the time.
Dr. Mistry:
…for months.
Donna Lee:
Yeah, at Orange Theory.
Dr. Mistry:
Orange Theory. It was great. We had excellent handle on our diet because we had a routine. But now you’re sitting at home for days on end…
Donna Lee:
I ate a calzone for breakfast. And yesterday I ate sphagetti and meatballs for breakfast.
Dr. Mistry:
We have a clock that’s broken in our house and we haven’t fixed it for eight weeks because time actually has no meaning anymore. Our calendar’s still on February, so…How do you get back into a routine? How do you reconnect? Especially since now that we have all these conversations about reopening, really reopening for a lot of people has to do with making sure you secure a job, make sure you’re able to get back to your social activities while trying to keep you know society safe and yourself safe. And I think that’s where a lot of the focus has been. While in quarantine I’ve seen a lot more people doing meditation, using you know relaxation techniques. You know, at the beginning you thought that “Wow, I have all this time at home. I can catch up on Netflix and I can you know learn how to sew and I can, you know…I tried to teach my kids how to sail, you know.
Donna Lee:
And we know how that went.
Dr. Mistry:
Yeah, it went terrible. And so all of these things that you thought you’d use this time for, but really there’s a psychological depressing effect of being in isolation and not being able to really kind of being forced out of your routine. And so as we kind of think about how we’re going to reengage in our routine, I wanted to talk about some of the wonderful tools that our practice can provide to help people get back into it.
Donna Lee:
You can just call us and we’ll have a conversation with you if you’re lonely.
Dr. Mistry:
You can just talk to Donna if you need a friend. I guess one of the most relevant ones related to the Corona virus illness is that there is evidence that in men who recover that they end up with low testosterone levels.
Donna Lee:
Fascinating to me.
Dr. Mistry:
That leads me to believe something that I believed for a long time, which is that oftentimes getting sick with a viral illness leads to low testosterone levels. So you know, you meet people that get bronchitis or a bad flu and they’re just dragging for months afterwards. We don’t routinely as a standard part of recovery talk about testing for testosterone levels and thyroid levels. There’s a number of conditions that lead to kind of a shutdown of what I would consider normal physiologic reactions in the body. Depression alone can have a significant impact on low testosterone levels.
Donna Lee:
Does this affect women too, and their testosterone?
Dr. Mistry:
It sure does. It probably does, and I imagine hormonally as well. There’s research out of Baylor College of Medicine that showed that up to 40% of people’s depression symptoms get better if their testosterone is normalized. And so there’s a chicken and egg phenomenon when it comes to depression. The depression makes us and worse and the testosterone being low makes depression worse. Certainly if you’ve suffered from Corona virus and you’ve recovered, recently I spoke to a physician who had the condition has been almost 3 weeks in recovery, but still lost 15 pounds.
Donna Lee:
Wow.
Dr. Mistry:
Complains about not even being able to do a pushup anymore. And, you know, we’re going to get him righted up, because for certain his testosterone level has dropped and we’re going to help help him in his recovery. And there may be ways to do this with direct testosterone supplementation, with other types of medicines that encourage your own testosterone to boost. I guess a lot of people also thought they were going to be having lots of sex in quarantine.
Donna Lee:
Yeah, my husband thought that, but we know that went. I showed up to work.
Dr. Mistry:
Poor Michael.
Donna Lee:
I know, I was like, “Oh, got to go to work! Sorry. Essential. I’m essential!”
Dr. Mistry:
And so, you know, maybe issues about low libido or sexual performance or premature ejaculation or any number of sexual kind of proclivities that we treat here, maybe they’ve become more obvious or maybe even kind of more in a shining light during these times–this would be a great time to get some of those things checked out. A lot of my ER friends talk about how, you know, people aren’t showing up to the ER when they have chest pain. And so the rates of dying from a heart attack have gone up, because people have delayed a little bit, you know, their first few signs, they kind of ignored.
Donna Lee:
Oh my goodness. I hadn’t even thought of that. That’s terrible.
Dr. Mistry:
I mean, people are still going to get problems. They’re still going to get all the same medical conditions you were going to get anyway.
Donna Lee:
So they’re too scared to go to the ER with chest pains because they’re scared to catch Corona, but then they’re having heart attacks?
Dr. Mistry:
Heart attacks are happening at the same rate, and I was shown data recently that showed that people are showing up further along in the process. And the same is true amongst cancer diagnoses too. You know, if you, you know, most cancers, there’s not a big difference if you wait 8 weeks here, there, but there are some. There are other medical conditions that kind of get delayed. So, it is generally considered safe to attend to your own health.
Donna Lee:
Right? Ironically.
Dr. Mistry:
So, the doctors offices have created tremendous numbers of limitations on people in the waiting rooms. We have been given instructions from the Texas medical board on how we’re supposed to interact with patients. It’s weird to wear a mask in front of a patient because they don’t see my wonderful smile, you know, but luckily they also don’t see the gray in my beard.
Donna Lee:
I can see it. You need to address that. Grecian formula?
Dr. Mistry:
Grecian formula. And so, addressing your health during these times I think is still critical for people. So especially now as we kind of understand the availability of protective equipment and masks a little better, we’d asked you to bring in your own mask when you come in. You know, we’re trying to supply some to patients if they come in without masks.
Donna Lee:
Well, and there’s a shortage. So I’ve been given away some t-shirt slices for real. We have a t-shirt in my office and we’ve been cutting it up, so try to get a mask if you can!
Dr. Mistry:
We do have 600 t-shirts.
Donna Lee:
We do, we don’t have 600 masks. We have 600 t-shirts.
Dr. Mistry:
So please send your questions in so we can get rid of these t-shirts.
Donna Lee:
That’s right. They’re just sitting there.
Dr. Mistry:
If you’re looking to get some advice on how to get back into a dietary program, Robert Mendiola, our registered dietician here does a wonderful kind of medically guided Keto program. We have ideal protein that can be given, which is meals in boxes that are much easier to follow. And we have just a number of other resources including laboratory tests and counseling and all sorts of things to help you kind of reinvigorate. And most men, you know, I think they feel like they should be able to kind of reinvigorate on their own, but there’s no, there’s no harm in asking for help. And that’s what we do here.
Donna Lee:
Right. And Robert’s a dude. Like he’s a man’s man, so he’ll be happy to instruct you men men.
Dr. Mistry:
I can’t wait till he hears this. Why don’t you tell people how to get ahold of us?
Donna Lee:
Call us during the week and ask for Robert, he’s amazing at (512) 238-0762. Armormenshealth@gmail.com is our email address. Our website is armormenshealth.com. Again, send us your questions. We’ll answer them anonymously on the air and we appreciate you so much. 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.