So, I am attaching an image from the American Heart Association that visualizes the major points that blood pressure effects. There’s hardly an internal organ that does not escape it’s effect somehow. Think of your blood pressure as a plumbing system that has to maintain pressure, which is exactly what it is!
Source: American Heart Association (AHA)
The one common denominator in all of the images above is that they all contain vessels, that transport blood back and forth to the heart. Some of those are arteries and are very tiny and very sensitive to pressure changes. The HEART eventually fails because the pressure is to great to keep up the pace. It can’t pump that hard all the time. High Blood pressure causes arteries to scar and become blocked causing a HEART ATTACK (think stretch marks, with plaque forming on them). The increased pressure eventually damages the arteries in the kidney, which is a constant filtering system, making it difficult for them to remove waste and help regulate your blood pressure (they do that too!!). Unfortunately for males, it makes for a really bad day for bedroom shenanigans (no further explanation needed). It also damages the arteries in the eyes, increasing vision loss. And finally, it can cause a vessel to burst in your head, or become clogged, causing a STROKE—a LIFE-CHANGING event. One of the greatest causes for admission to a nursing facility!
IT IS IMPORTANT to maintain your blood pressure! It should NEVER be shrugged off as not important because you don’t feel well, because you are damaging your insides, whether you feel it or not.
A hypertensive crisis occurs when you have a blood pressure over 180/120 and are symptomatic—headache, blurry vision, chest pain, chest pain, nausea/vomiting, numbness or weakness or other stroke-like symptoms. CALL 911–do NOT attempt to drive yourself to the hospital! Treatment can be initiated earlier with the EMS, you will not have to WAIT in the ER—yes wait, and you won’t have a heart attack on the way to the ER causing a wreck! TRUST ME!
Things to do to reduce your risk, CUT DOWN ON SALT, DRINK WATER-NO SODA, eat, veggies and lean meats, eat a DASH diet or Mediterranean diet. EXERCISE! Maintain your cholesterol. Check your blood pressure, visit your PCP for an annual physical with labs. See the link below for the CORRECT way to check your blood pressure…Now you are pressure wise! No pressure though..😂
Blood Pressure…. Everyone has one but is the one you have good or not? How do you know? For starters, most people will tell you, “I don’t have high blood pressure because I don’t feel bad”. MOST of the time, people will have NO SIGNS of high blood pressure until they are in a hypertensive crisis (more on that later). Case in point, I recently had a very spry, active, elderly gentleman in my clinic, NO COMPLAINTS—he needed to have bloodwork done for the VA. So as part of his visit we did routine vital signs. He was found to have a resting blood pressure of 210/110- that is most certainly stroke level, however, his response to me was, “I feel fine”. I am sure he did!
So WHAT is blood pressure? Blood pressure is the amount of blood pushing on the walls of you arteries. The top number is the measurement of pressure as the blood is coming out of your heart and is exerting “force” on the walls of your arteries. The bottom number is when the blood is coming back into your heart, this is when your heart is at rest and your pressure should be at its lowest. Arteries are little muscles, they clamp down to raise your pressure, and open up to lower your pressure (just like a plumbing system in your home!). This is in response to various signals from your body. If you’re dehydrated and need more water then your arteries clamp down to keep your pressure raised. If you’ve had too much salt and the accompanying water that follows, then your arteries try to open up to accompany all of that volume. There are many variations to this—but it is truly AMAZING that are body has this ability without us knowing or thinking about it!
What is a “normal” blood pressure 120/<80, is the criteria for the American Heart Association (AHA). Now as a practicing provider, there are many variations to this “rule” based on age, health status, health problems, and race. However, most guidelines specify treatment almost always at 140/90-150/90. Diabetics will get treated sooner and younger. Below is a chart for blood pressure categories.
Source: AHA
As you can see it shows numbers for a “hypertensive crisis”, most people are still ASYMPTOMATIC-meaning feeling OK-even at this pressure.
Signs and symptoms of high blood pressure
Flushing in the face, turning red or feeling hot
Feeling dizzy
CHEST PAIN-see heart attack symptoms on prior post
Spots in the eyes or blurry vision
Severe or persistent headaches
Stoke like symptoms, facial numbness, balance issues, weakness on one sid
It IS IMPORTANT TO TREAT HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE—YOU CANNOT CURE IT! You can make it better in some instances with lifestyle changes. However, some people are genetically inclined to have it. I treat otherwise healthy 20-year olds for blood pressure.
IF YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF HAVING ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, PLEASE SEEK OUT MEDICAL TREATMENT IMMEDIATELY.
NEXT post will explore the effects of blood pressure on the body, lifestyle factors that cause it, and things you can do to improve yours, and medical treatments for blood pressure.
So, it’s the season for snots!! I mean LOTS A SNOTS! So what am I seeing in the clinic? Flu, some Covid, and colds! What’s surprising to people is that when their Covid and Flu test are negative they look at you like, “What’s wrong with me?”. Well, once upon a time, we did have cold’s! Somehow since Covid, people seem to have forgotten that and have forgotten that their own immune system will cure a cold without fancy drugs! I often get, “You mean, I don’t get a prescription?”, well no— You don’t need one!
We Can treat Covid with Paxlovid, the flu with Xofluza or Tamiflu, and good old-fashioned cold with over-the-counter remedies! All of these add rest and fluids. Below I’m attaching a chart from the National Institutes of Health that discusses the differences between them.
If you find yourself with a prolonged illness, please see your PCP, as ANY viral infection can turn into a bacterial infection if snot lingers long enough!
One of the most difficult things that I deal with on a day-to-day basis as a provider is medication compliance or adherence. I often see that patients are not filling there meds at the correct frequency or they didn’t get the new prescription picked up. Up to 60% of patients for get what their PCP has told them as soon as the visit is over, making compliance difficult. Another alarming statistic, 1 in 5 prescriptions are never filled (that means I waste a huge amount of my time! 😂), and 50% aren’t even took as they are prescribed—this costs the healthcare system 100-300 BILLION dollars a year in additional costs due to noncompliance and worsening outcomes!! 😳
One way to improve compliance is to have your PCP write down specifically what you need to do at your visit. I know that I have written down on a piece of paper many times, specific instructions on what to do when they leave my office. Ask questions, if you don’t understand why you are being given a medicine or what it is for.
READ the bottle! Oftentimes I have patients who never look at the bottle to see what time that it needs to be took. Is it once a day or twice a day?? Is it DIFFERENT than it has been before? Also, do you have 2 or 3 of the SAME bottles of medicine but the pills LOOK different and you are double or triple dosing? I see this A LOT!
And finally, set an ALARM! There are “smart” phone everywhere nowadays that can be programmed for a litany of functions.
Remembering your medicine is a VERY important part of your treatment! If it’s NOT WORKING-see your PCP for an alternative-either it’s the WRONG treatment/medicine or the wrong diagnosis! Leave the diagnosing to your PCP and not Dr. Google! Trust we have reasons that we prescribe a certain medicine and it’s ok to question the decisions we have made!
Clarify……Understand……and Remember! Hopefully you can become medication wise!
Respiratory Syncytial Virus or RSV has been a common respiratory virus. I am bringing this to your attention because we have seen a LARGE outbreak this year of RSV in both children and ADULTS! Most of the time it is a mild respiratory virus for the small sacs in the lungs but sometimes it can be serious. Recently, I have heard of adults being on the ventilator from RSV and children under 1 can develop pneumonia from it.
Symptoms of RSV usually start within 4-6 days of being infected. They are usually mild, only last a couple of weeks, and will go away on their own. Almost all kids have had an RSV infection by their 2nd birthday. Symptoms include, runny nose, decreased appetite, sneezing, coughing, fever, and wheezing-particularly in children. Treatment for RSV includes, OTC pain and fever relievers such as Tylenol and advil (Motrin), drink plenty of fluids, and call your doctor if you get worse or have trouble breathing.
People that develop difficulty breathing, adults and children, need to be assessed by a doctor or go to the ER. Most people will only require 3-4 days of hospital treatment before they can go home. This is usually oxygen, IV fluids, breathing treatments or ventilator support as needed.
RSV is transmitted by droplets (when you sneeze or cough) or direct contact with the virus, hugging, kissing or direct contact with infected items such as door knobs, counter tops, etc. People can be contagious for 3-8 days and children can continue to spread RSV for up to 4 weeks after having RSV—DO NOT KISS BABIES AND INFANTS!
Usually, we don’t talk about RSV but with all the masks in the last few years, our immunity has gone down for RSV and cases locally and nationally are EXPLODING! I have seen RSV in the clinic and heard of patients both adult and children admitted for it.
So wash your hands, avoid kissing babies and be RSV wise!
If you haven’t looked at your Medicare benefits for 2023 NOW is the time! The open enrollment period ends on December, 7th. This probable seems like an odd “health” topic to many of you but it may be one of the most important decisions that you make all year! As a provider, it is often VERY hard to treat a disease, such as diabetes, because the newer, better, drugs are very expensive and aren’t’t covered by many traditional Medicare plans. I frequently, have to make decisions everyday based on denials from the insurance, and almost always they are not in the patients best interest unfortunately. Insurance has a way of “telling” us what to do by the way of our pocketbooks! You may say to yourself, I’m not on any expensive meds, I don’t need “good Med D coverage”. Well, that’s almost like buying a 1.9 billion dollar lottery ticket! You may not, but if you have yourself a nice little stroke or heart attack in the next year, you will probably need that Cadillac blood thinner—ask your friends, they know they aren’t cheap! A lot of them are upwards of $400 a month. I don’t know many seniors that can afford that. I frequently see patients that didn’t take out good coverage that end up on expensive medications before the end of the year.
While you don’t have to take out a supplement, these are just my cautionary tales. Another thing that frequently happens is that they take out the “free” plan and feel covered. They always tell me that they get “their medicine for free”. Well, that is true, if the medicine is dirt cheap to begin with, but if you do end up on an expensive med, you will pay. MY ADVICE, PAY A LITTLE MORE UP FRONT ON THE PLAN! IN MOST INSTANCES THIS WILL RESULT IN CHEAPER DRUG COSTS FOR HIGH-END MEDS! You will probably still spend less than you would for the copays on the drugs. If you end up a diabetic—you want the newer drugs!!
New for 2023, Medicare caps insulin at $35 a month without tying it to a deductible. This is wonderful news for insulin dependent diabetics. Also, recommended vaccines are now co-pay free.
The next open enrollment period begins January 1st and end March 31st.
http://medicare.gov is the place to go to research Medicare and https://www.medicare.gov/drug-coverage-part-d discusses Medicare drug coverage and options. If you are still confused and need additional help, your senior center can provide additional information as well as your insurance agent.
Alright, hopefully I convinced that honey IS amazing!!! Let’s get down to the benefits of honey!! SO yes honey is about 25% sweeter than regular sugar, it is not empty calories. As, I had said before, it does contain, vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino acids, and organic acids. So, eating honey can obviously have benefits just from the ingredients! But let’s get specific!
Antioxidants According to the National Institutes of Health, honey has the ability to provide natural antioxidants. Antioxidants prevents aging and damage to cells, when cells go through oxidizing stress then age and damage. It appears that the darker the honey the more antioxidant compounds that it has. Science is just beginning in this area but it looks to be promising to preventing damage to cells and to help in treating chronic conditions. One way to visualize the oxidation process is the rusting of metal—So in a way the honey would keep us from rusting! I mean, not really, but you get the point!
Antibacterial Without getting very technical, honey has a lot of physical properties that make it difficult for it to grow germs-including a low water content, super sweetness, and those bees actually produce a little bit of hydrogen peroxide when they make it! 😳 I told you those bees were amazing! But anyway, those same properties that keep it from spoiling also are used to inhibit bacterial growth. We do use honey to prevent growth in wounds. It is known that Manuka honey prevents the growth of Staph and E.Coli. Manuka honey comes from Australia and New Zealand form a bush related to the tea tree. The bacterial properties of Manual honey is 100 times higher than traditional honey.
Apoptotic Activity (Anticancer) So that same, fancy Manuka honey is also being studied as a possible cancer treatment. In very basic terms, it causes some cancer proteins to stop working and increases some anticancer proteins! And it does this naturally! So, I am not saying tha honey is a CURE for cancer! But it is known that it does have anticancer properties. Future studies in this area may lead to better treatments of cancer using the honey compounds! But we CAN EAT it now!
Anti Inflammatory and Immune Defense According to the National Institutes of Health, honey can also prevent inflammation in our joints. This is the primary cause of arthritis and joint pain, along with many other inflammatory diseases in the bowel and elsewhere. It is also suggested that honey helps to increase your immune response by a very complicated cellular system.
Other uses Other uses of honey have included diabetes, type I and type II treatments, wound healing, and asthma and allergies. There are many research articles to validate the research on the topics. This list in not inclusive of all the benefits of honey. It does show you, however, how amazing the organic molecules that make up honey can be. I don’t eat enough honey, but my husband eats it almost everyday. I will say this, I’m not sure an apple a day keeps the doctor a way, but a tablespoon may. I think I’ll buy some Manuka honey-it can’t hurt! After all the bees have been doing it for thousands of years!! And now you are honey wise!
If only bees could talk! They would undoubtedly rave about their products!! Imagine a product that is bacterial, anti inflammatory, anti cancer, and antioxidant properties—all in one! And from a product that tastes good and is “all natural”. It almost sounds too good to be true! But remarkably it’s not! The bees would probably be mad that we steal all of their gold and sell it for our profit and well-being, but then again maybe they made some of it for us!
So let’s talk honey! It is a remarkable substance, in addition to health benefits the bees work hard to make it! They have a “honey stomach” that they store the nectar in, when they get back to the nest, they mix it with their enzymes and regurgitate it several times before refining it into honey—this process takes about 20 minutes, and takes over a 1000 flowers to fill up their honey stomachs! Then the bees have this really cool way to heat up the honey, warm the water content, and then flap their wings create a supercooled environment to evaporate the remaining water and make the honey super dense! This process brings the water content to 15-18%, making it spoil-proof-unless you get water in it! Simply amazing! I mean we knew bees were amazing but did we really know HOW amazing they were? We just thought the hives we amazing!
So how beneficial is honey? A 2017 article from the National Institutes of Health done a vast search of research articles and literature to find uses of honey in medicine. It mentions that the oldest know use of honey goes back to 8000 BC in Spain to a cave painting of someone harvesting honey! So at least, 10000 years ago! After carbs, honey contains many nutrients! Proteins, vitamins, minerals, organic acids and amino acids. That’s a lot of stuff! There are over 320 different varieties of honey in the world and some have better uses than others. On average, an active hive will produce 65 pounds of honey a year.
Have I convinced you yet that honey is amazing and the BEES are even MORE amazing???? Hopefully I have, the next post will be on the benefits of honey. This post became long because I was so amazed by honey I could stop writing!! So now you are honey wise!
Most people identify chest pain with the crushing pressure or elephant setting on your chest. Did you know that heart disease is the NUMBER ONE killer in the US for women? I bet if you are a woman, you didn’t know that….1 in 5 deaths for women are related to heart disease. I get the feeling that a lot of you feel that heart disease is more of a man’s disease though, that’s why I’m trying to wisen you up today!
First, let’s talk about PREVENTABLE risk factors for heart disease—YES PREVENTABLE! Diabetes, overweight and obesity, smoking, excessive alcohol use, physical inactivity, and unhealthy eating. Does any of those apply to you? We’ve already discussed activity and diet, and I suspect you all are are aware of the dangers of smoking, obesity and excessive alcohol. We still haven’t had a discussion regarding diabetes, but just being a diabetic increases you risk of heart disease and being a poorly controlled one increases it even more. Also, cholesterol—we talked about those numbers, what they mean and how to keep them down—get to work!
So female presentation of chest pain doesn’t always show up as typical crushing chest pain-the kind we often see in men. It is more sneaky and often easier to dismiss as something else. Heartburn, muscle pain, bad sleep, stress, etc. Women are notorious for putting things off, to keep up their roles as caretakers for the family. They may ignore symptoms they think are other things but that can be very serious. Nausea and vomiting, chest pain (not always), neck pain, jaw pain, pain in upper back, fatigue, indigestion, fainting, shortness of breath, or pain in the upper abdomen can be signs of a heart attack in women. They may only have ONE of these symptoms or they may have more than one.
IF YOU THINK YOU ARE HAVING A HEART ATTACK: CALL 911! Don’t wait! Seriously! Do not drive yourself. EMS personnel can provide life-saving treatment at your home, in your home, immediately! If you go to the ER, you will not get inside quickly, you may have to wait—Don’t wait! If you have aspirin laying around, CHEW one up and swallow it. This will help you to prevent clot formation during a heart attack.
Hopefully, this short post will bring to your attention some of the differences with women and chest pain. A lot of this is preventable. I’m going to post a couple of good graphics, the first is female heart disease deaths by county 2018-2020. The darker the color the worse is is-the southeast glows!!! The second is a visual of the chest pain differences between men and women from the American Heart Association. Be heart wise!!
Source: CDCSource: American Heart Association, Go Red for Women
The advent of the internet has brought some amazing things to our lives! Can you say DoorDash, Walmart pickup, grocery deliveries, etc. But the very downside of the internet seems to effect the elderly and young both. Scammers, have been around since medieval times! Back then, merchants would weight the scales for goods to make you spend more! Today, scammers are a little more savvy, as they make things seems very real, when the reality is they are very fraudulent and sneaky. You are probably saying to yourself, I don’t know anyone who could fall for this. But there are people in the surrounding counties who have wired or transferred sums as high as $100,000 to “people in need”, who are actually total strangers and theirs they have met on Facebook or other similar websites. It is more common than you think, but you don’t hear about it because of the shame and stigma that people carry after it happens. My own grandmother, was a victim of this by mail, sending thousands of dollars in checks to sweepstakes, with the promise of winning the next $50,000. I interceded as much as I could but they were relentless, and with a touch of dementia she was gullible! Not a good combination!
There has been such a high number of fraud committed against seniors that the FBI has even created a special task force to help deal with the sheer numbers of victims. Seniors over 70 are the group that loose the most money with an average of $9000 per scam. In 2021 Americans lost $547 MILLION dollars to romance scams! The most common forms of this are simple phone calls or internet scams.
Phone calls are a frequent method, sometimes, it will be a caller who claims to be a relative, who is in great trouble or danger and needs a ransom to be released. Frequently, this person will pretend to be a grandchild. HANG UP! This person may require a money transfer, bank wire, or request bank account information. NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR BANK INFORMATION OVER THE PHONE, unless you initiated the call to the respected bank or financial institution. Sweepstakes are also a known source of scams. Legitimate sweepstakes WILL NEVER require you to pay them-EVER! You should never have to pay them to get your “chance” to win $50,000 or whatever, this is a scam. The IRS will also NEVER CALL YOU-They tend to send nice little certified letters! Please do not fall for these scams!
They will often lure people in with an innocent enough Facebook request from the opposite sex. Most of the time, they will be a decorated “war veteran or hero” or doctor that is just looking for friendship. They will live overseas somewhere or work internationally. It will ALWAYS be a place where they will be unable to have direct face-to-face contact. There is also a huge Nigerian population claiming to be a “prince” or “royalty” of some sort. They will initially reach out, usually talking about their children or grandkids, and they will almost always have lost a spouse or loved one. These conversations progress rapidly when they find out that you are alone or widowed yourself. They start out with flattery and kindness, not stop chatting, talking about your grandchildren, and your mutual loss or need for “friendship”. They will write “poems” for you, or may even send you a small gift with a note attached. This is called “love bombing”. They often hit them right at their most vulnerable spot, and play on it hard. But the flattery and affection the victim feels outweighs any warning signs their gut feelings have because they feel “connected” to that person and “they understand me”. These people will eventually become sick or have some type of emergency and need funds. Most of the time, they want to “BORROW” or have a “temporary advance” on the money, so it makes the victim feel as though they will be paid back They may also want a wire transfer but they also use gift cards as forms of payment, these are harder to trace. The loss is eventually emotional and financial!
There is also a website called https://socialcatfish.com/ that can verify if you are interacting with a real person for a small fee. This may be more useful for a family member that has its doubts than the actual person if they are really under the influence of the scammer.
This post is to raise AWARENESS of the problem. To let you be aware that we need to watch out for our seniors, parents, and grandparents. These people are vulnerable to fraud because sometimes they are lonely. Covid has made us even more isolated. Grab a friend , a loved one, a neighbor, talk to them, engage them, PREVENT them from being a statistic. Fraud, depression, suicide-all of these are products of loneliness and anxiety and the loss of a human touch-we can all be better humans-hopefully today we are just more wise! 💕🦉
PLEASE TAKE TIME TO LOOK AT THE LINKS! THEY PROVIDE A WEALTH OF INFO!
Becoming Wellness Wise 