Health: The Second Pillar of THRIVE for Health and Wellness

In this episode of The Erik and Matt Show, Dr. Erik Axene and Matt Ball dive into the second pillar of THRIVE—health.  Covering key points like weight tracking, blood pressure checks, cancer screenings, and cholesterol management, this episode is a must-listen for those dedicated to their health and long-term success as first responders. Stay informed, proactive, and ready for any emergency with these vital health insights. 

Transcript

Erik: [00:00:00] Have I ever told you about my Christmas balls?

My wife's a dentist. I think I saw the dentist six years ago.

Narrator: What?

You are listening to EMS with your hosts Erik Axene and Matt Ball. 

Matt: So today we're going to continue our conversation about our health and wellness our thrive acronym Yep, right. We've talked about the overview of thrive. Yeah, we talked about the tnt You [00:00:30] The TNT? The T TNT. Trinitrotoluene. Dynamite. Do you know what that stands for?

TNT? Trinitrotoluene? Uh, I did not know that. Of course you knew that. Have I ever told you about my Christmas balls? I haven't told you about your Christmas balls.

Erik: Nothing anatomic to reference there. Oh, okay,

Matt: got it. Because I didn't know if I had put a chemistry teacher,

Erik: I would turn little cotton balls into things that would explode.

Oh. At Christmas time, my chemistry students loved it. I made, I [00:01:00] basically made TNT.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: You take the cotton molecule and you put sulfur on it. With the hydro su the sulfuric acid. Mm-Hmm. . And then, and then you put another bath with nitric acids. You replace the sulfur with nitro groups.

Matt: Mm-Hmm.

Erik: Try nitro toluene.

Mm-Hmm. . This is basically try nitro cotton ball and you heat up a stir stick. Like a glass stirrer, and you tap it and it blows up. And so it was a Christmas tradition in my chemistry lab.

Matt: Oh, we're gonna have to do that.

Erik: Well, see, that's how I taught chemistry. That's how [00:01:30] we teach ACE. Right, right, right. And part of what we do here with our podcast, again, uh, you know, we have an education company.

We make education for EMS providers.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: And that philosophy I had as a chemistry teacher with the Christmas balls, making it interesting, blowing stuff up, you know, whatever. Yeah. It made learning fun. Learning should be fun.

Matt: Absolutely.

Erik: And that's what we're all about here. And I

Matt: guarantee you, the kids in your chemistry class probably still remember your Christmas balls.

They do. Yeah. It was fun. It was a tradition. The exploding Christmas balls. Yes. [00:02:00] Yes. So if you like our content, make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to our channel, and like Dr. Axine said, There's a link to our website in the description, so check that out as well.

Erik: So if you want your EMS education to be fun and enjoyable, I mean, if you want to be

Matt: bored and death by PowerPoint, have at it tiger.

But if you want to, you know, why, you know, drive a Chevy when you could drive a Lamborghini for the same price.

Erik: You know, it boggles my mind that chiefs are still spending money, thousands of dollars on education that just doesn't matter. People press play and walk away. [00:02:30] What we're going to talk about for the H though, you cannot just press play and walk away here.

This, this, this, like we talked about in the intro, this is some of the housekeeping items that you need to do. It's kind of like, uh, you know, it's nice to be able to buy life insurance or whatever disability insurance or whatever it is.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: And then you don't have to think about it anymore because it's all set.

Right? Yeah. You're, you're protected. Yeah. So I think what we're going to talk about today is some of that is just having that mindset of keeping [00:03:00] track of certain things. It may not like for you being a checkbox type person. Very sequential with me being more spontaneous. I'm going to struggle more with this than you.

Yes, because you're going to, you're going to, you're going to be one minute annual

Matt: checkoff. Done.

Erik: Do you do that? Really?

Matt: Uh, no. Well, like I said, uh, in the other one is that we do it with a fire station.

Erik: How about, how about dentists? Like if you see a dentist every six months,

Matt: yeah, they call me and they're, my

Erik: wife's a dentist.

I scheduled, I think I saw the [00:03:30] dentist six years ago.

Matt: What? I

Erik: know that terrible. And my wife's a dentist.

Matt: I hope your wife isn't listening right now.

Erik: But I don't have any, I think I've had one cavity in my life. Well, how do you know if you don't

Matt: go to the dentist? You might have teeth rotting out of your head.

My

Erik: point is though, I could do a better job with that. As far as the H for me, the health, um, metrics, I could do a better job with oral health, but that's not the focus of what we're talking about, but that's an example of how I struggle here. That's one facet of, yes. You may not, because you, you, [00:04:00] but the thing is though, what we're talking about though, you may not be aware of some of the stuff.

Right. To even know to put a checkbox there. Yes. Right? So that's what we're going to talk about today.

Matt: Yep, yep, yep.

Erik: Um, so, I, I think, you know, something that a lot of us don't think about, or maybe some of us do, is, I mean, we should be weighing ourself consistently. I mean, I don't mean like once a year,

Matt: it's

Erik: like we should be monitoring our weight.

We should, I mean, monitoring your weight should be like driving a car. You know, little micro corrections. If you're weighing yourself every other year or don't weigh yourself at [00:04:30] all, you're going to gain weight and then. You're going to have a bigger problem. Yeah, literally. Um, and then, and, and if you're losing weight rapidly, there could be something wrong, right?

So I think it's kind of like a gauge in the gauge cluster of life. Your weight is something we want to keep track of. And that's just an example of a health metric. We should know.

Matt: And can I say before you continue on, it's not necessarily about a number. No. Right. So, I mean, weighing yourself, yes, it gives you a number of an indicator, but it's not because I know like on those [00:05:00] BMI scales or those, uh, ideal body weight, like for a guy my size, I'm supposed to be like 130 pounds.

Yeah. Like at 130 pounds, I am super skinny, like not healthily skinny. Right. So a number is important, but I think more what you're talking about is like, you know, Everybody knows when they put on a couple of pounds, like your clothes start fitting different. Like, man, I've probably put on 10 here. Weighing yourself, you get that metric.

Erik: For me, though, it was different. I mean, I [00:05:30] would put on 10 and I wouldn't know it.

Matt: Your clothes wouldn't fit there. Yeah,

Erik: I guess. I mean, it's like different body. Like you said earlier, everybody's different, right? 10 pounds is different on me than it is on you for sure. True. But I, but I also think that some people might just be more aware of things where, I mean, you're, you're so structured.

I think like you'll be more observant than I might be. Yeah. Like I'll put on 10 pounds and then I'll realize. Yeah, I guess my pants have been a little tighter and yeah, I guess that, you know, it's like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. But I wasn't aware of it, you [00:06:00] know, but anyway, you know, when you're watching that, that gauge of your weight and you know, a rule of thumb for me, you know, go back to when you graduated high school, that that's probably a weight that's pretty close to what's healthy for you.

I grew three inches in college, so for me it might be my sophomore year of college might be a good way. And that's kind of what I'm shooting for. And I'm losing weight to get down to that goal weight. But the point is, whatever weight you are, we should be monitoring that, that [00:06:30] gauge of our health and weighing ourselves.

If you don't have a scale, buy one and just start weighing yourself. Um, same thing with blood pressure. I'm not saying you should have a blood pressure check every week, but you know, getting into your primary care doctor and having your blood pressure checked, uh, you know, you're waiting that line at the pharmacy and they got a free blood pressure monitor.

Matt: Yeah, just check it out, you know, and for the record, the ER shouldn't be your primary care physician.

Erik: No.

Matt: Yeah, just just to throw that out there. Go ahead.

Erik: But, but the other thing with blood [00:07:00] pressure too, is it, and it's not one spot measurement where we should react and this, you know, get on a blood pressure med, right?

Right. I mean, it's, it's really having a relationship with your doctor with multiple readings and a trend that's moving up. Maybe we should do something about it. Right. A friend of mine has lost quite a bit of weight and actually his doctor is talking about Take him off his meds. He doesn't need them anymore because one of the reasons he may have been overweight is Related maybe to [00:07:30] the weight or the lifestyle somehow.

So You know, I am NOT a big fan of meds. I'm not I hate it that that's a reactionary thing But sometimes we need it. Sure. Because you, you don't want to stroke out, right? Absolutely. And while you're on that med, I would view the med as more of a bridge to fix the problem, right? Let's figure out why my blood pressure is high, but in the meantime I'm going to take this medication while I'm figuring this out.

When I fix that problem, I may not need the med anymore.

Matt: Right? Absolutely. It's like [00:08:00] some diabetes medications, right? You lose that weight. You might not need that.

Erik: Now there are some forms of diabetes where you will be taking a medication. Yeah, you have

Matt: to. Yeah, exactly. Or you might need dialysis

Erik: your whole life.

I mean, unfortunately there are health issues, but fortunately we have a healthcare system that's Sophisticated that can take care of all sorts of different problems.

Matt: So you got to know fasting blood sugar, right? Your blood fasting blood glucose. You got to know your A1C. Like those numbers are very important.

And that's why it's important to have that [00:08:30] primary care physician. So they can look back. Oh, last year you were here this year, six months ago, whatever it is.

Erik: You don't want to tell the story at the ER, and I've heard this many times, it's like yeah man, I've been peeing all the time, I'm always super thirsty, I've lost a bunch of weight, you know, yeah, it's like uh, you've got diabetes.

Yep. And, uh, anyway, so that, you're right, knowing those things, knowing, uh, and again, you're not, you don't need to check your cholesterol level every week, but knowing what your cholesterol level is, so you can make [00:09:00] dietary modifications or exercise modifications. I mean, if your HDL is low, exercise can bring it up.

If your LDL and the bad cholesterol is high, you can change your diet to bring it down. And for the record, the triglycerides as part of the lipid panel, that is largely from sugar intake. Um, so being able to understand the profile of the fats in your blood is an important thing to know. And I'm not necessarily a proponent of medications.

Um, [00:09:30] but, um, there, there are medications out there that based on studies have shown to increase our, our fat intake. Um, or decrease our mortality. Sure. Especially the coronary artery disease. But anyway, but knowing your cholesterol level, knowing your weight, knowing your, you know, what's your

Matt: resting heart rate is, what's your blood pressure like?

I know. A ballpark of where my blood pressure usually falls. I know a ballpark of where my heart rate you

Erik: know, with these, these sophisticated watches that we have now, whether it's leather. It's super easy, at least to get your heart rate. Yeah, you [00:10:00] can monitor your heart, you EKG if you want to. But I think a lot of the metrics we've talked about so far could, could, you could successfully do those things, you know, with a regular visit to your, your primary care doctor.

Matt: Yep.

Erik: Um, I, and there are other metrics you can measure too. Oh, yeah. There's all kinds of stuff. You mentioned BMI. Um, and, and, and that really is just a good place to start maybe. But most people, like we said earlier, how much did you weigh when you [00:10:30] graduated? I mean that, and knowing your weight and being able to monitor things make changes.

Matt: And BMI, just so everybody, body mass index, right? It's basically your height and your weight.

Erik: Yeah,

Matt: right. Combined. So, you know, but you're a big guy, you're tall, but you're also, you're a big muscular guy.

Erik: I was morbidly obese playing football in college with a low body percent fat, but I, I just, according to the BMI scale, and a lot of these NFL athletes, a lot of these, these, these super athletes and you, you talked about being 130 pounds [00:11:00] might give you a normal BMI.

At 130 pounds, you can't lift the weight you do or do the push ups you do. You,

Matt: I can't, I mean, working as a firefighter, like trying to move the things at 130, starting up at 150 pounds. Yeah, it's, it's, so I think that that scale is relative. And I think that we all kind of should have at least a good idea of, okay, am I at a healthy weight?

Narrator: Yeah.

Matt: Right. You know, now it's interesting to hear your perspective on it. Like you don't, you wouldn't notice if you've gained [00:11:30] 10 pounds. Like I noticed if I gained. Five pounds.

Erik: Yeah,

Matt: like I can tell like, oh, yeah, I bet I'm a little bit heavier than I normally am.

Erik: And then what will you do?

Matt: Oh, I'll change something.

I'll change something.

Erik: Like you're driving. You're correct.

Matt: Exactly. Yeah. Micro turns. Exactly. Exactly. And that's, you know, we talked about this when we kind of talked about the overview is that a lot of these health things, you know, we talk a lot about diets. You've talked a lot about diets and paleo or vegan or You know, vegetarian, whatever the case may be.

Hey, if that [00:12:00] works for you, God bless you, go get it. Right? If being a vegan is working for that person, and they're happy and healthy and all those kind of things, good for you, go for it. Right? But that doesn't work for everybody. Right? And so I think we have to find changes. That we can live with long term.

It's not about a diet. It's about a lifestyle change. Right. And you've done that over the last year. Cumulative small decisions over time. That's a lifelong difference. Yes. How do you climb a mountain? One step at a time, right? How do you eat an elephant? How do you eat an [00:12:30] elephant? One bite at a time.

Exactly. And so I think people, and I get this too, you know, I work with some guys that are heavier. You know, and they look at me and they're, Oh, you're in the gym. Oh, I'm not disciplined like you, like bro. Yeah. Like there's days I don't want to go into the gym. Now, once I get in there and I get moving, 99 percent of the time, 10, 15 minutes into my workout, I feel, I start feeling good.

I've greased the engine. You know, I'm, I'm moving. I'm feeling good. Right. And then afterwards I always feel better. I always feel better. I never regret doing a [00:13:00] workout, but I'd say probably 50 percent of the time, like, I don't want to, I would much rather sit here and drink coffee and be hanging out at the smoking table in the bay with the guys telling the stories than going in here doing a workout.

Right. I would much rather do that or go watch my show, whatever it is. I would much rather be doing that just like any other human being. Right. The difference is, is that you create that habit. I think in your life, like you said, you've done over the last year of working out and eating healthier and [00:13:30] anybody can do it.

You know, these, these guys that think, Oh, I'm not like you, I'll never be like you. That's not true. You can be like that. You can

Erik: do it. Whatever it is that you do, you can be consistent. Exactly. And when you implement those small life changes, um, um, and we talked about this earlier, a big motivation or a big motivator can be a life emergency.

Yep. Don't wait till you get hit and you know, blindsided by a big health crisis. Yep. That'll motivate you to change But I want us [00:14:00] to empower change now Yeah And and and again one of the big detractors and we'll talk about this later with the how we're talking about the what now but the how really has to To be implemented the how, I mean, you'll know the right thing to do.

You'll know you should check your weight, but why aren't you doing it? You know, you're a little heavy and you need to lose weight. Why didn't you? It's hard to do it, but we'll talk about the how later. So I'm going to poke the bear now. I'm poking the bear. Um, we're going to, you know, there, [00:14:30] it's one thing to monitor the gauge cluster, right?

But we also know that there are certain things that aren't on a gauge cluster that we have to be vigilant about checking in the car. Like, uh, you know, the brakes can go out, uh, you know, it's a weak link in the cars, the, you know, transmission, um, you know, maybe, you know, even oil changes, transmission fluid changes, you know, all of these things, brake fluid.

Coolant. Um, you know, there's certain things that wear out on vehicles, right? Um, and in our [00:15:00] bodies, um, think one of the things that, you know, we need to be aware of is the cardiovascular health and knowing those risk factors, knowing, knowing how to keep your heart healthy. That's the weak link in our machine is the pump, the heart and the blood vessels that are attached to it.

And, So by monitoring those gauge clusters and doing the things that we just talked about is really one of the ways we can help our heart. And, and like you said earlier too, Matt, is that there's so much [00:15:30] overlap between all of these things by doing all those other things we're going to be talking about and have talked about, right?

You're taking care of that weak link, your heart, but that's important. And, and I think, um, anything you want to say about Hart before I start, I'm poking the bear soon. What

Matt: you're saying is it sounds like you're a driver, you're an engineer, you're a chauffeur, whatever term is used, right? Yeah. Well, what do they do in a fire ground?

They're literally sitting there watching the gauges and they know the slightest function in intake or discharge or pump [00:16:00] speed or anything. We've got to make minute adjustments. Oh, I've just lost a little bit here. I got to turn my throttle up or, Oh, I've got too much discharge pressure. I got to bump my throttle down.

That's exactly what you're talking about. To put it in the context of like a firefighter analogy is, you know, think of it that way. Your pressure is a little bit too high. Okay. Well, you got to change a little something to bring that back down. Right. That's, that's what you're saying.

Erik: And then, uh, unfortunately, um, there are certain life emergencies and crises, the C word cancer.

Um, how do we mitigate our risk [00:16:30] for those things? Because now we're talking about when we're driving and the engine blows up or the transmission falls out of the, I've seen it happen actually on the freeway, a terrible sound. And I looked over and the, the drive shaft had come out of the U joint had broken and failed.

Yeah. And you hear this terrible noise. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. When, so, you know, I have a friend of mine, uh, diagnosed with cancer and, uh, testicular cancer, his testicle removed or whatever, and that can metastasize to the brain. It's a nasty cancer.

Matt: Yeah. [00:17:00]

Erik: Um, you know, uh, how do we prevent those emergencies from happening?

There are actually things we should know. We mentioned GI stuff, right? Colonoscopy. Yep. Let me tell you a cool story, if you don't mind. A cool colonoscopy story? It is a cool one. Okay. Not my colonoscopy. Oh, okay.

Matt: I'll tell you that if

Erik: you want, but. I'm good. Uh, actually I had my colonoscopy recently, my second one, and I asked the GI doc if I could do it without anesthetic.

So I could be awake to watch it and she said [00:17:30] sure if you want to might be uncomfortable I decided not to but I thought about it just so I could see

Matt: Don't they, don't they record it? Can't they record it? Didn't, uh, didn't, wasn't it Katie Couric or something? You're smarter

Erik: than me. You couldn't record it.

Yeah I'm doing my thingies, right?

Matt: Well I think Katie Couric did it on the news live one time. Anyway.

Erik: It's really not a big deal. No. No, it isn't. Well, it is a big deal. Have you ever seen that is a huge deal!

Matt: It's like six, eight feet long.

Erik: Yeah right, it is huge, but it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. Yeah.

And what I mean by that [00:18:00] is it's not big. That uncomfortable. You fall asleep. You wake up. It doesn't. Oh, you don't feel

Matt: anything. There's no recovery time yet. I've had there are

Erik: some risks that you have to sign a consent for, but that's more the anesthesia side. But I've had patients in the ER that come in with terrible rectal bleeding and the CT scan shows this invasive rectal cancer.

And this guy's in his thirties with young children and a young marriage. And now he's dealing with rectal cancer. That's terrible. You can metastasize to the liver and you know, that's, you're not going to live long.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: And how [00:18:30] terrible is that? Right. It's horrible. So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, um, you know, in the fire service, we have an increased risk of colon cancer.

And you really should talk to your doctor and testicular cancer and kidney cancer. And we're going to talk about the big ones here.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: But for now, though, this is such a preventable cancer. And if you don't know this The colon cancer is usually. Most of the types of colon cancers we get are slow growing and that's [00:19:00] why you get a colonoscopy every three to five years because even if you develop a cancer between colonoscopies it grows so slow you'll catch it on the next one.

But there are people out there that come to the ER with complaints of rectal bleeding or weight loss or whatever and I find a big nasty colon cancer. I don't want anyone doing that. To have that happen to them because it's so treatable and preventable. So it's like

Matt: dying in a car wreck where your seatbelt,

Erik: right?

Matt: Yeah, it

Erik: is. It's like that. So that's what the H is. It's all meant to [00:19:30] signify is these things we can do to maintain our health, these, these decisions that we can make a one time decision. When I turn 45, I'm going to get a colonoscopy. If you have colon cancer in your family and you know it's earlier, that's when you're That's a big risk.

If you were, if you had a dad, for example, that was diagnosed at 45 with colon cancer, then you need to subtract 10 years from that and get yours at 35. If you're not sure exactly what you should do, you should talk to your doctor. Yep. And talk

Matt: to your family. [00:20:00] You know, yeah. Ask. What if you're adopted?

Right. That's the other issue. We, we have a good friend of ours. Can I tell you my testicular cancer story? Let's hear it. This is, uh, I'll tell him myself a little bit. It's almost should have been on the embarrassing stories podcast. So I had actually, cause we had a big cancer initiative in my department and I had actually found a lump.

And so I thought I probably ought to get this checked out, right? Self check.

Erik: Super important.

Matt: So I go to my doctor, he says, yep, we need to [00:20:30] get you in for an ultrasound, have it checked out. So I go to the place, the imaging center, right? And you know what? I'm sitting there and I'm not thinking, but I'm sitting there and I'm looking around, I'm like, All I'm seeing is cute girls back there.

They're doing all the imaging. So, well, whatever. Here you go. So, sure enough, this young lady comes out, calls my name, and I'm like, Oh, man, here we go. And so I go back into the little imaging room, and there's this chair. Yeah. Right? And she's like, okay, here's the deal. She goes, go ahead and pull your pants down.

And [00:21:00] here's a washcloth to cover the part up that I don't need to see. Just leave your testicles exposed and we'll do the thing. I'm like, okay, cool. There's a table there. Well, so she, she's like, I'll turn around. You get yourself all ready. I said, okay, fine. So she turns around. So I had. sweatpants on. I just pull my sweatpants down.

I take the washcloth and I'm holding my junk up with the rest of my junk hanging down, but I'm standing next to this bed. I'm like, okay, I'm ready. She turns around. She's like, Oh, [00:21:30] I'm sorry, honey. I mean, you can lay down. I was so flustered by the fact that, you know, I was getting this, this procedure done, but so she goes through and she checks and everything was clear is all fine.

It was all good. I'm glad you, I mean, but super important to get those things checked out.

Erik: Know your anatomy. This doesn't feel normal. What is this? Exactly. And it's interesting too, don't be lulled by, hey it doesn't hurt so it won't be bad. Actually the cancers tend to not be tender. And they're very slow growing.

It's [00:22:00] actually an acute onset, wow my testicle hurts today and I'm feeling something there, a lump, and it's super tender. That's less concerning than this. Probably a torsion or something. You should still get it checked out. Absolutely. But it's more concerning for that guy that says, you know what? I've noticed this thing for a few months, maybe a gear.

My wife has been bugging me about it. It doesn't hurt at all, but I, I'm here because my wife wanted me to get checked out. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: And, and then the, the, the pathophysiology of testicular cancer is, it will metastasize to your [00:22:30] brain. So we're trained in the ER. If we do find something like testicular cancer is to get a head CT as well.

And it's part of the workup. Yeah. Another, Common cancer again, lung cancer is huge, especially within the fire service where you're exposed to a lot of potentially toxic air, right? I mean, diesel exhaust is highly carcinogenic alone. And then, and then all the chemicals in the fire that you're exposed to, um, you know, uh, you know, I'll just say this once, but don't, you know, [00:23:00] don't smoke.

I mean, if you're smoking, find a way to quit. Um, and I mean, you can't, you know, it's water under the bridge now, but Um, quitting smoking is a huge benefit to your health. Good news

Matt: is I don't know a lot of firemen that smoke anymore.

Erik: I do know a few that are. Oh, I'm sure that there's

Matt: some out there that do,

Erik: yeah.

So, but it's all about decreasing risk. Right, absolutely. And, uh, mouth cancer with chewing tobacco, that's more common. Be careful. I mean, it's, um, I, I remember specifically a 35 year old guy who [00:23:30] found mouth cancer. He was a baseball coach and he went in, um, to surgery and the, the cancer had gotten into the skull.

There's nothing they could do. So it was kind of a, that made me, I mean, I've chewed before. I, I'm not doing that again.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: So just be aware of that. There are, there are risks and not everybody's going to have that happen, obviously, but that's why, why risk it? And there are, there are safer things to put in your lip.

Then. Tobacco. Um, but just to be aware of that, but all that to [00:24:00] say is, uh, you know, we, we live in a risky world and there's a risk benefit thing where you enjoy something. I mean, I'm, I'm not here to tell you not to do things, but be aware of the risk though. Right? Right. Same thing with alcohol. I mean, alcohol isn't in something that we'll talk about with intake, but it's certainly, um, uh, it can, it can hurt your body.

Um, um, uh, other cancers, I think that would be good to talk about. One of the, one of the really common ones outside of colon cancer, testicular cancer, uh, lung cancer, [00:24:30] another common one, prostate cancer, being aware of. of the risks for that, knowing your family history and being aware of that before you start something like testosterone and to have a conversation with your doctor about the risks and benefits of it.

Um, but prostate cancer is a unique cancer. It's, uh, I think, uh, the statistic I read and understand is that 80 percent of men over 85 have prostate cancer. And they find it in the morgue. They died of [00:25:00] something else, but in the morgue, they're found. 80 percent of men over 85 have prostate cancer. And it's, it's, it's a slow growing cancer.

You, you know, you die of something else. Now, there are more aggressive forms of prostate cancer, and, and you should be monitored. There are blood tests you can do to, to, to monitor if you have the risk. You know, you should get checked, um, and, and there are certain things you can look out for too, um, with, with, with prostate cancer, but that certainly is a risk as well.

Matt: [00:25:30] Yeah.

Erik: I mean, if you notice blood in your urine, if you, you know, it could be kidneys, it could be a lot of different things. If you notice bleeding and if you notice blood in your urine or your stool, you should see a doctor. Yeah, you should. For sure. And there are certain common things. I mean, it could be a kidney stone.

I mean, it could, and that's not cancer, obviously, but you know, uh, one of the things I've noticed, especially with firefighters and ER doctors too, is that we tend to minimize things. Oh yeah. It's like, Oh, it's probably just a, this, you know, you know, it might be good to get checked out. Be careful. The last thing I think, uh, [00:26:00] as far as cancers go that I think that, you know, sometimes we don't think about a common cancer, skin cancer.

Matt: Yep. You know, um, especially here in Texas. Yeah.

Erik: I mean, even t shirts don't fully protect you and you have a t shirt on. It doesn't mean that you're protected. Um, you know, wearing sunscreen, uh, wearing, you know, wide brimmed hat outside to protect the ears and your face and the back of your neck is important.

When I mow the lawn, I remember when I was younger, I would mow the lawn with just my, you know, tennis shoes and a pair of shorts with no shirt on. [00:26:30] You get some sun, right? Yeah. Um, now when I mow the lawn, I wear a wide brim, like a fishing cap, like a big straw hat. And I wear long sleeve shirts and jeans with gloves.

I have no skin exposure. I wear those, uh, sun sleeves.

Matt: Oh yeah. Yeah. I like you wearing,

Erik: you wear them on your motorcycle. Yeah. Cause it

Matt: keeps you cool. You

Erik: still get some ventilation, but it covers up your, yeah. And it's not giving us even, even like my long sleeve t shirt I'll wear when I'm mowing the lawn.

The cool thing about a t shirt is it doesn't lose its [00:27:00] SPF protection, whereas sunscreen will wear off. The benefit of sunscreen, though, is it can actually increase the protection, you know, 30, PSI, uh, PSS, SPF? Um, But the other thing to think about too, is there are certain chemicals you want to avoid in sunscreens as well, that can be harmful to you.

Um, so, you know, talking to your doctor or, you know, there's, I'm not going to tell you what sunscreen to buy.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: Um, [00:27:30] uh, but there are certain I can't

Matt: even wear sunscreen. Well, I mean, it's

Erik: Yeah. When you put, and we'll talk about this with intake later. Yeah. But when you're putting stuff on your skin, your skin's your biggest organ.

Yep. And you put stuff on your skin, you're putting in your blood.

Matt: Yep.

Erik: Yep. It's the reality, right? A lot of medications are patches we put on our skin, it gets into our blood. Tattoo ink even gets into our lymph nodes in our blood. We talked about that. We talked about that. So, uh, uh, uh, I just, we need to protect our skin.

Sure. And, and it's a common form of skin cancer. Um, the, the, the lower [00:28:00] level of cancer risk would be a squamous cell carcinoma, um, and then, uh, then you have basal cell and then you've got the big bad boy, the melanoma, uh, which can kill quick. Um, and. You know, how do you monitor yourself? Well, the first thing you should do is to decrease your risk.

If you're out in the sun for a long period of time, and unfortunately in the fire service, we're outside a lot. And so, you know, putting sunscreen on, um, and keeping yourself covered up can decrease your risk. But even if you do [00:28:30] protect yourself, unfortunately we live on this planet with a big old nuclear reactor, about 30, 93 million miles away that releases a bunch of Cancer causing energy UV light.

Yep. You just make sure you buy a skin That's the sunscreen that protects you from UVA and UVB. Yep. And, um, and, and I'd, I'd, you know, make sure that, uh, it's, it's something that's waterproof too. Because even if you're not exerting yourself or in the water, we, we're [00:29:00] 60 percent water.

Matt: Yeah.

Erik: It'll last longer on your skin.

Yeah. And so I'd, that's the two recommendations I'd make. Yeah. But, but don't forget about your skin, that very important organ.

Matt: Yeah. No, that's good. I

Erik: think it's a good talk. The H.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Health. Get checkups, regular checkups with your doctor. They'll go over everything you need to do annually at least.

It's a good way to do it. See you on the next one. Be safe out

Narrator: there. Thank you for listening to EMS, the Erik and Matt [00:29:30] Show.