Going Under: Anesthesia Answered with Dr. Brian Schmutzler
Going Under: Anesthesia Answered is a podcast with renowned physician and anesthesiologist Dr. Brian Schmutzler. Together with Award-Winning Co-Host and television journalist, Vahid Sadrzadeh, the podcast aims to answer not only your most pressing anesthesia questions but to provide the most up-to-date medical data available.
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Going Under: Anesthesia Answered with Dr. Brian Schmutzler
Movember, Men's Health, Real Talk
In this episode of Going Under: Anesthesia Answered, Dr. Brian Schmutzler and Vahid Sadrzadeh dive into Movember and Men's Health: prostate basics, what screening really means, how to weigh PSA and exams, and when to act. We also discuss testicular cancer, heart risks, and the silent strain of mental health, with clear steps to take today.
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This is going under Anesthesia Answer with Dr. Brian Schmutzler. I'm Vahid Saderzani. We're brought to you by the Butterfly Network.
SPEAKER_00:Alright, I'm going to let you in on something that's completely changed the way I practice. I've been using Butterfly Probes for years. It's a portable ultrasound device that plugs right into my compatible smartphone or tablet so I can start scanning at the bedside in seconds. If you use the older versions, or even if you're new to the handheld ultrasound game, let me tell you why this new IQ3 is a game changer and really impressive. First off, having an ultrasound that literally fits in my pocket means I can move faster, whether it's vascular access, procedural guidance, or just getting real-time insights for my patients. And the tech inside this tiny device is pretty incredible. Biplane imaging lets me see short and long access simultaneously, which is huge for procedural guidance and honestly a great tool for learners. The new needle out of plane preset even shifts the scan plane digitally so I can see the needle tip sooner, which makes a real difference when precision matters. And the image quality, honestly, the IQ three holds up against some of the high-end card systems I've used. That's impressive for something this portable. If you're looking for a device that supports your practice, I can't recommend the Butterfly IQ three enough. And right now they're running a special offer. You can get$750 off the latest IQ three. Check it out at ButterflyNetwork.com.
SPEAKER_01:750 US currency dollars. There you go.
SPEAKER_00:There you go. Every dollar matters, man. And we want to thank Butterfly uh for coming to our uh CCI Chiefs meeting this past weekend. Um they had they brought in uh Russ Horowitz from Chicago, and he did uh very nice presentation on POCUS and all kinds of pre-operative stuff. So it's great. I like Russ.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we interviewed Russ back at the forum.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he came up for us.
SPEAKER_01:So awesome. Um well today, I don't see your mustache. Are you working on a mustache? I'm gonna put one of those AI mustaches on you. I've tried a mustache. No, yeah. Have you ever tried facial hair? Oh yeah. Have you? Yeah. Are there pictures that exist? Probably somewhere, yeah. Okay, so we might have to get a few, uh, Alicia, if you're listening.
SPEAKER_00:I can grow like a full beard in about a week.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. Jeez. Maybe should we try it? No. I mean, not we, you. No.
SPEAKER_00:I have to go on sales calls. I have to do all kinds of presentations. I can't have a full beard. Okay, we will just AI one. That's fine.
SPEAKER_01:You can AI a beard for the uh for sure. For the podcast.
SPEAKER_00:So why are we talking about facial hair?
SPEAKER_01:Ha ha! Thanks so much for inquiring about that. It is no shave Movember. There we go. Movember. As my kid would say, moo, moo. I don't know what that means. Well, he watches baby Einstein, so it's moo.
SPEAKER_00:He knows cow. Oh, you're not talking about your 11-year-old or 12-year-old.
SPEAKER_01:You're talking about my one-year-old. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:My 13th. I thought it was some like fancy new Gen Alpha, you know, like uh 6'7.
SPEAKER_01:I made the joke of saying, hey, should I say 4'5 instead and start a new trend? And he said, No, you're just embarrassing me and sound like a dad. Yeah. Like, okay. Sounds good. Well, no shave November has been around for a few years now. 20, 22 years.
SPEAKER_00:20, 2003. Yeah, so this would be the 23rd year.
SPEAKER_01:And it started in Australia as we did our research. You did a research. Um but actually explain this though that it actually has nothing to do with November.
SPEAKER_00:Correct. Correct. So so prostate cancer awareness month is actually September, which we found out in doing research for the show today. Um, but I had always, because all the urologists talk about it and stuff, I had always thought November was prostate cancer awareness month month. It's not, it's No Shave November or Movember, um started in Australia in 2003 to highlight men's health in general. Um and so a huge part of men's health, you know, aside from the the you know basic killers of heart disease um and diabetes is prostate cancer. Um so November, no, no shape November, November is is is created to highlight not only prostate cancer, but also testicular cancer, uh suicide awareness, and then there was something else as well. I got you right here. You do faith, identity, and masculinity. Oh, yes, and men's and men's mental health. Absolutely. Yes. So um, so yeah, so what we'll do is just maybe talk a little bit about the prostate, what it is, kind of just very high view, high level, what it does. This is a PG-rated show, so we won't talk too much about all of it. But um, and then talk about prostate cancer in general. So um the prostate go ahead. We're gonna Well, the kind of a setup to that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I have to give a shout out to my physician. Uh-huh. Uh love him. Been going to him since I arrived in South Bend 10 years ago. And I have to say, uh, look him up, Dr. Vic Meta. Yeah. Love, love him. He's a great physician, great doctor. We were talking earlier. He offered you a prostate exam today. I had my physical. Good. I had my my physical. Yeah. And um he said, Well, you know, you you're holding up, you know, you're a little squeaky arm here, a little you know, rickety back there. Yeah, exactly. And um he said, While you're here, do you want to do a colonoscopy? Or like do the uh the prostate exam? You know, you could do blood work for colonoscopy. Oh, the cold the um cola guard. Yeah, I've done one of those. I said that you did it. You filmed it in the city. Yes, I did, and he's like, Not the process you film the box. Some people have difficulty doing that or like don't like doing that and shipping it in a box. But you can do blood work too. Yeah, yeah. You can do blood work. Um so I said, hey, I'll do either. I don't care, but the cola guard's cool. Like I know it from Ryan's. So um Yeah, you have to poop in a little like bucket that it's not that bad. Um and how quickly does it get results back? It took about a week. So colon cancer is another one that, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yep, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's not it's not specifically this month.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, I mean, col colon cancer is one of the biggest killers of males and females, not just males, and it seems to be happening in younger and younger adults.
SPEAKER_01:But but he said, Do you want to get you want to do a prostate exam while you're here? And I'm like, if you ask me that question, I'm I'm gonna say no every time. I'm gonna say no every time. Debunk the myths here. What what is the prostate? What is a prostate exam? That's what I was gonna set you up on.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, of course, of course. So the the prostate is a gland, it's it's involved, and I just again I won't get into big details, but um, it's involved in the the reproductive system and the urinary tract system, as well as the hormonal system. So um, you know, it it produces the fluid, the seminal fluid, so um, you know, that's what obviously comes out. Um and then also uh acts as like a valve between the reproductive system and the urinary tract so that you don't have things going where they shouldn't go, and you can sort of imagine the rest. Um so uh but as we age, some things happen, right? So almost every male um the prostate starts to enlarge. It's a gland like any other gland, and it's based on hormones, so as as we get older it enlarges and it can restrict the the urethra where the urine comes through. So if it does that, you don't you don't get all the urine out, and so that's why men wake up in the middle of the night and have to go to the bathroom and don't completely eliminate the urine from their bladder. So that's number one. Um number two, prostate cancer is fairly common, and so that's not um it's it's a bit of a newer thing, but it may just be because we are living longer. Um and so at least the statistics I learned in when I was in medical school is 50% of men over 50 have prostate cancer, and 80% of men over of men over 80 have prostate cancer. So as you age each decade, you like it's a 10% higher chance that you're gonna get prostate cancer. Now, that doesn't mean it's clinically significant prostate cancer, though. So you can have prostate cancer and it not be something that is going to affect you. And again, it's another adage, but more men die with prostate cancer than from prostate cancer. Oh, if you look at an autopsy on somebody who's 90 years old, they probably died from heart disease or diabetes, but they also had prostate cancer.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. So it's not, I mean, uh you I mean you can obviously die from any cancer. Correct, yeah. Um but what what does it how what are the symptoms, I guess? You know, how do you know?
SPEAKER_00:So the symptoms are actually similar to BPH or br benign prosthetic hyperplasia. So the same thing. You you can't you can't fully urinate. Um oftentimes there's blood in the urine, that's kind of a big sign. Um but I think they're recommending now that most men get a prostate exam to see if it's enlarging, um, and that's a digital exam. So um a physician will uh through the rectum feel your prostate. That's the way the prostate exam works. But it's a pretty basic exam. Um and I've I've done them when I was a medical student. I'm I haven't had one myself. Um and then there's there's a lot of debate in the literature whether you should get the marker for prostate cancer, it's called PSA, prostate specific antigen. So that's just a blood test. Um but you know, sometimes it's off, and then sometimes if you're not symptomatic, you might find out you have a very small cancer, and then what do you do? So a small cancer may never progress to anything, but then you're gonna have a big procedure to you know remove the prostate, which has a lot of side effects. So there's there's lots of debates in the literature about that. Um so prostate cancer itself doesn't usually kill you, right? The cancer metastasizing is what ends up killing you. So it'll metastasize the bone, it'll metastasize the liver, it'll metastasize anywhere where the blood from that that goes through the prostate goes back to. So bone is probably the most common. You get lytic lesions like the bone bones break. So that that's you know kind of where prostate cancer comes from, uh, or where how prostate cancer kills you. Um so you know, there's a lot of things that you can do. There's some medications that you can take. Um, there are some minimally invasive ways. So there's transurethral resection of the prostate, there's this cryoablation of the prostate, there, and then there's full-on prostatectomies, which you can do either robotically or you can do open. So there's a lot of ways that you can treat prostate cancer, but the mainstay is getting the prostate out, you know, getting that cancer out.
SPEAKER_01:Is this a I know a lot of um, and what what my physician told me was, you know, you wait till you're 45 to get the colonoscopy. Correct. Is this the same thing with a prostate? Do you wait till you're 45? Because more likely than not, insurance will I yeah, I mean or they'll won't let you do it before 45 with the colon.
SPEAKER_00:They'll let oh a rectal exam, a prostate exam. You can get that anytime. That's just part of a routine. Yeah, routine, yeah. And so I I think um, I think at least my direct primary care physician recommends it at 40. Um, I haven't done it yet. I you know, I don't know exactly what the literature says. It used to be 50, it may be 45. Now it probably is because you're 45, right? So two weeks. Yeah. I'm guessing. I'm guessing it's 45. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. So thanks. Um and that that's a completely non-invasive exam. It's not very specific. It's basically like, okay, you know, we feel what the prostate feels like. Is it larger than normal or not? And then it if you kind of have those every year, you can tell is it growing? And if it's growing rapidly, it's unlikely to be that BPH, that burn benign prosthetic hyperplasia, it's more likely to be a cancer.
SPEAKER_01:What would you do in that situation though, if you you had that small mass and you're like, eh, it's not I mean, do you do you wait?
SPEAKER_00:Do you I mean there's a lot of side effects to prostatectomies? So I I mean, if you can if you is that surgery through the rectum, or is that it depends. There's a bunch of different ways to do it. So I I mean, if you can live with the fact that you know there's a cancer in there and that's not gonna bother you, you know, I typically people wait till the PSA hits a certain level. And I I again I I'm not an I'm not a urologist. I think the level is like seven where they had start to talk about options. Um, but there's medication options as well, so you can do that even before your PSA hits a hits a certain level. So um, you know, I think it's good to highlight, it's good to think about, it's good to know, you know, we're all every man is gonna have prostate cancer. It just the way it is. Or prostate, sorry, prostate issues, not prostate cancer. Every man's gonna have prostate issues, whether it's benign or not. So it's good to talk about it. Um, I think testicular cancer is another interesting, you know, because this isn't actually prostate cancer awareness month, we'll talk about all the other ones too. So um testicular cancer is another interesting one. There's there's sort of these two, there's two um times in your life where you're likely to see prostate cancer. It's sort of in that late teens, early twenties, then again as you get older, um, you know, in the 60s or 70s. Um testicular cancer is almost 100% it's probably like 99% treatable. Um so um and the the best way, honestly, to make sure that you're screening for it is self-examination. So you actually feel your testicles and make sure there isn't a lump that you didn't notice before. Um and and then if there is, the treatment is orchiectomy, which is removal of the testicle. And then oftentimes they'll do also what's called a RPLND, a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, where they go in and take out all the lymph nodes where it could metastasize. And so a lot of this was done at IU, Indiana University, where I um where I trained. They they developed protocols for the chemotherapy for for testicular cancer as well as the surgeries. Interesting. Yeah, it is very interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Uh you know, like that that is nothing to take lightly. Uh again, I'm not gonna go into too much detail here, but um, you know, I've had some issues over the years, and it was one thing in my teens that I think I ignored. Yeah, maybe not cancer, no, no, right, but but that I ignored. And then as I got older and into college, couldn't avoid the pain. I see, yeah. And so at that point, they needed to do emergency surgery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, again, nothing to take lightly. I think uh you gotta check it out before pain gets too much, before it limits you and and you know, uh, but it's something that I've always been aware of. Uh something that I I think all men should be aware of is hey, like, am I feeling pain? Is it normal? Is it something that I should be aware of? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um so so I think we as men in particular um avoid our health issues. 100%, right? So and you I'm one of those guys, you know. And I and I think that you know that that would bear the the data would bear that out, right? That men just don't go to the doctor. Yeah, and by the time you do, you're so sick that usually it's either your significant other dragging you in or you just you know fall out in the street, right? So um I think it's a good, you know, using the month of November to really highlight men's health issues and then talk about it's okay to go to the doctor.
SPEAKER_01:It's okay to say like I'm sick, or I mean it's time consuming, but yeah, it's I mean but you have to do it.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sick, I'm having pain, I need help with whatever. And men just aren't good at that. Um we also aren't good at maintaining our health, and this is something you know, Friday I'm gonna go in and have my VO2 max, my Riching metabolic rate, and my uh DEXA scan to see how fat I am. Um and so I'm sorry, body fat percentage. Um, so yeah, so so I think it's it's good to do the preventative stuff too, right? And just like every other cancer we talk about, the number one modifiable risk factor for any cancer is smoking. Smoking, right. And yeah, smoking. Yeah, smoking is number one, and then weight, obesity is the other one. So um, yeah, if you avoid smoking, you significantly decrease your chance of having a severe metastatic prostate cancer.
SPEAKER_01:Um something that quit smoking. Something that I do want to bring up is um heart problems. Yeah. Because I think that's another thing that is avoidable-ish. Not completely. There's a genetic factor to it. But yeah, you can if there's warning signs, right? Oh, yeah. I had warning signs three weeks ago. I mean, if they weren't warning signs, but they were concerning signs, right? And I think like as men, and I'm just talking to you as a guy, yeah, you know, like as men, you know, we're so busy during the day. Yeah, and you're like, oh, I'm it's just stress related, or it's just whatever. And then you start feeling a little tingling down your left arm. Yeah, and you're like, eh, maybe not, maybe not. Yeah. And then you're like, ooh, well, I got a little chest situation. Discomfort, yeah. That is exactly why I called my doctor and said, I I may need to just get in. Yeah. You know, I need to get in, see what my physical's at, see where my weight's at, yeah, which wasn't good, and and just kind of test the things that I've been ignoring for the last year. Yeah. Because what you don't want is to catch the things after they happen. Because typically it's bad if that if that does.
SPEAKER_00:So any chest pain at all, you should get in and see somebody. Now, oh unless you're having other symptoms with it, most chest pain is not cardiac, is not a heart attack. But any chest pain at all is an indication that something's going on. So you should get in and be seen as quickly. You know, I'm a doctor, but not your doctor, so I'm not saying don't go to the ER or go to the ER, but you know, you know your body. You gotta get it, you gotta get any chest pain checked out. Um, again, diet, exercise, making sure to keep a healthy weight, making sure to exercise. Um, you know, I advocate for, and this is not fully um this is not fully data based, but I advocate for an 81 milligram aspirin over the age of 40. There is some So I asked my doctor about that. Yeah, what is I started taking it?
SPEAKER_01:What did Vic say? Vic said he's not totally against it. Yeah, but there have been studies recently that have shown that if you do take the 81 mil, that you have a chance of bleeding a little more because it you know obviously it's supposed to open up the the vessels.
SPEAKER_00:There are a couple good studies 10, 15 years ago, that said taking an 81 milligram aspirin every day doesn't have any real side effects, right? It does it does change your platelet, it works by changing the way that the platelets aggregate. So you're gonna bleed a little bit more, right? So when I get a blood draw, I bleed through a band-aid and then I'm fine. No big deal. Um, but it probably reduces your risk not of having a heart attack, but if you have a heart attack from of dying from the heart attack. So that's because it won't because it'll open the vessels just a little bit more. The blood is just thin enough that it's probably gonna get past it and keep you alive. Now I don't is that risk it outweighs the risk of blood. The benefit, the benefit out of so for me, yes. If you're somebody who's you know in a job where you're cutting yourself all the time or you have another bleeding disorder, probably not. But for me, yeah. I mean, bleeding a little bit more if I cut myself shaving is not that big of a deal to me.
SPEAKER_01:I I this is of to me, this is well worth having the conversation. Yeah, I think so. Because, you know, not just I think as men, you're like, eh. Right, right. I'm 45. Big deal.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Uh 45 is.
SPEAKER_00:But it could be something, right? So you should see uh you should see a primary care physician every year. And if you're having symptoms, you should get them checked out. I mean, you know, don't ignore it, I guess is what what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and we learned a great lesson with uh with our friend here who had the transplant surgery. Yep, yep, yep. And um, yeah, you know, he was Dave Schrock.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he was a you know, it was the symptoms, right? Yeah, 45 relatively healthy guy. Just turned out he had a yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. So I mean any any swelling that, you know, if your legs swell, that's that's kind of a big deal. You want to get that checked out. It could be nothing, it could just be, you know, you're not you've got incompetent veins that aren't pushing the blood back, but it could be heart failure.
SPEAKER_01:It is so easy, and I'm just gonna admit this. Yeah, it is so easy to chat GBT something now. Yeah that I did the literally, I'm sitting there at night having chest pain, and like, gosh, did I have too much salt? Yeah, or like why are my fingers kind of swollen? You asked Chad, huh? And I I went to ChatGBT, I'm like, type in the symptoms, yeah. What should you do? Literally, ChatGBT said, You should go to the doctor. Okay, you know what I mean? Like schedule with your because it is not some of these symptoms are not normal, right? Right. And so chest pain is never normal. So I took actually that's the first when I when I started having the chest pain with the left arm.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, then you thought about it.
SPEAKER_01:Then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get some 81 mil.
SPEAKER_00:But you but you And that helped a little bit. You talked about how the chest pain was not, it didn't feel like the classic. Somebody's sitting on your chest, right? It felt like yeah, I've got a pinpoint. Because I asked people, yeah, yeah, I've got pinpoint pain right here. So I mean, one of my best friends is a physician, so you know, but not my physician. Not your physician, and I'm not that type of physician, correct.
SPEAKER_01:But just to get that initial but not everybody has that. Right, right, right. And so it is good to know those. Okay, does it feel like somebody's sitting on your chest? Right. Yeah, that's didn't feel like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's one of the classic in men, in women, it's totally different. Really? Women oftentimes have silent heart attacks. So the only thing they notice is like jaw pain. Oh, that's like jaw hurts. And a lot of times it's a it's a heart attack.
SPEAKER_01:So um when we boil it back down though, get your physical every year, um, you know, listen to your doctor. Yep. Um, the other thing I wanted to to bring up with this Movember is that the mustache represents more than just right, oh no, shave November. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It represents, you know, like, you know, standing for men's health. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um it's kind of a virtue signal, not in a negative way, but it's kind of a virtue signal. Like I'm I'm, you know, I'm not gonna shave this month to show that I care about men's health. And you know, specifically we think prostate cancer, but like you said, testicular cancer, mental health, all that sort of stuff that men often deal with and don't talk about.
SPEAKER_01:Mental health is a big deal too. Absolutely. Which I don't think, I mean, is not talked about. Nope. Yeah, by far is not talked about more than any other, you know, and we can say it, killer of men, of women, you know, like it always gets to somewhere too far. Yep. I was one of these people that, like, uh, I don't really need to, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just chalk it up to stress or chalk it up to whatever. But again, you don't want to get it to a point so far where you can't control it, where you can't, yeah, you know, and and that is the the worry, right? Um, and so talking about mental health. Yeah, there's a stigma. I mean, I think there's a stigma related to it. Um, you know, is there mental health? I mean, just a serious question. Yeah, you know, you have a lot of professions where mental health is a big deal, yeah. Uh-huh. Right. Let's talk about medicine for a second. Yep. How often do you find people are not talking about mental health and how big of a deal is it in the medical field?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I think there's a stigma to it, particularly in the medical field, because you know, you're expected to be the one taking care of other people. And so a lot of times if you say, hey, I've got depression, I've got whatever, um, there's there's stigma in the in the medical field. And a lot of times you, you know, people talk about like they lost a job or didn't get a job or something like that because they talked about their mental health. Add to that that um, you know, in medical school and residency, it's cutthroat, it's very difficult, it's very time consuming. You don't have time to take care of yourself, you don't have time to see your family. Um I think you know, the the suicidality and mental health rate is a little bit higher in physicians than it is in the general public. Not not, you know, two times astronomical, but it is more a little bit higher, yeah. Um, but but it just it's very, very stigmatized where people don't talk about it.
SPEAKER_01:Um if you can, if you allow me to, I will post a story I did. Um this is another profession, football, yeah, um, on CTE. Um I I did some research a few years back, and now the technology has doubled or tripled with the guardian caps and stuff, yeah. Have tripled since then. But I I did a study and I talked to some physicians locally and and did a very in-depth report on CTE. Yeah. That I think is really important. Yeah, you know, um, because again, we're we're, you know, young men who are 24, 25 years old, yeah, who are losing their life because of mental health. Junior junior Seao, right? Junior Seao. He was one of the we was one of the first that we knew of when we kind of diagnosed that CTE, when the medical world was like, okay, we're gonna recognize this.
SPEAKER_00:Well, there was there was that kid from uh Dallas, the Dallas Cowboys couple committed suicide a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think his brother had died previously. Yeah, and so like, you know, again, in football, what are you gonna do? Go to the head coach and be like, hey, rest, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right? I mean, like, uh, you know, talk about those things. Yeah, and so I feel like there is a side that, you know, I'm glad that the University of Notre Dame has psychologists that they have on staff that can help kids with that stuff. Yeah, it's it's and somebody who played football, yeah, and somebody who played sports, right? It's not like uh it's not talked about at all. It's not talked about at all. I mean, it wasn't talked about in 03, 04, 05, whatever. Like that certainly not talked about.
SPEAKER_00:It's interesting. Um the uh the one of the biggest things is uh that that leads to you know poor mental health, more worse mental health and suicidality is isolation, right? So not talking about it, right? And I think a lot of men are isolated, especially now, there's a lot of men who are very isolated. If you don't have you know significant other kids or a really good set of friends, it's very easy as a man to go like I go to work, I go maybe to the gym and I go home by myself, right? If you don't have all the that support system, and I don't think you know, women are much more um in general, this generalities, women are much more interactional, right? They they'll find other women to hang out with, they might talk to. Right, yeah, yeah. So I I think isolation within men is a big problem, and that also probably leads to worse, worse mental health issues.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it's a it's a big deal in a lot of professions, it's a big deal in television because the stress, the you know, like you go home and you're not you don't really want to hang out with anybody else because you're just all day long. So it's like, you know, the I feel like there's professions that you know, physicians, you know, TV, you know, journalism, football, whatever. Look at these little pockets, those are just examples. Yep. Not saying it it's everywhere, it is everywhere, but those are just little pockets that it's not talked about. Yeah, and so I feel like why are we only waiting till one month to talk about this stuff? You know what I mean? That's true. And I think it's really good what you guys do, you know, once a week, or once is it once a week or once a month with the men's group. Once a month, yeah, men's groups once a month at influence. Yeah, and um, I really think that's a great thing because you know, I don't know if you talk about these things, but it's a support group. Yeah, yeah, that you can have a voice in, that you can have a listening ear in.
SPEAKER_00:We talk about our struggles, probably not to the level that I would talk to like a best friend, but we talked about our struggles in general, and it's uh it's nice to know, you know, you've got uh, you know, other other people there who are you know like-minded and stuff. So yeah, it's it's you know, a men's group is good. Any any time that you can put together a bunch of men together, um, I think it's it's helpful for the mental health aspect of things.
SPEAKER_01:So um, so there are some other months of the year. All right. Yes, there's 11 other months of the year. Always have a friend to keep you in change.
SPEAKER_00:That's right, that's right. So what do the other months mean?
SPEAKER_01:Uh so November is awareness. Yep, yeah. Uh January is New Year Health Reset Month, which that's why you see your gyms packed on January 1st.
SPEAKER_00:Until January 20th, about, yeah. I'm making a stand next year.
SPEAKER_01:2026. Come walk out with me. Deal. March is colorectal cancer month. Okay, yep. So that is March. Yeah. And then September is officially Prostate Cancer Awareness.
SPEAKER_00:Prostate uh month. But it's just not, it's not like so. You know, you know October is breast cancer awareness month because they partner with everybody. You've got the pink and all that sort of stuff. Um, you know, I th I think that you know nobody knows that September is prostate cancer awareness month. Everybody knows about No Shave November or Movember or whatever. So that's that's the you know, that's the one the month that we really you know promote it.
SPEAKER_01:So well, I'm gonna expect that uh AI mustache on you. Yeah, that's up to you. You're gonna have to put that on there. I will. That's not me. Um At least we will for the real. Yeah. The social media reel. But um I'm not gonna grow a mustache. And it's not because I don't stand in solidarity with other men about raising awareness. Halfway through the month already, so I needed to start that back in March. I should today. I needed to start that back in March. But uh, you know, if you want to see me on the next kickoff show, there you go. I won't have a mustache. Couple couple little straight. Yeah, that's gonna look weird. But um maybe for the kick maybe for the uh uh playoff game maybe for the playoff game in January. Uh but here is what we're gonna leave you with. Challenge yourselves. Yeah. Um share uh share this episode with with other men.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:With other people in your life, schedule a checkup. Yeah. Ask your brother, dad, friend uh when he last had a PSA. Yep. And or or a uh a prostate exam, either one.
SPEAKER_00:Prostate exam both, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And grow a mustache with purpose.
SPEAKER_00:I uh I promote all of those except the mustache portion. That will I will I will not participate in that portion.
SPEAKER_01:You know what? Maybe we will man now I'm wishing we had Bronson on the show. Yeah, he could grow a mustache in two seconds.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. He's got a full full beard. Maybe we'll just post his picture. That sounds good. Yeah. He's participating. Anything else on this episode? No, I don't think so. Just uh, yeah, like like we said, um, we care about health in general, and we definitely care about men's health, and so this this month, highlight it. Awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, take care of your guys out there and uh you know take care of yourselves if you're uh listening and watching. This has been another episode of Going Under Anesthesia Answered with Dr. Brian Schmutzer, brought to you by The Butterfly Network.
SPEAKER_00:And November? Yeah. Yeah. We'll see you in the next one. All right. See you in the next. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I was supposed to say see in the well, you you jumped, you you jumped at the chance last time, so I was giving you the microphone. We'll see you in the next one. Enjoy No Shape November.
