The Armor Men's Health Show
The Armor Men’s Health Show is what happens when a board-certified urologist and a stand-up comedian walk into a studio… and actually help people.
Hosted by Dr. Sandeep Mistry, founder of Urology Specialists of Austin, and professional, touring standup comedian, Donna Lee, this weekly podcast tackles the medical topics men care about… but don’t always want to Google in public.
We talk about all things men's wellness including the big stuff:
Erectile dysfunction.
Prostate cancer.
Low testosterone.
Enlarged prostate.
Fertility.
Kidney stones.
Vasectomies.
Yes. We go there. Boldly.
Dr. Mistry brings the medical expertise. Donna Lee brings the questions you’re slightly embarrassed to ask. Together, they make men’s health informative, approachable and occasionally hilarious. But it’s not just about anatomy — The Armor Men’s Health Show takes a holistic approach to wellness, covering nutrition, weight loss, sleep, sex therapy, pelvic floor physical therapy, and how all of it connects to living better (and longer). Also featured are top physicians and specialists from around Austin — from cardiology to endocrinology to orthopedics — because men’s health isn’t one-size-fits-all. If you like your medical advice credible, practical, and sprinkled with comedy, this is your show. Because taking care of yourself shouldn’t feel awkward. Unless we’re talking about a crooked body part. Then it’s a little awkward...but they can fix that.
The Armor Men's Health Show
Feeling the Burn? Dr. Erik Lough on the Difficulties of Treating Acid Reflux
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Thanks for tuning in to the Armor Men’s Health Hour Podcast today, where we bring you the latest and greatest in urology care and the best urology humor out there. Today, Dr. Mistry ponders the question, "How 'general' is general surgery?" To help him answer, Dr. Mistry is joined by Dr. Erik Lough of the Capital Surgeons Group and Bariatric Medical Director of North Austin Medical Center. In this episode, listeners will learn why heartburn is one of the most concerning problems doctors encounter, and why it is so difficult to treat surgically. If antacids aren't doing the job anymore, tune in to hear some of the most advanced options for treatment. If you have questions regarding treatments for acid reflux or are seeking a second opinion, our team would love to hear from you. And if you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share us with a friend! As always, be well!
This episode originally aired on 7.31.21. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share us with a friend! As always, be well!
Check our our award winning podcast!
https://blog.feedspot.com/sex_therapy_podcasts/
https://blog.feedspot.com/mens_health_podcasts/
Dr. Mistry is a board-certified urologist and has been treating patients in the Austin and Greater Williamson County area since he started his private practice in 2007.
We enjoy hearing from you! Email us at armormenshealth@gmail.comand we’ll answer your question in an upcoming episode!
Phone: (512) 238-0762
Email: Armormenshealth@gmail.com
Website: Armormenshealth.com
Our Locations:
Round Rock Office
970 Hester’s Crossing Road
Suite 101
Round Rock, TX 78681
South Austin Office
6501 South Congress
Suite 1-103
Austin, TX 78745
Lakeline Office
12505 Hymeadow Drive
Suite 2C
Austin, TX 78750
Dripping Springs Office
170 Benney Lane
Suite 202
Dripping Springs, TX 78620
Welcome back to the Armor Men's Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee.
Dr. Mistry: Welcome back to the Armor Men's Health Hour. I'm Dr. Mistry, your host here with my well-coiffed cohost.
Donna Lee: Oh, that's me.
Dr. Mistry: That's right, Donna Lee.
Donna Lee: I haven't been coiffed in a while. I had to get a new haircut, so you would notice me sitting here in the corner in the studio...waving at you.
Dr. Mistry: Oh my Lord.
Donna Lee: Look at me, look at me!
Dr. Mistry: Oh my Lord. You know, I recently looked back at a critical email that we got from a listener and I realized he actually loves me. It was you.
Donna Lee: It was me?
Dr. Mistry: Yeah, it was your part.
Donna Lee: Yeah, he didn't like that. I said, penis? Testicals?
Dr. Mistry: No, no, no.
Donna Lee: He didn't like that I said...
Dr. Mistry: Well yes, that's right. Because now we're on Saturday.
Donna Lee: He said, I got my jollies on saying certain words, but I'm saying body parts.
Dr. Mistry: That's right. And maybe he doesn't know that you were voted the seventh funniest mom in America by Nick at Night.
Donna Lee: We can say that together now, that's awesome!
Dr. Mistry: And I cannot wait. I cannot wait until you let me put those YouTube videos online .
Donna Lee: No, no. Even, my children can't watch it. So there you go.
Dr. Mistry: Well, we really appreciate everybody's support and input to our show. It is an absolute pleasure to be able to share, you know our urologic and men's health knowledge with the community. And we love the questions every week.
Donna Lee: And I love that we're getting the followups. "Thank you so much. I got in to be seen." "Dr. Mistry was awesome!" Or Dr. Ong, or Dr. Yang, and Dr. Jacomides.
Dr. Mistry: Yeah, we're really lucky to have such a wonderful crew of people to see and take care of you. We have space, we have time, and we have a commitment to making sure that your urologic and men's health needs are taken care of. And you know what urologist love is to grow.
Donna Lee: Oh, hey, that was awesome.
Dr. Mistry: Yes. And today we're very lucky. I'm joined by a great friend of the practice and an awesome surgeon. You know, I love surgeons.
Donna Lee: I know you do. Yes. You love it when they save your ass, too.
Dr. Mistry: That's right. I have Dr. Erik Lough with Capital Surgeons Group. Thanks a lot for joining us, Erik.
Dr. Lough: You're welcome. Thank you.
Dr. Mistry: Hey, where did you go to medical school?
Dr. Lough: West Virginia University. West-by God-Virginia.
Dr. Mistry: And where'd you do your residency?
Dr. Lough: Same West Virginia university in Charleston, West Virginia.
Donna Lee: What words are you going to share here?
Dr. Mistry: Nothing. If it was another Texas school, I would talk to them . But my wife recently told me that when I make fun of other people's medical school, it is unprofessional.
Donna Lee: It's not nice, but it's so funny.
Dr. Lough: The problem for me came when West Virginia joined the Big 12, and then I went to UT for undergraduate.
Dr. Mistry: Yes. So now there's like a rivalry.
Dr. Lough: What do I do? Do I, I mean, of course I'll still go with UT, but it was a little tough cause we still had a Big 12 head to head competition.
Dr. Mistry: Yes. Yes. Well, the good news is neither of you guys are in any danger of winning a lot of games, so you don't really have to worry about...
Donna Lee: The danger is gone.
Dr. Mistry: The danger is gone. Erik, I think a lot of people may not know the total breadth of what general surgery gets to do. You guys train in a way that allow you to treat problems from the top of the head to the bottom of the foot. But most people would probably know you guys as dealing with problems in the abdomen, right?
Dr. Lough: Correct.
Dr. Mistry: Heartburn has been a fascinating disease just in our lifetime. How it's changed, right?
Dr. Lough: Sure.
Dr. Mistry: When we were youngin's, it was because we had stress in our life. Just how that has changed the opinion of heartburn, how dangerous it can be, all that stuff has just been like remarkable change.
Dr. Lough: We learned about surgeries in my residency that were basically now considered historical operations that we would, you know, people would get ulcers from excess acid and you'd have to do an operation to stop their ulcer.
Dr. Mistry: ...from bleeding.
Dr. Lough: ...or perforating, and then their stomach contents leaks out into their belly and they're sick as a dog after that.
Dr. Mistry: And that was just 10 years ago. And we're just in a different era.
Dr. Lough: You know, now that people have acid blocking medicines, the ulcers are very easy to treat. There's billions of dollars pharmaceutical costs that just go to purely antacids and antireflux medicines and histamines blockers.
Dr. Mistry: You know, if you have had heartburn for a long time, you may be stuck in an old way of thinking about heartburn. You may still think that ulcers are brought on by stress, or you may think that acid excess is what causes the ulcer as opposed to a bacteria, you know, that we can treat.
Dr. Lough: Or if you just stop eating spicy food, or chocolate, or you know, no more jalapenos, you'll , you know, your acid reflux will go away.
Dr. Mistry: And I just think , I also think that the fact that a lot of these medicines were available over the counter now made people bypass doctors when it, when it comes to that condition. And so they don't get like the information. And so one of the things I love about doing this show for many listeners out there, this the most time they're going to get with a doctor to discuss an issue that they may not have sought out for.
Dr. Lough: Yeah, maybe.
Dr. Mistry: So give me your spiel. I'm coming to you. Tell me, I'm having heartburn. Tell me what I would be feeling or doing to let you know that it's pretty bad heartburn.
Dr. Lough: So I always start with asking people how long have you taking any medicine for acid reflux, whether it's an antacid like Tums or whether it's a Zantac or Pepcid or you're getting over the counter Prilosec, and you are seeing a doctor that's actually prescribing that for you, 'cause you need a next stronger level. So first things first, if you're taking a medicine and it's working to control your heartburn and it's a low dose, you're probably actually doing pretty good. The problem comes when you start to double your dose or take it twice a day or take one kind of medicine in the morning and a different kind of medicine at night. Then, you know, you go on vacation and you forget to bring it and it's the most miserable day of your life. You know, you're just trying to find the pharmacy. So that person has now sort of graduated beyond your typical medical management case of heartburn. That's where surgery comes in and that's why you know, someone like me, a general surgeon, can do surgery to stop your acid reflux. The goal of surgery to stop acid reflux is to number one, stop it, like we just said, keep the acid from going up into your esophagus; but two is to stop having to take medications. So we call that freedom from PPI, proton pump inhibitors, or freedom from acid blockers.
Dr. Mistry: A lot of people--I'm going to relate this to the prostate problems in men. A lot of people think that this is simply a lifestyle issue. I'm taking the pill so I don't have pain, or I'm taking the pill so I can pee better. And they're forgetting that there really is an underlying medical concern when you have these conditions. So maybe you could scare some people out there and tell them what are we scared of when somebody has reflex ?
Dr. Lough: We're scared of damaging our esophagus. The esophagus is just the muscular tube beyond our throats that just gets food from once we swallow it, passing it down into our stomach. Your stomach is actually what makes the acid and the acid is there to digest the food that you ate, but that should be leaving your stomach and going into your intestines. When you have acid reflux, the acid is going backwards up into your esophagus where it has no business being located. The esophagus starts to get irritated, eroded, damage to the lining of your esophagus.
Dr. Mistry: You can get cancers, difficulty swallowing...
Dr. Lough: It can cause, it leads to motility, problems with swallowing. It leads to risk factors for esophageal cancer and it leads to other things like where people lay down in their bed at night and the acid starts traveling upwards into their mouth and they start to choke on the acid or cough, have other problems with breathing.
Dr. Mistry: And I'm not going to say general surgeons are scared of much. One thing they're scared about is things that go wrong with the esophagus. It's very hard to fix it, right?
Dr. Lough: If you can't swallow, you're a miserable person. It's, you want to , you know, we drink to stay hydrated and we eat to stay nourished. And if you can't do that, you're just, you know , forcing...
Donna Lee: I feel like we're talking to me.
Dr. Mistry: Yes we are because we all know that you cannot swallow...and you don't get your endoscopy...
Dr. Lough: Let me get you my phone number.
Dr. Mistry: ...and you keep getting your medicines...
Donna Lee: ...and when I hurl a little bit, it's all acid . I do need to take care of that.
Dr. Mistry: Maybe you could describe some of the most common surgeries that you do for acid reflux.
Dr. Lough: The main things that I do , I say when I'm telling people kind of what kind of job I have, is I do hernia and reflux and obesity surgery. Sometimes the hernia, that's the problem with reflux is actually something called a hiatal hernia, which is a hernia in the diaphragm. When you get a hernia in the diaphragm, part of your stomach will go backwards up into the opening in the diaphragm. And that actually makes it much harder to stop acid reflux with just pills. One of the first surgeries that we do is a robotic surgery, which is , a way to do laparoscopy , very delicately and with good vision and good instruments, which is to repair the hiatal hernia, bring the stomach back into the abdomen where it belongs from the chest, and then close that too big of a hole in the diaphragm.
Dr. Mistry: With a piece of mesh sometimes.
Dr. Lough: With suturing, number one, and sometimes with mesh. And that's sort of part one of the procedure, if you have a hiatal hernia. The next thing you got to do is re-establish a higher pressure zone at the junction between your esophagus and your stomach because that's sort of like the sphincter muscle that prevents the acid from going backwards. If it's low pressure, it can't hold the acid back in your stomach. If it's losing its pressure, we got to increase it.
Dr. Mistry: And that's when you're going to wrap the stomach around.
Dr. Lough: We do a wrap of the stomach around that high pressure zone, or we put a linx implant, which is a magnetic device that helps to keep that area higher pressure that can open and close whenever you swallow food.
Dr. Mistry: That is one of the coolest things that I...
Dr. Lough: ...it's brilliant. I really wish it was my idea.
Dr. Mistry: ...that the food that's pushed through this magnetic ring is enough to break the magnet...
Dr. Lough: Yeah, there's a magnetic bond that's there between the beads on this ring that, at rest, nobody's doing anything, they're bonded. And so it's keeping that high pressure. They're keeping the acid out of the esophagus. It doesn't take very much pressure to push those magnets apart from each other. Just enough to swallow food is enough to push it out. And then as soon as the food drops in the stomach, they close right back. Some reflux surgeries out there, a wrap can make it harder for people to belch or to vomit. So they get gas trapped in their stomach. But the pressure of a belch or the pressure of vomiting is actually strong enough also to separate those beads. So that's the one benefit of that procedure compared to a wrap.
Dr. Mistry: But Dr. Lough, I think the message here is that...
Donna Lee: ...I need surgery.
Dr. Mistry: Yeah, Donna Lee probably needs surgery. And that reflux may not be a benign condition. If you have always avoided seeing a doctor or have recently avoided seeing a doctor, you may be missing out on kind of the newest thoughts on reflux. So thank you so much for joining us today. How do people get ahold of you? What is the number for your office?
Dr. Lough: We have a couple offices in Austin. The office that I'm at in North Austin is (512) 498-4860 and we have a website, capitolsurgeons . com.
Dr. Mistry: And Donna Lee, you're going to tell people how to get ahold of us.
Donna Lee: (512) 238-0762.
Dr. Mistry: No, our website to, come on...
Donna Lee: Armormenshealth@gmail.com is our email and armormenshealth.com. I'm so sorry, KLBJ, we'll be right back.