Transcription:
Top Five Most Googled Health Questions Explained

Caitlin Whyte: Welcome to BayCare HealthChat. I'm your host, Caitlin Whyte. If you're like me, you're probably also guilty of heading to the internet to investigate when a new symptom or health concern pops up in your body. So, that's why today, we are going to break down the top five most Googled health questions.

Joining us for this conversation is Dr. Julia Jenkins, a family medicine physician and Assistant Director of the USF/MPM Family Medicine Residency. All right, doctor, so question one on our most Googled list today is something that I think of a lot, I'm sure a lot of our listeners do. The number one question is "Why am I so tired?"

Julia C. Jenkins, MD, FAAFP: Yeah. This is something that, as a primary care physician, I'm asked a lot. And you know, unfortunately, many of us suffer from fatigue and from being tired. So, a lot of times this can be from poor sleep quality or suffering from insomnia. Unfortunately, a third of us will experience sleep difficulty at some time in our lives. So, would you like me to kind of get into some tips for good sleep?

Caitlin Whyte: I think everyone could use that. Yes, please.

Julia C. Jenkins, MD, FAAFP: So one, you want to make sure that the environment that you're trying to sleep in is optimized for good rest. And so what I mean by that is we really shouldn't be watching television, playing video games, you know, doing things that are very stimulating in bed. So, you want it to be very dark, ideally kind of cool of a temperature. And you know, you have to train your brain, kind of like you train a puppy. And what I mean by that is, if you're laying in bed and you're not falling asleep and you're kind of restless, good advice is to get out of bed, maybe get a glass of water, try to relax a little bit and then try going back to sleep. Because you want to train your brain that when your head hits the pillow, it's time to rest. And so, making sure you're trying to be consistent with that.

So I also want to mention that other than sleep apnea, there's several. Medical conditions that your provider may want to speak with you about if you have fatigue. So, for example, we see a lot of iron deficiency or B12 deficiency. I see a lot of patients who may have atrial fibrillation and don't realize it, and their only symptom may be fatigue.

You can have thyroid issues, you can also have issues with depression where you're mainly just tired. So fatigue is definitely a problem that you don't want to ignore. And you want to see your primary care provider so that they can get to the bottom of the unique cause that may be causing your fatigue.

Caitlin Whyte: You know, like you said, it's pretty common. Why am I so tired? But is there a point where maybe it could be more of a concern that really would be something that your doctor should get involved with?

Julia C. Jenkins, MD, FAAFP: No, that's an excellent question, and absolutely. Unfortunately, a lot of patients will not realize that they have things like sleep apnea. So, sometimes it's very obvious. You know, when your partner kind of nudges you a couple of times in the night, like, "Honey, you're snoring really loud again, can you stop doing that?" But for a lot of patients, it's not as obvious. So some signs that you may have sleep apnea, if you're excessively tired during the day, like you're falling asleep as you're trying to read a book or you're just feeling like really sluggish and tired more so than usual. If you have headaches in the morning or you feel like your mouth is very dry in the morning. And another kind of interesting sign is if you're having more vivid dreams at night, that could be a sign that you might have sleep apnea. So, this is something you'd want to talk to your health care provider about, and they could do some screening questions and decide if testing might be needed for that.

Caitlin Whyte: Good to know. So number two, our question is "How do I lower my blood pressure?" So, please tell us about some common causes or things that raise our blood pressure and then how we can work to lower it.

Julia C. Jenkins, MD, FAAFP: Yeah. And this is something that is critically important to those of us in primary care. And what we say is that first of all, that blood pressure, when it's high, can be very dangerous, but most people won't feel any symptoms. And that's why sometimes you'll hear the term silent killer because your blood pressure can put a lot of strain on your kidneys and your heart and your body in general. If your blood pressure is very elevated, it can be tricky to figure out the cause because I tell patients with blood pressure, there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. You know, we've got our heart that contributes to blood pressure. Stress and hormones contribute to blood pressure. Our diet, caffeine and salt can contribute and, of course, genetics, and so it can run in families. So, there might be a lot of different things that contribute to why you have high blood pressure.

The other way that you can help lower your blood pressure is to make sure that you're getting enough potassium in your diet. So, what's interesting is potassium will help your body get rid of extra sodium. And so, a lot of us when we think about potassium, we think bananas. But you can also eat things like oranges and avocados, mushrooms and broccoli, sweet potatoes. You know, all of these things are going to help you lower your blood.

And the other thing I would also briefly mention is exercise. And you want to make sure that you speak with your health care provider about exercise if you have heart conditions or you’re concerned about if you’re able to exercise safely. But exercise can lower your blood pressure several points and can help your blood vessels be less stiff and can strengthen your heart. And so, that can definitely be a good heart-healthy thing to do, is incorporate more exercise in your routine.

Caitlin Whyte: Thank you for that. Good to know. Our number three question most Googled health questions here is “What causes kidney stones?” I actually had kidney stones a couple years ago, and I still don’t really know why. So, please tell us.

Julia C. Jenkins, MD, FAAFP: Yeah. And so, kidney stones, one of the most painful things that a patient can have.

Caitlin Whyte: Yep.

Julia C. Jenkins, MD, FAAFP: Yeah, there’s a lot of different types of stones. And so without getting too much into the nitty gritty of that, a lot of the stones are calcium-based stones, although they’re not all calcium-based. And so, a lot of patients will say, “Well, okay, if I’m developing this calcium stone, that must mean that I have too much calcium in my diet, right?” And the answer is absolutely not. So, your kidney is a very sophisticated filter and calcium can kind of sit in your kidney and junk up your filter if you have too much salt in your diet. So you know, if your body is attempting to get rid of all that extra sodium, which is in a lot of our packaged foods and our yummy potato chips and french fries, and you know, all the things that have high salt. And if it’s having to filter a lot of sodium, it is also kind of putting too much calcium in our urine and in our kidneys where it can collect and kind of buildup.

So, I would say definitely don’t cut back on calcium in your diet. If anything, the two biggest things to do if you’re prone to kidney stones or you’re trying to avoid kidney stones is limit sodium. But definitely more important than that is drinking plenty of water, ideally water, to flush that filter and to make sure that you’re taking good care of your kidneys, so you won’t develop problems like that.

Caitlin Whyte: That is so fascinating. Thank you. And so, our number four question is actually a two-parter and it’s diving into the world of dieting. “How many calories should I eat and what is keto?” So, start us off with a bit about calorie counting and then maybe a bit about what exactly that keto diet is.

Julia C. Jenkins, MD, FAAFP: So this is a question that I get a lot and it's kind of a, a little bit of a tricky question because what is keto? You know, keto is generally a very low carbohydrate, low sugar, high fat diet. And so it can help you quickly lose weight, in a short amount of time. But what you really want to be mindful of is that one, it may not be something that you can do long term,because it can be a very difficult diet to kind of stick with for weeks and months and years.

and it may not be a healthy diet to do for that prolonged amount of time. Really the thing you want to focus on, because keto diet is all about fat burning. And when you're trying to lose weight, that's what we all want, right? We, we want to lose that stored fat. So you can use concepts of the keto diet, but maybe not be eating just, low carb and, high fat all of the time.

So for example, if you are just mindful about having good carbs, and healthy fats, and you also incorporate things like exercise or maybe intermittent fasting. You're going to lower your insulin levels and you're going to go into fat burning without necessarily being on extremely low carb diet. So there are definitely concepts in there that can help you lose weight as long as you're doing it safely and you're not losing weight too rapidly.

Caitlin Whyte: Wonderful. Well, doctor, wrapping up our list of the top five most Googled health questions, we’re going to touch on mental health. The top question here is “How do I stay strong and how do I improve my mental health?” Now, I know it’s a pretty broad thing to Google and to explain, but tell us a bit about just mental health and staying on top of it.

Julia C. Jenkins, MD, FAAFP: Yeah. This has been really important, especially after the pandemic. You know, there’s a lot of folks that have been dealing with anxiety and stress, and not just from the pandemic, but maybe related to the political climate or related to family stressors or related to some changes in the workplace that have caused a lot of people, a lot of my patients and others to deal with tremendous stressors.

And so, there's a couple things that you can do to kind of deal with this anxiety and stress. One is, if it's bad, please reach out to your healthcare providers. You know, I know within BayCare, we have some wonderful mental health and behavioral health services to help people through stressful times, and so please reach out to caregivers and health care providers who can be there for you.

But there's also some really helpful even phone apps that can teach you to do a technique called mindfulness. So, one of the apps will talk you through how to do mindfulness and breathing exercises. And if you incorporate that into your day-to-day, that can help you kind of decompress some of the stress that may build up from work or some of these other things.

And one of the other things that's really important is connections with people and socialization. So, you know, some of us will be very isolated and won't have time or connections with others, like with friends and family, but it's really important to make those connections, and social media doesn't count. It should really be in person or at least via video connection. So, think about joining a community group. Think about where you could volunteer. Is there a gym? Is there a yoga class where you could network with other people? Going out to dinner with friends, having date nights. So really, really important to nurture those friendships and relationships.

Caitlin Whyte: Well, what a great conversation, doctor. Thank you so much for joining us today. And that wraps up this episode of BayCare HealthChat. Head on over to our website at BayCare.org for more information and to get connected with one of our providers.

Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and all of the other BayCare podcasts. For more health tips and updates, follow us on your social channels. And if you found this podcast informative, please share it on your social media and be sure to check out all of the other interesting podcasts in our library. I'm Caitlin Whyte. Stay well.