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Series Code: UP
Program Code: UP190124A
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00:15 Year after year we see technology advancing in
00:18 everything from the vehicles that take us to work to the 00:21 toothbrushes that we use before bed. Although technology can 00:24 sometimes have a negative impact on our lives, it certainly can 00:27 be used for our benefit as well. Today we'll discover some of the 00:31 latest advancements in medical tech right here on the Ultimate 00:34 Prescription. 00:36 ♪ ♪ 00:57 Welcome to the Ultimate Prescription. I'm your host 00:58 Nick Evenson here with Dr. James Marcum. Now on today's program 01:02 we're going to talk about a lot of things, yeah, part of which 01:04 is developments in technology in medicine. 01:07 Yeah, medicine has changed a lot and one of the advantages of 01:11 getting older and doing this for many years, you can realize the 01:15 only thing that's constant is change. And in my years, we've 01:20 changed the way we approach medicines, the way technology 01:22 changes and I was thinking about even the way we do health 01:26 programs. You know Nick I've been since 2004 is when I first 01:30 started filming for 3ABN and we started with a program I helped 01:35 with called Wonderfully Made. And we talked about that. Then 01:39 we did one called Bible Rx. That's sort of what we still do 01:44 today. Prescriptions that change our physical health. Yeah. And 01:49 then one of the ones we tried for a while was Heart of Health 01:53 Live. You helped with that one. 01:54 Right, a live call-in, a call-in with health questions and 01:56 general advice. 01:57 Yes, and that was very exciting because at that time internet 02:00 technology wasn't it should be and we'd get people calling in 02:03 from all over with guests and we'd broadcast that for a while. 02:06 I remember we had some other calls from other continents and 02:08 other countries. 02:09 Yeah, other countries would call in and sometimes the connections 02:12 were good and sometimes they weren't so good and then I 02:15 remember then we started the Ultimate Prescription you know 02:18 and of course that focus was on you know the Ultimate 02:22 Prescription. You know, there's a place for modern medicine, 02:24 there's a place for lifestyle so the ultimate prescription is 02:27 that relationship we have with Christ, because that is what's 02:31 going to heal us in the end because we all have bad parts. 02:34 And then I got very interested in genetics, you know, what 02:37 causes disease. Why do some people have these things, why 02:41 not? So that's really in my practice at the Chattanooga 02:44 Heart Institute I started really working on disease reversal. 02:48 And if you think about health 30 years ago we were talking 02:53 about much different things than we are now. The trends have 02:56 changed. Think about all the trends out there. 02:59 That all this electronics now that govern a lot of what we do 03:01 in our lives these days. 03:04 So I've learned through the years and even in making these 03:07 programs, you know, the things we've talked about in 03:10 medications and treatments have changed. At one time we focused 03:13 on one thing more than the other Just think about weight loss, 03:17 how that's changed, the recommendations. I remember when 03:21 I started we used to give pills for weight loss and then it was 03:25 work on exercise and nutrition. Now there's these specialized 03:28 diets like the keto diet you know. All these fads are out 03:31 there that sort of come and go. So when I hear of a new fad or 03:36 a new something I say first of all we have to test it with 03:39 scripture. Does it make sense scripturally? And then when I 03:44 talk to people about it, there's a lot of gray in life. Everyone 03:48 thinks there's black and white but the more I study our 03:50 genetics the more I realize there's a lot of gray. Now what 03:55 works best for you, you know, which lifestyle change or what 03:58 thing might work best for you might not work best for Joe 04:01 because Joe has different genetics, different background 04:04 different neuropathways in the brain. And our bodies and the 04:09 treatment for our bodies is much more complicated that I can ever 04:13 imagine. Even in scripture, you know, the more you study 04:16 scripture the more you realize the wisdom in it and how that 04:21 God has biblical principles in there that govern every aspect 04:25 of our lives and there's truth here. So I think it's very 04:28 fascinating to see some of the technological advances. 04:31 So Nick you've probably never been sick before have you really 04:35 Not really sick. Just a little bit sick. 04:37 Have you ever needed modern technology to get you feeling 04:39 better? 04:41 Ah, yeah, I've used antibiotics at times when that was necessary 04:42 and I've had staples and stitches. Fortunately for me, 04:45 that's about the extent of it. 04:47 Well, I've used some through my years too, and what I've learned 04:52 through all these years is that there's a place for modern 04:55 medicine and it's great for emergencies and it's sometimes 05:00 great to replace parts that wear out or get old, but it doesn't 05:04 really fix our genetics, okay? And there's a place for 05:08 lifestyle, okay? And lifestyle is much more than eating good, 05:12 exercising. It's more complicated than that. 05:14 And as we move on we're going to talk about the complexities 05:17 of the bowel. A trillion bacteria in the bowel. 05:20 Go figure. But they're doing all sorts of things from regulating 05:23 inflammation in our brain chemistry. We're just now 05:26 understanding that. And all of the stress in our brains. What's 05:31 that doing to all the neuro pathways in the different parts 05:33 of the brain. It's much more complicated than just black and 05:37 white. Lots of gray for individuals. 05:39 Right. Now I want to interrupt here. You just kind of ran 05:42 through some of the programs that you've been involved with 05:44 through the years. But we need to remind people you're not just 05:48 a TV doctor. You're a practicing physician. How many years have 05:50 you practiced medicine? 05:54 Since 1991. So I've been doing this for quite a while. You know 05:56 we spend a lot of time in school I spent four years of medical 06:01 school at the university. Well before that I did undergraduate 06:04 at the University of Texas in Austin, four years in medical 06:07 school at the University of Texas and then at that time I 06:10 really didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to be 06:12 an orthopedic doctor, so I did some time with that. And I was 06:16 hammering on a bone one day and someone said hit it a little 06:19 harder Jim. And I was hitting it harder and I said No I don't 06:23 really want to do this. So I got married at that time and I 06:27 wanted to do family practice but my wife said well why don't you 06:31 do internal medicine. So I studied internal medicine for 06:34 three years and got board certified at that at the Medical 06:36 Center of Delaware in Wilmington and within internal medicine I 06:41 fell in love with cardiology. So I did more training; three 06:45 more years at the University of Kentucky and sort of learn my 06:49 skill and at that time we weren't nearly as specialized 06:51 as we are now. Those were sort of a jack-of-all-trades, you do 06:56 a little bit of everything. But as the years have progressed we 07:00 have in my group cardiologists that just work on one valve. 07:04 We have cardiologists that just help the rhythms of the 07:07 heart. We talked about ablations We have cardiologists that just 07:10 specialize on the arteries that feed the heart. We have 07:14 cardiologists that just specialize on the strength of 07:17 of the heart. Well my specialty, once you sort of outsource 07:22 yourself you just sort of reinvent yourself so not only 07:24 do I sort of manage all these guys, get people in the right 07:27 direction but I really specialize on disease reversal 07:32 and the genetics of medicine. Some of the medical problems 07:35 that we have can be reversed through lifestyle, through 07:39 changes that we can do. So I really help with that and then 07:42 getting people to the right people that can help them. 07:45 But more than that I like to try to really focus on people on 07:49 worship and what God can do eternally because all of us wear 07:54 out some day. No one lasts forever. 07:56 And the great thing is that truth will not change regardless 07:58 of what technology we discover in event that truth is going to 08:02 always be true. 08:04 Right, something you can depend on that's not a fad that we can 08:06 you know, a true north so to speak throughout time. It's so 08:10 hard nowadays with everything out there for people to be very 08:14 confused. 08:15 Yeah. So you've practiced for a long time, you've seen a lot 08:18 of changes and developments in the way that we treat, and the 08:20 technology that's available. Let's go ahead and talk about 08:23 a few of the technology advancements that we see today 08:27 that we'd like to share about. 08:29 Yeah, and these are going to be high tech. We're just going to 08:32 give our listeners an overview just to realize all the 08:36 technology that's out there for acute care medicine and also 08:40 for parts that wear out. 08:42 So there's a really neat video that I'd like to share with our 08:45 viewers here about a new device. I don't know how long it's been 08:48 around, but it's called the impella device and Dr. Marcum 08:50 just talk us through what's going on. 08:51 Well an impella device is a device that's actually inserted 08:55 through the arteries into the heart and it's sort of a micro 08:58 pump and it actually pumps blood from the heart and it has 09:04 a little pump there that you see that pumps blood out into the 09:06 arteries and it feeds the whole body the nourishment that it 09:10 needs including the coronary arteries and basically it takes 09:14 the place of a heart for a short period of time. Now the types 09:19 of patients that we would use this in, okay, let's say that 09:25 someone we're working on the arteries of the heart, okay. The 09:27 arteries are clogged up. We've talked about that before. It 09:30 gets clogged up with fat, okay through a variety of reasons. 09:34 And we need to work on it with a stent. So while we're working 09:38 on that part of the heart, you know, it doesn't pump well. 09:42 You put a stent up in the artery and the heart doesn't get enough 09:45 blood it doesn't function normally and we don't want that. 09:48 So while we're working on these high risk locations in the heart 09:52 like the arteries, or the heart is very weak and working on 09:56 this would compromise it even more we can insert this micro 10:01 pump into the heart which pumps blood for the heart while we're 10:04 working on it. Yeah. Is that pretty interesting? Very neat. 10:07 Now someone says what if we're working on it and something goes 10:13 wrong? Well sometimes that happens and hopefully it's 10:16 rarely, but the patients that we use these pumps on are the 10:20 sickest of the sick. The people that are having heart attacks 10:23 that aren't generating pressure for us. If we don't have 10:27 pressure going to the organs the organs malfunction. Now we've 10:31 talked about the cardiovascular system and if we don't have 10:35 perfusion to the organs, the organs malfunction, kidneys quit 10:39 working. A brain starts working so we need blood flow with 10:43 oxygen and the nutrients, we need waste removal. And even if 10:47 we don't have that for short periods of time organs in the 10:50 body malfunction. So let's say a person's having a big heart 10:55 attack and they come to the emergency room with a blood 10:57 pressure of 60. Now normal is 100, 120. So the organs are 11:02 not getting enough blood. Right. So we go in there and we figure 11:05 well the cause is they're having a heart attack. The artery's 11:10 occluded. So we take them to the cath lab which is where we do 11:12 these procedures. We look and we say Oh no, an artery's 11:15 completely occluded but we're not getting enough blood 11:19 pressure. We give some medicines and we still can't get the blood 11:21 pressure up. Well we might put this device in the heart, the 11:25 impella device, to all of a sudden perfuse the organs until 11:29 we have time to maybe open up the artery to get the heart 11:32 beating more efficiently. Right. Now does this take away the 11:36 cause of disease? No it does not It's great for an emergency. So 11:41 the impella device is for an emergency. So the next question 11:44 someone will ask is what if the heart's still weak after that? 11:48 What else can we do. Well we can't leave that device in 11:53 forever, but sometimes we also have machines that we can hook 11:56 the body up to where they don't need the heart and that's called 12:00 an ECMO machine, a big fancy name for basically we run all of 12:04 blood through a machine that puts oxygen in the blood, helps 12:08 it do good and run it back while we let the heart rest. And the 12:12 ECMO machine is really good for conditions in the heart where if 12:16 we think it can rest from inflammation, or a weak heart 12:20 due to an infection, well we can let that body part rest. Every 12:23 thing needs rest. Without rest sometimes things can heal on 12:27 its own. So an ECMO machine. We also have a device that pumps 12:31 for the heart called the left ventricular assist device, okay, 12:35 where we put that in. But that's usually a bridge to either the 12:37 heart getting better on its own from an infection or till we can 12:41 place a transplant. We can actually put a new heart into 12:45 someone. But we have to have a new heart and donor hearts are 12:48 few and far between. 12:49 So the ECMO is an external device that gets hooked up to 12:52 all the arteries and veins. Is the left ventricular assist 12:55 device also an external? 12:56 Well we put it in the heart and as a pump that it pumps blood 13:00 so it does the heart's work. These are not permanent devices. 13:05 These are either just bridge for either the heart to heal or to 13:09 get a transplant, for us to put a stent in it. So as you can see 13:13 modern medicine has changed dramatically in what we can do 13:17 in emergencies. But you know we want to keep emergencies from 13:19 happening as well and that's going back to some of the things 13:23 we talked about. 13:24 Technology seems like it's best used just as a bridge until we 13:27 can reverse or solve the problem some other way. Yeah. Well 13:32 there's lots more to talk about advancements in medical 13:36 technology on the Ultimate Prescription. We'll be back in 13:37 just a moment with more on technology. |
Revised 2020-03-16