Protect, Prevent, Enhance: Dr. Mistry and Shefaly Ravula, PA-C on the Importance of Nutrition Medicine

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.

In this segment, Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee are joined by friend of the practice Shefaly Ravula, PA-C. Shefaly works for Austin Gastroenterology and is trained in functional and integrative medicine with a special interest in nutrition and culinary medicine. In today's episode, Dr. Mistry reminds listeners that nutrition and healthy eating plays a huge role in NAU Urology Specialists' mission to deliver the most comprehensive, dynamic urologic care out there. Our wellness tagline is "Protect, Prevent, Enhance," and each aspect of that three pronged approach requires an emphasis on nutrition and healthy eating. Shefaly Ravula explains the difference between deriving nutrition from food vs. supplements and how, depending on the situation, one may be more effective than the other. She also discusses the importance of cooking meals at home, since we have greater control over the ingredients and portion sizes when we do so. The drudgery and the cost of home cooking can also be greatly reduced by advanced meal-planning. Given the importance of managing diet and weight to one's overall health, NAU Urology Specialists incorporates nutrition medicine into our daily practice of delivering urologic care. We also employ an in-house nutritionist to help patients evaluate what if any changes need to be made in their diet and exercise routines to minimize side effects of carrying extra weight and maximize the health impacts of eating and living well. If you or a loved one is concerned that what you eat may be holding you back in other aspects of your life, please give us a call. 

If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share us with a friend! As always, be well!

To contact Shefaly Ravula, PA-C of Austin Gastroenterology, call (512) 244-2273. You can also contact NAU Urology Specialists and we will forward questions for Shefaly to her practice. 

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.com and we’ll answer your question in an upcoming episode!

Phone: (512) 238-0762

Email: Armormenshealth@gmail.com

Website: Armormenshealth.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome back to the Armor Men's Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee.

Dr. Mistry: 0:17

Hello and welcome to the Armor Men's Health Hour. I'm Dr. Mistry, your host here with Donna Lee, my diet-restricting office manager.

Donna Lee: 0:26

No more diet Cokes for you.

Dr. Mistry: 0:27

Oh man.

Donna Lee: 0:28

They cause cancer.

Dr. Mistry: 0:29

We want to eat healthy around here.

Donna Lee: 0:30

That's right. Especially now with our new addition.

Dr. Mistry: 0:34

Yes. I'm a board certified urologist. This is a men's health show. We talk about a variety of different health conditions that affect men. A lot of them are below the belt and we'll admit that. I mean, men are more than just below the belt.

Donna Lee: 0:48

No, you're not.

Dr. Mistry: 0:48

We are. We're complex.

Donna Lee: 0:52

You're one feet of skin...

Dr. Mistry: 0:52

One foot? Oh boy! Good job, Michael!

Donna Lee: 0:56

From the stomach to the thigh.

Dr. Mistry: 1:00

Oh boy.

Donna Lee: 1:00

Sorry.

Dr. Mistry: 1:01

That is the best compliment that I've heard him get on this radio show.

Shefaly Ravula: 1:05

What kind of practice...

Donna Lee: 1:05

There's a one foot area that y'all think with, and it's not your brain.

Dr. Mistry: 1:10

I'm telling you I'm all brain, baby. I'm a board certified urologist. If you don't know what that is, that is a doctor who specializes in genitourinary medicine, but we do a lot more than that. We do a lot more than that. We also deal with men's wellness, making you kind of achieve the best that you can achieve. Our tagline is"Protect, Prevent, Enhance," and we really believe in that. So much of what we do has multidimensions in terms of how we treat them. Something as simple as kidney stones may seem like you could just operate on them or wait them out or just scream in pain, but there's also such an important nutrition component to them, preventative component to them, and it could be a sign of other underlying diseases, and that goes on and on and on. We treat men for infertility, for cancer diagnosis for chronic pain, and really want to take the opportunity to treat you for your conditions and answer your questions. And Donna Lee, thanks a lot for being such a great part of this practice and helping us move along.

Donna Lee: 2:07

You're welcome. You're just mad at me about the Diet Coke thing, and you're welcome that I'm keeping you healthy during our men's wellness hour.

Dr. Mistry: 2:14

Why don't you briefly tell people about our locations and how to get ahold of us?

Donna Lee: 2:18

We are in central Texas in Round Rock, North Austin, South Austin, and Dripping Springs, super cute. Our email address is armormenshealth@gmail.com. And you can see Dr. Mistry's handsome, smiling face at armormenshealth.com. That's our website where you can also send your inquiries. We will answer every question that you send in and we will talk about them anonymously on air. And we have so many every week that we can't even get to all of them on the show. So thank you. Keep sending them in.

Dr. Mistry: 2:42

I remember when we used to promise everybody we'll get back to them and now we're having trouble.

Donna Lee: 2:45

We'll get back to them. We just can't answer them immediately.

Dr. Mistry: 2:48

Please let us know. Okay. Yeah. You know, to be part of our, of our practice, you can call us anytime. And really to take advantage of everything we offer, we really want to showcase and highlight one of the most important additions that we have over other practices and really what makes us what we are, and that's our nutrition program. And today we have Shefaly Ravula, an old friend of mine, just an amazing practitioner, so passionate about nutrition medicine. She's a physician's assistant very much motivated in the area of functional medicine and nutrition. Thanks a lot for joining us today, Shefaly.

Shefaly Ravula: 3:20

So glad to be here. I cannot wait to just apply everything to these patients and you Sunny.

Donna Lee: 3:27

I can't wait to hear the stories that she's going to share about knowing you for so long.

Dr. Mistry: 3:30

I don't know. She knew me in high school. I was just a dorky teenager. I don't, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not sure.

Donna Lee: 3:36

You still are!

Dr. Mistry: 3:36

Ouch, all right. Well...

Donna Lee: 3:38

She doesn't have any gray hair.

Dr. Mistry: 3:40

It's really nice that I could be taken down a notch by two ladies on the radio. I do appreciate that. Luckily my ego strength is strong enough. And you know, Shefaly, I thought we could talk about today was this idea of what is the benefit of eating right versus just supplementing yourself with what you think are important nutrients. You know, as you and I talk a lot, it really made me think of another concept we're learning about more in medicine and that's the concept of epigenetics. Two people can have the exact same genes, but little bitty changes in how those genes get turned on and turned off can really affect who we become as people. I think that's true in nutrition, too. I think that you could eat all of your food from pills like the Jetsons, or you can eat real food and you may end up being different.

Shefaly Ravula: 4:24

Yes, you got it. So talking about eating food versus supplements, I love that question because you can be on supplements periodically in your life. I'm on supplements right now. I'm boosting my immune system because of COVID. Just taking a few extra things right now, but I don't want to be on them longterm. Some of those things, I feel like I'm probably not going to get a lot of turmeric in my diet every day because I don't cook Indian food every day anymore. And even when I did, I, wasn't getting probably the full teaspoon of curcumin that I would have wanted, so that's an example. If you aim to eat all, you know, whole foods, plant based diet, nutrient dense, in every which way possible, you could try to get as much nutrients as you can that way. Ultimately you might have to supplement depending on where you are in your either disease status or whatever stage you are in your life.

Dr. Mistry: 5:11

There are some things that I think supplements are superior to food at, and that would be an example like I think people who use yogurt for probiotics, cranberries to help with UTI suppression--I think those are hard things to make sure you get enough of that yogurt twice a day, or to take enough cranberry to take it consistently. So that's an example of something that I'd like to see in a supplement form. But there's, there's more to food than just the one nutrient that you think you're going to get for it. I mean, tomatoes have more than just lycopene. Right?

Shefaly Ravula: 5:38

Right. So of course you're thinking about not just the phytonutrients and we can talk about that term in a bit, but the macros. So, you know, you've got a nice little plate of watermelon all in front of me.

Dr. Mistry: 5:49

I was being, I was being healthy.

Shefaly Ravula: 5:51

Not sharing, not sharing. I see. But you know, it's sugar. It's loaded with lycopene, but it's got fiber as well. And of course the hydration component. They, all of these whole foods have so much to offer in one isolated, pure compounds. So we talked earlier about a phytonutrient and whether you can take, for example, ellagic acid, I guess. So you could take that, but you could get it in the berries and in the berries, you might get everything else too. You might get the anthocyanins, you might get the fiber, you might get the vitamin C depending on what color it is, vitamin a, you know, the list goes on. And we don't know if the synergistic sort of approach to eating whole foods is going to be more beneficial. We think it would be, then taking each of those supplements individually. And we don't know if that would work the same.

Dr. Mistry: 6:38

I think that a lot of times people are either losing the art of cooking or the downsides of cooking can, you know, and the convenience of takeout and the convenience of pre-prepared foods can sometimes seem very appealing. There really is a medical and therapeutic aspect of cooking your own food and understanding where it comes from. And, you know, you're a chef, Shef. So, you know, maybe you could describe a little bit about how that may affect somebody's health as well.

Shefaly Ravula: 7:06

For sure. Okay. So first of all, I don't like to say I'm a chef, but...

Donna Lee: 7:10

It is in your name.

Shefaly Ravula: 7:10

...it is my nickname and I, you know...

Donna Lee: 7:15

"Chef-aly!"

Dr. Mistry: 7:15

That's right.

Shefaly Ravula: 7:16

I'm a cooking instructor, but. So, okay, let's talk about cooking. I love, love, love, love, love to try to understand and get, sorry, get people to understand that what you said. It's a medical prescription, it's a dietary prescription. So think of it that way, but bring joy into it. So one of the biggest problems that people have is they've worked all day, they're tired, they've come home, and they're too hungry and tired to actually think about what meal they want to make. So meal planning is key, key, key. That should be part of your Sunday routine is just a little bit of meal planning, because that takes out all the mental work and everything is hopefully either shopped and done in your plan so that when you come home, you know exactly what you're going to make. Now that's an ideal world. Not everybody can have a meal plan and we don't always do that. A few basic cooking classes are fantastic to get your juices flowing. Just a few basic cooking classes. There's tons online that you can learn, you know, just through Zoom or through Skillshare.com, which I have actually a few there, you know, just a few of those to get you going in the kitchen and get you comfortable with using a knife. I mean, a lot of those barriers, probably in addition to the meal planning are what stops people from cooking.

Dr. Mistry: 8:31

I think that, over time, I've learned drive experience that when I'm more involved in the preparation of the food that I'm eating, I eat less, I tend to make healthier choices and I get more excited about the meals. And I think the eating less is an important thing. I mean, there is an addictive quality to so many of the chemicals and additives that are given to food. I mean, you know, you can't eat just one Lay's potato chip for a reason. And so, they've also found that to be similar in hamburgers that are from fast food places and other things like that preservatives can be addictive themselves. And so you eat more. I mean, my wife makes pizza, I don't think I eat more than two or three pieces, even though it's wonderful, but sometimes you sit down and eat an entire Pizza Hut pie just for whatever reason. It has enough sugar to kind of appease you. And that's why I think cooking and learning how to cook as part of a medical plan is a really important component.

Shefaly Ravula: 9:34

It really is. And I'm not a food psychologist, but just really thinking about our upbringing and what we used to love and how that still plays a role as an adult and habits, too. You know, so there's a whole field of eating psychology that is fascinating to me. And certainly something that I will work with our patients on.

Dr. Mistry: 9:54

You know, food is medicine is a really important, um, philosophy that we aspire to give to you as our patients here. So if you have a medical condition, if you think that nutrition could play a role in helping you feel better, uh, then please give us a call and come become our patient. Donna Lee, how do people become our patient?

Donna Lee: 10:15

They can call us at(512) 238-0762. I especially liked that you said Pizza Hut pie. Our website is our armormenshealth.com and you can email us....

Dr. Mistry: 10:23

We need to get this sponsored by somebody.

Shefaly Ravula: 10:27

Not Diet Coke.

Donna Lee: 10:27

Armormenshealth@gmail.com. Thanks so much

Dr. Mistry: 10:33

Thank you so much, Shefaly.

: 10:33

The Armor Men's Health Hour will be right back. If you have questions for Dr. Mistry, email him at armor armormenshealth@gmail.com.