Paul Szmal: Time for our Health Matters segment here on FLX Morning on Finger Lakes News Radio and as always Kim Alacua is here with us. Kim, good morning. How are you?
Kim Alacua: Morning, Paul. How are you?
Paul Szmal: I am good. I am good and understand that we have a slight name change for the organization.
Kim Alacua: Yes, we do. We have gone through a brand refresh. We have changed to University of Rochester Medicine, Finger Lakes Health. So this is going to allow us to align more visibly with the University of Rochester Medicine and reinforcing that our hospitals and practices are part of one unified academic health system with a leading research center. So the same quality of care regardless of where you go, University of Rochester Medicine, Finger Lakes Health and we are very proud to be part of this organization. And you will start to see this brand change across all the different websites and so on and so forth and probably at your offices as well as this whole thing starts to cycle around.
Paul Szmal: And you will start to see this brand change across all the different websites and so on and so forth and probably at your offices as well as this whole thing starts to cycle around. Yes, we're right now we're launching it. It's been launched out through our social media and our website and it will just take some time but we just it was announced last Wednesday so you're one of the first people that were actually going on air and publicly talking about this but yep so University of Rochester Medicine, Finger Lakes Health.
Kim Alacua: Cool, very cool. Would you like to introduce today's guest?
Paul Szmal: Yes, I'm very excited. We have a first-time guest with us today. We have Dr. Mohamed Mouman who is a fellowship trained nephrologist from the University of Rochester Medicine and I also just wanted to give a quick shout out. This ties in with Dr. Mouman's presentation but on Saturday we have our Rock for Kidneys event at the Sons of Italy. Starts at 4 p.m. $10 spaghetti dinner. All proceeds will help that will go towards our dialysis center. And it's an appropriate time to mention that because of Dr. Mouman's field of expertise. Doctor, welcome aboard. Glad to have you on board.
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: Thank you. Good morning. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Good, very good. Tell me a little bit about what brought you into this particular branch of medicine.
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: During my residency I was very interested and this was stick to learning the medicine and when I go through the residency it gave me a perfect balance between medicine and physiology. So kidney specialty actually there is a lot of room to learn physiology and pathophysiology and those physiology and pathophysiology interconnected with each other. That drives me to go for kidney specialist and become a nephrologist.
Paul Szmal: And nephrology covers a few different things here. Maybe the first thing people might think of with kidneys is obviously dialysis but there's so much more to the field beyond that.
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: So dialysis actually comes when patient has advanced stage kidney disease. Kidney disease often goes silent so and it does not produce any symptoms in early stages. So it's better to catch the disease in early stages and prevent the advanced kidney disease.
Paul Szmal: Early detection is always good no matter what you're dealing with but what kind of early detection screenings are there for people?
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: So usually we can detect kidney disease in very simple test with blood test and urine test. Sometimes we do kidney ultrasound. These tests are very simple and non-expensive. So that's one aspect of nephrology but there are other elements to it. There are things like kidney stones which are unfortunately for a lot of people rather common that they have to deal with. Diabetes and high blood pressure and the effect that can have on your kidney functions. Even things like urinary tract infections fall under your sphere of expertise.
Paul Szmal: Yes, I do see the kidney stone patient and basically I tell my patient how to prevent the kidney stone. And patient can easily prevent the kidney stone by doing some simple stuff like if they add two spoon of lime juice in their morning fluid it can easily prevent a few stone recurrence. It's not 100% true but sometimes it helps. And we do the simple test like 24-hour urine test and by this test we can detect what's the risk factor for kidney stone and we can treat accordingly.
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: I'm fascinated just two teaspoons of lime juice in your morning water. Is it because of the acidity of the lime?
Paul Szmal: Yes, because most of the stone actually precipitate in the alkaline urine. So when you make your urine acidic it helps to dissolve like stone and pass it out through the urine.
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: All right, that's good advice there. Good to know. How many years have you been in the practice now?
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: So I have been like this is my third year in the nephrology field and before that I did three years of medicine during my residency.
Paul Szmal: You know there's a lot that's been made nowadays and I see whenever I go to the convenience store I see a ton of these electrolyte infused beverages. Waters and things like Gatorade's got a like a rehydration drink things of that nature. Are those good things to use for your kidney health or can there be such things too many electrolytes?
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: So if people have normal kidney function they can use it as much as they can but if patient has stage three, stage four kidney disease I would say just watch their electrolyte rich fluid because it can then impair their potassium excretion and increase the chance risk for hyperkalemia like high potassium in the blood. And obviously with kidney function water.
Paul Szmal: Yes, plain water is the best medication for that kidneys.
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: Yeah because that keeps the waste filtering through keeps the toxins out.
Paul Szmal: Exactly. So on and so forth. What's the relationship between your blood pressure and kidney function?
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: Good question. So blood pressure and kidneys are like interconnected with each other and if high either high blood pressure or low blood pressure can affect the kidney function and can progress the kidney disease. The goal blood pressure should be less than 130 over 80 and usually for who has low blood pressure they need to keep their blood pressure systolic blood pressure above 100. And kidney disease can cause high blood pressure and high blood pressure can cause kidney disease. So they they are like acting as vice versa.
Paul Szmal: And it's also important too to to maintain and support good red blood cell health for kidney function right?
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: There is certain disease condition in the kidneys we called glomerulonephritis. These are actually inflammation of the kidneys from a lot of things like auto inflammatory autoimmune disease. Some infectious disease can cause glomerulonephritis and in this case patient may spill some red blood cell either morphologically change or unchanged red blood cell. So we yeah that's why that's why urine tests help us to detect those conditions.
Paul Szmal: How important are things like you know we hear calcium is good for bone health. Does that have any correlation to kidney function as well?
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: Again calcium is a necessary like vital mineral element and also this is one kind of vital mineral. But when patient has advanced kidney disease they tends to have either high calcium level or low calcium level based on the impaired mineralization because kidneys one of the kidneys job to regulate bone mineral in the bodies.
Paul Szmal: Okay I wasn't aware of that that's pretty fascinating. What's the best course of action for people that think they might be having kidney function issues?
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: So best plan should be to control the if patient has diabetes or high blood pressure they should control their blood sugar and high blood high blood pressure. Then stay out from excessive use of NSAID. Stay hydration. Then if patient is obese or overweight they need to watch their weight. Some genetic condition can cause kidney disease. If any family history they need to seek the medical attention first.
Kim Alacua: And if you want to pay Dr. Mooman a visit you can look him up in the nephrology department of the University of Rochester Medicine Finger Lakes Health. And Kim I want to mention one more time to the Rock for Kidneys event that's coming up this weekend.
Kim Alacua: Yes and I also want to mention that Dr. Mooman is actually the medical director of our dialysis unit. We do offer inpatient and outpatient dialysis at Geneva General Hospital. It's another example of our commitment to keep care close to home for our patients so they do not have to travel. If you'd like to schedule an appointment with Dr. Mooman you can call 315-787-5400. And also a reminder for Rock for Kidneys this Saturday it starts at 4 p.m. the Sons of Italy. It's ten dollars a person. It's a pasta dinner. There's going to be three bands playing. There's basket drawings and all the proceeds will go to support the dialysis unit. You can buy tickets at the door or you can call us at the foundation at 315 787-4050.
Paul Szmal: See it's a nice inexpensive pasta dinner on a Saturday with some music and you're supporting a good cause. Ain't nothing wrong with any of that. Thank you so much Paul.
Kim Alacua: Yeah appreciate it Dr. Mooman. Pleasure meeting you.
Dr. Mohamed Mouman: Thank you sir. Thank you for having me here.
Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues on Finger Lakes Newsradio.
