2025 Year-end review with Dr. Tamika Perry & Dr. Rajay Seudath part one

Podcast transcript

INTRO
Welcome to Docs in a Pod, presented by WellMed. Over the next half hour, Docs in a Pod will educate you about the health and wellness of adults everywhere. Co-hosts Dr. Tamika Perry and award winning veteran broadcaster Ron Aaron will share information to improve your health and well-being. And now here are Ron Aaron and Dr. Tamika Perry.

RON AARON
Hello everybody, and welcome to the award winning Docs in a Pod. Our podcast is available wherever you listen to your podcasts. We're also on the radio in several markets in Texas and Florida as well. I'm Ron Aaron, and we have a very special end of the year program today. We're going to take a look at the top topics covered by both Dr. Perry and Dr. Seudath in their various renditions of Docs in a Pod, and both of them are joining us. So, we are truly honored to have Dr. Tamika Perry and Dr. Rajay Seudath on board for today's Docs in a Pod. Dr. Perry is a doctor of osteopathy, associate medical director for WellMed and in. As such, she has a goal of supporting providers at a number of WellMed clinics as they deliver quality care and a compassionate patient experience. Dr. Perry has been with well for more than 10 years, and she has earned her undergraduate degree from Prairie View A&M. She then went on to graduate from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she was National Health Service Corps Scholar. She completed her family medicine residency at Methodist Charlton Medical Center, and she served as chief resident there. I could go on for another half hour with Dr. Perry but let me switch to Dr. Seudath. He's a board certified family medicine physician. Dr. Seudath is a Tampa native and lead physician for Optum, and he's at the university location in Tampa. He earned his medical degree from the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, and he has a passion for primary care. Dr. Perry and Dr. Seudath, thanks for being on this end of the year Docs in a Pod. Thanks to you both.

DR. RAJAY SEUDATH
Thank you so much.

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Thank you, Ron. We're super excited to be here and kind of wrap up this year, and we look forward to opening up 2026.

RON AARON
Well, we're going to share the top topics most listened to in our 2025 shows. We'll begin with Dr. Perry. Number one on the list, Dr. Perry, and this is not a surprise. Arthritis and inflammation. Hundreds of thousands of people struggle with arthritis. What is it?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Yes. Arthur and his cousin inflammation. Arthur, he's going to plague everybody at some sort in time and in some fashion. Arthur literally means joint, and itis means inflammation of the joint. Dr. Seudath will attest that there are various types of arthritis. Where can you get that inflammation of the joint? You can get it from wear and tear. That's osteoarthritis. Kind of like the brakes in your car wear out after you use them for a while, so do our joints. We've been using our joints since the time we came out of our mama's womb. We're wailing on our back, then we're crawling, then we're walking, then we're going on dates and we're walking around. We're playing basketball in college. I'm walking up and down the halls of my office in inappropriate shoes. Arthritis. Inflammation of the joints. That's osteoarthritis. You can get arthritis when your immune system attacks your joints. That's like with RA. RA is rheumatoid arthritis. ItÕs more pronounced in women than men, but you guys can get it too, so you're not immune from it. In fact, when RA happens in a man, it's actually worse. Dr. Seudath, have you had any patients with RA that were men?

DR. RAJAY SEUDATH
I've had a couple of folks with rheumatoid arthritis, and they also had the other associated ones with it because it was rheumatoid arthritis with dermato-myo-myelitis as well. So, he had bones, skin and his oral mucosa. So yes, it can be it can come in waves. It can come with other inflammatory disease. Inflammatory arthritis is a little bit different from osteoarthritis. It's not just wear and tear. It's your body literally attacking itself, as Dr. Perry said.

RON AARON
What's a mucosa? Mucosa is any type of part of your body that has a lining that can create mucus. That can create a liquid lining. So typically, from your mouth and your nose all the way down to your rectal area. That long tube of your digestive tract is part of the mucosa.

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
For women, that would also include the vaginal tract.

DR. RAJAY SEUDATH
Correct.

RON AARON
Dr. Perry, how do you diagnose arthritis and then how do you treat it?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
I've been preaching all year long, in fact, many, many years that I've been doing this, that you have to have a good relationship with your PCP. When you have a great relationship and you see them on a regular basis, that patient is going to come in and say, my joints hurt. Whether that joint is the knee, legs or arms, Dr. Seudath and I are going to look and see is it if it's your wrist, is it both wrists? Is it just one wrist? Is there trauma associated with it? If you're a teenage girl or guy and it's your knee and you just got a new boyfriend, is it in an infectious arthritis? Because you can also get arthritis for certain diseases like chlamydia. The little critters can get in there and cause inflammation of the joint. We call that a mono-articular one joint inflamed red. It wasn't because you were doing tumbling and cheerleading. It's because you got that new boyfriend. So, history and physical is paramount in diagnosing arthritis. We can kind of determine, is it gouty arthritis? What type of arthritis it is? Then treatment, really the hallmark of all the treatment is to try to calm down the inflammation. Calm the inflammation down. Whether you're telling the immune system to calm down to calm the inflammation down. Whether you're treating the infection or whether you stop eating red meat or we're just giving you an anti-inflammatory like ibuprofen or meloxicam, you're trying to address the inflammation. The basic components of inflammation are pain, redness and swelling.

RON AARON
All right, hold that thought. I'm going to come right back to you. We want to let folks know who may have just joined us, you're listening to the award winning Docs in a Pod. Our podcast is available wherever you listen to your podcasts. We're also on the radio in several markets in Texas and Florida as well. We have a very special show today. It's a year in wrap-up talking about the main topics that got more listeners in 2025. Dr. Tamika Perry and Dr. Rajay Seudath are playing together. We're playing the hits. Dr. Perry, before we jump from arthritis, you're looking at a guy who had knee replacement surgery. I had a left knee where all the lining was gone. It was bone on bone. And, man, did that hurt.

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Absolutely. You need to think about that once again. The joints, like the parts of a car, you've been using them they're wearing down. The normal cushion or lubricating jelly that is there, Ron, you've just worn it out. Sometimes instead of tinkering with that joint with a steroid injection, we can do other types of injections that kind of replace that viscous jelly that's in there. It gets to the point where there's no tinkering with it anymore. We have to give you a whole new one. That's what happened.

RON AARON
I got every injection you can think of including rooster beak juice that they shoot into you.

DR. RAJAY SEUDATH
There was one thing Dr. Perry had said about ways to get rid of that inflammation. She said cutting back on the red meat. That's actually one of the other types of inflammation. It could be gout. Gout is another cause of arthritis. What's gout? Gout is when your body builds up a gout chemical called uric acid, and your body can't get rid of it, and it crystallizes and those crystals deposited into your joints. Again, another way we can treat that, like you said with anti-inflammatories, but we can help a person to eat less of those types of triggers. Red meat is one of the major triggers for gout, alcohol, and dehydration. Those are some of the things that came about with that.

RON AARON
If you have gout, does it go away or is it something you'll be struggling with for the rest of your life?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Like Dr. Seudath said, it kind of depends on what you want to do. I'm not telling you to not have that New York strip with a glass of red wine, because we all like that, right? But if you have gout, that may not be your friend. We always like therapies in which we can do something to change our lifestyle instead of maybe giving you something that goes into your body. Sometimes is necessary, but if we can do something as simple as don't eat that food, don't eat that food. Don't drink that drink.

RON AARON
Talk to me a little bit about of the arthritis that cause great deformity. You see it in people's hands where their hands are misshapen. What is that?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
That's rheumatoid arthritis. One of the things that we want to do is we want to preserve the integrity and the function of your joints with RA. That's why early detection is paramount in that diagnosis. Once again, that is mainly a 1 to 4 for males to females. Females have it four times more. It's usually what we call bilateral. That means it's going to affect both sides of your family. One of the hallmarks is morning stiffness that lasts greater than an hour, and it usually affects the smaller joints at first. At first, it usually affects the smaller joints. So, the distal, meaning the furthest joints out, so the furthest joints out on your fingers. Even when you type, you typically don't bend those furthest joints out, but if they start to swell up, you're going to say, why are those swelling up? I don't use those like that. What's the what's the situation with those? If a lady were to come into the office to say, my hands are swelling up, I'm tight in the morning, and the same thing happened to my mom, immediately our bunny ears are going to go up and say, we need to test her for the blood markers for rheumatoid arthritis. Because what we want to do is not only take away the inflammation, we want to give her certain medicines that are going to preserve the integrity and the function of her joints so she can use her hands so they don't become deformed.

RON AARON
Those medications are effective?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Very effective. There are a bunch of agents that are very, very effective, but we got to know early and I'm sure Dr. Seudath has seen this, too. Unfortunately, in my practice I've seen a lot of people who have been neglected by the healthcare system for years, and when they walk in, they have these hands that are very stereotypical of RA. You'll ask, and they'll be like, I don't know what that is. Everybody in my family just has arthritis like this and they just never would diagnose it properly. But you can look at the condition and those are all RA hands.

RON AARON
Wow. All right. Stick with me. We're going to come right back to you. WeÕre talking with Dr. Rajay Seudath and Dr. Tamika Perry. Our year in program looks at the top shows for 2025, taking a look at downloads from our podcast. You're listening to the Award-Winning Docs in a Pod. Stick with us right now.

AD
WellMed and you can rely on WellMed and Optum doctors to care for and understand the health needs of older adults. Our commitment to quality is why the Institute of Health Care Improvement recently designated WellMed and Optum as an Age-Friendly Health System. This means WellMed and Optum care teams provide reliable, evidence-based, high-quality care to older adults. To get the benefits of an age friendly care team, go to WellMedhealthcare.com.

RON AARON
Thank you so much for staying with us right here on the award winning Docs in a Pod. Our podcast is available wherever you listen to your podcast. We're also on the radio in several cities in Texas and Florida as well. I'm Ron Aaron, and we're joined today by our two Docs in a Pod hosts, Dr. Tamika Perry and Dr. Rajay Seudath. We're splitting up a look at the various topics that each of them has dealt with over the years. We started with Dr. Perry, and in the next half hour, we'll deal with Dr. Seudath. We were talking about arthritis and inflammation. Up next, understanding your annual checkup results. Dr. Perry, I know you're a big believer in that annual checkup. Why is that important?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Because it kind of sets the tone for what's important for this year. What we should do. Do I need a mammogram now or do I need one next year? Do I need to follow my A1CÕs more closely this year? It is our blueprint for what's going to happen for this year. So, what's paramount in that exam is lab work. What's even more paramount is the results. So, we want to look at a test called a complete metabolic panel, the CMP. One of the important things that CMP has on there is kidney function. I always mention this one first because there's a range of normality. The normal for the test is between 60 plus on a number called our GFR, the estimated glomerular filtration rate. Y'all just hang in here with me for a second. That is the that is the speed at which your kidneys filter blood to make urine. Think about it like miles per hour. How fast or your kidneys running? Typically, we want that speed to be over 60. We give you some latitude depending on how old you are and what else is going on in your life, but really closer to 100 is fine. A D is passing, but we want an A. We want to get closer to 100. So, over the course of 2 or 3 years, if your number has gone from 80 to 70 to 60, you see it's still within that normal range, but your trend goes down. I mention that because not only is your value for that year important, but your pattern or your trend becomes even more important because your clinician may say at this point, why is her GFR going down? Why is his GFR going down? At that point, you may tell them my arthritis has been acting up, and I take ibuprofen on a regular basis. Even though ibuprofen is sold over the counter, regular and consistent use of it, even like the package says, can really play on your renal function.

DR. RAJAY SEUDATH
Absolutely. When we do your yearly bloodwork, the CMP, looking for your kidney function, looking at the metabolic parameters that we have for you as well as the CBC, which is your complete blood count. So, we're looking at how juicy your blood cells are. We look at the MCV. Are they too small? Are they nice, big and round? How much of it do you have? Your hemoglobin. Is that number going down? We often see a person with kidney disease often has their blood count go down. Those two kind of go hand in hand. Typically, we see the kidney disease first and then we start to see that anemia. But one can kind of play on the other right. So, those are two tests that just about everybody needs for their yearly blood work. Then as people have different diseases, that increase is what we're looking for on your yearly physical.

RON AARON
Where do red and white blood cells play into this?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
I'm glad you mentioned that, Ron, because we circle back to the CBC and we look at the hemoglobin inside those red cells. He mentioned kidney function because the kidneys produce a substance called erythropoietin. If the kidneys arenÕt working right, they arenÕt going to produce enough of that. If they're not working correctly, then you're not going to make enough of that substance and you're going to be anemic. Also, equally as important is that we look at the trend of that hemoglobin. For example, Ron. If you came to me and I was honored enough to be your PCP and your hemoglobin two years ago was 13.5 and last year was 12.5, and this year it is 12. Still normal for a guy, but why are you trending down and you don't have kidney disease? Then I have to look for a source in which you're either not producing enough blood or you're losing blood. Most commonly, that would be in the gut for a guy. I'm going to say, hey Ron, at some point I'm going to have to send you to GI or some medical professional who's going to do a colonoscopy on you or some way in which we can assess your gut to make sure you're not bleeding from there.

RON AARON
Are there ages beyond which colonoscopies are no longer recommended?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Absolutely. Dr. Seudath will tell you that at 75, we had this conversation with the patient. Is it in our best interest to screen for colon cancer? At 75 for breast cancer. At 65 for pap smears? I mean, arenÕt these the conversations, Dr. Seudath, that you have with your patients?

DR. RAJAY SEUDATH
Absolutely. Sometimes patients are just waiting. I can't wait till 75. I don't have to get these colonoscopies anymore. I don't have to do these stool cards anymore. The general trend is yes. If you've had clean colonoscopies, you haven't had any dangerous findings, all of your mammograms have been normal, yes. At 75 it is appropriate to stop doing those screenings. Now, let's say a person comes in and says, everybody in my family has colon cancer. My dad had it at 50. My mom had it at 45. My brother had it at 65. EverybodyÕs had it. With that person, we may need to continue doing those screenings because they're at a higher risk. If they had metaplastic disease where they had polyps that were not normal, gastroenterologist may recommend you need to keep having your colonoscopy even after the 75 year-old mark. So again, in medicine, I often say the answer is, well, it depends. It often depends, and that's why you need to have a good relationship with your primary care provider. They need to know you, and they need to know your health so they can help you with those decisions.

RON AARON
For guys, the issue of prostate cancer comes up. When do you stop looking for it?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
The literature says roundabout 70, but this is on par with what is person dependent. Nobody fits into a box. No one does. I'll tell you that because if you're a healthy individual, you have a lot of life to live in, you and you want to get the screenings. Absolutely fine. I'll tell you, early in my career, I had a lady who was 83 and would drive from Fort Worth to Dallas, which is about a 30 mile drive to see me. She's 83, and she's like, Dr. Perry, I need my mammogram. I'm like, do you really want it? We talked about it because remember, we said 75 was the general cutoff. She said, absolutely. Now, mind you, she was still active in her sorority organization. She would speak at their, their events. Very active woman. Of course, she got the mammogram and lo and behold, she had cancer. She chose to get a lumpectomy and local radiation. She's 101 now. She's upset that her grandson made her stop driving. Had we not checked, it might have cut her life a little bit shorter. So, when I say, just like Dr. Seudath said, let's look at your history. Let's look at your current state now because if you're a 75 year-old who has in stage congestive heart failure, you're on dialysis, you have a bunch of other stuff going on. I'm going to probably talk you out of the colonoscopy, but if you're like my lady who I was talking about before, I'm probably going to cosign it with you. If you have a bunch of colon cancer in your family and you're still healthy, I'm probably going to sign you getting that colonoscopy. But this is where you have a great relationship with your PCP.

RON AARON
All right. We're going to shift gears and cover the last of the most popular topics covered by Dr. Perry and Docs in a Pod in 2025. Gut health and microbiome. I know, Dr. Perry, that's one that really interests you.

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Yes. In our gut, we have critters who live there in a symbiotic relationship.

RON AARON
First of all, when we say gut, what do we mean?

DR. TAMIKA PERRY
Our intestines in particular. I'm going to mention our large intestines in particular. We have critters who live there. When I say critters, I mean bacteria. We donÕt have a coral in there or anything like that. So, they're living there. They benefit from them, and they benefit from us. They're supposed to be in there, but when we do something to throw that natural symbiotic relationship off, a plethora of things can happen from some studies say itÕs obesity. We absolutely know things like colitis can happen, inflammation of that gut. So, it is essential that we eat foods that promote gut health and we do things to keep our gut healthy. Everybody and their mama want antibiotics in a particular pack for something. I'm not going to name that pack names because I donÕt want anyone coming after me. They all want it, but that's not in our best interest. Dr. Seudath, why isn't it always in our best interest?

DR. RAJAY SEUDATH
Because those kinds of medicines, antibiotics, they eradicate all of the good bacteria in your intestines. Dr. Perry just said those bacteria help us. They help us to break down our food. They help us to be healthy. So, when we take antibiotics to possibly kill the bad bacteria in our lungs or in a wound, if we don't necessarily need those antibiotics, they're killing all of the good bacteria in our intestines. In the extreme sense, it can kill all the good bacteria and leave very bad bacteria. That's actually called C-diff. Clostridium difficile. That is an infection that is really one of the things that pushed us to study the gut microbiome, which is which is basically the environment of the intestines. We found out that those bacteria are so important in keeping the bad bacteria under control. When we kill off all the good bacteria, the bad bacteria, they multiply and they make toxins and they can give you a very dangerous, diarrheal infection. I mean, almost worse than the 1800s cholera epidemic. What are the criteria in your hospital? If they say, oh, this person might have C-diff or Clostridium difficile, well, how often are they pooping? Is it more than 14 times a day? Yes, it's more than 14 times. Okay. We have to do something about it because it can be very serious.

RON AARON
All right. I have to stop you right there. This has been really, really interesting and we appreciate it. I also want to take a personal moment because I am moving on from Docs in a Pod and will be continuing to co-host for caregiver S.O.S. on Air. We're passing the reins over to Carmenn Miles, who will be taking over with Dr. Perry and Dr. Seudath, and I am sure she will do a great job. Thank you both. You've been listening to the award winning Docs in a Pod.

OUTRO
Executive producer for Docs in a Pod is Dan Calderon. The producer is Cherese Pendleton. Thank you for listening to Docs in a Pod presented by WellMed. Be sure and listen next week to Docs in a Pod presented by WellMed.

DISCLAIMER
This transcript is generated using a podcast editing tool; there may be small differences between this transcript and the recorded audio content.

Docs in a Pod airs on Saturdays in the following cities:

• 7 to 7:30 a.m. CT – San Antonio (930 AM The Answer)
• 7 to 7:30 a.m. CT – DFW (660 AM, 92.9 FM [Dallas], 95.5 FM [Arlington], 99.9 FM [Fort Worth])
• 6:30 to 7 p.m. CT – Houston (1070 AM/103.3 FM The Answer)
• 7 to 7:30 p.m. CT – Austin (KLBJ 590 AM/99.7 FM)

Docs in a Pod also airs on Sundays in the following cities:

• 1:30 to 2 p.m. ET – Tampa (860 AM/93.7FM)
• 5 to 5:30 p.m. CT – San Antonio (930 AM The Answer)

Healthy aging Podcasts