614 - Wash Your Stupid Nutz
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Your show was better when you had medical questions. AIDS! You get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir! He's a fucking idiot! If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of Weird Medicine on Sirius XM 103 and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of a, you know, a clown. What?

You give me the respect that I'm entitled to! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Ebola virus dripping from my nose. The leprosy of the heart valve exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take my brain out and blast it with the wave. An ultrasonic, echographic, and a pulsitating shave. I want a magic pill for my ailments. The health equivalent of Citizen Kane. It's now in the tablet. Think I'm doomed and I'll have to go.

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the wacko alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. And Lady Diagnosis. Hello, Lady Diagnosis. Hello, Dr. Steve. Good to have you back. And my partner in all things, Tacey. Hello, Tacey. Hello. This is a show for people who never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet.

If you've got a question you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider, if you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 347-766-4323. That's 347-POOHEAD. Follow us on Weird Medicine, at Weird Medicine or at DrScottWM, Twitter or X or whatever the shit it's called. Visit our website at drsteve.com for podcasts, medical news and stuff you can buy.

Most importantly, we're not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your health care provider. All right, very good. Check out stuff.drsteve.com. That's stuff.drsteve.com. If you know someone who plays a stringed guitar,

Thank you.

because they like a lump because they don't know what to do with it, get them a Rhody coach. So that's rhody.drsteve.com. Check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbals.net and check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash weirdmedicine. I'm just putting everything up there, just the kitchen sink. You'll find something there that you like.

And we can chat with each other. You can ask questions there. Every bit of video content that I ever make, including our shorts, normal world appearances and that kind of stuff, all show up on Patreon.com slash Weird Medicine. And then if you want me to say fluid to your mama or whatever, I'll do it at Cameo.com slash Weird Medicine. It's dirt cheap.

Unless you're a business and that's $250. And that's the minimum that they'll let you charge. It's like I would charge $10 to just, you know, do something. Not necessarily endorse something I don't know, but just to say, yeah, check out Joe Smith's podcast or whatever. But the minimum you can charge is $250. So I'll never. Why would anybody pay me to do that?

You do have a good voice, Dr. Scott. Yeah, but I don't have any credibility. You are on IMDB. That is true. All right. And don't forget Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbals.net. Simplyherbals.net. Tis the season.

For nasal congestion. All things nasal congestion. And check me out at Normal World at youtube.com slash at normal world or on Blaze TV. And we've got the Ask Dr. Steve segments and they let me act a little bit. I actually have an IMDB page now, Tase. Oh.

I've had one for years. I know. That's true. That's true. Tacey's had an IMDb page for a video game, which I don't want to dox her. But she's had one much longer than that. What does that mean?

Well, Internet Movie Database has, when people act in something, and for some reason it has video games in it, too, you get an entry on there. And so Tacey had one because Laszlo...

He said, do you know anybody that sounds real country? And I'm like, yep, I surely do. And I really wanted to get Tacey's mom in there, but I was afraid that she just couldn't take direction. She'd get all flustered and stuff. So, you want me to say what? You know, just you can imagine. So we had Tacey and her friend Wendy and a couple other people.

And so, yeah, she's had this stupid IMDB page I was jealous of. And then all of a sudden I was just checking it one day and mine popped up. And there's like Dr. Steve, cult leader. Oh, yeah. And Dr. Steve, you know, psychiatrist and stuff like that. So, yeah, it was kind of fun. Nutcase. Yeah. Dr. Steve, idgit. Idgit. Anyway, it's normal world. All right. Tacey, you got some topics today? I sure do. All right. Cool.

It's Tacey's Time of Topics, a time for Tacey to discuss topics of the day. Not to be confused with Topic Time with Harrison Young, which is copyrighted by Harrison Young and Area 58 Public Access. And now, here's Tacey.

Well, hello. Hello. FDA is to finally ban controversial ingredient in popular decongestants. Uh-oh, here we go. Sudafed, Mucinex, Benadryl, Advil, Tylenol, Vicks, and Domitap.

Phenylephrine. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so they'll say, they say on their website, it's the FDA's rule to ensure that drugs are safe and effective. Yes. Phenylephrine's been in this shit ever since Sudafed. They won. You know, the druggies found out that they could make methamphetamine out of Sudafed, and it got put behind the counter. So all the over-the-counter stuff has phenylephrine in it. I agree with this, because...

If you don't have Sudafed in a cold medicine and you're really sick, that phenylephrine doesn't do shit. Yeah. It really doesn't. Yeah. I've always, as a decongestant, always rather than taking a pill that goes to the tip of my toes and, you know, my fingers and stuff.

Just to get to my nose, I just use topical stuff, either Dr. Scott's nasal spray, or I use oxymetazoline, which is the active ingredient in afrin and all those other sort of spray decongestants. That stuff is great. The problem is that if you use it over and over and over again, you'll get addicted to it. And really, addicted is not the right word. You end up getting rebound...

nasal congestion. So when it wears off, those tissues re-expand and they overshoot, and now you have even worse nasal congestion. That happened to me. Did it? Were you habituated to that stuff for a while? Yes, I was. It was when I was pregnant. Oh, yeah. Well, you were fluid overloaded then anyway. Yeah. It was awful. Well, my ex, she used to use like two or three of those Afrin bottles a day.

A whole bottle? Yeah, she just... Just constantly. She was so habituated to it. Yikes. It was really funny. But anyway... It took a couple of days of just not doing it. Yeah. And just not breathing. When your nose is that congested, it's almost like you can't resist spraying that stuff up there. I've had it where I could feel the turbinate. So those are sort of the active tissues in there just smashed up against my nasal septum. And it's just...

unbelievably uncomfortable. And you can't eat if you can't breathe through your nose.

Because I just gasp because I'm like trying to eat and then I can't breathe and I'm, you know, you can't taste anything. It sucks. So good. Got to be a mouth breather for a couple of days to get over it. Just got to be a mouth breather. Actually, if you do get habituated to oxymetazoline, what we used to use were two things. The Breathe Right nasal strips combined with...

the Atravent nasal spray. It has ipratropium in it, and it is non-habit-forming. And although it mostly decreases mucus production, it has some decongestant activity as well. And that would help to get people off of this. And Tacey's right. It only takes a few days, and then you're back to normal again. But it does suck. Mm-hmm.

It doesn't say when this stuff will be off the market. Well, it's a proposed order. Okay. So what it is is only the final order affects which products can be marketed. So they are asking for comments on this right now. Now, I was looking. I was going to look at PubMed. So PubMed.gov. Oh, no, that's a government website. No, it's the repository of the National Library of Medicine. Calm down. So...

I've had people, I've said, look, let me pull up this article from PubMed.gov, and they're like, well, I don't trust that. Okay. It's not, they're not affiliated with those that you don't trust. So let's see. Okay. So phenylafrin and inhaled nitric oxide in adult respiratory distress syndrome. One or two better than one, and there's no abstract, so I have no idea what the answer to that is.

Let's see here. The Phenylephrine Saga, A Drug Dilemma, also no abstract. The Impact of Hyperoxy and Phenylephrine on Cerebral Oxygenation. Okay, let's see about this.

So it says, patients undergoing craniotomy, in other words, brain surgery, under general anesthesia, brain tissue oxygen tension increased with high inspiratory oxygen fraction. There you go, of course. But remained unchanged after a bolus dose of phenylephrine. So in other words, the phenylephrine didn't help there either.

So, yeah, here we go. Now, this is from Ophthalmology 1980. Oh, wow. This is probably where this came from. Phenylephrine is a potent, effective, and relatively safe drug with few ocular side effects. Side effects from topical installation are uncommon. So back in the 80s, the common wisdom was that this stuff was safe and effective, and that's why it got stuck in ophthalmology.

let's say, you know, over-the-counter decongestants when Sudafed went behind the counter. Because nobody wants to sign a registry just to buy a nasal decongestant. But anyway, if you have short-term nasal congestion and you don't want to mess with phenylafrin because it's been demonstrated really not to be very effective and the risks outweigh the benefits, try the afrin. Just don't.

Use it three times a day, every day for two weeks because you will get habituated to it. We used to recommend four days max. And if you can use it just before you go to bed, that's even better. All right. Good one, Tase. Good one, Tase. Next. Okay. Did you have another one? Yeah. Because I have one. GLP-1 medications may reduce risk of overdose.

Okay, so what's the deal on that? Well, you might know as the newest craze of weight loss drugs could help with substance abuse. GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wagovi mimic natural hormones in the body that regulate blood sugar and insulin levels. They're used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesities. These drugs curb the craving for high-calorie food, helping users eat less.

A new study published in the journal Addiction showed that it could also be used to reduce cravings for opioids and alcohol for those struggling with substance abuse. Really? Mm-hmm. That's surprising. Because these receptors exist in different parts of the body, like the brain, there may be some options or possibilities in the future to use them for other types of conditions. Mm-hmm.

What do you think about that? Yeah, that's interesting. That's a surprising one to me. I mean, just because it makes you stop eating, it's not because it works on pain and pleasure. I would say pleasure centers somehow. Yeah, it must. Well, so many drugs, people go, well, why are you using drugs?

Oh, I don't know. This isn't a good example. Methadone for pain when they use it to get people off drugs. That's kind of a different situation. But lots of medicines have different activities. For example, aspirin is great for arthritis pain but also helps to prevent a heart attack and stroke and prevents colorectal.

colon cancer in some people who are at high risk. So, you know, all these three completely different things. So lots of medications have different activity. The study did not prove these drugs directly lowered the risks of opioid overdose and alcohol intoxication, but that it seemed to help. Those who took the drug had a 40% lower chance of overdosing on opioids and a 50%

lower chance of getting drunk compared to those who did not take the medication. So they will have to redo those studies with that as the primary endpoint and do double-blind placebo-controlled study before they can market it. Yeah. They do not have approval. Unless maybe it has something to do with the delayed gastric emptying of the... Maybe. Or breaking down the pills, breaking down the alcohol. It just sits in your stomach for longer. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it's kind of bizarre.

We've had a lot of stories about those GLPs recently. Yeah, there are. The one from last week dealt with surgical risk. Mm-hmm.

And we realize that it's because of delayed gastric emptying. People can be what we call NPO after midnight. In other words, not taking medication or oral intake after midnight and still go in and have a full stomach and end up aspirating in the operating suite. So nobody wants that. That's bad. Yeah.

So my next article is about Paragoric. Yes. I really wanted you to do this one. And has it been banned by the Food and Drug Administration? The answer, no. Okay. All right. Yeah, go ahead. This person is saying that they remember using this product occasionally as a teenager back in the 1960s, and it was a miracle drug for stopping diarrhea. Yeah. And it was available over-the-counter. Mothers would rub a little on their teething baby's gums to increase—

to decrease their pain. Nowadays, I do not see Paragoric mentioned on any schedule of drugs. Many pharmacists have never heard of it.

I don't think that's true. I don't think that's right, of course. Although it appears to be available in other countries, I don't understand why this drug that helps so many people is taken off the market. It certainly couldn't be any more addictive than codeine, which is still wildly available. Right. I'm 74 now. I would like to have some paraguruk on hand when I get diarrhea. Okay. I see. And the answer... This is one of those Q&A things. Yes. Yeah.

The answer is that paragoric is a derivative of opium. It is opium. Sometimes referred to as a camphorated tincture of opium. Correct. It's an extract of opium along with some other traditional ingredients like anise oil, benzoic acid. Is that right? That's why it tastes like licorice? Camphor and glycerin. I always thought that opium just tasted like licorice. But they actually put anise in the paragoric, so they make it taste like licorice. Gotcha.

Interesting. And it's in a base of alcohol and water, and because of abuse, it was made a controlled substance. Of course. It's opium. And although manufacturing stopped briefly, it is still available, and I suppose your pharmacist would get it if your physician ordered it. However, there are more effective and safer drugs for diarrhea, like loperamide and diphenoxalate. Diphenoxalate, which also both stimulate the...

mu opioid receptor and the other one has atropine in it oral atropine can cause dry mouth delirium disequilibrium it can cause bladder outflow obstruction so I'm not a fan of that who is that who's answering these questions it's Dr. Roach is it an actual doctor

Or are they just playing them on TV? Dr. Keith Roach, To Your Health. And it's published in the Detroit News. Okay. So, yeah, I'm not sure I completely agree with that, that those are necessarily safer and more effective. We...

The thing about diarrhea is you need to know what you're treating. Why do you have it? Right. And you shouldn't – just because you have loose stools shouldn't necessarily be taking medication. For example, if you have Shigella or Salmonella, they recommend that you don't slow down your –

bowel movements because you're just trapping the bacteria in your colon and allowing them to breed and multiply even faster than they already did. And then some people have things like malabsorption and they take loperamide, which they can buy over the counter. It's sold as Imodium.

And they'll buy that and they'll slow down their stools, but they don't realize they're not treating the underlying problem, which is the malabsorption. In other words, they're not able to absorb fat and they continue to lose weight and they lose essential fatty acids and fat-soluble vitamins and all kinds of shit. So... Literally. I think that, right. Well, thank you. So, but the...

I think the advice that I would have given had I been writing that thing is, yeah, Paragoric is fine, but don't just treat diarrhea without knowing what the cause is. You know, transient, short-lived diarrhea, totally fine. I don't really care what you use for that. But if it's just going on and on and on, you've got to do something about it and get it worked up. Okay. Now, Paragoric, I

I used to prescribe it in primary care all the time, and then when I found out what was going on is you get a little one-ounce bottle of this stuff. Remember, we used it on our kids' teeth when they were teething. Maybe that's how I know about it. Well, we used it for like a day, and you would take the bottle and just tip it over onto your finger and then take your finger and rub it on their gums. And then, you know, two days later, their teething pain is better or, you know, a week later, whatever. And now you've got a bottle that has...

an ounce minus one one hundredth of an ounce. So you basically have an ounce of tincture of opium. And what people were doing is they were dipping joints and dipping cigarettes in these and then putting them in the dehydrator or putting it in the oven at low, like 170 or something. And and then when you smoke it, you're smoking opium in in Upper East Tennessee. Oh, my goodness. So it's crazy.

So that's the deal with Paragoric. I've seen people put it – and I'm not advocating this. I'm just saying this is what I've seen people do. Put it like on a plate or a metal plate and put it in the oven and just sort of smear it on there. And then when it dries out, scraping it and then smoking that. And then they're actually smoking, literally smoking opium. Sounds like a much better option. No, it doesn't. That's not a good option, Dr. Scott. No.

That's Dr. Scott. It's a terrible idea. It's because you're an idiot. Is there a group for these people that want to quit? They meet in the church basement. Yeah, there are groups. Well, then they run out of it. If you keep going, well, I need more of that Paragoric. My kid's teeth and pain. I mean, for the teeth and drops. It's real bad, don't you know? It's like, you know, that's bullshit. No one ever needs more than one of those little tiny bottles of Paragoric.

So that's a self-limited thing. Anyway. Crazy. Those are all my stories. Well, thank you very much. You're welcome. You get a bell. Uh-oh. Give myself a bell.

I've got a bell, Scott, so screw you. Yeah, this is what Scott gets. I have a story. A U.K. man's aggressive brain tumor was cut down in size by 50% following a first-of-its-kind treatment for a type of cancer that typically kills patients within 18 months. So that would be glioblastoma. And so this guy had, he was an engineer. He was diagnosed with glioblastoma.

back in December of 2023. And what they did was they removed as much of the tumor as they could surgically, and then they implanted a tiny advice called an Omaya reservoir right under his scalp. So what that is, is it's like a, I don't know, like a little balloon that you can inject stuff into, and then it will

excrete that through a tube into the surrounding area. Okay. So that's what, so they put this Omae Reservoir in and after they placed it, they injected low levels of radioactivity directly into the tumor once a week for six weeks.

And it was aimed at killing cancer cells while leaving the healthy tissue unharmed because regular brain tissue is relatively resistant to radiation and the glioblastoma cells are less so. And brain scans that they reviewed revealed that his tumor reduced in size by 50% at the end of his six-week treatment.

And that's pretty incredible because now what we want to see is if they do a bunch of these, we want to see if survival is increased. Right. Because it could be that you have more adverse events with this or you have other issues that make this not a viable treatment. But right now it looks pretty good. And he says...

You know, he said before he saw the remarkable results, it would be wonderful. This treatment helps me. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. It may benefit someone else down the line. So that's the right attitude to have when you do an experimental treatment like this. You're always advancing medical knowledge. All right. They're going to have 40 patients treated in phase one of the trial over the next year. So we'll keep you informed on that. Glioblastoma is one of those. I hate that one.

That one is devastating because at some point it affects the person, not just their body, because it's in the brain.

And I would like this was a really good target to defeat because it's hard to get medicine there because a lot of the medicine won't cross the blood brain barrier, you know, and you don't want to kill other brain tissues. So you're killing living human cells inside a living human cell or, you know, in a living human body and dying.

Part of it is or substantially or all of it in this case is in the brain, which makes it even more difficult. So it's a tough one. So good for them. I like the idea. All right. Questions, comments, lady diagnosis. You got anything? I just have a question. I have a friend that has a an issue with she's allergic to exercise. Oh, yeah.

So when she sweats, she gets hives and breaks out immediately and then itches like crazy. But it doesn't last long. I don't know how long. Maybe a half hour, hour, two hours. Sure. And there's no explanation, is there? There is. Sure, there is. Or cure? Is there a cure? Well, there's treatment. She has exercise-induced urticaria. This is also known as cholinergic urticaria. It's rare. It's rare.

You know who has that, Steve? Well, who's that? Liam's fiance. What? Mm-hmm. Really? Mm-hmm. Well, she was a cheerleader.

I don't know. Okay. All right. There you go. Well, every once in a while, exercise can trigger a more severe reaction called exercise-induced anaphylaxis. And that's a rough one because, you know, you exercise and then you feel short of breath because you're exercising. But actually what's happening is your lungs are shutting down and you don't get better. As a matter of fact, it can be fatal. So this just came on...

One day. She was in her 20s. Right. This happens. Oh, okay. Yep. So no cause. Nope. Nope. Interesting. Nope. So the treatment of exercise-induced urticaria involves the avoidance of exercise. Oh, I wish I had that, man. Oh, man.

All right. Now, because exercise is good for you, that's a crappy answer. So you can use things like fexofenadine before you. That's Allegra, non-drowsy antihistamine. I'm going to also say that mast cell stabilizers like the leukotriene inhibitors like Montelukast or Singulair would be helpful. Okay.

And I know that they've been proposed, but they need studies to establish their effectiveness in this. The problem is, again, it's a rare disease, but I would do that. And then they say avoiding food for four to six hours prior to exercise has been mentioned across the literature as a way to help prevent food-dependent exercise-induced urticaria. So some people only have the hives when they exercise if they have food in their stomach.

Do you know if your friend, does she get the hives only if she sweats? Yeah. I was going to say, you know, exercising, but just not getting to the point of getting your body too hot.

Lots of little sessions, I guess. Well, yeah, you can do just weight training and do just steady aerobic. I mean, yeah, she can see what the threshold is. But it's probably not the sweating. It's the actual exercise. But it could be the sweat. She may be allergic to her own sweat or something. But then when she's hot, she should be having this, not just when she's exerting herself because you sweat other times, you know.

So this person in this study that I'm looking at, gradual modification of exercise was an effective treatment. And they work their way back and tolerate low intensity exercise without the use of antihistamines in this person. But I would want to be able to do what the hell I want to do. So I would try Singular if it were me first. Yeah.

Monte Lucas has its own issues with adverse effects, but it is generally safe and well tolerated by people who can tolerate it. Those that can't, it's pretty outstanding how bad the adverse reactions can be. But that's rare. I've only really seen one case of that, and that was in a friend of ours' kid. Yeah.

All right. Yes, thank you. So continuing on allergies here, Amanda from the Fluid family has a good question. Amanda 5x5. Yeah. She's got a cat that since she's moved to Florida has developed allergies. Allergies.

And she went and had her cat. Wait, she's developed allergies to the cat or the cat has? The cat has an increase in allergies. Okay. Takes the cat in for testing, and I guess the cat is now allergic to humans. What? Oh, that's hilarious. Isn't it awful? Well, that's because, you know, when you're allergic to a cat, you're not allergic to the cat. You're allergic to their dander. Right. So wash your hair more often, Amanda. Maybe that's dander. Maybe, yeah. It's human dander. A few more showers or something.

A little, what is it? Some gold bond powder on your... Wow. But she was asking if humans can actually be allergic to humans.

That's a good question. I'm just going to tell you, I've seen people allergic to things you would never think they would be allergic to. You can be allergic to sunlight. To anything, yeah, to anything. We've had people on this show that were allergic to sunlight. If they went outside, they started sneezing and maybe got hives or itching. Well, shoot, yeah. In lupus, you know, you're going to be sensitive to... Well, that's a sun sensitivity where the skin actually is truly sensitive to ultraviolet. That's not a...

immediate type hypersensitivity reaction. It's just their skin is sensitized. It burns and turns red more easily. But this is what we're actually talking about, an IgE-mediated allergy. Histamine is released. The cells degranulate, and all of a sudden the histamine and all those other active substances are released, and you get hyperactivity.

you know, skin swelling and redness and itching, and then you get running of the eyes and nose and all that stuff, too. I had a friend who was allergic to food. Yeah? Yes. Yeah, no, there's some people are allergic to cold drinks. Some people are allergic to hot drinks. Some people are allergic to their stomach being full. One person can be allergic to another. It's extremely rare. There's one that, well, okay, this doesn't really...

But dermagraphism is where you scratch your skin and you get a hive there. There's this thing called people allergic to me. And it's somewhere. Someone claims their body odor causes allergy like reactions in others. But I think that's just because they just smell bad.

I'm with you on that one. Yeah. Now, autoallergy, there are people allergic to parts of themselves, and those are people who, like, have sex allergy. So when they ejaculate, when the semen touches the mucous membrane of the urethra, it triggers an allergic reaction. They can feel really sick.

And they'll have malaise and, you know, they can have hives and stuff like that. As long as it stays inside the seminal vesicles in the prostate, it doesn't seem to bother them. It's just when it's released, which is crazy. And then there's this thing called mast cell activation syndrome. I had a friend in medical school who had that. We went skiing and she would just faint out of nowhere and her blood pressure would drop.

And it causes people to be allergic to almost everything, including the scent of a loved one sometimes. So it's just where their mast cells, which are the cells that have these globules of histamine and all these other sort of vasoactive substances in them, they just –

their substances for no reason. They've got a hair trigger. They're supposed to only do it under certain circumstances, when they meet certain allergens from the outside, certain foreign bodies, stuff like that. But in some people, they just go, okay, well, fuck it, and they just...

give up the ghost. And now you've got these people having these horrible allergic reactions to most everything. So is there something that triggers these automatically or is it something that builds up in your body and then your body just, you have no clue? You get exposed to something that the body misrecognizes as foreign. And then the next thing you know, you're off to the races. So for example,

So I guess an example would be, oh, like diabetes type 1. The immune system attacks the islet cells, or as they say in China, according to Dr. Scott, the islet cells. It attacks those. And what they think it is is maybe you're exposed to a bacterium or a virus that has some protein on the surface that when the body attacks that—

It also looks like a protein on the surface of the islet cells. And so those antibodies are running around looking for targets, and they've killed all the viruses. Well, hell, there's a bunch of targets over here, and they're all your own islet cells, and the immune system just kills them. So you can think of your own analogies that go with that, but it's just basically a deflection. The immune system attacks one invader and then...

When it's done, it sees other targets inside the body that it shouldn't have seen, but it's just what happened. And, you know, the receptors on the surface of that virus had receptors that looked like receptors on the islet cell. And so now it goes and kills it. Think of the Opium Anthony Forum.

The pests were there to support the Opie and Anthony army. And all of a sudden, when Opie and Anthony went away, they had nowhere else to go. So they attacked the host. And they started, you know, attacking Opie and Anthony and Patrick Tomlinson and a bunch of other people because they just, you know, the activity was there. It just didn't have a target anymore. Right.

Right? Does that make sense? No. No? Really? I don't know who those people are. Well, it doesn't matter, but can you figure it out from the context? I can. I can, yes. Like a fan base. I got it, Dr. Steve. A fan base. When the thing that they're a fan of goes away, if that fan base was there to kind of fuck with other radio shows and stuff, which they were, they shut down Facebook pages of rival radio shows and all kinds of stuff. When the sort of directing...

force goes away, then here's a new target. Think of mercenaries. If you hire a bunch of mercenaries for something, then you just don't pay them. They're going to turn on you. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. OK. That might be another way to look at it. All right. The sounds of the season can often sound like this. So when are we getting some grandkids? But with Hilton's season to stay sale, they could sound a bit more like this or this.

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The wrongs we must right. The fights we must win. The future we must secure together for our nation. This is what's in front of us. This determines what's next for all of us. We are Marines. We were made for this. Here. There you go. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Very good. Thank you, my friend.

Let's see what we got here. This one is called Wash Your Stupid Nuts. But I think this is OK. Now, what this is is a reaction to something Dr. Scott said about

Nine years ago. So I'm going to hold your feet to the fire. Yes, I just want to tell Dr. Scott that it was hilarious when he told the guy that had a urination smelling problem that all he needed to do was wash his nuts. I don't know, I'd laugh for five minutes because the irony of it, because two minutes before that he said that he wasn't funny.

But anyway, wash your nuts if your piss smells. That's fantastic. I will do that. Right. Lady Diagnose, the next time your piss smells, wash your nuts. I'm washing my nuts. There you go. I'm full of great ideas, I'm telling you. You're so smart. That's right. I'm so smart. You're so smart. He's a fart smeller. I mean, smart feller. Yeah.

That's hilarious. Good one, Dr. Scott. Hi, Dr. Steve. First of all, let me say how much I love your show. Oh, thank you. I also have a question. I have been a smoker for about seven years now. Okay. And I've just recently quit, but I am still smoking a vaporizer. Yeah. It

It's completely helped me stop smoking cigarettes. I was smoking probably about a pack a day, and now I'm not really smoking cigarettes at all. But my question was, how do you feel about the vaporizers? Because I don't know...

I assume they're better than cigarettes. Yes. But I don't know all of the health precautions, maybe. Yeah. Well, the bad thing is they're more accepted so you can do it anywhere. Yeah. And even a lot of places now are like no vaping. But I always find it very humorous when...

we see people just going down the road and you see these giant clouds. Giant clouds of smoke. And Liam and Beck used to, when we went to Asheville, which there are quite a few hipsters in Asheville, surprise, surprise. Spoiler alert. One or two. And there was this guy and they still talk about him and he had this vape pen and he was like a hippie Joe guy and he had

one, like, white glove and all this stuff. And he was just sitting out there acting cool for wanting people to notice him. And he had this vape pen. I swear it looked like a clarinet. I mean, it had all these contraptions. It was black and silver and all this stuff. And I remember us just going...

looking at him and just taking a toot off of this thing and these giant clouds of smoke or steam or vape or whatever. And you know that can't be good for you. Cannot be. There's no possible way. And he was just like, I think I'll take a toot off of my vape and then... And the boys just made fun of him because it was obvious he was just there with his cool vape pen to just draw attention to himself.

But it is, listen, it's undoubtedly safer than smoking. Okay. As long as you're not using one of those old knockoff vape pens that had vitamin E in it that was causing people to have lung, permanent lung damage. Right. And they sell a nicotine inhaler. Nicotrol or Nicorette or one of those sells a nicotine inhaler.

So, and it's designed to help people get off smoking. That is prescription strength, and it is reimbursable by your insurance. So that might be something for people to think about. For those that just can't

stomach the thought of switching from smoking to gum. You know, they have that thing in their hand. Oh, sure. Yeah. Tacey used to smoke. Very physical. Lady diagnosis, did you ever smoke? Never. Oh, okay. Well, whatever. We smoked three packs a day. I smoked three packs a day. Loser. Thank you. Tacey smoked a pack a day at least at one point. Yep. And, uh,

Just having that thing in your hand and just the whole concept of putting something to your mouth and inhaling it. And Dr. Scott's got different sort of thoughts about tobacco addiction because he put those squibs. Did you do squibs or did you do the actual dip? Oh, hell no. I did it all. I did it all. Pinch between the cheek and gum. Yeah, little twigs, cheek and gum. I would never put something in my mouth that looked like that when it came out. Oh, God.

Because it just looks like you're shitting into a Coke cup. It was wonderful. Then a big old chew tobacco sometimes. Gross. Oh, my gosh. Nope. Ain't nothing like it. Nope. There's none. Thank God. When I was in high school, we had a fraternity. And...

The induction to the fraternity was you had to do this big chaw, this big thing of chaw, and hold it in your mouth for like 15 minutes. That's a terrible idea. And that's why. That's vomiting. Kids are mean. That's cured all of us. That is vomit. Of ever doing that. That's going to make you vomit for sure. The nicotine in there. You know, the Copenhagen is what I chew and what I like the most. And they have little fiberglass containers.

In that thing that actually rubs your lip raw and you get a buzz of nicotine. Oh, because it. Oh, my gosh. Really? It's unbelievable. That's not good for you. No, it's terrible.

That's awful. That's why I love it so much. Well, so the vape pens just have nicotine and vapor in them. The cigarettes have 10,000 toxic things in them, including carbon monoxide and stuff like that. The tar causes the cancer. The nicotine promotes its growth. So nicotine...

alone still is not safe, but it is safer and I'm okay with people using a vape pen for six weeks or eight weeks to get off of smoking, but then you got to get off of that. Rich Voss got off of smoking X number of years ago. It was a long time ago.

But he's still addicted to the gum, the nicotine gum. He can't break it. Or he won't break it or doesn't want to, whatever it is. He's still using the nicotine gum. Can I ask you a question about those vape pens? They're not as hot, are they, like smoking cigarettes? So that's also part of it, too, not being so hot. Well, you're not combusting, so you're not making...

You're not making carbon monoxide and other sort of products of combustion, which are known to be cancer-inducing. Now, Tacey, who's that person we like, Teresa Lazarelli or something like that? And all she does is test vape pens. Oh. Yeah, her name is Teresa Lazarelli.

Oh, boy. Larzalary. Larzalary, I think. And she does these reviews, and she's one of my favorite people on the Internet right now. So we spent how many hours watching her at the beach with everybody? I mean, hours and hours. It was very entertaining. Yeah. So let's see here.

Okay, she's now, Teresa is going to. What is up, and I got a review for you. What is up, and I got a review for you guys. I'm going to do a review on the box air bar, and the flavor is orange shake. Here she goes. Now she's taking a giant. A big tooth. It's nice and smooth. Yep. It's nice and sweet.

And it tastes like an orange. Because she'll always say... Saving the obvious. Yeah, well...

It tastes like an orange shake. There you go. Because it's called orange shake. She is my favorite. So her YouTube channel is basically her testing all these different vape pens. And she loves them all. Did you ever hear her say, I don't like this one? No, and she likes to say it's nice and smooth. They're all smooth. And they're so funny. They really are so funny. And there's one that's a blueberry ice, and she said this one tastes like blueberries.

And ice. And then one time she said, this one tastes like a blackberry soda. Have I ever had blackberry soda? No, I have not. If you've ever had blackberry soda, comment in the, I'll put a link. We love her. She's the greatest. Good stuff. And so she's pushing the vapes. I hope she's okay.

But, yeah, I'm okay with vaping short-term, not long-term. So was the vitamin E what was causing what they called popcorn lung? It caused one of the chronic lung diseases. I'm not 100% sure it was what caused popcorn lung, but there were people having horrific –

permanent lung damage. And it turned out that the vape manufacturer was using vitamin E to solubilize the flavors. Like, why did they do that? They must have just gotten a vat of it cheap and said, well, it's an oil and it's vaporizable. And it was not something you wanted to inhale. That's my understanding of what went down. If I'm wrong, somebody feel free to correct me from my extensive research that took three minutes. That's what I got. All right.

Yeah, this one from Nick Illig, who is brother to Captain Mike. So RFK Jr.'s doctor discovered a third testicle during an exam. He said, I think this is what is messing up your voice, but it's also probably making you pretty virile. But I think we should still remove it. So he removed it, and it actually helped his voice quite a bit. But Bobby and Cheryl missed the third nut and asked the doctor for it back. And the doctor said, that's impossible. It's been destroyed.

He put it on himself. It's not bad. Not bad, Nick.

Our new chief of health and human services or whatever. What is it that RFK is going to be? He's doing something with health care. And the legacy media is going crazy. You know, vaccine denier, RFK in charge of our health care. And it's like he doesn't deny vaccines. He was not. He just says he doesn't like them. Now, what he said was he didn't want vaccines.

MRNA vaccines to be mandated until they were approved by the federal government, and they never were. So that's why. But that's his thing. Talk to him about it. I'm just repeating what he said. All right. Okay. I don't know what the hell this is. Hey, Dr. Steve. Long-time listener, long-time fan. Hey, thanks, man. So I have a question for you. And if this isn't weird, I don't know what is. Okay. For the longest time...

I've enjoyed, while I was in the shower, turning on the water really hot. Yeah. And taking a shower head and pretty much, you know, just having the water on my genitals. Yeah, okay. I don't know why. It just feels amazing. Well, it's called washing your genitals. I mean, who hasn't done that? Well, he probably has stinky urine. Oh, yeah. He might have had stinky urine. That's right. Otherwise, it might be that same guy. All right.

Okay. Okay.

Well, he's scalding his private parts. That's what it sounds like. Now, the testicle, if you want to be fertile, the testicles have to be three degrees below body temperature. And you might go, well, it's too hot for those. And, you know, they say if you get in a hot tub, that can affect fertility and those things. But transient increases in growth.

blood flow really shouldn't cause that much problem. So if he's just doing this for a minute or two, not a big deal. I know that the skin of the genitals is weird because when I was a kid, I...

Made the mistake, because when I was a kid, we didn't have like shea butter and all that stuff. You had Vaseline and you had Vicks VapoRub laying around. Oh, no. So I beat off using Vicks VapoRub. I guess I was 15. And it just kind of had a warming sensation. Wasn't that big of a deal? Initially. As soon as I completed the transaction, though, it was like, oh, my God. You know, my junk is on fire. Oh, no.

And it switched just like that as soon as the orgasm was complete. Isn't that weird? And lots of other things switch. Like I know people, they'll have...

intercourse with somebody and then they'll bust a nut and then they'll go, oh, as soon as they're over, they'll go, shit, what did I just do? Whereas 30 seconds before that, they were all in. You know, so there is this weird switch that turns off or turns on or turns to a different state. And I think it has some evolutionary thing

Going on that, you know, the evolutionary drive is to procreate. So even if there's some discomfort, you're going to endure it. The brain's going to turn it off until you're done, you know, presumably impregnating somebody. And then all of a sudden, now it's fine if it hurts because it doesn't matter. But try getting Vicks VapoRub off of your genitals regularly.

with soap and water, impossible to do. It's impossible. So all you can do is wipe off as much as you can, wash it the best you can, and then just endure it until the pain goes away. It's the menthol that does it. But anyway, yeah, so... Vicks VapoRub, you're funny. Well, I was a kid. Ha ha ha ha!

But, yeah, I mean, it was squishy and seemed like it would work, and it did up until it didn't. Until reality kicked in. Yeah, it was horrendous. Oh, geez. All right. Fuck yeah, Dr. Steve, this is chipper. I'm going to tell you something.

Cooler is the right way to pronounce it. That's how they say it in Chinese medicine. Cooler. All right. Bye, Dr. Steve. This is Chip out there. All right. All the way back. All right. Fuck yeah. Home run. Bye. Double guns, Chip.

All right. I don't know. He was making fun of Dr. Scott about something. Obviously. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve. Me and my wife, we recently got a genetic test done. She came out positive for the BRCA gene. And I came out positive with the ATM gene or ATM gene carrier test.

The question is, I have four kids. What do I need to do to protect them? That's a great question. Do you know this APM gene? I was going to say, what's an ATM gene? Is it an ATM gene, did he say, or an APM gene? That I don't know. Okay, okay. Now I know what he's talking about. So there's an APM gene that predisposes people to obesity.

The ATM gene is a cancer protection gene that helps repair DNA damage. So if you have a disordered one that you're, you know, you're going to be more at risk for cancer. So it's also called the ataxia telangiectasia mutated gene. Now, so let's talk about the BRCA gene first. So this is a gene that predisposes people towards certain cancers.

And if you have that gene, each of your children has a 50% chance of inheriting the mutation. Now, knowing...

that you're at risk for something means you're less likely to die from it because you're going to catch it because you're going to go through surveillance. But what you want to do is your kids need to be tested down the road because they have an at-risk parent. And with this ATM gene, they have two at-risk parents. So the likelihood is that half of your kids

will have the BRCA gene if genetics were perfect. You can roll, you know, flip a coin and get tails four times in a row, so maybe none of them will have it. It's possible half of them will have this ATM gene, and then the question is some of them will have both, and the ones that have both, you know, need to know that, and the ones that have the actual gene and it's being expressed need to know that. So when they get of age...

Just have them tested. So if they have kids, if they have the gene and they have the, is it a disorder, disease, will they be more likely to pass it along or does that matter? Right, 50%. Either way, whether they have it or not. No, no, if they have it, it's 50% if they've got one copy of the gene. And if they don't get anything, they don't pass it. They don't pass it, okay. Right.

Right. And if they don't have it at all, then they're free and clear. Oh, okay. All right, Dr. Scott. Well, before we get out of here, let's look at the fluid family. If you want to join the fluid family, go to youtube.com slash at weird medicine. Click join. Click subscribe. Click the notification button. And you don't have to pay anything to join if you don't want to. Just click the button that says accept donation.

gifted memberships. And look at there. Myrtle Maness gifted 10 weird medicine with Dr. Steve memberships. And I noticed Gina Bobina got one and several other people who have been in this chat room before. All right. Very good. And that's all I've got from the chat room unless you have anything that says we shouldn't be injecting minutes old stuff.

Babies with hepatitis vaccines. Okay. Which I can see an argument for. That was somebody talking about RFK. Oh, yeah. And do they do that? Do they give them hepatitis vaccine when they're minutes old? No. I don't think so. Unless they're just talking about lots of minutes. They do inject them with vitamin K and some other things. Yes. And that's actually a good thing. Yes. So, all right. Okay.

We obviously need something with our health care system. Something's got to be better. It's crazy to me that what I understand is we as taxpayers are funding the health care system in Los Angeles.

another country that's at war with another country and that people there have their health care for free and we're paying for it. Now, if that's not true, then that's I got that from the legacy media. So I'll have to do some research on that before I make any assertions about it. But it is if that is true, it kind of bugs me that we're I have patients who lose their jobs because they have to go get chemotherapy every three weeks because

and now they lose their house or they run through all their money and then they are tempted to sell their pain medicine because they can't pay the rent anymore, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and putting pressure like that on people when it's possibly avoidable. And I'm probably the only person

libertarian, light person you'll ever meet that's in favor of single-payer health care because I'm sick and tired of having to wonder every time I write a drug, is their insurance company going to pay for it? Because they're all effing different. Yeah, I agree. Real quick, we've got one question that slid in under the line. Okay, good. You ready for it? You're probably getting me out of trouble, so good. I'm interrupting on purpose. Hey, Golden George,

wants to know, is there a reason why the inflammation in his neck is not going down six months after spinal surgery? Yeah. Well, there's a couple reasons. Go ahead. Take that because that happened to me too. I didn't have surgery, but I had an injury and it didn't go away. A lot of times, depending on what kind of surgery you had, and if it's a spinal surgery on his neck and they came in from the back of his neck, maybe they had a dated disc or a fusion, a lot of times the scar tissue will build up

And the muscles actually build up around that scar tissue in the neck, and it looks like swelling. And it's not fluid. It's not fat. But it's actually muscle that's trying to pull the head back in place after the surgery. So it's kind of a protective thing, but it's also trying to pick your head up and just straighten it up. So if that's what it is, it's actually something we treat pretty well with the acupuncture. Yeah. Because we put needles in those muscles and fatigue and some stamina. And physical therapy, physiatry would help. Any of those. Not so much acupuncture.

This early. Okay, I see what you're saying. And the reason— He just had it? What did he say? How many months? Six months. Yeah, six months. Okay. I think the physical therapy right afterwards to regain movement. You're saying this late in the game. Well, yeah, but also this early. If you let it continue to go, those muscles get thicker and thicker in the back of the neck because they're trying to pull the head back into extension. Okay. Yeah.

And if you can work on getting the fascia to release where the scar tissue is, a lot of times that swelling will go down. And usually the sooner I get to them, the better. Assuming now, assuming that he doesn't have an infection or some kind of cerebral spinal fluid leak, which they would have known already. In my case, I've always injured myself. Are you okay? What happened? Yeah, this chair keeps...

I'm not even leaning on it. It keeps breaking. Okay, well, I'll fix it. We'll get to that in a second. I wish I had a camera on you right now. It would be humorous. I fell down the stairs the one time I've fallen, and I landed on the side of my neck. Scared the shit out of me. My head. Right, because...

She was just worried that she wouldn't know how to turn the remote on. Who's going to get dinner? Yeah, and the TV still doesn't work in the bedroom. Oh, really? Well, I can fix that. Okay, what did you try to do? Nothing. Nothing?

It's okay. I'll take care of it. Turn it on. It don't work. It don't work. But when I did that, it didn't hurt right away. But then after a couple days, then the healing starts and that's when the pain starts. And then it didn't go away. Yeah.

And it didn't go away. And it didn't go away for months. And I was like, what the hell is going on? Why am I still having pain for an injury when my body should have healed that a long time ago? Well, at my age, you know, maybe human growth hormone has been shown to enhance healing in elderly people. Maybe I could have tried that. But what I ended up having to do was get an epidural injection in my neck of steroids. Right.

And this guy, that's why I was recommending physiatry or anesthesiology pain clinic because

Because, you know, if they can put the steroids directly where the inflammation is, assuming there's no infection and nothing else like Dr. Scott is talking about, that may calm that down. You could do the acupuncture first because it's way less invasive. And painless. And then do that. Well, I tell you, it didn't hurt when I did it. And it really, within a week, I was back to normal again. So I was really happy that I did it. Yeah, we got a little clarification. He said he had it from the front.

Right. Correct. No, that's what Golden George said. They go through the front of the neck when they do that. For the injection, yeah. But Golden George just said his surgery was not what I was talking about, a posterior approach. No, I'm saying, no, when they... He had ACDF, which is anterior cervical disc. Correct. I've never known them to do it any other way, to be honest with you. Everybody I've ever had that's had a... unless they put in a cage...

that's had a disc removed in the neck, they do it through the front, which seems crazy, but apparently it's way easier to do. Yeah, so he said he's still having some pre-surgery signs and symptoms and the swelling is at the base of the neck, so he's got a lot of

Sounds like some other levels may be involved. Well, that may be. Yeah, which would be my guess. So they'll want to do some imaging, make sure everything's where it's supposed to be. And then, yeah, you can never go wrong going to see Dr. Scott. Just make sure you see someone with a D.OM after their name. Yeah. And that means that they went to four-year Chinese medical school. It's not just some schlump who took a weekend class in acupuncture. And then if that doesn't work...

Absolutely a physiatrist. Absolutely a physiatrist, yeah. Or a physiatrist is a person. Interventional anesthesia. That's right. Physiatry is a medical subspecialty. They don't have an ology name because physiology was already taken.

And the real name of their subspecialty is physical medicine and rehab. But when you tell people you're going to send somebody to physical medicine rehab, they go, I ain't going to no nursing home. It's like, I know it's the name of the subspecialty. It's very confusing. And but they can do some things that regular doctors can't do.

Okay? All right. Let's do it. All right. Sounds good. Wrap it up. All right. Well, thanks. Always go to Dr. Scott. Thanks, Lady Diagnosis. And thank you, Tacey. Thanks to everyone who's made this show happen over the years. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel. SiriusXM channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern. But On Demand is the place to listen to it and other times at Jim and Claire's pleasure.

Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at drsteve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses, get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thanks, everybody.