621 - Widowmaker
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I felt like immediately I was in great hands.

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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 clown. Why?

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. I've got 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. And now in the tablet...

I think I'm doomed and I'll have to go and... Requiem for my disease. So I paid you. From the world-famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios in beautiful downtown OJ City, it's Weird Medicine. The first and still only uncentered medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve and this is a show for people who never listened to a medical show on the radio or the internet.

If you have a question, you're embarrassed to take 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 Twitter at Weird Medicine and at drscottwm. Visit our website at drsteve.com for podcasts, medical news, and stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we are 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.

please check out stuff.drsteve.com.

And check out roadie, R-O-A-D-I-E dot drsteve.com or just go to stuff.drsteve.com and scroll down. See the roadie robotic tumor. It's the greatest thing for a stringed instrument that was ever invented. It will actually help you wind and unwind your strings too if you're restringing your instrument. Get the bass one if you're going to do bass and guitar. Otherwise, you can just do the regular roadie for guitars and mandolins and stuff.

Check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbals.net. Check me out at patreon.com slash weirdmedicine. I'm actually uploading the archive of ancient shows. Some of them really almost never heard before. And I've got stuff that's never been put on the internet. And then I'm running old podcasts. Anything under 300, you can't get anywhere because we were doing some

things back then that I would just as soon not be out there in Poland. So they're behind the paywall. Check it out. Patreon.com slash weird medicine. And if you want me to say fluid to your mama or say anything else to anybody else, go to cameo.com slash weird medicine. It's cheap as it can be. I do it for the cheapest. They'll let me do it, which is $5. I just enjoy doing it. So if you want me to do that, cameo.com slash weird medicine. Okay.

Don't forget Dr. Scott's website. It's simplyherbals.net. That's simplyherbals.net. And check me out on Normal World with Dave Landau at youtube.com slash at normal world or at Blaze TV. You get a bunch of other stuff there, too, although that is a subscription service. It's very reasonably priced. You get a million different shows. And across kind of the political spectrum, you know, Dave's not exactly, you know, a...

hard right wing lunatic. Not that I'm saying anybody else over there is. I'm not saying that. I'm just, you know. But anyway, yeah, check it out. And if you do sign up for Blaze TV, tell them you're doing it for Dave.

And that would, I think that's got to help him, right? That's about it. All right. Well, see you next week. No, it's just your old pal this week. If you want to join us during the live recordings, just go to youtube.com slash podcast.

weird medicine and click the subscribe and the notification button. And then when I go live, you'll get a notification. I didn't even put this one on Twitter. If eight people show up, that's fine. It's just, I like having at least somebody to talk to. So I don't have to pretend that I'm talking to people. So I'm actually talking to real human beings. And, you know, we've got old Don Phillips in there and, and,

And Talia Arnold and a bunch of other people hanging out. King of all diffs is often there and some of the dabbleverse people. So you just never know. Don't forget about Hackamania. That's Hackamania. Back to the hack. Go to hackamania.com and use promo code WEIRD to save 10% on tickets. This is a festival of...

hack comedy that actually is pretty fun. There's a lot of live podcasts. There's real comedians. And the very final Weird Medicine episode will be recorded there live. My co-host Lucy Titebox and I are planning on the most disgusting thing

And maybe informative episode of Weird Medicine ever. We'll probably do some retrospective stuff since it's the last episode. I just really, I feel uncomfortable talking.

making it about me. It's 18 years. Enough is enough. And I appreciate everyone. And it doesn't mean that we're going away. I just can't. It's very difficult for me with my, you know, system level position to commit to every single Saturday at 2 p.m. doing weird medicine and doing the prep and all that stuff. So what I'm planning on doing is

is live streaming and doing more documentary style stuff. I want to do some more projects with people like Dave Landau and Pete Davidson and some other folks like that. And, you know, I'll have more time to be on other people's shows. Not that anybody wants me on their show, but, you know, it just, it's enough. Yeah.

I think it's enough. And after, well, we'll talk about it. But, you know, after GVAC died, there was a bit of a spark went out and then COVID happened. And I just feel like I'm just sort of a drudge and I just need to do something new. I am going to be doing a gambling channel. So how to teach people to gamble responsibly.

I've taught this class for years. In the past, I used to teach a poker class, too. And one of my students is a poker star, WSOP. He's earned over half a million dollars in lifetime winnings. And one of the things that I told him, when he first came to us, he'd never touched a deck of cards. And he has done amazingly well for himself.

I went to Google him the other day with a friend of mine. We were talking about poker. And I said, you know, one of my students is not only active in the WSOP but ranked. It's like 4,000 in the world. I mean, it's not – it's no moneymaker or Dave Mattisau or somebody. But, I mean, that's pretty decent. And so we went to Google him. It turned out he was arrested in Washington, D.C. on January 6th.

And he was walking around with a little drum. And I called him. I said, what the hell, dude? He said, yeah, they took my little drum away. Apparently, he was trying to recreate that Nathan Phillips with the drum thing. And because he's actually from India. And long story. But anyway, he got like a misdemeanor and his record's been expunged and all that stuff. But it was just kind of funny. Lunatic.

But, yeah, so I'm going to be doing some of that. And we have a new casino close to me. It's probably 15 minutes from my house. And there are a lot of local folks who have never been inside a casino before. And, boy, you can tell. And people will sit down. This one really kind of broke my heart. This guy sits down at a Mississippi stud casino.

Now, if you've ever played this game, it is the most volatile table game in the casino. And I've lost 40 hands in a row on that thing. But then you hit a couple and then you make all your money back, a couple of decent ones. And so this guy sits down. He's got 200 bucks at a, you know, and I think the table minimum was 25 or something. So he's got enough for eight bets there.

which isn't going to fly because one hand can take up that many. And he just sits down and says, so how do you play this game again? I'm like, oh, dude, oh, my God. So it really hurt my feelings seeing people just vomiting blood

money onto the table and just giving it to the house. And it's bad enough. The house edge is bad enough. So the first module of my class is talking about the house edge and how it cannot be beaten, not with the regular casino games. Now, if you're card counting, you can give yourself an edge of about 1%.

But if they catch you doing it, even though it's not illegal, they'll trespass you because they have the right to not serve anybody if they don't feel like it. But you can give yourself an edge. And even then, it just really means that you're going to lose slightly less than half of the time rather than winning slightly less than half of the time.

when the house edge on blackjack, if you play perfect strategy, is about 0.5% in favor of the house. That's why they have all those slot machines everywhere. If you think about it, they're not making that much money off of blackjack except for people who don't know how to play. And I have sat down and watched people play

play, you know, table minimum on their hand and then just play these side bets that have an even larger house edge, you know, up to 16%. And they're playing, you know, $200 on those and then just playing $15, you know, for their regular hand. It's crazy. And I see people just throwing their money away. Anyway,

So my class is designed to give people knowledge about how the numbers work so that they understand how gambling actually works and why the house cannot lose over the long term. And they have it constructed so that you win sometimes. If you never won, nobody would ever do it. And so they have a thin enough edge that

that just by statistics people can win and take home more money than they came in with.

and be happy. And like, I mean, talk to Anthony. Anthony Cumia was up $150,000 on blackjack. And what do they do? Hey, come on down. We'll fly you down in our private jet and we'll put you up in the suite upstairs and just bring some of that $150,000 and play with us. You know, they know over time they're going to get that money back. So the only way to make money gambling is to win money

One time and then never go back. Just don't ever go back. But that's no fun. So my thing is showing people how to play optimal strategy,

for all of these games so that they enhance their chance of walking out with money, but they also are decreasing their chance of just vomiting up money and just handing it to the house for no reason. So, you know, by playing optimally, you're decreasing the house edge to its theoretical minimum.

And I'll give you one. Here's a freebie. Not that this is proprietary knowledge or anything like that, but if you're going to play this game called three-card poker, there's one single strategy for that. And the optimum strategy is, oh, you've got to remember, queen, six, four. If your hand will beat or equal queen, six, four, you bet. If it won't, you fold. And that's it. And when I start hooking people up with table games because they're intimidating...

I will hook people up with this game first because they don't have to think. Once they understand the ranks, you know, I've got, if you don't know the ranks of the cards, then you really should not be playing these kinds of games. I mean, just go hit the slot machines and give your money to them that way. But once they know the ranks of the cards and they know how to rank a hand, that's all they got to think about. Whereas with

With Blackjack, to play optimum strategy, you need to know how to play a soft 18 against every single card that the dealer might have. Soft 18 being a 7 and an ace.

And that's the most complex hand. And when to split and when to, you know, not split, when to double, when to, you know, those kind of, there's a lot of decisions that you have to make in blackjack to get that edge down to 0.5%. Whereas with three card poker, it's just that one thing, queen, six, four. So there you go. So yeah, so I'm going to be doing some of that. It's just something I like. Hell, I might do a ham radio channel. Who the hell knows? But,

But I'll just do it when I effing feel like it rather than having to be on a schedule. And listen, I love everyone at SiriusXM. Do not get me wrong. The fact that we are the longest running show not only on Channel 103 now.

We may be the longest running hosted show on the platform. I'd have to ask Sam Roberts about that. But if we're not the most longest running show, we're damn close. I mean, there's some of those like pop shows have been there, you know, from the beginning. But if you look at XM time and include that in a lot of ways,

We may be the longest running show on the platform. But it doesn't matter. It will be very difficult for people to beat our record. And it's not even about that. I mean, it is kind of a pride thing, I guess. It's just funny that a shitty –

little medical show where I just kept my head down and I produced my own show. So I didn't need any help from them. I think that's why some of the other shows went away that they would give them raw audio and they had to have a producer put it together, but I produced the whole thing and I've never asked for any help from them. And, uh, EROC got me started out that way. And, uh, um, uh,

uh, doing the, uh, you know, when I started turning shows in, Danny Ross was our original producer for the live shows. And then E-Rock became our, uh, producer on the XM or the serious side when we, um, started, uh, you know, uploading prerecorded shows. And, uh, uh, you know, he gave me this, um, uh,

pre-recorded beginning and end. It's got the theme song on it and it's got the outro on it. And I just record until I hear the music. And then when the cue hits from Roger Waters, I throw out, you know, check your stupid nuts for lumps and it's done and it's perfect. And I do those on different channels so that I can remix them and, you know, change the compression a little bit to make it sound a little better if I need to and tweak it.

And then I just upload it and Lewis Johnson or Paul Opcharski or Jim McClure, whoever's doing it that week, just uploads it. And so by keeping my head down and not saying, you know, crazy things and by giving them a prepackaged program that they don't have to expend time

billable hours on. I think that's why I've been allowed to stay there. So, and I have a file on everybody. They know I have, but I would never obviously dox anybody or give out proprietary information that somebody might have given me. That's one of the reasons why people will talk to me because they know I keep my fucking mouth shut. But anyway,

So, yeah, so it's been cool. And for the longest time, I always said I wanted to keep the Sirius XM show for a couple of reasons. Number one, I didn't want anybody to beat my record, which is, again, a pride thing kind of, but a little bit of competition is fun.

And I also didn't want to just be some schlub with the podcast, because when you don't have that Sirius XM show, even if nobody's listening on the platform, you still have the show. Then you're just one of another 10,000 people that have a podcast.

And, uh, but you know, at this point I'm 69 years old, I'm going to be 70. I've been doing this since really, uh, since 2005, I've been on the air with them. And I think we did our first show in 2007. So we're looking 18. I'm going on the 19th year. It's enough. Isn't it enough? And, you know, uh,

Like I said, GVAC died and then COVID happened and I didn't have any co-hosts. I brought Tacey in and thank God she was here so I wasn't just talking to myself the whole time. And she's doing her, you know, Tacey time of topics and all that stuff. But, you know, I think we're all just – it's enough. I think it's enough. Yeah.

I appreciate all the kind words. And we're still going to be doing this until May. And then, God, you know, I was supposed to retire today.

two and a half years ago, and then Beck decided he wanted to go to veterinary school. And so I said, oh, shit, I got to keep working. I was really kind of looking for an excuse not to quit. So, you know, when April comes along, I might be backpedaling a little bit, but we'll see. We'll see. I really need to stick to it and reclaim some of that free time so I can just do some more creative things. I haven't made music in my studio in years.

over a year, which is ridiculous. I've got all this great equipment in there, and I'm not doing shit. So anyway, enough about me, but it's all about me, of course. But check us out. Check out Dr. Scott, simplyherbals.net, and check me out at Normal World. All right. I do have...

One thing, you know, a lot of people know that I was a medical examiner when I was in Vermont. And I've talked about this before. I used to get the magazine or the journal for the National Association of Medical Examiners, NAME. I don't know if it still exists. It was the most gruesome medical journal I've ever seen because these medical examiners would send in articles saying,

about these gruesome deaths that they saw. I saw a picture of a guy that got run over by a tractor and his chest was like this and then there was a big divot and then it was like this again and just looked like something had just driven right through his chest and

There was a guy that died from giving himself a concrete enema. There was another guy that died because of autoerotic asphyxiation after giving himself a champagne enema. And he passed out and strangled himself. And that's how he was found with the video of Hansen playing and strangled himself to death with the enema tube hanging out of his ass. So there was stuff like that in there.

And I actually had some gruesome deaths that I witnessed when I was a medical examiner. You know, I don't know if you know this, but if you use – well, never mind. I don't even want – I saw some really gruesome stuff.

And I had to get fluids out of some eyeballs every once in a while for toxicology because there wasn't any blood left in their system, that kind of stuff. It was pretty horrific, nightmarish, the stuff of nightmares. But I thought it might be interesting if we looked at antiquity, what kind of gruesome deaths in antiquity, because you know—

good Lord, back before modern medicine and police and, you know, some, some,

of criminal behavior. There was some really horrendous stuff going on. And if you watch, by the way, the season finale of Landman, Taylor Sheridan's newest show, was one of the most intense things I've seen. Matter of fact, I watched the season finale of Silo right after that and was like, this is lame as hell because that was, and Billy Bob Thornton is, he's a national treasure. And,

And I think Jon Hamm is, too. And it has great cast. Ali Arter finally has, you know, the role that might get her an Emmy. And the woman who plays her daughter is amazing. And just everybody in it is great. And anyway, check it out.

Landman, if you like that sort of thing.

Every idea starts with a problem. Morby Parker's was simple. Glasses are too expensive. So they set out to change that.

I think...

OK, so here we go. But it was brutal. It was brutal. And I'm talking about things happening in antiquity. They still happen here on this earth at this time. There were pretty some brutal, gruesome things that people do to each other. Man's inhumanity to man.

All right. So these are horrific deaths in antiquity. And some of these are apocryphal, meaning that, you know, they may have been made up after the case. But according to Judges 4-5, chapter 4-5, the commander of the Canaanite army for King Jabin of Hazor was killed in his sleep by

Well, the Kenite woman, Jael, she from Krypton, old Jael, stabbed him in the temple with a tent peg. So they had tent pegs back then. And, you know, you could get stabbed in the temple by one. Let's see. I'm just reading. I actually haven't read these before. So some of the biblical stuff, obviously, you know, whether you believe it's the inerrant scripture,

word of God or it was made up. It's got some interesting stuff in there. So according to Judges 9, the king of Shechem and the son of Gideon was killed in the city of Thebes by a woman who threw a millstone on his head, which crushed his skull or mortally wounded him. Have you ever seen a millstone? How the hell is this woman picking this thing up? It must have been

one of Goliath's kin. But anyway, picking up a millstone and throwing it at somebody's head is pretty horrific. Let's see. Okay. Oh, this is a good one. An Athenian, Draco of Athens, 620 BC. Now, this one might be right because the Greeks kept some pretty good records. The Athenian lawmaker was reportedly smothered to death by

So here you are. Hey, I'm making this statement. Thank you. And everybody's throwing shit at you and they cover you and crush you and smother you to death with their gifts, giving you well wishes.

The Duke Jing of Jin, a Chinese ruler, was warned by a shaman that he would not live to see the new wheat harvest, which he responded by executing the shaman. However, when the duke was about to eat the wheat, he felt the need to visit the bathroom where he fell through the hole and drowned. Can you imagine drowning in a cesspool of fecal matter while the shaman got his revenge?

Here we go. Arrhenikion of Phagalia. This Greek Pancratiast. What the hell is that? What's a Pancratiast? Let's look that up. He's a Pancratiast.

Let me see. Unnamed combat sport. Oh, introduced in the Greek Olympic Games. Athletes use boxing and wrestling techniques, but also others such as kicking holds, joint locks, and chokes on the ground, making it similar to mixed martial arts. It's pancration, but I think it's pancration.

Okay, so pan meaning every and kration probably means something like, you know, martial methods or something like that. That sounds cool. Why don't they call mixed martial arts pan kration? I think that would be much cooler.

Anyway, so anyway, okay, so this guy was one of those people. He was a mixed martial artist back in ancient Greece, 564 B.C., caused his own death during the Olympic finals.

He was held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself. Tap out, tap out. He kicked his opponent, causing him so much pain from a foot ankle injury, the opponent made the sign of defeat to the umpires. But at the same time, Erechion suffered a fatally broken neck. Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Erechion was proclaimed the victor posthumously. Good Lord. Can you imagine?

I guess they just didn't have, you know, the refs like they do now.

Let me see here. Milo of Croton. He was an Olympic champion wrestler. His hands became trapped when he tried to split a tree apart. He was then devoured by wolves. Oh, God. So he's trying to split this tree apart with his bare hands. Well, nice try, dummy. Use a damn axe next time. And he got his hands caught, and these wolves were like, oh, what's going on here? And he's like nothing, and they ate him. All right. All right.

Okay, Zeuxis, 5th century BC, he was reportedly reported to have died of laughter while painting an elderly woman. She probably poisoned him. Oh, you old bag. And then she got her revenge. All right, there's not a lot in here. Let me see if I can find something else.

Cassian of Imola, the pious school teacher, was sentenced to death by Julian the Apostate and was handed over to his pupils to carry out the deed, which they did by binding him to a stake and stabbing him with their pens. So he must have been a shitty teacher or, you know, one of those wrap your knuckles types. And they got his students got their revenge.

"'Oh, well. Okay. "'Attila the Hun, did you know that he died on his wedding night "'by choking on his own blood, which flowed from a nosebleed?'

Interesting. All right. Well, okay, that wasn't that interesting. Number one thing, don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. I'm going to look here and see if there's anything in the fluid family. I see Myrtle Maness gifted 20 memberships. Very good. Thank you, Myrtle. What you can do is go to youtube.com slash at weird medicine and then click –

subscribe and the notification button, but then also click join. And then there's a button in there that says accept gifted memberships. And if you do that, then if somebody gifts 20 memberships, then you run a pretty good chance of getting one. Well, let me see if there's any questions in here. That's youtube.com slash at weird medicine.

And, yeah, some kind words in there. Mr. McRib says part of the reason I subscribed to XM was for this show. Well, thank you. Thank you, sir. And now you get to hear it for free on the –

Whatever. On the internet. Here's Squawk770 having been listening way back when ONA cost additional on top of the XM. So, yeah, I remember that. I was one of the – I signed up the first day you could for Opiate Anthony. I remember driving down a mountain and they played the Tourette's Whorehouse bit. I didn't realize it was an old bit.

And literally almost, I know people say, oh, we drove off the road. I was laughing so hard that I did have to pull over because I was on a really windy mountain road and I was afraid something bad was going to happen. I didn't want to miss anything either. So let's see here. Yeah. McRib says, is that true? Not Howard. No, it's like, oh, and hey, you had to pay an extra $2 or something in the beginning.

And then they became part of the whole platform. And then we moved over. And those who missed the XM days really missed something because it was the Wild West era.

They were the number one channel on the XM platform. They had great support. They had a big, monstrous studio with an ante-room studio that was behind glass, and you could sit on the bleachers. Sometimes they brought the bleachers in, and the audience could sit inside the studio. That's how big it was. So it was very cool. Let me see. I can't.

Wait, okay, McRibs, is Dr. Steve still going to be on at 7 on 103? I came in late. Yes, until May at least. And probably, you know, I'll have a few in the can. So it'll be sometime in June before we actually are done. But that's going to be the last official recorded show. Troy Smith. Hello, Troy.

I see Troy in there. Troy is doing the artwork for a game called Wet Brain, which is a card game that will be for sale at Hackamania, by the way. It's the weekend of Mother's Day, which is kind of crazy, but it was the best time that they could get the venue.

at the Plaza Hotel. But go to hackamania.com, use the offer code WEIRD, and get tickets, and then you can get, you know, people are there, get a discount on those if Troy will ever send me the final artwork. So, Troy, the original one pun is there. Hello. And let's see. Shout out to the swarm from Chris Mack. Oh, all right. Yeah. Now, this one,

We'll be at the Plaza Hotel. Yes, absolutely. And McRibs is asking me, will I be participating in Winter Field Day next weekend, which is a ham radio thing. So let me give myself a bell. Give that to McRibs just for knowing what Winter Field Day is. That's an event in ham radio where you get points for the less unplugged radio.

the most unplugged you are from the grid. So if you have a low power station that runs 100% on battery, that doesn't require a generator and you're not plugging it in and you're out in the real world and you not only, I think you get points for advertising it, but if you have a sign out there and you're in public where people can see you,

in a park or something like that, you get extra points. And what do you get if you win? Points. You get points. That's really it. You don't get anything. Maybe you get a plaque if you win, but the ones that win are the ones that really want to win, if you know what I mean. They're gunning for it, and so people like me never will. But it's just fun to do, and you make a lot of contacts, and really...

and would like to get Alaska and Hawaii on 40 meters on FT8 digital. I'm glad Tacey isn't here because she'd be yelling at me right now. But anyway, we'll just... Man, you are one pathetic loser. I know, I know. It's all right.

Ham radio is fun. And you know what? After the deluge that we had and ham radio was the only way that people could communicate outside of the area that was cut off because of the flood to tell their family members that they were okay, I tell everybody who makes fun of my hobby that they can go fuck themselves. Okay? There you go. How about that?

Um, all right. Uh, so yes, McRibs, I will be there. And Richard Kish is there, uh, who, uh, Dr. Scott thinks his last, his name is Kush. And that's because Dr. Scott is obsessed with, um, I guess the sixties and, um,

Anyway, okay, well, yeah, and the original one pun says he's not going to be able to make it to Hackamania. So anyway, this is what goes on in the fluid family. People just hang out, and they talk amongst themselves. And every once in a while, if I can take a break and look to see if they've got a question over there. And today, they do not. So let's play some recordings of people. Let's see what we got here.

Boom, Rucker. We got you. We got you. We got your car down here. This is Dad. That's Dad down at the garage. And I tell you what, buddy, you might be a great doctor and everything, doing all kind of, you know, work for your fellow man and taking care of your body and everything, but you need to pay attention to your car, buddy. Your car's got a body, too. You aren't doing jack...

You know what I've always said? I don't know what that's about. I've always said that a good car dealership is going to treat problems with a car like, you know, a diagnostician would. And nowadays, what I see a lot of times is you just hook the thing up. Those of you who are out there doing this, the really good ones will, you know, they can listen to a sound and say, oh, okay, that's

I don't know, you know, the fuel injector not working properly. And you can do tests. Hey, I'm going to take the vacuum off of this thing. And if this gets louder, then I know that's what it is and those kinds of things. And now it seems like the engines are so complicated. My original 1955 Willys station wagon engine.

If you open the hood on that thing, there was more air than there was engine. You could see all the way through it on either side. There's just a little engine in the middle, and then there was nothing but air. And these new engines are so complex, you just have to hook them up to the computer and let the computer diagnose it a lot of times. But anyway...

So that's got nothing to do with anything. What the hell that guy was talking about? Hey, y'all. It's your local neighborhood dumbass. Okay. Listen, I had a question about quadruple, double, triple bypasses. Yeah, sure. When they do that, what exactly is it that they're doing? Okay. Like they're doing something with the arteries, but the blood's got to go somewhere. So where's it going now? Okay. Also, how many can you get? What's the maximum amount of bypasses you can get?

Because my grandma just told me that my uncle had five, and I just thought that my uncle had four. Anyway, thanks for that. Yeah. No, I've seen people have eight bypasses before. People have severe, diffuse coronary artery disease. So when they do regular bypass, you're right. Normally they will do four. So a double bypass, they've got two blocked arteries.

And then triple, obviously, you know, they will bypass three arteries, quadruple, et cetera. So and the misnomer is that this is, quote unquote, open heart surgery. It's really not open heart surgery. It is. But it's open chest surgery. So when they that was actually my first day of medical or third year of medical school.

I was on cardiothoracic surgery, and I had scrub in. I'm a third-year, brand-new third-year medical student. Never been in an operating room in my life.

But I knew how to sew stuff from – they gave us pig feet and you cut them and you sew them back up and stuff. So I was pretty good at that at that point because I wanted to be. But I'd never been in an operating room before. And so I'm standing. Just imagine the guys – I'm standing on his right side down by his thigh, guys out there.

The head is to my left and his feet are to my right. And I'm standing there. And now the surgical tech, one of them is standing right across from me. And the surgeon is across from me up where the chest is. And he's got these goggle-like things on their little telescope so he can see little things up close because they're sewing little tiny arteries together.

Well, anyway, the surgical tech, after the surgery gets started, he hands me a scalpel and says, harvest that leg vein. And I'm like...

what are you saying? And he said, harvest the leg vein. I said, and I'm like, dude, I've never done this before. And he's like, no, it's okay. You'll be all right. And I'm like, I'm listen, I'm not really comfortable doing this. And now that the surgeon, I'm irritating him. And, you know, he's trying to crack this guy's chest open and get in there and do all this fiddly stuff. And he starts yelling. I don't want to hear any more of that. So I'm like, oh, Jesus, I'm going to have to do this.

So there's some guy walking around with a vein that I harvested out of his leg. I don't know. This was 40 years ago. So, you know, the guy helped me. We get this. But what they're really doing is they're taking veins from your leg a lot of times. And veins are thin, thin-walled, flabby things, whereas artery are thick-walled, muscular things, tubes.

And they will find a blockage in the artery going to the heart from the aorta. So if you look at the heart, there are these arteries that come down from the aorta that go down the body of the heart. And there's two main openings from the aorta, right? And there's one that splits into two.

That makes the left anterior descending, just exactly what it sounds like. It's on the front of the heart, on the left side, and it goes down. And then there's the circumflex, which does exactly what it sounds like. It goes around the heart, around the top. And then there's the right coronary artery and the...

If there's a blockage in the artery that is trying to feed both the circumflex and the left anterior descending,

That's bad because now that's two of the three coronary arteries are being blocked all at once. That's that so-called widow maker. That's what sadly, uh, my best friend GVAC had. He had a widow maker myocardial infarction. It was, he had a blockage just as the artery was coming out of the heart and, and it blocked off both the left anterior descending and the, uh,

the circumflex artery. So it's called the left main artery. Well, anyway, so if you have a blockage, let's say in your left anterior descent, let's say it's halfway down. What you can do is you take this little piece of vein that I've harvested out of the leg and you pop a hole in the artery and the aorta and you sew this thing in. So now blood will come through that and then you sew the other end on the other side of the blockage.

So that you are bypassing this blockage and you will get blood up to the blockage and then you get blood past the blockage from this bypass. And it will, it doesn't really prolong life so much, but it prolongs

quality of life. It really is kind of a quality of life thing more than it is life-saving. Although, you know, there's probably some data out there about decreasing, you know, congestive heart failure and myocardial infarction, stuff like that. I'm not a cardiologist or a cardiothoracic surgeon. So I deal with people when these things don't work. So if you really want to know the data, I can find it. I can become an expert.

But anyway, but that's how that works. And so you can bypass three or four of these places and the arteries branch and you can have – some people have very discrete blockages, some are more diffuse blockages.

And then for that fourth one, they can do a thing. And they did this. Anthony talked about this on the air. They do a thing called the internal mammary artery, which is actually an artery from the rib cage that they will dissect out and then flop it down and then attach it to bypass one of these blockages as well, which is really fiddly if you think about it. Just imagine you've got this chest and you –

You cut the sternum, the breastbone, down the middle, and you have these spreaders that spread everything. But there's still hardly that much room in there. And now you're going to go up in under there. And if you've ever tried doing plumbing up under your sink, think of it like that. You can't see shit. And they get in there and they tease this artery away and then make sure that it's flowing.

And then they will attach it to one of the arteries that is already blocked. And the benefit of that is that unlike the veins that now have to become arteries, it's already an artery. And most of the time, that thing doesn't block. It doesn't have blockages in it. So that will last a lot longer than a grafted vein will. So...

So that's basically the mechanism of a bypass surgery. And it's so routine at this point that I wouldn't think twice about having one done if they said you needed one. You know, I've seen so many.

few complications after that these days. And even back in the day, they did very well. So they've just gotten so good at it. There's some people, that's all they do. They just do bypass, bypass, bypass. I would think that would be boring as shit, but some people enjoy doing that and they enjoy the paycheck that they take home too because they are some of the highest paid physicians in the business. All right. Let's see here. Jimmy, I listened to your podcast

Okay. Okay.

The one from the 15th and the one from the 22nd, they both say they're new. This one says it's Lydia's, the second one. Okay. And it plays the same thing about the undercooked Jeremy. Okay. I thought it was something you guys would want to know. Yes. Thank you. So that actually got taken care of, and I appreciate you letting us know. I let Louis Johnson know about that. Louis is a great guy, and I really appreciate him and Paul, Paul,

Paul O, different Paul O, not the same Bennington Paul O, but Paul Ofcharski. And he and particularly Lewis has been my guy for the last many, many years. And if I don't turn in a show just in time, he'll load a replay. And he takes care of making sure that all these things get fixed. And he took care of it right away as soon as I let him know. So thank you. If you ever see something like that, please say something.

Hi, Dr. Steve. This is Steve from New York. I had a follow-up that I forgot to ask. When somebody has Alzheimer's, what can they do to maybe lessen the issues or improve them or stop them from becoming worse? Diet, exercise, both? Well, what I'm interested in is preventing dementia altogether.

And one of the first things is just staying active. People who just sit after they retire and give it up are more at risk for dementia, believe it or not. But staying mentally active, reading regularly.

Learning new skills, learning a language, doing Sudoku has been demonstrated to stave off or delay dementia. Volunteering, getting out there, doing things, staying socially connected. And yes, eating well, obviously balanced diet, everything in moderation, including everything in moderation. You've got to blow it out your ass every once in a while.

But eating a balanced diet that have all the micronutrients and all that stuff in there. And this is the one time when you're elderly that I do agree with taking a multivitamin because we can get just monotonous in our diet. And I think a multivitamin designed for elderly folk is okay to do. And then...

Just make sure your blood pressure, your diabetes, and cholesterol are under control because that can help prevent a thing called vascular dementia. Not everything is neurofibrillary tangles like Alzheimer's. There are some dementias that are caused by little mini strokes. Keeping your blood pressure and your cholesterol under control so you're decreasing your risk of strokes and heart attacks will really improve things.

And then here's the one where I've got a problem. This is why I'm going to have dementia, is getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night. People who are chronically sleep deprived get six hours or less of sleep or at increased risk for dementia. And also there are certain medications that increase your risk of dementia. And one of those is antihistamines.

So if you're taking Benadryl every night to help you sleep, if you're a male, there's going to come a time when it's going to affect your prostate and also increases the risk of delirium if you do get sick and increases the risk of dementia. So go easy on the anticholinergic medication. Those are any of those medications that make your heart beat fast, give you dry mouth, and decrease secretions into your nose and stuff.

And protecting your brain. This is a long-term prevention thing, but if you're going to play football, make sure that, you know, and if you're going to be coaching football, make sure that your students or athletes have proper headgear. And don't be street fighting and fighting.

getting, you know, curb stomped and stuff like that. Try to be chill and don't piss people off to the point where they want to hit you in the head because chronic traumatic encephalopathy can lead to dementia and that's caused by head injuries and multiple concussions. And then maintaining a healthy weight. Believe it or not, people who are overweight are more at risk for dementia than people who are thin.

And they say quitting smoking on this list, but I think they just tell everybody to quit smoking, you know, for any reason. But the big one is keeping your brain active with things like Sudoku and learning foreign languages and stuff like that. Now, if you go to Alzheimer's.gov, that's A-L-Z-H-E-I-M-E-R-S.com.

You can find clinical trials and some of the clinical trials are observational, looking at lifestyle changes to prevent dementia. So you can participate in research, too. They have clinical trials for people who are at high risk and they're trying some medications.

But anybody can participate. People who are healthy, without symptoms of dementia, young people, old people, and also people who are diagnosed with Alzheimer's. So that's like everybody. If you either have dementia or you don't, you can participate in a clinical trial. So definitely go to alzheimers.gov. And I can already hear, well, I ain't going to no .gov site.

That's all right. This is a good one. This one's okay. All right. Okay, let's see. Let's try this one. Uh-oh. Where are you? There we go. Hey there, Weird Medicine folks. Hey, man. This is Dave from Rhode Island.

Yay. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, OK, that's Dr. Scott's thing. I'm OK with turmeric. I don't take it myself.

because I'm a little concerned about where it's coming from. And also, there have been some rare cases of liver trouble with turmeric, but he prescribes it quite a bit. And it is a COX-2 inhibitor, just like the non-steroidals that you buy over-the-counter.

So that's very interesting. Yeah, I know. So I read an article that suggested that there were issues with liver toxicity. Oh, well, okay. Here, let me give you a bell. Give myself a bell. Yes. Let me answer this. So it can be severe if it happens.

But it is rare. Turmeric is generally considered safe, but some people have experienced liver problems when taking it. So this is what you do. If you decide you're going to take this stuff, make sure that you're talking to your primary care provider and let them do some blood work on you. Do a liver study beforehand and do one every, you know, in a month.

to make sure you're not having a rapid problem. And then every six months, check your liver enzymes. It is linked to a thing called HLA-B35, which is a genetic test that you, or it's, you know, a genetic allele, and you can test for it. So if you really want to know if you are at risk, you can ask for that test.

It starts about one to four months after starting the supplement if you take it every day. And the other thing is the FDA doesn't test...

you know, this stuff. So you are kind of on your own. So good luck with that. But just do it under the guise of a, or under the guardianship of a primary care provider. All right, before I get out of here, let's say hello to people in the fluid family and see if there's anything going on. I already talked about Myrtle Maness, gifted 20 weird medicine with Dr. Steve memberships. Don't forget to turn on, accept gifted memberships.

Let's see. Talia Arnold says, I love and appreciate the time I've had with Weird Medicine. I wish I'd known about it before Normal World. So Talia, you were one of those. So I guess being on Normal World actually did something. I got one person who's turned on to us, but I'm glad to have you because you're always here. And I think you're awesome.

Oh, she says, I play Hold'em with my brothers. As far as amateurs go, I ate too bad. Well, come to Hackamania. We're going to have a poker tournament, so we'll see how everybody's doing. Hackverse Godfather says, where's Rocco? Oh, this is El Padrino. Hi, molto bene. E bene, bene. Come stai? He says, Dr. Steve's a big fan. I don't think he is, but I am one of his biggest fans.

And then it says, is this an—Barb Parrish says, is this online or in-person class? It's actually in-person, but I want to do a channel where I do some of this stuff. So I'm working on that. And Terry Nee says, so what you're saying is you're old? Yes. I think 69 is a—it's a hilarious age to be because, you know, you're not actually participating in things like that so much anymore, which is too bad. I mean, listen—

Not only the spirit, but the body is willing. But, you know, we've got to have somebody to do it with. I haven't been listening way back when ONA. Okay, wait, we've done that one. Okay. McRib says, Dr. Steve, I know this is out of left field. Any suggestion on how to get rid of the fat pad? I actually lost over 40 pounds and under 200 pounds weight, and there's no reason for it. Okay. So I'm assuming you're talking about the pubic fat pad. You have not gained penile length, according to Dr. Steve's rule, right?

of one inch for every 35 pounds of weight loss.

And that's because you have retained fat in the pubis. And I'm going to tell you, I wonder if you had COVID, because I have not identified this as a real syndrome, but I keep hearing about COVID, Dick. And what it really seems to be is this fat pad in front of the pubis. Why this would happen, I don't know. But it's a lot of people after having COVID, and they actually, you know, have...

more penis inside the body than they do outside the body sometimes. I believe that a plastic surgeon or a, well, a urologic plastic surgeon could do a, you know, a fat removal procedure like a lipectomy, but it would be, they'd have to really know what they're doing. I wouldn't want to be somebody's first surgeon

on that because if you do liposuction on somebody and you happen to suck up their pedendal nerve while you're at it, that's bad. So doing Kegel maneuvers to develop the muscles in the pelvic floor is

And doing any maneuvers that will distribute that fat to other parts of the body, crunches and those kinds of things may help. But other than that, there's really not just a whole lot to do. Yeah. And John's ear mites has pubis fats. Could it be made into a pouch to carry things? Of course. You can do anything you want to, except that you would be missing those parts.

I know that they've made pouches out of goat scrotums and stuff like that before. And then Don Phillips says, I thought it was the pseudofedrin that was the dementia trigger. It's really more the anticholinergic. There may be some risk with pseudofedrin. I can look it up. Let me see if I can look it up real quick. It's going to be tough to do on the fly. Pseudofedrin.

And dementia. Let's see here. There we go. Sudafed contains sudafedrin. It may cause blood vessel spasms that reduce blood flow to the brain. This could potentially increase the risk of dementia, but the likelihood is very low. But then look up Benadryl. And let's just do that. So it's diphenhydramine. Diphenhydramine. This would be better for just a live...

It says there may increase the risk of dementia. There's no established cause and effect relationship. But studies suggest the longer you take diphenhydramine, the higher your risk of developing dementia. And it is dose dependent. So the more you take it and the longer you take it, the higher your risk.

And I have personally seen people in the hospital that are given diphenhydramine either have bladder outflow obstruction. In other words, they can't piss if they're an elderly male with large prostate or it increases delirium where they just start talking out of their head. So we try to avoid that. Chris Mack says, Dr. Steve, is it true high stress and cortisol levels can cause testosterone levels to plummet?

You know, stress is bad for everything. And, you know, name one thing in the body that stress doesn't affect. I can't think of anything. But stress definitely affects testosterone levels in short-term and long-term.

acute stress like physical challenges social evaluation you know stage fright that stuff can cause testosterone levels to decrease and

And then if you have prolonged stress, it definitely can cause testosterone levels to decrease. You know what else can too are long-term opioids. People who are on long-term morphine or oxycodone, about 50% of those people have low testosterone as well. And those drugs also increase your risk of malignancy. And if you're put on it for cancer pain and your cancer is gone and you're still taking opioids,

So consider trying a taper under the supervision of your prescriber. Go nice and easy. We don't want you going through withdrawal. But see if you can get off of it. You may be able to. It will reduce your risk of recurrent malignancy. So anyway. All right. Okie doke. So yes, that is absolutely a factor.

McRib says, yep, had COVID, but I've been cursed with this since my late teens. Really sucks, takes away from size. I only call it fat pad because you had to refer to it that as a while back. Yeah, it is a fat pad. It's a pad of fat. It's typical or medical name is, you know, the pubic fat pad, but...

Chris Max says, I was addicted to opiates for years. I take Clomid and an Astrozole now. Yep. Okay. Total testosterone is 107.5. Holy shit. That's pretty high.

When mine was that high, I was a son of a bitch. So a lot of times if you find that you're having acne or you're having high blood pressure or if you're irritable, they may want to decrease things so that your testosterone is under 850. But anyway, you do you with your primary care. I'm just throwing out things of what happened to me.

Anyway, all right, everybody. Listen, I really appreciate everyone being here. Oh, hematocrit was good. Yeah, mine was not. I had what was called polycythemia. So what he's talking about is his blood count. If you take blood and you spin it in a tube to get all the red blood cells and white blood cells in the bottom, you can measure the ratio of the total volume that includes the serum to just the solids.

And that is called the hematocrit. And you want it to be around 45%. But it can be as low as 30%. And you're still walking around. You don't notice anything.

And if you have high testosterone, particularly from taking exogenous testosterone, in other words, testosterone outside the body, endogenous is the term that we use for testosterone that the body makes itself, coming from the inside, endo meaning inside.

And exo meaning outside. So exogenous testosterone. You can get that hematocrit to go up. And mine was like 52 and they had to back off on my testosterone. So, all right. Golden George says I get deja vu a lot. Do I have brain damage or am I a multiversal traveler? No, it's a glitch in the matrix, my bro.

I used to get deja vu all the time. I'm assuming you're younger than I am. And it is just one of those weird things. I don't think anybody knows the answer to it. The one I get a lot is presque vu, and I'm not even sure how to pronounce it. But it's where it's the opposite. So deja vu is where you think you've been here before. You almost remember dreaming it. It's like you had precognition, but you can't ever remember it until it actually happens. So it's useless. Yeah.

But presqu'eveau is where you forget where you are. And it happens to musicians in the middle of a symphony. They played the symphony a thousand times. All of a sudden, it's like, where am I? I don't know what note to play next. And that happens to me a lot. So that's what happens. The deja vu turns into that when you get older. And it fucking sucks. Anyway, email me, Golden George. You...

You can go to our website now and click contact. I think that works again. But if not, just DM me on Twitter or I refuse to call it X or whatever. And I can send you some information about Deja Vu. All right. Oh, now the original one pun says, please don't forget my original question. I don't know what it is.

This is not that easy. Let's see. Oh, Dr. Steve, what can you recommend for health supplements and diet management when you've hit rock bottom and are rebounding from being homeless? Okay. Well, I'm glad you're no longer homeless, my friend. And, uh,

The best health supplement that you can take is a balanced diet. But if you've been homeless and your diet has sucked and it's been monotonous or just what you could get your hands on, then the cheapest multivitamin, you know, CVS brand, take that.

And get lots of fiber in your diet. Get off the sauce to the best of your ability. And I'm sure you're in good shape because if you're homeless, I'm assuming that you're having to, you know, move around a lot.

But keep that up, though. Moderate amount of exercise with a good diet and moderate alcohol and don't smoke. That's the best thing that you can possibly do. And just getting high-quality nutrients, lean, high-quality protein, limit trans fats. Trans fat's bad. Trans everything else I'm cool with.

But, you know, limit that. Lots of green leafy vegetables, whatever fruit and, you know, stuff that you can get in. And wash all those first, too. We've got a Norwalk virus epidemic going around. And a lot of times you can get that from fresh fruits and vegetables. So just be careful. Okay.

Yeah, the sauce is hard. Depression is a bitch. I get it. I suffer from depression myself, and there is help out there, and you don't have to just take buckets of serotonin and dump them into your brain anymore. There are other things out there. If you want to Original One Pun, just email me. I'll send you some information.

I was prescribed ketamine, and that really, I think, saved my life. And it works in two or three days. And I write this for my hospice patients a lot of times. They don't have time to see if...

Prozac will even help them after 12 weeks. They just don't have time for that. And the nice thing about properly administered ketamine is you get, in very many cases, a positive effect in a matter of days. It's not for everybody. The data isn't 100%, but there's enough people that it's helped out there that I feel like

OK, not only prescribing it, but recommending that people at least explore it. Don't go on the street and take it. That's not what I'm saying at all. It's just like kratom. I think kratom is a molecule that deserves some real focus from a research side because it's an alkaloid that also...

antagonizes the mu opioid receptors, all this interesting pharmacology. And it really kind of breaks my heart that people are having to go to the street or go to head shops to get this stuff to try to get off drugs when there's help out there. But we should be researching that drug. But I don't recommend that people just go to

to the store and just take it on their own. Just like I wouldn't recommend that you go take a, buy a statin in Mexico if the, I don't know if they're over the counter there, but, and just take it without anybody telling you to do it. You know, I, I do think that I know modern medicine isn't perfect and Western medicine has its issues, but we do have some science behind some of the things that we, uh,

that we talk about and we're constantly improving our science. And I think that there's some value in that, at least having somebody to back you up in case things go bad. Okay. All right, my friends take care. Thanks everybody for being here. Uh, thanks, uh, to everyone who's made the show happen over the years that listen to our Sirius XM show.

Until June on the Faction Talk channel, Sirius XM channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern on demand, and other times at Jim McClure'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. ♪