Shownotes Transcript
Delusion? Man, you are one pathetic loser. Can you, like, shut up? 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. Why, you give me the respect that I'm entitled to!
I want a requiem for my disease, so I'm paging.
From the world-famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios in beautiful downtown Tukey City, it's Weird Medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott. We'll be here in just a minute.
This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take your regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call. 347-766-4323. That's 347-POOHEAD. Follow us on Twitter at WeirdMedicine.
And at drscottwm and visit our website at drsteve.com for podcasts, medical news, and the stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything over the grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your healthcare provider. Very good. Check out stuff.drsteve.com for all your online shopping needs. And then roadie, r-o-a-d-i-e.drsteve.com for the roadie robotic tuner. It's amazing.
And check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbals.net. And check us out on Patreon. Patreon's got some eclectic stuff on there. Old shows you've never heard before. First look at all video content, stuff like that. Live streams coming. I've done some in the past. They're up there. We have the exam room.
where celebrities call in and ask us medical questions. Patreon.com slash weirdmedicine. And if you want me to say fluid to your mama, cameo.com slash weirdmedicine. Oh, and here's Dr. Scott. All right, very good. Don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's
Scott's website at simplyherbals.net. That's simplyherbals.net. How's everything going over there? Doing pretty well. Yeah? Pretty busy. You need some tchotchkes to send out to weird medicine listeners who order crap from you? We just sent some out the other day. We're still pretty good for now, which is crazy. So just if you do, just tell him that you're a weird medicine listener and he'll throw some stupid crap in there. It's garbage, but it's fun. It is.
And, yeah, check me out on Normal World with Dave Landau. I've got a new one coming out on vaginal odors.
And I have a really hacky joke at the end of it. Oh, wow. Yes. But I was just doing assets. And I'll tell you what, the AI is really helpful for that. And I know the artists try, you know, but I don't do AI art. I do it photorealistic. And I just, you know, I want...
picture of a doctor, you know, smelling a slide with a woman, you know, doing the whiff test. The whiff test being you take a sample of vaginal fluid and you put it on a slide and then you drop a strong base like potassium hydroxide on it, which causes the
cells to just lice, you know, to open up. And then you smell it. And if it smells like fish, it's a diagnostic for bacterial vaginosis. And it's called the whiff test. But I needed a picture of
of a doctor holding a slide up to his nose, smelling it and grimacing. And then the woman standing behind him with a horrified look on her face. And that's not easy to come by. So I just had the AI do it. And it looks great. Oh, funny. Yeah. Where can you find that picture?
What do you mean? I told Gemini to make it for me. I said, create an image of a doctor holding a glass slide under his nose with a disgusted look on his face. He's furrowing his brow and wrinkling his nose. And the woman is standing next to him with a horrified look on her face. And it was perfect. It goes, okay, here you go. Oh, geez. I love it.
Love it, love it, love it. So for that, I don't feel so bad. I don't want to take an artist's job away, but this is something that I would have just found a picture on the internet anyway. Yep. Oh, my gosh. And, you know, we employ some artists over here. Troy Smith, just Google him, Troy Smith Art. He did the art for the Wet Brain card game that we're coming out with. Okay. And I've got to get...
the hell out of the house for a weekend so I can sit down and just do it because I need about eight hours of uninterrupted time and that's impossible around here. So, I mean, you know. You're going to have to go back on
That retreat you went on and get some. Well, I could. They had really high speed Internet there. And you're right. You know, I could do all my activities during the day and just work on weird medicine stuff, you know, in the evening. That was the one time I did live streams consistently was when I was there. I did one almost every night. I remember. How long has that been? It's a couple of years. Yeah. We're getting ready to go on two years. OK. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't, we didn't wear masks and stuff. So was it, it was after, I mean, it was at the tail end of COVID, right? It was very tail end of COVID, yeah. Had to be. All right. Okay. Well, anyway, so yeah, Normal World, youtube.com slash at normal world. It is, Dave has the best show on the internet as far as I'm concerned. And I don't know why it's not bigger than it is. It should be huge. The production values are great.
And the guests that he has on are outstanding. You know, when he has me on, it'll be the lowest viewer count of any show that they have because nobody gives two shits about me. But, you know, they have some pretty big comedians on there. Derek Richards is on there and he's one of my favorite people.
And he actually came to Knoxville and had got us tickets to come see him. And then we had some other damn thing. We had a conflict. We didn't get to go. But anyway, or you can go to Blaze TV. Blaze TV and just tell them that you signed up because of Normal World. Or tell them your old pal Dr. Steve sent you. Right on. All right.
You want to just do a bunch of questions today? I don't have any topics or anything. Yeah. Casey's not here. Let's go for it. All right. Okay. Let's see here. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right. Very good. Sounds good. Now, this one just says voicemail, so I don't know what this is. So let me see. Hey, Dr. Steve. Okay. Hey, Casey. Hello. Hey, Dr. Scott. How's everybody? Good, man. How are you? I've got a question about...
My hands, some mornings I wake up and my hands are tingly. Oh, okay. And then as it progresses through the day, it's like a sore stiffness in my hand. Maybe it's arthritis. I'm getting close to 60 now. Well, the tingly, that's a nerve. That's a nerve. I used DMSO. It was recommended by a friend and immediately I tasted garlic. I was wondering, is DMSO safe to use for arthritis?
And should I be doing that? And there's a tingly hand. Could that be anything more than just poor sleeping position? Anyway, I'll hang up and listen. Thank you, sir. So, yeah, a couple of things. Let's talk about the DMSO. It's dimethyl sulfoxide. It is an organic solvent. Right.
I remember first hearing about it in like the late 60s, early 70s for arthritis and stuff. It does readily permeate the skin. And when it does, you taste garlic. That's exactly right. And, you know, there's a lot of people will use this stuff. They'll do a couple of things with it.
They'll put soluble drugs in it, and it will drag the drugs through the skin. If they are also lipid soluble, they have to be lipid soluble. Well, to dissolve in the DMSO, they kind of have to be. Gotcha. And then they will – so it's a vehicle that you can use to introduce drugs into the bloodstream without –
Injecting them, you know, without having to use an injection. But so I have the safety data sheet. This is sort of the product safety sheet for people using it as a solvent. It says may cause respiratory irritation, drowsiness or dizziness, skin irritation, serious eye irritation. And it is also combustible.
So, let me see. Okay, if they get it in your eyes, obviously you wash it out. If inhaled, remove the person to fresh air. I'm just looking to see if there's anything long-term on this safety sheet that says anything other than, okay, here's toxological information. Inhalation may cause drowsiness. Of course,
all these organic solvents will do that. People inhaling glue, that's basically toluene, which is a benzene ring with a methyl group on it, I think, if I remember right. It's been a long time. But that's also an organic solvent. And people, you know, are huffing glue. And it's one of these things. So most of those type of small molecular things
Solvents will get you up or alter your consciousness, but it's not good for you. Let me see. Mutagenic effects, no information available. Carcinogenicity, you know, whether is it carcinogenic? They don't know. There's no information available. Is there reproductive toxicity? They don't know. It's not been studied. So that's my concern about this stuff.
is that they don't know. They just don't know. People have been using it for years. We haven't heard anything about it, being naughty in that way, but, you know, still. But anyway, do you use any of these kind of organic solvents? Nope. Okay. FDA has approved DMSO as a prescription Medicaid for treatment of painful bladder syndrome, but that's they instill it directly into the bladder. Right.
Let me see. I'm looking on WebMD just to see if there's anything. People have also used it to try to treat conditions like headache, rheumatoid arthritis, eye problems, scars, and scleroderma. That's a disease that causes scar tissue to form in the skin.
But the American Cancer Society says there's no evidence to support the use of DMSO to treat cancer. That's for sure. Well, they haven't studied it. So there's no evidence. Doesn't mean it doesn't do anything. But why would it? It's just an organic solvent. Recent analysis of studies on the use of DMSO to relieve osteoarthritis pain found it was not significantly more effective than placebo. It's just you feel like it's doing something.
Let me see. Okay. Most frequent side effects of using DMSO on the skin include stomach upset, skin irritation, and the strong odor of garlic. Well, there you go. Some people can have severe allergic reactions, headaches, and itching and burning, and then do not take it by mouth. It is not designed to be taken internally, and I wouldn't, you know—
use it on my skin, to be honest with you. Okay. Yeah. I know they've used it for years and years for rheumatism. Yep. And if people are breastfeeding, obviously don't use it. One thing is, is that there are, DMSO can increase the effect of some medications, including blood thinners. So be very careful about that. If you're on blood thinner, I would not touch this stuff. Sedatives and steroids. So.
Now, the biggest concern is that when it gets on the skin, it would cause anything on the skin to be absorbed if it's fat soluble. So if you've got something toxic on your skin for whatever reason and then you put DMSO on there, it's going to introduce that into your bloodstream or make it more readily available. All right. So, you know, whatever. Listen, you do what you want to do. But I'm not a...
a big fan of DMSO anymore. I was back when it was popularized.
in the media, but then you go read the studies and the data just isn't there. And again, how do we know stuff? You give people, you know, a thousand people DMSO for their arthritis and a thousand people some other supplement. Maybe you have to put some garlic oil in it so that they smell the garlic.
and to make it a one-to-one comparison. And then you've got to subtract out the possibility that the garlic is doing something, you know? Right? So that could introduce a bias as well. And then you have to see if there's a statistically significant difference between the two after you unblind the study. No, the doctor can't know.
Or the investigator can't know and the patient can't know. And then at the very end, you decode the study and you see, well, these people got DMSO. These people got placebo. Was there any difference? Well, how do you know if there's a difference? Well, you have to have a validated instrument that you can rely on for whatever endpoint you're looking for. Is it increased dosage?
grip strength? That would be one. That's pretty objective. Or could it just be subjective pain scale? On a scale of 1 to 10...
You know, divide it up into tenths, you know, and then look for a statistically significant difference. And so far, the studies where they've actually done that have not shown a statistically significant difference. So not a big fan. Now, let's go to the first part of his question. He's waking up with tingly hands. Now, I...
I learned about this when I was about a year or two out of medical school or out of residency. I had a patient come in saying that they had tingling hands when they woke up in the morning and that they were numb. And I was just like, well, you're sleeping on your hands because I do that sometimes. And I wake up and my arm is completely not useful. And then...
When the feeling comes back, of course, you get hyperalgesia and allodynia, meaning that you can't even touch it. It sends pins and needles up into your brain until the – and that's just the nerve waking up. Well, it turned out that this person had carpal tunnel syndrome. Right.
And I didn't recognize it. And so I looked pretty stupid, but I never missed it again. Right on. So that's the thing. And carpal tunnel syndrome is a compression neuropathy, meaning that the nerve in your is being compressed and it affects the thumb, the index finger, the middle finger and half of the fourth finger usually. Right.
And now, if it's mostly the fourth and fifth finger, then that is cubital tunnel syndrome, which is a compression of the funny bone. Okay? So the funny bone feeds the fourth and fifth finger, the median nerve, right?
Where you have carpal tunnel syndrome, which is in the wrist, feeds the first, second, and third finger primarily. So it could be either one of those. I had cubital tunnel syndrome where my pinky wouldn't work anymore when I was typing. And so they had to go in there and they actually take the funny bone. An older nerve deviation. It's not there anymore. Right. It's not in that place. It's up here. They move it, yep. They actually move it from under that little knob on your elbow. Yep.
and they move it up above there just to take the pressure off of it. Do that a lot for pitchers. A lot of pitchers. Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll do an ulnar nerve deviation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A couple other things. Yep. A couple other things. Obviously, carpal tunnel syndrome would be something to check out since it's on both sides.
Since it is on both sides, I also think about possibly cervical spine. Is it in both sides? I think he was saying it's in both hands. When you say both hands, you mean both hands. Yeah, I thought he said both of his hands. I mean, I may have misheard, but let's just talk about if it is both hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then we think midline, which would be the neck and cervical spine, certainly a positional thing. Yep. He could have a stenosis like you've had in your lower back. Narrowing. And narrowing of the spine. Yep. Yeah.
You know, he could have a thoracic outlet syndrome that could give him a very similar, you know. Well, talk about what that is because I've never seen a bilateral one. I've seen them. Well,
Well, I hate to say I saw it yesterday. You can get a compression of the nerves in the vascular system going out underneath your armpits. Right. Underneath the really underneath your first rib. It's the first rib. And you can get in the scalene muscles in your neck can have can pinch part of it off to.
But anyway. Right. So how would you diagnose that? There is a test that you can do at home for it. Yeah, that's true. So what Dr. Steve's talking about is you can actually, you can have someone have their arm down in a neutral position below their heart and check their pulse. And if you feel a nice, good, strong pulse, that's what you want. And then what you can do is you can move their hand over or up over their shoulder.
And if they lose their pulse, that's a pretty good diagnostic sign that that's thoracic atlas syndrome. I'm not saying it's going to be, but that's a pretty good way to start the process.
What I do is I have them put their arm down by their side with their elbow at right angles. And then you feel their pulse, and then you push down on the arm and have them turn their head the other way. Okay. And if it extinguishes, then that makes the diagnosis. That's a great way to do it. So that could be...
And what about medicinal things? I mean, it's possible if he's got it in both hands, if he gets in his feet, it could be some statin medications even. Well, yeah, if it's there all the time. Yeah, yeah. But he's saying he's waking up with it. And if you take that medicine at bedtime, you know, possibly if it gets worse. But if it goes away during the day, then it's probably not that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So at least you have some things to look into.
Real quick, though, can I add? It's my pocket operator. What he can start doing, we call them prayer stretches, which might help with the numbness, especially first thing in the morning, where you can just put the palms of your hands together right in front of your chest and keep your palms right in front of your chest and
And slowly pull down towards your heart or towards your tummy. And keep your hands right up against your chest wall. Now, what is this supposed to do? And that's going to stretch the fascia. It stretches. It's going to stretch the fascia and that transverse ligament that goes...
Use these words. So fascia is just the tissue that sort of surrounds. It's the thin tissue that surrounds everything in the body. And it'll help stretch out the sheath that the nerve is inside of. And it might help stretch out some of that tissue. And this is for what? For carpal tunnel? For carpal tunnel. So that might help some. At least try that. See, I played piano and I played it really poorly.
And I wasn't using good technique and I got carpal tunnel from that once I finally got good technique.
It went away. Now, one thing that you can do, if you want to see if you have carpal tunnel, there's a couple of tests that you can do. There's a tunnel sign where you bend your wrist as far as you can in extension. So you bend it away from yourself and then to expose your wrist. And so if you're holding your hand where the palm is up...
Then bend it so that the fingers are pointing as far down to the floor as you can, and then tap.
in the wrist. And if it recreates the pain, that's a positive tunnel sign for carpal tunnel syndrome. And then you can just go to your primary care and say, "Hey, I need you to refer me to a neurosurgeon or whatever because I have a positive tunnel sign," and they'll shit themselves.
Okay. I love it. I love it. I love it. So I was thinking maybe we could use the pocket operator to differentiate between phone calls. Hang on. Cool. And we're back. There you go. All right. Let's see. I don't know what this is. Hey, Dr. Steve. Hey. Hey, Casey. Hey.
Hi, Dr. Scott. It's the same guy. Oh, it's the same call. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Bill from Texas. Hey, Bill. Good to talk to you again. I hate to see you go, but I understand. Well, okay. Let's clarify that again so everybody knows. Yes, we are recording the final Weird Medicine episode. Let me see. I'm going to send them a message that says can't talk right now.
We're recording the last SiriusXM regular show in Las Vegas at Hackamania, May 9th through the 11th. Get your tickets at hackamania.com. Use offer code WEIRD for 10% off. There's VIP tickets and there's regular tickets. It's a whole weekend of comedy and live podcasts and all this kind of stuff.
And I went last year and helped set up and did some stuff.
over there and then did a couple of bits and I did the pulling objects out of Rocco's ass. Oh, my. You know, it was kind of magic trick thing. But anyway, I was going to have like some of my celebrity friends do a video and so I just said to hell with it. You know, nobody gives a shit about
So I'm just going to do a regular show, but we're going to take questions from the audience.
And I've got cards where they can write stuff down. And, you know, if they throw a 20 in there, of course, we'll answer their question first. And Lucy Tightbox is going to be my co-host. And then we'll chop it up and it will play on SiriusXM until the, you know, our contract is up, which was three years ago. But anyway, so, yeah, now...
What I want to do is more stuff like I do for Dave Landau with Normal World. I'd like to do some acting even. You know, I've got – you know, Pete Davidson called me one day and said, hey, you know, we have a part –
that would be perfect for you. Can you be here on Wednesday? And it was like, this was Monday. It's like, no, I can't. I can't. But I would like to be able to do more of that kind of stuff. I really enjoy it. I actually have an IMDB page now because of the acting, quote unquote, that I've done for Dave Landau. It's kind of fun. For the longest time, Tacey had one. Mm-hmm.
because of her work with Rockstar Games where she did country voices for GTA 5. And it's like, okay, I've had this radio show for 20 years, but Tacey has an IMDb page. Well, now I have one. Now you've got one. But I'd like to do more of that kind of stuff. We're going to do more documentary-style things. And Friday night live streams will be a thing.
And I want to do my gambling channel. I've got all kinds of ideas. There is this guy, Anton Petrov, that does – he's like, you know, "Hello, wonderful person." And he does – every day he does a new science thing. I probably couldn't do every day until I retire. But I could do every week, do something on another – just a medical or a cool medical or science topic.
And so that's what's going to happen. And maybe we'll do some live shows and we'll answer questions and stuff. Every time I go on somebody else's show, they always have people call in and just ask medical questions. I like doing that too. So we'll still be around, but just not on a regular basis. And the Patreon channel will still be very active, patreon.com slash weirdmedicine, where we're going to –
You know, I've got classic shows on there where you can't hear anymore. And then we're doing special projects. And they see everything that I do for Dave before anybody else does, even before the normal world people do. So check that out, patreon.com slash weirdmedicine.
And if you want me to say fluid to your mama, you know, cameo.com slash weird medicine. You know, it's dirt cheap. I do it just for the hell of it. And some people, if I do them while we're in the studio, I, you know, I give them a tour of the studio.
So there you go. Cool. I even played happy birthday for somebody on the piano. All right. Okie doke. Okay. So thank you. But thank you for the kind words. And Dr. Scott, Cincinnati Reds sucks still. What's that? What did he say? He's got a point. Cincinnati Reds sucks.
Still suck. What does? The Cincinnati Reds. Oh, yeah, yeah. Cincinnati Reds suck still. My question is, I have a bowel movement. Yes. Majority of the time. Good. I'm glad you do. It sinks to the bottom of the bowl like it's supposed to. Correct. Why does some bowel movement float? Yep. Very astute medical question for you, Dr. That's a good one.
I'm not sure you're using the word astute correctly, but it is a good medical question. Scott, you want to take it? I know the answer to this. They have some fat in it. Could be fat. Could be fat. Could be fat. I'll give you a half of a bell. Give thyself a bell. Air. Gas. But it could be fat. But usually when you have fat in your stool...
you have malabsorption. Right. You should not have fat in your stool. All the fat should be broken down and dissolved. Yeah.
Unless you were taking something like Ali, that Olestra, which was a non-digestible fat. They were frying French fries in that shit. Oh, my. And people were eating it. And if you ate a whole bag of it, you'd just shit out, you know, orange oil, basically. It just floated to the top. I didn't know that. Oh, God. I had a friend, and she was...
drug rep and she was gorgeous you know and you know like as drug reps often are and she was going to a meeting and she thought she had to you know pass flatus and it was just voluminous orange oil that came shooting out of her ass and she had to go back home and change clothes
So oh my goodness. Yeah, so that stuff was pretty rough. It's not I don't think it's on the market anymore You might still be able to buy the ally or Ali or whatever it was a LLI which was a pill form of it. Yeah but so
Yeah, if you have fat, it could make it rise, but you'll also see globules of fat. And if you see globules of fat and you're not taking an undigestible fat supplement, you may want to get that checked. For a lot of people who have chronic diarrhea, I do a thing called stool for fat, which is they shit into a bucket for a day. And then they look in it. That's if you want to do quantitative fat. You do it for 24 hours and...
then they run it through a machine and they see how much fat is in there. And they look at it under the microscope, see if there are fat globules. And that is a sign of malabsorption. People whose pancreas isn't working right or their bile duct isn't working right. Could have had maybe their gallbladder removed. No, maybe. Possibly, yeah. So...
So it's air or? So now air could be from a couple of things. It could be from what we call aerofasia. Some people eat so fast that they swallow air and they'll get bloating and pain and then their stools will float because there's air in there. They'll also have voluminous flatus and stuff.
But a really common way to get air incorporated into the stool is for the bacteria to ferment something while it's in the turd form.
and then creating air bubbles, sort of like baking bread, right? When you bake bread... It rises. It rises because the yeast are making CO2 bubbles in there. And then when you bake the bread, it kind of...
fixes that. And when I say fix it, set it in stone sort of, in dough. And so you get those air bubbles in there. Now, that will be, if you immersed that bread into a vat of dough, it's going to be less
than the liquid dough, and it will rise to the top. And the same thing here, if you get enough gas production in your turd so that there's little pockets of gas and there's just enough in there, it will rise and be less dense than the surrounding water and it'll float to the top. So that's where that's probably coming from. Gotcha, gotcha. And, you know, if you have really smelly, disgusting farts...
You may have a bad, you know, colonic flora. Overgrowth of something. Yeah, you may have an overgrowth of something bad. And...
I recommend eating fermented foods for that and not just yogurt. Yogurt is just lactobacillus. You want more than that. So if you ferment pickles, that's mostly lactobacillus. But you want some good yeast as well. So people make fun of me, but kombucha is a really good way to get more varied flavors.
bacteria and beneficial yeast into your system. And if you don't like the taste of it, make smoothies out of it. You know, my son and his fiance have gut issues and the gut brain axis is really important and the gut can cause
Total body inflammation, which can cause all kinds of problems. Mel B, we were talking about this when she was here. You know, she has autoimmune disorder and she just had a widow maker, MI. So we, you know, I want to put her on an anti-inflammatory diet. One of the things to do is to make a smoothie with a...
anti-inflammatory type stuff in it. I would put kombucha in it. I would put kefir. Kefir is basically, you know, it's like a liquid yogurt from the old country. And the people that eat that or drink that shit in the Ural Mountains lived to be 120 years old. And I would put, you know, spinach in there maybe every once in a while. I don't think every day is a little turmeric.
And you can throw, you know, and there's other things like that that you can throw in there as well. And I think it would really help with that sort of stinky. If you have farts that are chasing people out of the room, just change the flora in your cup. Yeah. Okay. Oh, wow. All right. Anything you have to add to that? One other thing I love is I love sauerkraut.
I love sauerkraut. Yes, yes, yes. And a lot of people don't eat, they say they don't like sauerkraut, but I'm going to tell you how to use it. Okay. If you'll get like just a normal sauerkraut, the good sauerkrauts you can buy in the grocery store, I will actually take those and mix them with spices and herbs and make toppings for my tacos. Oh, yeah. So I make a sauerkraut topping for
tacos in that way. That makes sense. You don't really know that it's sauerkraut. It actually has got a wonderful kind of acidic flavor. Make sure it's fermented, though, and that it has active cultures in it. Now, you can make your own sauerkraut. Let me teach you guys how to make your own sauerkraut. Is it going to stink him out of the house? No, it's not bad. Oh, is it not okay? It's not like kimchi, huh?
No, it's not, although it is related to kimchi. Related to kimchi, right. So what you want to do is you get salt that does not have iodine in it. Right. Like Himalayan salt or Celtic sea salt? Or just even Morton salt that just is non-iodized. Okay. Right? Gotcha. And what you want is a 3% brine, basically. Okay.
So I'm trying to find the actual recipe here because I hadn't planned on doing this. Well, you can Google it. But basically you cut the sauerkraut into however you want it. Do you want it long and stringy or do you want little chopped up sauerkraut?
And then you don't add any water to it. You don't have to. You're going to weigh it, and then you're going to add 3% salt to it, and you're going to mush it around. You get a glove and just mush it in until it's well incorporated. Then you want to put it in a fermentation container.
vessel where the liquid, because all of a sudden there's going to be all this water in there because cabbage is mostly water. And the salt will draw it out. And so you're going to have now a solution that's got 3% brine and it's going to have the cabbage in it. And you want to put it in a fermentation vessel. You can...
Buy one at – I bought fermentation lids that go on mason jars, quart mason jars. And you pack it, and you've got to make sure that the liquid is above the solid particles. And if you buy that kit that has the fermentation lids on it, it will also have a glass weight. And you just put that in there to hold the cabbage down.
And after about three days, you'll start to notice that it's bubbling and getting cloudy in there. And what's happening is the brine prevents like botulism and other bacteria, but it promotes the growth of the natural lactobacillus that is living on the cabbage. And if you ever want to do this with pickles—
With cucumbers, make sure that you buy pickling cucumbers. The ones that you buy that are shiny have wax on them and they won't ferment. You have to buy the ones that are dull or grow your own. And you want to throw a couple bay leaves in there too to keep it crisp.
Anyway, and then you let it go. And when it starts to calm down and stops bubbling, it's pretty much ready. You can put it in a cool, dark place and let it sit there for a while. And you've got to make sure that you've got one of these lids because it will explode if you just take a mason jar lid and close it down. Some people will do that and burp it. I don't like that. I just want a lid that will release the carbon dioxide as it's produced.
And that makes really good sauerkraut. It's not sour, sour like some of the stuff that you buy. It's a little bit more mild, and it's good for you, you know? But it is mostly lactobacillus. Cool. So anyway, there you go. There you go. So, yeah, let's change our –
our gut flora. We need more fermented foods. We need a more varied diet. My kid eats chicken and fried, you know, French fries. And he'll eat gluten-free pizza. And now if I'm out there with him, I can compel him to eat a salad. And he will eat a salad. He doesn't put any dressing on it or anything.
But as far as him like going to the store and buying apples and shit, it'll never happen. Now, I think I was kind of like that. So as he gets older and starts paying attention to his diet, I think that he'll do better. When they were kids, I would make them smoothies and you take a handful of spinach and throw it in there. And now they're eating spinach, but they can't taste it. There's no taste to it.
But it's good for you. It's got iron and, you know, some minerals and vitamins and stuff. Or chicken and french fries. So when we were on vacation this last time, I made a smoothie for them every day. Oh, my gosh. Now, his fiancee, she's all about it. So she can make him kind of follow suit. She's a good role model for him. Good. So anyway. All right. So there you go. Floaty stools. Floaty stools. Yeah.
All right. Hello, Dr. Steve. Hello, my friend. I have two questions. Yep. First question is, what happens when we're in outer space or like at the ISS? Yep. For months on end. Yep. Where it is only 89% of Earth's gravity. Yeah. How do you, how do our feet? Oh, it's, it wasn't that. When they come back, are they black and purple and nasty looking because they're not getting the blood flow? Also, while you're up there, what happens to that blood brain barrier?
you figure a lot of blood gotta be going to the brain a lot of our blood gotta be going to the brain yeah but what's happening is all the blood up against the brain and uh collecting like at a i don't know i know what you're thinking and actually the volume of blood surrounding the brain because he's right if you're standing up straight blood will rush out of your head
you still get blood flow to it because the circulatory system is a closed system. So as long as you're pumping, you'll get blood going up there. But most of the blood will pool in your legs, right? And then the veins pump it back up again into the rest of the body.
When you're in zero gravity, it's like you're laying down flat all the time. And we say zero gravity. It's microgravity. And so they have some things to ameliorate that. They have treadmills and things like that. But what they don't have yet is a big centrifuge like they had in 2001 where you can just be in normal –
quote-unquote normal gravity. And now when you're in a centrifuge like that, did you know you can't ride a bicycle in there even though it feels like gravity to you? No. The thing called a Coriolis effect. The fact that it's rotating, you won't be able to ride a bicycle in there because of the angular...
angular momentum changes in there that prevent you from being able to ride a bicycle properly. You think that you can. You'll go, what the hell? Really? Just fall off of it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. So...
But anyway, so what they have now, though, is these treadmills and they've got bungee cords to hold them down and all this kind of stuff. But it's a real compromise. And so they'll have decreased heart size because the heart doesn't have to beat as hard to get all the blood around where it goes. There will be fluid redistribution, as he said, with fluid swelling the face and upper body,
relatively speaking compared to when you're in gravity. And then they'll have orthostatic intolerance when they get back. And what that means is that orthostasis standing up. And if you...
If you have really low blood pressure and you're laying down and you stand up and you feel faint, we'll call that orthostatic hypotension or low blood pressure when you're standing. So just think about it.
All this time they've been in microgravity. The blood just kind of goes. The heart pumps and it goes everywhere. Freely. Freely goes everywhere. Now they are in gravity and the body's like, what in the shit is going on here? And the brain, you know, they'll feel faint when they stand up for a while. Yeah.
They might have some sensory and coordination problems. You know, they're getting hit by cosmic rays more often, so there can be changes in the retina and brain. And the immune system will weaken as well while they're there. And that is still a little bit of a mystery, but it may have something to do with cortisol and growth hormone changes. And they'll have height increase because the spine will decompress more.
And that will go down. - I wanna go there. - I know, well, it'll be- - But their back wouldn't hurt so bad. - Yeah, I bet it feels pretty good until they get back. - Yeah, until the gravity kicks in. - Now, the longer, and it is dose dependent, the longer you're there, the worse this stuff is. - Isn't that wild? - But the blood brain barrier is not affected. So the amount of volume of blood
going to the brain. I sound like I'm 16. Well, Mr. Haney. I mean, Mr. Douglas. That was Mr. Haney. Um,
Just because you have more volume of blood surrounding the brain doesn't mean that the blood-brain barrier is being affected. So let's talk about what that is. That is a mechanism by which the central nervous system, which the evolution thinks is the most important organ that we have.
is protected from some chemicals. So there are some chemicals, medications that you can give somebody that will not go into the circulatory system of the brain. They're prevented from going there. I'll give you a good example of that. There's a drug called naltrexone, which we use, you can use to prevent opioids from having, you know, it knocks...
things like Percocet or Lortab off of the receptors. And so it reverses, like if someone's overdosing, you give them naltrexone or you give them naltrexone to prevent them from getting high because they're an addict and they take it, nothing happens because the naltrexone is on the receptors and the opioids can't compete with it. Well, if you add a methyl group
which is just a carbon and three hydrogens to that naltrexone. Now it's called methyl naltrexone. It will not cross the blood-brain barrier. And now they can take their Lortab and their Percocet and they'll still get the effects of it even though there's methyl naltrexone in their system because it cannot cross the blood-brain barrier.
You go, well, why would you do that? Well, because there's other effects that opioids do. And one of those is constipation. And if you have someone that has opioid-induced constipation, you give them methyl naltrexone. They can still take their pain medicine. It still works for their pain. But now their bowel is no longer being affected by that because it competes with the opioid at the level of the bowel. And so now they can shit normally, you know. So anyway, that's
So microgravity, to my knowledge, does not affect the blood-brain barrier, but that's a great question. Great question, yep. All right. All right. Let's see here.
Okay. Hi, Dr. Steve. Hey, man. Dr. Scott, how you doing? Good. How are you? Thank you. Hey, so my 58-year-old wife, the last few years, has been having a problem swallowing food. She'll have a piece of pork chop, for instance, and then get a drink because it's a dry piece of pork chop, and the water doesn't go down. It comes right back out. We're not cooking it right if it's dry. We get through it.
So we had a swallow test done a couple days ago, and that's led to a cardiologist that we're going to have to go see. And they're thinking circumflex aortic arch. Wow. Can you touch on that a little bit? Sure. On your show? Thanks. Bye. Yeah. So this is an interesting one. It's very rare. I have never seen it.
But people and usually they diagnose this in children. It is a congenital thing. So people will present with complaints sometimes of difficulty swallowing. Sometimes they can't breathe. They'll have what they call inspiratory stridor where they breathe like that's inspiratory stridor.
And when you do a chest X-ray, you see this sort of widening of the upper part of the middle chest under the sternum. And then you do a CT angiogram, which is a regular CT scan where you give them dye and you can see the blood vessels and you'll see this sort of circumflex aortic arch thing.
And it's really uncommon. Embryologically, it results from, I'll just throw some medical terms out there, regression of the left dorsal aorta between the left common carotid artery. In other words, it just doesn't form properly. And so you have this weird arch that can affect the esophagus.
and the, you know, sometimes the trachea as well. And it can mimic an aneurysm in an adult. And so sometimes they'll freak out.
But it can be fixed. And so the fix is surgery. And it's not a small surgery. You ever seen anybody with this? No, never. I mean, I've heard of it, but I've never seen it. I was just thinking, I was thinking of the things it could be besides a circumflex. Right. Well, sure. But I mean, we get the first thing you think of is just esophageal stricture. But it's a vascular ring.
And there is the procedure. I'm looking at the procedure here. And the procedure is if you go to...
Google operative techniques, circumflex aorta, and you can see some really cool pictures of it. That's where I am right now. Are you? Sure am. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So let me see. Let me see. Completed aortic uncrossing. The descending thoracic aorta has been brought anterior to the trachea and esophagus and then anastomose. All that means is that it was just connected to the side of the ascending aorta and
And then they have this ligamentum thing that's part of the band, and they ligate that. In other words, they cut it. Well, they ligate it. That means that they take suture material, and they put it on either side, and then they cut it and divide it.
And then, you know, this posterior compression that you get is completely relieved when you do that. And then the people feel better. Yeah, then they shouldn't have the choking. Nope, nope, nope. And most people do extremely well with this, even though it is...
big deal surgery. I mean, they're cracking open your chest and moving your aorta around. So you want to go somewhere where they've done this before. If they're saying, oh, hey, this is great. We've never done one of these. You get a second opinion from somebody who knows what they're doing. And so it's mostly going to be in university centers or big centers like Mayo or Johns Hopkins or someplace like that where they've done a bunch of these. So just ask them,
How many have you done and what's your complication rate?
And as long as it's reasonable and they feel pretty confident that they can get it done, then you don't have to worry about it. All right? All right. Hey, folks. Hope you all are doing good, including the Fluid family. Yes. Anyway, I got a really sweet little friend of mine. We've been friends for a couple of years. Oh, God. Here we go. Stacy was one of his sweet little friends. He's absolutely a weed head. Okay. I came across a little study.
That's something called CHS or cannabis hyperemesia. No, hyperemesis. Cannabis hyperemesia syndrome. It's cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. It's people who use chronic cannabis that instead of it working as an anti-medic, in other words, an anti-nausea medication, all of a sudden they start puking all the time. Yep.
What do you know about that? Well, I just told you what I know about it. So, yeah, it is a problem. And the only treatment for it is to quit smoking pot, unfortunately. Yeah. So do you have anything on it? Yeah, just you have to quit smoking weed. Yep. Because it will not go away. No, no. I'm looking to see if there's – you don't smoke pot though, right? I don't smoke in them. Yeah.
Oh, I see. Oh, you're being very cagey. No, I don't smoke pot. I don't smoke anything. Yeah. The only effective treatment for cannabis hyperemesis syndrome is abstinence. And it will lead to a gradual resolution of symptoms. It won't go away right away. Now, in the meantime, you can use things like ondansetron, which is sold as Zofran, which
There's another thing called metoclopramide, which I would only use. The brand name is Reglan. Use that for a short period of time. And then they use antipsychotics like haloperidol and things like that.
And they also say hot showers can help relieve nausea and vomiting from it, but you just have to get off of it. And then the question is, can you reintroduce it into your system? I don't know. Maybe edibles, maybe. Maybe, but in small amounts. It may be the spike, too, that's part of the problem. All right. Before we get out of here, Dr. Scott, let's go to the Fluid family. If you'd like to join the Fluid family today,
Go to YouTube.com slash at weird medicine and then click like and subscribe, but also click join.
And you don't have to pay money if you don't want to. It's only 99 cents to join the channel. And sometimes I put members-only content on there. And I will be putting more members-only content on there when I start freeing up some time to do these things. But click Accept Gifted Memberships. And when you click Gifted Memberships, then if someone gifts memberships in the chat room...
then you might get one. It's just it assigns them randomly. All right. So waiver. Thank you for the 99 cent sticker. I would appreciate it. Oh, yeah. Very much. Everything. Dang lizard. Five euros. What's what's five euros in USD? Sounds like a lot, though. Can you check it out? I'll look. I'll look. All right. He says, oh, no, I missed the sauerkraut talk. And he actually spelled sauerkraut right because, you know, he is one sauerkraut.
We'll have to listen to it later. Have a great show and all the best for Hackamania. Dang Lizard, I wish you could come to the United States in May 9th through the 11th for hackamania.com. Use offer code WEIRD. Don't use Carl's stupid code. Use mine.
$5.48. Oh, nice. There you go. It offsets the Canadian money that we get from sometimes. Okay, McRib says, yesterday I went to my optometrist. I'm diabetic and have things under control. Hemoglobin A1C at 6.1. Give thyself a bell. Excellent. Excellent.
It's pretty good. Could be lower, but that's still pretty dang good. When I was in training, we thought anything under eight was good, but they're really pushing it to like 5.7. My prescription hasn't been working, so I've been going without glasses. Said now farsighted instead of nearsighted. Isn't that something? So, you know, as... Have you ever taken...
sugar and stirred it into a glass of water that's clear, you know, clear glass. And you see those lines in there before it all dissolves. Those are called Schlierian lines. And what that is, is those are zones of different density water and
density water will refract light differently. So light slows down when it hits water and then speeds back up again when it exits from the water. And that's why when you put a pencil in there, it'll look weird because it'll look like it's broken, right? Gotcha, gotcha. And these Schlierian lines are in there as well.
That's basically what that is, is the light is being refracted differently and you're seeing sort of the boundaries of the zones of sugar or salt that's being dissolved in the water before it's fully dissolved. Well, anyway, you can get those in your eye too. And so I've had people who...
had horrible diabetes, you know, blood sugars at 300. They finally get their blood sugar under control. All of a sudden, their eyes are all blurry. And what it is is the fluid in their eye is refracting light differently, and then it has to get used to it. Oh, wow. Yeah, pretty interesting. And it may change their prescription and all kinds of stuff. All right. Anything else? No, sir. I believe that's it.
Chris Mack says it's only a dollar you bums join the Fluid family. We don't get anything for it. So I do understand that. Chris Case has finally got an alert to join the live stream. Yes, click all notifications and then you will get that.
And you guys have already figured out, unlike Carl and Chad and all these other people, we don't really do a live stream. What we do is we record our show, and then we have sort of video going. Yeah.
So I'd like to do more of a video thing. So when we're doing video live streams, it'll be more coordinated and stuff. But right now we just have this static two shot. Tacey's not here today. I didn't bother even asking her because she's, I know she didn't have a topic and she just didn't feel like doing it, I'm sure. So McRib says I have numbness in the mornings and yeah.
Yeah, okay. He says, now everyone is on the alpha-lipoic acid bandwagon. I was there 20 years ago for numbness. I take alpha-lipoic acid for my neuropathy as well. The first thing I noted when I started taking it was I could close my eyes in the shower and wash my hair without falling down. Right on. So, and I can, I got down to about 40 words a minute on typing. I'm back up to about 100 now. I used to be 140, so...
Chris Catterson says, "I've got dumbness all day. How can I treat that?" He's being funny, but there are things you can do for brain fog. And a lot of people have brain fog just because this world is conducive to brain fog. But there's post-COVID brain fog. There's post-influenza brain fog. Some medications cause it. I've had the best luck with lion's mane.
And I get a drink called Odyssey Elixir or Odyssey. Yeah, Elixir. And it does have a little caffeine. It's like 85 milligrams of caffeine, but it's got lion's mane and cordyceps mushrooms in it. And to me, that's the best thing I have. I function higher on that than anything else there. If you just don't want to take a big, you know, 12 ounce sort of soda type drink, you
You can get Magic Mind. And if you use the code WATP, you help Carl out. It's magicmind.com and use code WATP. Okay. Dr. Scott, do you believe in the benefits of alpha lipoic acid? Well, who cares if he does? I do because I know it works. All right. And he says don't take it on an empty stomach. I take it at bedtime before I go to bed. Chris Catterson said load of shit. What's he talking about?
What is he saying? Probably the floating poo question. Oh, okay, okay, okay. All right, very good. Let's see.
Chris Mack says, I fasted from 9 p.m. Tuesday night until 9 a.m. this morning. It felt great. Can we do a segment on fasting, ketosis, and autophagy sometimes, please? Or autophagy, however you want to pronounce it. I don't think it's autophagy. It sounds weird. Yeah, absolutely. Chris Mack, just call in. 347-766-4323. That'll remind me. Mm-hmm.
And Chris K. says, I have inverse reactions with SSRIs. I have panic attacks instead of anxiety relief. Do you know why my brain is broken like that? It's not broken. Everybody's different. If we were all the same, we would only need one drug for everything. Yep.
And also, if we were all the same, one virus could wipe all of us out. So that's why we have this natural variation. It's very good that we have that. And you just have to know that that's correct. Now, I wonder if the SNRIs would do the same thing, duloxetine.
Venlafaxine, those are two SNRIs. They're serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors. As a matter of fact, the old school antidepressants like amitriptyline, nortriptyline, and trazodone are all SNRIs as well.
So they made a big deal when these things came out. SNRI, it's new. It's not. That's what the original ones were. The innovation was getting rid of the norepinephrine and doing the SSRIs because they're more specific. But for a lot of people, the SNRIs still work better. I hardly ever prescribe an SSRI anymore because I deal with cancer pain, and the SSRIs are worthless for that. So, okay.
All right. And Chris Mack, I used to take a shot of liposomal alpha lipoic acid every morning, thinking I had a mega dose of vitamin C in it. Well, okay, well, whatever. You'll just piss it out if it doesn't irritate your stomach to hell. That's the problem. When I took a lot of vitamin C, I just had a heartburn all the time. Give me that real. And then Chris K said, Buspar worked for me. That's Buspirone, but gave me ticks. When I tried to take that stuff for anxiety, I got this serotonin rush.
And I had to just sit there like I was, you know, moving at 90 miles an hour. My body was like I was accelerating. And it would last for about 30 minutes. It made it very difficult to work. So that stuff didn't work for me. But it does work for other people. It's like magic. All right. Okie doke.
Well, let's get out of here, Dr. Scott. You got anything else? No, sir. I was going to say, let's wrap it. Oh, my God, Steve. What do you got? What do you got? That's my freaking wallet I thought I lost two months ago. Are you shitting me? Yay! It's the best day ever! Oh, yay! Yeah, thanks. Give myself a bang. Yay! What's it got in it? It's got like 50... Here, I'll share it with you. You mother of...
$125? Oh, I would not have stolen it. No, I know you wouldn't have. No, thank you. Oh, I thought I just left it on top of my truck and drove off. Oh, my God. Did you have to get rid of your credit cards? Yeah, I got everything new. Everything new. No, it's okay. No, I'm just glad I found it. Okay. Hey, we got $100. We can go buy lunch. No, you go do your thing with that. I'm sorry that it got stuck here. No, it's awesome. All right. You want to play some music? Let's play one. All right, we're going to play music. If you'll turn on the air conditioner. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Hey, thanks, guys.
You got to do the intro. All right. Yeah, I got to get out of here. So what we do, if you want to join the Fluid family, we horrify people with terrible musical renditions of beloved songs that ruin them for you forever after the show is over. So thanks goes to Dr. Scott, 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 and other times at Jim McClure and Lewis Johnson'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. Thanks, guys.