Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Believe It Or Not, More As for Your Qs

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

The more questions answered, the more oddly specific they become. Justin plays the listener as Dr Sydnee addresses Alice in Wonderland syndrome, super glue, and sixth disease.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Sobbing, it's a marital tour of

misguided medicine. I'm your cohost Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. And I am genuinely elated to be recording a podcast again. That's right. It feels so long. It's been a heck of a couple weeks folks if you weren't aware long. It's been a heck of a couple of weeks folks. If you weren't aware, you heard on the national news about the terrible events in Texas. Well, it happened in West Virginia, too. Just didn't make lots of quite as many headlines. We're the forgotten frozen state. We had these terrible ice storms. I haven't seen anything like it for probably a decade, an inch of ice, just frozen on the trees. But longer than that, longer than the decade, it wasn't this bad, whatever 10 years ago,

whatever it was when we, yeah, I've never seen anything, every single blade of grass, leaf, tree limb, everything in case in ice, in case in an inch of ice all around it for a week, or more, I think we lost power for, I don't know, a week other people lost for,

I mean, are still losing, have still. Yeah, week, other people lost for, I mean, our still losing have still. Yeah, there's still people in the, in the more rural areas who do not have power have not for two weeks and counting, um, in the cold and some of them projected, they won't have power back for two more weeks. Also, there's flooding here today. So it's a good time, but hey, listen, I don't know what we did, but, sorry, please. And if I were very, I apologize on behalf of the state of West Virginia, but I could come up with a list of things.

I see a locus. I'm moving to Missouri. That's what I'll tell you. Single frog. I'm outskied. Missouri, that's a reserve. I just a fun state to say, Missouri. Missouri, anyway, so because of the weirdness of our lives currently, we thought it would be fun

to do one of our Q&A episodes. There are always a delight to create for you and they're fun and they lift our spirits and we hope that it can do the same for you, assuming that your home was also frozen for any extended period of time. If it was, I hope it's not, and that you have power and clean water and that you're safe. Justin, do you want to read the questions? I'm ready. My weird. Now I'm going to be inhabiting the role of the listener.

Would I say my or I, I'm talking about question asker? Does that make sense? Feel free to paraphrase the questions too. Well, okay. My, my weird, that's a, that's a cool thing to just throw on me, but here we go. Does that make sense? Feel free to paraphrase the questions too. Well, okay. My, well, my weird, that's a cool thing to just throw on me, but here we go. Well, I thought you were good at doing that on the fly.

No, I ask anyone. I can barely read the questions verbatim on my brother or brother of me. My weird question is about MRIs. I had an MRI the other day, and I want to know more about why it takes so long for each scan to complete. And if I were to look at them

with literally no medical training, would have I built to understand them at all? Or would they just be fuzzy lines? That's from aim. Justin, you've had an MRI before. Yeah. If the M stands for miserable. No, but I would say you are not alone in that MRI. Sands answer miserable. Really. It sucks. MRIs. Magnetic resonance imaging is actually what it stands for. It's not a modern medical miracle, but getting one done is the pits. I have never heard anyone say like, I really enjoyed that MRI. Usually if I'm going to have somebody have a cat scan performed, one of the first things I say is, it's not the MRI.

It's a cat scan. They're of the first things I say is it's not the MRI. It's a cat scan. They're much faster. Don't worry because people never want another MRI if they've had one. You have to like completely still in a terrible tube and then they blaze you with loud noises. It is. It is very loud and it's kind of like a tutee tutee tutee sound. It's absolutely. Works. Wow. This is just what I wanted to think about. Thank you, Cindy. It's great. Sorry.

And now, if you've ever seen like you can Google a picture, but they're like a big doughnut-shaped thing that you got to go in, they do have open MRIs, which are more like C-shaped, which are not quite as intense, but you won't find those everywhere. Probably expensive. But they're still loud. Yeah.

And they're still loud and long. I mean, even if whatever you're at, I'm also, no. Why do they take so long? In part, it's because of how many pictures they're usually taking. We get MRIs. We'll need to get,

kind of to say, aim all, all love to you. Thank you so much for your question. Uh, because I, I feel the exact same way, but isn't that a distinctly, like human response? Like this magnetic scan of my brain is taking forever. It can't be the segues that long for the incredible miracle of randomly scanning my brain tissue to complete. It is hard for me. I understand so much.

And you can just tell the sciences I loved. I love biology. I can get down with chemistry. Physics is so hard for me. It's just the one that alludes me. And I'm always fascinated by people who are gonna physics because it's the one of the three big hard sciences that I had to take a lot of that, oof. Tell me where all the big hard sciences are. So MRIs, they're big magnets, right?

What are the people calling them marries? I don't know, they cause them that. I should. Some people just call them MRs. Okay. Mery's is good, but they're already just MRI. Anyway, Murray started. You can work on them. So it produces a magnetic field. And it makes all of the protons in your body, in the various fluids and tissues and whatever, all throughout your body, it changes their rotational axis to sort of align with the field. And then there is a radio frequency current that has run through the patient.

When Sydney, it's so rare on this show, but when Sydney talks about something, she does not completely understand. She looks at me with this look like, I'm gonna be like, uh-uh, you did it quite get it right. It's very rare on some of us, but it does happen occasionally. It's very good. So the protons are stimulated by this current. They rotate differently. They get like really excited. And then it's turned off and they go back to the way they were. Okay.

No, I'm not sure that's how it works. That's how it works. And the time that it takes for them to realign with the magnetic field is different depending on where they are in the body, like what kind of tissue is there. So it'll make every, all these different tissues light up differently, which is how it produces the image. And you can use like a contrast material, which you, you know, we inject a dye of sorts,

gadolinium. We inject it into you because that will make the differences between certain tissues even greater, okay, on the picture. And it's interesting, you can look up pictures of MRIs, there's lots of them online, and you would know what you were looking at in the sense that like that's inside a human body. And even if you have no medical training, if you've just seen like pictures of like

a brain or, I mean, to some extent, like the major organs, you probably would be vaguely aware like, oh, I kind of know what that is. You would know you're looking inside a human body, right? If you've ever seen a diagram of the human body. Now what you probably wouldn't know without medical training is like, is that what it's supposed to look like. I mean, even as somebody with a lot of medical training, I am not a radiologist. There are a lot of subtle things on this kind of image that I won't immediately be able

to tell. I can tell more than someone with no training, of course. But you could probably see major issues, even without medical training. Again, to some extent, just because things look asymmetrical or off, but you wouldn't know exactly what they were. They take so long because they are taking incredibly detailed pictures and sometimes thousands of pictures.

I mean, really, thousands of pictures that giant magnet is taking of you when you're laying in it, which is why it takes a long time. All right. Well, we have a lot of powerful, fantastic names on this week's Q&A scene, I gotta say. How common is Allison Wonderland Syndrome and other sleep-related disorders?

Had this a lot as a kid. That's from Topper. I wanted to mention this briefly because we've had this request a lot as an episode topic Alisson Wonderland Syndrome and it's tough because sometimes I just don't know how I'm going to fill a whole epit... like some of these really interesting but I feel it's more like an anecdote and I don't know how to fill a whole episode with it and this is one of those. So Alisson Wonderland Syndrome is what we call sensation. It can be brought on by different things. It can be its own thing. It can be brought on by different things.

It can be its own thing. It can be brought on by like certain forms of epilepsy, like temporal lobe epilepsy. It can be brought on by infections with some viruses, like Epstein bar virus. It's more common in kids. And it's the sensation of things either sort of like getting really small or getting really large,

like looking like they're really far away, like you're looking through a telescope or a microscope if they're really small, it's things changing and your relation, like your size and relation to things changing. It's that perception becomes altered, which is where the name comes from, right? Because Alice ate the stuff and shrank and drank the stuff. I got big. Whatever. I always forget. Just eat it. I'm gonna get big. And then you will shrink. Eat all the stuff and then you'll get big. What I thought was interesting is that if you read the literature on it, we still don't understand. I was the one earlier. No, on the syndrome, we still don't understand it very well because what everybody will say

is it's extremely rare. It's very rare. It's very rare, very uncommon. But then there was this one study in Japan that estimated that like 6% of boys and 7% of girls experience this at some point or another when they're kids, like young children. So kids are just like super calm. Which would be like super calm. All the time.

Yeah, I mean, comparatively, like if something happens in 7% of the population, that's not rare. No. No. So, you know, maybe the sensation of that, this perception and whatever the, the, their myriad reasons for it is more common. The syndrome itself, especially that persists into adulthood and like is a chronic condition that is rare. I will say that's very rare. Got it. I have a partial heterochromia eridium.

My right eye is blue, my left half is blue and half brown. My left is half blue and half brown. Why does this happen? How rare is it? How rare is it to only be half of one eye? That's from Johnny Ace. See what I'll tell you? Oh, my name's this way.

You know, it's interesting. I was reading about heterochromia. Specifically, heterochromia can be of any tissues, like different colors of any tissues. And then if you add the iridium, you mean eye. And it's, I guess a lot more common in certain domestic animals, like particularly like Siberian huskies are, it's very common that they'll have like one light eye, one dark eye. Like usually one brown.

You see that this listener is a Siberian husky. No, I just love podcasts. When you start googling this term and trying to find out things like how frequent is this, you get a lot of information about animals that aren't human animals. And so like, and it's associated in like other animals, not humans with like a lack of genetic diversity. In humans, it's not. I want to make that very clear.

Johnny Ace. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. It is Ace. I'm not. Take a side rule at these. It is not. It is not. I'm dragging you. No.

We're not entirely certain why. We know that there is a hereditary form that you just inherit. It's autosome-addominant. You just inherit it from your parents. We know that melanin can be related. Like, it could be an area where there just isn't pigment. There isn't melanin. And so that's why an eye would look lighter.

But it's actually pretty rare. It affects fewer than 200,000 people in the US. Oh, look at you. Yeah, it's a very rare condition. Like I said, there are just spontaneous causes, but it's usually a hereditary thing just something you inherited. And there is, Justin, I thought this was interesting.

There's something central heterochromia, which is when you have little spikes of a different color in the middle of your eye, and then another color behind it, which I mention because you have that. And it's very rare, and we've never put a name to it. So rare and be full as an name for it. But these partial heterochromias, where would just have like a segment of an eye that

was one color and then the rest of it was a different or something like you described, that's with this condition not uncommon in of itself. You know what I mean? Like that tends to run with heterochromia can have a varied presentation, but just the concept itself is very rare. I know we need to take a break, but I want to get in this quick one from Jude. Does cutting your hair really make it grow faster? No.

It just does. It just does. No, it doesn't. I mean, like, you can do it for stylish purposes if you see fit, but no. Okay. My sister and I were chatting recently because we had been on the same medication, but in different countries. She was on it in the same medication, but in different countries. She was on it in the US.

I was in Canada. We noticed something a bit strange. Her pills are regular round pill shape, but mine were triangular. Then I assessed the contents of my medicine cabinet, realized I have had pills that are round oval square and triangular. I even have one medication where the pills two circles together, like a weird figure eight shape, with a line down the middle as if it were like a break line cue. It got me wondering,

is there specific reason that different pills are shaped differently? Does that change my country? And that's from grace. How do you give me your guess? Yeah, I was gonna say, you may know this. My guess would be that it's a a way to distinguish like brands versus generics.

That's my guess. It, yes. It is about generics. When you have the brand name, I wonder if that's part of the copyrighter patent. Oh, I'm certain that is. And then the other part of it is just like, if you have different companies that are producing, so like when a new pharmaceutical is introduced,

it's usually on brand at first. Like it's a branded medication that cannot be reproduced generically, right? They have a patent on it. You can't, nobody else can make it. And so it has a distinctive look. And so you get like tag lines like the little purple pill, right? That makes sense. Because then you know exactly what it, then you know you're getting real. I like how big of deal the blueness of Viagras. You know what you're getting when you look at it and that's part of the brand.

Once it goes off patent and other companies can start producing it, which is great for everybody who needs to take it because then it gets way cheaper. It doesn't matter, right? What you're taking is no longer called whatever the brand name is, so who cares what it looks like? So whatever is the cheapest for that particular generic pharmaceutical company

to produce is what they're going to do. So you'll see a ton of variety and it can vary like your pharmacy could get a contract with a different generic supplier for month to month. I mean, it usually isn't that variable. But yeah, so the pills you fill could look different. Now, I would always suggest if the pill that you have been on chronically looks, you know, very different, it never hurts to say, hey, did this? Is this still? Yeah. It never hurts to ask. And it's not necessary. I mean, certainly from country to country, it can vary, but it can vary from state to state, from city to city to pharmacy. The same medication can look very different all over the world. Just different generic. You think it break now?

Let's take a break. Yeah, let's take a break. Okay. We will be right back for the first time. Quick trip to the New England Department. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Maximum Fun is a network by and for cool popular people, but did you know it also has an offering designed to appeal to nerds? A show for nerds. On Maximum Fun the devil you say. It's true, it's called the greatest generation, and they review episodes of a television program for nerds, called Star Trek. They reviewed TNG, DS9 and are now reviewing Voyager. Hey Star Trek, my

daughter enjoys that program. Well if she enjoys that and she enjoys humor of the flash one variety, might I recommend she subscribe to the greatest generation? Hey are you calling my kid a nerd? Where, gotta go. They come a friend of their soda by subscribing to the greatest generation on MaximumFund.org today. I've had some issues with super enlarged tonsils in my life and don't understand why they do that. I mean, I understand their purpose of protecting your throat from bacteria from what I know, but why do they have to enlarge so much when swollen?

Why do they not just give you a scratchy throat, slash a voice, and that's it. That's from Jesse. It has to do with what tonsils are made of. Tonsils are like, they're like lymphatic material. They're like lymph nodes. And when you have an infection, your lymph nodes swell, right? Because they are taking in the invader, so to speak, whatever the bacterial or viral or whatever invader it is,

and creating an immune response to it. And so in that process, lymph tissue, immune tissue, whatever, will swell because it's getting more blood flow. That's what's happening. More blood flow goes to the area, it gets engorged, it swells, it's part of the immune response. This is why your tonsils swell.

Now of course, if you have chronic infection or inflammation or whatever that's causing your tonsils to swell for a very long time, then it becomes no longer productive, right? Because exactly like you said, then it makes it hard to swallow or breathe or talk or whatever, which is why we take them out when those kinds of situations occur. But that's, it's responding just like your lymph nodes do.

All right, hello. Recently I had a birth control implant put in my arm, and I know my uterus has kind of been cleaning itself out for a few months, but why is the stuff brown and not red? I've been on my period for three months now, but it hasn't been blood colored. It's more like a ready brown. I'm a black. What makes it turn color like that? When will it end?

Thanks for a very good show. It always serves a great distraction at work. That's from periodically concerning Oregon. So the first part of the question is, and this is a good thing to note for anyone who has periods, it is normal for the blood and the substance that is released to look red, like you would expect blood to. It can look pink if there's some mixture of like cervical fluid and stuff in there too. It can look brown and it can look black like older blood that has

been exposed to oxygen. That's what it tends to look like. And especially if it's older blood where the water has started to evaporate from it. And so it's more concentrated than that pigment looks more concentrated. So it's old, old blood that's been exposed to oxygen starts to get a brown or black appearance. If there is something that looks grayish or greenish, that is usually something you should get checked out, but red, brown, black, pink, these are all colors that blood can be, and that's normal.

And as to how long it's so variable from person to person, everyone's experience with a birth control, whether it's like an implantable device or an IUD or whatever it is, is going to be a little different. The goal would be eventually to thin out that you're in lining so much that you stop having periods. That's nice. That is what we hope happens a lot of the time because that's easier, right?

But it doesn't always. So it's kind of unpredictable. Just keep checking in with your doctor if you're concerned about it. Okay. Can you still see with an eye that has been popped out of its socket from Caleb? So I had to think about this because this isn't like something we do. Not routinely, I wouldn't. No, it just made me think of that one awful movie.

That one terrible. When I used to be able to watch horror movies that were like the really disturbing ones, hostile. Hostile. That happens. Oh, I can't go there anymore. I'm too old for that stuff. I think as long as the optic nerve is intact, which is the thing that I, in your mind,

if you're picturing this, you probably are picturing it hanging by something. Yeah. That's what it's hanging by, the optic nerve nerve as long as that's still intact and not damaged Yeah, you would probably have it would probably mess you up though because the image would be So different right we're used to our eyes are lined up to produce three dimensional images by giving us two slightly different versions of Reality in front of us, right? Without that alignment, you would probably get

two completely different, I mean. Your brain would have a lot of trouble processing that. So then you get this like, tree falls down on the forest kind of thing. Like the eye is seen, but it's the brain able to process the information that it's seen. I don't know. I honestly don't, I mean theoretically it could, but yeah, I don't know how it would reconcile the difference between the two images. Yeah, I don't know.

That would be difficult. That would be tough. Oh, the primary, you feel pretty sick. Yeah, you probably get instantly very nauseous. And you could control, I mean, like the eye would just be where it was because the muscles that control your eye, like moving from side to side and all that are in the socket there. And so without all those teeny little muscles, it would just be there. I can't be in cross-eyed, but like in like triple, like quadriple that. I mean, it would suck. It would suck.

It would not be fun. Don't do it. Here's the official Swabbund's recommendation. Don't do it. Yeah, don't do that. Another eye question here. I've floaters in my eyes a lot and I've heard different explanations for what they are, despects, cholesterol, water, even parasites. I really hope it's not the last one. So what

actually are they and why do they happen through Amanda? So generally speaking, man, I always hate saying stuff like this. Like, yes, there is a parasite that you can get in your eye that you can see. That is incredibly rare and that is not sleep well. That is not that is not the cause of the vast majority of eye floaters as we know them to be as most of us experience. Those are just changes in the vitrious humor, the, the stuff, the jelly-like stuff that's inside your eyeball, it can become more liquid, over time, little fibers can kind of clump and cast shadows, and those shadows

are what you are experiencing as floaters. They're normal. Everybody gets them. That's all they are. That, having a floater in and of itself is not necessarily something to be concerned about. If you're having them constantly, if they're worsening, if they're affecting your vision. If it's parents' life. If anything else is going on, you should get them checked out. But like having a floater is not necessarily anything to be concerned about.

Most days, the first time I eat something in the morning, I will sneeze after the first mouthful. Why is this? It's from Liam. Do you remember we've talked about this sort of before on the show, the Snatiation? Snatiation. Snatiation reflects the combination of sneeze

and satiation. Wow. Cause you eat. This is a known reflex. Some people sneeze when they eat. We don't know why. It seems to be genetic. You see, you might ask if anybody else in your family

does this, but it is a known thing. And some people, their nose runs when they eat. Okay. Every time they eat, they get rhinitis, they get a runny nose. Yeah, I know. They're weird. Humans were miracles.

Weird nerve. It's weird stuff. Some sort of weird nerve reflex that happens when the stomach starts to get full of food and then you sneeze. I don't know. It's a weird thing, but ask if anybody in your family has it because we think it's genetic. Here's a weird one. That's not me. This is the text of the email. I'm not editorializing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no quote female puberty before this, but over the next few years after realizing I noticed a lot more hair on my body growing in places

Assigned female at birth people wouldn't get chest neck jawline, happy trail, et cetera without taking hormone treatment or similar hair stimulating treatments Is this normal for that age slash gender group? I'm really glad and that's from kit. Thank you, Kit. I'm really glad that you asked this question because first of all, I should say that like it's to to answer specifically what is happening in your human body on a podcast. Obviously I I wouldn't try to do right because it for for something very specific like that. You know, we don't this why I don't diagnose on a podcast. You don't wanna do that.

That's not proper medicine. I think though that it brings up an important point, which is, first of all, hair distribution is different in everybody. And it is related, yes, to an extent, to various hormones, estrogen, and testosterone, and all the different things, yes, for sure. And we all have different mixes of that in our bodies,

which is why to say a certain hair pattern is exclusive to one gender or another, really isn't very accurate, right? Some of us, I am a cis female and I am very hairy. And that is just, do I have more testosterone? Maybe, maybe that's why. I don't know, never had it checked. And that certainly could be part of it.

But I think it just speaks to a really important point that the email brings up, which is gender is so much more complicated than what I think some people would like to reduce it to, which is chromosomes. The idea that you can just call someone, and I think like a lot of you know where I'm going with this, but the idea that you could call someone,

that first of all that there are two genders, and that secondly, that those genders are easily defined by XXXYY is a completely flawed concept scientifically. And that's not just what I think some might write off as like being politically correct or woke the science. The science says that no, there aren't two genders and we can't define them by chromosomes alone. No, we can't define them by chromosomes alone. No, we can't define them by hormones alone.

Because as you've pointed out, we all have varying levels of estrogen and testosterone and progesterone and all the different hormones that make us grow breasts or not or grow hair different places or not or have a penis or have a vagina. All of those things are different in different people. And that has nothing to do with the gender that they present as and identify as and

Tell you that they are right? So I think what it what all this speaks to is that you can't define gender by Chromosomes cells receptors hormones you define gender by chromosomes, cells, receptors, hormones, you define gender by saying what gender do you identify as and asking a person and then they tell you. If you started looking at the molecular level, whether you're talking about hormones in this question or chromosomes, there are a lot more than two, you know, genders is just the simple case. But I think that's a good point to make

that when people say that there's not just two genders, male and female and you can't just assign them based on genitalia or chromosomes, they're saying that because they know the science and the science is that there aren't just two genders and chromosomes in genitalia do not define gender. I'm not a huge fan of medical sitcoms or dramas with a few exceptions, mainly scrubs and mash.

I know scrubs is a lot more accurate than most medical TV, but one question that's always struck with me is about video games. Turk, the search on the show, does a lot of things that are presented as silly or superstitious to improve his skill during one episode he begins to play Xbox, addictively claiming that studies show that surgeons who play great deal of video games develop better fine motor skills. This always seems suspect to me in terms of truth, but like the kind of thing that people would actually believe

apocryphal. Is it true? That's from Luke. So Luke, I didn't know. I've heard people say this. I don't know if it's a common belief. I don't want to say I know that it's a common belief among surgeons because I don't know.

I haven't ever pulled any surgeons. But I've heard people say this. So I look to see has anybody done a study. I found a study from 2007 called the Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st century. Seems like you've got the title to go to if you want to answer this question. And they were exactly looking for this. Now they were specifically looking at laparoscopic surgery when we use a camera, like a minimally

invasive with a camera and just a couple other points of insertion, you know, instead of like a big incision where we open you up, that's an open surgery. A laparoscopic surgery would video games help you with that specifically, because what you're doing with a laparoscopic procedure is you're looking at a screen, right? You're not looking inside the human body. You're not looking down at the patient. After you put all the tools in, you're mainly looking at the screen as you're operating the trocar and whatever else you're using, right? Because the camera's shown you things. So the question is, would video games make you better at that? Now, this was a small study.

There were only, I think, 33 residents in it. But their conclusion is that playing video games did make people better. There it is. That is the, again, this is a very small study. And I'm not gonna say that this is for these 33 surgeons, but they said that, yeah, we think maybe, maybe, it is, it does correlate with laparoscopic surgical skills.

Now, now it is important to say, to note, though, that's only if they're leaped. If they are kind of a noob, it probably isn't helping them at all. They need to get their Katie up, and they need to get some six skills. And then maybe they can see about it. I would want it reproduced a lot in a larger set of population. I have a volunteer attribute. Before I would buy it. But I do think, of course, hand-eye coordination is an important part of anything with your hands,

right? And especially if you're having to look at a screen, like you're doing what you're doing a procedure where you can't necessarily see directly with your eyes because it's not an open procedure, I could see that technology like being familiar with it. Anyway, I wouldn't I wouldn't bank on just this one study, but it's out there. It's interesting. So would you say that video game is done, did it again? I'd you would say that. Would you say it? Would you say that video game is done? What's the next question?

It's about vaping. Okay. Are vitamin supplement vapes good or bad for you? Do they even work? Like can the body absorb vitamins through inhalation? So I looked into this this because I didn't know the revidement vapes, by the way. Did you know that?

I feel like you should have known that tracks. I didn't know the revidates. It does seem like that would be part of my milieu, but no, I was not aware. There were some old studies in like the 50s, 60s back then that looked at Nebulized B12, putting vitamin B12 into like, you know, the Nebulbulizer machines, people who get treatments for asthma, like I'll be at her own stuff, that if you inhaled B12 that way, was it effective? And there were some studies that said you could actually get B12 into your body through inhalation, right?

But in terms of all the other vitamins, I mean, the answer is like, I don't know. Like, we don't typically, nobody's done those studies to prove that. Like, you can put them in a vape and sell them, and you don't have to do a study to say it works, right? So they're just doing that. And a lot of them will cite those B12 studies to be like, well, no, we know that you can inhale B12,

so why couldn't you inhale another vitamin? That sort of makes sense, sort of. That's not really enough. But the other thing is those were nebulized, those were like cold droplets that were being nebulized into the lungs, not like dripped over a heated coil and then inhaled. Okay.

So it's a very different mechanism. So I don't think it's, I don't think you can just say one to one. Yeah. They weren't cranking up a bunch of ohms and getting some real chunky cotton for the 12. It was like cool. I have no idea. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And I have no, so I have no idea if you could even get a vitamin in that way. And if you could, what it would do and how much would be penetrating and also if it's harmful. And also do you even need the vitamin? Is the other, well, that's the other thing right most of us don't need vitamins. So do you even need it and is it harmful?

We don't know. I would not if you think you need a vitamin supplement, I would talk to your provider about that and then I would take it the good old-fashioned way if you do need it, you know, in a pill or whatever your doc suggests, but not vape, not vape. When I was pregnant, the skin on my stomach became numb. Everyone told me I would get sensation back, but it's been two years,

and I still can only feel pressure on my stomach. Will I ever get sensation back? Could it be because I needed a C-section? My daughter and I love your show. That's from long lost nerves in Louisville. You know, it's interesting. So I wanted to, I don't know that it is necessarily common to lose sensation from pregnancy itself. Like the tissue is being stretched, but it's normally not something that damages

nerves, you know, because everything's growing, right? Everything's growing to a comedy. So like that doesn't, but C-sections definitely do. And any big incision like that. So not just C-sections, but for me, that's the only surgery I've had. So it's the only reference point I have. But if you have a large incision somewhere and you touch it, it might still, even if it's been years and years ago, still feel different. Numb or less of a sensation or just different from the rest of your tissue. My, because I have two C-section scars because I couldn't go in through the first one,

I got to get a big old equal sign there. Both of them feel somewhat numb to this day, you know, six and three years ago. So it is, yeah, after a nurse has been severed in like a surgical procedure, it is not uncommon for that tissue to feel there. And you might completely regain sensation. That's not everybody, but for some people, it always feels a little different. When my nephew was about six months old,

he developed a fever. I was taken to see the doctor who told his parents he had sixth disease. And they're anxiety. They didn't ask for any details what that actually is. Spoiler, it cleared up in a few days and he was fine and is fine. What is sixth disease?

Why is it called that? And are there other diseases named after numbers like this? That's from Martha. Yes. There are, it's a great question. There are a list of common infant of child hoods and just say infant common childhood skin rashes that we came up with a long time ago and numbered. And we just numbered them. There you go. I was, you know, was

funny. I was taught in medical school. This is what my professor told me that we numbered them this way because they are the order they're most likely to happen. I do not think that is true. And I don't think that was accurate. At least I haven't found anybody else say that. I think it was just the numbers that they were given, the order that they were added in. So, first disease is measles. Nobody calls it that anymore. I mean, if you said I have first disease, first I'd say why did you get vaccinated? And secondly, like, do you mean measles?

Second disease is scarlet fever. Third disease is rubella, fourth disease is, that's actually debated like it was this even a real entity. It might be something called staphlecoccal scalded skin syndrome or it might have been a kind of a collection of different rashes that were grouped under the name fourth disease. Fifth disease is the only one I think that's kind of perpetuated. Like you'll hear people say, my kid got diagnosed with fifth disease, which is called arithemian fexiosis. It's caused by a parva virus. It's pretty, most of these are pretty,

like fifth disease and sixth disease, which is also called rosiola or the three-day fever. Those are pretty benign, common infections that kids get, viral rashes, and then they go away. Usually fifth and sixth disease, not necessarily huge. Fifth disease is notable because kids will get what they call a slap cheek appearance. Their cheeks will look very, very red.

Yeah, we numbered them that way, and that's perpetuated. Some people try to get, for Kawasaki, when it was was first named and discovered tried to get seventh disease going for it No, no dice didn't feel like it stuck and not honestly none of these have ever stuck except fifth disease You will still hear that call fifth disease. Well apparently six disease to at least maybe I guess yeah, Rosie, Ola is what I would have what I usually say if I suspect Rosie, Ola And it's just a clinical diagnosis. I would just say Rosie, O. Once while getting a flu shot, the pharmacist used an alcohol wipe with something numbing in it and I barely felt the injection. A separate time I was given a subcutaneous flu shot and it was so painless, I was legitimately surprised with the nurse till Mayhew was done. Why isn't this

more common? I don't mind the minor discomfort of vaccines, but I imagine it would make things easier for kids or for people who are afraid of needles or hesitant to get vaccinated because of the pain of the injection. That's from Lenny. It's a good question. I would say because there are a couple different things we can use. Sometimes it's just like a cold spray, just a like numb. There's a cold thing you can put on there to numb the area. There is a topical, like, emla cream that you can put on the area to numb just the very,

very surface of the skin. Both of those things can like lessen the pain related to an injection or something. And you'll see it if you've ever had something like a joint injection, usually use that cold spray on the outside of the skin before they- They used it on me when I got my, what was it in my wrists? Your carpal tunnel injection. Yeah. And that can help with the surface pain.

I would say that we don't use it as often for very mundane logistical reasons. Shots tend to not hurt very much for the most part, right? Like just your standard intramuscular, like flu shot injection, they tend to not hurt very much and they were trying to do them quickly. And so I think logistically the idea is that you don't really need it. But it is something you you could ask about for sure. If you're someone who is especially you know kind of nervous about needles and or if you have somebody in your family or a kid, it is certainly something you can ask about.

I don't not. In the US, everything's about cost. And so like, will every office have it? I don't know, maybe. But you could certainly use it to lessen the pain. But I would say that that's the, it's a very mundane reason. They just think, well, shots don't usually bother people too much, so we won't bother with it.

But if you ask about it ahead of time, a lot of offices and places will have it and I think it's certainly worth something we could maybe do a better job of offering, especially for like kids or people who are very anxious about injections. One last question and I know why you put this on here. Can you use superglue to seal your wounds? Can you or should you is really the way did Sydney's dad or should say that is why I added this on here my dad it was this elbow right this before your physician right no well I was in training I don't know if I was done with training or in training somewhere in my path far enough long you knew it was about it yeah he called, I knew it was a bad idea.

He called and asked me, can you use superglue, he had split his elbow open on something. Basketball probably. Probably basketball. And he asked, could he just use superglue to glue it back together? And I said, I wouldn't do that. And he said, well, what if I did?

Yeah. I've been messing around tenses here. And here's the thing, the ingredients and superglue, some, and in some surgical glues we use, there might be some crossover, but here's a very, very important difference. Whether we use, if you come to a hospital or a doctor's office or whatever, you know, some sort of medical facility, and you have an open wound that needs to be stitched or stapled or surgical glued or whatever back together, stary stripped, whatever we decide to use, whatever is appropriate. We are doing that using sterile technique, meaning we are taking every available precaution

to ensure that we don't introduce germs bacteria into the wound while we're fixing it. Because if we do, and it gets infected, it's going to have to be open back up and it's going to be a whole thing and you're not going to like it. Superglue out of your kitchen stuff drawer, if you're like us, at home, is not sterile. And you probably don't have sterile gloves at home and you probably don't have sterile gloves at home. And you probably don't have sterile surfaces. And probably you're just like sort of glopping it on there without having cleaned it and sterilized the area and the glue and everything else appropriately. So I would not recommend this. It might hold something together, but the consequences maybe that you get a pretty bad infection. And then everything is way worse. So if you

really have something that you think needs glued together, then it needs evaluated by somebody who can actually do that under sterile procedure. Well, folks, I hope that these answers have been helpful to you in your specific scenarios. I do like, I love the more we ask for these questions, the more I get questions that are extremely, I love to hear your stories, because I get very specific stories from listeners who are curious about things. And I can't answer all the questions,

we just don't have enough time to do that, but I do try to read every single one that I can, and I do enjoy and appreciate everybody who sends things in. So thank you so much for doing that. We appreciate you. Thanks for listening. So thank you so much for doing that. We appreciate you. Thanks to listening. Thanks to taxpayers for these,

they're some medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And thanks to you for listening. We really appreciate it. If you want more, we got a book. It's called The Solbund's Book. It's now on paperback. Get it wherever fine.

Books are sold. And that's gonna do for us for this week. So thanks so much for listening. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't Alright!