Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 312 - A Pox Upon Your House

Episode Date: May 15, 2018

Dr Steve and crew discuss PA John's high gravity stealth-beer, OTC remedies for allergies, organ donation, varicella vaccine, sauna safety, kratom (again), kava, and more!   Please visit: stuff.doctorsteve.com simplyherbals.net Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happened at the fruit salad race? The oranges peeled out, the banana split, and the cherries went to the pits. You're listening to Weird Medicine with Dr. Steve on the Riotcast Network, Riotcast.com. I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivide stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my infertable woes. I want to take my brain out

and plaster with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen gain. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want to requiem. for my disease.

So I'm aging Dr. Steve. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history broadcast radio. Now a podcast on Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott, a traditional Chinese medical practitioner who keeps the alternative medicine assholes at bay. Hello, Dr. Scott. Uh-oh. Why's your mic off? Oh, try that again. Hey, Dr. Steve.

And she who will do most anything for a glass of expensive wine, it's lady diagnosis, everybody. Hello, Dr. Steve. And Dr. Smith and Major Pornstash are visiting the waiting room today. Hello, Dr. Smith and Major Porn Stash. Hey, Dr. Steve. Hello, Dr. Steve. 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 to your regular medical provider.

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Most importantly We are not your medical providers Take everything you hear with a grain of salt Don't act on anything you hear on this show Without talking over with your doctor Nurse practitioner, physician assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor acupunctures yoga master physical therapist or whatever so anyway last time i saw dr smith i was not in full

control of my faculties it was um uh we were at um pa john's brewery jr h brewing in a town called johnson city tennessee and um he had a new beer called imperial hop drop and imperial hop drop um was very tasty it was an iPA i'm not a big fan of ipas but it It was really good. It was one of the best beers he's ever made. But he was giving it out in these little chinty 10-ounce glasses. It was like, why are you being such a, you know, a tight wad with the beer? I thought maybe they didn't make a lot or something.

And we were having fun. Dr. Scott was there and his girlfriend. And I don't even remember who else was there. Your wife. Well, yeah, well, I remember that. PA Jill. And, yeah, PA Jill and PA-JON were there. when Dr. Smith came over.

And she was only like an hour and 45 minutes late. Right. She showed up just as we were leaving. Which is the problem. This is, she, it's her fault. I'm blaming it on her. You know what? You know what?

In my defense, I went to the wrong brewer. The wrong J.R.H. Brewery. Apparently, there is another one. You know, because I could see what was coming down the road. Yeah. And so we were getting out of there. And I was trying to get him out of there.

And then you showed up. Yes, I did. This is true. So it's all, we'll blame it on her soon. We were leaving and I was fine. And then Dr. Smith shows up and it's like, oh, well, we need to have fun with Dr. Smith. Let's give another beer. And it was that fifth beer that I had that sent me to the moon.

And I was so, you know, and it's like I've been drinking a long time. I can handle my alcohol pretty well. I couldn't understand why all of a sudden I'm talking slow. trying to enunciate and and then I was hugging everybody and telling them I loved them and I hug Dr. Scott's girlfriend and kissed her on the cheek, told her I loved her. I hugged Dr. Smith and kissed her on the cheek, told her I loved her. And I was, you know, at least I'm a happy drunk. Yeah, that was true.

And we came back to the house and apparently Dr. Scott and I played music. And I kind of vaguely remember that. I don't know how in the world I could have played. Fumbled through. Fumbled. Yeah. It had to be terrible. and I do remember I was bending over to pick up my base

and I just kept going and Scott grabbed my belt and held me up to keep me from smashing, you know, doing a face plant. Yes. So I called stupid PA John the next day and I said, what was the ABV, you know, the alcohol by volume of this beer, it was nine. So a regular beer is 3.2. So it was like, I drank five of those. So it was like drinking 15 beers.

And 9% is just under what most wine is. So it was like I drank 10 glasses of wine. And that lady diagnosis, now she can... 2.3 bottles. That'd be nothing. That'd be nothing by her. She just starts loose enough about that time, don't you? Does Tennessee have 3-2 beer also?

I know that's an Oklahoma thing. What's that? Does Tennessee have 3-2 beer? I know they have that in Oklahoma. Yeah, I think, yeah. Yeah. The regular... What's 3-2 beer?

The regular Pilsner is 3.2, right? Oh, okay. Oh, 3.2. Yeah. And so. Bible Belt beer. There you are. Oh, yeah.

Why bother? Oh, sorry. We call it piss water. The brewers will call it beer-flavored water. Yeah. So, but, you know, on a real cold day after you've mowed the lawn, of course, I pay somebody to do mine. But, you know, something analogous. After you pay the lawn guy.

Then you have your light beer. And then you're hot and sweaty from watching somebody mow your lawn. Then, you know, a nice. cold 3.2 beer can't be beat, really, you know. It doesn't get you too wasted. You get a little bit of that afternoon buzz. Do you guys notice that if you drink in the afternoon that you get a different buzz than you did? Do you notice that, too, major porn stash?

I mean, you're nodding your head. Are you just being agreeable? No, no. I can either drink during the night or I can drink during the day, but I can't do both. Yeah, right, right. And if I ever lose the buzz, it's gone. It's gone for the day. Isn't that weird?

I hate that. Or you just get hammered, you know, if you really put it too. That's usually what I do. You got to keep it going. Yeah. For me, I like that better because by 9 p.m. I'm hung over and I wake up okay. Yeah, right, right, versus like waking up, hung over and ruining your whole day. I agree.

The, oh, I did not wake up with a hangover the next day because my wife, before I went to bed, or before I passed out, whatever, she gave me some ibuprofen. And I found that really helps. lots of water and ibuprofen before bed and then you wake up and I'm always tired but I don't have that horrible horrible hangover so that implies to me that there's some inflammatory component to the hangover you know no one's ever really pinpointed it but but anyway um yeah so that was fun anyway so we have to do it again I'm going to join you next time yes yes and next time when you get the Dr. Smith is my research assistant, and for me to just be, you know, grueling from the mouth.

That's better than your buddy's girlfriends. Well, I mean, all right. They all seem to enjoy it. I thought it was awesome. You're insane. Hey, but the best part was Dr. Steve dancing. He was dancing telling the story and he was slinging his beer and he's dancing. Oh, yeah.

You were talking back and forth. You were definitely yelling and screaming, like yelling and I'm trying. There's lots of curse words coming out. Shut up, I was not. Like when we went to Owl, remember, you did the same thing? You were on the table screaming profanities. Remember dancing? At the band.

Yes, of course I remember that. That's nothing like the same thing. You're at a band, you know, you're watching a band. Of course you're going to get up on the table and yell MF as loud as you fucking can. You were the only one just so you know. I was not the only one. I was the only one in our group Because I had a very state group

He was a favorite I'd do some body surfing Some crowd surfing Oh it was a great time You know John makes a couple good beers Yeah he really does That one was really really good But damn it's strong

Yeah so anyway Nobody wants to hear my dumb drunk story So anyway Hey check out stuff dot doctor steve.com Stuff dot doctor steve.com Please go there and look at all the different things that we have there, or you can just click through and go straight to Amazon.

Most of the things that we talk about on this show that you can buy, show up on stuff. Dottersteve.com, and we've got a question coming up where I specifically put something on there for that person. Don't forget tweak to audio.com, offer code fluid. They are a Tennessee company.

I didn't know that until recently, and they make the best earbuds for the price on the market and if you use offer code fluid FLUID you'll get 33% off your purchase which is like buying three things for the price of two basically

and don't forget Dr. Scott's website at simply herbals.net where you can get his fantastic nasal rinse and what else you got on there these days? Now it's just those three things nasal spray and the stress less

and fatigue reprieve. Okay you don't have that um uh allergy thing that you gave me no no but i'm i'm working on that yeah that xanthium formula i gave you is the best it really worked allergy medicine i've ever seen that doesn't have all the side effects i think dr smith would like to sample some of that oh yeah oh she's been suffering i've been overdosing on uh over-the-counter stuff well oh i'll fix it yeah and that's easy to do too and um we could talk a little bit about seasonal rhinitis if you want to uh what have you been taken, Dr. Smith? Zyrotech. Caterazine.

Saterazine. It's a non-draousy antihistamine. Works pretty well. It's good for runny nose. Doesn't do much for stuffy nose and it does nothing for the inflammation in your nose. So, you know, when you inhale these allergens, you know, it sets up this sort of inflammatory

cascade that results in dilation of the capillaries in the tissues of the nose, which causes nasal congestion. The tissues start to to swell and then it makes it hard to get air through the nasal cavity and you get nasal congestion and then there's also a histamine release so you get running nose you get this sort of real thin hyper-filtrated plasma that we just call you know snot and and those two things are

really difficult to deal with and and these medications that they have on the market either have too much crap in them or they don't have enough. So if you got one of these combinations like, I don't know, Tylenol cold and, I don't even know, I'm just making that up. I don't even know if there is such a thing. But they'll have phenopropinolamine in it, which is a decongestant, and they'll have a cough suppressant, and they'll have Tylenol, and they'll have all these other things, and they're in these fixed combinations.

Well, what if you don't have a fever? You don't need the Tylenol. Or if you don't have a cough, you don't need the cough suppressant. So I like splitting out all of these different symptoms and treating them separately. It's more expensive, but you'll be more successful. So for runny nose, just exactly, as you said, a non-drowsy antihistamine is great. You can take venedrill, but if you're a male and you've got a big prostate, it'll make it difficult for you to urinate or you may even get bladder outflow obstruction.

It will probably make you sleepy, which is maybe you take it at night. That would be a benefit to. you. But also it can cause the rest of the legs. Oh, yeah. Well, all these anticholinergic, it's what we call an anti-colonergic medication. Those are things that make your mouth dry and dry out your nose and stuff. All these anticholinergic medications can be a problem for elderly people, can send them into the moon. It can make dementia worse, all kinds of things. So I like the noun drowsy allergy medications for running nose, like satirazine or.

Zyrtec. Fexophenidine is Allegra, and then Liradidine is Claritin. Those are the three big ones. And so any of those are okay. And then for stuffy nose, it's a little more difficult because the medications that you use for stuffy nose have some adverse effects. So you can use aphrine, which is a nasal spray. It has oxymatazylene in it.

You'll get 12 hours of. free and congestion-free breathing out of it. But if you use it more than a few days, you'll become habituated to it. Because as it wears off, those capillaries which have been constricted for 12 hours, now go, ah, and they let go. And they will over dilate,

and now it makes the nasal congestion even worse. And so now you've got to spray again. And then you get that constriction. Well, this time, maybe it only lasts 11 hours and then 10 and then the next thing you know you're like my ex-wife who had to buy three or four of these bottles a week and was spraying her nose every 15 minutes you know running around just and then wondering why she has high blood pressure and stuff you know so uh so but so what's the alternative you can use pseudofed of course you have to sign your

life away to buy sudafed anymore if you buy more than a couple of boxes they think you're a meth dealer you know that's going to make meth out of it but it works really well well, except it causes severe erectile dysfunction, which I found out. Good thing. I don't have to worry about that. Oh, that's right. Right now. Yes.

For the dudes out there, it's a problem. And it can also make you really prickly, too. And, uh-oh, here we go. In other words, there's a lot of side effects, all those things. Yeah. Thank you. And so I'm on call. So we, so, and now there's another one called phenopropinolamine.

that sort of works the same way as pseudofed. It kind of skirts the middle distance. And a lot of the things that have a D after them now no longer have pseudofid in them, they've got phenopropropanomene in them. So that's for nasal congestion and nasal runny nose. Now, if you have cough, we would like an expectorant, something to loosen the mucus so that you have a more productive cough. So you use mucinex for that.

But, you know, you only want to cough when you really have to. So a cough suppressant would be nice. So they make this stuff called mucinex-DM. It's Gwifenicin and dextramothan. And that's a nice fixed combination that I don't mind for a cough. And if you have aches and pains, then ibuprofen or Tylenol, depending on your preference, really. You know, if you're at risk for if you're binge drinking, don't take Tylenol. And the last thing is the problem, of course, is nasal inflammation, right?

So you can now buy Flonase over the counter. It used to be, Flonase is a topical steroid for the nose. You spray it up your nose and it decreases inflammation. I've tried it. I had better results. This is just me. Had better results with nasacort, which is another nasal steroid that you can buy over the counter. Now, that's sort of the alopathic over-the-counter approach to,

seasonal rhinitis. If you get this every year and it's just horrendous, then, you know, going to an immunologist and getting desensitized to the allergens that you're allergic to can really help. Since I did that, it's decreased my symptoms by about 90%. I still have some. Oh, wow. But it really helped. And then Dr. Scott's got some stuff from the traditional Chinese medicine standpoint. So why don't you wax eloquent about that for a second? Well, we have a couple things that a couple old Chinese formulas that work extremely well with, that don't tend to have all the side effects that a lot of the over-the-the-counter medicines have. And the one that I use the most is called Xanthium nasal formula. As long as you can find somebody that's certified in

Oriental medicine, they should have that in their offices. It's got Xanthium fruit. It's got some angelica root. It's got some menthol, but it's a wonderful alternative, especially for men, because I don't like, you know, especially young males taking a lot of allergy medications because if they start having prostate problems early, you know, I don't know that that's going to be a good thing for their long-term overall health. And, you know, a lot of people don't realize just going into a pharmacy and buying it over-the-counter medicine may be causing them some problems. The other thing is, doctors.

Oh, they're real medicines. Most of those things used to be prescription strength only. Sure, sure. but they but just like and you know certainly my stuff has some side effects to potentially if you took too much of it but the other thing was the nasal spray and the importance of the nasal spray especially right now you know we are all where we live all of our cars are now the same color you know they're all yellow the importance of washing that out of your sinuses decreasing the inflammation

and a histamineic response oh yeah thank you for mentioning that's huge you need to wash it out and blow it out and then there's not such a huge battle going on then you don't need all the as much of the medications so you know and people try the nitty pots and real quick i'll i want to say one quick thing about nitty pots i like the nitty pots the problem is most people pour too much water into the nose and just goes up in the nose and comes right back out well it only works if you if it goes in one nostril comes out the other one right isn't that the way you want to do it yes allegedly yeah get you get you get you good tooth there but you know So the key is getting as much of that sinus spray up through your head and into the, even to posterior sinuses and then a good blow out of your.

Yeah, typical allopathing doctor. I'm trying to throw pills at this when, in fact, yes, washing, if you can wash the allergens out in the first place, you don't have to take all these damn pills. Or at least not as much. Or as many. Right. So, yeah, so there's a lot of great options. Have you seen that new thing? Have you seen it on TV where it's a mechanized sort of netty pot?

Oh, I've seen that. And you stick it in your nose and it shoots. the water in one and sucks it out the other one. I want to try that. That's kind of like a high colonic for your science. Yes. Let's get one and just try it and see how horrible it is. Will you do it? Oh yeah. Okay. Remind me between

the shows I'll Either one. Either one. It doesn't matter. The high colonic. We'll try it both. See which one we like better. Remind me between shows, I'll go ahead and order one and we'll have it for next time. Okay. Because I do want to try this and we've got to videotape it too. Okay, very good.

All right. here's one how about how about and dr smith you are a doctor you can chime in on any of this stuff joe the follow panel uh you spoke a while ago about the opana and you answered my questions about that i'm listening now to your chicken pop story of vaccinations just want to share with me with you this chicken pop story i had is i never had chicken pops about three years ago my doctor said you know what you never had it how about we give you the uh vaccination well i take the vaccination. A little while later, I come down with chickenpox. She said she's never heard of that in her entire career. Someone and an adult getting the chicken pox from the vaccination. Well, I did. And about

three months later, she said that she's another patient of hers saying thing. Got the vaccination and a chicken box. Just wanted to share. Thank you very much. Talk to later. Yeah, man. Okay. That sucks. Yeah, it does suck. So the chicken pox vaccine, is a live attenuated virus. And just like the influenza, there's an influenza vaccine that's live attenuated virus, which is called flu-miss.

We haven't had it the last two years. But you actually, you know, it's an infectious particle and you get great immune response to it. And it often will be permanent as well. Unlike just using some sort of antigen from the virus, those vaccines tend to wear off and you need, you know, boosters. But so the, so this guy got a live attenuated vaccine, which he was not in the group that it's indicated for and got chicken pox.

Now, I'm assuming because he didn't say he ended up in the hospital that he had a very mild case, which is usually the case from these. If you do get the disease from the vaccine, it's going to be a mild one. And when kid, well, okay, so I looked it up. 1% of people who get the vaccine get a mild form of chicken pox from the vaccine. So this doctor, you know, all you have to do is, I mean, it took me 30 seconds to look that up. How about looking it up instead of, well, I don't know. I ain't never heard anything like that. Couldn't have been me.

He's a freak. Just look it up. Right. jeez and then you can reassure your patient hey yeah one percent of people have this you're you know unlucky lottery go buy a lottery ticket and um you know when you have a kid that gets shingles for example you worry that they've got some sort of immune uh dysfunction it could be mild and a lot of kids even seem to grow out of that where they you know you get that kid that gets a cold every every month uh their whole life it doesn't wear off after preschool uh And every once in a while, you'll get one of those kids, we'll get shingles. And sometimes it just happens, and other times it can be a red flag. In his case, I don't know that it's anything other than just one in a hundred sucks to be you kind of thing, you know. But what other live attenuated vaccines do we have?

I know we've got the flu, and I'm drawing a blank. Oh, one of the smallpox? Tedness It's not really common to get I don't know if it I don't know I don't know I used to have a friend that was a virologist

And he was a vaccine expert I wish he was around right now What were you going to say Dr. Smith It doesn't matter Certain populations are still getting that vaccine right What smallpox vaccine? Why? Oh really?

Weaponized Oh oh oh oh okay Yeah because there's There hasn't been a case On this earth of smallpox But there are live smallpox particles in freezers in laboratories

around the world. One's unaccounted for. Yeah. Oh, is that right? Yeah, that's why everyone needs it. Okay. Yeah, okay. And thank you for your service, by the way. We do appreciate it. You can't say anything more about what he does, but yeah, that's...

That's to do with polls, maybe. Polls. Polls. Mention poll days. So, Yeah, very good. So I just stumped myself on that one, but I do know that, oh, one of the vaccines that was live attenuated was the original shingles vaccine. And if you had HIV or some other immune deficiency or if you were a transplant patient, all the people who should be getting a shingles vaccine couldn't get it.

And the new shingles vaccine, Shingricks, which I find for some reason hard to say, is a kill. vaccine. So you can't now you can get the shingles vaccine if you are immunocompromised. Do you recommend everyone get that? Yeah, everybody over 50. Singles? Yep. It has a lot better. After 10 years,

most people are still immune. Yeah, which is weird. Yeah. It's weird. The other one was live attenuated. It wasn't as good of a vaccine. People weren't mounting as good of response, but they're doing better with this vaccine. Right. And it has a more vigorous immune response so people will feel worse after it too you may feel like you've

got the flu or aches and pain stuff like that lasts a day or two and then you don't get shingles thing about shingles you get it in your eye and you're going to wish that you'd gotten that vaccine but you have to be 50 yeah okay yeah i think that you dr scott can look it up who should get the shingles vaccine and it's i believe it's people over 50 all right and even if you already had the other vaccine. If you already had Zostavax, is that the right one? No. VeraVax, whatever it was,

the original shingles vaccine, they say even if you had that, you should get this vaccine too. All right. Hey, I was wondering about organ donation. I heard a rumor that if you have

your credit card or your driver's license mark that you want to be an organ donor and you having to die something tragic, but some organs can be saved, that the only organs they're going to save are the major organs, your lungs, your heart, your kidneys, your liver, whatever, all that stuff. But for your things like eyes or your penis or your, you know, some of the smaller things in your body, is it true that you actually have to specifically either leave a note saying you want to donate those to or that your family has to allow it?

or when you die and the organ donation will the hospital kind of make the judgment call and say, hey, look, this kind of has a good eye, so let's use that too, or this man's penis is beautiful, so let's use them. How did they decide that kind of stuff? That's what I'm wondering. Thank you. Just a side note, he did put penis in the small organ. I did notice that. Which I don't think most men would do that.

Maybe he's wanting to donate it now. Um, yeah, organ donation is an awesome thing. And just go to organ donor.gov and sign up and just do it. What do you care what they do with you after you're gone? And one of the myths is, well, they'll, you know, they'll make you brain dead just to get organs. It's bullshit. You know, every state will have, you know, a donor services that will come in. And, uh, what they really do like, though, are people, well, not like is not the right word.

but the people that can get the most organs out of are people who are clinically brain dead. And so, well, what is brain death? That's when the patient is deceased, but still on life support. So the ventilator is breathing for them and their heart's still beating, but their brain is irrecoverably dead. And, you know, in the old days, think about this, Dr. Smith, we usually, to say we defined death as cessation of breathing. So like in Hippocrates Day, when the person stopped breathing, they were dead.

And then we developed, what, the mechanical ventilator? So now you stop breathing, you're not dead. So then they said, okay, well, it's when people's heart stopped. They're dead. And then we developed, you know, advanced cardiac life support. And now you can't really say just your heart stopping, you're dead because we can shock them, do chest compressions and put them on life support. and about 15% of people will survive that. So just that alone can't be the definition of death.

So now the definition that we use is when there's cessation of brain activity, not just brain function, but brain activity. So, you know, you have to have lost all of your, so what we call brain stem reflexes, you know, you touch their corneas, they don't blink, they don't cough, they don't gag, all of that stuff. There's no respiratory effort. and we do a thing called an apnea test to see if the person truly is brain dead because, you know, the drive to breathe is pretty strong. So you rule out all, you know, that they're sedated medically.

You've got to remove all of those confounding factors. And then if they don't breathe on their own and they have no brainstem function, then you can declare that they appear to be brain dead. And then you have to confirm that. So you can do that a bunch of different ways. You can do an EEG, which is a brainwave study. And if it's flatline, then you've confirmed that the loss of brainstem function is permanent. Or you can do a cerebral brain flow study, which they really like to do those in the hospital. And it just shows that there's no blood flow going to the brain anymore.

If there's no blood flow to the brain, the brain's dead. And that shows that brain death is permanent or, you know, the loss of brain stem function. And the other thing you can do is just, just repeat the apnea test 24 hours later. If you've got two apnea tests 24 hours apart, you can declare the person deceased. So this protocol is violated all the time all over the world, and that's why you have people that are declared brain dead,

and then they wake up. Well, they didn't do it right. You know, if you do a complete brain death determination, the odds that you're going to be wrong is as close to zero as it can possibly be. but anyway so if you are dead but on the ventilator then the donor services can come and they can harvest a bunch of stuff so living those are called living organ donors they can um i'm sorry that's not right those are deceased organ donors and they can donate two kidneys a liver two lungs a heart a pancreas and even intestines uh they've even in 2014 they added hand

and faces to the organ transplant list. No penises, though? I do not see penis on here. Let's look, though, because I'm atorgandotor.gov. Cornias, you can leave behind corneas if, you know, that's the outer layer of the eye. And I have a, I know someone that had a corneal transplant, and it was a real gift to them because they were blind before that or going blind. Okay, so as far as tissues are concerned, let's see if,

penis is on here. Heart valves, skin. Now, you don't transplant skin thinking it's going to be permanent, what they'll do. And they don't skin you either. You get this idea that you're just going to be muscles and skeleton and stuff when they skin you. What they do is they take a couple of layers of skin off of your back and with this thing, if I were called a dermatome. Now, what was it called? I participated in one of these one time when I was in medical school. But it's like a cheese Cutter. It's like a sod cutter. Yeah, kind of like a sod cutter. Yeah, or like a cheese cutter sort of thing.

And you run it along the back and you get these strips of skin. And what you can do is you can use that as a bandage for people in burn units. That's really what it's for. Bone tendons. And it says most people can be tissue donors when they die. The local tissue bank will be notified by a hospital medical examiner or funeral home. So if they can't get live organs out of you because you're not brain dead, There's still stuff they can get.

And it says here, 30,000 donors every year provide life-saving and life-enhancing tissue. Now, wait a minute now. How many people die in this country every year? You can look that up, Dr. Scott. Let's ask Alexa, see if she knows. Alexa, how many people die in the United States every year? See if she knows. Sorry.

I'm not sure. Of course. Find out how many people die in the United States every year, Dr. Scott. Come on. porn stash's dad is a living donor he donated his kidney to a stranger oh yeah okay yeah let's talk about living donors you can donate one kidney one long or a portion of the liver pancreas or intestine yeah and the organization that he did it through actually set off the anonymous donation sets off a chain reaction that allows I think in his chain when there's seven other people to get a new kidney oh is that right because they matched like say oh somebody in your family needs a kidney but and you want to donate a kidney but you're not a match because it's very specific right well the anonymous one means that guy gets a kid kidney and somebody else has already offered to give his kidney if somebody else knows if he receives one so he matches with

another guy now those two people match with another guy and it keeps going and go and i think the biggest chain has been like 26 people is that right off of one anonymous donation so i would do that yeah it's it was really interesting tissue donations got to be initiated within 24 hours of death. And to this person's question, I'm not aware that putting organ donor on your driver's license means you're only going to be an organ donor. It seems to me that that also implies

that they can get tissue in corneas as well. And I did just, I didn't read the article, but I saw a headline that said they had the first penis transplant or something like that. You might be able to Google it and see if anything pops up. It had something to do with a, a veteran that had some sort of battle wound or something, but he had a, I believe he had a penis transplant.

I remember that. I remember that as well. Let's look it up. Hey, while you're looking at it up, while you're looking at up, we've got 2.5 million in the United States die annually and about $6,700 a day. Wow. So, 2.5 million die.

Correct. Alexa, what's 30,000 divided by 2.5 million? 30,000 divided by 2,500,000 equals 0.0.0.000. So it's 0.1% of people are organ donors. Come on, people. You can do better than that? That's ridiculous. 30,000 out of 2.7 million are organ donors. So go to organ donor.gov and just register. That's all you got to do. Yeah, go ahead.

Penis. Oh, yeah. Transplants or whatever. Speaking of penis. No, this is another physician told me this physician's tie. And where all the surgeries came to reconnect or do that came from. Thailand because they have such a culture of like the wife gets mad and she like just cuts off his penis and really yeah it's they're like lead for kind of penis reconstructive surgeries really yeah seems

extreme yeah not really oh i guess we just don't do it enough here i guess but they're a cheating husband you know here we got the world's first successful total penis and scrotum transplant was completed at Johns Hopkins Hospital on March 26th. Now, you look at this. Here's all these people. Can you guys see this picture? I know Lady Diagnosis you can. Here's this whole team of people. And here's this poor slob laying on the, yeah, just laying there with this, maybe that's a, maybe that's a model or something. But, you know, he's got a hospital gown on. Looks like he's completely asleep. And here they are just standing all around and getting their picture taken. That seems inappropriate.

But the procedure lasted... HIPAA. You can't see who it is. You can't see who it is. That's a HIPAA violation. No, it's just the legs. I recognize his feet. The procedure lasted 14 hours involved nine plastic surgeons, two urologic surgeons, and a team of anesthesiologist, nurses, and surgical

technicians according to the release. The transplant recipient who wished to remain anonymous is a young U.S. serviceman who sustained injuries to his lower pelvis, lower abdominal wall, and lower extremities, and an improvised, and an explosive device blast serving in Afghanistan.

Yeah, let's see if they so yeah, absolutely worth putting all those resources if this guy can get an erection and you know, and beat his meat again. All that for just

sex. No, yeah, yes. You know what? He was willing He could have been a monk. He was, He was willing to put himself out there. A priest. A priest.

There's so many other options. Hammered by an IED in the service of his country. That's the least we could do is try to give him another penis. So let's see here. I'm just looking to see if they think it's going to be functional. Because what you've got to do... That was my question. Is it going to be one of the ones that you have to press a button for?

Or is it going to be like somehow connected where he has fuel in? No, I think, okay. So this transplant is an example of a type of procedure called vascularized, composite allot transplantation and refers to the transplantation of multiple types of tissues such as skin, muscle, and bone and often refers to the transplantation of body parts such as arms, hands, feet, and now genitals. And yeah, these life-changing VCA transplants can only occur when a donor family looks past their grief and gives to someone in need. No kidding. Hey, can we have your husband's penis?

because he's brain dead and we have somebody that needs one. That would be a rough conversation to have. But I was just looking to see if they... Someone's getting used. Because he would... Yeah, sure. You would have to... You would have to get all the tissues connected together,

including vascular stuff, you know, the blood vessels, nerves. All of that stuff's got to be hooked up properly for it to be functional. So God bless this guy. I hope it works. Yeah. All right. I've got a couple of phone calls. Let's take them and then we'll...

Uh-oh, somebody's at my door. Goodness gracious. Let me go get it. No. Okay. Area code 307, you're on Weird Medicine. Hey, there, Dr. Steve. Hey, man.

I have a... How's it going? Hey, goodness. I have a sauna in my home. Okay. And we get in it, and, you know, we get it up to about 200 degrees. Well, 200 degrees at... at least at six and a half feet off the floor.

You know, it's cooler down low, but, you know, when we're sitting on the benches, our head is up at around 200 degrees. Okay. We hang out in the sauna for about 15 minutes, and then we run outside, and we get into a 50-gallon tank that has water that's 45 degrees. So we do a cold plunge.

Yep. And hang out in that for, well, it depends on, Depends on the person, sometimes people just jump in and jump out. Others will hang out in that for a minute or more. And then throughout the process, we'll do that two or three more times. So my question is, I've been warned that I'm 50 years old, and I've been warned that I need to watch out that if I had an arrhythmia and were in the cold plunge, that that would be a bad,

a bad thing and uh and then the other question i have is uh alcohol use while in the sauna right uh i mean there's there's when i see warnings about it it's often referring to you know stumbling around and falling into the sauna heater right and then passing out but i'm more curious on how it actually uh the alcohol and the height she would interact. Right. Okay. Well, a lot of the information that we have about sauna safety comes from Finland,

because they love saunas in Finland. And, you know, if I lived in Finland, I'd probably spend a lot of time in the sauna as well because, you know, there's dark half of the year, and it's cold as shit. And speaking of cold as shit, have you guys watched the, are you watching that show, The Terror on AMC? No. It's about Arctic. explorers that get trapped in the Arctic circle and they get stalked by a um by this polar bear and

they're there for three years yeah and they couldn't get out it was back in the 1800s it's crazy so anyway it's a cold and dark day in day out would drive me crazy so yeah i would invest in a sauna they did um a study of um over 16 months looked at about a hundred hundred heart attacks a month and they found only of all of those one less than two percent of those developed within three hours of taking a sauna and uh they looked at uh about six thousand sudden deaths in a year and only one point seven percent occurred within 24 hours of taking a sauna and many of those though were related to alcohol so these people were wasted and doing the sauna and um uh they looked at Canadian researchers looked at 16 people with well-documented heart disease,

and they looked at 15-minute sauna with a standard treadmill test, and none of the patients developed chest pain, abnormal heart rhythm, or EKG changes. Now, they didn't do the cold plunge with those folks. But, you know, the cold plunge causes your adrenal glands to release a bunch of adrenaline, and that's basically the concern, is that, you know, adrenaline is a vasoconstrictor, So the blood vessels constrict, and there's probably a transient increase in blood pressure. But it's so short-lived. You know, anybody that's ever done this, you go, and you get that chalk,

and then it really kind of goes away. And when you get out of the cold plunge, you feel like a million bucks. So if you survive it, they feel good. Hey, I will add this, too, though. I think what a lot of people forget is when they're in those hot saunas mixing the alcohol, because alcohol is going to dehydrate you also. If you're sweating, sweating a lot and you get dehydrated from alcohol, that's going to be problematic. Yeah, and, you know, probably alcohol decreases the rapidity that your autonomic nervous system is going to adjust to changes in cold and heat.

And you may not be regulating your heat very well. I do think getting hammered and either using hot tubs, saunas, or any sort of excessive. extreme temperature thing, jumping in Lake Michigan when it's cold. I think that you are increasing your risk. I'm not saying you're dooming yourself to a bad outcome, but this whole life that we're in is all about mitigating risk. And so you're increasing, I do think you're increasing your risk. They looked at, did I talk about the Canadians?

They looked at, yeah, none of them had chest pain, abnormal heart. rhythms, EKG changes with either kind of stress, either the sauna or the other. And they showed impaired blood flow to the heart muscles of most patients, but the sauna-induced changes were milder than exercise-induced abnormalities. So, in other words, you know, when you're opening up all your blood vessels, you're going to draw blood away from the heart tissue, but it doesn't seem to be clinically relevant. These guys conclude that saunas are safe for patients with stable coronary artery disease. And they even did a study in Japan that said two weeks of daily saunas may even improve vascular function in patients with mildly damaged hearts that cannot pump blood normally.

And that's called stable heart failure. But again, those people are not drinking at the same time. So the recommendation is check with your doctor before using sauna. So that's always a good thing. And, you know, I can't tell you it's okay. I have to tell you, you don't even know if I have a medical degree. Just check with your doctor. but that's the information that I've got about saunas.

All right. Well, thank you, Dr. Steve. Well, I got you on here since this is just a podcast and we can do whatever we want, let's do cold plunge and see if there's any data on that at all. So, okay, polar bear plunges, are they good for you? This is from CNN, so that very awesome medical journal, CNN. And let's see, you get a rush because there's so many people doing it. Okay, come on.

Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, this is the problem with CNN. You know, they have to give you all this sort of human interest stuff at the beginning. Okay, so people who are at high risk for heart disease, blood vessels in the heart can constrict. We just talked about that leading to chest pains and angina or heart attack. So I think, again, the answer is if you have either stable heart disease or no heart disease at all, the risk to you is probably pretty minimal. animal. If you have a heart

condition, you've got to talk to your primary care or your cardiologist before doing anything like this. How's that? Is that a good enough disclaimer? I've done it and I'm alive. Okay, man. All right.

Hang in there, buddy, and be careful and go easy on the drink and in the extreme temperatures. That's all. Yeah, it's never in excess. It's just, you know, a couple drinks. But I'd like formally invite Lady Diagnosis from Casey out to the sauna

here in Wyoming. They would love to do it. I will come there. You are a wise man. We could actually, and you wouldn't mind having Dr. Smith there either, to be honest with you. What we ought to do, we should get you guys out there to this guy's sauna, and then we'll do blood pressures and stuff.

We'll do naked blood pressures. Yeah. There you go. And wine. And wine. With wine. Before wine, after wine. All right, man.

Nice try. all right thank you okay i'll see you all right got one more let's see here keith in florida area code 603 you're on weird medicine hey what's up doc steve how you're doing hey man how are you i'm doing well thanks what's up so uh i want to call and talk to you and uh and hopefully dr scott too because uh you may have different uh opinions on on uh the subject but down here I live there's been like an explosion of all these

bars that are serving Crodham and also Cava and they're just like everywhere and people are just drinking it like crazy and of course you read stuff in the news they're talking about banning Crodham and all sorts of stuff

depending on what you read it's either the best thing in the planet or it's the worst thing for you I kind of want to get your guys' opinion of what you guys thought of it I think neither one of those things is true I think Cratum or Crodham however you want to pronounce it, is a very interesting molecule. Is it a drink or a food or what is it?

Well, it's a plant and it is an alkaloid, but it also, you know, agonizes opioid receptors and has other effects as well. So there are people that use it to get off of, say, oxycontin if they're addicted to it. But the thing I don't like about that is because they're practicing medicine without a license on themselves. And so, you know, the client who has or. the lawyer who has himself for a client. What is it the defendant who has himself as an attorney has a fool for a client, however that goes.

And it's the same thing is that the person who's treating himself, him or herself, has a fool for a doctor or a patient. Or however it goes, fuck, I don't know. But anyway, it's, I don't like sort of. street street medicine and even Dr. Scott's thing, you know, he does

what we call alternative medicine, but he went to school for four years to learn how to do it correctly so he's not harming people and he's helping people the best way he can. And Cratum is fascinating. Needs to be studied. Absolutely. The NIH needs

to study it. If it would be something that we could use in pain management that somehow would be safer, than opioids. We need to know that. If it's not safer than opioids, we definitely need to know that so we can tell people to quit screwing around with it. If it would help people get off opioids or if we could change the molecule a little bit like we do with other molecules to make it more effective with less adverse effects. And sell the shit out of it. I'm all in favor

of it. But until then, I have to counsel people that I'm not ready to endorse it in any way. Me either. There are adverse events. You can Google them. There's all kinds of people who have. We don't know what the overdose numbers are. We know nothing. We know nothing about it. LD50, the lethal dose that will kill 50% of people.

We don't know that. We should know that for every drug. So it's, we know it for caffeine. We don't know it for Kratum. So I, that's my problem with it. I think lots of research needs to be poured into this because it's very, very interesting drug. But I don't think that we, should be serving it in a bar somewhere no hell no you know but that's just my opinion terrible

what in my you know opinions are like yeah assholes or earlobes i was going to say earlobes but dr scott is an asshole anyway uh and then cavas they're uh they're uh they're yeah go ahead no go ahead i was just going to talk about kava for a second okay um well they both trotum and kava uh they're they're just like everywhere diana like literally there's you know, strips where there's like bars and stuff, like regular normal bars and on that strip will be 10, 15, just specifically

crotum and Kava bars. Wow. And it's like, they're just everywhere. And then, and I've gone to a few of them and I tried it. And it definitely affects you. Yeah. I'd like to know more about their experience,

you know, doing that. They've got a, you know, they've got a big cohort of people that are using this stuff. You know, you could do some, use that cohort of people that go to those bars and get some, get some data off of them you know how many of them now are craving it if any i do know that

in concentrated form uh people have been uh documented to get a quote unquote addicted to crotum um yeah you know so so i am very interested in it i would really be interested in their experience down there uh as far as the population of people that are going there and if there are any problem crotum users like there are problem drinkers in this country you know the people that run the bars in this country know who all the problem people are. You know, after, after five beers. Yeah, right. There you go.

So anyway, all right. Hey, I'm going to, yeah, if you could talk about the Kava, too, that'd be great. I'm just kind of curious on that, because I guess it's a whole different, you know, plant, I guess, or whatever it is. Yeah. Whatever you know about that, that would be great, too. Well, Dr. Scott would be, do you guys use Kava in traditional Chinese medicine? medicine? We don't. We've got other herbs at work. We feel are better. Of course, you know,

Kava's been used for forever. For many, many, many, many years. And, you know, I think the big difference between it, too, is it's not, it doesn't work on the, you know, the opiate receptors and the brain. So I think it's probably safer. Geez, dude. What's going on there? That's not me. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm kind of near an airport. Okay. There was a 2009 study that showed that Kava was safe and effective for short-term treatment of

anxiety, but I'm not aware of any long-term studies that, and it never will be because they can't make enough money on it. But I think if you're doing comparison, though, I think to Kava is profoundly safer as far as what we know. And as far as having side effects. Yeah, Kava has been banned in some countries because there were episodes of liver damage and liver failure linked to its use. So it's not been banned in the United States, but the use in the United States has decreased significantly since the FDA issued a warning about it in 2002. So I was like 14 years ago and, well, not longer than that even, 15, 16 years ago. And, you know, those things kind of fade into the past when people don't pay attention to them.

And it really is dose dependent too. So, you know, the amount that they're putting in this stuff could be so low that it's not an issue. But I would, again, as we talked about with the last guy, it's not that, you know, taking Kava is going to doom you to liver failure, but there is some indication that it may increase your risk, and that's, you know, it's all about risk. Yep. All right.

Great. Thank you, man. We'll do some more research, man. We'll see if we can come up with something intelligent to say on that. Okay. Cool. Thanks. All right.

Okay. I'll see you. Thanks. I've tried Kava before. It's not pleasant at all. It's a peppery type thing, right? I've had the very mud-mud-ish kind of, I don't know. Well, I've taken it in pill form before.

Oh, and I've had, it's very common amongst, like, the South Pacific region. Really? So they, it's like a glass of wine for them, you know? They make, like, a community bowl, and there's, like, a little thing, and everybody drinks it. Well, and see, that's the thing, coca leaves, same way, that's been used by indigenous people for thousands and thousands of years. What we do in the West is we take it, and we take out the one thing. and then we concentrate it and make it into pill form or powder

and then ruin it because coca leaves probably fine putting a little coca in your Coca-Cola which they used to do it's probably totally fine and then people have to we have to ruin it you know it's like

fish oil turns out people who eat fish have fewer heart attacks so what do we do in the West we take these fish and we dump them all in a vat and render them down to this oil that We can then put in a pill form and take it and think we're doing something.

You're supposed to eat the fish. Because then you're not eating other things. So anyway. All right. Yeah, I'm looking at Kava. Beverager extract made from Piper Mysticium, a plant native to the Western Pacific Islands. Very good, Dr. Smith. She's on a roll.

The name Kava comes from the Polynesian word awa, which means bitter. Just like you said, it was kind of bitter. Well, they use it for migraines, depression. depression yeah for sure in the south pacific cava is a popular social drink similar to alcohol in western societies epilepsy safety concerns about kava cases of liver damage and even some deaths have been traced to kava use i'll bet you 20 bucks it was concentrated kava in a pill form but anyway but i'm just saying that i don't know interesting okay well let's get out of here Thanks to Dr. Scott, Lady Diagnosis, Dr. Smith, the lovely Dr. Smith, and the even more lovely

Major Pornstash. Thank you all for coming. Can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coombe, Jim Norton, Norman, Travis Teft, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Ron Bennington, and Fez Wattley, whose early support of this show has never gone on, appreciated. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses, and get some exercise. in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. We can do it.

You want to do it? Can you guys sing? Dave, I can't say. Feel free to jump in. I've decided that doing the music, I've got these friends that do a podcast and they put all the bullshit stuff after the end credits of their show

that's what we need to start doing he's a good idea he's a bullshit all right are you ready let me see I guess I'm better as ready as I'll ever be. I could shed my skin. I could shed my skin in a blink of a night. I could cry.

Five, five Tie my dreams up in a sack Put my head down on the track And I die My life is so sweet I just can't stand I must admit I made it like a band Last night's conversation With a real good friend of mine

Make them wild, why, why. Since 50 years of nothing, but the world just keeps on giving us this time, time, time. One man my for love just can't find it. The next man can't get just two feet off the ground. These earthbound, earthbound here the wind through the tops of a tree. are bound some or some near the 90 degrees are bounding old moon sink and down

I got my stick around I knew I was from way back when she had all my eyes and all the skin and long black hair she was Irish Spanish mixed out of the southeast Texas hey see we were all most there heard that he didn't like my kind of rep. So Trulah took the next train out of town. We heard that. Earthbound seed of fathers and daughters and painter. Bound with boys running out in the rainer. I found like a ship run of the ground.

think i might stick around with these days that passes i may need a knicker glasses but it's all okay someday i'll be leaving but i just can't help believing that it's not too late every golden moment i have found it i've done my best to run straight in the ground. Now, Murgh, down, see the sky big and beautiful Burrubbound,

Fathers and angels are talking to earth bound, keep them close to the ground, think I might stick around. DURG bound Tom, ways to breathe the Frank the merry cars, bound,

Moulter, rock, a very hamstringled star. Bap, thai little arm to turn the brown. Hang on my stick around, where earth fell. Thank you.