Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 321 - Beet L Juice

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

Dr Steve (feat the music of ARHT) and crew discuss the benefits (if any) of beetroot extract, the benefits (if any) of vegetarian and vegan diets, a weird form of jock itch, and more! PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com                    simply herbals.net Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Weird Medicine with Dr. Steve on the Riotcast Network, riotcast.com. We got a thought. We got a bow. And that Scott's just yelling. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio. Now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medical practitioner, who keeps the alternative medicine wackos at bay.

Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. We also have our in-studio intern comedian Cliff Andrews, aka 49 cent. Hello, Cliff. Hello, Dr. Steve. And, um, in, you hear, it's not sure when slaves this time, it's Charles Moffat, what do you, Charles, what does your, uh, music go by when you, when you play? DJ noisy noise or, uh-oh, man, man, say it again, A-R-H-C. What, say it again, Charles.

Can he hear me? He can hear you, he just get a, I can call you. Keep busting it out there, man. Something wrong with that, Mike. It was working a minute ago. Oh, there you go. Yeah. DJ noisy noise has never used a microphone before.

I mean, I don't like talk, like when I play. But yeah, I go by R-Hat, so it's just A-R-H-T for letters. A-R-H-T, oh, okay, yeah. And if you look up... Sort of like the tetragrammaton. Yeah. Yaw-A. Yeah, but I'm on SoundCloud and Van Camp

You just look up, Air H.T, SoundCloud, and Van Camp, you'll find it. Okay, cool. Yeah, Charles, I first, he's been on this show before. I first saw him out on the street with a semi-modular synthesizer all patched up with the patch cables and stuff, and he was just playing this crazy-ass shit in the middle of the street of, you know, at that time, our town wasn't very hip.

It's not very hip now. It's a little more hip now than it was. But I'd never seen anything like this in this town, particularly where he was, which was right down from an antique store. So I said, I have to go talk to this guy. Because, you know, I was a patched-up modular synthesizer guy from back in the 70s, you know. So if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, just Google Keith Emerson Mug synthesizer. and I trained on one very similar to that in the 70s.

And Charles had this sort of miniature version of that. And so we started talking. It turns out that his father and my wife are friends. And then, so we had that connection. And we've just kind of, you know, we had a mini mug fest at our house about a year ago and just played music and stuff. He's very good. And he's going to be playing August 11th.

Is that when it is, Scott? at the beer run August 11th August 11th at the beer run Kingsport, Tennessee the grand opening

and we're going to have beer of course there's a restaurant there called the Magnolia Grill you can sit out by the river and by then we'll have the big sail up so you can get out of the sun and just

have a big old time listening to A-R-H-T do some buttery beats And then Scott and I are going to play For about an hour or two Oh, yeah So That'll be a big letdown

We should probably Play first No, no, no, we need people to Oh, to be drunk already? Yeah, you've got to get them drunk Yeah, liquor it up, okay It needs to be dark And, yeah, it's better

And then don't forget ETNcom com. Vic Henley, August 2nd, 2018, and also in Kingsport, Tennessee. We're doing a lot of stuff

in Kingsport this summer. At Allendale Mansion, all the directions and stuff are at ETNComody.com. It's free admission. It's a Thursday. I get it. Take a, do an extra long weekend.

Come hang out with us. There will be craft beer there, food trucks. 49 cent will be doing five, 10 minutes. Ooh. And James Byrd, both of whom were finalists in the funniest person in the Tri-Cities competition.

And then Vic Hanley. And it's free. The food and drink isn't free, but everything else is free. All right? Don't forget Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. Simplyherbils.net. And if you're going to go shopping at Amazon, just go through stuff. Dot, dot, dr.steve.com.

and if you need earbuds go to tweakeda audio.com use offer code fluid and you get 33% off all of your purchases, which is a big deal. That's not a small discount. That's a major discount. That's a lot. Yeah, it is. It's cool when you've got like 30 bucks in your cart and then you hit that fluid and all of a sudden it's 20 bucks. That's a big deal. So anyway. All right.

Well, you want to take some calls? Let's do it. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. By the way, I turned on XM103 today at 2 o'clock, and Bennington Show was on there. So I guess they've moved over from Raw Dog 99. So it's very cool. Anyway, all right.

Let's answer a couple of questions. This one's for you, Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. I was curious about beet root juice. and the in the effects on the body I've been drinking it for about three weeks and I felt like a different person Don't know what you think, man, please.

Beat root juice. So is that just beet juice? I think so. Yeah, I think so. Okay. Because the... I don't know that one. Why is she chiming in?

I don't know. Yeah, so it's a very deep red juice. And, you know, historically, beats were used for a lot of different ailments and stuff back in the past, but it was kind of, you know, got claims like snake oil. It's a good source of iron and folic acid, but it's also got some other stuff in it, too. There's some antioxidants if you're into that. I'm not particularly if you smoke. Antioxidants have been shown to not be beneficial, particularly in people who smoke may even be detrimental. But there are some, there is a study that showed that beetroot juice was associated with a modest reduction in blood pressure.

And this was a very well-conducted review of the current evidence. You know, so they did another meta-analysis where you take a bunch of different studies and mush them together. There's another review that looked at beetroot juice and exercise performance. Because, you know, when you do a study like this, people say, I feel better. Well, how do you measure that? There are actual validated instruments for it's called health-related quality of life. So you can use that as an end point to people just feel better because we could do that with Dr. Scott's intervention. You know, you do a study of the patient's health-related quality of life before, have them go see Dr. Scott, see what it is after.

Now, that will not eat or subtract out the placebo effect, but it may not matter. It's just we want to know if it doesn't make people feel better, so you can do that. But you have to have some measurable endpoint, right? Otherwise, you're just farting around. So these guys looked at exercise performance. They found that inactive and recreationally active individuals saw moderate improvements and exercise performance from drinking beetroot juice. And I'm not 100% sure what their endpoint was.

Oh, well, yeah, yeah, I don't either have. But here's the thing. A lot of these studies, like Arginine that shows improvements in exercise capacity, it's always in people who are out of shape. The elite athletes most of the time don't get measurable results from these, but it's people like me who aren't doing enough, you know. There was another study that showed that a diet high in beetroot juice may increase blood flow to certain areas of the brain.

So people say, oh, well, maybe it'll prevent dementia. We have no evidence of that. And how would we do that? We would have to give a certain number of people a placebo and a certain number of people beetroot juice. How would you do that? Well, you'd have to mask it somehow. And you'd have to follow them over decades to see if there's any statistically significant

decrease in the amount of dementia in those groups. That has not been done. They looked at beetroot juice on cyclists who were cycling in a high-altitude chamber. They found that cyclists that were given the juice had modest but significant increase in the terms of their time trial scores. So, you know, a 16-second improvement can be a big deal in a situation like that. So that's interesting. So, yeah, I don't see that there's a big downside to this stuff, and it may be beneficial. if you can stand the taste.

I've never tasted. I can't imagine what it tastes like. It's not palatable. Really? Unless you put some, a little bit of sweeter and stuff, and it. And just remember,

you can't just sit on your ass and watch Netflix like me. Right. And drink beet juice with vodka. And then drink, right, and think you're doing yourself any good. That was my plan. Well, you can, but I don't think we get the same results.

Yeah. I mean, we just want to take pills and be able to eat, you know, name any particular fast food places but you know eat fast food and i think we're going to be okay so we really need to make better choices i need to do that i've committed once i get back from this vacation next week that i'm going to lose 40 pounds in the next year yeah or or two and um because my health related uh score my you know my psychological score all came back good we do these things at work

where you got to take all these surveys and shit then you get a discount on your health insurance and I did all of this and it was not pretty you know I am I'm resting on my laurels you know I'm 62 I don't think I really look 62 and I'm in pretty good shape I'm on you know lifestyle medication you know I'm on something for reflux and but I'm not going to be able to stay that way if I keep up the way I'm doing so I'm going to make a commitment if people want to do it with me you know I'm going to increase my I'm going to improve my diet. I'm going to cut back on the alcohol and see if I can't get in better shape by next year.

It's saying on here that the beats are high in the nitrates. So the nitric acid. If it was nitric oxide. Yeah. That maybe what helps to relax. Improves blood flow. Right. Decrease the pressure on the blood vessels.

And increases penile two messens. Exactly. That's the mechanism by which Biagra works is it increases. is nitric oxide. So things that have arginine in them is a precursor to nitric oxide so that may have that and it may somehow increase

nitric oxide otherwise. Look up beetroot and nitric oxide, Dr. Scott, if you don't mind. Sure. And then we'll move on. Move home. I just can't think of drinking a cup of beetroot,

anything with the word beat in it. And then just, And being happy with the decision I made. You can extract sugar from beets, but it doesn't taste like beets. I mean, beats, I want my vegetables to not taste like that. It's sweet but not sweet in a good way, you know, to me. But then I think everybody's taste buds are different. My brother and I have a hypothesis that if liver tasted to everyone the way it tastes to us, nobody would ever eat it.

because it just tastes to me like a lump of shit in my mouth. What it looks like is that the nitrates do convert to nitric oxide in the body, which is what gives you a lot of those beneficial effects. Yeah, nitric oxide. Now, nitrous oxide is laughing gas. Yeah, a little different, yeah. But nitric oxide. No, you did.

I was thinking nitrous, though. So I'm glad you clarified. Sorry about that. I was thinking other people might be thinking nitrous oxide. Well, I'll try it. Yeah, right. I don't want people doing whippets thinking it's going to help their. blood pressure so all right so there you go hi dr steve i listened to the show a lot and i

always hear you say if we doctors in the medical medical community knew how to cure that we definitely would we wouldn't keep it a secret so here's my what what i was talking about was these conspiracy theories that doctors are suppressing the cure for cancer that it's very simple and we're suppressing it because we make more money by by treating it rather than And with the stuff that we've got rather than using vitamin B-17 or whatever, which you can just buy over the counter. Well, just go do that. But, you know, I don't want people to make the mistake of doing something, quote, unquote, alternative to the exclusion of things that we know work. You have the right to do it, but I think it's a mistake.

And my point on that 49 cent has always been that if I knew that vitamin B-17, was the cure for cancer, and I had been informed that I had to suppress it, you know, for the greater good of the medical profession for the money. I would expose it everywhere just for the blow jobs I would get. Right. You know, think of all the blow jobs you would get. If you had the cure for cancer, forget the money. Yeah. I'm talking about blowies, man.

Exactly. So anyway, so that's crap. But anyway, that's what he's talking about. So let's see what he says to say. Question. And I want you and Dr. Scott to answer this, if possible, because apparently Western medicine is just figuring this shit out, but Eastern medicine has known it for thousands of years. What do you think about the new trend that all the food documentaries are talking about, food

for medicine, basically saying that if you eat a bunch of plants, you can cure things like high blood pressure and clogged arteries and diabetes and even depression and what are the chances of the American medical community pushing this stuff out as a form of medical treatment as opposed to just a dietary option. Thank you. Yeah. No, it's a great question. We know we are what we eat. I just got done talking about it. how I'm eating poorly and I know I need to do better. And I know I'll live longer if I eat better.

So why don't we do it? You know, why am I not doing it? Because, you know, a cheeseburger tastes a damn good. And there is kind of a, for me, an addictive, I think, you know, I miss it. I start craving it. And so now if somebody, if one of my patients was craving a medication that was bad for him, I wouldn't prescribe it anymore. But food, you just go to the store and buy it.

So I'm not a fan of legislating this stuff. I think that's silly, but we do need to do a better job. If we know that a plant-based diet, for example, reduces heart attack and stroke, we should be pushing that. Now, when does food become medicine? You know, you've got to have food. So I don't know that we can call it medicine exactly. But you can certainly say that having a, well, just eating properly, and we can argue about what that is, is good for you. You can call it medicine if you want to, but the bottom line is you have to eat good, healthy foods.

And there's a lot of research that shows that eating crappy foods will make you sick. Sure. Well, vegan diets are vegan diets, which. to the strictest, you're not a vegan. You're a pescatarian. Which means that he'll eat fish, but everything else is plant-based. Vegan diets are more affected for weight loss than other diets that have been compared to. Now, a vegan diet can be low carbohydrate as well if you don't eat potatoes and stuff.

So it just depends on what you're comparing it to. They can lower blood sugar levels, so can a ketogenic diet. They can have been shown to improve kidney function. Let me see, according to the World Health Organization, one third of all cancers can be prevented by factors within your control, including diet. Big part of that smoking. You know, if I hear somebody saying, I'm a vegan for health reasons, and they're smoking two packs of cigarettes,

I just have to laugh because you're going through all this hell. Some people like it. But if it's a sacrifice for you, why are you sacrificing that if you're just going to keep smoking? Right. So that's always silly. Yeah, so food as medicine, I hate to call it medicine, but certainly food for good health is what it is.

And yes, it's, you know, for years and years and years, the Chinese diet, the Mediterranean diets, A lot of those things are based on eating particular foods for particular health styles. What about like multivitamins and stuff that have vegetable bases and stuff like that? Well, how many of them actually have vegetable bases? That's the thing. You know, multivitamins are extracted. Some of them may be even synthesized.

And if you don't have a vitamin deficiency, there really isn't a real indication for them. They've done some recent studies that show. showed that multivitamins really don't affect all-cause mortality at all, and maybe folic acid may have some benefit. I've seen another study that said vitamin E was beneficial. I've seen other studies that showed that vitamin D helps people prevent certain viral infections. You know, they have a decreased incidence. Correlation doesn't mean causation necessarily. So there is a study here that I wanted to show you guys.

from 2014 in the journal Nutrients. This is not a wacko journal. And I'm just going to read the abstract tree. It says vegetarians, those who avoid meat and vegans additionally avoiding dairy and eggs. So basically, vegans are, in a very simple form, are vegetarians that avoid all animal products. And that includes dairy products and eggs. There are 5% and 2% of the U.S. population. and they summarized available evidence from three prospective cohorts of Adventists in North America.

Now, have you ever been to an Adventist food store? It's the coolest place in the world. They've got all kinds of fake meat in there. They still kind of, some people, I guess, in the Adventist food store, still want to eat meat. Now, this comes from 40 years ago. When I used to go to the Adventist food store that was near me, I would get these steaks, right? And they were just kind of layers of soy fiber or something, but they were just like steak. You could cook them just like a steak, and they kind of tasted like a steak, at least to me, when I was 17.

But anyway, so the Adventists are a good cohort to follow because they're very, tend to be pretty strict on their diet. And what they found were that the vegetarian diets conferred protection against cardiovascular disease, cardiomor metabolic risk factors, in other words, high triglyceride and high blood sugar, some cancers and total mortality. And check this out, compared to lacto-ovo vegetarian diets, vegan diets seem to offer additional protection for obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular mortality. So now why wouldn't we be just pushing this? You know, a lot of people don't accept these findings. A lot of people aren't taught about it.

You know, we don't get taught this in medical school. We had very little nutrition information in medical school. And we have nutritionists who listen to the show that yell at their radio when they think I'm recommending a diet to somebody. I don't think we've ever actually recommended a diet to somebody on the show. We've just talked about the evidence for different diets. So it is very interesting. And I don't know what it's going to take. You know, what kind of evidence do we need before people say, look, this is what you really should be doing as opposed to, you know.

I mean, we still circumcised kids, even though we know that. only assert a very small number of people will benefit from being circumcised and a small number of people will will be harmed by it there's no real compelling reason to do it but we still do it and we're not saying no we're not going to do that anymore you know so it's a tough question i know i know i don't know because you know he's asking a question i should know the answer to i know you know as well as i do we can make recommendations for everyone going vegan diets and but 99% of the dogs saying that are not going to do it themselves. Well, I should do it.

Well, according to this. Right. Because it's a very difficult diet to maintain them. That's my problem. I mean, we'll eat a lot of vegan meals. We eat a lot of vegan meals. I've got two of our best friends. Too much pasta and bread.

I can't eat the pasta and bread. So I'd have to go vegan plus so it would be plant-based, no gluten. Right. Well, and it's just a tough diet. I've got two of my best friends. They're hardcore vegans, man. It's a tough diet to work for it. It's tough to negotiate.

Well, it's tough to negotiate a heart attack or a stroke. It is. On the front end, it's tough. On the back side, it pays off. Now, I've known vegans that had heart attacks and strokes. It doesn't 100% protect you. Just like smoking doesn't 100% doom you to having lung cancer. I've known people that were 89, 90 years old still smoking when they died from something else.

You know? So it's just all about mitigating risk, you know? Yep, yep, yep. So. But anyway, it's, yeah, it's a tough one. I really don't know. I don't know. Just eat the best you can.

I don't say that very often. Eat the best you can, stay active, get off your ass. The evidence is right here in front of me, and I'm still going to eat fried chicken tonight, you know? Still seesaw, yeah, not on. Now, I didn't quit smoking because I had evidence that it was going to cause. heart attacks and cancer and strokes. I quit smoking because I read a study that showed that nicotine is the number one cause

of reversible impotence in men over 40, and I was approaching 40. And I'm now 62, so I've been off of them for quite some time. But that's what it, you know, when I, oh, you know, heart attack, stroke, fuck that. Damn, flaccid dick. Get rid of these things. Maybe it's because of the immediate risk because, you know, you talk about, you know, cancer or, you know, lung disease and those types of things. They're like, that's like a, oh, that's in the future. That could happen.

But if you're talking about, hey, my dick don't work now, oh, wait, hang on, I got to fix this. Yep. No, you're right. You're right. That had a lot to do with it. And just the whole lifestyle thing. I could abstract cancer and heart disease. It was a lot harder to abstract not being able to have intercourse anymore.

So if I can find a study. Find me a study, Scott, on PubMed, that shows that a vegan diet improves sexual performance in older men. And that might be just enough to push me over. I'll do it. All right. Maybe I'll have to get some of that damn beetroot. Yeah, well, thanks. Stuck up on some beetroot.

All right. I was just wondering if you had a cure for job, dude. Okay. His audio is terrible. He asked if we have a cure for jock itch. So jock itch generally, not always, is a fungus. And antifungals will take care of it. But it's why did it happen in the first place?

Well, a lot of times it's because our inguinal region and our genital region has, you know, oily pubic hair and skin against skin. and then we sweat a lot and it's you know when you've got the scrotum mushed up against your thigh like saltwater taffy uh you know it gives a perfect place for fungi and other things to grow they like dark moist places so uh you want to make sure that you don't if you cure it that you don't give it the opportunity to come back so um i i really like fresh balls and i mean the the product, not actually, you know, people having, well, you know, good hygiene on their scrotums. But Fresh Balls is a tapioca powder in a volatile liquid. And when you rub it on, the liquid evaporates off and it leaves behind this residue of this very absorbent, you know, dry powder.

It's awesome. That won't cure the fungus if it's already there. So you can use over-the-counter Lotriman or Lammacil or just any anti-over. over-the-counter antifungal and you want to use it for about a week after it's gone because it'll disappear and it'll still be there it's tricky and then you'll stop and they'll grow right back so you want to really kill it by going for at least a week now if you do that and it's still there and it doesn't affect it at all it's probably not a fungus it could be a thing called erythrasma erythrasma is actually a bacterium I believe if I remember

right, it's a corani bacterium. And these things secrete a pigment that if you hold them under a black light it will fluoresce a very beautiful salmon pink. It's beautiful. I've only seen it once in my career but I looked like a damn genius when I saw

it. And that's actually treated differently. Antifungals will do nothing for that. Only an antibiotic will get rid of that stuff. So if you do the home remedy first and it doesn't go away, you must go get seen and we just want to make sure we're not missing And stop washing your nuts with the same washcloth that you wash the bottom of your feet with.

That might help too. Give yourself a bill. I think that's worth saying. It might help. I don't have any evidence of that, but it certainly sounds right. Yeah. I mean, if you get stinky feet and you wash your feet and then you wash your junk after that. Yeah.

See, I always, I start with the junk. I always start there. Yeah, me too. I feel like that's where, you know, it's going to radiate. Then I'll go up here, then I'll go down to the feet. And then, you know, whatever else. Yeah, I get the old ass crack first. Oh, yeah, that's a good place to start.

And then I washed my hands. Then I wash my hands off. Then you wash your face. But now, I'm compelled to do the ass crack first because I got a really hairy ass crack. And it just, oh, it never, it only feels good right after I get out of the shower. All right. Hey, DJ Noisy Noise, aka A. Orham.

R hat. It's R-H-A-R-H-T. That's too hard, dude. Okay, it's cryptic on purpose, meaning nobody will ever be able to find you on the internet. But, A-R-H-T. Hey, Charles, do you know what my DJ name is? What? DJ Minty Fresh.

Nice. I think if I ever DJ, I think I'm going to go by DJ Sex Chrome. Ooh, I like that. Our electronic band, if the MoGFest people get together, and you're included in this because you were peripherally, while you were invited to MoGFest, just didn't show up, is our band name is Super Android 23. Anyway, okay, you got something going?

I'm going to bring you up. Let's hear what you got. We'll take a little musical interlude here for a second. I think this will be cool at the beer run, don't you? Have some sort of, instead of just blue grass like we always have, and we'll have something that people can kind of groove to a little bit. We can get cliff to wrap. I'll do it.

It would be pretty cool. If you show up, you're more than welcome to pick up the microphone. Yo, yo, yo, 49-sad in the his house. We had a very stressful serious X-M show today. And a lot of really. serious information it's on demand at Sirius XM

regarding chronic pain and chronic pain patients and stuff check it out thanks always go to Dr. Scott 49 cent check out A RHT on SoundCloud Just Google it let me Google that shit

and see what comes up If you Google SoundCloud ARHT or Band Camp AirH It's the first thing. Okay, so ARHT comes up ARHT media, leaders, and holographic telepresence. Yeah, you got to look up SoundCloud or VanCamp. Okay.

All the normal names are taken. That's a thing. Yeah, that is a problem. Yeah, I'm trying to see if you, yeah, there's an ARHT media. They're all over everywhere. And then Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust. That one actually makes sense. It's ARHT.

All right. So now let's do AARHT. H-T SoundCloud and see what comes up. There we go. I do things. Beats, dance, music, other stuff. 20 tracks, 18 whole followers. I'll be interested to see if you get any more after this show airs.

This is his music. It's dope, though, guys. Go follow him. Yeah, this is the shit. This is awesome. Yeah, and it's playing itself. That's the cool thing. You know, with Charles is sort of guiding it, but the machines are, well, that's not really true.

I mean, he created all these beats and stuff, but it's really neat that they're just, he can set up different loops and polyrhythms and stuff, and it's all very musical. And once you sync all of your stuff together, which is hard to do, it can be very technical, especially when you're syncing instruments from different manufacturers and stuff. But once you do, it's gold. Check out Cliff Andrews at Rants in My Pants on YouTube. And I have not done that yet, although I have seen your stand-up on YouTube multiple times. Don't forget, Cliff's going to be at Allendale Mansion, August 2nd. 2018. Doors open at 6 p.m. Admission is free. The headliner will be Vic Henley. Do you hear what I said. Admission is free. Go to etNcom. Look for that. Check out Dr. Scott's website at simply herbles.net.

We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, Eric Nagel, Roland Campo, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Ron Bennington, and Fez Watley, who's early support of this show, has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel. Serious XM. Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern, on-demand, and other times at Don Wickland's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps.

quit smoking get off your asses and get some exercise we'll see you in one week for the next edition weird medicine Thank you.