Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 342 - Phat Soluble Vitamins

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

Dr Steve and Tissue Bank James discuss bone marrow donation, vitamins not to megadose (i.e., all of them, but some in particular), aspartame and neurocognitive disorders, and more. PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com premium.doctorsteve.com (offer code FLUID) simplyherbals.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. I've got diphtheriaeat. I've got diphtheria of my esophagus. I've got subalabre stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heart valve, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain now, blast with the wave and ultrasound. It's a chagraphic and a pulsating shape. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. 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 a requiem for my disease. So I'm aging Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve. Yo, de, yo. Take a careful. Yo, ho, ho, ho, do the brain. Yo, de, yo.

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, Tissue Banker, James. That's a hell of a mouthful. Hello, James. Hey, good to see. I've never had anybody else to say that.

Yeah, that's what she said. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you have a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider if you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call 347-766-4-33-23.

That's 347. Who? If you're listening to us live, the number 754-227-3-6-47, that's 754. I'll do this one. 22 penis. Okay. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine. And you can follow the other two who aren't here at Lady Diagnosis or at DR Scott WM.

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All right, very good. Uh-oh. Someone's calling me. Let's see who it is. Nope, it's spam. I get so many of those spam calls. I do too. Even though I'm on the do not call list.

They're out of control. It's ridiculous. And then I like the one that says, this is Microsoft. Have you gotten that one? Yeah, yeah. This is Microsoft. Someone's gotten into your account or something. Yeah, I don't even know what they're trying to pull.

Yeah. But it's so obviously not Microsoft. And that's not how Microsoft would introduce themselves. Right. If they did call you. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it's, I get that one and selling the insurance and the old, the IRS scam. Yeah, the IRS scam.

I've gotten that a couple of times. The one that drives me crazy is the one where you pick up the phone and the woman goes, Oh, hello. Oh, can you hear me? Oh, sorry. My, my headphone was, and then she goes into the, and it's, you're like, oh, no, I can hear you fine. But then you're falling into their trap because their computer is registering that you're answering. And then it's just a robocall. It's complete utter horseshit. The whole, oh, oh, sorry, my headset. No, that's a recording. The whole thing's a recording. So that drives me crazy. What else drives me crazy? About everything, right? these days. It drives me crazy. Anyway, hey, don't forget to check out stuff.doctrsteve.com. If there are things that

didn't show up on your holiday gift-giving situation this year, go buy it for your damn self. That's what I do. That's why my wife can't ever buy me anything, because if I want something, I just buy it. And I go to stuff. dot, dr. steve.com.

Do you still have the Bristol stool scale cups? Yes, we do, and those are at cafepress.com slash weird medicine. Bought those for all my employees one year. Oh, did you? Well, I get 30 cents every time you do one, so thanks for that. I got to sell 10,000 of them to ever make any money off of it, but it's just fun to have up there. They're great.

But, yeah, stuff.com will take you to a click-through page where you can just click right through through and go to Amazon if you want, or you can scroll down and see all the different products we've talked about in the years of this show. with links and explanations and all that kind of stuff. So check out stuff. Dottersteve.com. Don't forget, tweakeda Audio.com. They are a Tennessee company.

I didn't know that. They're in Franklin, Tennessee. We've got to go visit them someday. And they make the best earbuds for the price that are on the market today. And they have the best customer service of anywhere. Everyone, if anyone's ever had a problem with their tweaked audio, earbuds and they've emailed me they say look they're the greatest in the world you know I told them I had a problem and they absolutely took care of it I don't want to tell you what they did

but it was amazing what they did and I'm sure it's U.S. based versus some of the other yeah I don't know where if they manufacture them there or they're buying them from some manufacturer outside the United States I don't know their customer service their customer service is absolutely Tennessee based, and you can tell. Dr. Scott's website is simply herbals.net, and I'm just going to put out this plea that if you had a premium subscription before, it has been canceled, and this is because of my own stupidity, and so I'm asking you to sign back up again. But if you do, I'm going to give you an offer code.

It's also fluid, FLUID, and you'll get a substantial discount on your premium membership. It was already cheap, wasn't it? Yeah, it was already only a buck 99 a month. Right, yeah. But if you go to premium.com and sign back up for the premium service, and I promise it'll be up until the day I die from now on. I'm not going to, you know, I just got in a weird, I got in a weird place. Is our comedy stuff on there, some of our shows?

Yes. For the past. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the ETN comedy, funniest effort in the Tri-Cities is on there. There's some other stuff on there. Great. You have access to all the archives. is going all the way back.

If you want to binge the whole thing from day one and listen to the evolution of the show, such as it is, you're more than welcome to do that for a buck 99 a month. Really, for the buck 99, you can just sign up, download everything if you've got the time to do that and then just cancel. So you'll have everything. Goes back to the PA John.

Oh, it goes, yeah, it goes back to 2005, I think. Maybe, well, I don't know about that. It goes all the way back to number one on Riotcast whenever that was. So we're at 3.51 now. So that's five, six years worth. Wow. A lot of material. Yeah.

So premium. Dottersteve.com. And if I see it get back up there again, I promise I'll put more premium material up there for the premium people. So premium.com use offer code fluid. It's like the sound of that, premium people. That's right. All right. Oh, at the end of the show, Dr. Scott did a version of

creep and it was the first time he ever did any multi-tracking so i'm just going to put it on there um it's certainly better than semi-sweet melissa and if you have a premium membership you must right now go listen to that show that was the first time that gvac and i played with scott and scott and scott that's i've never seen him get mad but the um he will get madder than hell if i say oh let's go back and listen to that version of sweet melissa we did it was painful it was awful but that i only play it to show how far he's come right right well maybe he's just making a confession in this next song but he'll he'll rip off his headphones and start to leave the room if i play that that's great do that next time i'm here it's such a great song too so but anyway so it's

been a while since you've been here do you at all want to talk i mean in general terms about tissue banking and all that kind of stuff sure i don't want to bore anyone but i've been glad to talk about okay Well, sit up to that microphone a little bit more. And then so, because we have a question that's coming up later in the show about bone marrow donation. Sure. A little different than what we do. Yeah. Well, tell me something about tissue banking.

Well, tissue banking is preservation of cells. Okay. So it could be for transplant. It could be for research right now. I primarily do research. We preserve cancer cells in particular is one of the many things we do. as you know unfortunately the cancer cells that kill us outlive us so it gives us an opportunity to capture those cancer cells so they can be studied and hopefully determine a way to kill those cells without killing us in the process yeah that's kind of the problem isn't it absolutely current like chemotherapy basically where you're trying to poison cells that are dividing rapidly that's basically the you know the old-fashioned chemo

it was like dropping a bomb in the middle of Baghdad there's going to be collateral damage you're trying to kill living human cells inside a living human body it's hard to do so we're going more as time and I've been talking about on this show for ages an immunologic targeted approach

to cancer is going to be the way that we will finally beat cancer I agree I think in 10 years hopefully 10 if we'll see it in our lifetime we do a lot Dude, there's one company that is already monetizing and marketing a T-cell treatment for a specific type of cancer. So the ones that we talked about early was the woman with stage four cervical cancer, which is, you know, it's a terminal illness at that point. And so stage four means that it's spread to other parts of the body, or you may hear the term metastatic cancer. So this lady had T cells removed from her body.

T cells are one of the groups of cells that will kill cancers if they can see them. And the problem with cancer is the T cells don't recognize it as being foreign and it lets it grow. So they mushed up her proteins of the tumors, of the tumor cells, and then exposed the T cells to these proteins. And they recognized one of the proteins as being foreign because they'll see the rest of them is, you know, the whole reason you don't eat yourself alive is because there's a system for saying friend or foe, you know. and so they recognized those cells as, or those proteins as foe, and when they injected the T cells back in, they multiplied, divided, and started killing the hell out of the cancer cells. Because it realized it was there.

Right, it realized it was there. I always talk about, the analogy I always use is it's a serial killer in your neighborhood. And you drive by every day, and they're out mowing their lawn, and they wave to you don't think anything about it. Right, absolutely. That's a good analogy. Until one of the people that they have chained up in the basement gets free and says that crazy person at the end of the cul-de-sac. And then that's when the villagers show up with their torches, metaphorically speaking.

Unless you're Jeffrey Dahmer, and I think the cops tuck the cut back to his house. Can you believe that? But that's a whole different story. Yeah, that poor kid. Yeah, it's absolutely true. We do some messenger RNA stuff too. Oh, yeah. Tell us about that.

Well, it's just our end is just the preservation side. We've developed a proprietary way to step down freeze the neurological tissue and then preserve that messenger RNA. And, you know, that tied in with the, you know, the immune suppression, immunosuppressant studies, I think they're onto something. And obviously, like you said, it's going to be a better treatment coming down the road here soon. How is that going to, how will they use messenger RNA for that? I think they're trying to reprogram it. Okay. in the same.

They don't tell us everything what they're doing. We have a lot of non-disclosures in place, as you can imagine. Yeah. Well, you have messenger RNA and you've got transfer RNA, and these are all, okay, so RNA is a, is, deoxy ribonucleic acid. And there are people that think that RNA was really the precursor of life, that RNA was the first ribonucleic acid chain to be formed, and then it started reproducing itself. After, who knows, maybe a billion years of just fiddling around, then all of a sudden one of them started reproducing itself.

And then it had a differential advantage because none of the other RNA molecules were doing it. And then, you know, over time, our genetic material is mostly deoxyribonucle. acid. That's what makes up our genes. But we still use ribonucleic acid to carry information from the double-stranded DNA strand to the ribosomes, which make the proteins that these genes code for. So it's pretty cool. And we've even incorporated these things mitochondria that were probably single-celled organisms at one time, and we incorporated them into our themselves and basically make them do things for us. It's kind of survival of the fittest they've developed over the years.

Yeah. And, you know, it's hard for us to think back 200 years, much less 3.5 billion years. And Carl Sagan always said that the genius of evolution is time and breadth. So, you know, just these innumerable numbers of branching, well, branches of life and then this just unbelievable amount of time. You know, 65 million years from the dinosaurs to now, really, geologically, is not that long of a period of time. Well, I think it was a monk originally that discovered DNA, didn't really know. what it was. Well, you're thinking of Mendelian genetics.

He figured out, so what he figured out was if you take a white flower and a blue flower, well, and a blue flower, well, let me try a different example. A white flower and a red flower, a certain number of their offspring would be pink. Some would be white and some would be red. And then he figured out the whole dominant and recessive gene thing. That was based on his study. Yeah, yeah, that's right. But some of that set on the shells for years.

years and the one used it. Sure. And then it kind of revived itself. Oh, yeah. Well, that's happened in physics, too. You know, someone will come up with some wacky math thing that no one thinks will ever have any purpose. And then Einstein will use it to, you know, formulate general relativity from. Right.

So, anyway. Well, let's just do this bone marrow question now, then. Let me see if I can find it. Oh. Well, shit. Okay, well, let me just talk about donating bone marrow because somebody called in and said, what's the deal about bone marrow donation? And so bone marrow is this sort of soft, spongy material that's found in the large bones,

pelvis, long bones of the arm and legs and stuff like that. And it makes, get this number, 200 billion new blood cells every day. That's how tiny these damn things are. And it makes red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets. And people who have bone marrow diseases, and particularly different types of cancer, it doesn't work right. And, you know, the bone marrow transplant is their best way of surviving. The problem is that you have to match the bone marrow very carefully. If you don't, the injected bone marrow will multiply and then kill the person.

It's called graph versus host. Is that based on an antigen match sort of like kidney transplant? Absolutely. And it's way, yeah, very much so. So they have to be, you know, exceedingly careful not to inject bone marrow that's going to kill the person. And they use this thing called human leukocyte antigen typing. And that's blood test analyzes these human leukocyte antigens. And they've got to have a match.

And the problem is that only about 25 to 30 percent of people who need a transplant can find a HLA-matched donor in their immediate family. You'd think it's, well, all you need to do is get your family to donate, and it's no problem. But that'll only work about a third of the time. So for the other people that don't find a match, they've got to find matched, they've got to find matched bone marrow from other donors. And that's about 14,000 people a year from young children up to older adults. Do they have a registry for that now? Well, I'm so glad you asked. It's perfect timing.

Matter of fact, let me give me one of these. Give yourself a bill. There is a National Mero Donor Program. And you can just search for National Mero Donor Program, and they have this whole registry of donors. And what they do is that you'll collect cells from your chief. But first you have to say, I'm willing to be a bone marrow donor. And then they'll collect cells from your cheek with a cotton swab, and then they'll put you in this database. And if there's a match, then they contact you.

And then the donation process itself is, it's not fun, but you're saving a life. I mean, literally, I've seen people who have had bone marrow transplants that go on to live long and healthy lives afterward. I've seen people who had to have more than one, but they still very often will. do well. So what they'll do very likely if they can is a peripheral blood stem cell collection, and that's pretty easy. They'll give you an injection of this granulocyte colony stimulating factor. So this is a hormone that causes the bone marrow just to churn out tons and tons of white blood cells. And then you and you may have some some pain with that in your bones.

Just imagine. You know, they're just emptying out. They're going crazy and the bones tend to get achy. But that's it. I mean, it's uncomfortable. And then on the fifth day, they place a needle in each of your arms and they take out blood. They circulate the blood, collect the stem cells, and then they return the regular blood to your

body through the second needle. It takes about three hours. It's like dialysis. We're donating plasma, maybe. Yeah, yeah, very much like that. And every once in a while, they'll ask you to do a bone marrow harvest, and that's where they take bone marrow from the back of your hip bone. And that's a surgical procedure, not fun. Again, you'll have some pain for a few days afterward.

Most of those people can go back to full activity in a week. But, again, you're saving someone's life. So I'm going to, I'm glad this person. asked about this. I'm sorry I can't find their phone call. But I'm going to do this. So I'm going to do it today. I'm going to sign up at the National Bone Morrow Donor Program. And let me click on that link to that. And I'll give you the URL. It's called be the match.org. And I think there actually is a fee to sign up. It's like a hundred bucks. Fuck it. I'm going to do it. Well, save a life. Yeah. There you go.

It's pretty cheap to save it. Yeah. So I'm going to do that today. I'm making that pledge today. And if anyone else wants to join me, tweet to me at Weird Medicine on Twitter and let me know you did it. I'll retweet it. All right. So, good. Anything else about tissue banking? Well, there's a lot to it.

You know, one small problem. Ain't y'all just selling body parts? Yeah, yeah, we got a yard sale going on. Well, speaking of bone marrow, we work with a company that's developed a more pain-free. way to recover it from the Iliac crest. Oh, really? And so people don't... Okay, so tell people where the Iliac crest is.

The Lilliac crest is your hip. They think it's a TV show in the 70s. Iliac crest, okay. It's basically your hip. All right. If you're laying on your back and you're thin enough, it'll be, you know, down near your junk over to the left and right. You have two of them.

Okay. They will stick up if you're skinny. If you're not, if you're like me, you can't really see them. Yeah. to feel for it. But yeah, we've worked with them for a while. So if someone donates their body, you know, for medical research and education, that is one of the many things that we've worked on in the last year, is this organization has developed a new way to recover that. Is that right? Well, do you know what the process is?

I don't know the exact process. I haven't seen it. I just know that we're working with them, you know, it's less painful. Yeah, that's how the marketing is on it. And it's for physician training-wise. They seem to think it's a better process. Oh, okay. I'm in. Yeah. Okay. All right. Cool, man. Anything else? No, I'm just glad to be here. I was at a meeting and there was a funeral director there that said that places like what you're talking about are just selling body parts. Right. Well, they're trying to discourage people from doing it because you all cremate, you know, places like what we're talking about will cremate the remains and give back to the family for nothing so nobody makes any money off of it well you know just imagine a world without people donating their body i mean medical schools learn we work with a lot of medical schools now

a lot of research uh that that can be done on the body post death that can't be done when the person's alive right um and then and then the basic of physician training if if you're laying on the surgical table to get your knee replaced you don't want the first time that doctor's ever seen that implant to be while you're laying there on the table and he's trying to make it work on you. You want him to practice on some cadaver specimens. Yeah, and computer simulations are not where they need to be yet. It's just not there. Yeah.

But we're starting a new, our organization as a don't cremate to cure is our new, our new slogan for 2019. What the hell does that mean? That means don't just be cremated, don't eat your body. Oh, I see. Your body may hold the cure to cancer to ALS to... So what's the slogan? I think maybe you could word that a little better.

Don't cremate the cure. Oh, don't cremate the cure. Okay, I thought you said, don't cremate to cure. No, no, don't cremate the cure. Gotcha. Oh, okay, okay, okay. And the reason... That sounds like an anti-cremation message, though.

Well, no, it's... Yeah, but it leads you to... How about donate for the cure? Well, I think someone has that one already. Oh, they do? Okay. Jeez. can you so so the people that have donate for the cure would somehow sue oh yeah some other organization

uh-huh that's hilarious yeah at one point there was there was there's that there would be politics involved in that there's another nonprofit out there that has a has a slogan it's that's you know you've heard for years i won't say what it is okay yeah yeah but we at one time linked to them and they they came after us just for linking to that's hilarious yeah even though it's the same call you would think okay anyway I'm not going to say what I would think it's just I've I've learned I've become more cynical I thought hospice for example you know where you're just trying to help people have a comfortable life and a good quality of life before they die that everyone would be so peaceful and all would be on the same page and just willing to help each other and no politics need

ever get involved in such an endeavor and oh my goodness was i wrong at the national level at the local level it's still you know people are jockeying for their own thing so anyway hospice is a great thing it is a great oh don't get me wrong oh i know it's my chosen profession but i was just amazed when i got into it that yeah you do have to deal with politics and and uh that kind of Yeah, my 25 years of doing this, I've been amazed by you would think if someone learned something. But, again, I told you earlier, we had proprietary processes ourselves. Yeah, yeah. It kind of gives you that niche and keeps you alive.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. Well, all right. Let's see what we got here. Hey, I just wonder if you could talk about artificial sweeteners and what they do to the brain memory loss, short-term and long-term. know you all talked about it a little bit, you and Dr. Scott, you and Dr. Scott might differentiate a little bit because he's a little more into the natural supplements. Not necessarily. The natural ways of things and natural healing. Oh, those types of things.

Shut up. I'm a special guest, maybe a nutritionist or a homeopathic type doctor or something like that. Maybe dietitian would talk about some of these things. A homeopath? Okay. Now, just remember, homeopathy is the idea that like cures like, but only when like is imprinted on the molecules of water. So if you have something that causes people to have fever, some chemical, then if you put it in water, and put it in solution, and then do something. serial dilutions, then that diluted substance has imprinted itself on the water.

And now when you give that water to somebody with a fever, it's supposed to cure their fever. Okay. So, that's homeopathy. Homeopathy. Homeopathy. And when you see a homeopathic substance in a pharmacy, look at the number. after it, and it'll say Arsenicum 64x or something like that. That means that

it's been diluted out 64 times. So if you take a solution of something and then you double it with water and then pour off half, double it again, and do that 64 times, you can prove mathematically that the odds

are there won't be a single molecule of that stuff left. However, the homeopaths will say that it's imprinted itself on that water and it will have some efficacy Okay. I'll follow you now. So I am, no, not a fan. And, you know, studies have shown that it's a placebo. Not to say that a placebo is not a powerful medication.

But there doesn't seem to be any effect when you do these serial dilutions. Now, some of the things like Zycam that is sold as homeopathic really isn't. because it might be a 1x or 2x dilution. I'm not sure the truth of the xicamlid, but they have zinc in them. And the zinc itself may actually have some membrane stabilizing properties. You know, this stuff is sold to decrease the duration of a cold. And, you know, some studies show that there's some efficacy might decrease the duration by a day or two. But a day or two is a day or two.

I'll take it. the ingredient inside? Zinc. Zinc is basically comes down zinc. And when they were selling it as a nasal spray, it was causing people to have anosmia. In other words, it was killing their sense of smell.

So the idea that these things have no effect whatsoever isn't true, particularly when they're not truly homeopathic. It's just zinc in solution. I'm not sure why you call that homeopathic if it's not diluted

out. But And also, I'm not sure how zinc-like cures like. Maybe my idea of homeopathy is too superficial. But anyway, but those zinc lozenges actually work, but they have detectable concentrations of zinc in them. And as I started to say, there may be some real effects of zinc on the oropharynx in stabilizing those cells to prevent virus.

intrusion or something. Who knows? We'd have to look into that further. But, so anyway, yeah, so I won't be having a homeopath on to talk about a spartame. Maybe you and Dr. Scott could kind of debate, you know, do some research and debate. Well, we have, and he and I both agree on this one thing. But anyway, that's a long-term effects, and even the short-term effects, you know, 10, 20, 30 years plus of... Yeah. So, let's talk a little bit about a spartame. A spartame is a dipeptide, so it's made up two amino acids, and it fools the tongue into thinking that it's sweet, and when it gets into the stomach, it's cleaved into its constituent amino acids. Now, this is where I have the

problem with a lot of the sort of chicken little stuff when it comes to a spartame, is it's been studied and studied and studied and still have not found significant amounts of adverse effects, which I would expect because these two amino acids are found in nature, and they're included in every protein that you eat, and it's cleaved in the stomach into its constituent amino acids. So where's the harm coming from? However. When you pronounce it aspartane, same thing.

A spartame or aspartame, right, yeah. Okay, so I looked up, now this is, a nursing journal, and it was a review article. So it's the first thing I could find, it says despite its widespread use, artificial sweetener aspartame or aspartame, remains one of the most controversial food additives due to mixed evidence on its neurobehavioral effects. Mixed evidence means there's some evidence for and some against. Now, here we go.

healthy adults who consumed a study prepared highest spartame diet. This was 25 milligrams per kilograms of body weight per day. So remember that number. For eight days and a low aspartame diet with a two-week washout between the diets were examined within subject differences in cognition, depression, mood, depression, mood, and depression, mood, and cognitive tests. orientation. So they did a lot of stuff. When consuming highest spartame diets, participants had more irritable mood, exhibited more depression, and performed worse on spatial orientation tests. A spartame consumption did not influence working memory. So that's compared to the lowest barthame diet. Okay. Now, so how much is 25 milligrams per kilograms? It's a body weight. So let's just take

the ideal male is 70 kilograms. So let's ask Alexa. Let me pot her up here. Alexa, what is 25 times 75? Uh-oh. Oh, shit. I don't have Alexa plugged in. What happens, you know, if you ever plugged in?

What was that number, 25 times 75? 1875. Okay, so 1875. Now, let's find out how. much aspartame let's go milligrams of a spartame in a packet in one packet of equal okay that's 37 milligrams of a spartame so take that 18 whatever and divide it by 37 50.6 so it's 50 packets. Right.

Okay. Now, here's the thing. The 10 milligram per kilogram people seemed fine. So let's do that. That's 700. So that'd be,

wait, seven, not seven times ten. So, yeah, 700 divided by that 37. So they got 700 milligrams total if they were a 70 kilogram man.

That's 0.0. No, it's not. Alexa, what's 700 divided by 37? 18.9. Okay. Yeah, so 18 packets. So if you do 18 packets of a spartame, neurocognitively come in this study anyway, you were okay.

And that's over how long period of time? A day and a day. Okay. They're talking about 18 packets in a day. That's still a lot. And they called that a low aspartame diet. Now, I think a Diet Coke has got a shit load of a spartame in it. So I think it's 200 milligrams.

So let's do it in Diet Coke's milligrams of a spartame in Diet Coke. So considering a can of Diet Coke contains 180 milligrams of a Spartan. So let's do this. by cans of Diet Coke. Okay, so what was that 1800 thing? 1875, if you did it. Divided by 180. That's 10.4.

So that's 10 cans. Yeah. So you'd have to get 10 cans of Diet Coke before you met the milligram amount in this study. In a 24-hour period. In a 24-hour period, that's right. Now, there probably are people that drink that much. Probably, but that's a lot. That's still a lot.

Let me see here. Okay. Now, there are people who cannot have a spartime, and those are people with phenyl-ketonuria. You should know if you have PQAU, you were diagnosed with it when you were born, because we test everybody for it when they're born. And those people cannot have a spart team. Now, for them, it's dangerous. This kind of comes down to the circumcision thing. You know, there are studies that show some benefit to circumcision that might benefit a few people.

It's like a bell curve. People way on the right of the bell curve may benefit from it. And then there's people on the left of the bell curve that may be harmed by it. Most everybody's in the middle. And they'll be okay either way. And then it becomes a personal choice. Are you going to, you know, put your kid through this, knowing that there's probably not going to be any benefit and there might be some harm. And they'd probably be okay either way without their consent.

Right. You know, and we do lots of things for kids without their consent. Most of them are not of a permanent nature like that. but you know you can consent to your kid having surgery if it's you know if it's necessary you can consent to your kid having antibiotics or not and you know if you're putting your kid in danger the state can come in and mandate that you do certain things like chemotherapy for a kid that's curable you know and when the family's refusing sometimes the state's jumped in and said no you have to do it been in the news a few times yeah um but anyway uh so that's so i the spartame

thing is kind of the same thing in the sense that there's this big bell curve and there may be some people that will be harmed by it but they're in the minority and there maybe there's some people that'll benefit from it i don't know but most everybody else is going to be okay well it seems to come down to basically you can control it because if you just control your intake yeah yeah well Or if you feel that it's dangerous, don't take it. I was going to tell you something else. But I was just going to tell you briefly, the European Food and Safety Authority published research that concludes that consuming the artificial sweetener, which has been used extensively for more than three decades, is perfectly safe for the vast majority of people. They said that the acceptable daily limit for a spartame is 40 milligrams per kilogram of.

body weight. So what were the other... It wasn't it, 25? God dang. The other one was 25. That was considered high. Yeah, that's right. So, okay, 40, let's do four, okay, Alexa, what's 40 times 70? 40 multiplied by 70 equals 2,800. 2,800. Alexa, what's 2,800 divided by 180? 2,800 divided by 180 rounds to 15.556. That'd be 15 cans of, okay.

Look, and now, I read some research recently, and it wasn't really research because it was more someone's opinion, but it was in a medical journal. That their idea of why drinking a lot of diet sodas causes people to gain weight, because we have seen that effect, is, And this one I can buy, and I absolutely believe that this is possible, that your body thinks that it's sweet, right? It fools it into thinking, even though it's got that kind of weird, better taste, but the majority of the taste is sweetness. That since the body's experiences that sweetness, it sets off a cascade of hormones and other changes in the body. that are expecting carbohydrates. And it's expecting to then store these carbohydrates because it's going, oh, boy, there's sugar coming in.

So we need to get ready to store this sugar because that's what the body does. Because when we were developing as a species, we were starving almost all the time. And so we're very efficient at storing calories. But then it doesn't get it. And it doesn't get it. goes, what the F?

You know, so then that stimulates the hunger and the parts of the brain that seek satiety, in other words, you know, satisfaction from eating, and it makes you more hungry. And so you eat more and you gain more weight. And now that I can actually wrap my brain around, and I think that probably makes sense. I've been around people who drink a lot of Diet Coke, and a number of them after a meal will say, And now I'm craving something sweet. Yeah. So would that be a part of that?

Yeah, I've had that too. Yeah. I've had that as well. Almost like your body says I need it. Yeah. I desire that now. Yeah. And I think that makes total sense that the body's going, where are these calories I was expecting?

I didn't get them. Eat more. So I guess my question is why do we crave, why do we have to have sweet stuff all the time? Why do we have to, the things that we drink? Why do they have to be flavor? Do our taste buds have to be constantly entertained? I'm just trying to drink more unsweet tea. And I drink the tea because it has a positive effect on my mood and energy level.

I drink a lot of tea too. But not sweet tea. And down here in the south, it drives me crazy. The default is tea laden with simple syrup. And it makes me physically ill. And I wondered why I was so weird because everybody else around me. I mean, I've been here my whole life except for a short period of time that were formatively years that I spent in Michigan and Chicago. Do they have sweet tea there?

No. No. And that's the thing. So I had apparently forgotten all of this. And I grew up drinking unsweet tea and everybody else around me in the South looked at me like I was. a weirdo, and you would order it and you'd still get sweet tea because they're so sure that's what you meant. They must have misheard you when you said unsweet tea. So I, and I never could quite understand why I was different from everybody else. That wasn't the only thing,

believe me. And I went back up to Michigan to interview at a place called Angel Hospice in Detroit, Michigan. And I went out to eat with them. And I, um, I, was at a restaurant and I said I would like unsweet tea please and the lady said well honey that's all we have what other kind is there and that's when it hit me that's where that came from and people up there if they put any sweeten or in they'll put it in after they get the tea but they don't brew it with this gobs and gobs of sugar like they do down here well two things I've done there is I've slowly reduced the amount of sugar that I add to my tea because I make my own tea So I started at a cup per gallon

I know I know it was like syrup But I'm down to about half a cup Okay I think if you slowly reduce it You can get that down to where I just developed a taste for bitterness And so I like things better One thing that you could try is

To particularly to develop that taste Is to put lime or lemon juice Lime juice particularly In your tea and see if you can fool your taste buds And so that they'd not crave you know, sugar. But I see you drink regular Coke anyway. And that's a caffeine thing. Yeah, that's 100% caffeine. Yeah. About 1030, if I haven't had some caffeine, I feel it. Yeah, really. It's almost like a withdrawal. Yeah, I've never had the caffeine withdrawal, but I do like

drinking tea in the morning. It keeps me from being hungry, too. That's how I start out every morning, but it is sweet tea. I'm on a new weight loss thing that has really worked for me. I'm down 11 pounds since I started, and I'm heading for 30, and I've seen it advertised, and I'd love for them to advertise on this show, but it's Noom, it's an app, N-O-O-M, and it's the closest thing I can tell you is it's closest to Weight Watchers, but it's about $10 a month cheaper than that, I think. And what I really like about it is I have a personal counselor, right? We have a group counselor, too.

And it's all on this app on the phone, but her picture is she's just absolutely hot as hell. Now, she's probably just some big, fat, sweaty dude in a basement somewhere using that picture. But I, you know, so I have to report every morsel of food that goes into my mouth to this counselor through this app, right? And I don't want to have to tell her that I ate a whole bag of Snickers. or a whole can of Pringles, like I used to do on almost a daily basis. And because I don't want to tell her that, and I've pledged to be honest about it, I don't do it. And since the day this thing started, there hadn't been a Snickers go into my mouth. I've had a few potato chips, but I have reported them, and they've been part of my daily program.

So how do they make you honor? It's just you take the pledge. Yeah, it's an honor system. If you lie, I mean, what do you spend in your money for? Right, absolutely. Okay, I get you. You have to, you have to commit to being honest about it and putting down everything that you put in your mouth. So, so she's like this smoking hot lady.

Unbelievable. So why don't, is it like part of the app is like she puts clothes on? No, no, no. If you eat something, you shouldn't. That would be awesome. Yeah, maybe we should develop that. But that would be an awesome app for big fat dudes. You know, they would go for that.

Nobody else would go for that. But, you know, it's just that I would be embarrassed to admit. to her that I ate, you know, a whole bag of chocolate. So you report every little thing. Everything. So. Everything. And, you know, sometimes if I'm way under and I'm lazy and I drink a beer and I know it's 100 calories and it's still going to be under my goal, I don't, I won't put that. But other than that, yeah, every single thing. So if you report to her, I just ate a, you know, a king-sized Snickers bars. What's her feedback to? Well, her feedback will be supportive, but I'll know the whole time that she's going this fucking guy.

So she's like a dom then. Yeah. But she would be, oh, so you fell off the horse. How do we get back on? What are we going to do to commit to, you know, just like any behavioral, cognitive sort of therapist would do. And so I try to, you know, I just don't want to put her in that position where she has to be disappointed in me.

So there's psychology built into it. Oh, it's the whole thing's about psychology. And I've seen the ads, and it's not a diet. There's no forbidden foods, but you change your relationship with food. And there's a constant reminder because you have that like she's looking over your shoulder. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm really, really pleased with it. Sounds like a great idea.

Anyway, I don't know why I brought that up. I know there was a, oh, we were talking about a spartame and weight game. There we go. Yeah, so let me see, this European food safety authority. authority. So the spartame becomes toxic only once you consume 4,000 milligram per kilogram of body weight. Oh, 4,000. Okay, so it only becomes toxic when you drink that much. And that's 1,600 cans of Diet Coke a day. 1600. Yeah, 1,600 cans. 1,600 cans. I don't know if there's enough time in the day

for that. So, yeah. So there you go. Yeah. And, you know, study after study shows us. Now, there are these little niche things like this neurocognitive thing that they showed. But that could be, you know, when you get an overload of a certain amount of amino acids, you know, if you get 10 times more phenyl, or let me think of, like you get 10 times more lysine than your body is used to getting, I could see where that could have some weird effects on your body. So you're getting this sort of overload of these two amino acids. You could convince me that if you drink enough of that and you've got this sort of imbalance between all the other amino acids in your body and these two, that that could have some adverse effects, totally into that. But these sort of magical effects that I keep hearing about, it just doesn't ring true to me since they're naturally occurring amino acids.

So anyway, all right. let's do another nutrition one. Hey, Dr. Steve, Dr. Scott. I've got a question about vitamins. Some of them say that they're fat soluble, and I'm just wondering what that means. I've seen like the vitamin D and a couple other ones, maybe the vitamin E, what that means.

And then also some vitamins say they're intericoded. I'm just wondering what that means, too, how it has to be interracoded. It's just an extra cost. Kind of curious. Thanks, guys. Yeah, okay. Some people will have GI upset from taking vitamins, particularly multivitamins. And if you have one that's intericoded, it's just going to get past the stomach before it starts to break down and be absorbed.

and therefore it may cause less GI upset. Really, that's the only thing I can think of. I know there are some dietary substances, and I believe iron is one of them that is absorbed down in the intestine rather than being absorbed from the stomach, so that makes sense to maybe intericode that if the iron hurts your stomach. So the interic coating? Enteric coating.

So it just basically keeps that pill or capsule intact in the stomach. Until it passes through the stomach. That's right. That's right. So let's talk about fat soluble vitamins. The nemonic for that is ADEC. It's ADE and K. And the only one that you can really get in big trouble,

megadosing is vitamin A. And you can get into big trouble. So I don't recommend that you megadose. any vitamin, fat soluble vitamin, and he asked, what does that mean? Well, it means just what it says. It's soluble in fat. Other vitamins like the B vitamins are soluble

in water. So when you take a B vitamin, it's not really readily stored in the body except in the water in the body. And the rest of it, if you get more than you need, you just pee it out. The fat soluble vitamins will go to your fat cells and actually be absorbed there, and they'll

stay there where they become a reservoir. So they just live there. They just live there, and then we'll be re-delivered to the body over time as they sort of leach out of those fat cells. So vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin K. So, and the danger comes from A first, then K, and then D and E, not so much. I mean, K affects your bleeding studies and that sort of thing. That's right. Is that one reason K is dangerous?

Well, I don't, I'm not saying it's dangerous. Or could be. Let me look up. It's certainly. When I worked with a group of doctors, you know, vitamin K was kind of the last resort. If you had someone, we couldn't stop bleeding, their blood was too thin for whatever reason. Right. Well, we used to use aquamophyton or vitamin K to reverse cumulidin overdose. And then there were some adverse effects from doing that.

So they use that kind of, like you said, as a last resort. Let me look at vitamin K toxicity. So vitamin K toxicity is usually seen in formula-fed infant. are those getting synthetic vitamin K injections, and therefore this menadion is no longer used for treatment of vitamin K deficiency. So the effects of vitamin K toxicity includes jaundice and newborns, hemalytic anemia, and hyperbilloruminemia. Hyperbilliburomanemia is just an increase in a molecule called bilirubin, and that causes

jaund us over time. They also, it blocks the effects of oral anticoagulants. So if you're on Coumadin, you're not supposed to take vitamin K. Hypervitaminosis A can cause some real problems. Let me look at up. Vitaminosis A. So symptoms arise as a result of altered bone metabolism and altered metabolism, other fat, vitamins.

Oh, hypervitaminosis A is believed to have occurred in early humans and the problem has persisted throughout human history. I wonder why I'm probably eating livers and stuff. That's interesting, isn't it? So it's obviously diet. Yeah, signs and symptoms

include abnormal softening of the skull bone in children, blurred vision, bone pain, swelling, changes in consciousness, calcification of the gastric mucosa, heart valve, calcification, all kinds of stuff. So we don't recommend megadosing vitamin A at all.

Now, there is a thing called hypervitaminosis D, and let's look that one up real quick, because it's quite less of a problem. It's rare, but potentially serious. It occurs when you take too much vitamin D and can cause abnormally high levels of, calcium in the blood that can affect bones, tissues, and other organs. So just don't megadose, unless you've been told by a health care professional, any of the

fat-sliable vitamins, don't megadose any vitamin. There's no shown benefit for megadosing any of these vitamins. The sole exception would be vitamin B-12. And for people who cannot absorb B-12, we used to give them shots, right? because they couldn't absorb it. Well, they finally found out that they can absorb it, but it's about one-thirtieth of the rate of normal people. So these people will get pernicious anemia.

So what they'll do is instead of giving them 1,000 micrograms, which is 1 milligram, right? Okay. Right? 1,000 microgram. Yeah, it's a milligram. Of B-12 intramuscularly will give that same dose orally every day. so if it's 1 30th of the absorption you give it every day for a month it's going to be the same

as giving it once i am monthly dose okay so there you're right though i looked up its liver has has a ton of a vitamin a yeah lamb liver in particular beef liver by far has the most yeah so they're probably eating all these livers and uh because there was um they didn't let anything go to waste. True. My stepdad used to eat liver all the time. I used to like Braunschweger. I'm probably the only kid in the world that like Brownschweger.

It's liver sausage. And Oscar Meyer, Braunschweger is awesome. I hate liver. I can't stand it. It won't put it near my mouth. It tastes like what I imagine a turd would taste like were I to put one of those in my mouth. But Braunschweger, for some reason, I love it.

My mom used to cut it. cut it up and make balls of it, make me, and let me eat balls of Bromschweger. My mom was weird. All right, thanks always go to Tissue Bank James. Glad to be here. Thanks, man. Can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Ron Bennington,

and the great Fez Watley, whose early support of the show, has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel, SiriusXM, Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern, on demand,

and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks, go 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 of Weird Medicine. When you were here before I couldn't look you in the eye, you know, just like an angel, your skin makes me cry. You look like a feather in a beautiful world. world I wish I was special you're so

fucking special but I'm a creed I'm a man old what the hell am I doing here I don't know I don't care I don't care

if it hurts I want to have control I want a perfect body I'm born a perfect soul I want you to notice when I'm not around

you're so fucking special I wish I was special I'm afraid I'm overdo what the hell am I doing I don't belong I don't know. Whatever makes you happen

Whatever you want I wish I was very sure But I'm all green I'm all we know I'm moving on What the hell I do it is I don't belong here.

I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.