Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 344 - Jerk Chicken... Tsssss

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

How much self-pleasure is too much? What's this dang virus going around and how do we treat the symptoms at home (check with your primary care tho), a dude calling when otherwise indisposed, and more. PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com simplyherbals.net noom.doctorsteve.com (dr steve's favorite) premium.doctorsteve.com 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're missing contains mature contents that may be offended to some listeners. What did they wrong then? You know, your house is like another. 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, clasped with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating

shave. I want a magic pill for 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 and say, I want to Requiem for my disease. So I'm paging Dr. Steve. It's Weird Medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio now a podcast. Now on Spotify.

Now on Pandora. I'm Dr. Steve, and this is a show for people who had never listened to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to a regular medical provider. I can't find an answer anywhere else. Give us a call at 347-766-4-33-23. That's 347. Poohhead.

Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine. At Lady Diagnosis, who will be back next week. At Dr. Scott. W.M. It's D.R. Scott, W.M. He'll be back next week, too. Visit our website at Weird Medicine.com for podcast, medical, news, and stuff you can buy or go to our merchandise store.

CafePress.com slash Weird Medicine. That website is also Dr.steve.com. Most importantly, we're 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 it over with your doctor, nurse practitioner, physician, physician, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory scientist, or whatever.

Oh, very good. Please don't forget to check out stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. That's stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. I now have the Navage. device on there that saved my ass during the most recent bout of sinusitis. Stuff.

Dot, Dr. Steve.com for all your Amazon needs. Even if you don't want something that I'm selling, please go there, click through to Amazon. Shop to your heart's desire won't cost you a penny. Also, a tweakeda audio.com offer code fluid, FLUID, for those of you that got new Fitbit Verses or Fitbit Ionics for the holidays, you, to get the most out of that, you need a set of wireless headphones, and they have very reasonably priced ones

at tweakedaio.com, and better than that, they have the best customer service anywhere. Go to simplyerbils.net to check in on Dr. Scott. And don't forget to go to premium.com. Premium.com.com. premium.doctrsteve.com. That's our premium service. It's a buck 99 a month.

If you use offer code fluid because I screwed it up and everybody's accounts got canceled. You didn't lose any money. You just didn't renew automatically like you were supposed to. If you use offer code fluid, FLUID, you get a huge discount. So please do that. Please sign back up. I promise if we get up to a certain level, I'll start putting more. content in there that you will enjoy.

But you have right now access to all of our previous premium content, plus access to all of the shows going back to the very first one on Riotcast. All right, so that's premium.com. You all have heard me talk about the weight loss program that I'm on. It's called Noom, N-O-O-M. If you go to Noem, N-O-O-M-D-R-S-Eve.com, and if you want to try it, you can sign up. You get 20% off of your membership, and you get two free weeks free, which you would, even if you didn't go to Noom.

Dotters.com. They'll give you the first two weeks free. It's, I think, way cooler than Weight Watchers. It's $10 less a month than Weight Watchers, and it's more than that if you get the 20% off. and you get an individual counselor, a group, a group counselor, and Noom is all about psychology eating. There's no forbidden foods, but if you want to have something that you normally would not think would be a food that you could have if you were on a quote-unquote diet rather than a lifestyle management program, you just have to plan for it. So if I want to eat a burger and fries, I can do it. I just need to plan for it.

And this has been a revelation to me. And they're not even sponsors. This is just my code. I just, this is something right now I really believe in. It's been very successful for me. It's changed the way I think about eating and I just feel better. I'm more energetic. I've lost a shit ton of weight.

Well, for me, you know, I'm down 15 pounds right now and I'm on my way to losing 30. I just bought new clothes because now I can't. fit in my fat pants anymore. Well, I can fit in them. I just can't wear them because they fall off. So anyway, go to noom.com.com. Newm.com. Get 20% off and two free weeks of Noom. I hope you all had a great holiday season. I know I did. We were sick AF. And I know our friend over at Compound media has also been sick with the same thing. And it's whatever this is going around. I've had a bunch of people calling me have had cough, meleys, no fever, runny nose, stuffy nose.

And did I mention cough? Yeah, the cough goes on and on and on. Every time you laugh, you cough, you lay down to bed, you cough. And this thing lasted around four weeks. So the common cold usually will last anywhere from three days to 14 days. And they swear you can reduce the duration by at least a day or two by using zinc lozenges. I have no problem with that. I think they're called cold ease.

Don't use zinc nasal spray. That's been associated with anosmia, aka loss of the ability to smell. And then by extension, loss of ability to taste. That happened to me once when I had a sinus infection. I got some swelling in the turbinates, which we've talked about. Those are the active tissues in the nose that swell up that make you give you nasal congestion. And they were so edematous or swelled up so much that they covered up my smell sensors.

The smell sensors are in this ethmoid plate that's at the very top of the nose. It goes from, you know, the front of the head where your nose meets your head back. And there's these little sensors there. They're little like hair-like extensions that sense molecules and put that all together

and synthesized smells is pretty amazing. And, but it covered that so that all these smells that I took into my nose could not get up there. So I lost my sense of smell. And my kid has the most toxic flatus that, oh, it's unbelievable. And it couldn't smell anything. Couldn't smell my food and couldn't taste my food. And the problem with that is I couldn't tell, you know, if I ate a hot dog and it was rotten, I wouldn't be able to tell.

There was no, it was almost took, it took my assent appetite away because I knew that I was missing flavors and I would also miss off flavors. So, but it was rough. Little nasal steroids helped that out and some Afrin nasal spray. So let's talk about symptomatic treatment for a viral infection. Now, if you have influenza, hopefully you got your flu shot because if you did, even if you get it, you're going to most likely have a mild case and not end up in the hospital. But if it's influenza, you want to present to your primary care or urgent care or wherever to get treated. If you have shortness of breath with that and your lips are turning blue, and you'll know it when you see it,

you need to go to the emergency room. don't hesitate because influenza, as you know, can become a very serious illness. Even when you recover from influenza, if you have known flu and you sailed through it, and then all of a sudden you start coughing up green stuff and feeling like crap and now you've got a recurrent fever, you may actually have a staphylococcal pneumonia. It's not uncommon to have after influenza. I guess the influenza virus disrupts the mucus membrane inside. the lung and the alveoli to the point where they become susceptible to bacterial infection.

So, but if you have influenza, go get checked. But if it's a cold or this thing that's going around that seems to be a virus and we're not able to, you know, treat the underlying problem, here's symptomatic treatment. And as always, check with your primary care. Some of these things may be contraindicated for you, and I'll tick those off too. if you're on blood pressure medicine or other medications. So make sure when you're going to do a course of self-care that includes over-the-counter drugs that you talk it over with your primary care provider or, you know, some health care provider. Anyway, so for runny nose, runny nose is caused by, you know, liquid mucus that's being extruded or exuded or excreted from cells.

in the turbinates mostly. These are active tissues. And they often will be stimulated to produce this thin mucus by a hormone called histamine. And some bells are probably going off in your head. So that's what an antihistamine is for. So the antihistamines will block the activity of histamine at the level of the tissue and decrease the amount of snot that's being produced. now if you have a yellowish snot it's not always a bacterial sinus infection could still be a sign of viral sinusitis

but and if you think you have a bacterial sinus infection we'll take a little side track most of the time you'll have pain in the cheek bones above you know right to the side of your eyes and you can tap on them and it hurts you'll have greenish or yellowish mucus that may be darkening in color, and you often will have malaise with that. One thing is the body, all of that snot that's in your nose that's got white blood cells in it that makes it, makes it yellow like that, has to be cleared by the body. And you will not get well until the body clears all of it out of your system. So one thing, and I bought one of these, it's the greatest thing I ever bought.

So we've always talked about the netty pot when GVAC was here. We talked about, he liked the netty pot. And Dr. Scott, you know, he's big hippie, so he likes the netty pot. But I found the 21st century netty pot. It's the coolest thing ever. It's called a navage, N-A-G-E. And I'll put it on stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com when I finished recording this show so you can find it there.

It is a 21st century netty pot. It basically has a reservoir that has saltwater. in it that you put salt water in and you make it use sterile water not tap water we don't want amoebas in our head although that's exceedingly rare but still most tap water is fine i would still it's distilled water is so cheap just by distilled water and then they give you a little pack of sterile saline and that goes in there and then it's got two little extrusions you stick one in each nostril and when you push the button and there's videos of this um it shoots saline in one nostril, and then there's a vacuum in the other nostril that sucks it back out

again. So it goes in one nostril, goes all the way back to the septum around, and the suction is strong enough. None of the fluid goes down into your throat, if you do it right. It just circles around and comes out the other nostril, because fluid's going to follow the path of least resistance. And you would not believe that even after you've blown your nose 50 times the crap that will, this thing will clean out. It's amazing. And when I was going through that, that thing gave me a whole lot of relief. So any molecule of mucus that's infected that you can take out mechanically is a molecule of mucus that's infected that your body doesn't have to clear. So you'll get better faster if you do that. So anyway, the Navage, NAV-A-G-E, it's awesome. So I like it. Not a sponsor of the show.

I wish they were. I could promote the hell out of that. All right. So runny nose, antihistamines. Now, if you don't want to be sleepy, I would avoid the old-school antihistamines like Benadryl. Sometimes it's great. You take one at bedtime. You sleep all night.

They sell it as a sleep aid. As long as you don't have a reason not to take Benadryl, one of those would be prostatic enlargement, you could take Benadryl. If it doesn't make you sleepy, it's fine. It's dirt cheap. Works really well. Otherwise, I recommend a non-drowsy antihistamine like Allegra or satirazine, which is, starts with a Z. I can't remember it. Allegro is fexophenidine. And those are or a sclerotin, which is loradidine. For me, the fexophenidine or Allegra works the best. The other one is Zyrtex satirazine. But, you know, if one worked better than all the others, we'd only need one.

So everybody's different. So that one works for me. One of the other ones might work better for you. So that is a stuffy nose. Sorry, running nose. For stuffy nose, you need a decongestin. So remember we talked about those terminates that are active, tissues. They will swell up in the presence of inflammation and they will recede again in the presence

of not inflammation, I guess. And the mechanism that they do that is by opening up blood vessels and allowing fluid in the form of blood and then to flow into those tissues and that increases the density of those tissues. And then that in the presence of histamine, particularly, what will happen is the tight junctions in those blood vessels will open up and allow fluid, and it's a real thin mucus, but it's mostly water, to leak out. And so now you've got these thick, boggy tissues that are now leaking thin mucus, which you'll take care of with the antihistamine, but you still have these big boggy membranes in there, and they occlude your airway in the nose.

So you want to use a decongestant. Now, some people who are on blood pressure medication can't take strong decongestants. You've got to talk to your treating provider, which ones can you take? They have this choracidin, HPB. That's for, or HB, HBP, it's for people with high blood pressure. All it is, the lower dose of the antihis, of the, sorry, of the decongestant. So common decongestants are phenyl aphrine and pseudoephedrine. We used to have phenopropanolamine, I believe somebody told me that was off the market.

And then there's the nasal sprays where they have these epinephrine-like things and one that's called oxymotazylene, aka aafrin. And it's dirt cheap and it works so well to open up your nose. knows that it can be addictive. Now, is it addictive in the sense that you lie, cheat, and steal and crave it and use it beyond harm? Not really. It's habit forming. Why is it habit forming? Because it works so well. It causes vasoconstriction of the blood vessels going into these turbinates. So vasoconstriction, meaning constricting of the blood vessels, so there's less fluid going in. The turbinates recede and you open up your airway. 12 hours. Well, that takes a lot of energy to clamp down on a blood vessel for 12 hours,

even for these tiny little blood vessels. For them, it's a lot of energy. It's a lot of heavy lifting. So when the stuff wears off, they go, oh, thank God. And they relax. And then, of course, they open up to wider than they were before. So what that requires is you got to do it again. And you do it again and you do it again. The next thing you know, you're doing it not every 12 hours, but every eight, and then every six. And then you get to be like my maniac ex-wife who was doing it every 15 minutes. She would go through a bottle of Afrin every day. And, you know, adverse effects abound when you get up into those ranges, because that's not the way it was designed. So when you're basoconstricting your nose, you could be vasoconstricting

vessels in your heart and other places. So that's the problem with this stuff. It works so well. So you can only use it for a few days. Now, if you only use it at bedtime so that you can sleep with a clear nose, you can take Sudafed or one of the other ones in the morning or day quill that's got a decongest in it in the morning and then do the affluent night. You're much less likely to have habit-forming behaviors to, you know, come from that, but still can happen. So if you do it only once a day at bedtime, I'd recommend the aphrine for no more than five to seven days. Okay. And so you can take the pills or you can do the aphrine.

Again, make sure that it's not contraindicated in you if you're on certain blood pressure medications or if you're prone to problems with vasoconstriction. Okay, so we've done runny nose, we've done stuffy nose. How about cough? well in the old days we just used narcotics for cough because they are antitussive as we say they block the cough mechanism and they work great but then some genius found that the de-isomer okay so let's talk a little bit about isomer so some molecules are not symmetrical when it comes to handness. In other words, you can have a left-handed molecule and a right-handed molecule. It's kind of hard to describe on the air, but just trust me there. The way these molecules

are constructed, you can't put them in a mirror and see the exact mirror image. Okay. So there's a left-handed molecule and a right-hand molecule. Just trust me, there's a left-handed and a right-handed molecule of levomithorphan, which is a very potent narcotic. The right-handed right-handed molecule is dextromathorfan, and it has very little properties of an opioid, or you may call it a narcotic, we would call it an opioid, very little properties. You know, opioids cause pain relief, they cause the, you know, changes in the pupils, they also cause decrease in respiratory drive or can cause respiratory failure, and they'll also decrease cough. This stuff doesn't have much pain, unless you just drink gallons of it, much activity on pain,

doesn't have much activity on the irises of the eye, doesn't suppress breathing except in, you know, mega doses, which you shouldn't take. But it does decrease the cough response. So apparently the receptor that these things are hitting for cough response, don't care whether the molecule is right-handed or left-handed. They kind of deal with it equally. So it's kind of interesting. So that's your organic chemistry lesson for the day.

So dextramothorfan is the best over-the-counter thing for cough that you can get. Now, some people with this thing, particularly there's so much mucus being secreted into the lungs, that you need something that will decrease mucous production. And for that, you've got to see your primary care. I use a thing called epitropium bromide or atrovent inhalers for these people, and they'll just inhale it and decreases the mucus production, decreases the cough. But that's really a last resort, and you're already seeing your primary care at that point. So Robitussin DM is one. Now, that's got a very mild solution of the dextramothorphan in it.

If you want a higher dose, you can get mucinex DM. Those are these big horse pills. Hard for kids to get down, and I think the minimum age is 12. And you take those, and the guifenicin that's in them is an expectant, thins out mucus, allows you to cough it up easier. And then the dextramothorphan keeps you from doing unnecessary coughing. So we've dealt with runny nose, stuffy nose cough, aches and pains. So aches and pains, usually long as you don't have liver trouble or a binge drinker,

Tylenol will take care of it. Tylenol will also bring your fever down in cases where that's ineffective as long as you don't have a contraindication, which would be history of, you know, stomach ulcers, bleeding ulcers, bleeding problems, low platelet count, renal failure, that kind of stuff. Then you can take ibuprofen or naperson. It was funny, when I was in training, we always thought Naperson was the dangerous one, but it turns out it's actually less risky to take than ibuprofen is as far as stimulating things like heart attacks and stroke and stuff.

So, and Naperson or Naproxin lasts about 12 hours. So you could take it, just take it with food, follow the instructions on the bottle. Again, make sure there's no contraindications to these things. Okay. So we've dealt with aches and pains, stuffy, runny nose and cough. Well, what else? Oh, sore throat. For sore throat, assuming you don't have strip, you don't want to miss a strep infection,

that requires a visit to the urgent care or primary care, but you don't, you know, they've ruled out strep, ibuprofen for me or Naperson will make it just go away. It's the best thing for that kind of pain because those pains are caused by inflammation, and these things are anti-inflammatory. So they really are very effective. Throat lozenges and all that stuff, cough drops and stuff, you know, they're basically candy. They may help a little bit. And sometimes they make you feel a little better, but unimpressed. And that's, oh, now for people who have concomitant allergies, in other words,

allergies that go along with all this, and this is making your symptoms worse, those folks can get an over-the-counter steroid inhaler and use that as directed, nasicort, Flonase, those kinds of things. I don't like Flonase's advertising because they say, well, it treats six things and six is more than one. It's like, I don't need to be told six is more than one. I'm aware of that. Like Florentine says, I'm not four.

Also, I don't like being marketed. And you all are aware of this. I don't mind adult gummies. I promote the use of melatonin gummies instead of melatonin pills because I think they're more bioavailable. In other words, they dissolve more readily and you get more medication. It doesn't have to leach out of this pill when a gummy dissolves. But I don't like the way they market to us. That's what I don't like is it, oh, my vitamin is.

in a delicious gummy and it's like shut the five you know how old are you for so anyway i need florentine here for exactly those maybe i could find a drop where he said if any of you have a drop of florentine saying that send it to me i've got a couple of spaces on my soundboard and i'll throw it in there okay anyway by the way don't forget to check out dr scott's website at simply herbals dot net he's uh cleaned it up quite a bit and it's uh um He's got some good stuff on there, including another thing I wanted to talk about. If you don't want to do the Navage, you can use a sinus nasal spray. There's one on the market called Ocean Nasal Spray.

You spray, spray, and then blow your nose and you blow out all this crap. And this is not an advertisement. I'm just telling you, I use this stuff. Dr. Scott's sinus spray. You know, I give him a lot of shit. But this is something I cannot give him shit about, which is his simply herbal sinus for instance. and it's on his website at simplyerbils.net and tell them Dr. Steve sent you. Anyway, don't forget to listen to our podcast, wherever podcasts are heard.

We are now on Spotify and I, well, we've always been on iTunes. We're on Spotify and Pandora. And don't forget the Amazon skill. I think you have to enable it, but it's really easy. I'll show you about the skillet for people who haven't heard this for a while. Alexa, ask Dr. Steve for a fun fact. Check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking.

Get off your rear and get some exercise. And we'll see you next week on weird medicine. For another fact, please say, tell me another fact. To quit say, stop. That wasn't really a fact. Let's try another one. Ask me, tell me another fact. The Turtis Maximus is not a giant.

constipated stool, but rather a species of Tibetan blackbird. For another fact, please say, tell me another fact. I didn't remember that one. To quit say, stop. Tell me another fact. Hiccups are called Singaltas by doctors. Transient hiccups can be treated by swallowing a teaspoon of sugar dry if you're not diabetic. Chronic hiccups need to be evaluated by a health care provider.

For another fact, please say, tell me another fact. Let's do one more, see if I can find a funny one. Tell me another fact. The biggest muscle in the human body is the gluteus maximus or the muscles found in the buttocks. The gluteus maximus is the largest and strongest muscle in the human body because it helps a person stand and supports most of the upper body weight. Without it, a person wouldn't be able to sit, stand or squat. Squat. Squat. I love that word.

For another fact, please say. Tell me another fact. I swear I don't remember doing this. We did it so long ago. tell me another fact the uveola sounds gross but it's just a little hangy thing in the back of your throat it probably triggers the gag reflex but people still argue about its function for another fact please say tell me another fact to quit say stop stop goodbye there's a couple uh there's one about rich voss in there somewhere um i was hoping

that we would just hit it by accident but there's over 200 of them in there so you can go a while before you repeat one. Anyway, well, let's answer some questions. I think that's most of it. If you want to do the zinc lozenges at the beginning and see if you can knock this thing out, there is some data out there that shows that that may be effective in reducing the duration of the cold. You know, nobody knows the mechanism. I'm assuming it stabilizes the cell membrane in the in the throat and decreases the virus's ability somehow to latch on and multiply. I just don't know what it could be. And I'm loath to call them homeopathic.

They'll say they are, but I don't think it's diluted. I mean, it's got active ingredient in it. It just is zinc ion. So it's not classically homeopathic. But anyway, all right, let's see. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right. I think that's the very first thing.

Uh-oh. Oh, shit. Where are we? I'm in the wrong place here. There we are. Okay, thank you. Hey, Dr. Steve. Andy calling in Ohio.

I wanted to get your thoughts on something. I had a vasectomy about a month ago, and I still have what feels like a little, like, blueberry-sized knot in my scrotum along with, obviously, the two testicles. I wanted to know if that's normal, if that's something I should get checked out or what it might be. So thanks a lot. Yeah, man. Okay, so he's had a vasectomy and now has a little nod in there. Or if you remember, that's where double vasectomy Todd got his name.

He had a vasectomy and had a third nut. So his was a little bigger than a blueberry, and he had to have that revised. In his case, the third knot was a spermatoseal. Now, a lot of times these things are abnormal cysts at the epididymus, which people who've listened for a long time know, that's an uh-oh wait a minute who could this be hello tacy you're on weird medicine no i need to talk to you really well okay okay i guess i better uh pause this and talk to her i will uh this will be invisible

to you but it will be apparent to me and uh i'll be right back All right, I'm back. I guess it's probably going to be doing for a while. No, I'm just kidding. It's, yep, needed to deal with a little home business there. All right, where was I? Oh, I was talking about this guy's spermatoceal. So anyway, spermatoseil is usually developed.

up at the epididymus, and it's not impossible that you can get a collection of fluid after a vasectomy. So the vasectomy occurs when a doctor usually or a health care provider trained in the technique of vasectomy ligates or ties off. and then cuts into the tube going from the testicle into the body where it's mixed with prostatic fluid and seminal fluid to make semen that has sperm cells in it. So if you ligate that tube, you will still have semen. You'll have seminal fluid and prosthetic fluid.

It just won't have sperm in it anymore. The sperm is only 2% of the volume. So if you're worried that you're going to, oh, I'm going to decrease my ropes, man. If you can tell the difference in 2%, you know, you might have had an issue beforehand. But so this tube comes from, starts at the epididymus, which is a collection of much smaller tubules in the back part of the upper pull. of the testicle. So if you want to feel your epididimus, you can do so now. Make sort of a C-clamp with your hand and reach around behind the scrotum and find one of the testicles. If you're using

your right hand, it'll be your right testicle, and use that C-clamp configuration of your hand to get your thumb and first finger at the upper pole of the back of the back. part of that testicle and you'll feel this thing that when you don't squeeze it too hard. If you squeeze it just a little bit, you get that kind of feeling like you're getting kicked in the knots, but it'll go away as soon as you let go. That's your epididymus. And sperm cells are produced in the testes and then end up in the epididymus to mature and then work their way into the tube that goes from the epididymus up into the body called

the vasdeferin. So when you cut that, you're doing a vasectomy. So remember, otomy means to cut a hole in something. Ectomy means to just slice it or remove it. So an appendectomy, you're slicing the appendix and then removing it. So oz-to-me means to make a permanent hole in something like a tracheostomy. You would make an oz. An oz means mouth.

I think that's Greek for mouth. It's been a while since I've dealt with my Greek and Latin. The cervical oz is the whole in the cervix of the female through which sperm travels and seeks out an egg if there's one and fertilizes it if it can. So, you know, and that brings us back to the whole sperm thing. So the vasectomy. So you basically are put in a dorsal lithotomy position, and a.k.a. the position as if you were going to get a pap smear,

although, you know, women used to have these things once every year. They're recommending once every three years for women over 21, and there's other criteria, too. But dudes, for the most part, have never had one of those. So when you go to have your vasectomy, it's a very vulnerable feeling position so you can kind of put yourself in the, you know, get some understanding of what women may feel like when they go to have a pap smear done or a pelvic exam. And then they'll enter the scrotum, which is a lot easier than going into the abdominal cavity. So if it's the difference between a bilateral tubal ligation for a woman or you having a vasectomy, have the damn vasectomy. It's way less invasive.

You know, we were created in such a way that our gonads are on the outside of our body in this horrific-looking, you know, pruny sack, but you can get to it really easily with a scalpel or a sharp pair of scissors. So they'll open it up, dissect out the Vazdeferins, try not to cut any nerves while they're at it, and then they'll use a bunch of different techniques. You can cut it and fold it back in on itself, burn it, sew it to get, you know, sew the pieces apart, whatever,

take out a big chunk and then sew those ends tight and then burn them and whatever it takes. There's a lot of different techniques. And to interrupt that flow, now the testicles just fine doing it that way, any sperm that don't make it up into a functioning Vazdeferens just a resorbed down there so that it's not like they build up a bunch of back pressure.

or anything. So this guy has this blueberry-sized collection. Now, it's maybe just be scar tissue. It could be fluid. He needs to see his urologist. There's a long way to say, go see your doctor and see if it's something that needs to be dealt with. If not, they'll let it go for a while and just watch it and see what happens with it.

All right. Now, if it grows, if it starts increasing in size and gets red and painful, that's a sign that the damn thing's infected. needs to go see somebody right then. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Bobby in Texas. I have been getting off my stupid nuts and getting some smoke.

My wife and I have been on this diet for a while. Okay, it's get off your asses and get some exercise, not getting off on some smoke. That's, I think he's paraphrasing me. A while now. And I used to do as regular as the sunrise, but now I can't get one out in under 10 minutes. And it feels like I'm about to blow my o-ring out. But we haven't been eating as much junk and stuff, but all healthy stuff, replacing some meals and breakfasts with these fucking breakfast shakes and whatnot.

and I am crapping logs. Does I know? Should I be looking into stools officers? Ah, I'm about to drop a fucking torpedo. Oh, thank you. Give yourself a bill. This is the first time we've had somebody that I know of,

taking a literal shit rather than a metaphorical shit on the air. I do the metaphorical shit every day on the air. Usually cannabis, I'm not sure I understood his question. Cannabis usually doesn't cause constipation. There are people that will use it to relieve constipation. I could imagine, you know, sometimes you get that dry mouth. Those are, well, and your heart racing, not that I would know, but so people tell me, Those are quote-unquote anticholinergic effects, and sometimes if you are heavy into the anticholinergic effects, this can also cause constipation.

So that may be what's going on. People who are on low-carb diets, you would think if you're eating a lot more fiber and green leafy vegetables and stuff that you would be more regular. And a lot of people report increased constipation. and they may go once every three days and then just have giant shits when they do go. So if he wants to call me back when he's not smoking, I might be able to answer that question because I didn't get a cogent question out of that. But it was very entertaining hearing him drop a deuce. All right, very good.

Yeah, you were just talking about masturbation and the stop-start system. My question is kind of in that same ballpark. I'm just wondering, is this being masturbating too much? And what is too much masturbation? You probably already asked that question, but Nick from Canada. No, my old medical school professor would say the only time that you're masturbating too much is if you're doing it so much it's interfering with meals. In other words, if it's affecting your life and you're obsessively masturbating, that bears looking into that could be a sign of obsessive compulsive disorder, some other impulse disorder problems.

But if you just like to jerk off a lot, that may not be a problem. Now, if you have a partner and you're no longer able to get it up for them, but you can still get it up to masturbate, that's an issue in your mind. relationship. And if you really love that person, you want to be able to get it up for them, you have to stop masturbating. That's the first thing I tell people, you know, when they say, you know, I just can't get it up for my spouse or my, you know, a significant other. Stop masturbating so that you're saving all of that goodness for them and you'll be more easily stimulated by them. Now, if you, you know, if you just absolutely can't get it up for them, then you've got to look at your relationship and see if everything's okay.

And there could be some unresolved anger issues, or you may have just fallen out of love with them, too. That's a possibility. The scary thing about relationships like that is you really can't control that. You want to be in love with somebody, and you just can't, you're not. And I had a friend in college, and he said that was his biggest fear. He got married, and he never knew when the Sword of Damocles, was going to drop because he was always afraid that his spouse would just stop being in love with him because you can't control it you can't control who you fall in love with very easily and it's

hard to control who you fall out of love with so it is uh it is quite the mystery that's it's it hey dr steve i'm on matropal for my heart recently diagnosed with allergy to almonds and the doc gaming epipin i was looking online in this guy listen to the a major drug interaction, taking those two together. What advice would you have for me? Happy New Year, and you guys are fucking awesome. Oh, thanks, man. No, it's just me, but thank you.

I'll take the compliment. EpiPen. So epipens have a drug called epinephrine in them that is a vasoconstrictor for the most part, but it also has some vasodilating activity. and it's very interesting that epinephrine by itself really doesn't have a big effect on mean blood pressure because it has, okay, let me take a second. There's two kinds of adrenergic receptors.

There's beta and alpha. So beta blockers block beta adrenergic receptors, okay? And then alpha blockers do the same for alpha. It doesn't, don't worry about it too much. But when you use epinephrine, it has alpha adrenergic effects, not blocking effects, but effects, which produce vasoconstriction. And then their beta adrenergic effects induces vasodilation. Okay. Now, if they're on a non-selective beta blocker, in other words, one of these sort of general beta blockers, the old school type, and they get.

Epinephrine, the beta blocker prevents, you know, it's blocking the beta adrenergic receptor, right? So you don't get the vasodilation. All you get is the vasoconstriction. And you can get a massive spike in blood pressure. Okay. And it can be significant. So they recommend that people who are going to be on beta blockers, at least be on a very selective beta blocker that won't have this effect.

You know, in most people, it probably wouldn't be dangerous, but you don't know. So you don't know until it happens and you don't want it to happen. Now, asabutolol, atinol, bataxylol, bisoprolol, esmalol, and metoprolol, which if I remember that, he said he may be on metoprolol, wouldn't be expected to cause this because they're more selective, okay? Now, the other problem, though, there's more to it than that. if you're on a beta blocker and you are given epinephrine, the beta blocker may block the beneficial effects of the epinephrine. And so, again, evidence that patients who are on beta blockers have an increased incidence to severity of anaphylaxis, again, these were on the non-soluctor.

collective beta blockers. Now, if there's any doubt whether this is going to be a problem, in other words, if you have a really severe reaction to these, you may want to consider getting on a different blood pressure medicine. Matter of fact, beta blockers these days are considered third-line therapy for most people. When I was in training in the 80s, it was first line. We put everybody on labatol or atinol or one of those at the beginning of their hypertension and then you'd add a diuretic. And then we would add an ACE Hibbiter. Now they're saying ACE inhibitor first.

If you're African-American, it is different. They would use a thiaside diuretic like hydrochlor thyside and or a calcium channel blocker and do that in those order because they found that that works better. If you have African, if you're of African descent, those medications work better. than the other ones if you're not. So, but on all of these, whether you're honky or not, your beta blocker is going to be your third choice for the most part, unless there's a compelling reason to use it.

So, you know, the other thing, when I was in training in the 80s, if you put somebody out who had congestive heart failure, which is a pump failure problem where people, their heart can't beat enough blood to prevent it from backing up into the lungs, basically. A simplistic answer. It was malpractice to put people on beta blockers in the 80s. Now it's malpractice not to do it.

So it just shows that medical knowledge is not always perfect, and it's evolving, and we always are striving to learn more. But anyway, so that's why. So you may want to talk to your primary. and see if it might be appropriate to put you on something else. I'm not, and certainly don't stop anything based on what you hear on this show, because I'm, you know, you don't know who I am. All right. Hi, Dr. Steve.

I love the show. I got a quick question about bacterial vaginosis, and basically whether partners could just keep basically just passing it along to each other. My girlfriend and I, you know, when we get in it, recently she basically caught that fishy smell and whatever. She was diagnosed basically that's what it was, the BV. But when we would continue to have sex while she was on it, and then I wonder if I contracted that essentially. And she would treat it, get rid of it, then we would have sex again, and then while she would have it back. So my question to you is, is it possible for partners to basically just keep?

passing in on to each other, and if so, you know, what can I do or what can she do to eliminate it? Yeah, okay, that's a great question. So bacterial vaginosis, not really a sexually transmitted disease, is not in the way that we think about it, is an overgrowth of generally one bacteria called Gardnerilla vaginalis, but there are others that can cause it. You can diagnose this due to a fishy smell of the mucous from the vagina that's usually not white and milky like some other things. There's a mobiluncus genera that can also cause this. We will diagnose it with a whiff test, which is where you take some of the fluid, you put a little potassium hydroxide on it and smell it. And if it smells like a fish market, then that's diagnostic.

If you look at the cells under the microscope, you'll see little white blood cells with a whole bunch of bacteria adhering to the cells. I'm sorry, not white blood cells, they're epithelial cells. So there are cells from the wall of the vagina, and they've just got bacteria just adhering all over them, like little black dots. Then that's diagnostic. So very often we'll treat this with antimicrobial treatment like. metronidazole. If you take metronidazole, you don't want to drink alcohol with that because it can block the metabolism of alcohol, trapping it in an intermediate molecule called acid aldehyde make you sicker in hell. But metronidazole pills or gel is recommended for this. Women who have

multiple episodes of this may benefit from using condoms with sexual intercourse. So if you have recurrent bacterial vaginosis, you can use the metronidididic. Shit, metronidazole vaginal gel twice weekly for six months. They've got a boric acid capsule that you can use. You don't take it orally. This is intravaginally. It can kill you if you take it by mouth. So follow the directions, please.

Sometimes they'll do oral metronidazole and fluconazole, which kills yeast. I don't know why they would give you that, but it's one of the CDC recommended regimens once a month. Now, treatment of partners, this is where it gets interesting. The CDC doesn't recommend treatment of partners because there's no definite data to support any recommendation to treat you. There are some clinical trials that show that if you treat the sex partners of women with bacterial vaginosis, maybe it would help, but they all had, were not good studies. And we don't know whether treatment should, you know, should be offered to partners. There are experts that think it is a sexually transmitted disease, not an STD in the sense like gonorrhea or, or, or, But, you know, there is some concordance in partners, particularly women who have sex with women.

Sometimes they'll both have bacterial vaginosis on a similar schedule. So it's an open question. I probably would not treat you right now for this. You can swab the outside of the male genitalia and you don't get this gardenerlla, but it probably doesn't live well there. doesn't live well there, how could you be giving it to her? So using good hygiene and making sure that she sees her OBGYN and gets treatment when it happens, probably the best course for you. All right.

Thanks always. Go to Dr. Scott. Can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Tepp, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Sam Roberts, Eton, Twatz. Hello Bob. Bob from Florida. Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Ron Bennington, and Fez Wattley, whose early support of this show has never gone on. Appreciate it. Listen here, my good man. Listen to our Sirius XM show on the faction. I don't know what's wrong with me. The Faction Talk channel. I've been too lazy to get drops to put down

of Riley Martin, which is exactly what I need. And I'm, you know, anyway, I can't do it justice. listen. I'm not even trying. I'm just saying the words now. I'm not even trying to do it in his voice. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel, SiriusXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, Sunday, 5 p.m. Eastern, on demand and other times at Jim McClure'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 off your asses some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. And I always forget

to say thank you to Lewis Johnson and Paul Uphcharski as well. Thank you, boys. Thank you.