Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 352 - Diagnosing Joe List

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

Navaging your nose, Lady Diagnosis finds her birth father, opioid overdoses, Joe calls in with some questions about silent reflux (or is it?) PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com simplyherbals.net noom.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. I need some touch it. Yo-ho-ho-ho-ho. I'm in the garretel. I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivir stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heart valve, exacerbating my infertable woes. I want to take my brain now, blasted with the way, an ultrasonic, agographic, and a pulsating shave. 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. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio. And now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Lady Diagnosis. She will do most anything for a glass of expensive wine. How are you?

Uh-oh. Nope, your mic is not on. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. God. Okay, go. Okay, try it now. Can you hear me? Now I can hear me.

Okay. There we go. What a professional start. I hope. It's okay. some recruiters listening to this one. This is a show for people who never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular

provider. If you can't find an answer to anyone else, give us a call. 347-66-4-323. That's 347. Pooh-Head. If you're listening to us live, the number 754-227-3-6-47, that's 754. 22 penis. Yay. Or 754 Bear Nip, which is my favorite. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine, or Lady. diagnosis or D.R. Scott, W.M. Visit our website at Dr. Steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy or go to our merchandise store at cafepress.com slash weird medicine.

Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything here with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking about your doctor, nurse, practitioner, physician, physician, assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, clinical laboratory scientist. Veterinarian. Samalier or whatever. I was distracted because I was potting down the wrong pot and nothing was happening.

Oh, well, don't pot. Yeah. And if you're wondering why I allowed that abortion of an intro to just go on and on is because this is like the fourth time and the people who are listening live or getting sick of hearing the theme song over and over again. I had to take a mulligan like three times before you got here. Hey, don't forget, stuff.doctrsteve.com. That's stuff.com for all of your online shopping needs. It's got just about every thing we've ever talked about on this show that you can buy, including the womanizer, which is a delightful toy for sexual intercourse. We never got a report on that.

Well, it's pretty awesome. The other things that are on there are things like the navage, where if you're suffering from nasal congestion as I am, the navage is delightful. It's like a netty pot for the 21st century. I like the netty pot, so it's better. Oh, it's a million times better. You don't have to get into a weird position and you don't have to practice, and nothing ever goes down your throat. But this thing is, it's got a reservoir in the top, and you put saline in it, and always use distilled water, by the way. Don't use tap water for any of these things.

And do you use tap water? Of course that do. We've had stories on here where people get, their brains get eaten by amoebas by using tap water. Every once in a while, in this country, tap water is sterile. But every once in a while, something will get in there. So, please, please, always use distilled water. Okay, going forward. And then they've got these little saline pods that you put in.

And so that's in the top reservoir. The bottom reservoir gets all the stuff that comes out of your nose. So you stand up in a normal position with your head upright, and there's two little nasal speculums that stick into your nose with a nice seal with rubber. And then you hit the button, and if you hit it in halfway, you get suction out of one nostril, you know, and then you push it in. Once you get that flow going, then you hit it in all the way, and then it starts shooting saline in one nostril and sucking it out the other. Okay. How does it shoot it? Well, there's a little pump.

Oh, that's neat. Yeah, it's got a little water pump in there, or hydraulic pump in it, so it shoots it in one nostril and sucks it out the other, and then everything goes in that bottom reservoir. And then about halfway down, I'll flip it. You can flip it so now it shoots in the other nostril and sucks out of the other one. So do you look at what's in the bottom? Yeah, it's horrendous. Oh, God, that's disgusting. Yeah. But it's really easy to clean out. And your nose feels like, you know, how you feel right when you get out of the shower or, you know, if you've gone to a spa and you get in the hot tub and then you get in the pool and then you take a shower, how clean you feel. That's how the inside of your nose feels. It never feels like that.

I'm going to get one of those. It's awesome. It's under $100. You can buy it at stuff. Dottersteve.com. Highly recommended. Don't forget, tweakeda audio.com. Offer code fluid for the best earbuds for the price on the market and the best customer service anywhere.

And they are a Tennessee company. Simply herbals. That net is Dr. Scott's website. He's caught in a traffic jam, so he's going to be a little bit late. And if you're interested in losing weight with me and really, Really, it's not even a weight loss thing. It's a psychology thing that allows you to change your relationship with food. It's called Noom.

N-O-M. Go to Noom.com. You get two weeks free and 20% off, and it's already cheaper than, or I don't want to say cheaper. It's less expensive than Weight Watchers. And with that 20%, it's significantly less. And then if you're interested in getting archives of this show and why would you, But I'm just, you know, it's out there if you do. Go to premium.com. If you'll use offer code fluid for that as well, you'll get a really good deal for the first three months.

It's basically free. Okay? Gotcha. All right. So do you want to talk about the thing you told me about at lunch the other day or no? I don't care. What did I tell you? Well, about the 23 and me.

Oh, yes. The DNA? Yes. Yeah. You want to talk about it? Sure. Okay. It's so exciting.

Okay. So tell us the story. well i'm 50 and i didn't know who my parents were i'm adopted oh wait say that again how old are you i'm 25 and so for my whole 25 years i've never known who my parents were my birth parents fucked up this drop because when you said i'm 50 i was got i know that's why i always tell people i say you know when the comedians come down i say i've got a supermodel that'll drive you around she's old she's an aging supermodel but a a supermodel, nonetheless.

She's old. But anyway, so I fired it, did the ancestry DNA, and I got a bunch of hits on one string of family that I don't know. So I started contacting them. You never heard of them. Right. So they were like, well, you could possibly be, they were all from Iowa, which is where I'm from. And I did have a mother's name. Well, can we start this whole thing?

You were adopted. Right. Okay. Oh, I said that while you were fixing your mic. Oh, you did? Yes. Oh, okay. Yes.

Okay. So I had her name, and one of the people that I had talked to that were on my ancestry, they knew her. Hang on. This is important. Oh, okay. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Not that your story isn't important. Tacey, you're on weird medicine. Are you there? No, she's not. Okay. It's such a coincidence. Is she coming up? No, I don't know. It's such a coincidence that she calls every time while we're recording

and then hangs up. Okay, but anyway. Oh, so the people I had contacted, one of them, his wife actually grew up with this person who was the mother, and so they tried to help me figure out who my dad was. So she's the one that showed up. So she had done the Ancestry.com DNA test as well? No. Okay.

No, I just had her name, my birth mother's name. Oh, you did have her name. Oh, okay. But I couldn't find her on any kind of a social number. media or anywhere. I had her maiden name, not her married name. Got it. So I didn't know how I would find her. So they

helped me find her and then I talked to her one day I just called her out of the blue and said hey. And she was shocked and I asked her who my dad was and she told me and he didn't show up on any of my ancestry. So I was kind of confused. So I kept talking to the people that were

on there and we think we found out who the father is. Wow. Because my supposedly uncle did it, and I came back really, really high number. So context with that. So you had found this guy who was not the guy, but he was the brother of who you thought was the guy. Well, what happened was I called who they thought my dad was, and he said, nope, don't know her. But you can talk to my brother. So he gave me his brother's number.

Maybe my brother did her. No, he had no clue. And so I called the brother, and the brother said, well we'll figure it out and so we started you know doing the deductive reasoning and looking at pictures of me and his pictures of his kids and he's like oh you're my niece so okay so he did it and he got the test results back Tuesday so this guy spent the hundred bucks to do it just to show that he was related to you and it came back as a first degree relative or second degree relative first yes first degree relative yeah yep wow isn't that nice and he's excited

excited about meeting me yeah you'd think in that situation where no one even knew i existed they'd kind of you know keep me at arm's length yeah well the uncle he doesn't have a dog in that hunt well the whole family is excited yeah yeah so cool but the father doesn't know yet so don't tell anybody so yeah that's great so everyone's excited except maybe the father we don't know and hopefully he'll come around i hope so yeah okay cool that's awesome it's really Well, it's a mystery solved. I know. That's a lot of years.

Who'd have thought? Spitting a tube, all your questions will be answered. Yep. Yeah, who'd thought? I've heard lots of stories. Putting a penis in a vagina and 50 years later, somebody shows up. Or 25. Yeah.

Right, whenever it was, exactly. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Well, good. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm so excited. All right.

I wish we had a code for that, that we could now make money. off of other people doing the same thing. I read a couple of news articles that showed the police are using this. Like if they have DNA, they're just submitting it to 23 and me as a profile and seeing who shows up. And everyone, it's usually not the criminal, but just like in your case, it's some family member of the criminal. And then they can go to them and go, who are you related to and track them down that way? home. Oh, and the family loves to try to figure out the mystery. So that's pretty helpful. Well, I can tell my 23 or Ancestry.com story. Not unlike Elizabeth Warren, my family, the story in our family is that

we were descended from a Native American tribe in Florida. And my mom told that story. And, you know, I think she thought she was one 16th that would have made me one, you know, 32nd Native American. And then on my dad's side, we were always told that we were Ashkenazi Jewish descent and that we had been forcibly converted in what was then the sedaten land by, you know, the Germans, the overlords back in the early, in the early, know, late 19th century, early 20th century. And so I got my Ancestry.com expecting to see a 132nd Native American heritage and, you know, at least a quarter Ashkenazi heritage. None of it.

None of it. None of it was true. Liars. Zero. All liars. I have even less Native American DNA, than Elizabeth Warren does, and she's got like 1,000th or something like that.

So I have zero. And so that was interesting. So I'm not going to pass along a bunch of malarkey to my kids in some fake BS family story, you know. And Dr. Scott's here. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. Glad you could make it.

And we did plug simplyerbils.net. You got anything new there? Oh, not yet. Just sorry, I was late. Okay. All right. We have Richard in Seattle, and we also have a special guest that's calling in.

Joe on line two. Richard's been on hold for 20 minutes, and I really do want to get to Joe. You've got a couple options, buddy. You can call back in, say, 10 minutes, or you can just hang on the line. And I do need to get Richard first, and I apologize for that. Anyway, well, I don't apologize to Richard because here he is.

Hey, man. Well, it makes you feel any better. I'm calling you from a Blackberry, and it's working just fine. That's delightful. Anyway, what's going on, man? So I got quite a few things in time with us. I don't know how long you want to have me on, but, you know, I'm going to give a quick shout out to watch the thigh first because I always forget

to say that. Yeah, it's your lovely wife. That's up front. Right, yeah. And also a shout out to GVAC. And whenever baseball season, spring training starts, I always think of him because we talk about baseball all the time, so a little shout out to him as well. Yeah, yeah, we miss GVAC. There's no question about that. He's looking over us. I don't know if you can, if you're looking on the monitor, but he's over a lady diagnosis left shoulder.

And there was something you said. actually, just a quick question, you said something about, you thought GVAC had reached enlightenment or something, but you didn't really touch too much on it? Like, what did you mean by that? That was always interesting to me. When did I say that? I don't remember saying that. I think he wasn't an enlightened person, but, you know, he was very well balanced.

I don't remember you saying that specifically, but certainly we had discussions like that. He was very well-rounded and very knowledgeable, and he just an all-around great, great. person yeah yeah well I mean for only having met him once like he had like a pretty big impact on you know on us and so yeah good gun yeah yeah yeah so I was calling to talk about well if you think I guess the first thing I ask you the question I had about is a you know as far as like the opiate debate when when when people take them regularly like in most states if you take taking something strong right you have to go to the doctor like every month to get them right

well it's every it's actually it's really it's usually three months every three months is the minimum even that yeah even that right so but the fact that they're just coming to a doctor every three months is probably a good thing right like maybe they'd never go to the doctor if they didn't have that you know so i was one like when you guys talk about medical ethics and now with you know everybody wanting to cut off people from their be it's and then that's a whole other mess but it from a medical ethics standpoint like what do you guys what is your take and what is your take of your peers on that on seeing the medical ethics of taking people off of but yeah well yeah because you know I'll know the doctor I've had back surgery so I've had all this and they

make you sign a million pieces of paperwork and right you know and you're on them for a couple months And they're like, well, you know, maybe we should get off of these. But yet they'll give you like an antidepressant and let you take it in perpetuity. Oh, I see. You don't want to have to, you know, they're like, you don't want to have to take a pill every day, right, referring to the opiates. And I'm like, well, you'll give me a blood pressure medication that they take every day. Or, you know, what is the difference between that, if taking responsibly, of course,

and which most people do, the study show most people do take them responsibly. The huge difference is that there isn't. a crisis in overdose deaths from antidepressants in this country right now. And the issue is that a ridge, okay, so a lot of people who die from opioid overdoses were started on a legitimate prescription of opioid. So it was an orthopedic injury or surgery or something like that. And there's a significant percentage of those people. So we as physicians are called.

culpable to some extent in the opioid quote unquote crisis that's going on right now. But what you notice is as doctors and other providers learned that overprescribing can increase the number of pills in the community that are being used for non-medical purposes, that we, when we realized that, maybe we should have realized it long. before, but when we got serious about it in about 2010, you can see the number of prescriptions of pain medications that are written in this country dropping precipitously, but at the same time, the number of opioid-related deaths are going up on a geometric rate. And I talk to people at the state level, and I'm on a couple of committees, and one of them is a state-level committee, And everyone there, particularly in the emergency rooms, are saying none of the people they're seeing anymore, and that's almost literally none, are due to prescription opioid overdoses. Almost all of them are due to illicit drug overdoses from medications like heroin and fentanyl or heroin cut with fentanyl and that kind of stuff.

And so we've been successful in decreasing the number of pills. on the market, but we're not stopping opioid-related deaths. And because the doctors aren't the problem, but the regulations keep coming down on us. And they make them more and more stringent all the time. I mean, because we're really the low-hanging fruit, we're the easy target. It's easy to say, oh, well, the doctors just need to stop writing opioids. The problem is there are people out there who legitimately need opioids to live, and they've been caught up with this and I tell

these legislators don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Let's at least make sure that people who legitimately need them can get them. But let's make sure that providers of all kinds that can write Schedule 2 and Schedule 3

opioids are writing them for people that they're actually going to benefit. So that's as far as the ethics of just hacking and slashing at people without regard to what they actually need, I have a real problem

with that. And that's usually our response to everything in America. You know, we, if somebody drinks, you know, 20 energy drinks, all of a sudden, they're like, well, energy drinks are bad. Well, you know, if you drink 20 and pretty much anything, it's not going to end well. Well, that's right. And Richard has a true

bias in this regard, since he owns a company that makes energy drinks called hyperphysics, ladies and gentlemen, which you can you can buy it at Amazon, on through the stuff. Dottersteve.com link. So, there you go.

Yeah. Got to make money while we're doing. Right. There was a, yeah, because there was an episode of House MD where they had a,

you know, he's teaching these students how to, you know, treat patients. And this guy comes into the ER and it really seems like he's faking his injury

to get opiates. And, but, you know, and he's got like kind of the sketchy past and the student, the correct,

response was, you know, what do you do? Do you give him the opiate or not? And the correct response is you give it to him. And they were like, well, he's, he's probably fishing for this. And he's like, yeah, but in the one in a hundred chance that he actually really is in pain, the bigger wrong is to let him stay in pain rather than give, you know, giving an addict. Some more drugs is, you know, not great, but that's, you know, the lesser evil. Well, that's acute. Well, that's acute. That's acute treatment. So chronic treatment and acute treatment are different. I'll throw something else out. If you have someone that's exhibiting drug-seeking

behaviors, often the correct response is to increase their dose. And you say, well, that sounds ridiculous. That's what we're trying to fight against. But there's a thing called pseudo-addiction. So I'm going to throw this out there for the people who are not intimately involved in this. if you had 10 out of 10 pain the worst pain you could possibly imagine and you went to your primary care provider and they you know said oh you know we don't write pain medication here take some Tylenol what how would you behave not what what would you think how would you behave well one thing you might do is you might raise hell you might argue with them you might find another doctor oh oh now you're doctor shopping you might hoard whatever a little bit of opioids they give you and take them all at one once and maybe you overdose because you're desperate. There's a lot of things that you might do that would label you as a drug seeker, but you're actually seeking relief. So when you are dealing with pseudo addiction and you're not sure what you're dealing with, the correct response is to increase the dose of opioids. And if you're dealing with a case of pseudo addiction, the patient

will say, oh, thank you. You know, finally I'm getting some relief. Whereas the true addict, there's a bottomless pit. You know, there'll never be a dose that you can give them that they're going to be satisfied with. Tacey, my wife just showed up. Just leave that right there just for a second. We're having trouble with the phones again, and we're using this. So as soon as we get Joe in here and out of here, then we'll stop taking phone calls and we'll put that mic on you.

Until then, you can share a mic with ladies. yeah share it with you can talk real loud okay actually i can hear you okay i can't hear you but anyway so that's the deal with that right okay so and on to a new topic um you know we talked about the flu vaccine before when i was in the show and you know with things coming out like johnson and johnson baby fat are having asbestos in it i was at a conference at my job i work in medical research also if the people don't know um i'm not a doctor and just working the lab but um we're having this discussion and they were talking about people who were anti-vaxxers and i'm like well it really adds fuel to their argument when companies

like johnson and johnson knowingly put asbestos in their baby powder for years apparently right this happened um and i'm like what do you tell people you know when you tell people this vaccine is okay and you say just believe me well blood pressure medications now have carcinogens in and like every time these companies fuck up like this I mean there should be like severe consequences because they're not only doing the service to their particular drug but like the overall

you know psyche of patients yeah how do you respond how would you respond to that the thing with the thing with Johnson and Johnson is that talc is apparently

mined near places where asbestos is or it forms geologically under similar circumstances. And the issue with the talc was, or the asbestos in the talc,

was that Johnson Johnson kind of knew about it for decades. I'm not sure I'd have to do more research on this to determine whether anyone's been able to point to this asbestos that was possibly in their baby

powder and say that it was linked to any disease. I know that there were three asbestos-related cases that they're appealing. The company won three other cases related to mesotheloma, which is a lung tumor that can be caused by asbestos. And by the way, if you've ever been exposed to asbestos, the key, there's nothing you can do about the past exposure, but don't smoke. If you smoke and you've been exposed to asbestos, it increases your risk of mesotheloma significantly. But Johnson Johnson says, you know, they've tested it. None of the tests over the last 50 years detected the presence of asbestos.

So, you know, I don't know where this thing is going. Right, yeah. And the bigger question is just, you know, when you're telling people, you know, just trust medicine. Oh, I see. Johnson is the company. How do you overcome that kind of thing, you know? The people I talk to have no answer. There isn't an answer for it.

I mean, I got a bottle of pills from the pharmacy a couple of years ago, and they were just the wrong medication, you know? So there are things are, there's risk in everything. I mean, we could get hit by a meteor sitting here talking about this. So they make it as safe as they can. The USDA makes our food supply as safe as it can be, but still, every once in a while, there will get some parasite on romaine lettuce or, some, you know, enterotoxygenic E. coli in beef, these things happen. The best we can do is mitigate the risk to the best of our ability. And find me something more trustworthy.

So here's the question. So if your pharmacist isn't going to be 100%, there could be 99.99% somewhere in there. But not 100%. There's a small chance of there being an FEP. And this case with the nurse who was trying to inject somebody with Verset and injected them with Valcuronium, which is a paralytic agent, the patient died, those things, you know, are tragic when they happen. But there are multiple layers of safety that you have to violate to get to an outcome like that. And the more layers that you put on, the safer things are, but safety is never 100%. So what I can say to you, though, is if I can't trust 100% the pharmacist, it's one of the most trustworthy processes we have in our lives is getting our medication from our pharmacy.

Why in the hell would I trust some dude off the street selling me meth or, you know, ecstasy or anything like that when there are none of those safeguards, So when you compare it to things like street drugs and stuff like that, then, yeah, it makes you feel a little bit better that at least it's as safe as it can be. We can always do better, and it's generally safe. Nothing is 100% safe. That's the best answer I can give you on that. Yeah, I had a, whenever, you know, at the end of the, when you're done getting your prescription, they always say, you know, do you have a question for the pharmacist? and mine is always, yeah, why did it take so long to put pills in a

fucking bottle? Yeah, well, I know, at least now they've got these robots and they prints out the label, they don't have to sit and type up the label anymore and all that stuff. Right. You know, these places, the commercial, the big pharmacies, of course, are so insanely busy that

I recommend everybody, if you need refills on your medication, give them at least two days, if not a week's notice because most of the time they can get it done pretty quickly. Now, the other day, we do e-prescribing and I e-prescribed something for someone

and at the end of the visit which was not five minutes later I said I'm going to call the pharmacy make sure they get this ready for you so you can just go pick it up and so I called the pharmacy and they said oh it's already ready so that stuff is getting better

all the time they had a robot well I only have yeah go ahead I was going to say I only have one rule with prescription I found my doctor this is that if you give me anything that interferes in my erection,

I'm not going to take it. I don't care how good it is. Unless it's saving my life literally at that moment, I'm not going to take it. You know, I'm just not. That's too much of a part of the enjoyment of life to give up. I understand. You know, certain antidepressants and beta blockers are going to be things you're going to want to avoid.

Most everything is pretty erectile-friendly. Well, listen, man, I've got to move on to, I've got Joe, list on the other line and he's been waiting for a while. Call back if you've got other topics we're going to do another show in about 30 minutes so if you want to call back that would be totally fine we can get you on next week.

Actually, yeah, I will do that because I'm just sitting here I'd probably be asleep right now if I wasn't on this. All right, only. Tell your lovely wife, Shatai, we said hello. So what happened? You broke up there. No, I said, tell your lovely wife, Shatai, we said hello, and everyone check out hyperphysics

H-Y-P-E-R-F-I-Z-Z-I-C-S anywhere where you can buy energy drinks. All right, thanks again, Dr. Gell, and I'll talk to you again soon. All right, old buddy. I'll see you. We got a big delay there at the end. All right. Now none of this is working.

Holy moly. all right let's get joe in here hey joe sorry for the wait man we're having technical difficulties i'm gonna have to sit down and figure this out over the next week so that we can take phone calls normally again but anyway how are you doing man i'm doing great no sweat i was enjoying listening to the show i don't tune in more well whatever the great joe list everyone comedian extraordinaire can be found at what joelist dot com is that right what's your website um it's comedian jollist dot com and uh at jollist comedy on twitter and instagram and all that good stuff okay so i guess attorney jo list um dot com was already well i mean i guess plain joe list

who is that then who's got regular joe list dot com i don't know i think it might be like some shopping site or something like that. Joe's List or something. I don't know. There's another Joe List in England who's an artist, but I've actually met a couple times. Nice guy. Okay, I'm checking it out right now. But anyway, what can I do for you, man? All right, so

I sent you in the email. I haven't talked to a while. I'm going to therapy. The therapy is really working out my, what do you call that, when you're afraid of everything? Hypochondria. Okay, well, hypochondria is afraid of medical issues. Being afraid of anything, of everything,

is sort of agoraphobia if you're caught in the house or just generalized anxiety disorder. Yeah, I got that too. I'm working on all of it. Oh, geez. I hope I've been bothering you less. No, no, that's what makes you a great comedian, though. You know, I've never known a well-centered, balanced comedian that was worth anything. That's a good point, yeah. So what I'm dealing with now is I have an actual diagnosis. It's this silent reflux. I don't know how to say the full name.

Lara, Faca, Fouca, whatever the hell it's called. Okay. Where I have reflex coming that skips over the heartburn and just goes right into my larynx or exophagus, I guess, have an ellix. Sure. So I have like, it's almost like having asthma. I feel like I got a cough and there's a little hair in my throat or something. Yeah.

And I just started taking Prilosec. Is that going to help me? Prilosec OTC. Well, okay. So let's talk a little bit about reflux. So reflux is the process of stomach contents instead of staying in the stomach and going out through the duodenum, which is the first part of the intestine, some of the stomach contents will work their way up the esophagus and sometimes into the lungs even. And I used to have, well, I still do, but I have reflux and I have the heartburn, but if I eat carbohydrates or drink too much and then lay down, I'll have this phenomenon where I'll get this quote unquote sour brash or acidy liquid that will flow from my stomach up it through my esophagus.

Of course, I'm laying down. So there's a gravity isn't keeping the contents in my stomach anymore. It's all horizontal. And so it just flows down the path at least resistance and then gets into my lungs and then I cough and hack for about a half an hour before I can go back to sleep. So mine is not silent. So silent reflex would be all these same things happening, but you would get the sequelae of being exposed to acidic fluid, coughing, hoarse voice, those kinds of things.

Tacey, any other symptoms of silent reflux that you can think of? Those are the big ones, clearing your throat constantly, that kind of stuff. Do you have ear pain at all, Joe? no no ear pain it's just um it's only gone on for a few days what first started i had like a white bump in the back of my throat so i went to a doctor about that it would come and go for like a day but be worse after i drank like a smoothie or something spicy yeah yeah and then uh the e&T he noticed that like the back of my like my throat not like the roof of my mouth my throat looks kind of cobblestoney i guess sure yeah that's a sign of inflammation yeah i feel like there's a tickle there

I feel like there's a hair in my throat, and I can't get it out. Yep. Okay, so the prilosec is a proton pump inhibitor. There's a bunch of them, dexelot, prilosec, previsid, nexium out there, protonics, can I name them all. But that will decrease the amount of acid that's produced in your stomach. It will not stop this fluid from moving around, though. That's the issue, and it's still got chunks of,

of things that you ate and pureed, things that you masticated with your teeth and so it's still going to be irritating. It just won't be as acidic as it was. So what I recommend people do is that's fine to take up

and Dr. Scott is my sort of alternative medicine guru here and he hates proton pump inhibitors. You can throw your thing in Scott if you want to if he's has symptoms, what would you recommend that he do? Sure, yeah, I would tell him just to try some yellow mustard.

Believe it or not. In a spoon, it works pretty well. And I'm not completely opposed to those PPIs. I mean, I think at least to get things under control initially, they're excellent. But certainly if he's having it, it sounds like he's got a hyperactive airway kind of, too, where he's got the acid in his back of his throat. Yeah. And that mustard would help a little bit.

So, Joe, what I recommend people do for this is to, um, to, when you're sleeping, what kind of bed do you have? You don't have a water bed, do you? No. Does anybody have a water bed? I don't know if anybody has a water bed anymore, but water beds are anathema to people with reflux, because the top part of your body is heavier than the lower part, and so you'll end up actually having your head slightly downward compared to your stomach,

and then stuff just flows from the stomach into your hypoferrinx into your lungs. So, go get a couple of bricks, just regular the, you know, 16 by four bricks, and put them under the head of your bed post under the head of your bed. So it lifts up the head of your bed by maybe, you know, two, three inches. It's not enough to cause you to fall to the bottom, you know, to roll to the bottom of the bed during the night, but it's absolutely enough to keep stomach contents in your stomach. The other thing is, no carbohydrates, no alcohol, within four hours of going to bed.

And for me, it was six. And because if you do, alcohol loosens the sphincter in the bottom of the esophagus. It's not a very good valve in the first place. And if you've got a little hiatal hernia, that makes it even worse. And so the last thing you want is to loosen that valve that's already not that great of a and then for whatever reason the carbohydrates make a huge difference avoid pasta avoid bread at dinner time at least at least until you get everything under control yeah huge difference yeah so protein green leafy vegetables that kind of stuff for your evening meal and no snacking

no cereal before bed any of that bullshit yeah it's got love cereal and i used to and it would kill me if i ate cereal before i went to bed now so uh those are the the big things, and there are medications that can tighten that lower esophageal sphincter. The reason they don't give them first line is because they've got some significant long-term downsides.

The ultimate last resort for people who have this and can't get it under control is a thing called a fundoplication. The fundo placation is a surgical procedure where they go in and they tighten up that sphincter down there to keep stomach contents in the stomach and keep

the flow of food going one way from the mouth to the stomach and into the intestine and not backwards. Okay. Now, so I've been, for a couple of days, I've tried to, because my diet is definitely causing it. It's horrible. I drink like three or four Cokes a day. I eat a lot of salsa, nothing but pizza and pasta, marineri, I eat late at night. I eat huge meals. So basically, for my whole life, done everything you're supposed to do to get this. Yeah, exactly. So if I take the Prylosec and then cut out soda, which I've been doing, I cut out soda and

all the marineras sauce and stuff, how long will it take before I start seeing a result? Oh, well, literally within days. People that I put on, so I learned about this carbohydrate thing, not because I was taught about it in medical school, but when I was working with diabetics, who were type two diabetics,

I put them on a low-carb diet for a while and get them to lose weight, get their blood sugars back under control. And almost all of them said, you know, all my reflex is gone. too. And so when I went on a low-carb diet, I noticed I didn't have any heartburn anymore either.

So, and it was literally within days. But I, it's not, the marinera, yeah, it's got a little acidy vinegar in it that may be an issue, but it's really the pasta and the dough from the pizza, in my opinion,

that's causing this problem at night rather than the marinera itself. Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. Okay, because it, well, it seems, I'm feeling it kind of all day, worse at night, I guess, but, like, just kind of, and it's not horrific. It's just, like, like, I said, a tickle or a cop. It almost feels like I have asthma. Like, I feel like I'm like, ugh, like a weird, sure. Not good, but it's only been happening for a week, so it took me a long time to get it

after eating shit my whole life, but, yeah, yeah, well, it has to start sometime. It'll take a little, sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, it has to start sometime. I remember the day I first had heartburn, and it was, you know, it was like it was yesterday and I've been bothered with it ever since. But the other thing that would be interesting is this has only been going on for a week. If three weeks from now it's gone, it could have been a viral infection or some other issue that was just or an allergy where you're having post-nasal drip and that can cause a lot of

the symptoms that you're having as well and it could be absolutely unrelated to your stomach. Okay. Okay. Well, it's good. I'm trying to start eating healthy for the first time in my life. But I don't know what else to eat. I'm like a child. I've only eaten four things my whole life. Burgers, fries, pasta, and salsa. Sure. Well, email me, and I can send you some stuff. I was like you. I had a pretty shitty diet for a long time. And I really have done since November, I decided I was really going to go much healthier.

I'm not a vegan. Dr. Scott's a pescatarian. We don't have any vegans in this studio. But I've been really getting by with a lot more salads and grilled chicken. And I've got to tell you, I enjoy it now. It took me a while to get used to it, but now I kind of crave it. So you can change these long-term eating habits. And I feel a million times better that I'm not sitting down ordering a double cheeseburger.

And, oh, throwing the bun away, saying, oh, I'm eating. healthy and eating all these french fries because those didn't seem to bother my stomach so i was an idiot and um it really does make a difference and i it's very doable and it's very enjoyable i enjoy it you know i enjoy eating just as much as i ever did i'm just eating different things okay well it may be nervous because my dot i've been pretty good the last two days no soda no pizza no pasta no anything i've just been eating salad and chicken but the the symptoms seem to be as bad or worse the last two days. That's without the prilosec.

Okay. That's without the prilosec? So, yeah, I just, I took the penalty for the first time today, so. Okay, okay. Yeah, let's do the diet and the prilosec for about a week and then call me and we'll kind of go through all of this and we'll try to figure this out. The other thing is, Scott, why don't you send him some of your sinus rins? Sure. And let's just make sure it's not post-nasal drip that's causing all these symptoms. Sure.

Because that can certainly mimic silent reflex, no question. about that because you're you're really it's just the opposite you're getting these toxic fluids but they're coming from above rather than from below and they can cause the same same symptoms absolutely all right so email me your address again and I'll get Scott to send you a complimentary sinus rinse and we'll see if that helps get it from both ends yeah okay all right sounds good can I throw one more thing out of you of course yeah of course. So I've looked, I'm, I get obsessive, so I look in the back of my throat a bunch.

Yep. I've seen like white, it looks like saliva foam coming from the top down to the bottom, like dripping down my back of my throat. Yep. Is that acid or is that something else? That's most likely nasal mucas. Yeah, so we may be on to something with this post-nasal drip thing. If you don't want to wait until Dr. Scott's thing, just go to the, oh, well, okay, if you

got it, 90 bucks to blow. Go to a CVS or a Walgreens, and they've got a machine called a Navage. And the Navage, you might have heard us talking about it earlier, it's a motorized device that shoots saline in one nostril and sucks it out the other one. And if you have a post-nasal drip problem, it will completely eradicate that. Now, if you don't want to spend the 90 bucks just on the odd chance, that's what it is. Before you do that, go to one of those places and get a bottle of this stuff called Ocean Nasal Spray. it's ocean like the sea

and you just spray the shit out of your nose with this stuff and suck it back spray it again suck it back and then blow your nose and you should get a whole lot of just nasty disgusting mucous out of there and you may notice that this is getting better and if that does

work then the Navaj might be something that you'll want to get but I love the ocean nasal spray it's or there's another one called simply saline And there's fail in comparison to the simply herbal sinus spray. That's right.

The stuff Dr. Scott's going to send you is infinitely better, but this stuff will do in a pinch. Yeah, that's true. Okay. And I get that CVS, too. Oh, yeah, anywhere. Yeah. Oh, right. All right.

I'm going to try all this, but I'm going to try the diet thing, too, because I don't want to die. Yeah, well. You should eat better anyway. So even if it doesn't fix your symptoms, that's still something you should do. Don't die. I decided when I hit 63, maybe I wanted to live. of a few more years. So that's something, too.

So I feel, I feel literally 20 years younger right now. Wow. All right. Great. All right. Let's not die. Because the one thing that scared me about it, it says it's left untreated. It can increase your chances of cancer.

So I want to make sure I'm treating it. Is that considered treating it by eating better and taking prionocin? Yes. So decreasing the irritation of the lower esophagus, particularly. will decrease the risk of esophageal cancer over time that used to be questionable the data is reasonable on that at this point so okay keep talking to dr steve that helps and and have eating a lot of fat increases your risk of uh of not only heart attack and stroke but also of cancer as well so you know just eating better is better for you literally are what you eat because that's

the only way that you can turn over you the cells and your body is using protein and sugars and things of that nature that you've ingested orally, you know. So we truly are what we eat, and it makes a big difference. All right, great. Thanks so much for the help and for your time. I appreciate it. Yeah, email me any thoughts or info. I appreciate it.

Okay, we'll do. Yeah, send me your address, and I just realized I've just been a cliche-sling-zilch, this whole phone call. Oh, you are what you eat. But anyway, I go fuck myself, but I appreciate it. I was great. It was very helpful. So I should plan to feel better the next few days.

If not, I should, you know. Yeah. And then, yeah, if you don't let us know. Move to another country or something. Yeah. Well, then we'll just go to plan B and plan C. And this is how these things are figured out. You start off, you know, if you're, if you're in Central Park and you hear hoof prints

coming behind, you're going to think it's a horse. You're not going to think it's a zebra, right? But it could be a zebra. It's just unlikely. So the horse, in this case, is sign. silent reflux or post nasal drip. And there are zebras that it could be as well, but you always want to treat the horse first

because that's the most common thing. You're going to hit it 90 some percent of the time just by doing that. If you're still not getting better, then the E&T may want to pass a fiber optic scope down your nose and look around. They may want to send you to a gastroenterologist to see if you've got a bad hiatal hernia or something like that.

There are other things that we can do. We can figure this out over time, but it's a process. Okay. Well, he did the nose thing. He stuck a little camera down my nose. It's unpleasant. Good, good, yeah. It didn't seem too worried.

Okay, very good. All right, awesome. All right, guys. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I mean, it seems likely that it's diet-related since I eat exclusively things that cause this. Yeah, you eat shit. For 35 years.

Yeah, so, therefore, he is shit. And so, you know, the... Yeah, I'm shit. And I said I feel 20 years younger And I still feel older than you are right now So it's not all that great But All right, man

All right, guys, thank you so much I appreciate it You got any gigs to plug? Well, I'm in Fort Worth right now I'm at Hyenas If you happen to be at Fort Worth tonight And you can see me on Netflix Season 2 of the stand-ups is on Netflix right now

streaming all the time So go check it out Yeah, well check that out Absolutely Hey, thanks man And there's some medical humor in there. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. Surely to God, some project you're doing will require the presence of an elderly doctor at some point.

My whole life is that process. Okay, well, that doesn't help me get on TV. But anyway, all right, man. I'm living that project. I'll try my job. Okay, I'll see you. ComedianjoList.com. All right.

He's a good feller. He's a feller. All right. What else we got? You guys got anything? Nope. Is that that? Well, all right then.

Hell with you. Let's see if we've got anything here. Oh, hey, you got anything for tenetous? Depends on what's causing it. Okay. We're going to hit that next time. Lady Diagnosis was talked about for quite some time on the Opie Radio podcast. We'll be hitting that next week as well.

uh let's see what else we have uh oh some more anti-vaccine stuff cold urticaria and uh oh it looks like uh riley martin from beyond the uh grave sent us a send us a message let's see um until next time check y'all stupid nuts for lungs that's not right wait a minute yeah uh thanks always go to dr scott the lovely lady diagnosis and the except exquisite tacy. Uh, we can't forget, uh, Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, uh, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coombeer, Jim Lorton, Travis Telfastiffith.

Uh, Tom Kaufman and his little dog, I'm gonna chantella Virginia. Well, anyway, that's, uh, our friend Riley Martin, from beyond the beyond. Don't forget. Stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. That's stuff. dot dr steve.com for all your shopping needs tweakeda audio.com offer code fluid for 33% off best earbuds

for the price and the best customer service anywhere. Don't forget simplyherbles.net. That's Dr. Scott's website. We're going to be sending some simply herbals to Joe. Check out noom.doctrsteve.com if you want to get on this newm app, get 20% off and two weeks free. And if you want archives of the show, why would you? premium. com. 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 for 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 next week

for the next edition of Weird Meta. Awesome.