Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 357 - Rotten Body Parts

Episode Date: April 19, 2019

The return of the bodysnatchers, and Tissue Bank James sets us straight. Medical questions galore. PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com simplyherbals.net noom.doctorsteve.com freshly.doctorsteve.com tweakedaudio.com offer code FLUID 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 to touch it. Yo-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho. Yeah, me garreted. I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivir from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain out and blasted with the way.

an ultrasonic, agoraphic and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen gain. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want a requiem for my disease. So I'm aging Dr. Steve. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show

in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medical practitioner, keeps the alternative medicine assholes at bay. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider.

If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 347-76-4-3-23. That's 347. Whohead? Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at DR Scott WM. When she's here, at Lady Diagnosis. 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 to over with your doctor, nurse practitioner, physician, physician, assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncture, yoga, master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory scientist, or whatever. All right, very good.

Hey, don't forget to check out stuff.com. That's stuff.com for all your Amazon needs. We have the navage on there. It's getting ready to be allergy season. And the navage is delightful way to keep your nose clean. It's under $100. Use it over and over and over again. I'm a true believer.

I think if you want to use a netty pot, that's up to you. Please use distilled water. But what I want you to do if you use a netty pot is Google image netty pot users. And you'll see how stupid you look. And then you'll want to go buy a Navaj. So anyway, you can get one of that stuff at Dr.steve.com. I am currently using headphones by tweakeda audio.com. Tweeked audio.com.

Offer code fluid. Well, my voice crack. How am I? Fluid. Fluid. Offer code fluid for 33% off, which is, as somebody pointed out to me, I once said, it's like buying three for the price of two. idiot

stupid oh wait well there you go well you used to start saying stuff your brain's sort of in neutral anyway it's like buying no that was right

oh now I'm really stupid I wasn't I was I was wondering where you're going oh I said I guess one time I was doing that promo and I said it's like buying two for the price of three.

It actually is like buying three for the price of two. Give yourself a bill. Yeah, there you go. God, I'm dumb. Close. Anyway, and I call Big Joe dumb. She actually is dumb. She is.

She thinks eight times eight is 16. And then she says, now y'all, I can modify. Mod apply. Anyway, it's just, that's a, that's a, that's a black hole of different proportions. simply herbals.net, check out Dr. Scott's website. It's, again, allergy season. There's nothing better for your allergies right now, really. I've got to say, I've been very impressed with Dr. Scott's nasal rinse.

The other thing that I like that you don't sell on that is that, what is that nasal, xanthium nasal for? What is that? That's an old Chinese herbal medicine formula called xanthium, and it's a formula just made of a bunch of different leaves and herbs that work on sinus inflammation. It's wonderful. It's actually quite impressive. So now if you see Dr. Scott

and you complain to that, he'll sell you that shit, but I guess you don't sell it on your website. Not yet, but I could. Oh, you could. I could. Yeah, whatever. Go to, so anyway, check him out at simplyerbils.net.

If you're interested in losing weight with me, I'm five pounds away from my ideal body weight as of right now, so I'll give myself one of these. five pounds away from my ideal body weight first time since I was about three years out of college so and I did it using Noom and so check out Noom.

Dottersteve.com it's N-O-O-O-M dot Dr.steve.com You can get two weeks free and you can get 20% off your program. The program's just 12 to 16 weeks. It's cheaper than, well, I don't want to say cheaper. It's less expensive than weight watchers, and with that 20% coupon that you get by going to Noom.doctr.com, it's even less expensive than that. And you can try it out for two weeks with no obligate. It's just free. Now, you won't get your group. You won't get the sort of value-added stuff

until you sign up for the real program. But the first two weeks for me were, you know, I learned a lot and I started losing weight from day one, even without my group. You get a group, a group counselor, and you get an individual counselor as well. I am a true believer in Noom. It's not a diet. It's psychology. You can do any diet you want, but you've got to deal with the psychology of eating.

It basically changes your relationship with food. And speaking of food, freshly has $40 off. If you go to freshly. com, what freshly is, is they deliver fresh prepared meals that make eating right super-eat.

easy. You can use my link and get six dinners for $39 for two weeks, and that's $20 off each week. Give it a try, and let me know what you think. Now, so we used to do Blue Apron on the show. You may do it again. Love Blue Apron. If you need, you know, an ounce of balsamic vinegar, they send you an ounce of balsamic vinegar. You don't have to go buy a whole, a whole jar. Or what a jar? Who buys a jar of vinegar? You know, you don't have to buy a whole bottle of vinegar, and you just have what you need. But you still have to do the prep yourself.

You've got to cut up the radishes and do all this stuff, and it's fun. I learned a lot of cooking techniques doing that, and I'm a reasonably accomplished chef. They had a great variety of flavors. Awesome. You can go to blue apron.com slash weird medicine and check them out. Then I tried that terrorist kitchen because they do all the prep for you, so you don't have to cut up any radishes or cut up any radicchio. or can I just name a bunch of other weird vegetables, because it's already done for you.

And then I got even lazier than that and said, well, maybe somebody sells food already made. And that's what freshly is. So it's already made. If you're a lonely eater like I am, this is really good food, you can sort it by calories, by ingredients. If there are things you don't like, they just won't show them to you. you can do, they're all gluten-free and they're all pretty healthy and everything I've had has been very tasty. Some things I like better than others, but I've liked everything I had. $40 off of Freshly by going to freshly.orgely.com.

And then the last thing is premium.com if you want to get archives of the show, you get full access to every show we've ever done for Riotcast, plus some premium content. And if you use offer code fluid for that, you get half off. It's only a buck 99 a month now. So for a dollar a month, for three months, you can get premium access to the show. Just download them all and then cancel it. I don't care. I'm just trying to keep my employers out of my archives because we used to do some stuff on the show that was a little more wilder than we do now. Anyway.

Yeah. All right. So there you go. What do you got? Well, you know, the very last person you listed on our intro was what, the research scientist, which I was reading a really disturbing thing today. I guess a father and son in Illinois have been arrested and federal prosecutors have charged them with getting people who are donating their bodies to science. They're taking these cadavers and selling them on the black market to researchers who thought they were perfectly healthy individuals. so they've not done any kind of vetting of these individuals.

They've got all kinds of diseases and stuff. They're passing him on as healthy cadavers. Was this one of those places like that guy that we had in here where they do sort of you donate your body and then they parcel out the parts? We need to get him in here. Yeah, no, I know. I wasn't going to say his name unless he was in here. But he does it and he's legit.

Well, he's totally legit. So we need to get him in here. Well, you give me a note. to remind me to get him in here and we've got to talk about that particular article because we want to see if that's somebody that well shit

damn it I could get him on right now let me hang on a second let me see if I can get him on the phone because that is despicable it is despicable yeah they're passing these they're taking these people who are donating their body to science

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they, you know, you want to donate your body to science so that what your demise can improve someone else's, uh... Hey, boss. Hey, man. Hey, can you be on the radio like right now? Sure, if you need me to be. Okay, so you are. You are. What am I talking about? Okay, so Scott found an article. Have you heard about these people? What's the article, Scott? So it's in Rosemont, Illinois. A father and son. Rosemont, Illinois, father and son. They were accused of selling disease. Selling disease body parts?

Do you know anything about that? I didn't know it was father and son. But you know about the case. There was a group of biological resources. Are we live? Yes. We are, yes. That's why I'm...

Okay. And he is right. That's the company. There was Rosemont, Illinois, Arizona, and Detroit, Michigan. There was a group of three that got shut down two or three years ago. Oh, okay. That were allegedly distributing... specimens that had tested positive for things like HIV and hepatitis.

I see. Okay. So when you guys, when an ethical place does this, you all screen people for certain diseases that you will not accept them for donation and then organ or, you know, body part, whatever it is, whatever you do. Well, it's a two-step process. We initially asked them to fill out what we call medical social history. which lets us know whether they have been diagnosed or possibly have been exposed to something that is, you know, venereal, I mean, even a venereal disease, we even ask about that, but we ask about a viral hepatitis, we ask about HIV 1 and 2, syphilis, those sort of things. And the second part, which is the most important is we contract with a Clea certified lab that can test the blood and we run serologies on each sample, I mean, on each donor, we, We draw a sample, and then each donor is tested individually, and if anyone comes back reactive or positive for those things, we have to discard the entire donor, you know, that gift that they've given us.

We have to, in other words, cremate the entire thing. We've had to do in the last week that has it been on that way. If someone wants to donate their body to science, you know, to somebody like you, and they don't live where we do, where you're so convenient, what are they? look for they can just search body donation pretty much we'll bring it up um you know and then put their their city and state obviously the first choices that are going to come up are going to be universities which is good i mean you know we we don't discourage that but the downside to universities versus our organization is number one they keep the body sometimes forever two years and a lot of times they do not return the ashes yeah and a lot of

times there's a charge where with with our nonprofit public charity there's not a charge and in addition to that we return to cremated remains that are not used for research within within 30 days of the death yeah we filed the death certificate we do the cremation we do everything as if you went out went out and arranged a cremation except there's no charge and then addition to that and you get a free cremation out of it you get a free cremation but it's so much more than that just say someone has suffered from ALS, Parkinson's, you name it, some form of cancer, mesothelialoma, lung cancer. We have researchers across the country and now across the world that we can send a sample to that as long as we get the body in time to preserve those cells that study that cancer or study

that autoimmune disease. We, you know, everything from immunotherapy for cancer to this new group we're working with that is working on epithelial cells to kill the blood vessels that feed the tumor versus just killing the tumor. Right. Yeah, we can't advance science without having specimens. And when people do this, they're actually, you know, it's always tragic. I mean, look, the price of admission to this world is we've got to leave it at some point.

It's one of the prices of admission. The other one, apparently, is you've got to marry three different crazy women, but that's a whole other thing. Whole no story. The third one being less crazy than the other two. but you also can turn some of that tragedy into joy in the sense that you're helping somebody else. If you can't donate your organs, you know, to live donation, which is rare. You know, you have to be brain dead on life support.

Most of us don't go out that way. This is a way that you can help other people by furthering science and furthering the knowledge in medicine. that's incrementally, and just never know when we're going to have a huge breakthroughs. And I think it's important to our donors and our families. We were one of the few groups that will actually go out and sit at their kitchen table and do their paperwork. We are probably the only group that one of our staff personally delivers the urn and the ashes back to the family. Yeah, that's awesome. And it means a lot to them that their loved one is fighting that disease process that killed them.

I mean, just that they can be a soldier. during that battle to find a cure for whatever killed that one they really care about. I like the psychology of that. I really do. Okay. All right, man. Well, I knew you would know the answer to that. And we were just, I wondered what the context of this thing was because, you know,

of course, medical journalism gets it all wrong. You know, they were just talking about, well, they're selling disease, body parts. He just had this idea of, you know, just people rotting in some room and they're just selling, you know, rotting arms and legs. But what it really was was they were exposing

researchers to viruses that they had claimed were not in those specimens, and that's the real bad part of that. That's exactly right. Somehow they got turned on to some of those guys and started looking whether they had even ran the serology panels. Okay. Allegedly from what I read, based on the news story, they determined that they had not tested or were they had tested them, and some of them turned out reactive or positive for these results, but yet they hid that from the research. So that's really what happened. And again, it's all alleged. We don't, hell, we're reading a new story.

We weren't there, but very interesting. All right, man. Hey, do you want to plug anything or do you want to just leave it at that? I'm not saying, again, I was saying, do you want to plug anything or do you want to just get the hell off here as quickly as you can? Well, I mean, you know, one of our mottoes this year is do not cremate the cure. So, in other words, if you're looking to just, not to just be cremated, but if you're looking for your final arrangement

to find the position to be cremation you got to look at body donation you can help so many people through that process you're still going to get cremated you're not it's not going to cost you anything and you're going to fight all these disease processes even people without cancer

we do these rapid autopsies where we recover normal healthy tissues that they compare to cancer tissue too even those without cancer helping the battle against cancer That's how we determine when things are abnormal is because we've examined so many normal people, you know. Absolutely. That's how what's like Dr. Scott, you and I, abnormal.

Yeah, exactly. You've got to have, you got it takes all kinds, my friend. Well, I know the funeral directors just love hearing you say, you know, come get your free cremation. So I was actually in a... Yeah, I'm sure I'll be getting some love like that. All right. Well, listen, thanks, man. I appreciate your time and thanks for being there for us today.

Anytime. Talk sense. All right, buddy. All right. So, I was on Jim and Sam today. Oh, cool. Talking about the Event Horizon Telescope. Did you see the image of the black hole? I did.

And look, people are going, oh, it's fuzzy. Yeah. What you're trying to look at is the head of a pin from using a telescope from, like, New York City to London. Mm-hmm. And you're trying to zoom in on the head. of a pin. This telescope that they created and took all of its data two years ago.

And it is, the telescope itself is the size of the planet. Right. Okay. So this was a millimeter something wavelength telescope. So they were using microwaves, which will penetrate through cloud layers. You know, these clouds are. basically transparent to microwave. So that's a good thing for looking into places where there's a lot of dust and just shit obscuring things.

Right. And they got this image and you go, well, and it looks like, you know, a crispy cream or something with glaze on the bottom. Right. And this thing actually is outstanding. First off, yes, it's blurry. the size of this in the diameter of the sky is on you know it's in micro arc seconds so the sky is divided up into 360 degrees and each one of those degrees has 60 minutes each 60 minute is has 60 seconds you know in space so you're dividing the whole sky up 360 and then within each one of those

360 divisions there's 60 divisions there's 60 division of 60 divisions. Right. So it's 360 right there. And then this is micro arc seconds. So this is millionths of one of those sections. One-60th of a section. Yeah.

Okay. Of a 160th of the whole thing. So it's unbelievably tiny that they were able to resolve this thing. This is an incredible feat of engineering and science that they were able to coordinate all these different telescopes. So how do they make a telescope the size of the Earth? Well, what it is is it's got the discerning ability of a telescope the size of the Earth. It does not have a resolution of a giant dish the size of the Earth.

Right. Okay. So what you're doing is increasing your baseline. So you've got a telescope in Australia and one in Los Angeles. Didn't they say there were, weren't there eight different telescopes across the world? And they were in high, dry places. and that's how they coordinated them to cover the face of the earth. Yeah, made up of eight independent observatories.

And then they got so much data that they couldn't send it through the Internet. They had to actually bring the hard drives and just have somebody fly them to this place to put all this data together. Wow. Yeah, because it's not like they took a snapshot of it and magically looked at this. There's a lot of processing involved there. Oh, yeah, it took two years. And we've been anticipating seeing this image. and most people who knew something about it knew it was going to look like this.

I think some people were expecting something a little more dramatic. But this is unbelievably dramatic, if you know, the history of this, because, you know, Einstein, whose field equations for gravity predicted this, you know, he thought that was a flaw in his theory. Yeah. A couple of things he thought were flaws turned out to be real. The cosmologic constant was one. And this.

And, you know, more and more we were seeing things in the center of galaxies that were severely red shifted on one side and severely blue shifted on the other. So light is always constant speed. So when you have light, things accelerating toward you, the light can't go any faster, but it can become more energetic. And when light becomes more energetic, it turns bluer, right? Right. Just like an arc welding, you know, compared to a match. You know, the match is kind of yellowish orange. Arc welding is bright, you know, shines in the ultraviolet, too.

So because it's more energetic. Likewise, when things are going away from you, they're still going away from you at the same speed. But because of that constancy of the speed of light, they have to lose energy, okay, or apparently lose energy. So when you see them, they become redshifted. And this thing is showing a couple of things. One is the total warpage of space around the black hole event horizon. Because that's the only way that no matter where you look at this, it's going to look like a donut. Okay.

Okay. So we couldn't be south of this and look up and just see it edge on. Okay? It's never going to look like that because of the way space is warped around it. Excuse me. light that grazes over the top is going to curve around the back side of the black hole and come back out

the front and some light will go into orbit but some of it that's not quite in the orbit will escape and we'll be able to see it and because of that effect and it's hard to describe on the radio but there are a couple of YouTube videos that demonstrate this very nicely

when you warp space that much, the pathway of light becomes warp to the point where you will always see it looking like this. So if you went north of this thing, it would be almost as if that donut is following you, you know, just to always orient itself. And then the bright part at the bottom is another confirmation of general relativity as well, because a lot of these, the matter is. traveling at some significant fraction of the speed of light. And as it travels away from us, it's redshifting, and so it's becoming dimmer. So it's pretty neat. That is cool. So this is actually outstanding.

Right. And I think people look at it. They don't realize how much information is in that picture. Right. You know, for someone trained that can actually discern what exactly is going on. We have had. Okay. So, and I told Jim and Sam to Google this, and I have anyone that's listening.

listening to this should Google this as well. Google or YouTube this. The motion of orbits of stars around the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. You can just put that in. And these other scientists have been monitoring stars that are close to the central supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. This one, by the way, it was 55 million light years away. It's just a giant, giant, massive. So the one in our galaxy is, it's still super

massive, but it's not as massive. But it's closer, so we'll see what kind of image we get from it. But they've been watching the orbits of these stars, and they've done it for 20 years. And you can see the technology get better as the video progresses, because the images get

sharper and sharper. But you can see them whipping around, something that isn't there. They'll come down and they come down and then all of a sudden they speed up and then they whip around and then slow back down again and then do it again just over and over and over again.

And there's nothing there. Right. You can't see anything. So that was indirect confirmation that there's a super massive black hole in the center of a galaxy, but it's indirect. Okay.

You know, by indirect, we're inferring that it's there based on what we're seeing happening around it. Right. This is a different thing. We're actually seeing the effects of warpage of space. We're not actually seeing the black hole, but we're seeing the effects on it, on its local environment.

This is the first, you know, direct observational evidence that black holes exist, even though we knew they were there. But scientists, you know, they won't settle until they can see something like this. So aren't they expecting another black hole image to show up soon, right? Is that what they're talking last night? They've imaged the one in the center of our Alexi. Okay, gotcha. I wasn't sure what they meant. But they've got it.

They've got a new one coming in. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. You don't have to back off quite that far. But the way I've got these, these mics are just really overdoing. So anyway, it's pretty neat. So, yeah, that'll be interesting to see the difference.

Cool. Looks good. All right. Well. Pretty exciting. I got a couple of, here's an interesting news thing, a comparison of gender-linked population. cancer risks between alcohol and tobacco. How many cigarettes are there in a bottle of wine?

So this is from British or one now BMC public health. And the abstract says in contrast to our knowledge about the number of cancers attributed to smoking, number of cancers attributed to alcohol. Ooh, I don't like the sound of that. That's terrible news. Boo science is poorly understood by the public. No shit. We estimate the increase in absolute risk of cancer, the number of cases per 1,000, attributed to moderate levels of alcohol and compare those to the absolute risk of cancer attributed to low levels of smoking.

So what they're trying to do is say we're going to see if we can attribute a certain number of cases per thousand to alcohol. And then we know how many cases there are for tobacco. compare them, and then we can say, you know, if you drink three glasses of wine, is that equivalent to a pack of cigarettes or whatever? So creating a cigarette equivalent of population cancer harm, which is interesting because people can understand that. When I talk to people about their narcotic use, we don't use the word narcotic, but our listeners understand that, you know, our opioid use, I might say, well, you have, you're on

The pump that you're on is delivering 800 milligrams of oral morphine equivalents per day. And they'll just give me a blank stare. But if I say it's the equivalent of 80 Lortab 10s a day. I'm speaking in Lortab 10 equivalents. Then they go, oh, God, because they understand that. Right on. Most people understand you smoke more. You're at high at risk of cancer.

So they're taking alcohol and converting it to cigarette. risk, in a number of cigarette risk, okay? So a cigarette equivalent population cancer harm. So they did this with alcohol and tobacco fractions, they were subtracted from lifetime general population risks of developing alcohol and smoking-related cancers. And they did that to estimate the lifetime cancer risk and alcohol abstaining non-smokers.

Okay? So they subtracted everything out, looked at the people, people that never smoked and never drank, estimated what their cancer risk was, and then went back to the people who either smoke, drank, or did both. Okay. Okay, so one bottle of wine for week, Jesus, is associated with an increased absolute lifetime cancer risk for non-smokers of 1%. So it's not a lot.

Not much, yeah. The risk to you is not high. That means you've got to, you know, 100 people, maybe one person will have an extra cancer. So the number needed to harm would be one. One point four for women. The overall absolute increase in cancer risk for one bottle of wine per week. My wife's going to die tomorrow. Equals that of five men or ten cigarettes per week. I'm sorry, five cigarettes for men or ten cigarettes per week for women. So women are getting the shaft on this. Gender different. And we should do this one lady diagnosis. Here won't make any difference. She'll still drink.

She'll still drink. Gender differences result from levels of moderate drinking leading to a 0.8% absolute risk of breast cancer in female non-smokers. Hmm. This sucks. We need another... This is a terrible study.

The great thing about sciences, somebody will come out with another study next week that says it's drinking a bottle of wine is good for you. And it probably is. So you've got to weigh this. this. So one in a hundred people may get one extra cancer, or one out of a hundred cancers may be attributable to alcohol. How many lives are we saving with heart disease, though? So this may be that risk versus benefit thing. So we'll have to look at that. Maybe we'll

look at that for a future show and we'll do a report on it. I think I saw years ago the benefits of moderate drinking was. based on the fact that it's because a lot of drinkers tend to be more social and have healthier social lives. Oh, really? Yeah. And they were suggesting that, you know, of course, drinking alone is not encouraged, but having a couple of drinks a day, even daily, two to four drinks a day daily in a social

environment is actually considered going to give you the best longevity compared to all others. This is from Mayo Clinic, moderate alcohol consumption, and I would say, one bottle a week is certainly moderate. May provide some health benefits, such as reducing your risk of developing and dying from heart disease, reducing your risk of ischemic stroke, and possibly reducing your risk of diabetes. So you've got to weigh all this stuff. And when you talk about a bottle, they're talking like a bomber or I am?

I don't know. Yeah, Jeroboam, one of those things that comes up to your tits. Now we're talking. Let me see. Yeah, it says, while moderate alcohol use may be of benefit. for individuals who have existing risk factors for heart disease, you can take other steps to improve your heart health

besides drinking. Well, shut up, maybe. But nothing else makes fun. Nothing else is as fun. Now, heavy alcohol use that's different. To find as more than three drinks on any day or more than seven drinks a week for

women. Oh, my wife is in big trouble. I'm screwed too. Or for men older than age 65 and more than four drinks on any day, any day or more than 14 drinks a week for men age 65. Oh, well, hell, I can do 14 drinks. Easily. No problem.

Okay, and then binge drinking. So excessive drinking can increase your risk of serious health problems, including certain cancers, including breast cancer, and cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and liver. The head and neck cancer, got to pretty much be coupled with HPV, though. Pancreatitis, sudden death, if you have cardiovascular disease. So if you have cardiovascular disease, don't. binge drink. No.

And, yeah, and then, you know, the other things that go with alcoholism, like alcoholic cardiomyopathy and stuff like that. That's not really what we're talking about. No, no, no. But anyway, it says here, if you don't drink alcohol, don't start because you think it as potential health benefits. That's reasonable. But we used to tell people if they were teetotlers, because we live in an area where a lot

of people just don't drink, that four ounces of red grape juice may confer the same benefit It is four ounces of wine because it's the resveratrol that in their grapes that really confers a lot of the benefit, not necessarily the alcohol. Right. But anyway, it's controversial when we did the Somalié episode. We also talked about this. And, you know, I found a couple of one study that said it was the resveritrol. Another one said it was definitely the alcohol. So nobody really knows.

No. So just go easy. Moderation. Of course. Let me tell you real quick. Yeah, yeah. I remember seeing us. a study a couple years ago, and they were interviewing folks in London

on what their thoughts are on the research and what they would consider moderate drinking, right? And the consensus was for these guys in London, eight pints a day was considered moderate. Well, that's the whole thing about when you're doing, trying to decide what's normal. Right. It really has to do with the sample. It is. We see this. We talk about on the show frequently when you're looking at things like testosterone.

And when you're trying to determine, well, what's normal? You're going to go to the populace and start drawing blood, determining what the levels are, get the mean, and then do two standard deviations from the mean and consider that normal. Well, what if inside that population is a huge group of people who have what we would call clinically low testosterone, because they're symptomatic, but they've never been diagnosed. Now you're skewing that sample size down. So when you go to London and ask people what normal amount of alcohol intake, you're kind of skewing the curve a little bit. Right on.

That was London? Yeah, London. Those guys love their pines. Well, they do. Their pines. One last news report. This is from the New York Post, that prestigious medical journal, should masturbation breaks

become the new smoke breaks I love to masturbate Oh yeah According to some psychologists masturbation break would be very effective at work and a great way to relieve tension and stress There you go

Have you ever beat off at work? No I will have to say I have Oh well Not in my current job No But a long, long time ago When I had a different job

And, you know, you get all wound up and you have to take a break and relieve some stress. I guess. Get the poison out. Expell those evil humors. Psychologist and life coach, Dr. Cliff Arnall agrees. I would expect a masturbation policy to result in more focus, less aggression, higher productivity, and more smiling. I don't think that's true. I would not be more productive after beating off.

No. Because I just need a nap. And in the old days, a cigarette and a beer. Would they make this like a team kind of bonding, a bonding thing for the team? No, that's a little different. Now, that I could get behind. I actually did have to masturbate at work once in the hospital because I had to give a sperm sample and they wanted a fresh one. Okay.

So I had to go in the bathroom in the hospital and jerk one off. And it was so terrified that the door lock wasn't going to. work. I mean, can you imagine even in the one in a million chance somebody walks in and you're beating off in the hospital and you're a doctor? That would been terrible. I still

even then had a high percentage of two-headed sperm and non-motile sperm. I remember calling Tacey because we were having trouble getting pregnant and I went, it's me, it's me, but it turned out that that's normal for somebody my age. Right. I still had plenty of good ones. Good ones, right. Yeah.

Good. Hey, thankfully the, you definitely turned at least too good. Yeah, that's right. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Okay, here's, they're not a sponsor, but let's check the ring video doorbell and see who's at the front door. It's got to be. Hang on.

Here we go. Oh, come on. Oh, it's UPS. Thank you. Okay. Ooh, there is a package down there. I wonder what it is. It's like Christmas, Dr. Scott.

Cool. Okay, so according to Arnal, however, masturbation break shouldn't be driven by lust or fantasizing about a colleague as this would likely result in cognitive impairment. This is just the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. That is crazy. Can you imagine mandating this? Okay, well, you guys can have masturbation breaks,

but don't think about any of the women or the men. But your co-workers are off women. Right. Sergeant warned, oh, this is some MD, introducing any form of sexual behavior to a workplace could be seen as a slippery slope that makes people think other forms of sexual behavior such as those linked to harassment are more acceptable. Do you think? Yeah. You think that might be a problem? I love to masturbate.

I love a masturbate. I love a master being. I love a masturbate. And what are they suggesting? A special room? Yeah, right. I'll just whip it out at your desk. For every 52 minutes spent on the job,

workers should be allowed to have 17 minutes off the clock in order to maximize their productivity. Really? Oh, what the hell? We're in a wrong profession. Okay. Really? Okay, hang on a second.

Alexa. What is? Um, shit, never mind. Sorry, I didn't get that. I bet you didn't. No. Um, what do I want to do? Um, okay, Alexa, what's eight times 60?

This I could do in my head, but... Eight times 60 is 480. Alexa, what's 480 divided by 52? 480 divided by 52 is 9.2308. Alexa, what's 9.3278 times? 17. 9.3278 times 17 is 158.

158.576. What's 158 divided by 60? Oh, Alexa, what's 158 divided by 60? 158 divided by 60 is 2.6333. So they want us to have two and a half hours

off every day. That's a lot. These maniacs. I mean, sounds great to me, but we're the most productive country in the world. We wouldn't be if everybody got two and a half hours off a day. No. Because you can always grab a coffee or a cigarette instead, masturbation has remained an ultra form, I don't know how to pronounce that,

of getting that added boost you need to power through your workday. However, there are signs that the stigma against masturbation at the office may be slipping. This year, the company, hot octopause. Dubus debuted masturbation booths across New York City to give men a public place to relieve stress. Instead of reacting with disgust, women wanted to know where their masturbatoriums were. Why should men have all the fun? Well, that's a good point. Good point.

Oh, boy. Okay. This article is just assing. You want to take some phone calls? Let's do it. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right.

Thank you, Ronnie B. absolutely true. Hey, Dr. Steve. My name is Jacob. The reason I was calling is I just had a quick question. I'm currently going through a divorce and it's been pretty tough. I've been seeing a counselor for a while and he was saying something about adjustment disorder. I'm wondering if you can tell me any differences that would be between adjustment disorder and depression and if you would recommend medication for either of those. All right. Thanks. Well, yeah. I mean, it's a great question. So they diagnosed him with adjustment. disorder we'll call that situational depression or reactive depression i mean sadness is a natural human emotion and we will grieve even the shittiest relationship now let me ask you you went through a crappy divorce well you got a crappy marriage and a crappy divorce yeah but when you finally did you move out or did she uh no i moved up okay so did you feel grief when you did that oh of course yeah you feel you feel you feel bad you feel like you've done something wrong and a failure and um it's just the normal.

You grieve for that relationship and what you hope that it could have been. What it could have been, right. So it's not all joy. You know, vacations cause stress. You know, it's weird. You go on vacations to get away from stress, but it's well known that going on vacation can be stressful. I had arguably the shittiest marriage in the world, and I've talked about it on the radio

before, but I cried when I left the house. Yes, sure. You know, I packed all my shit up and I cried. Yep. Because you're losing something, you know, and it's something that you did. You know, I've never met anybody that got married with the intent to be divorced. Right, right, right, right. You know, that was what we're hoping to do.

Right, right, right. Spend all this money on this fucking wedding and they can get divorced. And then just give you half of everything. Yeah, or more. Including a painting that my dad gave me and my mom's wedding ring and, yeah, two-thirds of my take home pay. shit that they shouldn't want to take they take because they think it's going to make them feel better. It's coming to me.

Yeah, I deserve it. Oh, for God's thanks. And they've done it. All right, sorry. Well, good luck, buddy. And it always drives me crazy when Big Joe will call us, and if she doesn't get her alimony check from Tacey's dad,

she'll go, he didn't send me my paycheck. And I just hearing that word called a paycheck goes all over me just because of what I, you know, the paychecks that I wrote for all those years. But anyway, so you do grieve even if it was crummy. Now, if you didn't want it to end, then it's going to be that much worse. So situational and clinical depression are similar, but they're not the same.

And, you know, situational depression, as we already said, you know, we'll call it adjustment disorder with depressed mood. That will often resolve in time what I found when I had girl trouble, when I, particularly in high school was, you know, a new girlfriend. Sure. That cured that pretty quickly. It was amazing how fast that would cure things. Yep.

Now, if you don't recover, you could develop major depressive disorder, and that's an actual mental condition. So, you know, major depression includes not just sadness, but loss of interest in doing things. Loss of the ability to enjoy things. We'll call that anhedonia. Loss of interest in doing things is apathy, changes in eating, changes in your sleep cycle. And we feel like this is caused by changes in certain chemicals in the brain, particularly serotonin and norepinephrine. And it can be related to genetics or it could be major life events. And you can take screening tools, but if you I think you're depressed.

Fatigue is another one. Sure. I've known people who are depressed that, right, and they can have trouble falling asleep or they could sleep too much. Yeah, sleep too much. That's right. They could quit eating or they could eat too much. So it's difficult to just hang your hand on one set of symptoms. But if you feel like this is an issue for you, then going to, you know, a medical provider who's skilled in this, they've got some screening tools that they can do.

there's some diagnostic tests. We will treat some of these with medication. It really depends on how severe they are. I mean, clinical depression can result in loss of productivity, suicide, you know, loss of social ability and even anxiety and agoraphobia and stuff like that. So we definitely want to treat that if it's affecting your life or as the potential to affect your life or if it's putting you in a situation. where it's affecting your quality of life or may, you know, you may be heading toward hurting yourself. So if you ever feel like you're going to hurt yourself,

you have to tell somebody right away. Right. And it sounds like at least he's kind of on the right track. He's using a counselor. And hopefully the counselor's showing him some good skill sets to work through this. And we'll help him recognize anything that's profoundly troubling. And true situational depression should improve. prove pretty quickly.

Especially when you get you into a girlfriend. Yep. Or whatever. Whatever. Whatever you eat. Exercise. It seems weird when you're that tired because when you have this, you're going to be really fatigued. The last thing you want to do is be active. But if you do, it actually releases chemicals into your bloodstream that may actually be effective for depression or at least make you feel better in general.

Getting up first thing in the morning and getting vitamin D. getting some sunshine early early sunshine i don't disagree with that is a you'll get higher levels of vitamin d production and then it'll make you feel better increases some serotonin so really now that i don't know oh yes oh yes you may clinically proven really hey no the vitamin d it is vitamin d and serotonin okay now i got to look this up because first i was early morning sunshine increase okay higher levels of vitamin d i was with you till that but here we go in addition to its well-known and calcium absorption, vitamin D activates genes that regulate the immune system and release neurotransmitters.

In other words, dopamine and serotonin. Give yourself a bill. All right. Dr. Scott, I'm going to even give you a little bit of that. You say so much bullshit that I can't just, you know, take what you say with a, you know, without looking it up. That's very true. It's a fair, fair statement. It says here, optimal vitamin D spurs serotonin release.

It's another study on PubMed. You can check this stuff out on PubMed.com, which is a national library where any person with an internet connection can look at clinical trials and medical literature. And yeah. And what are we doing with a serotonin selective re-uptake inhibitor? we are in the brain decreasing re-uptake of serotonin. So serotonin is a neurotransmitter goes from one neuron to the next, and then it's resorbed. Once it does the signal, it does the signal, it's resorbed, right?

So if you block reabsorption, what are you going to do to those levels? Increase the levels. They're going to increase. So if you increase serotonin using an SSRI, and it's effective. for depression, increasing it using other things, you would presume would also do the same thing. So I would love to see, you know, our favorite thing, a double-blind placebo-controlled study, and there may be some.

I just, you know, I don't want to stop the show and I have to look at ups, but we will. We'll do it off-air and see if there's a double-blind placebo-controlled study that shows that actually increasing serotonin levels that way is clinically relevant as far as depression is concerned. So very good, Scott. Where's a shot? You taught me something today. Good stuff.

Yep, you're a good failure. Good stuff. But we wish you well. Hey, Dr. Steve. I have a weird question. Whenever I go to shit, no matter how well I wipe my ass, a couple of hours later, maybe three, four hours tops, I'll go back. I'll run another piece of toilet paper up my crack, and there's shit on that paper, just like I had just stood. up. And I'm just wondering why. What causes that? It's like, like, am I not done shitting

when I think I'm done shitting? I even tried jumping off the toilet straight into the shower and washing my ass a couple of times, and I still end up with this little issue, and I'm just kind of curious. I don't know if my size may matter, but I am a little bit of the overweight side. Anyway, I'm just kind of curious. What's up with that? Yeah, I know. That's a great question. We've talked about this in the past with regard to hairy ass cracks. So back before you were on this show, Dr. Scott, I went and got a Brazilian wax just to see if it made any difference. Because I have a really gross hairy ass crack to the point where when I do my colonoscopy and they bring the colonoscope and they always have a big TV right there. And I don't do my colonoscopies with anesthesia so I can see this.

And I just see this gross, hairy hole that they're just getting ready to shove this thing in. It just makes me physically kind of ill. And whenever I see the nurses in the hospital, I'll look at him and go, stop it. I know what you're doing. You're thinking about my hairy ass crack. But so when I had mine waxed, no more shit issues whatsoever. But if you have a hairy ass crack, getting that clean is very difficult. whole routine. I finally am successful with this. But I, if you use toilet paper to wipe your

ass, what's going to happen? It's like, smear it every damn way. Exactly. Take a bare rug, dump some vaseline on it, and try to wipe it off with newspaper. It's the same thing. And so wet wipes will help in a pinch, but a bidet is the key to this. And Howard Stern, and I heard him talking recently. He's got one of those Toho. Is it Toho? Toto. Toto.

Toto. Yeah, Toto. Toto toilet. Yep. And this thing will actually give you a mini enema. It will shoot water into your rectum and flush out the rectum of any residual stool. Because we think a stool is being solid. It really isn't.

It's sort of a semi-soar, semi-formed solid, but it breaks apart really easily, which is why you can, and flush it down, you know, a sewer pipe, you know, because it just breaks up when it gets in water. Take a turd sometime and just take a chopstick and swirl it around in there. It'll just turn into, you know, brown water, right? So if you still have some fecal matter in the ampula of the rectum, you know, the part of the rectum that's right before the anus, it's just going to leak out. And then you've got a hairy ass crack where it's just going to, you know, subsume itself into the roots of the ass crack. And then then when you come back later and take a wipe, there's going to be shit on it. So there are a couple things you can do.

You could get one of those and use it and try to train yourself to void your bowels every morning or at some time when you're at home and use that part to give yourself that sort of mini enema to get any spare fecal matter that didn't. get extruded when you, you know, defecated out of your anus and out of the rectum. If you can do that, then there's nothing there to leak into your underwear. The other thing you can do, and this is just kind of gross, just wear a man pod. You know, just cram either gauze or a high-quality toilet paper, not the kind that they have at like the ballpark that just falls apart. You need a high-quality toilet paper, multiply, and you just kind of wrap it around your hand and then just cram it into your ass crack

particularly if you're a big dude it'll be easy to do I was going to say if he's big he's probably got a little bit more space in there than he thinks that's why they're that extra and there's sweat mixed with feces and you know it's just hard to get rid of hell I hate to know he may have hemorrhoids

too because hemorrhoids that have prolapsed yeah actually so if you get an internal hemorrhoid which is a varicose vein and it's prolapsed to the outside what it's actually doing is opening up a channel by which small amounts of liquid fecal matter can leak out of the rectum and into your ass crack and, you know, the folds of the anus and all that stuff.

And it just wicks out, you know, like, you know, capillary action. Go ahead. Yeah, it's going to say, you know, those tootot tools are pretty expensive. They are. Yeah, but for the not so expensive, there are adaptive bidets that you can buy, you know, your loaves and home depots that actually fit right exactly where you're. Oh, really? It is now.

You just take it off. And it's got a little remote control that you just punched the little remote control. It raises up and sprays you and gives you a good little wash. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I actually turned a guy with a really terrible disorder on to that because he was concerned about cleaning himself. Yeah. And he came back and, I mean, I thought he was going to hug me to death.

He's like, oh, my God, it's so much better now. My rectum is squeaky clean. I don't have to have somebody clean me anymore. So I think we've got him dialed in. Let me find this, um, Toto toilet. Yeah, they're a high dollar now. Oh, it's $300 bucks. Are you looking at the one that's got the bidet function?

Oh, I don't know. Oh, maybe not. Yeah, I doubt it, Dr. Steve. I mean, I'm not looking at what you're seeing, but most... No, this is just a regular toilet. You're sure it's Toto? Yeah, TOTO. Oh, okay.

But now some of the high and... Oh, shit. Oh, shit. $1,400 bucks? Oh, no. I told you. Damn. I told you.

That's what I'm saying. There are better ways. Or not say better ways. Let's say there's less expensive options. Two grand for a toilet that washes your ass. I'm telling you. Now, I got one of these shower heads. And it's got three different settings.

And one of it is Cascade, where it just dumps water. like if you take a bucket and dump it on your head and so why am I telling this story but you know I'm always honest with the with our listeners so after I'm done you know I move my horrible bowels and I wipe to the best I can I get in the shower

and clean off and everything and then you know the last thing I'll do is soap up my ass crack but then the very last thing I do when I'm rinsing is I put this thing on the cascade mode and then I You do a handstand in the shower It's kind of, you know, I'll bend over, spread my cheeks, and just let that hot water just cascade through my ass crack. It feels good, and I feel squeaky clean afterwards.

And that showerhead was not expensive. I got it at lows just on a whim, and I really like it. Yeah. That's cool. All right. So there you go, but we've solved it. Did we, though? I think.

Hey, Dr. Steve, quick question. And just wondering, I use nasal spray from my nose. I used the Navaj, cleans me right out. Why can't I still taste my food? Do you have any quick remedies for that? Thanks. No, so this guy can't taste his food. He didn't say whether he can smell.

Most of the time when you can't taste your food, you have a thing called an-osmia. And an-osmia means that you can't smell. You've got to be able to smell to taste your food. So the taste buds just go so far. They'll give you sort of sweet, sour sensations, but you really need to be able to smell to get the full flavor. So there's some integration of those two signals in the brain.

I know when I've had a sinus infection and I can't taste anything, it terrifies me because I know that if my food was rotten, I couldn't tell. There's no taste. It's maddening. People that have to live with that, it really sucks. So there are a bunch of different causes for them. this, but nasal and sinus disease is the most common. About 25% of cases will have, you know, some sort of sinus disease, whether they've got

swelling to the point where, you know, organic molecules can't get up to the sensors because the sensors in the nose are in the very, very top of the nose in this thing called the ethmoid plate that runs along the very top of the nose way up above the bridge of the nose. And, you know, if the tissues below that are swollen to the point where air can't get up there, well, you can't smell anything. You can't smell anything. You can't taste anything. So an ear, nose and throat dock can look in there and see if you've got a problem like that. My wife doesn't mind if I tell this. She had a thing called a Concha Belosa, which is just a big wad of tissue that was in there. And she couldn't smell anything. And she had trouble breathing

through it as well. Hens, this guy's having that too because he's got a nivage and he's using all these nasal sprays and stuff. So it could be something like that. You could have nasal polyps. Those will not get better on their own. So you've got to see any nose and throat person, let them look up there. Your primary, if they're worth anything, can look up there and sort of screen for it. Any sort of upper respiratory viral infections. 25% of these cases just happens. It just happens. And you've got to rule out everything else. You know, you've got to do blood tests, brain scan, stuff like that.

B-12 deficiency can cause it. So they'll test you for B-12. Head trauma if you've had injury, some injury to the head. So get this checked out. Not being able to taste your food is actually a sign that really should, you don't have to run to the emergency room, but you should go get this checked out. You got anything in traditional Chinese medicine for an osmia other than Dr. Scott's nasal spray, which you can get at

simply herbals.net. Just a nasal spray. That stuff's awesome. Now, if you can't smell it, you've got a problem. You've got a problem. That's right. Because Dr. Scott's nasal spray is buffered saline and it's also got peppermint oil in it as an anti-inflammatory agent. And it probably, I

figure that peppermint probably dilates the nasal passages a little bit too, probably has some vasoconstrictive properties just because it's just a little bit noxious to those tissues, you know, and they'll sort of recoil from it. But it's great stuff. But anyway, if you can't smell that, then you definitely need to go see in your nose

and throat, Doc. Yes, I agree. Okay. I really want to do this one. Yeah. This is important. Hey, Dr. Steve. My wife recently went in for her 20-week ultrasound, and everything looked good on the

ultrasound, but he did find an ecogenic focus, a single one, on the baby. bright and venticles. It said it's not the same density as bone or the same color as bone. I've been told that can be associated as a soft marker for Down syndrome. I'm just looking on your thoughts on that. Every other measurement and everything else came back. Perfect. Great.

Just want to know your thoughts, I think. Yeah, if they're really worried about a genetic abnormality, they can test the amniotic fluid for genetic markers for, genetic abnormalities and find out if that's really an issue. So what he's saying is they did a cardiac or an ultrasound and they saw this little dot of echogenicity, in other words, just in an echo. Okay, you know, ultrasound is just sonar. Sure.

It's bouncing sound waves and then recreating an image based on how those things bounce back. and they found this little echogenic area inside the baby's right heart, okay? And someone had told them that that was a, you know, a soft finding for trisomy 21 or Down syndrome. So this was studied pretty intensely because there were people who thought that there was some correlation between the two. And so they did a prospective population-based observational study from 1997 to 1999. It was 12,373 pregnancies. They found 267 cases of ecogenic foci in the fetal heart. And trisomy 21 was detected in 0.31 percent.

Okay? So that was, you know, right at or below what was expected. So their conclusion was an isolated ecogenic focus in the fetal heart at mid-trimester ultrasound and women aged 18 to 34 years is not associated with increased risk for trisomy 21. So I would not lose one bit of sleep over this. Now, if there are other markers, then, of course, yeah, do the genetic testing. But this is not only is it a soft finding, it's not even a finding. You know, it doesn't seem to correlate at all. And that was a decent size study.

Yeah. You know, it had the power to, you need a big study to prove a negative. Yeah. You know, so. And congratulations on your baby. Yeah. Let's talk about a little one that has a good ticker. Absolutely.

And go to Dr. Steve.com and click on the one-page baby manual. It's in the upper right-hand corner. It'll tell you everything you need to know. for the first year of taking care of that baby. I tried to make it really, really simple. Do it. All right. Well.

I had this phenomenon occurred to me several times a year. I don't know what it's called, but basically I walk into the store. You know, this is the store that I've been going into for years, sometimes daily. And I notice a picture on the wall or a credit card machine, a reader. And I asked, you know, are these things new? Because I'm just noticing them. And they say they look at me kind of weird, you know, and of course they're not new. Or another instance, I'll be driving down the road and I'll see a billboard and it just pops out at me.

And it's obviously not new. But I was just wondering what's going on there. What's going on in my brain? Is it a mental disorder? No, no. It's not a mental disorder. What it is is your brain functioning normally. Your brain sees some fraction of what you're actually.

looking at and it will filter out things that, you know, basically your brain's putting things you see every day on a pay-no-mind list. Right, it's a filter. That doesn't mean that if you look at them and give them some attention that you won't see them. You just won't see them every, this shit

happens to me all the time. I'll be driving to work the same. And it's like, well, I've never seen that house before. I've been there this whole time. I see people in the hospital every day. People, it's like there's an infinite number of people that I don't know

in the hospital, you know, because I see somebody every day that I've never seen before. Right. So, no, it's totally normal. The normal brain will filter out extraneous shit in an attempt to allow you to focus

on what's really important, which is going in and buying that tallboy of Miller or whatever it is you're doing in the convenience store and or getting to work safely. Just the same thing your brain does when you're sleeping. Well, what's that? How is that? Well, it just focuses on what's important versus what's unimportant at the time.

Oh, I see. Yeah, so breathing and making your heartbeat and stuff. Exactly, resting, yep. Okay, we've got 30 seconds. I don't have time for this. The person that growled or called in about the white spots on their scrotum, those are called four dice spots, Google them. Thanks always go to Dr. Scott. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Craig Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis, Teff, Lewis, Johnson, Paul.

Tcharski, Eric Nagel, Roland Campo, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Ron Bennington, and Fizz Watley, whose early support of this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk Channel, SiriusXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Easter, Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern on demand. And other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks go to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas, make this job very easy, and go to our website, Dr.steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. time. Check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking. Get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine.