Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 376 - Alien Abduction and Tainted Drugs

Episode Date: October 3, 2019

Dr Steve discusses the new drug recall, evidence for and against red meat, awful genital piercings and more. PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) simplyherbals.net (Dr Scott’s nasal rinse is here!) noom.doctorsteve.com (lose weight, gain you-know-what) tweakedaudio.com offer code “FLUID” (best CS anywhere) premium.doctorsteve.com (all this can be yours!) 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-he-oh. In the carri-de-old. I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivide stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heart valve, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain out and blast it with my nose.

to wave, 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 paging 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, and this is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you have a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. You can't find an answer anywhere else. Give us a call. 347766-6-4-3-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-2-7-3-6-4. We're listening to us live. The number is 754-2-273-6-47.

That's 754 double-duce penis or 754 bear nip. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine. There's also at Lady Diagnosis. Who's that? And at DR Scott WM. Never heard of them. 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 you hear with the grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking to over with your doctor, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory scientist, registered dietitian or whatever. All right, very good. Well, I just took my boards today. I'm doing this longitudinal maintenance of certification or certification thing. So to make sure, I guess, that your health care provider isn't a complete dunce,

they make you take these tests every 10 years. So if you start at 30, then you're going to do it, what, three times, I guess? You'll do it when you're 30, when you're 40, when you're 50, oh, and when you're 60. So four times total. And I am 64, but it got no intent of. retiring, knock on wood. And so I've got to take these damn exams again. But when you're my age, let me tell you something.

This getting old shit is for the birds because, of course, I had to start wearing reading glasses when I was around 45. And it was no big deal. But that's called Presby Accusis, by the way. There's a name for it. Or is that presby opium? Presby opium, sorry, Presby Accusis is when you're hearing goes bad because you're old. I have that too.

And then Presby brain means that your brain is old and you can't remember stuff. You used to know cold. But anyway, yeah, so I have presbyopia. And so what that just means is the lens is just not as flexible as it was and doesn't focus like it did. So you need little help wearing or reading stuff. close. Anyway, well, now I get this horrible eye strain, and I've made it better with these eye drops called Sistane Ultra, by the way.

It's not a commercial for them. This stuff is incredible. If you're in front of the screen a lot and you're getting terrible eye strain, my ophthalmologist said it's not actually straining the muscles of your eye. It feels like it. But what's really going on is your eyes are drying out because you're just so hyper-focused on it that you're not, you're not, you're not. not blinking like you're supposed to.

So when I got this stuff called Sistine Ultra, these are these long-acting eye lubricant drops, and they're not bad. They feel good when you put them in. Amazing difference, like night and day. Also, I'm using the settings in my monitors where you can take out some of the blue light, because blue light is the shorter, more high-energy light,

has the shorter wavelength, and cutting some of that out doesn't affect my ability to see my screen at all, but it does, improve eye strain and also I can wear glasses that have special computer eye or computer screen coatings on them that just reflect away the blue light so when I look at somebody

they see blue which is kind of cool it's a real pretty deep blue and all of that helps but still eight hours in front of that computer screen kills my eyes so after about two hours I can't see anything anymore I'm just guessing and then they put all the pictures at the end of the exam it's an eight hour exam you're in answering I guess 400 questions and it sucks it doesn't I don't think call out bad doctors in any way and it's a money grab and we have to spend a lot of money doing this maintenance of certification thing so the doctors out there one of the things I'm looking at is this thing called the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons where they don't require maintenance of certification because it has not shown to improve outcomes I'm just going to tell you that

right now what it's shown to do is line the pockets of the organizations that do make you do maintenance of certification to keep your your board certification intact so anyway so but they have for old jackasses like me they are trying to make some changes and I appreciate that so I'm doing this longitudinal thing where every three months I have to do 25 questions and I do that for four years and then that gets me good for 10 years if I stay in good standing. So anyway, that's what I'm doing now. But I did that today. I'm a little hepped up on unsweet tea, don't you know.

So anyway, it's a real trip, but I'm a little goofy today. But, you know, so what else is new? I want to remind you to check out stuff. Dot, dr.steve.com. That's stuff.com for all your Amazon needs. And with the holidays coming, there's all kinds of cool stuff you can get through stuff. Dottersteve.com. You can scroll down and you can buy stuff and look at my mini reviews and everything.

Or you can just click through to Amazon, and it does help keep us on the air. In addition, tweakeda.com, offer code fluid. They're a Tennessee business in Franklin, Tennessee, and they have the best earbuds for the price anywhere and the best customer service, bar none of any company that's out there. fantastic. Tweakeda Audio.com offer code fluid. Check out Dr. Scott's website. It's simplyerbils.net. It's time for his Simply Herbal's nasal rinse.

It is fantastic. I know I give him a hard time, but it's really good. And then Noom. Dot, Dr.steve.com. If you want to hit your ideal body weight and do it with me, I'm still doing it. I love it. It's not a diet app. It's a psychology app.

There's no points. You got a log. a bunch of meals, but that's to keep you accountable for what you're putting in your stupid mouth. So check out Noem, N-O-O-M dot, Dr.Steve.com. You get two weeks free, and if you decide to do it, you get 20% off. You only have to do it for three months. It's not a lifetime gig like Weight Watchers is.

And then if you're lazy like me and you want to have meals that are pre-programmed that have the caloric requirement on the back is great for Noom, go to freshly. dot dr steve.com they deliver fresh prepared meals that make eating right really easy it's all gluten free and um which is good for me because gluten bothers my stomach and it may bother yours too and you just don't know it and you can use my link to get six dinners for $39 for two weeks that's 20 bucks off each week give it a try let me know what you think you don't like it you just cancel freshly dot dr steve.com now the last thing um if you're interested in getting archives of the show.

Go to premium.com sign up for a buck 99 a month. You use offer code fluid. You get it for a buck a month for the first three months. You get all the access to the shows that you're locked out of right now. Right now you get the last five shows free. This goes back 360 some shows. And there's another way that you can just get a thumb drive. If you go to Dr.steve.com, look for the link.

You can just buy a 16 gig thumb drive from me. and I'll fill it up with 16 gigs of all the podcasts going back to number one. And there you go. All right. Dr. Scott was in the hospital last week. I still don't know what the hell's wrong with him. He'll be back next week and then we'll discuss it. You know, this is the thing, you know, physician heal thyself even worse when it's, you know,

traditional Chinese medical specialist slash acupuncturist, heal thyself. they're going to be less apt to just do standard things. And so when you have, you know, GI bleeding for three days and your blood pressure is low and you have a fever of 101, you know, maybe when the astralogus or astragalus or whatever doesn't do the trick, go see somebody. Well, finally his office staff got him to go. And I'll let him tell the story because I don't want to speak out of school. And I'm not breaking HIPAA because I know this because I'm his friend,

not because I'm his doctor. As a matter of fact, I'm not his doctor. So, very good. So check out his website at simplyerbils.net. His nasal spray may not be great for GI bleeding, but it is really good for nasal things. Simplyherbils.net to check out Dr. Scott's website. And don't forget, Dr. Steve.com.

And check out our podcast at Dr. Steve.com and also at Riotcast and other places. like that so wherever podcasts are heard very good all right let's get into some stuff here a couple of things in the news today this is from Harvard health publishing from Harvard Medical School and popular Hartberg drug ronididine was recalled what you need to do and what you need to know so we've had a bunch of these recalls and the most recent one being low sarton which was well, hell, I was on that, but my version of that drug was not recalled. So rinididine is a, what we call an H2 blocker or a histamine blocker.

These things are, so the histamine receptor has, you know, there's type 1 and type 2. Type 1 tend to be in the nose. And so when those are stimulated by histamine, your nose runs, you take a type 1 antihistamine, fixophenidine or diphonhydramine, which you know as Benadryl, and, you know, it blocks that histamine receptor and your nose quits running. The H2 receptor tends to be in the stomach, and when it's stimulated, the stomach produces more acid. So when you block it with an H2 receptor blocker like rinididine or famotidine, aka Xantac and Pepsit, you produce less stomach acid. So, you know, this article starts out.

If you were a family member, take rinididine, aka Xantact Relief Heartburn. You may have heard the FDA has found a probable human carcinogen. And this is a subdefined as a substance that could cause cancer in it. Here's what you need to know. So on September 13th, 2019, the FDA announced preliminary tests found low levels of Nitrosodimethylamine. that's N-DMA, not N-M-DA, which is the receptor. And then what's ecstasy? That's MDMA, right?

Ecstasy. I know the druggies out there yelling at their screen. MDMA. Okay. So wait a minute. Which one was this one now? Oh, this is N-D-M-A. So not Mike Delta, Mike Alpha, but November Delta, Mike Alpha.

All right. In rindididine, a heartburn medication used by millions of Americans this week, the drug company's Novartis through its generic division, Sandoz, and Apotex announced they were recalling all of their generic rinidine products sold in the United States. These announcements came after Connecticut-based online pharmacy informed the FDA that detected NDMA and multiple reninidine products under certain test conditions. okay um let's see here so which products are affected reninidine also known as xantac which was the brand name of the drug sold by the company sanifie was available over the counter and by prescription and already explained about h2 blockers it's commonly used to relieve

and prevent heartburn and restriction strengths are also used to prevent more serious ulcers in the stomach and intestines and lots of companies sell generic versions of both the OTC and the prescription products. So far, only Novartis slash Sandoz and Apatex have recalled their products. The ronididine distributed by other companies remains on the store shelves. So that begs, well, that doesn't beg the question because that's not what begging the question means. But it raises the question are all the dangerous ones off the shelves. So, NDMA is environmental contaminant found in water and foods, including dairy products, vegetables, and grilled meats. Its classification as a probable carcinogen is based on studies in animals.

Human studies are very limited. But any time you hear nitrosamine or nitroso, it might be a carcinogen or a carcinogen or related to a carcinogen. All right, because like charred meat has a lot of nitrosamines in it, and that's felt to be a probable carcinogen. It's important to know that NDMA in ronididine products does not pose any immediate health risks. Neither the FDA nor Novartis, Sandos, or Apotex have received any reports of adverse events related to NDMA found in renitin. Although classified as a probable carcinogen, NDMA may cause cancer only after exposure. to high doses after a long period of time. Now, this is one of the same impurities that was found in Losarton beginning last year

and resulted in the recall of a bunch of products. So if you're taking rinidine, the FDA and other agencies around the world continue to investigate renadine. More details will become available. In the meantime, FDA is not calling for individuals to stop taking medication. However, for many conditions, renidine is only recommended for short-term use. if you've been using reninidine for a while, now it'd be a good time to talk with your health care provider

whether you still need it and whether you might benefit for something alternative, including drugs other than an H2 blocker. What we used to do when this stuff first came out was we would give it to people for six weeks and then take them back off of it. If their symptoms came right back, they needed to be scoped just to make sure we weren't missing something

because you know there's people out there that are treating an ulcer with low-dose rinidine, and it might just keep it smoldering, but it doesn't cure it. And they may have a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, which 50 years ago we would have laughed at you for saying that there's any way a bacterium could cause ulcers. But that has to be treated in a different way. And again, just treating the heartburn with rinidine won't get rid of the helicobacter infection. Based on what's known so far, there's no evidence that other H2 blockers or other heartburn medication

are affected by NDMA impurity. So, you know, if you're just paranoid about it and you don't want to take the rinididine that you've got, the Xantag, just switch to over-the-counter peps it. But always do this under the supervision of a health care provider, please. I don't like people just treating heartburn by themselves without at least having some input from their provider. So there you go.

All right. Other ways, why don't we talk about it? What are some other ways that you can treat heartburn? You know, if it's just every once in a while and it's mild, Dr. Scott's method of yellow mustard is surprisingly, surprisingly effective for short-term relief of mild pyrosis or heartburn. Don't have a clue how it works. There is turmeric or turmeric in most yellow mustard. Maybe that's it. I don't know.

But I remember I tried it when I was trying to get off my proton pump inhibitor. I had 10 out of 10 heartburn, and I said, let's just try it on the air. And danged if about a minute later my heartburn wasn't gone. Now, it came right back. So this is for short-term temporary use for limited heartburn. You could try that. The other thing that you can try is just an over-the-counter antacid. I like Gaviscon because it floats, but it tastes.

like fish oil to me or just rotten fish. My land is another one. Not a big fan of baking soda, although if you've got a lot of acid and you do a quarter of a teaspoon of baking soda and some water and chug it, when the baking soda, which is sodium bicarbonate or a very strong base,

hits the stomach where there is hydrochloric acid, very strong acid. The two combined to make water and carbon dioxide, and what's carbon dioxide, it's gas, and you just start belching like an MF. It's the same reaction that you have when you take vinegar and add it to baking soda, although that's acetic acid. But if you ever made that volcano in your science fair project, which, by the way, is not science. If you want to talk about the reaction between sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid and what the

bi-pros, then that's science, but just going, it's a volcano. and putting these two things in and making it overflow. It looks cool and it is cool, but it ain't science. Don't encourage your kid to do that as their science project unless they just need to show up with something to get the grade. In my kid's school, they had 35 people in their class. They had like 20 or maybe it was like 15 didn't even bring in a science project. And my kid, of course, being the Uber nerd, you know, if you ever been to one of these science fairs, They've got these little displays, and they're three-sided displays,

and you put all your data and all that stuff there. And then you put the project in front of it, and they're all lined up. And so here's back at this thing, and next to him is how much water will a sponge take up. And then the next one to him is, after that, is which toothpaste was better? I guess they were taking soot off of an egg or something. And then here's my kid, and it's deterrent. determining Planck's constant to within 1% using a homemade circuit and light-emitting di-out. So there you go.

That was my kid, and I was very proud of him. And as a matter of fact, he won the overall award from the Tennessee Academy of Sciences for that, and his data was pretty amazing. So he's some kid, that one. And what does he want to do when he grows up? He wants to be a garbage man and no flies on garbage men, sanitation workers, because he thinks the robot that they pick up the cans with looks cool and it looks like it would be fun. So, you know, more power to him.

He can be the philosophy. Look, Einstein was a patent clerk. So there's plenty of time on your route to be thinking about Planck's constant and how you can determine new science. So I'm cool with whatever he wants to do. Anyway, where in the hell was I? How did I get off on that? As the FDA and other agencies around the world continue to investigate rinididine. Oh, okay, never mind.

So anyway, just, oh, we were talking about lifestyle things. So, yeah, I'm not a fan of using the baking soda unless you just want to, you know, make some amazing belches. Now, there's other things other than acids, though. decreasing the carbohydrates in your diet. Let's just say that you have heartburn when you go to bed at night and then you get that sour brash that comes up in your throat in the middle of the night. If you're one of those people, you have mechanical reflux and avoiding carbohydrates altogether is great.

But if it's just at night, avoiding them within four hours of going to bed. And if you can make it six, it's even better. If you go to bed at 10, no carbs after 6 p.m. certainly no concentrated carbohydrates like sugar. So if you're going to eat desserts, eat those at lunch and skip them at bedtime or, you know, for your evening meal. And for your evening meal, no bread, no potatoes, no pasta, and do things like grilled chicken with green leafy vegetables or salad and things like that. And I've almost had universal positive response to that. in people that have nighttime heartburn.

And if you're having that sour brash, you wake up in the middle of the night and you're choking down stomach contents, think about why that is. During the day, your stomach contents are being pulled toward your feet due to gravity. But when you're lying down flat, they're being pulled to the bed, but in all directions because you're now supine. So that means that these stomach contents can now flow freely into the essential. which is also horizontal.

So one thing that you can do besides avoiding carbohydrates to try to decrease this effect in the middle of the night is to put a brick under the head of your bed. You put a brick under the head of your bed on both sides and just lift it up a couple of inches. You don't want it lifted up so high that you're rolling out of bed, just a couple of inches and then take a floating and acid before you go to bed like Gavis gone because it floats on the surface. So now the acid, even if it floats up, what's going to hit your esophagus first is going to be ad acid, and that will decrease that sort of noxious effect.

And if you'll raise the head of your bed up just a bit, gravity will be your friend and tend to keep the stomach contents in the middle of, or in your stomach and not in your esophagus. Now, you can say, well, why can't I just prop myself up on pillows? If you prop yourself up on pillows, your body is candid at an angle. your legs are horizontal but your body is let's say 45 degrees if you have a gut at all and even if you don't but particularly if you do that bending at the abdomen at the lower abdomen at the hip but really the lower abdomen is what's affected by it is going to tend to push in and you're going to increase the amount of pressure to extrude stomach contents into your esophagus so you want to have a

straight increase. In other words, your body is all at the same angle. Now, they do make reflux pillows. You can go to stuff.doctrsteve.com and look, just click through to Amazon and just put in reflux pillow and they've got these wedges that you can use. They've got one that if you like to sleep on your stomach, that it's a wedge that you can actually, it's got a hole in it, and you can stick your arm in it. And so you're elevated and still able to, you know, sleep with your arm under you, without cutting the circulation off to your arm. So it's pretty cool.

So you could try that as well. Anyway, try all these things and just let me know what you think. All right. And if your symptoms go on for more than six weeks, see your primary care provider and let them refer you for an endoscopy just to make sure they're not missing anything. One other story, maybe two.

No, I want to do two because I got one on Lucid Dreaming, So stay tuned for that. New guidelines based on five reviews of existing evidence have recently made. So that's a meta-analysis, right, where they take a bunch of studies, mush up the data, and then come out with a new statistical analysis based on these pooled data from different studies. And it's not a perfect way to do things, but it is a way to get higher numbers in your studies. So existing evidence recently made the headline suggesting that people go on eating red meat. Processed and unprocessed without feeling ill health consequences.

How should we interpret these findings? Because, you know, for years we've been told that processed meats increase disease, particularly cancer, and that red meat in general increases the risk of heart attack and stroke have taken in large amounts. And some people say, to hell with it, I'm still eating red meat. you're going to take my red meat away from me from my cold dead hands. Or you have other people saying, well, I'm just going to go to a strictly plant-based diet because now they're paranoid to eat any meat. And premature death was one of the things that was supposed to be at risk if you ate more meat than not. And so over the past few days, controversial new set of guidelines has made headlines worldwide.

It's finding suggests that red meat may not have. as detrimental an impact on health as researchers previously thought. The guidelines, now look, this is not on some crap journal, okay? This was published in the annals of internal medicine. That and the journal of the American Medical Society and the New England Journal of Medicine are the big three in internal medicine and where policy is often published first. and but these guidelines and you can just go to annals of internal medicine and the article will be there at least the abstract will be there let me see what how much of the article you can grab

off of that let me let me link over there right now oh okay well no they have the whole article there so it's annals.org not anals.org that'll take you to a different place so it's a n-n-l-l-s.org I remember when Dick's sporting goods came out and before they had finally bought the domain dix.com if you wanted to go buy some skis for your kid and you didn't put in Dick's sporting goods but rather put dicks.com. You had quite the surprise, let me just say.

Okay, yeah, annals of internal medicine. So it's just annals.com and it's unprocessed red meat and processed meat consumption, Dietary Guidelines Recommendations from the Nutritional Recommendations Consortium. So this is not some malarkey. So I'm just going to read

straight off the abstract. To hell with this article. It says dietary guideline recommendations require consideration of the certainty in the evidence. That's absolutely true. Because when the USDA told us all that we needed to get 60% of our calories or whatever it was on that food

pyramid from grains, they didn't have any evidence. They were just trying to promote grain sales in the United States, and all of this fat came with it, all of this obesity. Okay, what are the magnitudes of potential benefits and harms, an explicit consideration of people's values and preferences? Yeah, true. A set of recommendations on red meat and processed meat consumption was developed on the basis of five de novo systematic reviews that considered all of these issues.

So, okay, so what that other article didn't get was this is not just a meta-analysis. This is a meta-meta-analysis. This was a meta-analysis of five different systematic reviews, which are also meta-analysis. Okay, so the recommendations were developed by using the nutritional recommendations guidelines development process, which includes rigorous systematic review methodology, and grade methods to rate the certainty of evidence for each outcome

and to move from evidence to recommendations. A panel of 14 members, including three community members from seven countries voted on the final recommendations. Strict criteria limited the conflicts of interest among panel members. Right. So if you got somebody from the pork producer society, you don't necessarily want them to have much of a vote in determining recommendations regarding diet in the United States. Considerations of environmental impact or animal welfare did not bear on the recommendations. So what they're saying is we did this independent of whether, yeah, it's better for the environment to eat plant-based diet.

They were just looking at the science based on eating meat. Nothing else. We can argue about whether plant-based diet, including plant-based meat, although may not be more healthy for you, although plant-based diet probably is more healthy in general, is it better for the environment? And, you know, is it easier on water resources, that kind of stuff? So they didn't look into any of that. Four systematic reviews address the health effects associated with red meat and processed meat consumption. And one addressed people's health-related values and preferences regarding meat consumption. Okay.

So it's really the science that we're interested in was in four systematic reviews that they synthesized. Their recommendations were the panel suggests that adults continue current, unprocessed, red meat consumption. That's a weak recommendation with low certainty evidence. You don't hear this otherwise either. Similarly, the panel suggests adults continue current processed meat consumption.

This is also a weak recommendation with low certainty evidence. So what they're really saying is we don't have really enough evidence either way to make a determination that's stronger than weak. And they said that the original recommendations were primarily based on observational studies and as you know those are pretty

weak evidence so you've got anecdotal evidence absolutely the worst that means well that worked for me it'll work for you that's the worst evidence number two uh type evidence is um retrospective studies well we looked at a whole bunch of them they seem to do all right that's that's retrospective They're observational is where you're just observing people. You're not blinding the study in any way. You're just getting a bunch of people and just kind of watching what they do and how they turn out. Those are good studies for like figuring out what to study. So you do one of those.

You can even cast a widen that. Say, well, it looks like people who eat more fish have less heart attacks. We can't make a recommendation based on that, but it gives us something to look at. So now we could do a real study on that, okay, where you do a prospective study on that. And if you want to see if it's the oil in the fish, you can do a prospective, randomized, double-blind, double, or plus, sorry, double-blind placebo-controlled study where you take, you know, capsules that look identical. One group has fish oil in it. The other group doesn't. and you follow these people over a period of time with a treatment group and a placebo group,

and you see if there are statistically significant differences in your expected outcomes at the end. Now, you can have other outcomes, and they may even be statistically significant, but if you weren't specifically studying for those, you have to put an asterisk by any results that you get. So what you would do in a situation like this is say, And we want to look at our end point is reduction in myocardial infarction. Wow. Myocardial infarction or stroke. And so you would watch over time and see if the treatment group has less myocardial infarction versus stroke.

And the thing is, you know, you got a control for smoking and other risk factors and you want to match your controls with your treatment group. Because if you don't do that, what if you just have a preponderance? of smokers in the placebo group, and then it's going to skew the results toward efficacy. In other words, it's going to look like the treatment group got a better result because the other side is just smoking their brains off and having heart attacks and strokes all over the place. So you've got to control for all of that.

All right. I hope you guys like it when I kind of talk about how we get these things and the science of it, because I think it's important rather than just reading an article and somebody says, Well, these are the results. At least now you, well, anyway, I hope you like it. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. So there you go.

Yeah. So these are weak recommendations. And let me see if I can scroll down and find out anything. Yeah, for our review of randomized trials on harms and benefits, we found low to very low certainty evidence that diets lower and unprocessed meat. may have little or no effect on the risk for major cardiometabolic outcomes and cancer mortality and incidence. Dose response meta-analysis results from 23 studies with 1.4 million participants provided

low to very low certainty evidence that decreasing unprocessed red meat intake may result in a very small reduction in the risk for major cardiovascular outcomes. Well, so they were looking at dose response. In other words, people who ate more red meat. eat. You know, if they decreased it more, then they would get some small response, and that was very weak evidence. So, you know, it's just really weak evidence everywhere. Dang. So this is surprising to me that the original evidence was so weak, that we've been basing what we eat on very weak evidence. And it says here,

Omnivores reported enjoying eating meat, considered meat an essential component of a healthy diet and often felt they had limited culinary skills to prepare satisfactory meals without meat. That's true. You know, when I think about eating a plant-based diet, I think of salads and something like that. There's all kinds of stuff that you can do, including, you know, meat-free chili and meat-free lasagna and meat-free burgers. And, I mean, just about anything you can think of, you could make meat-free except maybe, you know, pork chop. It's hard to make a meatless pork chop. But other than that, things that you put together, casseroles and things like that, rice dishes and stuff. Basically, anything that you're sauteing meat in, you can use tofu or you can use something else. So it's not that

hard to do. But I understand that when I first started gravitating away from eating as much meat as I was, because I was really, I was kind of crazy with the meat. You know, I think, what the hell am I going to eat? I just can't eat salads all the time. Well, it turns out actually you can. Salads are pretty tasty, don't you know? So, yeah, so they're just recommending you don't have to feel an imperative to make changes. And they're going to do more studies to look for higher quality evidence.

So when you read these stunning headlines saying, oh, it doesn't matter. anymore and then you read these headlines before saying well it does matter both of those generated extremely extremely weak evidence so the original claims were very weak and these claims are also very weak so that makes you think it's probably six and one half dozen the other just don't be ridiculous and everything in moderation you know so anyway all right now this last one I really do want to talk about because I have some experience with this this is the behind lucid dreaming. And this is from medical news today.

In lucid dreams, the observer or the dreamer realizes they're dreaming even as they remain asleep. So this is interesting. So you think about it, there's a bunch of switches that have to be flipped for you to sleep. And any one of those can go wrong, right? There's a switch that paralyzes your body when you're in REM sleep. And that's just so you're not bouncing around the room acting out your dream. So if you take off the paralysis switch, people will start walking around the house or doing things in their sleep. And that's called somnambulism or sleepwalking.

So my kid is a somnambulist, meaning that he gets up and, you know, walks around. If he's ever in a dorm, someone's going to beat his ass because he's just going to walk into their dorm room and just say the most. ridiculous random things so so that's one switch the other switch that you could switch off though is because you got to be unconscious if to dream you have to be unconscious and your body has to be paralyzed what if you don't on you know flip the the paralysis switch but you unflipped the sleep switch so that now all of a sudden you're conscious but you're paralyzed now this has happened to me we call this sleep paralysis or hypnopompic episodes.

And if you read the Whitley Streber or Striber, his discussions of alien abduction, almost all of those were people who were asleep and they woke up, but they couldn't move their body. And then the grays and the other ones would come in and take them away, right? this is classic hypnoponic episodes when I had my first one I was probably

20, 25 and I was staying at my parents' house and when this happened I understood something very profound about the human brain and I remember I opened up my eyes and I was wide awake but I was paralyzed I couldn't move

and I looked over to my right And I could see, you know, I could see in the room. I was in my parents' bedroom. They were out of town. And my girlfriend at the time and I slept in there because it was, you know, it was kind of wrong. And so anyway, so I wake up and I look over and I can see everything in my parents' bedroom, the dresser, the mom's, you know, vanity, the closet, all this stuff. And there's this giant eyeball. This is the stupidest thing.

this eyeball floating right next to my bed now this thing had to be four feet wide and it's just floating there and it's sort of hovering you know just kind of bouncing just very slightly in the in the breeze maybe and um and i'm like what are you doing here and i really thought i was having an alien visitation or some spiritual thing and then the eye blinked because apparently it had a lid this disincorporated eyeball I had a lid and it blinked and I sort of had this weird feeling like I was having a seizure or something and it scared me and then I woke up for real and what was cool was and I'll tell you about the profound thing

that I understood was that you know there's no giant eyeball it was all a lucid dream or a hypnopompic episode which is a form of a lucid dream we'll talk about this in a second and I it was dark in there

And now I couldn't see my parents' bedroom at all because it was dark A.F. And when I turned the light on, the image that I had before was 100% exactly the same, which meant that in my brain, I recreated my parents' bedroom down to the tiniest detail, which meant that it had to be in there. That was the profound thing that we have this incredibly detailed mental map in our brains. that could we harness it and access it, it would be very powerful. But anyway, so that was my first one. I've had several of them since, and the most recent one was pretty interesting

where I woke up and I realized, oh, God, I'm having one of those things. And then I could hear papers in 360, like they were floating in the air but rustling. around my bed in 360 degrees around my bed and equal, like I was at the center of this circle and they were floating around and which was weird because my bed was backed up to the wall. So there's no way that they were going all the way around unless my wall just disappeared

and I was sort of just laying there, you know, disincorporated. So I hear this and I'm like, I'm having one of those dreams. I'm going to sit up and look to my right. I'm going to force myself. Well, I was paralyzed. But I forced my head to rise and my body to rise.

And I looked over to the side. And again, I could see everything in the room. I look over and there's a hospital gurney in my bedroom. And I was like, oh, shit, alien abduction. And boom, I woke up. And I was actually laying down flat. So the sitting up was just part of the dream state. And it was dark again.

And I turned on the lights. again and my mental map of the inside of my room minus the hospital gurney was a hundred percent accurate so that was pretty cool now that is a hypnopompic lucid dream so i'm dreaming but i'm awake but i'm paralyzed now the one the kind of lucid dream people want to have is the one that they're talking about in this article and uh and this is now and again some of us realize we're in a dream as we are dreaming this phenomenon is called lucid dreaming stirred interest to researchers in the public alike. Learning to control absticks of your aspects of your dream

can be a great way of exploring activities. Oh, and I could think of a few that you could never do in real life facing and overcoming fears and learning more about your subconscious. Well, I'd like to be able to fly. I'd like to be able to have intercourse in a dream. You know, I've never had a sex dream. Now, I have dreams where I get right close to having sex.

I will, you know, maybe make out with somebody and start to get ready to engage in the act and then it just switches to something else. Now, why my brain does that? I do not know. Maybe it's for the same reason that I don't have very many nightmares either because, you know, really,

if my brain could do just what I wanted to, it could go, well, I'm just going to F with this guy and just throw monsters at him. Or horrible situation. My worst nightmares now are not things that scare me or motorcycle gangs coming after me or anything like that. It's that I committed a crime and I got away with it,

but I know they're coming to get me. And everybody's still treating me like I'm their friend. You know, everybody in my life is treated. And I'm like, oh, my God, when they find out they're not going to care about me anymore. That or the other classic one, which I know you've all had, is where you forgot to go to class or you went to class and you forgot to put your pants, on. I have the dream where I forget to see a patient in the hospital for two weeks and they've just been laying there and nobody's seen them and I forgot to go see them. So it's the same dream

as for getting an exam in college or forgetting to wear your pants in school just, you know, at a different level. But anyway, so they have talked about techniques you can apply to achieve lucid dreams. But first, how common are they? A 2017 study published in the Journal of Imagination, Cognition, and Personality referred to estimates suggesting that representative population, 51% of individuals had experienced lucid dream at least once in their lives. Now, they would have to be including people like me. About 20% experienced lucid dreams about once a month. I used to have them more frequently. It's been years since I've had one.

They're more likely to experience spontaneous lucid dreams in their childhood, starting at about three to four years old. That is absolutely true. When I was still in my crib, so I would have been two and a half, I would have this stuff going on all night. I would have hallucinations of people walking in my room, but they were buried down. They were like, could phase through the floor, and so their legs were below the floor. And their body, half of their body from the waist up would be above the floor, but they'd be walking on something below the floor. And they'd just be walking around in my room. I remember this.

and I'd talk to them, and they would talk to me. So those were, like, you know, lucid dreams in the sense that I was standing up in my crib, it's hallucinating this stuff. And after the age of 25, spontaneous onset of lucid dreaming appears to be very infrequent. So they found that openness to the experience correlates positively with lucid dreaming. I want to know how to do this. So, now, people who are in. neurotic. In other words, people that present

with strong moods, anxiety and depression are more likely to have it happen. Lucid dreaming occurs during the REM sleep. That's when you dream, so that makes sense. And I'm really interested in finding a technique for doing this, for promoting this, and I'm going to do some research on it.

Let's do this research together. We'll all try it. Those, and And my goal, of course, is to have the completion of intercourse, consensual, of course, in the dream state. And, of course, only with my wife, who I love very much. You know what? No, I do. I do. Can you please stop bullshitting?

Okay. Yeah. So anyway, that would be my goal. And to fly. and both if possible so we'll work on that together and I'm going to put that on the agenda and over the next few months

we'll see if we can pull that off if any of you have experience in lucid dreaming and particularly if you know how to if you've got a technique for triggering it call in 347-766432 call right now leave a voicemail we'll bring it on next week

now I know one technique is to say if I find myself in a dream dream, look at my hand. And if you can look at your hand, you can remember, hey, I'm dreaming. I'm going to look at my hand. If you successfully can do that, you should be able to take control of that dream and be awake and go, okay, now I'm going to do whatever the hell I want to do. Okay?

All right. Well, let's take a couple of phone calls here. Number one thing, don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Well, isn't that true? Thank you, Ronnie B. Trueer words have never been said. All right. Well, hello.

Hey, Dr. Stephen, fam. This is a random question I was having with a discussion. Men have a way, other than, you know, swap and spit, men actually leave a body fluid inside of the female body. Right. It's all this way it ends up, but we do leave it. Do women leave a bodily fluid inside of men, again, other than, you know, swap and spit? That's a great question.

So, of course, you, if you're doing oral sex on someone, you will get vaginal fluid in your mouth. And if you are having penis vagina sex, then, yes, some bacteria can sometimes ram themselves down. You know, the cockhole, aka the urethral meatus and into the urethra. That's how we get this nonspecific urethritis sometimes, which are these weird, some weird sort of odd organiative. sort of like mycobacteria.

And they, as you have this piston effect in and out, in and out, of course, you know, you can build up some fluid on the end of your penis. And then as you continue to thrust just through the motion itself, a couple of 100 million bacteria can work its way into the urethromyal meatus. Remember, bacteria are incredibly small. and it doesn't take a whole lot of fluid to get tons and tons of these bacteria in there. Now, most of the time, when you ejaculate, of course, you'll clean out the urethra of some of that fluid, and then if you urinate afterward, you'll wash out some, but every once in a while, one will cling to the urethral mucous membrane

and then breed and then cause burning when you urinate can be treated with antibiotics. So yes, maybe, and so the answer is maybe sometimes. And again, the other thing that could be in that fluid could be chlamydia, gonorrhea, rarely, and I mean vanishingly rarely, a virus like HIV or less, way, way less rarely, a virus like HPV or herpes. So if you don't know the vagina that you're putting your penis in, please, for her sake and for your. wears, wear a condom, and if you're engaging in other types of activities, either men on men or women on women, just use the appropriate protection to the best that you can. And the best prevention, of course, is knowing your partner and, you know, practicing safe sex. So there you go. All right.

Excellent question. Dr. Steve, this is Jerry from Tallahassee, Florida. Hey, Jerry. I got this, that's a weird man. I got this weird thing on my balls, man. I don't know what it is, man. It's just changing color, too, dude. It's like a damn mood ring.

It's going from blue to green to red. Man, I don't know what the hell the thing is, man. You've got to help me out, Doc. Oh, okay, man. Hey, you're on a bad trip. You know, drink a beer if you can. Let me see if I can find Jimmy Carter taking a guy down from a bad acid trip. Jimmy Carter

Bad Acid Trip All right Here we go I should have had this cute up I absolutely did not know this was coming up All right Nah, I can't find it Okay

Anyway back in the SNL days When Jimmy Carter was considered this cool Hippy Hero to the hippies, president, man of peace, which he has turned out to be. You know, how many Habitat for Humanity Homes have you made? Damn, this guy is still going at it at 80-something. He, back then, on SNL, they did a sketch where he was taking phone calls,

and this guy called in with a bad acid trip, and he talked him down. That's how cool he was. He could talk people down. And it was Dan Aykroyd, and he didn't look anything like Jimmy Carter, and he had a mustache, but it didn't matter. It was the first season of SNL. So anyway, yeah, dude, just quit doing mushrooms, and your color-changing

junk will get better. I promise. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Hello. I'm listening to your show, and, yeah, I have one of those things

above your testicles. but I just wanted to leave a funny story of a time where I had to go to the hospital because I had a Prince Albert piercing that got stuck and behind the counter there was the lady and when I told her she was completely shocked Okay, I know what this is in reference to

we had Cody Gilmer from the band Indie Ghost You can check them out at at Indie Ghost Band on Twitter or on Spotify Indie Ghost. and he'll be here next week to talk about their tour and also about some of his newest medical stuff. The great thing, if you've got to show like mine, they have a friend who's a hypochondriac. But anyway, Cody was talking about going in

to get his testicle ultrasounded, and he went to the wrong place. He went to the breast center, and they were looking at him like, why are you here? So that's what he's in reference to. There was a lady, and when I told her, she was completely shocked.

And she was like, oh, just wait. Wait a minute, and she went and grabbed another nurse, and this nurse looked like straight out of like a porn star movie. Nice. And I had to explain to her what had happened, and she just laughed. It was... They don't need to be laughing. That happened to Cody, too. One of the most shocking moments of my life.

Well, that you lead a great life, for real, if that's the most shocking moment of your life. And that's not to belittle what happened to you, but that means we live in a place where, yeah, that's, oh, my God, a Prince Albert piercing. Okay, Prince Albert piercing is a piercing of the penis, which a metal ring is pierced through the skin at the tip of the penis. the ring begins almost straight to pierce through the penis and then is bent with pliers to create a rounded ring shape. The piercing enters at the phrenulum. Okay, that's that little strip of tissue under the Roman War helmet and exits at the urethra, going through the urethromeda.

Holy moly. What are you all doing? And I wonder when you pull this thing out if now you piss through the bottom of your penis like someone with a fibmosis. we're not fimosis oh god now I'm at you know

when you turn 64 a hole in the bottom of the shaft what hell is that called again it's not a fimosis oh dang it people are

some doctor show let me see here hypospadius god that was going to drive me crazy Okay, hypospatias. So it's like you're giving yourself a hypospatius, which is a congenital hole in the bottom of the penis rather than at the end of the penis.

Okay. It says, yes, it's painful to have done. I would say so. It should only be carried out by a professional with a lot of experience in genital piercing. Typically, it takes weeks to heal, and there's quite a bit of bleeding, and you do pee out of both holes.

That's something to get used to. Wow. Yeah, if you have a Prince Albert piercing call in, you know, the frenulum, and the umpalong don't drive me crazy. The Prince Albert kind of drives me crazy because I'm just wondering how that is affected when you're having intercourse

and when you ejaculate and do women look at it and go, uh-uh, or are they turned on by that? All right, well, that's all we've got for this week. Thanks always. Go to Dr. Scott when he's here. Hope he feels better. And listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel.

SiriusXM. Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern on demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks, go to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap. And don't forget, stuff.org, dot, Dr. Steve.com for all your shopping needs. Just go there now and check it out. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses, and get some exercise.

We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thank you.