Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 388 - Phat E LivR

Episode Date: January 4, 2020

Dr Steve and Dr Scott discuss flu vaccine for cancer, a dude wants a shoutout for his wife instead of BUYING HER A GIFT, calcium score criteria, oxy v hydro, 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!) freshly.doctorsteve.com (how lazy are you? Get $40 off, and don’t cook!) 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 Tobolabovir stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain now, blast it with the wave,

ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shape. 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 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. My little pal, Dr. Scott, their traditional Chinese medical practitioner, who keeps the alternative medicine wackos at bay. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. T. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio. 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 347764643. That's 347. Visit our website at Dr. Steve.com for podcast, medical news, and stuff you can buy. Go to our merchandise store, cafepress.com, slash weird medicine. If you want to email us, you can just go to

Dr. Steve.com and click contact. Follow Dr. Scott at DR. Scott W.m. on Twitter or follow me at Weird Medicine on Twitter. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers.

Take everything here with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on the show without talking it over with your doctor, nurse, practitioner, physician, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncture, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory, registered dietitian or whatever.

All right, very good. You know, it's after the holidays. It's our first show of the new year, Dr. Scott. We'll be freaking due. Another artificial milestone. Go to stuff.org. com and buy anything you damn well want. How about that?

You can get anything you want there. Stuff. Dot, Dr.steve.com. Just click through to Amazon and just have a big old time. Or you can scroll down and you can find all this stuff that we talk about on the show. Also, tweakeda audio.com. They're the only earbuds that last for my kids.

Everything else they break. Those last forever. Tweakeda Audio.com. Use offer code fluid and get 33% off your earbuds or your complete order, and they have the best customer service anywhere. That's tweaked. T-W-E-A-K-D-Odio.com, offer code fluid. And if you want to get to your ideal body weight,

which, by the way, after the holiday, I'm going to have to get back on that, But the great thing about it is, I know I can do it. There's no anxiety about it at this point because I've been a member of Noom for over a year now, and it really does make things actually pretty easy to get to your ideal body weight. It's not a diet. It's a psychology program. Get 20% off and two free weeks by going to Noem-N-O-M dot Dr.steve.com.

Come on, you know you blew it over the holidays. Just, it's time to do it. Yes. And freshly.com delivers fresh prepared meals that make eating right super easy. You can use my length to get six dinners for $39 for two weeks. That's $20 off each week. If you like it, keep doing it. If you don't like it, just cancel.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. It's freshly.com. Now, look, they come, they're never frozen. They come refrigerated in a biodegradable box, and it's all, pre-made. Now, it looks like it's lean cuisines, except it's twice amount of food as in a lean cuisine. And the, you know, it's better. But it

is microwave. So, it has that microwave character. If you don't like that character in your food, I get it, but I am just lazy. And this is three nights a week I don't have to cook because, as you know, Dr. Scott, I do 100% of the cooking in my house. Now, over the

holidays, I kicked some damn ass. Let me tell you this. First off, I cooked my turkey. in a pressure cooker. Okay. It was a turkey breast. I couldn't fit a whole turkey in. But it was perfect.

It took 30 minutes. Wow. From thawed. 30 minutes. Yeah, that's crazy. And it was perfect. Yeah. Juicy. I ran it under the broiler just to crisp up the skin on the outside, which you shouldn't be eating anyway, but still just...

It's a physical appearance. It looks, yeah, it looks better. And that took another three minutes. Really nothing to it. So that was great. And all the, you know, the sides and all that stuff. But when I got back, I got inspired. And I know you don't eat meat, but I made a short-rib braised short-rib recipe.

And I made homemade ricotta yoki. Oh, wow. And it was so great. I hate that I wasted it on stupid P.A. John. You let him come over? Yes, of course. But he came over, and he was like, this is the best meal I've ever had with the flavors. And he was going wacky about the first.

like, you know, the mix of flavors in his mouth because I made a bunch of other stuff to go with it too. How funny. But the, this recipe was inspired. I made, I combined a couple of recipes and adjusted some recipes because we ate at a place in Sullivan's Island, South Carolina called the obstinate daughter

and they have a, best ever. They ever, yes, we'll give them a, oh, man, they're great. Now, if you are in the Charleston, area make a special trip to get to the obstinate daughter it is fantastic yep and uh you need reservations about a month in advance a month yeah come on a month is particularly in season it needs to be at least three to six months in advance yeah you probably yeah but you can call them or

they're not on open table but i found that they are on resi it's a different it's a different reservation app r es why okay and you can get on there and tell them dr steve sent you They don't know who the fuck I am. No, but it'll go, well, who's it, Dr. Save Guy? But they're very inventive, a bunch of young chefs, and this, they made this ricotta, a ricotta, noki with brazed short ribs. But mine, I went one step further. You got the whole bone in rib. They did, you know, they take it off and mix it up in the yokey.

I had the, I, um, after I made the noki and boiled it and it rose. to the top and I drained it. Don't ever rinse it, by the way. I put it back in the pan with the a little bit of the short rib juice and some of, you know, shreds of meat and agitated it around. And I put that just to the side of these big giant

ribs that were the meat was just basically falling off the bone. It's so effing good, dude. And I made, I hate black-eyed peas, but my wife wanted them for good luck. Well, you can't eat this, But I made an awesome black IP recipe, but I had bacon and ham and stuff in it and some Cajun seasoning. And that was the first time I had black eyed peas where I could eat them because to me they taste like dirt.

I don't like them. But this was awesome, but I could maybe try to modify it for your pescatarian. I could think I could use like fish bacon or something. A little bit. And then I made an awesome collard greens and some other shit like that. So anyway. Then the next night, I made cheese grits. So there's another restaurant, and you can't get reservations.

It's called Pages-Okra Grill. Pages-Okra Grill is in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. It's just before you get to the big bridge to go over to Charleston from the Ravenel Bridge. Okay. Big giant brick. Gotcha. You can't get reservations. It is worth the wait.

If you get there early enough, they open at five. If you get there at like 4.30, 4.15, you just sit around and wait. Sometimes during the season, they'll have a bartender out there. You can get drinks. And then when they open up, then you can get right in. Or you can go late, you know, 8, 8.30, something like that. But they have a shrimp in grits. And what they do is they take cheese grits and you cook them, you put them in the refrigerator.

And then in the morning, you cut them into trink. triangles, and then you deep fry them. Wow. So they're crispy on the outside, but, you know, still grits on the inside. Okay. And then you put that on the plate and then put your shrimp and grit, you know, rue or whatever, the, you know, the sauce with the shrimp and the undoy sausage and the spices and all that stuff around that.

And it is fantastic. So I made that the next night. Page's Okra. Yeah, Pages Okra Grill. Got you. All right. And then if you're down there and you want to do that. want to go fishing check out avid angling avid angling is captain mike i've been trying to get him on this

show for years he's basically a part of our family at this point and uh you know he's known the kids since they were four years old they're 16 now so we've been going out with him for about 12 years and uh yeah you know we we we know his wife we've met his you know his baby just had a baby we we are used to hear about all his girlfriends for he hooked up with this one so anyway Pretty cool. That's awesome. Don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. You got anything over there these days, Dr. Scott?

Nothing new. Nothing new. Yeah. But you've got the nasal spray back in stock. Coming back in stock, yeah. Still coming back in stock. That was six weeks ago. I know.

The hell. I know. It's a baby. So walk us through. I mean, how effing hard is it? Okay, so you have this formula. Yeah, no, it's just. And you don't want to give out the formula because it's proprietary.

but it's, you know, buffered saline and some peppermint oil, right? Yep, yep, yep. So the peppermine oil not only smells good, but it's anti-inflammatory at the level of the mucus membrane. That's been demonstrated, so that's cool. Buffard saline, we know, is beneficial for, you know, washing mucus out of the nose. So, and I find it to be quite delightful. And the peppment oil is great because it opens and dilates and the nasal passages. So it does it have vasoconstrictive proper?

Have you demonstrated that? No, but I could look it up on Okay, look it up then, because I'm going to give you one of these right now. But then I'll give you one of the good ones if you can find it. But yeah, so what we're trying to do is trying to come up with a little bit different formula that has a little longer shelf life. Oh. Yeah, so coming up with some dried honey and mixing that in a little packet like they're doing

some of these other larger saline solution things. I don't know that I like the whole honey thing. No, we've used it for years. You like it. You've liked it for five years. Oh, it's in there? It's in there already. Oh, okay.

But that's why it's got a crappy shelf life. Is that why? Because, you know, no, the research I did, though, every single nasal spray on the market across the board. Nazan X, Flanace, I said, all of them, whatever, all of them. Can you list some more? Yeah, there's, okay. You just said all of them, and then you just went and listed two of them.

These are good ones. Well, those are good ones. But there's a lot. I guess my concern is bacteria getting into the spray. So what we're looking at is trying to come over a little bit different. I mean, make sure the honey is sterile. Well, honey won't grow bacteria in it. Because, oh, okay, that's true and also not true.

Motulism can grow on honey. That's why they don't give, they recommend that you don't give honey to neonates. Under one-year-olds, yeah, under one-year-olds, you know, rarely could get botulism from it. So what Dr. Scott's talking about is the BRICS level. So it's BRIX. If you have a high enough concentration of sugar, you think, well, sugar, you know, bacteria love that. But if it gets high enough, they actually can't maintain their cell membranes and they can't reproduce. That's why you can sell, like, concentrate of, like if you're a winemaker, you can buy concentrate.

And if it's got a high enough bricks level, if it's been concentrated enough, they don't even have to pasteurize it and it'll never go bad right that's that's one thing we love it nothing can grow in it yeah we've what it's just we've found that some of those some of those nasal sprays do have a little shorter oh oh oh are we in trouble yeah um i'm gonna need to get this and we'll come right back go ahead uh after uh this brief interload damn it god damn it terrible anyway no interlude I just you know

instead of playing music I just came straight back because we're very unprofessional I didn't find something interesting about pepperminol per the question was is it a vaso constrictor

so yes and no it's actually a vaso dilator and a vaso constrictor strange enough yes they say so there are different receptors and there are things that could be, you know, if it's hitting the alpha receptors, it could, you know, constrict, and if it's hitting the beta receptor, it could dilate.

You know, something that you do both could really do both, but you would think, you know, it's going to be context dependent because if you have something that's both a constrictor and a dilator hitting the same receptors in the same area, well, it'll have a zero net effect. So tell me what the answer is. Well, according to this, website. It says peppermint oil actually has the ability to this website, the ability to constrict blood vessels. Well, okay, well, then that would make it a vaso-constrictor, so why are you saying it's both? Well, it says it's a vaso-diliter. When it's applied in certain instances, it's a

vaso-construiter. Like which ones? Well, it says if you apply it to the skin, it's actually a vaso-diliter. Well, it says it's a vaso-constrictor. What? Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, Because it hits those, because it's got to be stimulating those alpha receptors in the skin, he would think. Okay. I couldn't find anything on PubMed yet. I just found this other place. It looked interesting. It says, hey, three uses for peppermint oil for men.

That's got to help us. Oh, this is from Newman Revolution.com. Exactly. It's got to work. This has got to be perfect. Okay, here we go. Effects of peppermint on exercise performance. This might get us somewhere where we want to be.

This is from the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. It says the results of the experiment support the effectiveness of peppermint essential oil on the exercise performance gas analysis, spirometry parameters, blood pressure, and respiratory rate in young male students. Relaxation of bronchial smooth muscles, so that would be, you know, a dilator. That would be a dilator, a smooth muscle relaxing, which, what's another one, albuterol, when you inhale that, when you have asthma, that's what's doing, is it is relaxing. you know, bronchial muscle opening up the bronchial airways. Right. So let me see.

Increase in the ventilation and brain oxygen concentration decreases in blood lactate level are most plausible explanations. Okay, so they had 12 healthy male students every day consuming one 500 ml bottle of mineral water containing 0.05 ml of peppermint essential oil for 10 days. So they took this in orally. That's very interesting, isn't it? And it's got to be super-duper small doses. And then they tested them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They tested forced vital capacity, peak expratory flow rate. So these are spirometry things where you breathe into that tube. And it measures airflow in and out of your lungs and peak inspiratory flow. We're determined one day before and after supplementation. And then, yeah, they saw significantly significant improvements after 10 days. That's interesting. Now, how much Dr. Steve again?

Because I'm going to take that. I know, no shit. Because my, the way I've had to... Well, it doesn't say what the concentration of the essential oil was, but it was 0.05 ML, so that's 5.100s of a millilator. So it ain't much. It's 50, what, microlators. About a drop per...

Yeah, maybe. Eight ounces or something like that or even less than that. It would be hard to measure that. You'd have to get a really small pipette to do that. Yeah. So five one hundredths of an ML. into how into what was now you could do it another way by concentrating if you know so one way that you could do this is you could take if you had one ml of peppermint oil then you could calculate how much it would be to get this concentration right right right which is um what they say uh 500 ml to 0.05 ml so uh that would be 0.05 divided or 500 divided by 0.05 divided by 0.05 yeah you could figure that out pretty easy but that's the ratio you want okay 500 mls of water to 0.05 mls of peppermint essential

oil to reproduce this experiment not recommending anybody do that I'll try it first yeah you can and that way we'll talk about next next week so that doesn't answer our question about whether it's a muca vaso constrictor at the mucus membrane but at least that's in a peer-reviewed journal not new man revolution which I'm sure they're fine in probably fun. Now here we go. A near-fatal case of high-dose peppermint oil ingestion lessons learned. A near-fatal case due to ingestion of toxic dose of oral peppermine oil is being reported. The patient came in a comatose state and was in shock. She was managed with mechanical ventilation and ionotropes. Don't worry about what that is. Stuff to make her heartbeat

better. Her vital parameters reached normal within eight hours, became conscious by 24 hours. The side effects of peppermine oil are concerned to be mild. but this case report warns an ingestion of toxic doses. So what's the toxic dose of peppermint oil? Let's see. This makes me, we need to probably get that. Let's see if Echo knows. Echo, what's the toxic dose of peppermint oil?

See if she knows anything. Here's something I found from the article peppermint on Wikipedia. High oral doses of peppermint oil can cause mucosal irritation and mimic heartburn. I'll guarantee it. I'd say that's true, but this is more. way worse than that. Yes. Okay, okay, here we go.

Leesle dose of peppermine oil has been documented in experimental studies. It has a 24-hour oral LD-50. So what that means is leesled dose in 50% of people, so that's sort of the cutoff. Of 400, 4,441 milligram per kilogram in rats, the 48-hour LD50 was 24. So the precise amount of peppermint oil ingested cannot be ascertained the case described here. She was just drinking it. So 4,441 milligram per kilogram. So let's say a 70 kilogram man.

That's going to be a lot of damn peppermint oil. That's a lot of pepper oil. That's going to be four times 70 grams. So what's that? 280 grams. I don't know how the world you can. Well, that might not be that much. 280 grams.

Let's say. A drop of that shit's too much. Let's say it was the same density of water, which we know it's not. It's going to be less than water. I'm assuming peppermine oil floats. Yes, okay. So it's less dense than water, but let's do, let's find out how much that is. So what did I say, 280 grams?

Alexa, how much water is 280 grams? It's going to be 280 milliliters. He used her wrong name. Oh, that's right. Echo. Oh, shit. I forgot the question, too. I think our senility is keeping in.

You have 20 questions enabled. Do you want to open it? No, thank you. No, thank you. Okay, so 280 grams of water in cups is what? Okay, let's try this. Alex. God damn it.

Echo. How many cups are in 280 grams of water? Piece of shit. There are 1.2 cups in 280 grams of water. So, you know, it's less dense than that, but that's fine. You know, if you're drinking a cup of peppermint oil, you're a tough SOB. But that's interesting that a cup of peppermint oil will just about kill you if you don't have mechanical life support. That doesn't surprise me at all.

You know, in one thing I know, because I think the peppermint oil has the menthol in it. So that's why it does have the analges. anti-inflammatory effects. But that stuff is so strong. I mean, I know you cook a lot and I cook a lot. Just a drop of peppermin oil is too much. I can't imagine a cup and a quarter of it. I'm going to look up active ingredient in peppermint oil is menthol.

The main chemical constituents of peppermint essential oil are menthol, menthol, and one. Yeah, I'll give you one of those. Lucky guess. Give yourself a bill. And 1-8 sincineol, menthol acetate, and isovallariate, pining, lymanine, and other constituents. The most active of these components are menthol and menthone. Yep, makes sense. Cool.

That would be a good name for a band, menthone. I don't know why. All right. Well, anyway, so it remains to be seen, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it's probably is vasoconstrictive. at the mucous membrane. I'll tell you why, because we use it for irritable bowel syndrome, and one of the issues with irritable bowel syndrome

is people have leaky, loose junctions in their was the diverticulum. Well, okay, this is at the cellular level. So, the cells all bind together, right? They have to kind of tie together, but they're loose. And so when you've got a loose junction

between the intestinal cells, and particularly if it's leaky, it's really wide open and toxins there's that word but these are for real these are actual real toxins from the poo from the poo we can come in contact with tissues that they're not supposed to okay that causes inflammation that causes irritable bowelies that's one of hypotheses and peppermint oil works really well to close up those tight junctions that there are other medications like luby prostone aka amatiza also does that and the both of them are good for

bowel syndrome. So if it closes up those tight junctions, you know, presumably there's some constriction of something going on. Makes sense. And that makes sense. Yep. On some level, I do know, you know, all I was trying to do is give you an anthem plug and it ended up being a, you know, a dissertation on pepperment oil, but it's still pretty interesting.

Yeah, the pepper mineral is really good for IBS. For those who maybe have not heard our discussions on that before it works. Yeah, and you can check it out. It's sold in an entericoded version called IbiGuard. Ibiard, that's right. And it's... We talked to the guy that made it. Pretty outstanding stuff, really.

Yeah, we did. That's a long time ago. He's from South Alabama. And my kid takes it. He's got bad irritable bowel syndrome. It really helps him a lot. I take it too. He never forgets to take it because it really helps him.

And you can check it out at stuff. Dot, Dr.steve.com if you're so inclined, if you just want to look at it. I just wanted to give to an interesting article. and then we've got a bunch of cool phone calls to take. Injecting the flu vaccine into a tumor gets the immune system to attack it. Now, this is from Ars Technica, not a medical journal, is a reasonably interesting article that one of our Twitter followers sent us. So activating the immune system at the site of a tumor can re-engage the immune system

because we've talked about this. Cancer is a problem with immune surveillance, where the immune system, all those sets, that are supposed to be finding foreign tissue and abnormal tissue and killing it and then eating it and then, you know, shitting it out and into our system so that we can then excrete it in our own urine and feces. It doesn't work. It just goes right on by the tumor for whatever reason. It recognizes that tumor as being normal. And if we could get the immune system to wake up and you can go to Dr. Steve.com and click on non-seudoscience cancer cure.

in the upper right-hand corner. Those are all articles about harnessing the immune system to kill cancer. And so, yeah, let's just take a look at this article. A number of years back, there were a great deal of excitement about using viruses to target cancer.

We know that, one, for multiple myeloma, where they used, and it's called viral oncolitic therapy, they used measles vaccine, gave the patients six million doses of measles vaccine. The measles virus, which is a live virus, live attenuated virus, goes to the multiple myeloma cells, and then what does the body do to cells that are infected with measles?

Kills them. And for whatever reason, measles loves multiple myeloma cells. So they even tagged these things. They genetically altered this virus to take up, to express a receptor on the surface of the cell that would take up radioactive iodine, and then they injected them with radioactive iodine. It didn't kill the cells or anything.

It just marked them so then they could put them in a scanner and see where those viruses went to and they all went to the multiple myeloma tumors. And then the body goes in and just kills those cells. The next thing you know, you don't have any multiple myeloma. So that's something that's coming. So that's what they're talking about. A number of viruses explode the cells they've infected

in order to spread to new ones, engineering those viruses so they could only grow in cancer cells, seem to provide a way of selectively killing these cells. And some preliminary tests were promising, showing massive tumors nearly disappearing. The results were inconsistent. There were complications. The immune system would respond to the virus, limiting our ability to use it more than once, which is true. You know, once you make antibodies to that virus, when you inject it again, the body just uses those antibodies and neutralizes it.

Some of the tumor killing seemed to be the result of the immune system rather than the virus. Yeah, well, that's right. Now, they focused on the immune response, inducing it at the site of the tumor, and they do so by a remarkably simple method by injecting the tumor with flu vaccine. As a bonus, the mice were tested on were successfully immunized, too. So, ha, ha, yeah, you have cancer, and you're an anti-vaxxer. Oh, well, we're going to cure you anyway, and you're going to get your flu vaccine. And not catch the flu.

That's right, and not die from the flu. So let's see here. They move to mice using melanoma cells that can form tumors when transplanting the lungs of mice. These model systems often respond to treatments that don't end up working in humans, so the results have to be treated with appropriate caution. The use of, come on. You don't have to pad these articles out so much. Just tell us what the hell.

So anyway, they injected these melanoma cells. with influenza vaccine and it wasn't even virus and um oh well anyway okay so it's more stuff this is a shitty article it's hard for me to get to the meat of it but so it's just another idea in this advancement of using the immune system to fight cancer so we're getting there we're getting there. Said here, some vaccines contain chemicals that enhance the immune system's memory promoting the formation of long-term response to pathogens. Those are called adjuvants, by the way.

When a vaccine containing one of these chemicals was used, the immune system wasn't stimulated to limit the tumor's growth. So, yeah, so you want to give it the pure stuff with no adjuvants. That's interesting, isn't it? It is. Yeah, cool. It's crazy. Yep.

All right. Let's, I want to take this one. And then we're going to try something. Okay. And let's just see. Oh, first thing. Hey, Dr. Steve. Don't take advice for some asshole on the radio.

Wait, what, what Ronnie B? Give yourself a B. No, no. No one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. I'm a clean. I really messed up this year. My wife is a nurse,

registered nurse. And I don't have. have good enough Chris's presence for her but we've been listened to you for a long time

and she would really appreciate like if you just gave a call back or she just really enjoys your show and like

I've been listened to you forever since the opium anti days it's just something that your show is something

we can always talk about together so like I'm going to panic here for Christmas gifts. Okay. Join a club. Dude, it's January 3rd when we got this.

Email me. You guys can email me. Just go to Dr. Steve.com and click contact, and you can email me any time. If he had emailed me, I would have done this. Give her a call and just tell us, hey, this is Dr. Steve. Hey, I'm here. Hilarious. And thanks a lot, man.

appreciate it. She's a nurse writer and she's got like really good nursing experience, like oncology and like... This dude is totally wasted too. She really appreciates your insight.

Okay, didn't give us her name, didn't give us her number. He did call back and give us her number. So, yeah, let's just call her. See if she answers. If she, if we get her voicemail, I'll have to cut it off and then we'll edit this out. But Let's just see what happens here.

Hopefully she's not working nights and trying to get a good night's sleep. I know. All right, come on, let's go. Okay, calling, calling, calling. Ring-a-ding-ding-ding. If I have to leave a voicemail, I will. Still calling.

Ring-ding-ding-ding. One ringy-dingy. She probably thinks it's some... Two ringy-dingy. Well, no, she didn't send us... A call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. There you go. Two.

La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la i can't hear you. I don't know what you're talking about. Is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you've finished recording, you may hang up or press one for more options. Hey, it's Dr. Steve from Weird Medicine. I hope I have the right person. Are you the wife of the dumbass?

that called us and said he didn't have enough Christmas presents, and would you just call my wife that would be a good Christmas present? If you're not that person, I apologize. If you are, well, Merry belated Christmas. I guess we got his message on January 3rd. He is a genius. He's obviously plans ahead extremely well. I'm not 100% sure he'll even remember calling us the way he sounded on the voicemail.

You can listen to this on our show this week. So anyway, sorry we missed you. We would have loved to have had you on the show today. All right. Hey, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year's. See you. Give yourself a bill. All right.

Let's hope I was the right person. If not, somebody's going to have a great surprise. Do you think so? Oh, yeah. You think that'll be a great surprise? Right, surprise. Or just an awful, awful. Oh, I think it's a surprise.

Fantastic. All right, let's take some other phone calls here. Let's see what we got. Hi, Dr. Steve. My name is John from Northwestern, Pennsylvania. And I have this up here now, for us at least. It's freezing cold outside. We don't have a whole lot of exposed any foliage.

I was actually in the woods a week ago, and I was moving a trail camera for deer, and I realized a couple days later that I may have a point of night. I heard you talking about it. And the poison idea I have, and I don't know that it's Poison Ivy, I should clarify that, is in my, around my belly button, for lack of a better term, area. And it is, I know it doesn't spread, and I hate to beat a dead horse here, but could it be anything besides Poison Ivy if it's leaving, you know, somewhat of a rash,

And it has a, almost like a mucus-like discharge. It's getting on clothes, et cetera, et cetera. I'm thinking it's some variety of poison ivy, poison. I poison something in the woods that I hate with all of my might. But my wife keeps talking about it's probably a skin infection or something that was in your belly button that you did not get out. Ew. Is that a possibility?

I look forward to hearing from you. Anything's possible. I don't have to see it, but, I mean, he says mucus. Now, when you have a contact dermatitis and you have a type 4 delayed type hypersensitivity reaction, that's what poison ivy is. Right. So, you know, you can have an immediate immune reaction, which is like anaphylaxis. So you get stung by a bee, all of a sudden you can't breathe. That's an immediate hypersensitivity reaction.

You come in contact with poison ivy and maybe. A day later, you get these blisters, and then, you know, when you got, you know, three or four parts per billion, and then you, it might march up your arm as the concentration gets less and less. So the places that were stimulated with the least amount of antigen come out last, which gives it the illusion of spreading. Now, redness and heat, so that should be blistery with clear fluid. So if that's what he means by mucus, then, okay, yeah, then it could be this. But if he's got actual discharge, and it's not from broken blisters, then that's not normal. If he has redness or pain, you know, mostly it's itchy, puss, fever, spreading redness, any of that stuff that needs to be evaluated right away. You can get cellulitis, which is, you know, a bacterial infection of the skin that can be life-threatening from poison ivy because you're opening up.

you know, areas of the skin that bacteria could get in and then, you know, invade. Right. So you've got to be careful about that. So anytime you see that, if it isn't just itchy, blistery stuff, then, yeah, you should get that checked. Agreed. Yeah, I've had the poison ivy so bad. I had poison avie on top of poison ivy. You had blisters and pus and everything.

Oh, God, yeah. Oh, you can get a superinfection. Oh, man. A great bacterial culture medium. Oh, my goodness. It was terrible. Terrible, terrible. But, you know, the only other thing I was thinking is maybe a bad case of shingles, even, depending on.

Yep. But I'm like Dr. Steve, if it's not just itchy. Well, he says it's at the belly button. That's a weird place to get shingles because shingles usually comes from the spinal column. Right. There are these little ganglia on the way to the spinal column, and the ganglier just collection of nerves. And that's where this stupid virus, once you had chicken pox, it retreats to one of those. and it just sits there.

And when it comes out, it will always be just on one side or the other. It's weird. Unless you've got some of, you know, you've got a bad immune system. You've got a normal immune system. It will come out and will follow where that nerve goes. We call those dermotomes. And so, like, if you have one in your rib cage, it will follow the rib. And, of course, it'll spread out.

It's not, you know, those little fibers spread out everywhere. But it will tend to start higher in the back and end up low. lower in the front because those things come around kind of in a spiral form. The wrap are in the front. Right. And they descend. They follow the rib. And then, you know, if it's farther down, but it'll always be on one side of the body or the other.

If it's on your face, could follow that trigeminal nerve or other nerves. Right. Have you ever seen it on both sides? I've seen it one time on guy's back and on both sides of his back. I've seen it. I've seen disseminated Veracella Zoster. You know, you really couldn't call it shing. at that point.

What it was was he had it everywhere because he had a bad immune system. Okay. You know. That explains me. Yeah, well, I'm betting he's got some poison ivy or some bearish. If he's not seeing pus and, you know, expanding redness and all that stuff, that's probably what it is, you can put some hydrochortosone on it. If it doesn't get better really quickly, just go to your primary care. If that's the diagnosis, they can put you on a short course of oral prednisone.

That stuff goes away just almost immediately. Yep. Brenazone being an oral corticosteroid or just a steroid, not a Schwarzenegger's steroid, but a corticose. Not anabolic. That's right. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Cammy in Texas.

Hey, Cammy. My question for you is, can I get any diseases from rimming my partner? And, of course, I'm asking for a friend. Of course. Thanks so much. Love the show. Bye. Thank you.

Yes, of course. So, rimming, what she's talking about is getting down and licking around her partner's asshole, which, you know, which that is the medical term for it, by the way, is asshole. It's when you're licking one. And not, I don't know. God, you're okay? Yeah, I'm going to talk about that. This is one of those things where I do whatever you want to do that I don't understand it.

don't want anybody's tongue anywhere near where the poo comes out, and I don't want my tongue anywhere near where the poo comes out. I've told you my story about the time when I was performing cunnelingus on my partner, and she got up and said, hey, I got to go run to the bathroom real quick, and I figured she just had to go pee. Motion detected at the front door. Okay, thank you. And I thought, someone is at the front door. Okay, thank you. I just thought, she had to go pee, and then she comes back and lays down and says, you may proceed, and I get back down there, and then I get this waft of fresh turd smell. I was like, I cannot believe that you let me do that. Oh, my God.

But, you know, some people don't have that taboo. You know, I, this is horrendous to me. That should be, that should be an automatic, at least give them the option. There is a reason why you can't lick your own ass, and you know why? It's because it's gross. and there's a reason why your ass is as far away from your mouth as you can make it and still have a functional GI tract. Right.

You know? It's literally as far away as you can get it and still be in the body. In the torso, right. Because, you know, it would be dumb if it was like in the bottom of your feet or something. Yeah, it'd be stupid. Pop ball in your ankle. Yeah. It's just shitting out of the bottom of your foot.

Yeah. Can she catch a disease from that? So, well, let's talk about it. Yes. Okay. There are diseases that are contracted by the fecal-oral route. And that's a particular route of transmission of disease where pathogens in feces pass from one person's ass to the mouth of the other person. So when you are, you know, sucking on someone's rectum, that's the classic transmission.

But now, what if he doesn't have any of that? stuff. You know, he, for the most part, if he doesn't have, well, let's look at the different diagrams that you can have. There's cholera. He probably doesn't have cholera. C. diffacil, ooh, you know, there is. Yes, oh, yeah.

C. diffacil causes a form of diarrhea that can be community acquired or acquired through taking too much antibiotics, and it can cause a life-threatening diarrhea, but he probably doesn't have that. He wouldn't be having intercourse if he had C-difference. He had C-Def. No, and he'd be rushing to the bathroom. Shigella, same way. You know, that's dysentery, you know, basilari dysentery, salmonella, salmonella, typhi, which causes typhoid fever,

campelobacter, that kind of stuff. Now, the one thing that he couldn't have is an enterotoxygenic version of E. coli. So, E. coli is the normal turd bacteria. Most of the time, you can get a little bit in your mouth's no big deal. But if he had some that had a, you know, a toxin. that it was producing. And by this, I mean a real toxin, not the kind of toxins that you're naturalist. That you detoxify with a...

Right, detoxifying, right, right. And then there's other viruses like hepatitis A, he probably doesn't have that. Norovirus, that's a good, Norwalk virus, that's the virus that you get. You used to hear a lot about on cruise ships. They've gotten really good about putting a stop to that crap. Polio, both of them have probably been vaccinated. So, you know, so probably you're going to be okay. But if he has any of these diseases, tapeworms, toxoplasmosis, giardia,

all these things that really would probably, he would be so sick enough that he wouldn't be having sex with him, then you could get that. But other than that, it's just poop in the mouth. And if you get too much of it, your stomach doesn't like it. But most of the time, the stomach can just kill it. And I would just. man, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't understand it, but there you go.

If you eat feces, there's a term for that, a medical term for that. Do you know what it is? Gosh, no, I don't. Coprophilia. Coprophilia, nope. Yep. So, anyway, let me see. Let me see what, if they say that there are any diseases.

Oh, and then the act that she's talking about is anal lingus. That's the oral and anal sex act, which a person stimulates the anus, another using the mouth, including the lips, tongue, or teeth. It's also called anal-oral contact and anal-oral sex. It's additionally known by slang names. Ooh, what slang names could they be? Okay, so anyway. So probably not, but yes, there's a non-zero possibility.

You can get a disease. Well, there's a non-zero possibility you can get a disease by blowing him, too. Sure. You know, if he has herpes or, I don't know, herpes or gonorrhea or syphilis, then, yeah, you could get it from that. But, you know, he probably doesn't have those things. Or her. Or her, right?

Yeah. Well, she was talking about her boyfriend. Oh, okay. I think maybe I presume that. Now, let's just see if I'm a damn genderist. Let's see. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Cammy in Texas.

My question for you is, can I get any diseases from rimming my partner? I am a gender. She just said partner, so he or she. Non-specific. Yep. Who are they? Rim away. Just be careful.

Well, practice good hygiene. I guess. Well, that's the definition of not good hygiene. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe use a finger instead of a tongue. Oh, do whatever you want to do. Don't listen to us.

It's 2020. It's a new decade. I don't ruin anything for anybody. Who cares? Lots of people lick other people's rectums. Lick away. Just fine. I'm not going to say that.

That's Dr. Scott saying that. I'm just going to say that it is a non-zero chance of getting diseases, but most people do okay. I agree. And Dr. Scott's woman's telling you to actually do it, and I'm not doing it. I'm telling her, just do whatever she wants. Well, you know, yeah, okay. Yeah, be cool. What are weird medicine?

Hey, man. Question. Okay. What's the difference between oxycodone, which I believe is Percocet, and hydrocodone. I think the- Okay. If that's the basis of the question, they are both opioids, meaning that they both stimulate the mu-opioid receptor.

and the mu-opioid receptor when it's stimulated, and there are other receptors, too. Oxycodone also stimulates the Kappa receptor. Don't worry about all that stuff. There won't be a quiz afterward, but these receptors, for the most part, cause pain signals to be dulled going to the brain. They also can slow respirations.

They can make your eyes, the pupils, small, and they can slow down your genes. eye tract and they also prevent cough. You know, they're antitussive. So they do a bunch of different things when those things are stimulated. Now, oxycodone and hydrocodone are kissing cousins.

They're just a couple of molecules different. They both hit the same receptor, but they've got somewhat different properties. The oxycodone hits more of the cap of receptor than a hydrocodone does. It's more potent. Yes. 20 milligrams

of oxycodone is equivalent to about 30 milligrams of hydrocodone, that kind of stuff. You know, if everybody responded the same way to every drug, there wouldn't be a bunch of choices. We'd only need one drug. Yeah, but anyway, okay. The oxycodone, and that shit makes me itch. Oh, yeah.

And I take, it keeps me awake at night. I can't sleep. And I want something that works better. Would I, we're switching to hydrocodone help? What is it? Is it like Viking, is that what Vikingin it is? Vicodin is? Vicodin, Norco, Lortab, all those things are all hydrocodone.

Those are just brand names, but the underlying name is hydrocodone. In this country, we don't make a short-acting version of hydrocodone that doesn't have acetaminophen or Tylenol in it, so you can only buy it in combination with Tylenol. Oxycodone can be gotten with Tylenol or without. When it's bundled with Tylenol, we call it percol, set because that's the brand name. And if it's not, then it's

roxycodone or just oxycodone immediate release. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, and I have seen a number of folks, they tolerate one versus the other in many, many instances. So what this guy's asking is a very good question.

Yeah, everybody's different. You know, there is opioid-induced peritis. It's probably, paritis is a fancy word. I don't know if it's fancy, but it's another word for itching. You know, I don't know why we can't just say itching in medicine, but we have to say pruritis. And looking at the prevalence, it looks like 69% in non-pregnant patients, including males and females.

Now, that is for, wow. Well, that's a high number. That's higher than my experience has been. But let me see. Okay, well, the mechanism is the presence of an itch center in the central nervous system. So the reason we itch is it's called formication. It's probably because back in the caveman days it let us know that there were bugs on us and to get rid of them. Okay.

So, and these things stimulate those same receptors and cause this feeling of itching. It looks like, yeah, modulation of serenergic pathway. I'm looking through pain and paritis, blah, you know, if you have someone that has liver disorder and they're jaundiced and they itch, if you ever seen them, that is caused by peripheral stimulation, in other words, stimulation in the skin of mu opioid receptors, which are the same opioid receptors that morphine and hydrocodone, oxycodone act on. And if you have somebody with jaundice that's itching and they're not on opioid pain medications, you can put them on an opioid blocker called naloxone. This is a pill. It totally goes away. Wow.

Totally goes away. If they are on opioids, you could put them on what we call a peripheral mu opioid antagonist, which just means a drug that blocks the opioid receptor, but not in the central nervous system. only does it in the skin. But the problem of those is they're crazy expensive. Now, oxone's dirt cheap when you just give it in a pill form. But if you've got to inject somebody or give them a pill of these peripheral opioid receptor antagonists, they're really, really expensive.

And mainly because they're new. I don't see. I don't even think I've ever heard of that. Yeah. Well, okay, so the brand names are Rellistore. You've heard of Rellostore. Methyl-Naltrexone. So what they did was they take naltrexone.

which is a drug that blocks opioid receptors. Right. Put a methyl group on it. And now all of a sudden it bangs up against the blood brain barrier. Oh, can't go through. Can't cross. Oh, okay. Gotcha.

So now it will only do things like stop you from having constipation and stop itching caused by, you know, stimulation of those receptors. Well, it's pretty cool. It's a neat idea. That's a great idea, actually. Yeah, and there's another one, naloxigal, and then there's symproic. There's a bunch of them out there. Anyway, all right. So, yeah, everybody's different.

Everybody responds these things differently. If I take hydrocodone, it keeps me up. I've only taken it once, but it kept me up. Oxycodone, I'm fine. My wife, if she takes hydrocodone, she pukes. And my mother-in-law, if she takes oxycodone, she itches. So everybody's different. And if you itch on one, you might not itch on another one.

So they can, you know, switch you to the different thing. If your pain is mild to moderate, they could put you on a non-opioid, mu-opioid agonist, which would be, so that's like a non-narcotic, narcotic, if that makes any sense. Right. And that would be things like Tramidol. Tramidol. Tramidol is one. It's really not derived from opium. That's what opioids are.

But it still hits those same receptors. It's been reclassified as an opioid just because it's addictive, and it hits the same receptors. they just had to change the definition a little bit. Right. But anyway, Tramidol might be an option for you. And just taking an anti-itch medication with, if you really got to have it,

and that's the only thing that works for your pain, they can treat the itch. There's lots of different medications. There is, oh, goodness gracious. Well, Visturil is one of antihistamine. And then there is shitfire. I've been having this all day. I didn't get enough sleep.

last night, and I'm starting to forget things. Let me see. There's a nortyptylene, amytryptylene, and then doxapin. Is it doxpin? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it doxapin? Maybe. Anyway, one of those is, yeah, tricyclicanidem.

That's it. So it was called sinequant. I knew I had an S in my name. So doxapin is a very potent antipuritic or anti-itch medication. It's prescription only. Benadryl you can buy over the counter. I said Benadryl you can take any time. Not a big fan of just taking Benadryl every day

because there's problems with just taking antihistamines day in and day out. But anyway, doxapin is one that a lot of physicians aren't aware of that we use all the time with really good success. All right. Let's see. Hey, Dr. Steve. I'm a 44-year-old. from the Northeast.

Got some health issues. I'm 5-11 and 300 pounds. Definitely overweight, trying to get a hold on that. Multiple sclerosis, diabetes. So the question I have for you is they both me in fatty liver, and I got some pain in my abdomen, and I've had a problem when they was bleeding. So no matter how bad I cut myself or no matter how bad I stick myself,

Even if I stick myself with an insulin deal, I believe like crazy. Okay. I wear one of those continuous glucose monitors, and I put a new one on my arm today, and I actually bled through it through the plastic. Okay, I'm just going to stop him right there. That shit's got to get checked out. So I'm assuming he's got bruising some places as well. He needs a complete blood count, see if his platelet counts okay.

If his platelet counts okay, then the other thing they're going to do is a thing called a pro time. and what they'll look at is does he have coagulopathy, which means does he have the inability to, you know, coagulate blood properly? Because of his liver disease, because the liver participates in the creation of these pathways that lead to blood coagulation. It's a really complex pathway, and there's all these different factors that have to be present to coagulate blood properly. why on earth the universe, you know, created something so complex and any defect along the way will mess things up, but they'll check that out. And, yeah, we need to get that. If that's caused by your liver failing, then we need to get on top of that, so you'll need

to see a hepatologist. Fatty liver can be treated. Most of the time, we'll start with medications like metformin and maybe even a stat. or some other medications to decrease triglycerides like prescription strength, fish oil. But a low-carb diet will go a long way to get rid of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, which is what this is, which is fatty liver with, you know, liver damage that's not caused by alcohol. Okay. So go get that checked out right now.

He just called in the other day. This one wasn't. I don't think this was sitting in the queue for very long. Yeah, he needs to get on it right now. Right. Okay. I think we've got time for one more. Happy New Year, Weird Medicine. Amen. So, this new year, I'm looking to improve my health, and I hear you talking.

Is this the same guy? The voice sounds similar. About this calcium score test. And I want to get it done. I'm in my mid-40s now, and, you know, just, I've got this fear of clogged arteries and stuff. Is this something my primary doctor can do in the office with the jelly? and the ultrasound bond, or is it something that they have to refer me to, like, imaging MRI center? Okay, great question. The calcium score we've been talking about is a score to kind of just quantify your risk that's really simple to do. You can go right now and just search Framingham calculator and calculate your own risk score.

And then you can combine that with this, and it gives you a pretty, accurate idea of how much lifestyle or medication change you need to incorporate into your life to decrease your risk of heart attack. But calcium score is CAT scan. So you have to be between 40 and 75 without diabetes. Because if you're between 40 and 75, you have diabetes, you're already at high risk. And with an LDL score of anywhere between 70 and 189. and any risk of cardiovascular disease greater than 7.5,

so they'll do a Framingham score for 7.5% over 10 years. So you kind of have to have some risk factors first, but you don't want to have your pre-test probability. In other words, yeah, you've got, you're at high risk already. This is supposed to tell you if you're at risk, so they're looking for borderline people to do this on. And if you meet those criteria, yeah, a lot of times you can just walk straight in and just get one.

our hospital, I just walked in and asked for it, and it was 50 bucks. So anyway, you know, just talk to your primary care about it. You could call the hospital, see if they do them, and then, you know, whatever. Boola, boola, boola. Go have a big old time. All right. Yeah. Well, thanks always goes to Dr. Scott.

I can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coombe, a Jim Norton, Travis Test. Travis Teft, Louis Johnson, Paul Ophcharsky, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Ron Bennington, and Fez Watley, whose early support of this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk Channel. Serious XM 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. 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. All right, Dr. Scott, a little extra of something. You got your instrument ready? What the fuck you're doing? Oh, I thought you recorded that last one. No.

Oh, hell, fire. I'm recorded anything. Oh, yeah. I'm ready. I wish I had. All right. Let's see here. Let's get you a little

A little reverb. A little reverb, yep. Yep. Oh, that's me. There you go. Let me see. Let's hear. Give me a test, test.

All of me. If you're going to hit that instrument as hard as you did last time, I'm going to back you down just a little bit. Of course, yeah. Because you're distorted. like f and i turn my volume down on this thing too okay but you don't have to turn it down too much all of me why you just gave it away spoiler alert we're doing all of me two okay take two let's give a shot that sucked balls all right let's do it again one two a one two three

four all of me why nothing gone of me because you know I'm no good without you take my arms I want to lose and take my lips I'll never using

your goodby's left me with eyes and cry and I know I'm no good without you You took the part of me that once was my heart So why not take all of me We're going to be. Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, and Oh, Oh, and Oh,

Oh, and Oh, Oh, Oh, All of me, why to take all of me, why to take all of me? me because you know

I'm no good without you take my arms I want to lose and take my lips I'll never using

your goodbye left me with eyes and cry and you know I'm no good without you. You took the part of me that once was my heart.

Now, why not take all of you? So why not take all of me? I remember all the words. Well, given that we learned it literally a minute ago. One minute ago. We had practice one time, one song. I'm not real big on the walking base, but I'll work on it. No, I thought you did a good job, then.

All right. All right, everybody, happy new year, shit on you. And as we say in Hindi, Naya Sal Mubarakho. This means happy new year. Happy new years. And, uh, uh, uh, bachwas, uh, I, I, I mean, see, up, uh, up, uh, bachwas he. That means you are a bullshit. All right, see you.

All right, guys. Okay. See you.