Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 392 - Nanea Reeves from TRIPP.COM

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

392 - Nanea Reeves from TRIPP.COM In a "very special episode," Dr Steve talks virtual reality as a meditation aid with the CEO of tripp.com. If you have Oculus Go or Quest, try it for free from the Oculus store. Use code DRSTEVE to get 20% off if you want to buy it! PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) Feals.com/fluid (lab grade CBD products!) TRIPP.COM offer code DRSTEVE (relax and get 20% off!) simplyherbals.net (While it lasts!) 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

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so and then we have something new and we don't get anything from this we're going to talk about it later on in the show as well is go to trip t ripp.com and use offer code D.R. Steve, D-R-S-T-E-V-E, and you can get 20% off their virtual reality mindfulness app. And it is unbelievable. That's what the rest of the show is going to be about today.

And we're going to do an interview with Nenea Reeves, who is the CEO of Trip.com. And then when we come back from the interview, I will do some of your medical questions. So hang in there. You're listening. of weird medicine. Since 2018, Tripp has established themselves as the industry pioneer in immersive wellness. What the heck is that? We're going to talk to its creator, Nanaia Reeves, in just a second.

They use virtual reality to deliver experiences targeting the visual and auditory systems that induced mindfulness, reduced stress. These are my claims, not necessarily theirs, improved sleep and may even improve post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions. Our guest today is Nenea Reeves, CEO of Tripp. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you so much. And I am definitely a creator, but not the only creator.

We have a great team of talented people working on this, yes. I get it. And I do want to talk about that because you have some maniacs that work for you. I'll just skip to that. Well, let's tell people what Tripp is. And then I definitely want to ask you about some of the. creative elements of this. So tell our listeners what it is and kind of what it does. What's its purpose? Well, as you mentioned, Tripp is an immersive wellness platform. And we are

currently distributing through virtual reality because we found that the immersion of VR seems to have this multiplicative effect of anything that you put into it. And our goal with Tripp is to create a toolkit of experiences that you can opt into to change the way that you feel. That was really our overarching goal. Initially, we thought, could we take mindfulness structures and gameplay mechanics, sound frequencies, and bring them all together in the immersion of VR to hack mindfulness? So that was really our first goal, but I think overarching goal is can you have, hack your mood overall and change the way you feel.

So you feel more in control or, you know, to use one of the buzzwords, have agency over how you feel. Sure. Well, I first became aware of you all just through the Oculus Quest app store because I was just tuteling around in there because I bought a quest for myself because I wanted to play Vader on Immortal. So great. I love it.

It's so great. I mean, we're all gamers. that trip to our core. That's even better. Gamers who meditate. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and I have a very high-stress job, and I have multiple roles as, you know, I've got, I'm 64, but I've got two teenagers in the house.

And, you know, so I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, it's awesome. It's awesome. But it is, it's just, I come home from work and then I really start the real work of the day. Right. And by the end of the day, my adrenaline has just been pumping. And I know it's going to kill me someday because physicians have a, you know, a higher mortality rate. And I've been wanting to go to the Dharma Center or whatever to do this, to meditate or do something.

And I come across this app. And for people out there who have, you're just on the go and the quest at this point, right? That's correct. It's a TRIP-P, trip with two people. That's right. Thank you. Right. And so I just ran across it, said, you know, VR mindfulness or whatever the demo said. And I took the demo and it blew me away.

Oh, I love that. People are going to think, oh, you know, Dr. Steve's gone off the deep end. First off, it opens up and you're in this sort of think avatar except even cooler environments. And each environment's different every day, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, we knew that whenever you see anyone do VR in general, there's this wow factor because you are experiencing one reality, your own reality, and then you put on this headset, and you really are in a new space. And I think that in and of itself has the ability to trigger awe. And I can talk about some of our design principles, you know, in a little bit. But really, for us, What we noticed when people went into VR was they go, wow, and take it off and never want to do it again. And, you know, many of us have, you know, I have a closet full of old dead VR devices.

And so when we were designing some of the core framework principles for Trip, we thought, how do we design this in a way that will make people want to do it again and do it regularly? because that's really where you get the efficacy of any kind of mindfulness practices through consistency. And so at minimum, we thought, could we trigger this? Oh, I wonder what it'll be like today. And we're continuing to evolve the experience, pushing out improvements over time. I'm super excited about what it's going to look like even a year from now. Oh, wow. Yeah, as we evolve it.

Yeah. So to give our listeners just a little idea, so you, you, merge into this environment. And sometimes it's an alien kind of landscape, but it's beautiful with little life forms that are sort of floating around or, you know, just signaling their existence and little things popping up here and there. And yesterday I was on sort of an inflatable lounge chair in this alien ocean. And it was the coolest thing.

And then it does these breathing exercise, which my listeners will. instantly relate to because I'm always talking about using square breathing to break panic attacks. Box breathing. Right, right. And there are several different breathing exercises and people think, oh, another breathing exercise. No, this is different because when you breathe in these sort of blue sparks flow into your nose. And as you breathe out of your mouth, they come out sort of redshifted.

And then the environment around will change as you breathe. And you can turn your head and sort of blow these sparks at some of the environmental, you know, constructs that are in there. It's unbelievable. The illusion that is remarkable, I have to say. I really appreciate that. And you and I met through our support channel, actually. that's right you had an issue and that's how we started talking so one of the things we've been doing as the leadership team at trip is manning the support channel after our launch

because we really wanted to hear front and center the good and bad that our users were experiencing it's easy to get disconnected on that and keep moving forward but I was very motivated to just go and let's answer customer support tickets. And let's throw that out to people. That's not very often that. So let me just tell people what my issue was. And it was only the one time. It was the first time I used it.

And I did the sleep module. And so you rise after doing these, there's two breathing exercises on different levels. And you rise to these levels. And then I rose above this planet. And I saw this atmosphere and I kind of got stuck in the atmosphere and there was this beautiful music going on and the sounds sort of ping ponging in my head. And I didn't know what was supposed to happen. I sat there maybe for 20 minutes and is this thing ever end?

And apparently that was actually a glitch because it's supposed to be over in, what, eight, nine minutes or something. But I actually fell asleep. So I said, well, this really works. But I emailed the company on the support line to ask, is that how it's supposed to be or was there a glitch? And it's not very often you get the CEO of the company emailing you back on a support line. Well, I had been inspired by hearing the founders of Airbnb say that when they first started their company, they went door to door and met with all the hosts and heard, you know, all their concerns and issues. And I felt like that was the right thing to do.

Because, you know, our goal is, first and foremost, as a company, if we can build something that makes people feel better, then the business itself will show up behind that. We'll get the support to continue. And so, you know, having that intention, and it starts with how are people responding to it. So I was delighted, though, that we could continue this conversation. It's, you know, helpful to me to get the feedback, but also to get the word out there because the more people use it, the more we can evolve the service. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've used it every day since. Oh, I love that.

Yeah, every single day, I've done at least one module. And something that our listeners would be interested in as well is that there is sort of a, there's a subjective, well, it's all subjective, of course. course, but you can rate your mood before you go in, and then you rate it after, and you can also just pick up, you know, a visual analog scale. We talk about visual analog scales on this show as well for pain and stuff, and you can just rate how you feel on a scale of one to ten, and when you're done, you rate it again, and it is very interesting to see, well, you improved by 20 percent, and you went from tense and angry to calm and peaceful and all these kinds of things.

It's a very biased sample, of course, but it's still very interesting to see that effect. So it brings me to the question, what kind of benefits can people expect from this? I know you don't make any medical claims. Not yet. Not yet. We are engaged in several clinical trials, and I can talk about that. Yeah, sure. Just staying on the topic currently, the assessments, the scales that we put in the app were designed with the support of the National Mental Health Innovation Center up at the University of Colorado on the Ant Schutz medical campus.

And so it was important for us to work with subject matter experts on even our product design. And we thought if we could just capture the data with every session, that awareness of your mood trends and being able to actually state it would help you identify your own pattern. So I don't know if you've used the aura ring for sleep tracking, but I've noticed having visibility into my sleep patterns through the ring is having. has been helpful to even change some of my behavior around sleeping. Yes. You know, I've identified optimal time to go to bed and quality of sleep I'm looking at in a way that I didn't before just by having some level of measurement, yeah, even if it's qualitative.

And so we thought, could we do that with this idea of moods and your emotional well-being and see how you're doing? And then in our mobile app, it allows you to track that data over time. And we're actually working on a new scoring method for your mood so that you can start to see like a daily score and an overall score. Because I've noticed, because it's one thing, you do something like this, there are a couple of studies that show that people that watch nature scenes feel better afterward. but they often fall asleep, and then when they wake up, their stress levels just right where it was before. And so that's one thing to get eight minutes of rest, but a whole other thing to get long-term

benefits. And this is just with my own experience, anecdotal with an N of one, but I have noticed that my baseline numbers when I'm rating before I do the app have actually risen over time. So in just, you know, whatever, a week, 10 days, I might have started out. I'm rating myself at a 4, but now I start off rating myself at a 6 or 7. I can't make any claims from that, but it is interesting. Yeah, and I think just even that you had the awareness for that as a perceived benefit, I think, has some benefit to it.

And I think the one thing we do know that we're doing at Tripp is the mere act of you taking this time to connect to yourself and take care of yourself for eight minutes in this container that's designed to give you a respite in and of itself has, I think, benefits. It's a behavioral change. And our goal is not to replace any kind of mindfulness practice. I have a deep meditation practice that has influenced a lot of the design principles. of the product, but it's really, can we be an onboarding mechanism for you to start to look at the way you're feeling? Like a gateway drug.

Yeah, well, or what did we call it early on a rug, a VRUG? Yes, right? You know, this whole new category of digital therapeutics that's emerging. It's fascinating. and VR really has a place in that category of using software in therapeutic use cases. Yeah. Well, I've looked at some of the research that's been pretty well demonstrated that Delta sound waves in the sort of binoral audio therapy have effects on anxiety. Yeah.

And I've read just one study on patients with pre-surgery anxiety. So I have some theta waves. Theta binaural sound waves are also helpful with relaxation, anxiety reduction. So let me play them. And then maybe I'm putting you on the spot because I know you're an entrepreneur and not necessarily a scientist, but you're deeply immersed in this. I just wonder if you can explain sort of what delta and theta waves are. But let me play them just for a second for everybody.

Now, if you're listening on headphones, There's a stereo effect of this where things seem to be passing through your brain, which is an illusion, of course. So I'll just let those go in the background. See, I'm starting to get relaxed already. So what are we listening to? How is that different from just me getting on my synthesizer, which, by the way, I have a nice electronic music studio here in the Weird Medicine Studios as well? Well, how is that different than me just noodling around on my Oberheim OB-6? Yeah, well, I will say that all music has an effect on a human.

And there's studies on certain classical music pieces that can be used to de-stress, even improve productivity. And there's a fairly decent amount of research on that. with sound waves we thought let's incorporate binaural audio we do put in theta and delta into the experience that's why we ask you to select do you want deep relaxation or sleep preparation in our calm trip trip is definitely better with headphones rather than the in-device sound so that you can get the binaural effect but binoral audio can be somewhat dissonant in its sound

I think it has a tendency at times to sound a bit spooky and so we worked very closely with Justin Beretta from the Glitch Mob who's our creative director to incorporate binaural audio in a way

in our calm trip that was still pleasing and so we really hit it much harder in that part where you levitate in the experience and you go up and we're actually going to make some changes so that you don't hear the voiceover meditation during that part and you can get the full effect of the binaural audio with this feeling of embodiment as you float up even though you're sitting these are some of the

things we can do in VR that I think have some transcendent properties and can also stimulate different responses, just even awe or connection, deep states of gratitude, which can affect your vagus nerve, starting with you just feeling more compassionate toward your own life experience and your own self. I know that sounds a little woo-woo, but there definitely are benefits to that. It's a real thing. So stimulating the vagus nerve, you brought up something that's interesting to me because we do vagal nerve stimulation for chronic pain. Right.

And there is a branch of one of the nerves going to the helix of the ear that actually interfaces directly with the vagus nerve so you can access it from outside the body. Is that what you're talking about? How are you stimulating the vagus nerve? It's not so much stimulation. It's more activation, and so it's different than doing the manual stimulation that you're talking about, which is very effective but can also be invasive. But there are things that you can do to activate it. There's a, you know, some people will call the vagus nerve the Oprah nerve because it can be activated through images of seeing people in acts of compassion. helping other people, looking at small animals, you know, infants as well, can stimulate this response in you.

That's fascinating. What do people need to use the Trip app? Can you do this on, say, a VR on your cell phone? You know, the people that have the, say, the Samsung just snaps into a headset, or what do you recommend? We are available right now on the Oculus Go and the Oculus Quest. The Oculus Go is at a very affordable price point. I think the current price they're selling it for is $149. So these devices have really gotten much more affordable than, you know, what they were even just a couple of years ago.

And you have an Oculus Quest. I feel that's really next level. You don't need a computer for it. you just need the device itself. We like to recommend that people use headphones. And what we found with the phone devices is just that little bit of latency from the phone to the VR device, even though it's sliding in. That's really, I think, what was causing in the early days a lot of the motion sickness that people were experiencing. and a lot of the manufacturers have deprecated that functionality.

Now, because of that, we've got these great devices. Because of devices like the Oculus Go and the Quest, I will say that the research now is really evolving on using VR to address different mental health issues and even some physical in the area of pain management. We're doing a research project funded by the NIH right now in addiction recovery. A two-phase grant was received to do this, and we're really excited about that. For me, personally, my family has been devastated by the impact or effects of drug addiction. I lost my sister to a drug overdose.

about five years ago. I know. It's, I think the most painful thing any family can go through is to watch someone you love just completely destroy themselves through addiction. And you feel very powerless over it. And I know that I'm definitely not alone. And, you know, just from a pragmatic standpoint as well, in the workplace, issues with addiction can have a huge effect. And so, you know, We're excited about the ability to be able to go do evidence-based research and start to see how we can use our technology and evolve it in ways that can support different indications, you know, be an intervention for different problems. Yeah, I'm going to be applying for a grant. I called the research department at our cancer center this morning before this call. And we're going to be applying for a grant to try to use trip for chemotherapy or anxiety in the chemo suite.

And we're going to have to come up with validated instruments to measure anxiety and maybe some other parameters before and after. and then we've got to come up with like a nature landscape, you know, environment that we can use as our quote-unquote placebo. Yeah, the sham. Yeah, right. Well, we have a, we have a nature environment in our more content section in the video, so we certainly could use even within the same. Yeah, we'd love to support you with that. Okay. Anything we can do to provide the devices.

And I'd be happy to share with you some of the IRBs that we've had to prove that. That would be great. I'm going to New York next week to kick off a new research study on reducing anxiety in a psychotic and schizophrenic population. Weirdly enough, they respond better to these fantasy environments on some initial feasibility testing that the researchers had done. The frame to go into an environment where they had some real-world frame of reference, but then the sensory dissonance. So if you're on a beach and you don't smell beach or feel beach, the brain kind of goes on high alert, at least in. this population like what's wrong uh kind of like an uncanny valley response that you get with robots and um so you know we had read some early research i can't remember i think it might

have come out of UCLA on that sensory dissonance in virtual reality and so we made some design assumptions that if we brought familiar objects in like a seahorse or something that you go oh I know what that is, but we put it in environments that you've never experienced before. There's no expectation. Right. And that might trigger an ability for you to let go and relax into it with a wow or awe kind of response. Yeah, and that's fascinating because you're putting people in an environment where there's zero expectations of smelling anything because they're in an sort of, you know, an otherworldly place. Yeah. What does space smell like?

Yeah, right. I don't know. Exactly. It's fascinating. Let me ask you, what maniacs code your landscapes? Because these are not normal people. That's funny. You know, and we're starting to open up our toolkit to other developers to design trip experiences. So I've been searching for more maniacs out there.

I just don't get HR guidelines. You know, the worst thing that could happen is, oh, Tripp decides to do a Halloween edition and start, you turn around and start seeing scary things, because that would terrify me. Because I'm so. Well, a lot of the early VR experiences, and it's weird, they're very popular, you know, are basically designed to scare the crap out of you. Zombies coming from behind you and all this stuff. I mean, it's loads of fun, but it really gets my. adrenaline pumping it. So that's in no way stress reducing. No, and I think in the wrong context, it could actually, you know, we have to be responsible.

Of course. And I think, you know, we saw that and we thought, well, could we take that same powerful effect to make you feel like you're, you know, hanging off of a cliff or being attacked by zombies for real. Could we use those same principles to help you de-stress? Let's start with de-stressing and be less agitated and maybe insert a little pause so you don't really send that email that you're furiously writing. And these things will have major benefits. They're the same kind of benefits that you get from a deep meditation practice, but we find that adherence to a daily practice is really, I think, an issue for a lot of people. We know we should do

these things, just like working out, but, you know, how do we stick with it? I think the motivation becomes more of the challenge. So I think VR, mobile apps, all of these things have a place to be assistance to help us, but ultimately you're the one that has to build that muscle. And so going back to the maniacs designing it, you know, they'll start to create stuff and think, wow, this looks really cool. And then I'm sort of the person that goes, yeah, but how is that supposed to make someone feel? And so we look at a lot of research around, and some of it is pseudoscience that will look at. But it has some design principles, the way we incorporate sacred geometry.

We read some research on the fact that fractals have a pleasing effect on the mind. And that might be the reason why when we take psychedelics, our brain produces patterns, because it's trying to stabilize itself. I wouldn't know. Yeah, me neither. Was that the laugh track? I love that. I need one of those in my life.

Even though we should do like a, I want to do a bunch of trips that have guided meditations from comedians. I think there's some joy to laughing, right? Absolutely. I agree. Very healing. There's even like a whole practice you can do about smiling when you're unhappy. even if it's forced, it's the, you know, those muscles, they can actually lift your mood. So we're looking at all these different things.

But it always goes back to, how is this going to make you feel, right? Are these colors calming and pleasing? And, you know, what's interesting is that can vary by region because red in the West, you know, is used to generate energy or energy. even anxiety, which is why a lot of fast food restaurants use it. They want to get you in and out. But in Asia, red, you know, has very different properties to how people respond to it. It's considered a lucky color. It's what you wear when you get married.

And so we have to be able to shift our content to the individual. So when you do trip and you give us those baseline and endpoint mood, reads and you rate the session, we use that data in our platform to understand what does Dr. Steve respond to differently than what Aurora, our QA and product manager person respond to and capturing that data and looking at the variances. So we've already under, have noted that men seem to relax more floating in space, being above ground. And women seem to like environments that are more terrain focused, where they're closer and more grounded.

That's fascinating. Yeah. I mean, well, I could come up with a bunch of different hypotheses for that, but that is a really interesting finding. And, of course, you do both in the trip experience. We do, yeah. Speaking about floating in space, when we ascend to look down on the earth like the space baby in 2001, why do we always see California? Could we see another part of the country at some?

Yeah, or even the world. You know, I don't think it's working quite right. It's supposed to be where you're located, but I think it might be coded to where our office is located. So thanks for continuing to debug our product, Dr. Steve. That is hilarious. But we're going to add some features. One of the things that we're working on for that is, you know, the whole point of that experience is we really wanted to see if we could trigger the overview effect and that the astronauts have when they go into space and they look down on the earth. And, you know, they come back very transformed from that experience.

And so we're going to change some of it to get a deeper connection. One, we feel that, you know, can we just use that space to help people be more mindful about, you know, the state of our planet and the world and the community on it? And so you'll see us incorporate into that part of the experience, more of a feeling of connecting to other people on the planet. and we'll start to introduce a little community feature that you'll see shortly. I don't want to talk about it too much, but it's super cool. And, yeah, because you're in Tech, Tennessee, right? That's right. Yep.

Cool. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm going to be out there first week of March, and there's a very cool conference. I'll get you an invitation to on using virtual reality in, health care. Oh, well, I would love to go to that. Yeah, I'll get you hooked up with that. Please do. It's a very exciting community and we're all very friendly with each other, even though at times we're competitive. I think that even just sharing research data, how we structure these studies, as you mentioned, having a sham VR experience, even just so you can control against the effects of

immersion is important, and then what else you control against, I think, is important. And the devices now are at an affordable price. We can do research at scale. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. This is something that's really emerging. I think VR is just in its infancy, and it's already incredible. I'm, you know, and I had the same experience that you did. I bought an Oculus Go for my kids, and they tried it a couple of times, and then just kind of put it down, even though they, yeah, they had that wow factor. And I bought myself the Quest just for the heck of it. I didn't mess with it for the longest time.

And then all of a sudden it just kind of clicked in my head. And now I'm a very regular user. And like I said, every night before I go to bed, I'm hitting the Trip app. So it's quite wonderful. If you want to try out trip, get out your Oculus Go or Oculus Quest and find it in the Oculus store. use the offer code DR Steve and get 20% off. And by the way, that's just for weird medicine listeners.

I don't get anything from that. This is not like we've got some sort of affiliate agreement. They just want you guys to try it. So you get 20% off. And there is a demo version where you can try out the focus module. And Nenea is the narrator. You know, I realize that about halfway through this interview. I recognized your voice.

Yeah. And my co-founding partner, Zach Norman, is the voice. on calm and yeah we're hoping you know as we grow our audience we can bring in new voice talent as well as enable different languages and so anybody who also wants to subscribe there is a seven-day free trial that you can cancel any time in if it's something that you feel is not not helpful to you, but we would love to get people using the product. It only helps us be better as well and create more experiences. Fantastic.

It's the greatest thing in the world. Before we close, have you played the game Red Matter on the Oculus, by the way? No. Okay. Is that on the quest? It is. It's on the quest. The textures in it are so realistic.

and the puzzles aren't very, very difficult. It's a fun game. But the reason I bring it up is at the very last module, mild spoiler, you're on a moon of Saturn and you go outside and you look up and there is Saturn as if it would look as if you were standing on the moon Rea. And I'm just telling you, I wouldn't mind if every once in a while I ended up my trip thing, you know, floating around Saturn or something. Oh, yeah. I love that. You know, people have been sending us their recommendations, which, you know, we love. Oh, good. We love it. And one feature, have you tried the mobile upload of your own pictures into the experience, into the focus trip?

Absolutely. I love that feature. I mean, just for me personally, I've used it, I used it on the anniversary of my late husband's death. He passed away from cancer. answer about four years ago. Thank you. I appreciate that. And it's always a sad day when you hit that anniversary of the loss of a loved one. And, you know, this past April, I was able to upload pictures of him and hold space, you know, for quite a bit of time just honoring our journey and really feeling a deep sense of gratitude in a way that was so empowering. And then take off the headset and go about my day into my new life and it was the first moment that I really understand that just by exposing these little tools to people they can find their own way through that we saw we have another man who has liver cancer uh using our product regularly

finds that it helps him get a little distraction from the pain that he experienced experiences, and he's uploaded images of himself when he was healthy to remind himself who he is when he's feeling, you know. So it's, I think, a really powerful tool, and we love hearing the stories from our users on how they use it. Someone else sent us a note saying they set their New Year's goals by uploading, you know, what they want to be or what they want to accomplish, and they meditate on that in trips. I love that. Yeah, people won't understand what we're talking about until they try it. So I absolutely go try it. And you'll see, if you do the focus trip, you'll see what we're talking about.

There are these sort of orbs that move when you move your head. And they'll have different, you know, when you start off, it's just pictures of happy people, kids, and animals and stuff. And, of course, my experience with uploading isn't nearly as impactful as yours. I've got a picture of a hippopotamus that I took when we were at Disney. So it's not nearly as impactful. But it does give me sort of warm fuzzies as I remember a great family trip. So, you know, I can see so many uses for this. And thank you for being on here.

You're welcome. It's my pleasure. Just the hugest fan. And I look forward to actually incorporating this into my research. I've got quite a few publications in the national or, you know, in the medical literature. And I look forward to becoming part of this sort of research. research community of people doing medical research in virtual reality, because I just think it's got such potential.

That's great. And we're happy to support you in that effort. And thank you so much for the exposure to your audience. It means a lot to us all, the entire trip team. Thank you. And thank you again. So Nanea Reeves, CEO of Tripp, you can see her work and her company at Trip.com. And don't forget, if you want to try it out, use the offer code DR Steve for 20% off.

Nenea Reeves. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. You're listening to Weird Medicine. Well, that was, I found that fascinating. Could you tell your old pal, Dr. Steve is excited about that. I haven't actually been excited about something like this in a long time.

And particularly not to ask. actually cause myself extra work and call the research department, get an IRB, you know, to work on a grant and an IRB approval to do, you know, a clinical trial in our cancer center. I'm very excited about that. I'll report back when I know more. But if you try it and you like it, let me know. You can do the demo for free. You can do the seven days for free.

Anyway, that's, you know, I get nothing from that. I just, I think it's awesome. So anyway, all right, let's take some phone calls. I probably... Hey, Dr. David's Scott, a very long-time listener since ONA and all three of podcasting, but first time reaching out. So over the past year or so, I've been experiencing some very annoying heart PBCs, you know, preventricular contractions, a lot of them, all the time, really.

And they got so annoying and worrisome to me that back in December, November, I got, not my doctor, and a cardiologist specialist had the following test done. We had an EKG. We had a 14-day halter monitor. It wasn't actually a halter monitor. That's not a halter monitor. What he had was an event monitor, I'll guarantee you. So let me get everybody on the same page.

He's talking about premature ventricular contractions. So this is when the ventricle contracts, be prematurely, hence the name. And most people have these and don't feel them, but sometimes you'll feel it as skin. skipped beat. You'll feel like it's a skipped beat. We'll talk about why it's not exactly a skipped beat, but something different. So he had an event monitor, which is a monitor you can wear for an indefinite period of time. Anytime you have one of these episodes, you push a button on it. A Holter monitor will record every heartbeat for 24 to 48 hours, and then they'll scan it looking for crazy arrhythmias and stuff like that. This is for something. This is for something.

something that doesn't happen every day. So take to my chest with a Bluetooth phone, again, for 14 days. An echo cardiogram was done, and then the big one was a CT coronary angiogram with contrast. Nice. So for all that rigor, there was a lot, but I wanted to rule out everything. And after all that, everything seemed fine. The test revealed, I have a perfectly normal heart with normal valves, walls, et cetera, and about 9% cholesterol blockage.

everyone so far said the PVC's which show up showed up all over the 14-day monitor and a couple in the regular EKG are okay they and nothing to worry about they claim it won't affect my life strength etc they claim the recovery beat which tends to be a little stronger right is not an elevated risk factor for stroke

that's the one that you feel so when you have you know your heart's beating doom doom doom doom and then all of a sudden you get this premature one and it will pause because it tried to beat but there really wasn't a lot of blood in the ventricle to pump out

so it just sits there and now it's trying to repolarize and while it's doing that blood is still flowing into this ventricle from the other side of the other side of the body so the heart's starting to fill up and it's filling up and it's filling and now it's overfilling because it's taking a little bit

too long. And then it goes, oh, crap, I need to beat. And it goes, doong, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, and gets back. So it's those afterbeats that you often will feel. The pause itself, you don't feel so much. But it's when you get the compensatory afterbeats trying to clear out the system and get the volume back to what we call homeostasis, meaning, you know, just sort of a general average. So let's hear what he says. Aneurism or anything? Which was a question I asked? They claim all that, but they drive me fucking insane, the PBCs, not the doctors.

That's a different story. If I'm sitting, I still feel them all the time, at least one a minute if I'm paying attention. If I'm doing something, I really don't pay attention to them. But they do happen every now and then, even when I'm active. So my question is, is this really an okay situation? I'm concerned about quality of life because I find myself paying so goddamn much attention to them. Should I be worried here? Should I seek out more tests or other opinions?

And finally, is there any actual way to stop these fuckers from happening? So I'm really, really grateful for your time and any guidance that some guy in the radio can get. Yeah, so PVCs or when they're in the presence of a normal heart are actually not considered a significant risk factor. PVCs in a diseased heart are of significant concern. But this person has had every test in the book, it sounds like he's been to cardiologist. so they know what they're doing. And I'm assuming that an electrophysiologist took a look at him and made sure that there weren't any pathologic, you know, circuits in the heart,

because the heart electrical device, basically. And it even has trunk lines. It's fascinating. If you ever look at Perkinji fibers, just Google that, P-E-N-J-E fibers. and or look at a video of electrical conduction in the heart. It's fascinating. I've used that word way too many times in this podcast. It's very interesting to watch and very educational.

Anyway, so in the presence of a normal heart with no weird pathways and short circuits and stuff like that, PVCs are considered relatively benign, but they can, as this person says, drive you insane. So there are medications you can take. They can give you medications. What I generally did for folks with symptomatic PVCs that had a normal heart was put them on a beta blocker. But, of course, beta blockers can cause erectile dysfunction. So you want to get a really cardio-selective beta blocker, one that really only works on the heart and nowhere else. And they make those.

If you're really worried about your penis not working, then there are calcium. channel blockers that can be used. There are anti-arhythmic medications, but I would stay away from those. They tend to be more expensive, and they can actually make arrhythmia's worse, in rare instances. So the beta blockers and calcium channel blockers, where I'd go with that. And I just, you don't have to live with this discomfort. And I know it's minor and it's benign, but it's driving you crazy, and you can actually get medication to take care of it. Okay, let's take another phone call.

Yo, Dr. Steve, Bobby in Texas here. Hey, Bobby. Now, I am dealing with my old lady. Old lady. Now, she is a normal, level-headed, smart woman. Not for long. If you keep calling her that, are you a biker in the 70s? Well, anyway, okay.

No judgment, no judgment. Right, go ahead. She's talking about this frickin' oxy powder lately, trying to get her gut flora and whatnot in check. She had a child with me. I think it's mine. Two years ago, we had a little boy. And ever since then, pretty regularly she's complaining of yeast infections. and or I will notice some cottage cheese-like discharge around my old meaty sausage upon completion.

And I don't complete inside her, so, you know... Hey, Earl, we got any cottage cheese back there? I'm starving. No, it's not. Me, I occasionally get sort of painful, maybe itchy, seems like a yeast infection. around my old ball there she's talking about getting this

colon cleanse thing going on thinking it's going to alleviate her constant yeast infections and also she has had a problem with her acid reflex for 10 years

probably off and on you know just can't eat spicy food anymore can't handle the food that she used to without you know complaining about this constant acid reflex and these fucking all right these freaking yeast infections okay oh I don't know if you know anything about this oxy powder perhaps she says it's an oxygen yeah yeah um I'm I'm not gonna trash somebody's product or anything like that so it's talk about colon cleanses in general. The colon is very well designed to deal with gross stuff.

You know, its job is to reclaim water from liquid feces that's brought into the colon from the small intestine as it passes through. Water is reclaimed. and then its other job is to safely pass said fecal matter from, you know, the body to the outside world. It really doesn't have a lot of, I mean, there are other things. There may be some immune properties. And certainly there's a whole gut flora thing, mind gut connection, and, you know, a healthy bacterial colony in the colon really. makes big difference.

You know, we're pushing healthy bacterial colonies on one hand and then basically putting bleach in our colon to, quote, unquote, cleanse it. That's, I don't agree with that. And I'd like to see actual studies, if anybody has any, that shows that that's in any way beneficial. Now, you know, people talking about, well, I've got toxins or concretions. If you're constipated, that's one thing.

There are no leathery, years-long concretions in the bowel. The bowel is perfectly capable of cleansing itself completely. And anyone who's ever done a colonoscopy knows this is true. They know it's true. Anyone that's ever had one done, anyone that does them, anyone that's seen one, knows. that this whole myth of there being leathery concretions and that the caliber of the bowel gets smaller and smaller over time because the bowel is lined with this solid sludge that only the smallest amount of stool can pass through is complete malarkey. If you've ever done a bowel prep to have a colonoscopy, you know this is a lie because you take the bowel prep,

you have liquid stool. There's no, you're not passing leathery concretions. And you, by the end of, like the old fleets phosphosota prep, you would take this stuff and stuff would be just forcefully just shooting out of your colon. And then you'd stand up and the water was as clear as a mountain stream. It's amazing. And then when you look up there, there's no concretions. It's nice pink mucus membrane all the way up through the sigmoid transverse colon through down to the cecum.

And if you're lucky and you've got a good endoscopist, they could go into that terminal ilium look around in there. Nothing. No leathery concretions, no decrease in caliber of the bowel unless, of course, there's a real problem like a tumor or something like that. And there wasn't any in the toilet either. So where is this stuff? It's a figment of people's imagination, and there are some of these bowel preps that are so full of fiber that when, and you'll see these videos of these people, they'll take a dump in a bucket, and then they'll dig around with a stick and pull out these masses of just fibrous tissue, go, see? Well, no, yeah, I see it. That came from the bowel prep that you gave them.

If I give them a normal bowel prep, you won't see any of that. And their bowel will be totally clean. So don't fall for this stuff. Now, having said that, constipation, diverticulosis, messed up bowel flora, can absolutely make you miserable. And so therefore, eating a balanced diet high in green leafy vegetables or a vegetarian diet, even better, supplementing your diet with, soluble fiber like oat bran or even our old friend that we haven't mentioned in quite a while. Uh-oh. Citrocell, citrus cell, citrus cell, citrus cell.

That's the sound of the whole world having an awesome series of bowel movements after using citrocell, which is methylcellulose, soluble fiber that's not digestible so it doesn't cause gas. And when I say not digestible, it's not digestible by the flora in your bowel. And then a probiotic, if you've taken a bunch of antibiotics and you're just feeling miserable, a probiotic can restore some of that balance to your bowel and the gut flora. And it's great. All of these things are true. But what isn't true is that unless you're...

wiping in the wrong way, and I don't know any women that don't know that they need to wipe from front to back, and to think about it for a second, that there's any connection, there should not be a connection between the vagina and the bowel, unless there is a real pathologic situation like a rectovaginal fistula or something like that. And that's where you have an actual physical connection between the rectum and the vaginal wall. Because the bacteria that are in the vagina stay there. They don't seep through the skin and the mucous membrane or the membrane in the vagina and then somehow get into the colon and vice versa.

You know, there's a very nice barrier there that keeps that from happening. So anyway, so to finish the question, fixing the bowel isn't necessarily going to do anything at all for her recurrent yeast infections. So people say, well, if you eat yogurt, I don't understand that one either because I'm not sure how the lactobacillus, which is proof that God has a sense of humor, that the same bacteria that makes yogurt, yogurt is the same bacteria that makes a healthy internal vaginal flora. not, you know, it's just, I don't know. I guess it's just efficiency. Why create yet a different bacteria for that when one will do for both just perfectly nicely? But because of that, plain yogurt that's cultured has lactobacillus in it.

So there have been people that have done a yogurt douche to repopulate the vagina with good bacteria. you. Now, you wonder, why is this keep coming back? One possibility is it's never gone completely away. Make sure that you are following the treatment instructions completely and finish all your medicine. You can't just go until the discharge goes away, that sort of cottage cheesy discharge. You have to take it and finish it. And if it comes back, switching to a different, Anti-heast medication may be helpful, but again, you've got to follow through. And, you know, if you're doing anything like taking antibiotics, those can lower the amount of good bacteria in the vagina itself, uncontrolled diabetes, hormonal birth control, spermacidal creams and jellies, all of these things can alter the balance of bacteria in the vagina,

allowing more of this yeast to grow. It's called Canada species. Now, there are some theories that wearing wet or tight clothing, like sweaty gym clothes and stuff like that, or thongs that don't allow that area to sort of just naturally breathe. It's not like it respires, but you know what I mean. Being open to the environment can create this sort of environment where yeast can grow. There's really no research supporting that anything that you're eating, it will either help or make this worse. So anyway, talk to your OBGYN, see what you can do.

And now, it's not impossible. The dude, in this case, he said that he had it at the base. He may be giving it back to her. So there are times when we will treat both partners at the same time. So the female gets some cream that she can introduce intravaginally, and then the male will get a cream that he just sort of slathers on. I love that word slather when you're dealing with this kind of thing. You just slather it on and do it for the same duration

and make sure that neither one of you have reservoir of yeast. And then when you do that, often this can be prevented. All right. So see your OBGYN. That's the most important thing. Thanks, always go to Dr. Scott, even when he's not here. You can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, Lewis Johnson, Paul Ophcharski, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos,

Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Ron Bennington, and Fez Wally, who's early support of this show, has never gone on appreciated. Listen to our Sirius X-XM show on the Faction Talk channel. Sirius 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 and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise.

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