Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 412 - Fee Fi Fo Mosis

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Dr Steve and Tacie discuss COVID-19 spikes, coronavirus immunity, foreskin troubles in adults, conscious sedation,, and more! stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) Feals.com/fluid (get 50% off your 1st subscription shipment of CBD!) simplyherbals.net (While it lasts!) noom.doctorsteve.com (lose weight, gain you-know-what) Get Every Podcast on a Thumb Drive (all this can be yours!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Weird Medicine with Dr. Steve on the Riotcast Network, riotcast.com. I need to touch it. You-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho. Yeah, me garreted. I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Ebola, stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain now, blasted with the way.

An ultrasonic, agographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of Citizen Kane. 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 to Requiem for my disease. So I'm paging Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve. It's, oh, God, why do I?

Lord. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored. medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Tacey, my delightful wife of wives. Hello, Tacey. Hello, Steve. I've been married to you longer and I ever been married to anybody. Well, in that song.

Oh, hell. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call. 3477664323. That's 347. head visit our website at dr steve.com for podcast medical news and stuff you can buy or go to our merchandise store at cafepress.com slash weird medicine you know what don't do that just go to

stuff dot dr steve.com most importantly we are not your medical providers take everything 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 assistant pharmacist chiropractor acupuncturist yoga master physical therapist clinical laboratory scientist registered dietitian or whatever All right, don't forget, feels.com slash fluid for 50% off. 50% off your first order if you sign up for a subscription. It's a broad spectrum CBD oil. And it's a little tincture, and you put a little under your tongue.

It's quite delightful. And it's a pretty dang good deal, Steve. It's a dang good deal. And then if you do the subscription, you still get a discount. I was surprised. I got mine the other day, and it was a lot less than I thought it was going to be. So I was very impressed. I mean, CBD's not cheap.

It is not cheap, but this is not expensive, these guys. And the continuing discount. That is awesome. Yeah, it is awesome. Also, oh, go ahead. And you don't know what you're getting in so many places that have it, you know? This is true. And if you sell CBD in your vape shop, I'm sure you're fine.

It's not you. It's the person that or the people who are selling it to those places. a lot of times you don't know who they are. And the FDA has pulled some, quite a lot of it off the shelf, saying that it's not what it says it is. So just be careful. There are ways to vet these suppliers and to have them show you their data and all that stuff. So if you're going to do CBD, just get it from a reputable place

and make sure that they're getting it from a reputable place. Do you know when I was so anxious last night and could not sleep, I could have done CBD. Well, I wonder why you didn't. Didn't think of it. Too worried about everything else. Yeah. Yep. Old taste was getting a little anxious last night.

A lot of things to be anxious about, but there you go. But one thing not to be anxious about is shopping at Amazon, and if you're going to do that, please go to stuff. Stuff.com. Stuff.com. com. Scroll down and see all the things that we talk about on this show. I think we even had a coronavirus survival. section, but now things have gotten so much better as far as toilet paper and stuff. But there

are, I think the tushy bidet is on there, which we have yet to install ours because the urgency is not quite there. But I will do it. I'll do it tonight. And tweakedaadcom offer code FLUID. That's offer code fluid for 33% off. I don't even know if we're getting anything from that anymore, but they've been so good to us. I'll still plug them. And if you want to hit your ideal body weight. Do it with me. Do it with Noom. N-O-O-M dot Dr. Steve.com for 20% off if you decide to pay, but you get two weeks free. And even if you don't do it, you can still use the app. So Noom is awesome. It's not a diet. It's a psychology app. Check it out. And what else you got to do right now? We can't do anything. You might as well lose weight and get your ideal body weight.

And you can also go to our website and get archives of the show. Why would you? But for There's a link in the middle of the page, and you can get every podcast that we've ever done. There's like 400 of them. It's about 18 gigs of material on a thumb drive, and I'll usually throw in a little something. And this week we're throwing in weird medicine face masks. So if you go to the store wearing one of these, you will get noticed, but it won't be in a good way because you'll look like a dang nut. But anyway, one of our listeners does these kinds of things for a living, and there you go. So we've got a few people out there with those things.

More of a collector's item than anything else, but if you want it, you can have it. Go to Dr.steve.com. And that's while supplies last. We have a few of those left. And don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbils.net. I say Dr. Scott, and you may go, who? Yeah, he used to be on the show. It seems like it was a million years ago.

It does. It really does. It's really just been, what, 12 weeks, 13 weeks? About that, yes. 14 weeks. That's a long time, though. And anyway,

did I read this letter from Hugh last time? We had a letter from a guy, and he said, Thank you, dear Dr. Steve, thanks for bringing your better half on the show. To me, she sounds like her mom, Big Joe took a limitless pill. Oh, I did? Okay, I couldn't remember if I did.

Well, somebody said that... I can't imagine her eating a fried bologna sandwich, but I bet as a kid she did. Yes, I did read that. For people who don't know, this is Big Joe. We're medicine contains mature contents that may be offended to some listeners. Let me run. What did they wrong in? You know, your old's house is like another.

You know, what was funny to me was that people wrote to me saying, we can't understand anything that she's saying. I know, and it's no problem for us. No. And so being from the South, when Honey Boo Boo was on, it used to make me laugh that her or what was her name, mom's name, Mama June or whatever. Yeah.

And they'd just be talking and there'd be subtitles. It's like, why are they putting subtitles? under there. They sound totally normal to me. But to everybody else, it just sounds like nap, nap, nap, nap, nap, nap. Mama June's got a crack issue now. What? Allegedly, right?

No, I'm pretty sure. Because a friend of mine actually watches the show. There's still a show. There's still a show. But it's more about Mama June, and Mama June got into cahoots with some ne'er-do-well boyfriend. What? And, yeah, and so she's got, like, this drug habit. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, well, okay, TMZ. Okay, this is according to TMZ. Which is true, always. Mama June arrested for crack cocaine. Aw. And when I went to visit my friend, she made me watch the show a couple of times, and Mama June wouldn't show up for her court date. Oh, no, you have to show up for your court date.

Yeah. Well, she didn't in that episode. Poor old Mama June. I don't know anything about it. I've never, well, okay, I knew, I've watched it enough that I knew that they ran subtitles, but I never followed that show. The one I liked was Monster Hunters. Because now those guys were people we know.

And I don't mean we actually, in real life, know those people, but the archetypes of those people. Was it called Monster Hunters? Mountain Monster Hunters or something? Mountain Mountain something, Hunter. Yes, and our boys adored that show also. And they're good contraptions, but they, you know. They would make every show, they would make a contraption to capture these monsters, and they were big on Bigfoot.

But then one time they were going to find, they made a trap for the Chupacabra, right? The devil dog. And they built it, and they, oh, there's something going on up there. there's something going on and they went running after it and then they found that the the contraption that they made

was all busted up and their reasoning was or their excuse was that Bigfoot let it out. That was a great show. Oh my God, it was the greatest. I mean,

I was going to say you can't make that stuff up except that's all they were doing was making up stuff. And they would go to counties around this area. Yes. And so, you know, they are our neighbors.

Yes. Oh, no, we know these people. Yes, we do. They're elusive, remember? Yeah. Oh, that was your buddy. Yeah, Pickle. Yeah.

Tacey had a friend, and his name seriously was Pickle. Nicest guy, and he was very idiosyncratic. He was a big fan of Bigfoot and Bigfoot shows. And also The Mermaid. Oh, was he? See, I never talked about that. But I remember saying, Pickle, if there was a Bigfoot out there, wouldn't we not, why haven't we found one? And his answer was, well, Bigfoot's pretty elusive.

That was so you can't argue with that. So we didn't. How can I trust you, Will? I'm trustworthy. Oh, that's not good times. Yeah. So anyway, old pickle. Well, a couple of stories in the news.

COVID-19 antibodies may fade in as little as two months, study says. So what does that mean, Steve? First off, the key word is may and in as little as. In other words, they don't know. Okay. But the studies authors are saying the results caution against immunity passports, which I've been cautioning against from the beginning. Not because of this, though.

so when you get an antibody test and you just go out and get an antibody test you never were sick or maybe you were sick back in January and you didn't know and you go get the antibody test and it comes back showing IGG antibodies so there are some people that say well I've had it I can't get it the problem with that thinking is that oh and I had a friend by the way who who said, my doctor said, this was the good test, and it shows conclusively that I had it and I can't get it again, okay? And I said, send me the test that they actually did. Call the office, find out what the brand name of the test was and what it was called.

And he did, and he sent it to me. And I went to their website, the website of the manufacturer, and there on the website, it clearly said this antibody, test may cross-react with other COVID or not COVID with other non-COVID coronaviruses, you know, the more quote-unquote benign ones that cause a common colon. So there's just a lot of malarkey out there. Tons of malarkey. The way to determine whether your test, by the way, is specific for SARS-COV-2 antibodies,

is to test it against blood that was drawn maybe two years ago before this. virus even existed on this earth and that would be very easy to do and there's there are preserved specimens out there that would still have antibodies in them and if none of them show up anything then you can maybe start saying yeah this thing is probably for real so are you saying when you get blood taken they actually save some of it and store it oh well there's research labs where they've got blood that's been drawn and they're storing it for whatever reason but not specifically like your blood. No, no, no, not me. I thought that would. No, that would be great because a lot of times I'll call down if I'm on the floor and there was,

I wanted to see what the person's amphetamine level was on admission. And I called down, hey, do you all have any blood left from admission? It's like, no. You know, we, we used it and got rid of it after two days or whatever. So, and that'll vary from lab to lab. But so some of these IGG tests that are positive, I've always counseled that those antibody tests really only tell you something if you're stone cold negative. If you're stone cold negative, then you've got to be careful. If you're stone cold positive, you know, the most positive test, that doesn't mean that you're immune.

It probably does, but it doesn't necessarily mean it. So then you have to decide, well, am I going to take that risk? It's just like everything else with this virus. We just don't know. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of stuff we know. We know some stuff. But with certainty, I mean, in this world, it's hard to know much of anything with certainty, to be honest with you. One thing that drives me crazy talking to people about this is how they're like, oh, well, you're young enough.

It's not going to get you. But I don't want to get it. I don't want to be in the hospital for a week or two weeks or a month. Well, then you give it to me, and I am at high risk. I don't want, I just don't want to deal with it. So I would really prefer to not get it regardless of my age. And I don't understand why that's an okay thought. Well, I'm not worried about the virus.

It won't kill me, but it might make you pretty miserable. And it may kill you. The death rate is only approaches zero and people under 10. And that's not even exactly zero. No, it's not. And it's rising, I mean, not the death rate, but the number of cases amongst young people because they can't be nice. and polite, and they can't just... I don't know if it's that.

They just are naughty. They're just naughty. Because, you know, well, everybody's invincible at that age, I guess. Sure. There was magical thinking. When I was that age, I thought I would never die and nothing would ever happen to me. You know, so I understand that. And it is, there have been some pundits that have said, look, this rise in cases among the young is actually a good.

thing because they are less likely to die from it and that means that the older people are still staying in place and being careful and the people that aren't going to be as affected are out there living their lives and they're catching this thing but most of them are doing okay with it but you know you still see hospitalizations on the increase I'll skip to this other thing then we'll come back to this antibody thing this is from the always as accurate CNN, but they're, you know, their online presence isn't too bad. As Florida emerges from its coronavirus shutdown, the state is experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases with younger Floridians accounting for a significant number of positive tests.

So there you go, Tate. The Florida Department of Health reported an additional 3,286 cases of coronavirus on Tuesday. Now, we're recording this on Wednesday, June 24th, bringing the state total to 100,000. Medical experts have attributed the rising numbers to a combination of more testing. Of course, the more testing you do, the more cases you'll find until you get to a point of saturation. But also more social contact as businesses reopen and in recent weeks to people's participation in large group gatherings like protests and all that kind of stuff, although that's not been clearly established. Yes, the things that I read were talking about, a lot of them were talking about how the protests have actually not increased the number of virus. Yeah, I haven't seen a whole lot of stuff on that.

But going to bars has. Yes. So when I've seen a lot of the protests, people are wearing masks. I've seen that too. Which is interesting because, you know, if you don't want to be identified, you know, wear a mask. You know, I went to the bank today, and the lobby is closed, so I had to go through the teller thing. I had to get into my safe deposit box, and I had to wear a mask. You have to wear a mask to go to the bank now, whereas before, if I'd walked in there with a thing, like maybe I said this before,

they'd be putting the blue dye in a bag and handing me a bag of money and trying to get me out of there. So it's sort of interesting is topsy-turvy world. taste. It is topsy-turvy world. And I don't understand why, I do understand why we're reopening because we can't shut everything down. People need to work. And we have to reopen. But the cases are going crazy and it's just, it's making me nervous. Yeah. So, well, let's just think about it. I'm looking at total hospitalized patients cumulative over time in Florida because they're not reporting current hospitalized patients nor new cases. But I can infer it from, so on 623, they had had 13,614 people admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 since the beginning of this.

And I go back to 622, it was 13,407. And so there was about 207 people admitted overnight for COVID-19 in the whole state of Florida. Whereas the day before that was 325 and then 227, and then 62. So this is sort of a linear increase. It's a little bumpy, but it's mostly linear. The slopes stay in about the same. They're getting about 100 to 200 new admissions every day. now the other thing that we want to look at is new deaths so new deaths are completely flat the curve if you look at the 20 day smooth moving average and by the way if you want to play with these numbers go to our friend daniel stout he's been on the show multiple times go to covid dot stout labs dot com and you can play with all these numbers and do this simple moving average and the bolinger bands and all the stuff that we do

talk about on the situation reports on YouTube. Anyway, new deaths, staying about the same. Now, they had a spike yesterday, but this could be just reporting. They had 55 deaths

on the 16th, and they had 67 deaths on the 23rd. So we'll just have to watch this over time, but I'm not seeing an alarming trend in new deaths yet, but the next two weeks will really tell the tale all right

all right and we're going to South Kakalaki in a few days and they're on the list they're on my list of states places to not go to I mean we're doing it too I know

well we're going to be careful we talked about it last time we don't have to go over it again we're planning on going there well we do need to go over it again but for our own for us okay so we'll do it for us. Yeah. Well, not today, not on the show, but later, I'm sure we'll talk about it a million times and rationalize how it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we won't be working, although I'll still

be on 24-7 phone call, but it's still, I won't be able to actually do anything because I can say, hey, I'm in South Carolina. I'll find somebody to help you do X, Y, or Z. Although I remember one year I had to do an ethics committee meeting while sitting at the bar next to the pool, which was a pretty nice way to do it. And it lasted so long, I chalked it up to an extra, to an actual day of work. I didn't take PTO that day. I remember that. So it wasn't so bad.

But, yeah, so we're going to shelter in place. We're going to get Publix to deliver our groceries. And, you know, we'll maybe go out a couple of times. Our favorite restaurant down there at Sullivan's Island, by the way, is everyone's favorite restaurant. This isn't sticking her neck out. is the obstinate daughter. Now, if you've ever been there, they have this thing called... Can you please stop bullshitting me on?

They have this thing called... God damn, this is about as boring as sick of... Okay, okay, okay, okay. I mean, finish the sentence. So this, they make this thing called braised short ribs with ricotta Nyoki, right? That's what I get every time. It's sick. It's so good.

But if you've ever been there and wondered, can you make it at home, the answer is an emphatic yes. And I have, I created, well, I mushed a couple of recipes together to recreate it. And actually, I think ours was even slightly better because I did it bone in where they don't. And it was outstanding. PA John, I made it for them for what Christmas was it? New Year's. Was it New Year's? P.A. John, who never really says much nice about anything, to really be honest about it,

said that was one of the best meals he's ever had in his life. He kept talking about flavors, remember? I know. I know. You know, anyway, the cacophony of flavors in my mouth is just, you know, it's like, shut up, John, cacophony. It was like... I think he called it an explosion. Yeah. Those colors are so vibrant. That was double vasectomy turd, as I recall, at his wedding shower, talking about some ceramic bowls that they got it.

Oh, these are wonderful. The colors are so vibrant. It's just, shut up. Just say thank you. Anyway, yeah, so if you want the recipe, email me, and I'll send it to you. It's long and it's involved. It takes you a while, and it's handmade yokey made out of ricotta cheese, but it is absolutely worth the effort. it if you want to impress somebody.

If you want to totally get you some. Right, Tase? That's right, Steve. Okay. I'm not sure if it worked for you. I didn't. That's okay. All right.

Well, let me see. We've just gone downhill. This is a terrible show. That's our new drop, by the way. I'm going to have to work that. It actually sounds like we're saying that. It doesn't really work. Well, it's true.

But one of our listeners cut that up and sent it to us. Let's hear it again. We've just gone downhill. This is a terrible. terrible show. This is terrible. I think what I'm going to do is just isolate out. This is a terrible show.

Okay. You do whatever you want. Okay, thank you. All right. Let's get back to the antibody story, and then we'll take some of your questions. It says, as the world grapples with ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a new study suggests that antibodies, the proteins produced by the immune system that can grant protection against reinfection may fade in as little as two months after infection and certain people who have recovered from the virus. So now all of a sudden it's not

only may, but it's just certain people. The study was conducted in China and published in nature medicine. Specifically, the study's authors found that people with COVID-19 who never developed symptoms, oh, so it's not everybody, it's the asymptomatic people, may see their antibodies fade more quickly than those who tested positive for the virus, and also came down with this telltale symptoms. Well, that makes sense because you are, the symptoms mostly come from the body's response to the virus, not so much from the virus itself. So you would think that the more symptomatic you are, the heftier the immune response is.

And in fact, the people who are nearly dying or who do die from this, they don't die just really from the virus. They're dying from the immune systems over reaction to the presence of the virus. Hence, last week's discussion about dexomethazone, which decreases mortality by decreasing the body's overreaction to the presence of the virus and decreases the damage to the kidneys and other organs, particularly blood vessels. Anyway, the study, though small and with limitations, uh-oh, well, now this headline says COVID-19s may fade in as little as two months. study says. It's not a completely misleading clickbait title, but I'm getting less and less worried about this as the time goes on. The study, though small and with limitations, provides greater insight to a topic that mystifies scientists examining this new coronavirus, SARS-COV-2.

Most people who have recovered from COVID-19 develop antibodies, but the extended duration of that protection remains unknown. We do notice that if we give people convalescent serum, In other words, plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 and give that to people who are sick with this, they tend to get better. We don't have perfect data on it yet, but it certainly conveys some protection. And just because your antibodies fade does not mean that you're not immune or that you can't mount. And let me back that up. That you can't mount an effective immune response because the B cells in your. bone marrow and circulating that produce antibodies can do so on a moment's notice.

And you don't have to have a huge tighter of antibodies floating around for those things to still be activated if the virus comes back. So there are all these cases, particularly in China, because they had it earlier than we did. So they've had more long-term data where people tested negative. and then later on tested positive for the virus. Not a single one of those people were sick. They just tested positive for the virus. So ultimately, we don't care, well, we care, but we don't care so much that you can be

reinfected by the virus. What we do care about is, are you going to get sick? Are you going to spread it to other people? Are you going to be hospitalized and are you going to die? If none of those things are true, then just simply being reinfected and then the body takes a day to clear it rather than, you know, prevents the infection altogether, who cares, you know? So that's, I'm just waiting for you to say something. Oh, I've got nothing to say. Sorry.

It's okay. So researchers compared the immune response with 37 asymptomatic people diagnosed with COVID-19 to 37-scentmatic people diagnosed with COVID-19 to 37-scentmatic. symptomatic patients in the Wanzhu District of China. 40% became negative for antibodies early on in their recovery compared to just 13% of people who develop symptoms. So the asymptomatic patients also reported lower levels of cytokines. We've talked about cytokine storm. That's when you have too many cytokines. These are small proteins released by different cells in the body in response to infection.

and basically mediate the inflammatory response. And so the data suggests that asymptomatic people had a weaker immune response to the virus. It doesn't mean that they can get sick again. So we'll see. We'll know much more when we have a lot more long-term data. All right? So I'm not so worried about this yet.

Okay, now, there are some things that you can get multiple times. And there are other things that you can't, you know, for example. I mean, go ahead. So like when you get a cold, there are so many different strains of colts. Right. Who the hell? So you don't even know. Okay. You don't even know.

There's adenaviruses. There's pecornavirus, rhinoviruses, and then there's coronaviruses and all these things. And we don't test for them because there's no treatment for them. And it's mainly where there's no treatment for them because nobody cares about a cold very much. It is interesting to note, however, that even the benign coronaviruses, the other strains that we think of as being the quote-unquote good coronaviruses compared to the SARS and MERS and SARS-C-O-V-2 coronaviruses, those cause deaths too. There's probably about 10,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States every year, but they just get lost in the noise with

all the influenza and heart attacks and strokes and pneumonia's and stuff. So they're not as benign as one would think. Likewise, herpes. just take a quick leap. Herpes Symplex 2, people think of it as the, quote, unquote, bad herpes because it infects your junk. Whereas Herpes Symplex 1, well, you just get lip herpes from that, so that's the good one. But the one that causes herpes encephalitis infection of the brain, which can cause horrible encephalopathy or mental status changes and even death, is Herpes Symplex 1. Oh. And if you think about it, it's proximity to the brain.

Exactly. It's got a lot farther to travel from your jungle area than to get to the brain. Although, let us not forget that just because herpes simplex, one, prefers the lip, it will also live in the jungle area. It just doesn't like it as much, and it won't be as virulent. You won't get as many outbreaks, and the ones that you get won't be as severe. Likewise, Herpes Symplex 2 will live on the lip, but the same caveats apply. Okay. All right?

I'm hearing our Life 360 go off. I mean, I don't know what's going on at our house. That means our son has probably left the house. Anyway. All right. I would just pass studies on SARS and MERS, two related coronaviruses that have led to prior outbreaks and people have found their antibodies last for at least a year. In comparison, this study suggests antibody levels of the new virus.

may drop much more quickly. Well, maybe it was, how many patients did we say it was? Less than 100? 37. 37 people. Let's not get all excited. Okay? That's not how science works.

All right. It is interesting finding, but it's in no way conclusive, and we will know the answer to this before it's over. Okay. All right. Very good. You ready to take some questions? Yeah, let's do it.

Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. That's right. That means you, Tase. That means you. Oh, this one, here, you can answer this one. Whoops. Uh-oh. Oh, here we go.

Well, we better talk for a minute because this poor old Mac. When we go to the beach, by the way, I'm taking this Mac in to see if they're going to speed up. Yeah, that's CQ. Anyway, this is your new in-the-field reporter. Gotting a question for you about medical stuff. Okay. It's Stacey DeLoch, everyone. Bying into the bid, I guess.

Read a study the other day that said something about why men don't go to the doctor as near as often as women do. Actually, about 33% less than women. Is it that we're just embarrassed to go to the doctor and ask about stuff? Or what do you think it is? Why are we more ashamed or embarrassed to go talk to somebody about something? Just tears about it. 73, old man. See you.

7.3 and 88's good buddy. Oh, that's CB lingo, sorry. 73 means best wishes in ham radio lingo tastes. Oh, good. Good to know. But the CB guys used to, when I was on there all the time, go three's and eight, too. Do you remember when you tried to get me a ham radio license? No, I do not.

Remember this? Yeah, it didn't work out well. Well, it was before the age of cell phone. Do you remember when you had me have one in my minivan? I sort of vaguely remember that. Did I have you have one in there, or was it just in there? No, no, you put it in there. Why did we do that?

Why did I do that? Because you wanted me to get my... Ham radio license? And I had to go to a class once. It was horrible. Well, let me tell you something. Back in the day before cell phones, ham radio saved my butt so many times, because I always,

had crappy cars, and they'd break down, and they'd break down the worst places. I'd get on the ham radio and say, hey, my car broke down, and they'd come, listen to this. They'd come get me. And I remember one guy took us to the car dealer to get it fixed. Are you going to go investigate? Is that what you're doing? Okay. I'll just tell everybody.

To the car dealership and dropped us off, took us to his house, fed us lunch, took us back. It was awesome. That was in Asheville, North Carolina. And so the ham radio thing, we really did make a big difference. But the cell phone and the internet killed ham radio for a lot of people. It's still fun, though. If you want a cool hobby where you can just do stuff

that has less meaning now than it did, It is part of, you know, during disaster, you know, if you have a disaster where there's a hurricane or a tornado and the cell towers are down and there's no power, ham radio still can be a great help in coordinating disaster relief. And they still will, there are these things called aries, area something, something and emergency something. And they'll have these drills where they'll have a disaster and then they'll coordinate and they'll form these ad hoc networks of people. And it's really cool. If you want to do something civic-minded that's pretty technical, ham radio is a cool thing. Plus, they have all these digital modes now.

So you can hook it up to your computer. You don't have to talk to people. You just get on your computer and talk to people. Plus, it is quite the challenge to try to bounce a signal off the moon and talk to somebody on the other side of the country, that's pretty effing cool when you think about it. But it is really uber geeky type of hobby at that point. Yeah. I heard all this 15 years ago when you tried to get me to do it.

Actually, it was more like 18 years ago. Well, yeah. Okay. So anyway, that was just in case something bad happened and your cell phone. I don't think, did we have cell phones then? Yes. Oh, we did. Well, then it was stupid.

But anyway. So let's get back to Stacey's question. So what keeps men from seeking care? And when you ask men why they don't get routine medical care, like annual physicals, men a lot of times will report that they have a busy schedule or something. So researchers looked into this and they discovered there are some common themes popping up around this. and one of those in Harvard and Rutgers published a study that showed men who self-report traditional views on masculinity. That's me, Tase, are also less likely to get consistent health care. There appears to be a correlation between holding the belief that men should be strong and self-reliant.

We all should be strong and self-reliant. I don't see that as a bad thing. But slow to show emotion and resisting routine exams. That's interesting. Many men also report a fear of diagnosis. I don't see how that's different for men or women. More than 20% of responders said being nervous to find out what could be wrong was a roadblock to scheduling an annual exam. So I do see people who are in denial.

They've got a symptom and they just continue to deny, deny, deny, hoping it will go away. And then sometimes they show up and it's been too late. You say, well, what took you so long to come? you've had these symptoms for two years. Well, I didn't want to know what it was. Yes. But if you're feeling that way, by the way, you want to know what it is early. If you think it's, listen, if it's something that's bad enough that you don't want to know what the answer is, then you do want to know.

Because if you, if you, any, most of the time it's going to be cancer that people are worried about like that where they're having these vague symptoms. Cancer caught early. is curable almost all the time. If you do your colonoscopy like you're supposed to and you've got a cancerous polyp in there or a pre-cancerous polyp, a lot of times they'll just go in and snip it off

and then it's done. You're done. You don't have to do anything else. But if you wait until it becomes outside of the colon and now some of those cells have gotten into your bloodstream and set up residency in your liver that's not curable now, you know, with our present technology, it will be someday, but it isn't now. So anytime you feel like I don't want to go to the doctor because I don't know, that's a signal to yourself, I need to disobey this command from that part of my brain and just go, you know, vaginal bleeding. when you're post-menopausal.

That's not your period coming back. Something going on. Maybe just a polyp. A benign polyp on your cervix, but it may be endometrial cancer. So go get it checked out. How long would you say you needed to wait after menopause? So like periods can come. Would you wait?

How do you know if you're through menopause? Say you haven't had a period for a year and one pops up. Yeah, then I would get that checked. Okay. I would. Yeah. GYNs may disagree with me, but I'm pretty conservative on that. It never hurts to go to your GYN, say, I hadn't had a period in a month.

I'm having one now. Check me out. Particularly, of course, if it's more than scant bleeding. If you have a day where it's just spotting and you don't see it again, you can probably not have to run to the gynecologist and get that checked out. But particularly if you're having heavy flow after that long of a time, you could have an ovarian cyst, I guess. You could have an end of cervical polyp.

It's really easy to get this doped out and figure out what it is. And again, caught early, these things are curable if it's something bad. Okay. Okay. And, you know, we haven't talked about our friend, Dr. Kay, who used to be on this show. And this is probably a good time to talk about it. Dr. Kay, for the longtime listeners, was a chiropractor who listened to the show. show and she stopped being on the show when she got breast cancer and she fought it really hard

for a long-ass time and recently succumbed to her disease and it was very sad for everybody and she you know she was she was here so much back then she was on our logo so but it was years and years ago people don't remember her that you know are more newer listeners but anyway So we're very sad about the passing of our friend, Dr. Kay, and she was just a good, nice, sweet person. She would tell you, though, that she waited too long to get something, you know, the lump looked at because she had it for at least six months before she got it checked. And it was one of those situations where, oh, it'll be fine, you know.

Yeah. So, yeah, try, if you have a symptom, to, in summary, if you have a symptom and you don't want to know the answer because you're worried at something bad, that's a signal you need to go get it checked out. All right. So men are twice as likely to wait

more than two years between doctor visits. In fact, all the reasons that we talked about above and more than 40% of men don't go to the doctor at all unless they have a serious issue on their hands. So there is this organization called the USPS STF, and they look at all the data and decide what good data is out there for screening. And there is some really good data, and it's not that much. You don't have to go and get that executive physical like my dad used to get,

with the treadmill and the EKG and the colonoscopy, if it's not your time to get it, all that stuff. There's just a few things that you can do that really will impact. your longevity and not just living long, but your quality of life. One of those is obviously not smoking. Another one of those is attaining your ideal body weight, but getting screened for diabetes. If you catch diabetes early, just like cancer, it can be curable if it's type 2, but it certainly is very treatable, high blood pressure. But they'll screen you for high, how do they do that?

I check your blood pressure. I mean, this is not all crazy stuff. People I get this idea, I'm going to go get a physical, and they're just going to be pawing all over your body and doing all these invasive things. It's not really that way. You can get away with just a few things and really improve your quality of life. Plus, after the Affordable Care Act, one of the great things about the Affordable Care Act is pretty much all insurances now have to pay for yearly health maintenance screening. So go get those things done. okay is that like blood work and yeah blood work but you know a yearly physical we would call that so you just go get your blood pressure check they might do a little bit of blood maybe they'll check your prostate and do a couple you know check some pulses and your legs can you know compared to your arms and some stuff like that just real simple things that can make a huge difference and if you're at risk for cancer getting you're

you screened for those things, and if they find it, good. You know, if you're more likely to die from something and you know it, if you're at high risk of, sorry, these damn allergies this year, they're the worst. No, well, we haven't had rain in a long time. Oh, God, is that, yeah, now that's what it is, isn't it? I just feel like there's just dust in my whole upper respiratory tract. Anyway, if you're at high risk for something, you're less likely to die from it, as long as you do the follow-up that you're supposed to do. People with, there's a disease called familial polyposes, and these people have tons of polyps in their colon.

They're at high risk of getting colon cancer. Guess what? They're less likely to die from it because they get a colonoscopy every year. Okay. Makes sense. Yeah. All right. So anyway, all right.

Hi, Dr. Steve. This is Hannah from Minnesota. Hello, Hannah. How are you? Good, thank you. Good. I hope you and pays are well. We're doing fine things.

I just have a quick question for you. Do they intubate patients when you're getting your wisdom teeth taken out? If so, then that answers my question. But if not, then how the hell do you not lose your airway when you get sedated for your wisdom teeth removal. Uh-huh. Love to hear your answer. I hope you guys are staying safe.

Thanks for the show and for the laugh. Bye-bye. Thank you. I'm not sure what anybody's laughing at on the show, unless they're laughing at us. That could be it. Just like this lady. All right.

That's an excellent question. And it actually reflects a little bit of just a maybe a somewhat malformed image of what they do when you have your wisdom teeth removed. Have you ever had yours removed? I don't even know. I don't have any. You just, you never grew any?

I just don't have any. No. What kind of dang inbraid are you? I don't know. You're from the center of tranquility and consanguinity. I think your mom and your dad may have been related. Well, I wonder what side of the family that comes from. I don't know.

Did your mom have wisdom teeth? I don't know. She has her own teeth, though, right? You can ask her when she comes over tonight. I'll be drinking. Oh, my God. Okay. Well, anyway, so I had my wisdom teeth removed.

I was wide awake when I had them removed. and they just did a, you know, a dental block or whatever. And what was weird about mine was apparently my roots were pretty deep. And I had all these nurse or dental hygiene students watching this MDDDS do. So he was a medical doctor and a dentist at the same time. And I got it done free. Because I was at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and if you were a student, you could go. And as long as you let them teach stuff, they would do it at a discount of price.

I think I got mine for free. And so he numbed me up. And then he's in there, and he's like, oh. And you could hear him grunning going, like that. And my mouth's wide open. And I see these dental students, and they're all going, ew, ew, like that. And it's like, that's not what I want to be seeing when someone's got a wrench in my mouth. But you can breathe.

You can still, even if they occluded your whole mouth, you can breathe through your nose. So like with our son, but he was put to sleep. So, yes. Now, he had what's called conscious sedation. So there is conscious sedation, and then there's general anesthesia. So conscious sedation, you're just out and goofy, but you can still breathe. Your breathing mechanism still works. You may even be able to talk.

you just won't remember it when it's over. They'll do that for colonoscopies because you could ask the same question. They do sedation for those. Upper endoscopies where they're actually sticking a fiber optic scope down your, you know, down your throat

into your stomach. So is it propoil? Can be. The three biggies are medazalam. All I had in my head was the trade name, which is Versed. Propofal, which was Michael Jackson's Magic Milk.

And then I think they'll also sometimes in the outpatient setting use fentanyl, but I'm not sure about that. But those are the two big ones, are Verset and Propheaval. And I can attest, having had it done to me, that you don't know what the hell's happening. I remember my last upper endoscopy, because I'll have anesthesia for that. I don't have anesthesia for my colonoscopies. And they laid me on my side. They said, we're going to give you some medicine and just, you know, we'll get to you

in a second. I said, oh, this stuff isn't even working. This is going to be bad. And I'm thinking, what in the hell am I going to do when they stick this thing down my throat, but it was already done? I was thinking those thoughts after they were completed with the procedure. There was no sense of time. passing, no sense of me being asleep. You know, when you wake up from being

asleep, you kind of think, well, I slept a long time or I only slept for a couple hours. You may be wrong, but you have a sense that you were asleep. With this stuff, there's nothing like that. When it's in your system, it's almost as if you just put your brain in neutral and it's still functioning, but then it doesn't re-engage again until it comes out of your system and then everything reboots and you're just right where you were when you left off. So yes, our son had it. He was not

intubated. They just had oxygen on them and they watch you to make sure that your oxygen saturation stays elevated. Every once in a while you have to intubate somebody emergently, but that's usually because there's a problem. You know, they're aspirating during the procedure or something like that.

It's interesting. That was a good question. It's an excellent question. So what do they do? Just rip them out? Just take a wrench and just rip it out? Well, they have these special wrenches that when you squeeze them, it does up and down motion. So you're not having to go in there and grab it like you would with a monkey wrench and then just sort of lift up. Because as soon as it came out, you would hit the upper tooth, right?

It doesn't work that way. These are special wrenches. They taught us nothing about dental stuff in medical school. So if a dentist wants to call in and talk about the mechanics of wisdom tooth removal, hell, we could have our across the street. neighbor come in. He's the oral surgeon that actually operated on both Liam and me. So maybe we should do

that sometime. Let's ask him to come in. Okay. We'll have to record it like midnight because I think his schedule is insane. It's ridiculous. Guy lives across the street. I see him twice a year. It's right around Christmas if he puts out

any decorations, which the last couple of years he's had somebody do it. And then Fourth of July, he'll shoot off some fireworks every once in a while. We never see him otherwise. The only time I see him is when I go to the office. When he's on his way to work. Tooth pulled, or if he's on his way to work.

All right. We've got about two minutes. Hey, Dr. C. with me, Randy, from Austin. Hey, man. Long-time listener, first-time caller. And I have a question about femosis or the tightening of the foreskin. Yes. I never knew that this was really a problem until I got a little bit older in life

and realize, you know, it was a problem. That's where you just drive it. And I'm trying to see what is the best way I can deal with it. I just see some stretching techniques. And unfortunately, during this whole pandemic, this is the one year I decided to forget to sign up for health insurance. Oh, no. No health insurance.

Have fun moses, trying to see what I can do. Maybe there's a cream I can buy over the counter without a prescription. or other stretching, or maybe even if it has to be circumcision. Thanks for the information. She put this on the podcast. I ended my series at film subscription a long time ago. Okay. Thank you.

No problem. So this is where GVAC would have tried to get me in trouble with the intactivists back then in the day. He'd love to do that on Twitter and on here. Say, well, Dr. Steve, you're in favor of wholesale circumcision for all infant boys. I'm like, shut up. God, I got into it with them one time, and I'm on their side. That's the crazy thing. I'm just not a maniac.

Someone had simply asked me, what is the American Academy of Pediatric Stand on Circumcision? So people ask me questions like this all the time. It's just an informational question. There was no opinion. No opinion of mine. I just went and found the link and put it up there. And apparently that set off, you know, alarm bells in the intactivist community.

And they just jumped all over me. And it's like, you know, I've talked to my show dozens of times that I think that it is a cosmetic procedure that's done without the consent of the patient. And, you know, I don't have any problem if you want to do it. And really, I don't have a problem with it. The data shows most people will not be benefited nor harmed. there will be a very small number of people that will benefit from it in the sense that they, you know, they won't have a, they won't later on develop a fymosis, which is what we're going to talk about with this guy, or there's a slight decrease in risk of HPV mediated cancers like penile cancer. I think hygiene when you're elderly too is much more difficult.

Talk about that. You were a CPT, right? Yes. And I would go and bathe people in their houses in college. And I had a lot of older men. And it really gave them heck that they weren't circumcised. And I would have to clean it. And it would be, it would hurt them. You know. And so I think that's why I wanted to have our children circumcised. So, just because of that reason. And it is, I mean, parents do have the, you know, the right to make that decision. It's just... Are you going to get in trouble again? No, it's okay.

They have the right to make that decision. That's not questionable. Whether they should exercise that is what's arguable, where they should exercise that right. But there are some people who will be harmed from having a circumcision as well. Yes. But that's also, when you look at this bell curve, both of those things are way, way, way off to the edges of the bell curve. You know, everybody else is in the middle and they'll be fine either way.

So, but one of the issues with having a foreskin is sometimes you can get this thing called fimosis. Now, if you remember Sam Roberts, who was the person who videotaped me, when I first met Sam he was running the video camera when I stuck my index finger up Pat Duffy's ass to check his prostate live on the air

and I remember asking Sam I don't mind if you videotape this just please don't get my face and he didn't so he was a very good young little feller and now he's the professional broadcaster that he is but he has talked multiple times about his circumcision

as an adult and his fimosis was so bad and fimosis just narrowing of the foreskin so that you can't retract it his was so bad that when he would pee his foreskin would balloon up like it would fill up with urine

like a balloon and then it would just sort of dribble at the end so he had to have it done this wasn't something that you could fix with some home treatment and he said it was the most painful thing that he's ever had done he was laid out for multiple days, and it was horrible.

Now, that was one of the arguments that we use, that if you have to do it as an adult, yeah, you might choose to do it, but you're not going to do it because the pain is so bad. It's not really sort of an equal choice. Well, do I force a kid to have it when he's a kid or let him do it as an adult? Because once you get to being an adult,

and the pain is so bad, nobody's going to do it. So it's not really a real choice. But that was then. Our buddy Jefferson the Scheister had a circumcision. We talked about it on the air, so I'm not speaking out of school. He played softball the next day because they've got a new way of doing it, apparently. They stitched his up. And he said he didn't have any pain at all.

None. So that is interesting. So that does kind of take away that argument that you need to do it when they're a kid because they won't do it as an adult. I think Jefferson has an amazing pain tolerance, Because do you remember that time we were at the beach and his foot was so sunburned? And he was like, I don't feel it. I don't even feel it. Oh, maybe.

Maybe he just doesn't feel pain. Maybe he's one of those people. The worst sunburned I've ever seen in my life. Was that when they got married? I believe so, yes. Better than a year after. He and his now wife just showed up to go to the beach with us and just announced we had no idea. We're going to get married tomorrow in Charleston at the gazebo at Battle Park.

And it's like, okay, I guess we're planning a wedding. It was fun, though. It was fun. It was special. Old Jarsen. See, when you're from the part of Tennessee, he's from, if your name is Jefferson, it's Jerson. Jerson. But, yeah, so he had it, and that kind of took that away a little bit, that argument that you need to do it as a baby.

But anyway, so if you have sort of a moderate, mild to moderate phymosis, where it's just painting. to retract it. What can you do? Well, you can't have a circumcision. Or you can go and get a novoglan, N-O-V-O-G-L-A-N. It's a gentle foreskin stretcher kit. I have not been able to find data on this. Or the cost. What's the cost? Well, let's see. It says risk-free, 365-day money-back guarantee. Wow, that's something. Comes in a discrete white plane mailer bag. Okay. uh let's see um let me see if i can get a cost on this okay it says fix it now i'm going to go to that link and see how much it is oh it's not bad 140 142 bucks so it looks like it's little balloon things that you stick in there oh okay i see what it is it comes with a syringe

and um little balloony things and you stick those on the end of the syringe and you stick it in your foreskin, and then you blow up the balloons. There's videos here, too. I wonder what the efficacy. We need to see if they have some data on efficacy on here. They've got a bunch of testimonials, but what do we know about the testimonials? You can cherry pick those. If you have a 5% placebo effect, so 5% of people will get a benefit, even though you're giving somebody a sugar pill.

I'm not saying that this is a placebo. But if you had something like that and you treated 1,000 people, how many would achieve a benefit taste at 5%? I'm not doing math. Okay, well, 5% of 100 would be 5, so 5% of 1,000 would be 50, right? Okay, I'm not doing it. So you sent out a survey and you get 950 saying this stuff is crap, but you would get 50 people saying,

well, this is, yeah, this worked for me. So you just publish their testimonials, those 50. And now you've just page and page and page, 50 testimonials saying that, so there is a selection bias there. And when you read them, you go, wow, this stuff must be awesome. So that's one way that people can mess you up on this stuff.

So I'm looking on PubMed.gov, which you can do. And I didn't find that, but I did find an article from International Urology called Long-Term Efficiency of Skin Stretching and a Topical Corticoid cream for unretractable foreskin. But this was in pre-pubertal boys. But then what they said was the study showed that local application of a potent corticoid cream, that's just steroid cream. and skin stretching is a safe, simple, and effective long-term treatment for all types of unretractable foreskin in pre-puberable boys.

The efficiency of the treatment was not related to the age of the patient or the types of unretractable's foreskin. So let's see if we can find it in adult. So I'm going to now search with the keyword adult and see what comes up. And then it comes up with the same article. So let's see. Found one result. Oh, no, this is not the same article. Okay, so comparison of foreskin revision and circumcision in, okay, let me see.

Nope, this is not an article that we're interested in. So I don't have anything on adults, and I don't have anything on this novo gland. So if you do decide to use it, it doesn't look like it would do any harm unless you tore your foreskin, which would suck. that would hurt. So follow their instructions and ask them if you do decide to order it if they've got any data on efficacy. And then if you find out something, send me something. I just can't do it on the fly. But anyway, all right. Could have probably done it ahead of time, but I didn't know that we'd get to this question today. So I'll do some more studying. Okay.

All right? You got anything else? Nope. Well, we can't forget Rob Sprantz or Robert Kelly. Greg Hughes or Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, Lewis Johnson, Paul Off Charsky, Eric Nagel, Roland Campo, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinschmidt, Ron Bennington, and Fizz Watley, whose support of this show has never gone unappreciated, particularly Bob Kelly, if this bidet thing works out, because he was our go-to person for the bidet. And he gave us a lot of advice.

him sick when I asked him if you went to the bathroom and then I went to the bathroom if your ass juice would get squirted up your ass yeah and and he's like yeah Bobby is pretty easy to make sick which is fun that's a legitimate question it is a legitimate question you want to know well I don't have to restate the problem you I think you stated it pretty eloquently but if there's any cross-contamination and doesn't seem to it unless somehow you, you know, accidentally defecated on the tube itself. So we're going to have to look at that and see how likely that would be. I don't think very likely it's set back pretty far.

But that would be gross. Now, my mom had one that was separate. She had a toilet, and then right next to it was the bidet. So she would get up from the toilet and then just transfer to the bidet and do her business that way. That's the fancy con. Yeah, she was fancy. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel. SiriusXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern,

on demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. And go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, wash your stupid hands, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses, your face mask and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Goodbye, everyone.

I think so. Thanks.