Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 414 - Cliff's Best-of #1

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

Taking a break from COVID-19, Dr Steve and Tacie are on hiatus; Cliff Andrews made this compilation of calls from previous shows! See you in 2 weeks! PLEASE VISIT: 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

It's the best of Weird Medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I am your guest host, Cliff D. Andrews, and Dr. Steve is out for the week, so I'm just going to be here taking this place and bringing you some of the best clips I could find for your entertainment purposes. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you have a question that you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider, or if you just can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 3, 4, 7. 766-4-3-2-3. That's 347 Poohhead. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine and Dr. Scott WM. Visit our website at Dr. Steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy or go to our new merch store at CafePress.com slash Weird Medicine.

Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt and don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your doctor, nurse, practitioner, physician, assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory sciences, registered dietitian, or whatever the hell. Let's get it going, right? So for today, I picked out some clips about blood pressure, going vegan, penis pills, and whatever the hell, a plug delivery.

You're listening to Weird Medicine. Hey, Dr. Steve, it's Nick from Kentucky. I was diagnosed with low testosterone three or four years ago probably low vitamin D, low B12 and I've been on injections, I've been on Android gel, I've been on testum gel, nothing seems to work.

They had sent me to an endocrinologist, but they actually ended up firing the one that we had here, Luttle. so they have put me to a lady they have filling in for an endocrinologist and she went down a checklist for chronic fatigue because they can't figure out why I'm so tired all the time and she went through everything on the list everything checked out I don't know how many three letter codes

that they check my blood work for but my question is And at the end, she came up with the fact that metaphrins, if I'm saying that right in my urine, were too high. But they couldn't test it because of my metoprol blood pressure medicine. It was increasing those, and they wanted me to go off of it. But my family doctor won't approve that. Do you have any suggestions on what I could do or how I could fix that? Thanks. Yeah. Okay. So this is more, okay, what he's talking about is urine metanaphrens. And that's a breakdown of epinephrine. And he's right. What they're looking for are, you know, things like fiochromachyton. So don't worry about what all that is, because this is not really an issue of us diagnosing what his problem is. It's an issue of him communicating with his primary care physician.

Feeling like shit. And first off, he's complaining of fatigue. They're saying, well, your metanephyrins might be elevated, but we can't check that until you come off your metoprolol. Metroprolol, my friend, is a beta blocker that one of its main side effects is fatigue. Right. It's a blood pressure medication. So think medications.

Right. So I would petition the physician to consider changing you to something else because There's all kinds of other blood pressure medications. If he or she won't do it, have the endocrinologist call them and have them fight it out. And when you get off of that and onto an ACE inhibitor or some other medication, and I don't know your situation. So beta blocker may be the perfect thing for you. But you may find that that fatigue goes away.

I had a case a million years ago of impotence that went completely. completely went away when the patient was taken off their beta block. Right. So that was one of the happiest patients you could ever imagine. So just always think drugs, and let's look at that first and then go from there. Okay, we're completely out of time. And check yourself for sleep. Yep.

Yeah. There's all kinds of sleep apnea, testosterone, thyroid, anemia. Those are all the things that they've got to do. You're listening to weird medicine. I keep leaving messages about weird stuff you suggest on the podcast, but not yesterday, but I think it was a day before yesterday, say Thursday, so like Monday or Tuesday, anyway. Anyway, I signed up for the noon app that you were talking about, and so far, like, yesterday was the first day that I fully logged my, you know, entire day. and the accountability really helps like yes i've tried you know my fitness pal okay what she's talking about is um i'm i'm doing that thing they're not a sponsor called noom it's an app

and um we talked about it in the show i've lost 21 22 pounds on it now and uh one of the aspects of it is uh accountability i have to i have to report every single thing I put in my mouth to my counselor. And she listens to the show. So I, you know, she got a little frustrated with me because I said, you know, she's so hot that I didn't want to, well, the feminist part of me doesn't like that it's about my looks. But it's like, no, that's a dude thing. You know, I have no shot with her. It's not that.

It's just that she's hot. She's attractive. And I don't want to admit to her that I ate a whole bag of freaking snickers. So I don't do it. So that's what she's talking about. So let's see what she had to say. I tried, you know, like, quote, unquote, accountability through, like, gyms and friends, going to the gym with me and all this other kind of stuff. And it never worked.

It did work for me going to the gym when I had a friend that I went with every single time. And that was in medical school. I had a friend who was a ham radio operator. and we, that's where we knew each other. And we would meet at the gym three times a week and encourage each other. That made a difference. And that was the one time when I was actually buff was because he and I would compete against each other, who can curl the most on the, you know, on the Nautilus curling machine.

We got to the point where, you know, we could curl the max on the Nautilus machine. And, you know, I was in really good shape. But you've got to have somebody like that. They've got to go with you every single time. So I agree with her on that. You have somebody, like, you know, actually holding you accountable for... Oh, anyway, yes, I agree. Accountability is huge.

That's what, for me, that's what I needed. Because before that, I could say, well, I'll just have four Snickers because they don't bother my stomach, so they must be good for me, because everything else seems to bother my stomach anymore. And then, well, I'd go back, well, I'll just have a handful this time. And the next thing I knew, I'd eat in a whole bag. And I was just going up and up and up and wait. And since I've had this accountability, it's not just that, but that was a big part of it. Just the ability to have to tell somebody, uh-oh, I screwed up. And I don't want to tell them I screwed up so I don't screw up.

Now, it'll be interesting when I'm no longer in the program. But I've forged new habits. It's been 100 days. And I'm eating differently. without even thinking about it now, you know? Good. So, but anyway, so, yeah, accountability is a big deal. How much have you lost?

21, 22. I'm going for 33 total. So that'll be at my ideal body weight. My BMI is below 25, which I'm not a big fan of BMI, but is below 12. It's all we got. Below 25, so I'm no longer considered overweight by medical standards, which is the first time in my adult life. But the kids, how do you feel?

A million. I feel like a million bucks. People notice, that's the first thing. People notice. Well, hey, you look pretty good. I've lost so much weight I can no longer fit in my expensive hospital clothes. So Brooks Brothers is losing a bunch of money because I was like, I can either buy a shitload more Brooks Brothers pants and shirts or I can just switch to scrub. So I decided to switch to scrubs.

and I feel better in these it's a hell of a lot more comfortable I always look I never I don't fit I just look but it's crappy anyway I got a stupid body it's too straight and when it's not straight

and I got a gut then it's disgusting so I just feel better about myself I've got more energy just you know yeah better yeah just better

I feel better yeah so anyway I'm actually now for the first time in my life I'm motivated to actually work out and stuff too which I of course have not done but I'm motivated to do it well don't start jogging that's what that's how you blew up your I know no I'm not your leg last time I did I don't know what was wrong with me thinking I was going to oh I know what it was my kid you're running with your no my son was doing cross-country and look by that looks like fun

and I didn't realize that he was a semi-elite athlete when I would see him come around the corner in front of everybody and I'd be cheering that wasn't going to be me so and then I just yeah I tore my gastronemia's muscle which for those of you who are lay people which is most everybody that's listening to this hopefully that was my calf muscle I ripped it in two and um talk about pain and then I look stupid I'm in the middle of this track at the middle school and I'm just laying down holding my leg like a big baby and I had to limp home This is terrible. Jogging sucks.

It was a terrible idea. So. Oh, my gosh. And I almost fell, I almost bought one of those $2,500 elliptigo things because I thought that would be fun. It's an elliptical bicycle. Sure. Where you stand on it, you don't sit, because I don't want to sit on a bike because I don't want to get pedendal neuropathy. It's your prostate all pissed off.

Yeah, and your dick, too. Your dick can go numb if you don't sit on that thing, right? If you're going to be a bike rider, by the way, look for seats that support the back part of your ass and don't make your taint put a bunch of weight on a real narrow thing. So I didn't want to do that. But I have found a virtual reality thing, exercise workout, and I'm going to try that.

Okay. See, because that's what I really want is an exercise bike that's hooked up to a virtual reality. And then, like, you run away from, from aliens or something and the faster you pedal the less you get killed or uh you know that you may have a spaceship or something you're going through an asteroid field i think that would be for that i would do yeah that would be cool it'd be cool if you could be like it'd be cool if you could put yourself into like one of those um those virtual reality games that the shoot them up games where you could be like

the person trying to avoid getting shot yes but but it's all dependent on how fast you're going on the bike and and maybe it would change like if you were going uphill it would change the resistance and stuff like that I would love that I found one online but it's not quite ready for prime time yet but if anybody knows anything like that that would work with the Oculus go let me know

all right let's try oh here's one for you let's see I thought it was oh yeah here you go this is a question for Dr. Hey, Dr. Steve, got a question for you. 43 years old, I go to the gym five days a week, and I have a yearly fiscal. And before my last fiscal, I decided to try something different.

So for six months, we went vegan. So I cut out all meat, chicken, eggs, berry. If it had a mother, I didn't eat it. No honey and no gelatin. And to boot, I also cut out alcohol and carbonated drinks. drinks. So, I made sure to Oh, wait, I think I just booed over the important part.

It consisted mainly of fruits, vegetables, and bread, and I made sure the bread didn't have any eggs or milk in it either. And that also left me with a protein and soy-based diet. And we did that for six months. So when I get my labs back from the doctor, my, total cholesterol has went from 196 to 228, and my prigensurized went from 264 to a whopping 554, and I gained 14 pounds. So my question is, what the hell.

Thank you very much. I fucked that up. I hit all the wrong buttons, but anyway. Well, so. We know what to tell you. He went on a totally plant-based diet. Right, big and based diet. And he gained weight in his cholesterol and his triglycerides went.

up so what did he do wrong if anything well you know it sounds like to me dr steve he fell in the same habit a lot of people get into they read these things that say healthy or organic or are all good for you and they don't read in there and look at the look at the ingredients where there's a lot of hidden sugars and you'll get well sugar itself is vegan that's correct that's correct and that's table sugar is vegan yeah because you think about honey is not no but but but still you get it's the hidden sugars if you notice the one interesting thing you said is tri glyceride shot up So his liver is being over-stimulated with these sugars kicks that up, and that kicks up the production of the cholesterol, too.

So, you know, what you want to... Carbohydrates are the enemy, not fats. Right, that's correct. So, you know what it looks like to me is that he was trying to do the right thing, but he wound up eating the foods that were absolutely categorically wrong. If you want to be a true vegan and not gain any weight, you have to eat kind of like an ape. and a wild, you know, and eat 16 pounds of spinach

and kale and stuff daily, and then that won't happen. You'll get all your proteins. Can you get enough protein from doing that? You know what they found is that one of the reasons that animals in a while specifically, and I can speak specifically to apes that eat these, they get a very small amount of animal protein and the bugs and stuff that are on the leaves.

Right, right, right. And they found that in captivity, actually. And so what he was doing. Well, that's interesting because they'd wash their food. They wash it. clean it right and took all the bugs took all the bugs off it that's exactly right so this gentleman had a good idea but the bottom line is he you know if he's eating a bunch of rice if he's eating a bunch of bread if he's eating these things the grains that convert in your bloodstream almost instantly to sugar spiking your serum glucose it's spiking triglycerides it spikes your cholesterol he had it close but i would say stop the the sugar you know the the um the fruit drinks stop the fruit i hate to say it Well, cut down on the fruit. Or at least cut down on the fruit.

And absolutely cut down on all the grains and the rice, et cetera. Go back to the green leafy vegetables if you want to be vegan. But I'm a huge fan of, again, moderation. I think a little bit of meat. You know, we talk about a lot of times on here, the Pescatarian diets. Yeah. Based mostly on veggies and fish. And that's kind of the diet that I go to.

So he was close. He just had a bunch. You know, I think in retrospect, he can look back and see there were a bunch of hidden sugars in there and that's what derailed him sure i i see a lot of uh vegans who get fat and their indices don't do well because they're eating a lot of pasta and potatoes and then as you said other things and so starches are just sugars that are chained together right so pasta uh even uh you know high whole grain pasta even uh potatoes any pasta any of any of that stuff. And they're filling and they taste good. And it's like, well, I can't have all these other

things, but I can eat all the damn potatoes I want. And then that's the problem. Yeah, exactly. I'm just reading, yeah, vegan diets, a lot of times just rely too heavily on carbs. And there's a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and says 99% of our genes were formed before the development of agriculture and the consumption of grains like wheat around 10,000 years ago, which you and I have been talking about for a long time. Right. Our ancestors didn't have gluten and a lot of wheat in their diet because they hadn't developed agriculture yet.

And these things are a mismatch with our genes for a lot of people, and then you refine it and you hybridize stuff and you spray stuff and genetic modification, whether it's through GMO-type stuff or just Mendelian genetic modification. You know, we're eating things that our bodies didn't evolve to process very well. Exactly. So, but anyway. So, yeah, that's probably what's going on there. I'm with Scott.

I think green leafy vegetables applies in another place, too, these people that are eating ketogenic diets. If they're just eating meat, they're malnourished. They will lose weight, but they're losing weight because they're malnourished. You know, there's as much protein in a head of broccoli as there isn't a flamenon. Is that right? And you think about it, those, you know, rhinoceros is, um, yeah, that's, you're right, you're right, giraffes, et cetera. Herbivores must be getting protein from plants, but the reason they do is because they eat such massive amounts, right?

They're not, they're not protein dense, but there's adequate protein if you eat enough of it, which is, you know, what you and I, you and I, we have to have eat at certain times because we have jobs and families and blah, blah, blah, blah, but, you know, we're living in the, out in the jungle and, you know, we're going to eat and sleep most of the time. You can kind of eat at your leisure throughout the day and get those calories, but we just can't do that. Okay, so let me, I'll give you some vegetables, and you tell me, oh, we don't have enough time for this stupid game. Okay. Weirdly, and this one surprises me, one of the vegetables highest in protein is watercress.

Yeah. Cruciferous plant grows in water as a high protein content. One cup of chopped watercress contains 0.8 grams. grams of protein, 100% of vitamin K and B vitamins. Okay, let's see here. How about spinach? Protein accounts for 30% of its calories. I love spinach.

Raw spinach is my favorite thing as far as vegetables are concerned. Cale and Swiss chard and things of that nature. Yeah, Chinese cabbage, bok choy, asparagus, and also you can piss and stink up the bathroom. One cup contains two. 2.9 grams of protein, mustard greens, bleh, okay, broccoli, one cup of serving of raw chopped broccoli has 2.6 grams of protein. And all the essential amino acids also contains folate, manganese, potassium, phosphorus, and vitamin C. So people who are on a ketogenic diet, if they will

skew highly toward the green leafy vegetables and lean animal protein, that's a reasonably safe and effective diet for people. I'm not a big fan of diets per se, but as a lifestyle, it's reasonable. And particularly if you're gluten-sensitive like I am, you know, and don't want to eat a bunch of potatoes because that's what gained, where I gained a lot of weight. So anyway, all right.

I'm looking to see if we have any dick or nut questions. Well, I have a Cialis question. I don't say I had a masturbation. Oh, you did? Yeah. Hey, Dr. Steve, this is the... You want to do it, and we'll say... No, no, that was the John Popper thing.

Oh, I swear, guys, that had called a while back about the projectile ability of ejaculation and also about Myaga versus Seales. I have a question relating to the Myager versus Seales. Blue 2. Is it safe? Does it actually use the ingredients? Okay. So I don't know anything about Blue Chew, but if they're FDA, you know, approved and they are selling what they say is the same ingredient as Viagra, then that's sildenafil, then yes, that would be safe as long as there's no contraindications. The deal with these, we only got 30 seconds, is that compounding pharmacies can make a chewable Viagra because there isn't one commercially on the market.

So they can make anything that's not commercially on the market, and you can go to any compounding pharmacy and get Viagra lozenges and, you know, and chewables and stuff like that. And those are perfectly legal, and they're just as safe as the regular. So anyway. You're listening to Weird Medicine. Well. Leaving a message ends just too soon. I was busy J-A-offing, and it just ends. I couldn't end.

What? So I guess I'll ask you a question. question. Okay. Yeah, I'm, um, close to diabetic, uh, pre-diabatic. We probably could have started this call right here. I don't know all that pre-out. Good day is. Good call screen. Uh, and they gave me pre, maybe even into it. Um, they were never super clear, but they gave me a few medications. Uh, I don't have to prick myself. They, they ask for it occasionally just to make sure, but I don't know what they are off the top of my head. Okay. First off, if you're diabetic, you need to be checking your bunch of hers.

And you need to know what medication you're on. Yes. So let's just a little advice from your old uncle, Steve. But I've been going on an extreme diet, you know, 1,200 calories. Okay. Every day because I have a cruise coming up in a month and a half. And you know what? I stopped taking my medication because damn it, if I'm eating.

Nothing. My blood sugar should be fine. Okay. So if we could rely on this, we wouldn't need to check our blood sugars. Right. Because you can't tell most of the time when your blood sugar's elevated. That's why most people who are diagnosed with diabetes are actually surprised by it. So I'm okay with people doing diet control of their diabetes.

As a matter of fact, I would prefer that. Yes. Most people with type 2 diabetes, which is the type of. where you have plenty of insulin, but your body just can't understand the signal. I think it's those people, many of them can be controlled with diet alone if you'll just do it. So he's doing this 1,200 calorie diet, don't know. He just said the calorie, it doesn't tell me how many carbs it is, it can be all rice. You know, if it's all just white bread, 1,200 calories of white bread, then that's not going to help him.

It's going to make it worse. If he's doing a low glycemic index, 1,200 calorie diet under the supervision of a nutritionist at the diabetes center, I have no problem with that. And I'm even okay with him coming off his medication and seeing what happens. But how are you going to know if it's working if you're not testing your blood sugar? So that's the issue I have with his strategy. Totally agree. And all that. But anyways, I want to hear your thoughts on it.

So I still take them. I know you don't know the medication I'm on. Well, dude, you don't even know. Let's say work with somebody. You get the deal. Yeah, I get the deal. So I think it's totally fine. It's a decent strategy.

Lifestyle management for a lot of people can, if not cure their diabetes, can certainly improve it to the point where they need minimal medicine. medication. And if you start this early, you can very often prevent yourself from needing insulin down the road and kidney failure and all these things. So I'm okay with the strategy. I just don't like the way you're doing it. So if you will at least monitor yourself and then keep a diary and then take it in, that's fine. Or do it under your doctor's supervision. But you've got to have blood sugar checked or you'll never know if you're making improvements or not there's no way to know now down the road they're going to want to do a thing called a hemoglobin a1c which is probably

one of the things they did to diagnosis in the first place right hemoglobin a1c is a really cool test because it gives you a three month kind of rolling average of what your blood sugars have been so if you did um you know blood sugars throughout the day and then average the most of all up and then average them over 30 days and then every day you do the last 30 days or three months. I'm sorry about, you know, then you get this rolling average. So a hemoglobin A1C gives you about a three month rolling average of your average blood sugar and it'll correlate with that.

And it basically happens because there's an irreversible reaction between glucose and hemoglobin where it can attach. And once it does, it doesn't go away. So, and the amount of glucose that's attached to the hemoglobin in your blood is proportional to your average blood sugar over the last 90 days because, or, yeah, 90 days because a blood cell lasts about anywhere between 90 and 150 days. Right. Okay. So it's a good marker. And so, you know, every three months when you're first working with somebody with diabetes, you can see, is it going up, is it going down, or is it staying the same?

There's no fourth thing. It'll be one of those, you know. Right. And if it's going down, then you're doing all the right things. Right on. Okay. So he needs all of this. And he just needs to talk to his provider.

It's totally fine. They'll be open to it. You know, my doc, when my blood pressure started to elevate, I said, look, I'm getting ready to go on this Nume app. Do you think we could wait to put me on blood pressure medicine? He said, no, let's just put you on it. And then when you lose the weight, then we'll try to back you off and see what happens. And I actually am kind of glad he did that Because I would add yet another three months of elevated blood pressure

Because even with the I've lost 25 pounds on Noom so far And but my blood pressure hasn't come down that much I was surprised It's genetic you know Hell everybody, every man and my family had a high blood pressure Yep So Running wide open

And I love that Noom though Yeah you're doing really well Yeah I'm very happy with it Very happy with it All right But I've still got, I've got 10 to go to hit my ideal. Oh, my God, no. Well, shit.

For wicked egg allergy, right? So food allergies in general. I'm just curious you guys' thoughts and opinions on exposing them to, you know, said food allergy and, you know, does that actually help get rid of it? You know, I don't know. There's a lot of mixed opinions on it. So I'm curious to hear what you guys think. Well, okay, so here's the thing.

There's prevention of allergies, and there's treatment of allergies. And food allergies are really kind of, you know, they're a tough one. I had a friend who had a kid who's now a pharmacist, and I can't even count how many times he almost died. They'd come home because he ate one p. He was allergic to all kinds of stuff. Oh, gosh. And, you know, when he was little, they didn't know if he was going to make it.

Now he's, you know, hail and hearty and you don't want to mess with him. Somebody came in and tried to rob them, and I think he shot him. So he's doing pretty well. Good. But, you know, more and more, so the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that food allergies and children have increased 50% between 1997 and 2011, and they affect one kid out of 13. like two students in every classroom, so I know all these parents were like, well, I can't even send peanut butter to school. What was the number again on that?

One in 13. Dang. Yep. Now, this is going to be a varying severity. Sure, of course. But 90% of the allergic reactions come from eight foods, milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, fish, and shellfish. So there's not a whole lot of shellfish sandwiches going into school, but there are a lot

of peanut butter sandwiches and stuff. Sure. And, you know, there are a few theories, including one link to our society's obsession with fighting germs. And this is called the hygiene hypothesis. And what the hygiene hypothesis states is that lack of exposure to these agents early in childhood can create a situation where the immune system mistakes food protein is invading germs. And so it's not that they're not being exposed to peanuts. It's that they're not being exposed to bacteria, say, in. the soil or something that have these proteins on them that are similar to proteins on peanuts.

So now when they get the peanuts, all of a sudden the body just, you know, tries to attack those antigens because they've never been exposed to them before. And, you know, nobody knows the answer to this. That's the problem. It's still being studying, still being debated. But there are a lot of people that think that that hypothesis at least has some merit because, you know, we're just, our kids are being brought up in bubbles, you know, in clean rooms, basically. And, you know, I didn't let my kids just play in the dirt.

And, hell, I ate dirt, you know, mud pie sandwiches when I was a kid. I remember doing it. Of course, my favorite story of my youth was I was in the backyard of a friend's house and everybody had left me and had done something else. I was in the backyard by myself, and I started screaming bloody murder, just screaming, screaming, like I was being, you know, attacked. And they all came running, and they were, what's wrong? And I went, a butterfly. I didn't, butterflies freaked me out because of the way they flew. It was so chaotic.

I didn't like it. Oh, how old were you? 12, 13? Yeah, right. I think I was three. So I had that on my side. There you go. They're also wondering if medicines like antibiotics or acid-reducing stomach medications are being overuse.

But, you know, we would know if there was a correlation. Most kids are not being given acid-reducing stomach medications. Most adults are a huge number. I think, you know, for a while there, Omeprosol was the number one prescribed drug for adults in the world. It was something that was one of those. It might have been Xantak, one of those stomach acid reducing. So I'm leery of that one. And then, of course, climate change is being blamed on it.

You know, these climatologists say that, you know, we are in the hottest decade on record. And the warmer climate may worsen respiratory allergies, but still doesn't explain the food allergies. So I really am on the side of the clean room hypothesis. Because we talked about it before, but on the show, but, you know, there's a higher risk for children that are born via C-section having asthma and having other types of diseases because they were born in a clean room. You know, they don't get all of the, well, we're not just squatting them into the rice field. Right, the good bacteria. So you're saying C-section? Yep, kids are higher risk.

And asthma? Yep, asthma, yep. Okay, let's just by God see this one. No, I think you are. Yeah, I think you are. I think so. Cessarian section without medical indication and the risk of childhood asthma and attenuation by breastfeeding.

Now, okay, now look, whatever you do, breastfeed your damn kid if you can. And that was the second part of the story, yeah, if you can. Because, and I think I do know this study, and it's going to show that these kids that had, you know, C-sections had an increase in asthma, but that was blunted in the group of women that breastfed their kids. Right, exactly. So let's see here. Our study found that C-section without medical indication was significantly associated with elevated asthma risk. And so it was about a 58% increase.

Now, remember, that's relative risk, absolute risk, still very low. However, this risk was attenuated in children fed by exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months after birth. And I think you can do it even shorter time than that and still get benefit from it. My littlest one back would be either severely debilitated today or may not have made it if my wife hadn't been breastfeeding. So he's five days into his life. I walk into his room to check on him in his crib and the heat, I could feel it come, you know, radiating off of him. So I, you know, I get him out of his. this little sleeper thing, and he is just burning up. Check his temp, 105. Oh, bless his heart. Before we

even did any, when he's breathing 40 times a minute, too. Right. Just happen. Just suddenly. So I didn't even stop, go, or collect $200. Get him in the car. I'm on my way to the hospital. Sure. And I'm calling our pediatrician. He meets him, and he had respiratory syncycial virus, which causes croup in older kids. RSV, right? Yeah, RSV. And my wife had a cold when she delivered, and lo and behold, she had RSV. So she gave it to them.

So in adults, it just causes a cold, but in kids, it causes croup. And in babies, it can kill them or it can cause chronic asthma. But she was breastfeeding. And this kid, because she gave it to him, she had the antibodies, fresh antibodies, IGM antibodies in her breast milk. and she was able to confer protection to him through these antibodies, and the kid just sailed right through. Cool.

Totally sailed right through. Totally fine. And he continues to sell. He continues to sell. He's a beautiful child. Yep. He's a good little feller. So anyway, I think that so the risk of asthma with a C-section, obviously, you don't want to do them without medical indication, to the individual's,

low, but that's a huge number 58% increase in risk. But the real take home of this is that breastfeeding is good for you. So if you can breastfeed, highly recommend it. And if you're having trouble, they have breastfeeding coordinators and coaches and everything in every hospital. And we had to, you know, Tacey had trouble breast or, you know, breastfeeding with Liam. And what we had to do was weigh him before and after just to see how much he was. was getting so you would weigh him oh wow and then breastfeed and then as long as he weighed three ounces more than he got enough oh cool you know so it's kind of cool all right dr steve uh my name's

mike lane and i recently had an MRI and for kidney stones they didn't find any kidney stones but he did say that i had a plug liver for some reason i'm not really sure he didn't really give you much information but i would like to know what i can do about this and if there if there is anything that i should do with a follow-up thank you uh yeah i'm going to give your doctor on these oh um we were doing an MRI and um we didn't find anything in a gobletter but your but your liver's clogged up see you nice what an asshole it calls if you have any trouble yeah what are you supposed to do with that okay so I'm going to I'm going to call your assuming that this is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I'm going to call your that health care provider an asshole I can do that if I call them a quack then it's actionable true but I can call them an asshole all I want it's your personal I learned that from pen and teller right because they said oh you know we can't call these psychics fakes but we can call them assholes all we want because that's just our opinion.

Right. Right. What this probably is, is fatty liver. Fatty liver, right. Now, fatty liver can be caused by diabetes. It can be caused by drinking. It can just be genetic. Right.

There is a condition called Alpha 1 antitripsin disorder, and people who are carriers of this, you know, you have to have two genes to have the disease, but if you have one, you can, the only manifestation could be that you have fatty liver. And so sometimes when I see fatty liver and somebody that I didn't expect it in. I'll check, and they'll be heterozygos for alpha-1 antitripsin deficiency, which is heterozygous

just means they've got one normal gene and one shitty gene. Right, I have normal. Alpha-1 antitripsin disorder, you may know, you may not know that you have it in your family, but you could suspect it if you had a bunch of people in your family that had liver disease and or lung disease at an early age, you know, people that had emphysema, and it was just really bad, and maybe they died from it at like 40 or something, and nobody knew why. If you had two or three people like that in your family, you know, this is an easy genetic test to do. It's a real simple blood test.

It's not common, but I wouldn't say it's uncommon either. It's certainly not rare. And in this area where we are, there's pools of it. I've seen more alpha-1 antitripsin deficiency in this area than I've ever seen any other area of the country that I've practiced in. So, again, that whole consanguinity thing, you know, if you weren't here at the beginning of the show, that just means in-braiding. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a, you know, the main characteristic is too much fat stored in the liver cells.

And we can also call that steatohepatitis when you start seeing elevated liver function test. Steato, meaning fat and hepatitis, just meaning irritation of the liver or inflammation of the liver. That can cause liver inflammation, which may progress to scarring, and then, you know, cirrhosis down the road. So if you have this, there are some things that can be done about it, and rather than just your doctor going, well, hell, you got, jeez, fatty liver disease, good luck, old buddy. Go see a hepatologist or, you know, a liver specialist. And most GI docs can handle this. Most of them are experts in liver disease.

Things that can cause it would be high cholesterol, high triglycerides. High triglycerides, you know, those are blood fats. Metabolic syndrome, which is, you know, basically high triglycerides with high blood pressure, being overweight. Women with polycystic ovary syndrome, if you have sleep apnea, you can somehow, I don't know the mechanism. of that one. And diabetes, as I said. And all these genetic things as well. You can diet control this sometimes, as Dr. Scott said, getting more active is important. Treating the underlying problem. If you have high triglycerides, treating the high triglycerides with an omega-3 purified fish oil. There are prescription versions of that, and there's one.

one out there now, I think VASIPA it's called. VASIPA is a purified omega-3 fatty acid, if I'm remembering this right. And it actually has been shown to prevent heart disease at the same rate that statins do. Wow. But only in people that have hydroglycerides. So you'll get a 30% decrease in the first heart attack, and then you'll get progressive decreases in subsequent heart attacks. but the first line of treatment is diet and exercise losing weight getting to your ideal body weight and if you can lose 10% of your body weight so if you weigh 200 pounds if you can get down to 180 it

helps and they'll also vaccinate you against hepatitis A and hepatitis B in case you get those when you have fatty liver it's going to be worse and you know so those are those are the kinds of things they can do. So you want to have this followed up. Sure. Absolutely. I'm hoping this person is listening. Yes.

Me too. And just ask for follow-up. Definitely can be treated. If your primary says, well, I don't know what to do about this, then, you know, there are no sound just like they're from Appalachia. If they, then they can always send you to a specialist. And just get checked out. See how serious it is.

What do you need to do? Can we nip this in the bud? How far has it gotten? And if it's just a little bit of fatty liver without any inflammation, yeah, you can, you can get this under control pretty easily with some work and it'll lead a long and normal, happy life. Okay. Yep. All right. I was a kid, I became blood brothers with a.

Hey, Dr. Steve. Amen. When I was a kid, I became blood brothers with my buddy from church. And I was just wondering, it was only, you know, it wasn't much blood. We cut our hands somehow. I forgot how we did it. But I was just wondering, is his blood still in my body? Does it work like that?

Beautiful question. I love this question. And the answer is there may be some, okay, so when you are blood brothers, you cut, you know, your thumb or your hand, and then you grasp them, and then you mix blood. the likelihood that any significant amount of blood goes from one person to the other because the pressure is for the blood to come out not to go in, right? I mean, when you bleed, you bleed out. You don't bleed in.

So even if one or two cells are in there, well, let's just say your blood type A and their blood type B, what's going to happen when those cells mix? You're going to get a clotting reaction. You know, that's why you can't just give blood to just anybody. and then the spleen will see that happening and it'll it'll cull it out and destroy it. Now, could there be some molecules of your friend? Hell yeah.

Sure. There could be hydrogen molecules. There could be oxygen molecules, you know, from the water, all kinds of stuff. And those could be insignificant numbers, you know, orders of magnitude. Because, okay, so. salt to get oh i don't know what you look up what the um atomic weight of salt is but it's i can't i used to know this stuff by heart ask her she'll know oh yeah hey Alexa what's the atomic weight of salt salt's atomic weight is 11 okay so in 11 grams of salt

there are 6.022 times 10 to the 23 molecules of sodium chloride times 10 to the 23. So that's a 10 with 23 zeros. It's a huge, huge number. So if you had 100 molecules of hydrogen left over from the water that was in this guy's blood, then, you know, that seems like a large number. But, you know, when we're talking about trillions of quadrillions and, you know, unthinkable numbers of molecules. So what is more interesting to me is this theory of large numbers. It is almost certain that you have at least one molecule of water in your body that came from Christopher Columbus's piss.

Okay? So Christopher Columbus coming across the ocean, pissing in the ocean, and through diffusion, evaporation, rain, and, you know, all these molecules working their way, diffusing through the environment. It is likely that you have at least, at least one molecule of Christopher Columbus's piss in your body somewhere. Now, there's, how would you mark that? You can't. No. You know, if you had some radioactive element that only existed on another planet, you could have maybe marked the, the water molecules in his body and, you know, go back in time, mark them and then come forward in time and see if anybody has it. But there's no such thing.

There's no radioactive element that exists somewhere else that we can't make here. So, but just through pure statistics, you can calculate that, the likelihood. That's the case. Now, that's true of every other person that was on the Nina, the peanut, and the Santa Maria. Not only them, but every other person that lived in that time. That's how huge these numbers are. Or me, since I may have pissed in the ocean last weekend, maybe. Yeah, those, right, those have diffused quite significant.

Significantly, but not enough so that everyone on the planet has, you know, Dr. Scott molecules in them. You're listening to Weird Medicine. And though you will try to always get it right, the beauty of life lives inside of you. And I hope someday you find it too. Casey, do you experience stress? No. Or have anxiety?

Oh, absolutely, never. Or chronic pain? Do you know what drives me crazy? Are those people who will put on, like, Facebook, oh, now I know anxiety's real. Oh, are you kidding me? Yeah, really. I mean, what the hell? Where have you been?

Have you never had a kid? Because if you have a kid, you know what anxiety is. Oh, these are people with children. I mean, are they just floating through life? Like, oh, anyway. Well, if you're having any of those things. or having trouble sleeping at least once a week. You're not alone.

Many of us do, and personally, I have difficulty sleeping sometimes, but I have this myelgic disorder called polymyalgia rheumatica that causes my muscles to ache, and it makes it difficult for me to sleep, and I just feel crummy. And I was searching for something that would help, and then I discovered Fields, F-E-A-L-S. Feels is premium CBD, delivered directly to your doorstep. And was it due?

It naturally helps reduce stress, anxiety, pain, and sleeplessness. And it certainly helped my chronic pain. I really can tell the difference if I don't take it. Now, that's just me. That's an anecdotal report for me. It works for me. It helps, Steve. It really helps, especially to calm me down at night.

Yeah. It really does. So you just place a few drops of feels. That's F-E-A-L-S under your tongue. Feel the difference within minutes. The thing to remember about CBD is finding your right dose is important, and everyone's dose is different. So leave room to experiment over the course of a week or so.

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Feels.com slash fluid. Hey, Dr. Steve, is it true that when we sneeze that our heart stops beating, like, for a millisecond? And then when people say, God bless you, that's just, that because the devil can't get a hold of you and damn you eternally. I'm just wondering, I've heard that ever since I was a kid. Sure. And you probably also heard that you blow your soul out with every sneeze, too. That's why people say, God bless you, or a gazuntite when you sneeze. But there is actually something to this.

Your heart doesn't stop, stop in the sense that you have a cardiac arrest. But there's a thing called sternutation, and that's this reflex that's, you know, it's a brainstem reflex. and when you have something that irritates the upper lining in the nose, these nerves carry the signal to the brain stem, it triggers the eyes to close and the chest to contract. And then your lungs expel a burst of air. But one thing that doesn't happen is there's any signal to the heart to stop. So what does happen is when you have this huge increase in intrathoracic pressure,

When you get that sort of just right before you sneeze, it's hard for blood to pump into a thorax where the pressure from the outside is so high at that second. So for that one second, you get an interruption of blood flow. It's not complete. It just decreases it. And when that happens, the blood supply coming out of the blood supply coming out of the, the blood supply coming out of the, the heart will decrease for a second. Then you may have a compensation where it actually increases soon thereafter. You're listening to Weird Medicine.

Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. What's the difference between Narcan and smelling salt? I've seen both of them, you know, use on TV. It's probably not real. But, you know, they wake an unconscious person up. And I was just wondering how it works in the body. Yeah, now, this is a great damn question.

I'm going to, I wish I had, well, I'll just give them so. That's a great question. So you've got an unconscious person, and you've seen this a million times, they put the smelling salts under their nose, and then they wake up. Well, how's that different from Narcan, which we're promoting for use with opioid overdose? It could be also in not. And they're unconscious as well. Okay, so smelling salts really is not.

nothing more than ammonia salts and they if you ever smell it just you know take a bottle of ammonia don't don't get close don't get close you waft it's called waft the way that you waft by the way we learned this in organic chemistry you hold it away from you about a foot away from your body right put your hand over it and then wave it towards your nose right don't ever stick your nose right over the ball never do that with anything no hold it away from you and then use your other hand to wave it towards you um and if you you do that that's the smell that you get with these smelling salts and if someone has fainted that will wake them up but um or if they're intoxicated with alcohol or something like that and

here's the thing smelling i've never used them clinically ever we have them but i've never used them if someone faints the right way to wake them up is to get there is to lay them down gently on the ground and then get their feet hold their feet up you can even put them on your shoulders and like if you're kneeling in front of them, just kneel and put their legs, their ankles on your shoulders. And it's usually good to do this witness because if somebody walks in to your exam room while you're doing this, it's going to look not, it's not going to look good for you. Oh, well, they fainted. I was just, you know, come on. Or maybe a better way to do it if you're in a room with furniture is to put their feet up on a chair or a couch or chair.

chair, yeah. I agree. And support their head. I mean, don't let them flop down, but, you know, you can put a little pillow under the head, but that'll usually wake a fainter up right away because their issue is the circulatory system in their body has opened up, and gravity is pulling blood out of their brain to the body. And this can happen for a lot of different reasons.

It has lots to do with the autonomic nervous system. Don't worry about it. Or people who stand up to fail. and their body doesn't adjust. You know, when you stand up, the veins and arteries in your body are supposed to tense up so that there's more resistance to flow and you're pushing blood back into the brain. But if it doesn't do that fast enough, particularly in people my age and up, it works a little bit slower. You stand up. All of a sudden, the blood starts to rush out of your brain and you feel faint and you may even faint.

And again, the treatment for those people is to, you know, lay them down on the ground and get their feet up. Don't hold them up. I've seen people, you know, grab under their shoulders and try to hold them up. If the blood continues to rush out of their brain, they'll have a pseudo-seizure. And it looks just like a real seizure. And it may even be one. I've never seen a good physiologic explanation for it, but they'll jerk like they're having a seizure. And that's their way of telling you.

put me down, you know. So anyway, now, you have someone that's intoxicated with alcohol, there isn't a whole lot you can do, so they'll use the smelling salts just as an noxious stimuli to just wake them up. You get their attention, sure. You know, loading them up with coffee, you know, it doesn't really do much. Might keep them from going to sleep because you're just giving them something to do. Time is the main thing.

Time, time. If someone is acutely intoxicated with alcohol. and they are comatose, and you don't know how much they've had to drink, you've got to take them to the emergency room because you can die from alcohol and poison. You know, if you see two champagne bottles off to the side and an enema tube sticking out of their ass and they're unconscious,

they may die. So, again, another reason to drink champagne, don't take it in enema form. Because once you've shoved two bottles of champagne up your ass, you have no control over how quickly this stuff is absorbed, and you're going to absorb all of it. Yep, very quickly. Very quickly.

At the same time, too. Yeah, because of the surface area of the bowel. You know, if you're drinking it, the stomach's smaller surface area. And you get full. And you get full or you pass out before you can kill yourself. Yep. So those people, we may use smelling cells for now. Narcotic overdose, whole different thing with a narcotic.

We call them opioids. you call them narcotics, they stimulate a receptor called the Mew opioid receptor. Now, there are other ones, too. There's Mew, Kappa, Delta, and Lambda, but let's just talk about the Mew opioid receptor. So the mu opioid receptor, when it is triggered, induces somnolence or sleepiness. It decreases your rate of breathing. It makes your pupils pinpoint, and it slows down your... the um bowels as well okay or peristols in the GI tract now if you get enough of it it can

make you comatose and it can even stop you from breathing altogether right so this is what narcan is good for narcan is completely different you spray it up somebody's nose or you give them an injection of it gets into their system and it displaces the mu agonizing or this mu stimulating material like like morphine or heroin or whatever and displaces it off of the, off of those receptors. And they wake up. I have seen this happen so fast.

I could, so you walk into the emergency room. I heard this story. Let's just say I heard this somewhere. And there's someone that's had a stroke and you walk in and the family's all around I'm saying, you know, grandpa's leaving us. And was he like this when he came in? No, he was sitting up, but he must have had another stroke.

Grandpa's leaving us, and you look at him, and this person is comatose, breathing maybe four times a minute, and they're actively dying. So you look at the chart, and you see they got four milligrams of morphine intravenous, and you also find out that they had a creatin of six. Now, for the people who don't know what that is, it's a measure of kidney function, and normal is. 1.5 or less, and the higher you get, the more your kidneys are not functioning. So if you know a thing or two, you know that there is a metabolite. In other words, when drugs get in the body, they go through the liver, and the liver changes them. And we call those changed chemical compounds metabolites. And there's a metabolite of morphine called glucose 6 morphone, or morphine 6 glucuronide.

It doesn't matter. It's the same thing. And it is only excreted by the kidney. And when the kidney isn't functioning, it's got nowhere to go and it's active. It works on the body just like morphine does. So it accumulates. You can't get rid of it. So in a situation like that, you go and say, well, just hang on a second.

And you go get an amp of Narcan, which is the stuff we're talking about, that competitively inhibits the morphine at the level of the receptor, and you inject it. And 30 seconds later, that person sits up. and goes, what, what are y'all doing here? Okay. I changed that story enough so that there's no HIPAA situation. I made it hypothetical, but that's basically the gist of exactly what has happened multiple, multiple times. So that's the difference.

Smelling salts are just a noxious stimuli, like slapping somebody in the face. Narcan actually has a chemical basis for its action, and it only works on. opioid intoxication. It kicks those little boogers right off. But here's a couple of things, Dr. Steve, too. You know, we all love the movie Pulp Fiction. You don't have to jam Narcam into somebody's heart, number one. Right.

And they injected adrenaline into her heart. Was that what it was, adrenaline? Which doesn't make any sense medically. It doesn't great story. You use adrenaline. Right. We used to jam adrenaline in people's hearts when they had a cardiac arrest, and they had no IV access.

But... It was the last step kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So, and I haven't seen that done in ages. And the other thing, too, and correct me, if I'm wrong, please. So if Tarantino had come to me, I would have said, let's use Narcan for this. But it wouldn't have been as cool a jamming this thing in Uma Thurman's, you know, sternum. Or sticking in her nose and squirtinging it in her nose.

It wouldn't have been... No. It wouldn't have the same effect. No. Hey, hey, and correct me from her. It was such a great scene, but it made, you know, and it doesn't even, it's so great, it doesn't even take me out of it. No, it was a great.

Knowing that it's bullshit. Yeah, that was a great move, by the way. But, and correct me if I'm wrong to, but when you give someone Narcan, it displaces the opiates. Right, temporarily. Temporarily. In other words, they're not magically gone. They still need to go to the hospital and make sure that they're treated. Give yourself a bill.

They will go back to where they were. Thank you, Dr. Scott. I forgot to mention that. You have to, when, if you give them. to somebody who immediately call 9-1-1, even if they seem fine. Right. If they have a long-acting opioid in their system, let's say that they took 12 extended release oxycodones known on, you know, and the market is oxycon.

Those are going to be in their system for quite some time. I, let's say I heard about another patient who injected themselves with 14 milligrams of dilaudid. Dillaudit is a very potent opioid and for someone that's not used to it, 14 milligrams is a lethal dose.

You know, 1.5 milligrams of intravenous hydromorphone or dilaudid is equivalent to 30 milligrams of oral morphine or three Lortab tens. So that was the equivalent of just about 30 Lortab tens, right? So

we would give, let's just, well, in this case, you would give somebody Narcan and they'd wake up for 15 minutes and go right back to sleep again. Give them another one, wake up, right back to sleep again

and stop breathing. So what you have to do in that situation is do a Narcan drip. Right. So you are actually giving them a constant dose of this stuff until the other drug is completely out of their system.

Right. So there you go. That's a great question. Good question. Well, that is going to be it for this episode of Weird Medicine. Thank you for tuning in to my compilation of Best of Clips. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Cumia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, Lewis Johnson, Paul O'Charsky, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos,

Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Matt from the syndicate, Ron Bennington, and Fed Watley, whose support of this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our Sirius XM show on the Faction Talk channel. Sirius XM Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern standard time, Sunday, 5 p.m. Eastern. On demand, another time, that Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemails and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr.steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. I also have a personal website. That's Robotsintheocean.com if you want to check that shit out.

Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses, and get some exercise, and we'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird a Medicine. Thank you.