Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 424 - Future Body Farmers of America

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

Dr Steve and Tacie discuss an article that is way too long but brings up some interesting topics. Also body donation, autism and preterm birth, influenza shots and more! Check Out: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) noom.doctorsteve.com (lose weight, gain you-know-what) Get Every Podcast on a Thumb Drive (all this can be yours!) mybookie.com (use Promo Code WEIRD to double your first deposit!) wine.drsteve.com (get the best deal on wine…delivered to your home!) expressvpn.com/weird (total privacy! Defeat geographic blackouts!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay. Oh, we've just gone downhill. This is a terrible show. This is terrible. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of Weird Medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez,

you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Number one thing, don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. I've got the theory Crushing my esophagus I've got to bolivide stripping from my nose I've got the leprosy Of the heartbound exacerbating my incredible woes

I want to take my brain out Plastic with the wave An ultrasonic ecographic and a pulsitating shave I want a magic pill All my ailments The health equivalent of citizen gain And if I don't get it now In the tablet

I think I'm doomed Then I'll have to go insane I want to requiem for my disease So I'm paging doctor It's Weird Medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio and now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my wife, Tacey. Hello, Tacey. 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 at 347-764323. That's 347 Poohead. Visit our website at Dr.steve.com for podcast, medical news, and stuff you can buy, or go to our merchandise store at cafepress.com slash weird medicine. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking to over with your doctor,

nurse, practitioner, for practical nurse, physician assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory, scientist, registered dietitian or whatever. You know what I was just thinking would be cool as hell? would be for, let's say, Cody or John Field and I to resurrect Super Android 23 here in the studio. Well, not resurrect it. Well, we have to resurrect it because it's dead

because of COVID-19, thank you very much. But I have Sherwin's sleeves here in the audience, I mean in the studio, and do the theme song live. How cool would that be? We might be able to get them to do that. The theme song is cool, but Super Android 23 is not cool. I mean, we need the drums, and then we need the keyboards, and then we need sleeves. So I would do the keyboards, those two guys would do the drum machines.

And then, yeah, we'd play music, you know, in between times. Well, you'll have a chance to do that on Sunday, if you'd like to. You don't like Super Android 23? No, I'm not. How did that name come about, Steve? Be honest. from Oh, never mind.

From Dragon Ball Z. It's from Dragon Ball Z. Oh, okay. It's an anime, Japanese anime cartoon. I can't believe I didn't know that. Yeah. So there you go. Super Android 23.

If you are interested in hearing Super Android 23, you will regret it. But you can go to SoundCloud or just Google SoundCloud, Super Android 23 Cody Jam. And then maybe I'll put a link up on the website. Oh, yeah. Please do. We have something new to talk about.

It's Naked Wines. What do you think of Naked Wines? Well, I think we're in the middle of a pandemic, so why not? Yeah, Naked Wines is awesome. I won't go into a lot of depth. You can go to their website. You give them a little bit of money every month, but it's okay. What they do is they up front help pay these small batch vintners to make wine.

And then, so if you put in 20 bucks a month, and then in a couple of months, you buy $100 worth of wine. Well, it really only costs you $60 because you put in the other $40. And on top of that, you get the stuff for about half price. So I get $20 wine for $10. I get $40 wine for $20. So I buy Tasey all the $20 wine. You know, I try to nail it at $9.99. But I've bought $250 worth of wine from, from, you know,

Naked wines and ended up paying, you know, $80. And they ship it to most places. They'll ship it. They go FedEx. So we get it shipped. I don't want to miss it and have it sent here. And then we're not here to sign for it. I just have them send it to Walgreens or whatever, you know, where your local FedEx place and then pick it up from there.

If you're interested in checking it out, go to wine. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. It's just winew-w-I-N-E dot Dr.steve.com. And our website should be back up. I think. Anyway, don't forget, feels.com slash fluid.

Stuff. dot, Dr. Steve.com. Stuff. dot, Dr. Steve.com for all your Amazon needs. That really is the biggest thing that keeps our show afloat. And then tweakeda audio.com. Offer code fluid,

FLUID for 33% off the best earbuds for the price on the market and the best customer service anywhere. And if you want to get to your ideal body weight with me and with Tacey, and we're both doing it now, Noom, N-O-O-M is not a diet. It is a psychology program.

It helps you change your relationship with food and change your relationship with other bad habits for the better, too. I've found that it's really been, had a broader impact on my life other than just food. So noom. Dot, Dr.steve.com. We are going to need to log our chicken McNuggets. That is true, but I ate almost nothing today, so I'll be okay. Okay.

But, yeah, you know, you're right. The spicy chicken McNuggets, not chicken, not really nuggets. I don't know what they are, but they were really, they were pretty damn good. So Noom. Dottersteve.com, and you see you can do stuff like that. And you can get away with it if you kind of just change how you're doing things. You can splurge and go crazy every once in a while with your kids and actually eat fast food. And don't forget Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net.

He'll be back here soon and off. I know he's going to be on the Sirius XM show. starting two shows from now, and we'll see about the podcast. Okay. Okay. All right. So our website was down for a little bit, and that was a nightmare. So now we didn't make our $4 from the week.

I know. That's true. That McDonald's trip we made today. That cost us money. Yeah. I got all wound up about it, and they were saying, well, your databases are over their capacity. It's like, where does it say that on my control? I'm looking at my control panel.

It says everything's fine. Well, you're supposed to just know that. And it's like, come on, this is a computer system. It could just flag it and say, hey, this database is over, you know, deplete it or, you know, clean it up or do whatever. But there was nowhere, anywhere in there that said that there was a problem. Yeah, I heard. It was a nightmare.

And then she's telling me, well, you're just supposed to know. I say, show me where it says that. Show me. And so she says, we'll go to, you know, blankblank.com slash TOS, which is Terms of Service. Look there. Nothing there. Then they said, well, you need a dedicated server. And it's like, okay, I'll get a dedicated server.

What's that going to cost me? $180 a month. And I said, no, thank you. No, thanks. I don't make $180 a year out of that. On the show. So anyway, they got one of these. That just shows you.

the depth of your website, though, that you're just overloaded. Yep, that's true. Well, what it is, there is some log file, this is technical, it doesn't matter, I won't take two seconds on it. There's some log file that every time people do anything, it logs it on there, and if you leave it after about a year, it ends up being about 1.5 gigs, and for that particular type of file, that's over. So I just deleted it. I don't give a shit. I don't need that log file. And then all of a sudden, they said, oh, no, your website's fine.

So, but they could have told me that or they could have done it, you know, instead of till one in the morning yesterday and then from eight until nine this morning on the phone with people that don't know what the hell they're talking about. So I'm not going to say their name. So I got my 23 and me ethnicity estimate. This was interesting. Why did they send you a new one? Well, because they redid their database and made it more detailed and more. and more specific. And so in my family, on my mother's side, they said that I was, you know, one, I don't know,

one 16th Native American. Isn't that interesting, me too, Steve. From some tribe from Florida. And then on my dad's side, they said that we were Ashkenazi Jews that were forcibly converted in the sedaten land. And so then we became Protestants. So talk to me about your diversity. So, yeah, right, thank you.

So I get my 23 and me, and of course, you know, to confirm all this stuff so that, you know, I can send recipes in just like, you know, a certain politician did to a cookbook that was related to her ethnicity. And, yep. Here we go. None of it is true. One bit of it is true. Mine wasn't either. Yeah.

So I am the whitest white person that I know. I have less Native American than Elizabeth Warren does because she has one to what, 1, what, 1,200s, and I have zero, literally zero. 48% Germanic Europe. And then it says, Germany and the Midwestern United States. Eastern Europe and Russia, 26%. Scotland, 16%, Ireland, 7%, and 3% Sweden.

And that's it. So. Well, there you go. You know what? The nice thing about this is I don't have to pass these bullshit stories onto our kids. You know? It's a real Southern thing to tell everyone that you are. Part Native America.

Yes, I've read articles on it, and I guess it makes people feel better about what happened to them. Oh, well, you're one of them, so don't worry about it. Don't worry about the trail of tears. Yeah, that's just a story. Your ancestors were there. They were actually there. So, no. Makes you feel as guilty or so I don't know.

I'm just as white as you are, so there you go. Just different white, but white nonetheless. Still whitey. Yes. Okay. Let's see. Oh, you had some articles, right? Yes, I do. I know everybody's so excited because I pulled up some articles.

Well, and you had a couple that were not COVID-related, too. Would you like me to start there? Yeah, let's do one that's not. It doesn't have anything to do with this pandemic. I'm sick of it. Everybody's sick of it. We've got a couple of calls, but we're all sick of this damn virus. And I reiterate my call to arms that we need to go to war with all viruses and just wipe them off from the face of the earth because enough is enough of this bullshit. Okay, go ahead. So the first one that is non-COVID related is a small increase in autism seen for pre- and post-term birth. Okay.

And they looked at three and a half million Nordic children. And it came from the journal. My people, apparently. Yes, from your people. It came from the journal of P-L-O-S medicine. And I do not know what that stands for. It's plus one and the different plus journals are online, open. open access journals, but they are peer reviewed.

Their philosophy is we don't want to sock this away in a journal and make people pay $400 for a subscription or make people pay $25 an article. And some of them are even higher than that just to get the articles. They just want to put them out there. So I respect that. The problem is there's a lot of other fly-by-night, quote-unquote, online open access journals that suck. But that's not one of them. So what they're saying is it's a bell curve that if you're pre-term or post-term, there's a slight increase.

And if you're post-term, there's a slight increase. They consider weeks 37 to 42 normal with a 0.83% autism diagnosis. Okay. 1.67 for those born in weeks 22 to 31. And 1.08 for weeks 32 to 36. And 1.74 for weeks 43 to 44. So what did they draw from that? It says these findings provide new insights into the potential links between ASD and gestational age of birth.

Okay. More research will be needed. It's what it says. Given the unknown ideology of autism spectrum disorder and the lifelong consequences of disorder, identifying groups of increased risk associated with potentially modifiable risk factors important. So it would be interesting to know. But this is the thing, is the preterm delivery the cause of the autism, or does the kid have some genetic thing that causes them to be slightly preterm? Well, that's why they say they need more research.

It's like the vitamin D thing. Is vitamin D a marker or a cause of disease? Because we see vitamin D, low vitamin D levels are associated with all kinds of diseases, cancer, heart disease and stuff like that. But it's not clear that just taking a vitamin D supplement will reduce it. reduce your risk of those things. It may just be a marker for disease, not the cause. If low vitamin D were the cause, we could just supplement people with vitamin D and we could reduce their risk. But if it's a marker, just increasing it actually decreases your ability to detect the people who are at high risk, you know? That makes sense? Sure. Okay. Not listening.

Okay. What else you got? Okay. So I don't know if you want me to go through this because it's a long list, but it wouldn't take long to go through it. That's okay. Yeah. I don't know what it is. Never ignore these red flag health symptoms. Okay. One of these.

So I could just list these and you tell me in like one word. Okay. I could give you one. Okay. Defecating blood would be one. Okay, but let's not go out of. That's not go out of order. Oh, that's in there?

Uh-huh. Oh, well, that's a... Facial drooping, arm weakness, slurred speech. Yeah, stroke. Severe vomiting or diarrhea. Okay, well, it could be a lot of different things. It could be a bowel obstruction. Could be COVID-19.

You could just end up with a GI bug like Norwalk that could last three days and you end up dehydrated. And when you stand up, you get dizzy and you fall down and hit your head. So yes, okay. Deep wounds or gashes? Yeah, well, it's pretty obvious. Yes. Some of these are painfully bruised. And bruised and swelling limbs.

Okay. I don't, I didn't, you know. I just read the top. I didn't read the whole thing. Okay. Oh, it could be a broken bone. Yes. How about that?

Well, sure. Could be lots of things. Red, painful, itchy blisters or rash on one side of the body. Something I ignored for quite some time. Shingles. Walking around with shingles and not even knowing it, but just fussing about it. Let's talk about shingles just for a second. It's re-emergence of chicken pox, the chicken pox virus.

And when you have chicken pox, when you're a kid, your immune system destroys it, but it retreats. But it goes, I'll be back, damn you, and it hides in your central nervous system. Well, actually, it hides in these little collections of nerves called ganglia that are attached to the central nervous system. And then they'll be gone everywhere else except one of those, usually. And then later on in life, when you've got some stress going on or whatever, just whatever the conditions are favorable, those viruses will come back again. But they'll only be seen in the area where that nerve root feeds. So if it's in the mid back, it'll come down and follow the rib and sort of spread out as those nerve, as those nerves, peripheral nerves spread out. but it'll generally be on one side of the body and following one nerve root.

Now, if it happens to hide in the fifth cranial nerve, then you're going to end up with a big face full of shingles, and that sucks, and you don't want shingles in your eye. So follow the manufacturer and the USPSTF, which is the agency that kind of sets standards for screening and for health maintenance and get your shingles shot as soon as you're able to do so.

And I had mine that kicked my ass, but I will not get shingles in my eye. All right. Okay. Red painful, oh, no, sorry. Pain and burning in or weird discharge from the vagina. Oh, well, yeah.

And you know what that could be sometimes? Every once in a while. You have intercourse with a tampon. on in, and you go, oh, just push it on in. And then you forget about it. And it sits there for a week and then two weeks. Well, that's just disgusting. Well, it happens.

And when it happens, the smell is unbelievable. But the great thing is the fix for it is pulling the tampon out. And it'll have some really gross mucus and it'll smell bad. Throw it in the trash outside. And if it persists, you may need an antibiotic combination of metronidazole. and a sulfa drug maybe, but most of the time just getting rid of that vaginal form body will get rid of the smell. Lots of carefully timed unprotected sex and still no baby.

Yeah. What are you talking about? That's our next reason. Oh. Oh. Oh, I thought you were talking about... Keep up. I thought you were talking about the tampon shoved up there for three weeks.

Okay, yes. No. So that could be a sign of lots of things, including polycystic ovary syndrome. but the first thing you do is you check the dude because there's no point in putting a woman through a hystereoscopy and all these other things if the guy is shooting blank. So if you have been having unprotected in-course

and you're trying to get pregnant for six to 12 months, then the first part of the protocol is to check the sperm donor and see if they're producing sperm. If you remember when you and I were having difficulty, having our first child, I did a sperm sample, I called you up, just really upset, saying, it's me, it's me, because, you know, there was 40% double-headed sperm or something like that.

And the OB-GYN said, no, nope, that's normal. We see that all the time because you're normally not looking at sperm cells. Those just don't ever get to fertilize anything because they're slow and dumb. But, you know, you just need the other 50, 60%. If you've got, you know, 250 million sperm cells. in each ejaculation. I can't remember how many it is, but it's a lot. It's a crazy number. If you cut out 40% of them, you've still got a ton of them. Plenty to fertilize an egg. Unexplained weight loss. Yes. Yeah. So that's very often an ominous sign,

but it could be elevated thyroid is one thing. So hyperthyroidism can cause people to lose weight. Obviously, some malignancies can do the same thing. and it's very rare that people just forget to eat. You know, if your hunger is sort of a primal instinct. So if you're losing weight and you're not trying to lose weight, get checked. Let's see. Recurrent, indigestion, and heartburn. Sure.

So you want to speak on that or do you want me to? No, I'm not speaking on that. Okay. So heartburn could be as simple as gastroesophageal reflux disease, which is very common, where there's a lower esophageal sphincter. It should be a valve, but it's very inefficient valve

between the esophagus and the stomach. And that valve also kind of spans the hole in the diaphragm, which we call the hiatus. The other way it's supposed to go is esophagus, and then the hole, and then below the hole in which we call the hiatus, in the diaphragm is stomach. But it's not really tacked in very well sometimes,

a lot of times, maybe even a majority of the time. And so the esophagus, sometimes the stomach that's supposed to be below the esophagus ends up above the diaphragm. And we call that a hernia through the hiatus or a hiatal hernia. And when you do that, now that valve and the lower esophageal sphincter is just all distorted out of shape and it doesn't work properly. And so when you lay down, stomach contents end up going up into the esophagus. If you eat a lot of carbohydrates, stomach contents go up into the esophagus.

And it's just not a very well-designed system, unfortunately. We were designed to live to about 30. And those people never had. I started getting reflux symptoms when I was about 28, 29. And if I had been a caveman, I would. be an old person already procreated five or six times if I was lucky. And I wouldn't worry about reflux. But since we live so long, you know, that one sort of, it's, I don't want to call it a flaw,

but it is a weakness in our anatomy that very many people have. So that's why Previsid and Dexelot and drugs like that are the number one selling drugs or class of drugs in the United States. I think that's still true. I don't know if it is. I don't know. I don't know. Changes in size and color of mulch.

Oh, but anyway, so if you get enough of that, if you get enough of that, okay, if you get enough of that, you can change the mucus membrane and the esophagus. And so persistent heartburn needs further evaluation just to make sure you don't have an esophageal lesion or a lesion in your stomach. So, go ahead. Okay. So changes in size and color of moles. Yes. So moles should stay the same. And when they start to grow or change, particularly if they have a geographic border,

which is a craggy border like the edges of the map of the United States, if it's craggy like that or different colors or ulcerated, those are ominous and they need to be. looked at him as soon as you can get to see somebody and they will remove those now if it's a basal cell or squamous cell carcinoma most of the time that's the end of it if it's a melanoma again most of the time that's the end of it but every once in a while you get a melanoma and the cells will start to spread to other parts of the body so you don't want to dick around with those I let's just say I've heard of people that had a otherwise relatively benign

basal cell skin cancer on their face and these things have sort of a raised edge sort of a raised pearly edge with little blood vessels in it and then a depressed center but it will never stop growing it just grows and grows and grows and they just blew it off young people blew them off and then the next thing you know it's taken over half their face and cutting into their carotid artery and causing all kinds of problems So this is one of those things.

Everything in medicine is this way. The earlier you can catch it the better. But when you have something like that, the sooner that you deal with it, you can most of the time forget about it afterward. Okay. Thinning hair. Now, not like losing some in the shower, but, you know, massive amounts of thinning hair. Okay.

Well, there's a thing called alopecia Ariata where you get patches of hair. In matter of fact, I think we have, yeah, we have a question about that later on, so I won't go delve too deep into that. But if your hair is just falling out, often it's just because you're a middle-aged male, but it could be a sign of thyroid disease and other issues. So if you notice rapid hair loss that just kicked in all of a sudden, that's a good time to get that checked. Vaginal bleeding, like Angela, on 90-day fiancée. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So particularly postmenopausal. If you're after menopause and you're bleeding, it is not your period coming back. There's something going on it. Sometimes it's just the lining of your uterus needs either a little thickening or a little thinning, but sometimes it's a sign of something more ominous like a uterine malignancy. Again, the sooner you catch it, the better off you're going to be. So don't hesitate and don't blow it off, say, well, I've just had a random period. Once you go through menopause and you're solidly past it, that doesn't happen.

So you want to get that checked out. So your OB-GYN or your primary care, assuming that your primary care does women's health. Constant thirst. Sure. Constant thirst can be multiple things. One is diabetes, of course, but most of the time that those people will also have besides polydipsia, which means that they're drinking a lot, they will also have diabetes, meaning that they're peeing a lot.

So the word diabetes means funnel. Diabetes melitus means that it tastes like honey. In other words, they're pissing out sugar water. And the reason they called it melitus is because they were differentiating it from diabetes insipidus, or insipitous, which is a, a condition where people are pissing out pure water, free water. And those people will become dehydrated as well. It could be a brain tumor.

It could be something that is secreting antidioretic hormone. And I'm sorry, where they are no longer producing antidiary hormone, sorry. It could be a pituitary lesion, all kinds of things like that. So back in the day, if you remember, we did the test. at Opian Anthony's studio. Were you there that day? I think that you were in the hotel. You didn't come to the studio that day, did you?

I don't know. Well, we had P.A. John, Pat from Munaki, Andrew Gold, you know, Big A. And they all pissed in a cup. P.A. John was well-controlled diabetic. Pat from Munaki was poorly controlled diabetic. And Big A was our control.

And then I almost wasn't. going to do it. We made double vasectomy turd taste each one. That's disgusting. And he could tell absolutely which one was the diabetic urine. And so we did a little history lesson about that's why they created test strips so doctors didn't anymore have to taste people's urine to determine what kind of diabetes they had. But yeah, the funnel, the funnel in water that comes out like a funnel that tastes like sugar. that's diabetes mellitus.

Changes. No, let me say one other thing. Oh, for God's sakes. So the other thing you could have is primary polydipsia. This is where people just drink water, drink water, drink water. And if you drink more water, then your body can handle, you will wash out all of the salt gradients in your kidneys. And now the kidneys will no longer be able to retain water. and they will start pissing out free water

and you will become dehydrated meaning that you have to drink more water which means you're going to wash out your kidneys even more and you end up in a vicious cycle where you're drinking a lot and pissing a lot and you can't stop and that's called primary polydipsia changes in breasts

yeah well I mean that's obvious just get that checked jaw shoulder and back discomfort that it might be a sign of heart disease. Oh, okay. I see where they're going with that.

So, yes, not all heart disease is manifest as left-sided chest pain. There was a person in an emergency room in a medical school that I heard of that came to the emergency room, said, I have a sore throat. And they triaged this person to the side where people just come in and they've got sore throats, right? when they went in to get him to see him, he was dead. And the reason was that he was having angina or heart pain. He was having a heart attack. And it was manifesting not as chest pain, but as left neck pain. And when he came in, if he had said, you know, I've got shortness of breath and I'm sweating

and I've got palpitations and I've got left neck pain, they would have triaged him to the emergency side. But instead, it was unfortunate. He said, I have a sore throat. they send him over to the side where, you know, they figure people can just sit there and wait until they get to them. So the other thing that jaw pain can be, though, is if you have pain when you eat and you start having pain, the more that you chew, it's called masticatory clodication or clodication with mastication, that could be a sign of an inflammatory,

condition in the arteries of the temple, and it's really inflammatory condition of other arteries as well, but we call it temporal arteritis or giant cell arthritis. So jaw clotication with, in other words, pain that comes on with chewing, that goes away with rest, could be a condition that needs to be evaluated sooner rather than later. It's pretty easy to do. They can just take a biopsy of your temple. and look at the arteries, and they can also do a blood test to look at your inflammatory markers. If you have it, it's easy to treat.

They just give you prednisone for a while until they can calm it down. But there are other places that your heart attack syndrome can refer itself to. The other thing is, if you have pain in your shoulder or between your shoulder blades, that could be referred pain from either your gallbladder or your liver, which is crazy. So if you have an enlarged liver or some other issue of the liver that's causing it pain, and you could actually manifest as pain between the shoulder blades. Human body is just crazy. Sudden horrific headache.

Don't ignore those. Yeah, no, don't ignore that. So a thunderclap headache, the worst headache you've ever had in your life, it's lancinating, it's severe. Just go to the emergency room. If it turns out to be your first migraine, so be it. But that you don't want to miss. Because it could be a sign of sudden aneurysm, as aneurysmal bleed. Black, tarry stool.

Right. We call it melana, M-E-L-E-N-A. I've known people that named their kids, that, not realizing that it meant black tarry stool and physician talk. You can Google people's name, and there will be several people in this country with that first name. And when it turns black, it means that the bleeding is high up in the GI tract. So if it's low like a hemorrhoid, it's going to be bright red when it comes out. But black tarry stool is often a sign of bleeding in the stomach. So you bleed and the acid hits the blood, turns it black.

It mixes in with the fluid in the bowel and then turns into this sort of black tarry substance. Now, if it comes out, if it's voluminous, you could have a big time bleed, but you should pretty much know that because you're going to be lightheaded because you're losing, you're actually losing blood enough to affect your blood pressure. Shortness of breath. Yeah. Yes. Like I have right now.

Yes, just like he was. I need to take a drink. I have this, you know, I talk to my niece. who is a, not Holly, Holly is more like my sister, but her sister Chrissy is a PhD speech pathologist. And she gave me some things to do, and they worked for a while.

But she gave me somebody to see and a test that they need to do. Of course, I just blew that off. So I am going to have to do it because I thought I had it licked. Last bunch of shows I haven't had a problem. You've done good, yeah. I even did a two-hour talk on Zoom.

No problem whatsoever. Not one time did I have to stop. But just every once in a while it kicks in. It's really embarrassing when I'm talking to a patient and all of a sudden I just start, I can't, I start talking like this and I can't talk. And I have to cough and I have to go drink something. And then they think I have COVID-19 because this is the age of COVID-19. Yes.

So, anyway. Unending fatigue. Yeah. Well, chronic fatigue could be lots of things. Thyroid disease, low blood pressure. Anemia. Diabetes, maybe? Yes, diabetes is one.

Low testosterone. Oh, absolutely. 90% of people that have men that have low testosterone are never diagnosed. Frequent urination. God, how long is this list? That's why I told you in a word not to say like sentences. And there are 27 things on this list. Okay, I'll just do one word then.

Frequent urination. Diabetes. Depression. Or pancreate, or. Pancreatitis or urinary tract infection. What was the next one? Depression. Don't ignore it.

Depression. Go get it taken care of. Don't ignore it. Loss of appetite. So many things. Sorry. I can't do it. I can't do it in one word.

Loss of appetite could be an ulcer, could be really bad reflux, could be gallbladder disease, you know, malignancy. drug abuse, and hyperthyroidism. Can you think of any others? This says can be a sign of ovarian cancer if you begin eating and immediately you're full, ulcers or reflex, getting fat. Early satiety, by the way, that's when you eat just a little bit and you get more full than you would have normally. Can be a sign of three different places where a tumor could be. one is actually in the stomach, you know, just laying in there like a polyp, but it's big enough to take up space in there. Another one would be in the wall of the stomach, right?

And then the third place would be outside the stomach pushing in on the stomach. So people with cirrhosis, for example, will, and you'll know it because you have a big distended abdomen with a fluid wave where you push on one end and it goes, you know, to the other side. there's so much fluid in there. It's pushing up and compressing their stomach. So when they eat, there's just not enough space for the stomach to expand and they feel full all the time. If you're expanding waistline, that could mean fluid. Another sign of heart disease. Yeah.

Correct? Well, yeah, more liver disease or, you know, this is really a bummer or, you know, malignancy in the abdominal cavity. When you have heart disease and you have congestive heart failure, it tends to be more right heart type symptoms where you've got, you get swelling in your legs and you get short of breath and that kind of stuff. Blurry vision? Yes. So blurried vision. We're almost done. Okay, thank you.

It could be severely dry eyes. We would call that carotoconjunctivitis sicka. And severely dry eyes can be a sign of rheumologic disease. and people with diabetes can get blurred vision. Yes. You know why? This is cool, though, why they get it. If you've ever put, and they'll get it when their blood sugar gets better, too,

their vision will get goofy. When you put sugar in water, and if you do it in a very clear glass and you do it, you can swirl it around. You see those lines in there as the density of the water. There are interfaces between pure, water and sugar water and at that interface it'll make these lines they're called schlarian lines and you can get those in your eye so if you get a lot a big influx of sugar the refractive index of the eye actually changes and then you kind of get used to it and then you go in

after you've been this way for a year and you realize oh gosh i'm diabetic and they get your blood sugar under control now you're uh it happens again because the refractive index changes again when you go from sugar water in your eyes to more pure water in your eyes. It's a gel, but you get what I'm saying. And so that, yeah, blurry vision can be a sign of worsening blood sugar control or actually improving blood sugar control. Swellen legs and ankles. Yeah, edema.

So congestive heart failure. Could just be bad veins in the legs. We've talked about that multiple times called venous stasis, where the veins and the legs start to fail. There's little valves in those. that try to keep the blood moving in one direction. And when they fail, the veins now expand, and they become varicose, and then gravity pulls the fluid down toward the feet,

while the heart is trying to pump the blood up toward the heart, and that fight between downward pressure and upward pressure causes outward expansion of the vessels and leaking of fluid, and then you end up with venous stasis or big, big giant, you know, stumpy legs. Too much sleep. Yeah, too much sleep. Yeah, you want to talk about that?

Depends on you, the character of your sleep. So if you're falling asleep a lot like I was, I didn't have, it wasn't like I would sleep 14 hours, but I would get up, and then as soon as I got to work, I would park my car and then fall asleep again. And then when I'd sit in front of my computer, if I wasn't fully stimulated, I'd kind of gnawed off, you know, and just kind of, you know, do like that where I'm, oh, God, you know. And that's a sign of sleep apnea or some other parisominy or sleep disorder. They talk about depression here too?

Yes. And then, yeah, staying in bed all the time. That's a different thing. So that's distinct from this. I was sleepy but not fatigued, if that makes any sense. Some people have this just overlying, crushing fatigue, and that could be depression. and what else, hypothyroidism is another one. What other ones did they list? Anything else? They just say the sign of depression, but I know, you know, like Hashimoto's and things like that. People think that, yeah, well, Hashimoto's will generally start out as hyperthyroidism

and then end up as hypothyroidism. It just made me sleepy. Just talking about it? Yes. Yeah, just the word, because Tasey has Hashimoto. That's okay to say, right? Well, yeah. I mean, we just did.

No, I can beep it out. I'm just kidding. Feeling confused. Yeah. And that's the last one. Thank you, Preventative Magazine. So there is a thing, and I'm trying to remember what it is, where you get amnesia with exertion. And I can't remember I'm having a senior moment myself.

Oh, good. And I'm trying to remember the name of, oh, yeah, transient global amnesia. I used to be the medical director for a marathon cycling thing when we lived in. Vermont. And we would have every year two or three people come into the clinic saying, I don't know my name, I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am. I know what a bicycle is. I can speak English and I can do some siphren, but I don't know who I am. And we would lay them down, give them some IV fluids, let them just sit there in a cool room for 30 minutes and they're like, oh yeah, I remember my name. You know, it's Jim Norton.

And it's a weird, weird syndrome. I've had it myself once. I don't know if I've ever told you this story. I didn't have it from working out too much, which is pretty obvious if you look at me. But I was riding home from school. I was in the seventh grade. I had my, on my bike, I had my Schwinn bike, and I could ride it without holding onto the handlebars. So I never held onto the handlebars ever unless I needed to break.

and so I would just ride, you know, sitting up with no handlebars and just leaning. But when I got home, I put my hand on the handlebar, and then I threw the book, stupid, onto the yard. Well, when I did that, I made such a sudden shift in my center of gravity that I just immediately fell and hit my head. It was just like that. There was no stopping it. And when I got up, I didn't know what grade I was in.

I knew my parents. I knew it was my house. And I was looking through my book going, please, please have written down what grade you're in. And the last grade I could remember that I was in was fifth grade. But I knew that wasn't right. But I couldn't tell you what school I went to, who my teachers were, any of that. And, of course, my mother just went, oh, you'll be all right, and took me back to school. And when she took me back to school, as soon as I hit school grounds, it all came back to me.

But that was some pretty freaking scary stuff. I thought so. We are 100% a product of our memory. That's it. So if we don't remember it to us, it didn't happen. And that's like conscious sedation, where people will have a colonoscopy. They give them the goofy juice, and they'll be talking through the whole thing. Hey, does this hurt? No, you know, you can talk to them.

You'll be a little stuporous, but you can still talk. But then when the stuff wears off, anything that happened while the drug was in your system is completely wiped from your short-term memory. And so you wake up as if it never happened. My experience with that is I lay down, they say count to 10, and I go 10, 9, nothing's happening, 8. And when I get to 8, it's already done. You know, I'm still counting. But now the procedure is complete. I have no sensation of anything having gone in between those things.

Isn't that crazy? Yes. So I have a few more, but I think we spent quite a bit of time on that. A few more articles. Oh, a few more articles. Okay. Well, you got anything interesting? That was good, though.

That stimulated a lot of discussion. I kind of enjoyed that. COVID-19 mortality rates are higher among men than women. Of course. Okay. Okay. And it's a little easier. What was the percentage, do you know, did they give you because...

No, Steve, I just don't. You're never going to be able to point at a single death and say, well, that one happened because this person was a dude. They say that it's because men smoke more and have a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease and hypertension. That's it. And women are more likely to hold jobs in health care. What? And that's why women don't die as much from this. smarter because we understand our health better.

And then many animals and human studies demonstrate that women or the ladies mount stronger immune responses to infection. Aha. Okay. Now that might be something, except for pregnant women and they have trouble with respiratory viruses. All right. Very interesting. Well, thank you.

We talked many, many ages ago. It seems like years ago, but it was just really in February and March, talking about the blood type where you're slightly protected if you're type O and slightly more at risk if you're type A, but there's no one that has type A that dies, you'll say, well, that was because they were type A. Fast majority of people, type A, are going to live just like everybody else. Most people still will not get this, and most people who do will not die. So, all right, that's my, my, um, uplifting thought for the day. Hey, hey, can I talk to your husband?

Got a question for you. Something you've never touched on here. Uh-oh. That would be, no, never mind. That's Stacy Deloge, everybody. Let's give him one of these. Lest I ignore him. and not let everybody know that that's Stacey Deloach, everybody.

If I donate my body to science after I die, do I get to decide what experiments are done on it? No. Before I donate. Well. No, if that's the plan or do I just give it up for a pre-barial or cremation or whatever and let y'all do what you want to do? Yeah, well, don't say y'all.

It won't be me, but it'll be James Byrd. It depends. So if you can find a research study that's looking for bodies for a specific purpose, then, yes, you could donate to that thing and you're pretty much going to dictate what they're going to do with it because they're only recruiting deceased people for that specific purpose. But for the most part, if you donate your body to a medical school, you're for the most part donating your body to be dissected by medical students. So you are furthering medical education. If you donate to a place like Restore Life USA, and we've had James on the show before, you are donating parts of your body to medical research. Now, that's different. So if there's someone is doing a study on osteoarthritis of the knee, they might want some knees to look at under the microscope or whatever to grade the degree of.

damage the cartilage, whatever, so they'll take your knees off, send those to them. And somebody else may need some pancreatic islet cells, or, as Dr. Scott would say, islet cells. And then they'll harvest those and package them up the way that the researchers need it and send them to those. And then when they're done doing all of that, then they will cremate you and give you back to the family at no cost. And these type centers are scattered across the country. The other thing that you could do is you could, if you wanted to know exactly what they're going to do, in Tennessee, there's the body farm. I hear people talking about that all the time, where you donate your body to the body farm. And what that is, this is crazy.

I would never do this. But they just put you in this field, and maybe they'll bury one leg or they'll bury half your body or they'll just lay you out there. And then they can study how people decompose under different circumstances out in the wild. And what that does is it helps them to catch criminals because if they know that these certain beetles only feed on, I don't know, eyeballs after the three months of the person being out in the field in the springtime, then they can kind of determine when somebody died and when they were brought out there. So if you like CSI and stuff like that, you could donate your body to a body farm. But for the most part, no, you don't get to say what you want them to do. Now, if you want to donate organs, it's a little bit more precise. You can say, I only want to donate skin.

Now, it sounds horrible like they're going to skin you, like you see on alone, that TV show that we watch, where they actually skin the animals when they kill them. It's not like that at all. It's more like, you know, those cheese things that have the little slicer on them, and you pull it toward you, and it makes a little sort of flat, long slice of cheese. it's like that and they do that on the skin and it's called a dermatome and they'll, is that right?

That doesn't sound right. Okay. There's a dermatome we use that for something else. I can't remember the name of the device. But anyway, it's been 40 years since I had anything to do with this. And you drag it across the skin and you get strips of skin that you then put in sterile saline and you save them for people in the burn unit.

It's the best bandage that you can put on somebody with an acute burn. So you can just specify, I only want you to do skin or skin and corneas or whatever. Okay. Okay. All right. Excellent question. That's why we take his calls, though, because, you know, he has really good questions.

Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Chuck from New York. Hey, Chuck. Good. Thanks, man. How are you doing? Good. Good.

Thanks for asking. First of all, I want to thank you for getting back to me on e-mails. It's always been great, especially early on in COVID, to have somebody to reach out to that can give you an answer. Yeah, man, I'm here to serve. So flu season's coming. I have never, as far as I know. I don't even know what he's going to say, get your damn flu shot.

Exactly. So had the flu. Okay. I've also never gotten a flu shot. Oh, there you go. And I know that you're a big proponent of getting the flu shot. Yeah. But there is a part of me that feels like,

I've never gotten a flu. Yeah, I get it. I've never gotten a flu shot. Yeah. So why mess it all up now by getting a flu shot? I think a lot of people. The irrational fear. How many people got the flu pandemic flu in 1918?

Do you know? It was about 10% of the population. So 90% didn't get it. But it was still devastating. But I think a lot of people feel the way he does. Yeah, I know. I know they do. I don't get sick.

I don't need the flu shot. Well, no one time I got the flu shot. I got the flu shot. Yeah. I understand that. I got the flu after not only getting the flu shot, but getting the being exposed to two kids who got the flu missed, which is contagious, dirty little secret. They won't give it to adults, but any adult around a kid that got the flu mist gets the vaccine, too, because it is a live, attenuated virus, and it is communicable. But here's the thing.

I didn't die. And if you remember, they made me stay out of work for seven days. And what did I do? I was sick for a day, fever of 105, and I watched five seasons of arrow and loved every minute of it. And I was pissed when I had to go back to work. So if you get the flu shot and you still get the flu, you're less likely to go to the hospital. If you go to the hospital, you're less likely to die. So we have a friend, and he is the CEO, along with his spouse, Chetai.

And his name is Richard David Smith. and he was here in this studio, and they were on their way to move to the West Coast, right? Yeah, well, Vegas is one stop. I think they're in, like, Washington State now or something, but they are the proprietors of hyperphysics, H-Y-P-E-R-F-I-Z-Z-I-C-S, an energy drink for nerds. And he felt the same way, never gotten the flu shot, never gotten the flu, why I mess with it now? the swine flu. I guess it must have been like 2009, right? God, was that long ago?

And he ended up on the vent and almost died. Didn't die, thank God. And now when I get somebody on Twitter particularly that says, well, the flu shot's a big scam, and I send them to him. And there's lots of people. People I respect that feel this way. Chrissy Mayer, who you haven't met yet, who you will love, by the way. We did a show with her back in Thanksgiving before.

all of this dumb COVID stuff was really kicking in here. And we talked about influenza. And she just felt like you can't tell that it really does anything. How can you say it prevented anything? You know, if it didn't happen, then how do you say that, you know, how do you claim that? I've already gotten mine. Yeah. You got your, this year?

I can't get mine because I just had the COVID vaccine. I had number two. Pretty sure I got the real deal. And I'll tell you why, because I feel like crap. And the second one is kicking my ass, kind of like the shingricks. The shingricks one did. Yeah, so that's good. I feel pretty good about that.

Anyway, let's get out of here. And thanks always goes to my wife Tacey. Thanks, Tase. You're welcome. It's really fun doing this with you. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob, Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teth, Lewis Johnson, Holly Gould, Paul Offcharski, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Sam, Roberts, Pat, Duffy, Dennis Falcone,

Holly Gould, Matt Kleinschmidt, Dale Dudley, the great Rob Bartlett, Bernie and Sid, and their little dog, Ember, Ron Bennington, Holly Gould, and Fez Watley, whose support of this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our Sirius X-M show on the Faction Talk channel. SiriusX-M. Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern on-demand. And other times at Jim McClure's pleasure, don't forget to check out Wine, W-I-N-E dot Dr. Steve.com. assuming and please drink responsibly. Many thanks. Go to our listeners. These voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy.

Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, wash your hands, wear your face mask, get off your asses, and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of weird medicine. Thanks, take you. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye.

You know what I'm going to do.