Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 426 - Examining the Junkal Area

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

Dr Steve and Tacie discuss hand sanitizers, causes of mouth pain, when to quarantine, self breast and testicular exams, male breast cancer 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!) hellofresh.com/weird80 (fantastic meals, cooked at home!) feals.com/fluid (premium CBD, delivered to your door!) wine.drsteve.com (get the best deal on wine…delivered to your home!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Number one thing, don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of Weird Medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows, O'B and Anthony and Ron and Bez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Your show was better when he had medical questions. Hey! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolovir, I'm stripping from my nose.

I've got the leprosy. of the heartbound, exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take my brain out and glassed with the wave, an ultrasonic, agographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill for all my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane.

I want a requiem for my disease. So I'm aging Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio now a podcast i'm dr steve with my little pal tacy hello tacy hello everybody 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 regular medical provider if you can't find an answer anywhere else give us a call at 347 766 4323 that's 347 pooh head visit our website at dr steve

for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy or go to our merchandise store at cafepress.com slash weird medicine and I don't know, buy a Bristol stool scale mug. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything here with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking over with your doctor.

Nurse practitioner, practical nurse, physician assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory, scientist, registered dietitian or whatever. All right, very good.

Don't forget to check out stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. This is the thing that really keeps us on the air. Stuff. dot, Dr. Steve.com. Our new thing is wine. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. Wine, W-I-N-E.

You go to Naked Wines, and it's a wine club, but it's the best wine club I've ever seen. We use it all the time. Keep your wife happy during quarantine. We are very excited about naked wines. It's wonderful. You get wine. you wouldn't get otherwise.

I'm drinking one now. Is that right? Is that one of your naked wines? Finishing off a bottle. I think your next shipment is coming tomorrow, by the way. Oh, my goodness. So it's neat. We'll have to go get it, Steve.

You put a little money up front. That is the thing. Once a month, like I sent 40 bucks a month. But every month I'm buying a case, so I get $40 off my case. Plus, there's these huge discounts, crazy discounts. I bought $235 worth of wine for $85. And they ship it right to your door. as long as it's legal.

Wine. Dottersteve.com. Don't forget if you want to lose weight with us, Tacey and I are both losing weight like crazy again because we're back on Noom, a full-time. Noom-N-O-O-M dot Dr.steve.com. Noom. Dot, Dr. Steve.com.

It's not a diet. It's a psychology program. You get two weeks free, and if you decide to do it for, it's just three months, you get 20% off. It's not an on and on and on, like the other one that, you know, rhymes with flate flotchers, right? And then check out Dr. Scott's site at Simplyurables.com.

So, anyway, we are on vacation and we're drinking, right? So this is a drunk show. Not yet, but hopefully soon. You filled your glass right up to the rim, didn't you? The last time we had a drunk show, I had to play. clown music. Do you remember that? I wish I had to require.

I wish I thought about it. It was like I was making fun of you. And then you went, you know what, Steve? You! And then you hear d-l-l-de-l-l-l-de-d-l-de-d-d-de-d. Because that made it funny. But anyway, well, good. The reality was quite sad.

Yeah, what do you do? Oh, we'll have fun. Yeah. So. Well, it was great to have Dr. Scott, not Steve. You're always here. Scott in last week? Yes. And we're hoping he'll be back more often to do the Sirius XM show and then you and I may do the podcast. We'll see. Or we're hoping Dr. Scott can do all of it.

Do you want to, okay. So let me look at our voicemails real quick. I haven't downloaded any this week because we're actually... Way to prepare. Good job. Okay. We're doing this the day after we recorded our last show. And let's just see here. You know, let's, Let's see what this person has to say. Hang on. Hey, what's this about Tacey quitting? It's impossible. She's the abateeer Costello.

The glue, if you will. Mellow to your mellow or whatever. She can't be quitting. Set her straight. Take care of her. She's out of here. You hear that? People actually like you.

I don't understand it. We love you, Tacey. Oh, yes, we do. We love you. Tacey and we'll be true When you're not near us We're blue Oh, Tacey, we love you

So, drink motherfucker, drink Motherfucker, drink, drink motherfucker, that's how our sorority song was when I was. Is that right? Yes, exactly. So they would say how much they loved somebody and then they'd call them the MF word and tell them to drink Yeah, let's see here That's naughty of me, we're not supposed to cuss anymore

Hey, it's Chippa I just wanted to tell Tacey she needs to stay on the fucking show or something she's got big fucking hooters and I like

I like her fuck yeah okay so now I feel wanted wait a minute I think there was more God damn it God damn it cut that pot out

all right Oh, oh, here we go. One more. Well, hey there, Dr. Steve. It's Natalie from Northern Ontario, Canada. Wow. I am calling to say that I realize that COVID has certainly messed up your studio guest, but I most certainly enjoyed having Pacey on the show as your co-host or commentator or whatever.

I really enjoy her comments. I really enjoy her point of view. and I think she's a good foil to you. So by all means, I would love to see Casey stay on the show. All the best, take care, stay safe. Bye-bye. There you go. Thank you.

Well, so all of that makes me feel really great. So thanks to the lovers, boo to the haters. Well, there's no haters. But anyway, let's explain to them why I'm talking the way I am. So there's a reason we didn't have a show, oh, a week before or last. Right. My company went through significant surprise layoffs. And so I did keep my job.

I was very fortunate. It's just the majority of my area is four and a half hours away. So I am not going to be here. We're trying to figure out a way that I can set up a nice little microphone in some Fairfield Inn somewhere. Let me ask you this. Because that was my idea. To keep you on the show, we could have you Skype in from wherever you are. Well, okay.

So I've got... Would that be fun or would that be stressful for you? I don't know. I literally will have nothing else to do at night. I value my time with Steve just tremendously and to not be able to be at home with my husband and my children three nights a week at least. Yeah. It's quite disturbing to me. And I'm just now soaking it in and processing it.

So that may be a thing that we can do. And it's not like I'm going to have anything to do except for eat, like fast food, like Wendy's and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. That's your son. Okay. Yeah, so I think that, I don't know. I mean, I could see that going either way, that it would put pressure on you and you'd be away from home and you'd be going like just F it. which would be fine if you couldn't do it.

We'd just do it without you. But it also could be a way to stay tethered to your regular routine, too. It could go both ways. I see that, too. And if anybody has extensive knowledge of, well, never mind. I'm not going to ask that. Well, no, that's true. We've got all kinds of people that listen to this show, and they're on the road,

because they're on the road for days and days on end. So if you have, listen, if you have any advice for Tacey, feel free to call you can email me you don't have to put it on air but if you want to put it on the air and no i mean i don't i want to be as as generic as possible yeah yeah um you know just a lot of really good people lost their jobs and and it was very upsetting to me and it would have been horrible for me to be on the radio show i would have just cried the whole time yeah so no that day particularly i am heavily medicated and doing just fine now thank you well good yeah well i'm glad. Well, we'll see. This will be an adventure for all of us because Tacey's job's always

kept her close by. And we have our routine. And we have our weekday routine and we have our weekend routine, just like a bunch of old people, like Howard Stern's parents where they have yogurt and blueberries every Tuesday morning. I can't imagine getting to that point. But I guess that's how that happens. And you get comfortable with it. So being uncomfortable isn't necessarily the worst thing because that's when change happens and sometimes the change is for the better. So, you know, I'm optimistic, but it's going to be weird. It's difficult to understand how being four and a half hours away, three nights a week,

is going to be better. But I am starting to feel positive about it, maybe even a little bit excited. But, you know, we'll see. Well, you can have your work husband in, you know, in Virginia somewhere. Well, that's what my trainer said. He said, that'd be awesome for me. I could have a family in every town I visit. He's exactly right.

He would. But, you know, I don't roll that way. Well, we'll just. That might be something to work on, Tate. Maybe so. We'll just see. And, you know, I'm going to have to give him up a lot, too, because, you know, I'm going, I've seen him for eight. years probably and just a lot of changes and a lot of things to accept and process.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, we wish you the best, obviously. Oh, there'll be plenty of bitching when I get out there, though. You know, there will be. I know there will be. And I'm just, I feel very fortunate to have a job. Just why does it have to be so hard, you know? I just, anyway, that's, that's my story. Okay, very good. Well, let's, you want to answer some medical questions. Since we're on vacation, I don't want to do any topical news stories because things could happen to make us look really stupid over the next two weeks. So why don't we just give us one of these. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. And we'll do well, Dr. Steve, you recently tweeted an article about the efficacy of and need for sanitizing hands

with alcohol, and the CDC recommends 60% as of the 6th of October, and most of the commercial hand sanitizer are 70%. Do you have any information about the efficacy of that 70%? Sure. And should I be moving heaven and earth to get 80%? And where the hell do I get it? Thanks. Bye. Yeah, no, it's a great question. So the disinfectant effectiveness of alcohol depends on the type of alcohol, the concentration, the amount that you put on your hands. You know, if you just put a little dab or glob it on, obviously more is better, the amount of time that you're exposed. And, you know, it's isopropanol and ethanol, which is drinking alcohol and end propanol. And some combinations are the ones that are usually used in these hand rubs. And what they've found is that ethanol concentrations of 60 to 95% are safe and effective.

So anything in that range would be fine. And if you, everything that I'm looking at is 60 to 95%. If you have 80 to 85%, you can reduce the contact time. okay in other words you can put it on for less time but you know we're talking seconds different so you just put it on rub it in good let it sit there and let it dry on your hands before you're saying oh that stuff's terrible hey what about do you know about the distilleries that are creating sure so what's the deal with that like we used to make vodka and now we make hand sanitizer in so um you and i had a still

at one time. When I was pregnant, so I did not get to partake. Well, but we still have some of the products of that. So I had a five gallon still and I grew my own mash using molasses and white sugar and wine yeast, and then

I would feed it to get it to get up to a temperate, or not a temperature and alcohol concentration of about 15%. So there is our food. Do you want to go get it? I'll wax eloquent for a minute. it. And we would distill it. So about 15% of five gallons is how much we would get. And it would be

pure alcohol, 200% or 200 proof. And it was really 198 proof because you can never quite get it to 100% alcohol. And then that stuff will kill you if you drink it. So you have to dilute it. So I'd always dilute it down to 100 proof. So I'd go away. If I had a liter of alcohol, I'd add a liter of water to it. And then from that, you can make stuff. You can make liqueurs. You can drink it just like it is. You can make some of those weird moonshine drinks like apple pie or peach pie or cherry pie, all those different fruit flavors and stuff.

But anyway, that's ethanol. and ethanol in 60 to 90% concentrations in gel mixed with aloe or whatever gel that you have, some sort of hydrophilic gel, you know, a water-based gel, will kill viruses and bacteria and all kinds of stuff. So, you know, if they're wanting to divert some of their ethanol production to hand sanitizer, more power to them and good for them. But anyway, yeah, so the 70% is just fine. right in that, if it's right in that range. All right. Hi, Dr. Steve.

I just went through a stressful time in my life. Okay. It was a couple of days and I was not hungry at all. I eventually forced myself to eat and the roof of my mouth hurt every time that I bit down. And it was like that the next meal I ate, I went probably 50 something. hours without eating anything. I mean, that's not crazy, but my mouth just hurt so bad, chilling, and did the same time the next meal I had.

Then it subsided after that, but what the fuck said about things? Yeah, so pain at the roof of your mouth can be caused by usually about four things. One is burns, so all of us have eaten pizza that. was too hot. The cheese on the top is an insulated layer. And so underneath it, it may be a lot hotter than it feels on the surface, because the surface feels maybe even cool to the touch, but there's hot lava under there. So you take a bite, and then the stupid cheese kind of sluffs off and exposes that hot layer, and it burns the top of your mouth. And you can't get it off because it's cheese and usually heal itself within, you know, a couple of days.

So one thing about the mouth is it generally heals quickly except in a couple of examples, which would be canker sores or cold sores, but everything else will heal pretty quickly because there's a lot of blood supply there. So any hot food, any hot drinks, coffee, tea, anything hot that's hotter than you thought it was, and you can use a mouth rinse for that, or you can. can just swirl, crushed ice around in the roof of your mouth, and that'll help with the pain. The other thing is cancassores. Now, cancorsors can develop on the inside of your cheeks or on the mucous membrane, but they can also be on the roof of your mouth.

And when they're there, they usually last 10 to 14 days. They suck and they hurt, and then they just sort of disappear after a couple of weeks. and I have found, if you have a single canker sore, these things called canker covers, C-A-N-K-E-R, and I think we have them at Dr. Steve.com, or sorry, stuff.com sort of takes you to the merchandise area of our website. But if you scroll down there, I think we have canker covers on there. But if we don't, you can just click through. But those work great because they cover the lesion with this sort of gel, and it acts like a Band-Aid. And that's really all they need to start healing. Apparently, they're just real sensitive to us eating and drinking, and it keeps sloughing off the tissue that's trying to heal those cancorsors.

So I've made cancorsesores go away in 24 hours before. The other way I've had that really appears, I don't have any data on this, but appears. to make them go away quicker is if you get the just over-the-counter hydrogen peroxide, the stuff in the brown bottle, and you put a Q-tip in it and get it good and soaked with the hydrogen peroxide, and then just stick it right on that canker sore, and it kind of stings a little bit, but it sort of hurts good. And if you just hold it there until the pain goes away, they seem to go away quicker. I don't know if this is real or if it's just my experience, but,

I've had good results with that. So canker sores is one. The third one could be a cold sore on the top of your, the roof of your mouth. Cold sores are caused by herpes virus. And that can be something that can hurt for 10 days to two weeks. And it causes blisters that then ulcerate in the roof of the mouth if that's where you get in your recurrences. Instead of getting on your lip, you're just getting it in the roof of your mouth. And that can also be painful.

And that may also the prodromal phase of that, in other words, before the virus erupts, could make you feel so bad that you didn't eat for a couple of days. That's a possibility. So if this comes back and it comes back on a semi-regular basis, then that may be what it is. And what you're going to want to do is talk to your primary care provider to get a prescription of an anti-herpes medication that you can take at the onset of it that will knock it out. a lot quicker, within days instead of weeks. And then the third way is, you know, an oral malignancy, but that's not what you have,

because oral malignancy, they don't come and go. I always tell people, cancer doesn't come and go. It comes and stays. So if you've got a lump on your neck and it got big and then it went back down again, the likelihood that's cancer goes way down. If it just continues to grow, then, yeah, we've got to look at it. So that's a possibility for other people, not for you. I don't think that has anything to do.

with what you've got. But what you can do is have your primary care provider or your dentist. Dentists are really better at this at diagnosing oral lesions than primary care providers are. Let them take a look in there and see if they can see anything, particularly if it comes back. All right. How are you doing? Is our food here? I really enjoy the show.

Do we need to break and eat and then come back? No, no, no, no. We can. No, let's do this. That's that thing. Let's just do it. How much longer we got? Five minutes.

No. No, we've got, we have 30 minutes to go. All right, let's do it. All right, okay. You sure? Food's going to be cold. That's okay. Is it going to go bad?

I don't think it'll go bad. Okay, all right. Well, if you get hungry and we need to quit, we'll do it. So I somehow contracted COVID-19 in the middle of September. Okay. My symptoms began on the 16th, and my county health department cleared me from at-home lockdown 10 days after my symptoms started because I was improving. Okay.

Now, I live with my husband, and he has not had any symptoms yet, and we've shared spaces throughout the time that I was the most ill. Okay. So he's required to quarantine for two more weeks to make sure he doesn't get sick. Yeah. But my question is, it seems kind of crazy to me that I can rejoin society when I live with someone who may either get sick or be an asymptomatic carrier. Understood. So I'm thinking like I could still be shedding virus. or still have it on me, you know, or have I built up enough immunity that I'm okay to go places

regardless of whether or not he ends up getting sick. Right. Also, not to mention the fact that I still have a little bit of a stuff he knows, so I don't feel like I'm 100% over it. So just so, you know, I do plan on continuing to stay home for the next two weeks while he finishes his quarantine, but just curious here. thoughts on if I'm being overly cautious or if it makes sense to just make sure that he rides it out as well.

Yeah, it is interesting that you're in a home, you live with somebody. You had COVID-19, and then you can go out into the world. You had it. Your spouse never had it, and they still have to be quarantined because they have to be quarantined for 14 days after the last conference. with a person who has COVID-19, and you were considered to have COVID-19 until the day you were released. So he's got to stay an extra 14 days.

And the reason for that is, is that he could get it any time in there. You know, people generally display symptoms within five to seven days, but it can go as long as 21 days. And the rules are just stay at home for 14 days after your last contact with someone who has COVID-19. So the day you finished your quarantine was the last day that you were considered by the CDC to have COVID-19. So if we followed the rules to their limit, then he would have to stay an extra 14 days. You, on the other hand, should be done. You may have a positive COVID-19 test, but it's most likely positive because they're detecting viral fragments rather than actually live virus. it's unlikely that you can infect anybody at this point.

So how can you tell the difference between viral fragments and live vines? You can't, and with that test. So why can she go out? Because the syndrome generally lasts, you know, 201 days. Okay. So. Very confusing. It is very confusing.

And there are going to be some people that are out, that are released, that are transmitting virus to people. But our goal is not 100%. Shedding is what I believe they say, Steve. Yes, shedding. Shetting it. But if you're shedding, you can transmit. So we may release, so let's say we release one to two percent. That's better than having 100 percent of them out on the street.

We can't go for zero percent. I was on this show recently. It was Gary Garver and the judge out in California. And one of the things we talked about was expectations. So we could stop this in 21 days from today. We could stop this completely. But to do that, we would need seven billion hazmat suits, and everyone in the world would have to wear one for 21 days. Or a bubble.

We could get in a bubble. And that's gross because you have to live in the bubble for 21 days, and it's going to be, you know, loaded with all kinds of grotesque things smeared on the wall of the bubble. It had to be, you know, at the end of three weeks. But we could stop it because during that time, anybody that was already sick would mostly not be sick. I'm not talking about the hospitalized people. That's just forget about them for a minute because some of them could be sick for 55 days. But they're not shedding virus the whole time. But all the people that are sick now would no longer be shedding virus and nobody would have caught it from them because they were in their bubble.

And that would be the end of it. We could emerge from this and the virus would mostly be gone. we could use contact tracing to just tamp down on the few cases that came up while we were waiting for a vaccine or whatever. So we could do that, but it's so extreme. I mean, there would be more deaths from that than there would be from not doing it. Well, look at all the people that wouldn't be able to go to the hospital. You know, that would be part of this. That would be part of it.

If you get an appendicitis, you're going to die because you're not allowed to come out of your bubble. So that's an answer. it's not a satisfactory answer. So going for 100% isn't our goal. We want to decrease transmission to the point where the R sub T. You remember the R sub T is, right, Tase? When you talk about that, I kind of get you hot, right? Yeah, it does.

It's the number of people in the real world that one person will infect, and we want to get that below one. And if we get that below one, let's say we get it to 0.9, then 1,000 people will affect 900. which will affect 8,10, which will affect 720, which will affect 630. And if you do that, then you will always have declining number of cases. And that's what we want. So when we pick a number 21 days or 14 days or whatever number you pick, there's always going to be some people that are going to emerge from that that are still going to infect somebody.

But the number will be minuscule compared to if we didn't do that. Does that make sense? If we want to go for 100%, well, then hell, we need to quarantine everybody for 60 days. But then we won't have an economy. People will be, you know, doing substance abuse. There will be suicides. There will be loss of productivity and income, much more extreme than what we got now. So we can't do that.

So we say six feet, not because that's 100% going to stop transmission. Yes, I keep hearing more that six feet's not enough. Well, okay, not enough for what? It's enough to decrease transmission to the point where if we all stayed six feet away from each other, we could decrease that R sub T to a number far below one. It wouldn't stop all transmission. So then people go, well, how many deaths are okay with you? And it's like, no deaths are okay with me.

I don't want anybody to die. But to go to a zero tolerance for death in this country, it's impossible. Why don't we have zero tolerance for automobile accidents or zero tolerance for smoking any of those things? Because we just don't do that. It's not realistic. So the price of admission to be in this world is to leave this world. And I don't want anybody to die needlessly, though. That's the main thing.

There's your son. Let's put him on the air this time. Liam, you're on Weird Medicine. It's downstairs, buddy. On the counter. On the counter. It's the wings in the bag. You have wings.

It's the white plastic bag. This is fascinating for everyone listening to this. This is a child who has a 4.2 average out of four. Close. up that you opened, please. Thank you. Yeah, close everything else up, okay? Yeah, okay. Thank you. I wonder if we should have put everything in a 170-degree oven. What do you think? I think it'll

be okay. Too fucking late. Oh, damn. Oh, I know. I keep thinking... No, it's not too late, though. We're not supposed to... We could do it. We can just stop right now. I'm not going downstairs again. It winded me really hard. You work out four times a day. There's no way that going... up those stairs. It did, though. It did this time. I think it's alcohol. I don't know. That could be it. All right. So I hope that helps. The person, the close contact is anyone that's within six feet as someone who has COVID-19 for a total of 15 minutes or more. So your spouse is always going to count for that unless you're estranged.

Remember our friend, Dr. Hoplin, who was on this show, way back at the beginning of this, he was on the Diamond Princess. And he was locked in a tin can room with his wife. for 14 days. She had it. He never got it. So there are some people that have natural immunity. If you provided care at home to someone

who was sick with COVID-19, or you had direct physical contact with that person, or you shared eating or drinking utensils, please don't do that. Or they sneezed coughed or got respiratory droplets on you, then those are all close contacts, and those people need to quarantine. Okay.

All right. All right. Okay. Hey, Dr. Steve, Phil here. Question. What's the proper real way to do a breast exam? I know you talk about, you know, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Yeah.

But I didn't even know what I'm looking for when I do that on my balls. So what's the breast? I had a breast exam today. Okay. Well, let's talk about that. Then we're going to do a, you know what? It's October. Every October we have to do the cell.

testicular exam. And every year that we do that, someone emails me and says, you know, I found a lump on my testicle. I went and got it checked. It was cancer and they took it off and I'm fine. Well, that's awesome. So we're going to do that after. So remind me. All these shenanigans mean something after all. Yep. So I had a breast exam today. And she started pressing on my breasts from the outside. So you were standing up, laying down on your stomach? Are you on your stomach? No, I'm slain. Okay. No, you're on your back.

Well, I'm just saying, okay, so you're on your back. I was on my back. Ooh, with breasts akimbo. Yes. Oh, I'm looking at. I guess. I don't know what that means. And so she started pressing on the outside, and she just pressed all around in little circles.

Okay, okay. Okay, all right, all right. And so, and it was fun. Okay. But then also, she scheduled me for a mammogram for a month. from now. Excellent. Okay.

So self-breast exams, you know, for a while there, we were hearing, well, you know, they're saying don't do it. There's no reason not to do it. 40% of diagnosed breast cancers are detected by women who feel a lump. You know what? I think most women do not do them. I don't do mine. Yeah, I do them for you. That's terrible.

No, you don't. Say, do. No, you don't. So, yeah, so you want to lay, a good place to do this in the shower because you get all soaked up and then your hand will slide really easily over that breast tissue. And listen, men need to do this too. One out of a hundred men will have breast, or I'm sorry, that's not right. One out of 100 breast cancers will be a male breast cancer. So you can get it as well. So if you're a male and you feel a lump in the pectoral area, get it checked, okay? Because you can get breast cancer too. So you're in the shower or you're

laying down and so the breast tissue is flattened out a little bit. You start at the upper outer quadrant, so under the armpit and feel all the way into the arm bed. She did do that. She did do that. And then you work your way in a spiral toward the middle. So just feeling palpating all the way around until you get to the nipple area and then sort of pinch under the nipple and see if you can feel anything there. Now, if you're real young and you do this, you will feel some glandular tissue under there. That's normal. You got to, the reason you want to do this is because you want to get the feel of what your breasts feel like normally. So we've got really fibrous breasts, really fatty breasts. Either one, you want to feel what it feels like

normally because the first time you do it, most likely it's going to feel pretty normal. I mean, it's going to be normal. And what you're looking for is a change in that exam over time. And then you do the other side with the other hand. Okay, so you want to switch hands. and so right hand to left breast, left hand to right breast is a good way to do it. And if you want to do it in the shower, that's fine too, because then you can slide around and a lot of women feel that they get a better feel that way when they're doing that. And once a month, you do it once a month. And another way that you can do it is get in front of a mirror.

You know, visually inspect your breast with your arms at your sides and then raise your arms overhead. And what you're looking for is any dimpling, anything that kind of pulls in when you do that instead or any change in the skin. And, you know, difference in size isn't a problem because most women have difference in size. Do you have a difference in size? I've never noticed it if you do. Well, I've had surgery on them, so I should not. He should have made them normal. I think I did before.

I don't remember, though. I don't remember there was a big change. I remember they were amazing. I think there was one. They were amazing. I think there was one that was bigger than the other. Yeah, okay. I don't notice it so much now.

Okay. So you can't rely on just that. But, you know, it's free and it's easy and it's relatively sensitive. Our friend, Dr. Kay, who used to be on this show, found a lump, and she ignored it. And sadly, she's no longer with us. She ignored it for some period of time. I remember we were at PA John's and PA Jill's Halloween party, and she made me feel it right there in the middle of the dance floor. And I said, Dr. Kay, you need to do something about that.

And she said, oh, I'll be all right. Well, fortunately, she had a really slow-growing tumor, so she lived a long time with it. I mean, a long time. But it finally, you know, she finally succumbed to it. So please, if you feel that, don't ignore it. and every once in a while it'll be it won't be anything you know it'll just be a fluid-filled cyst they go in and stick a needle in it which sounds horrible except weirdly there's no pain fibers in there so you can stick a needle right in there and women don't feel it for the

most part at least that's what they tell me and they get the fluid out of there look at it under the microscope it's fine it's gone it never comes back that's the end of it so so a lot of Sometimes you get good news, too, but you're going to get better news the quicker we can treat it. Stage 1 cancer has got 90 plus survival at five years. Stage 2, these are based on the size, right? Stage 2 is a little bit bigger than a stage 1. It's got 87 plus percent of women that survive treatment. And then stage 3 a little bit less.

And then, of course, stage 4, now that's a problem because stage 4 means that it's moved away from the breast to a distant place in the body. And those cancers tend to be incurable. They're still treatable, but tend to be more incurable. So your job, if you find yourself in this position, is to have between you and your oncologist kick the can as far down the road as you can because we are coming up with new treatments for cancer every single day.

And I'm not even exaggerating when I say that. It's amazing, all the stuff that's coming out, and the immunological treatments, which will be the mainstay in the future of cancer treatment, they're coming. You know, if you're interested in looking at some of these non-sudoscience cancer cures, you can go to Dr.steve.com up the right-hand corner, just click on non-sudoscience cancer cures. And you'll see some of the pioneering stuff that's being done with modulating the immune system to kill cancer. All right. All right. Okay, do you get your pap smears? I sure did.

Let's see. She's so good. She does it so quick and talks to me the whole time. It's like I don't even know because it makes me really nervous. Yeah, sure. It's so great to have somebody good who does that, who understands and knows who gets nervous and who doesn't. I will say that because I delivered so many babies that I was good at pelvic exams, and that my patients when I was doing primary care,

I think would give me a good report on that. My philosophy was just to walk them through it, what I was doing. So I never did anything without telling them I was doing it or going to do it before I did it. You know, I'm going to touch you here. You know, here comes the, you know, the speculation on all that stuff. Oh, so I see your son's a senior. Oh, my God, that makes me feel so old.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, my gosh. Okay. You're done. And then it's like, oh, that was wonderful. Yep. I mean, not wonderful, but not terrible. It could have been wonderful.

Not terrible. So let's look at men, by the way, that had breast cancer, okay? So Richard Roundtried, you know who he was? He's a little bit before your time. Nope. He was the actor who played Shaft. And when the doctor told him that he had breast cancer, he said, I thought he was questioning my manhood. you know, how could I possibly have that?

But he survived after a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. So Richard Roundtree had it. Edward, let me see. Edward Brooke, he was the first African-American elected to the Senate. In 2002, he was diagnosed with breast cancer. He also survived. He had a double mastectomy and remained cancer-free until his death at age 95. So good for him.

Peter Chris from Kiss had breast cancer. cancer. Ernie Green, he was a fullback with the Cleveland Browns. Montel Williams, I used to be on his show all the time. In 2012, he appeared on the Dr. Oz show to talk about his emotional eating, which began after a traumatic event when he was 19. And while serving as a U.S. Marine, he was diagnosed with breast cancer and received double mastectomy.

So that was when he was young. And a lot of young people who get breast cancer do not do well, you know. because an active immune system in that situation actually can make things more difficult for you. But he did very well. As a matter of fact, we know Montel Williams, you know, from his show and his radio show that I used to be out. That was all after the fact. He had breast cancer, you know. So, you know, so there you go.

So there are. Talk about testicular cancer. Okay. Yes. Thank you. I almost forgot. This is October. And for weird medicine, this is the time when we discuss male self-testicular exam.

Why do we do that? Because on the very first show, October 12th of 2005, or whenever it was, we did a self-testicular exam on the air. So this is what you do. You want to obviously discard your clothing and do this with me. I'll do it with you right now. I'm going to take my pants off. And are you okay with that? It's hot, right?

Yeah, I don't care. Okay, so what you want to do is reach down there, and you're going to feel one testicle and then the other, okay? And you just want to get a gestalt for the testicle first. Is it smooth? Is it egg-shaped? Is it kind of, you know, a little tender if you squeeze it a little bit, don't squeeze it hard, but does it generally feel smooth? And you want to take your hands and make a C-clamp and then reach around to the back side of the top of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, let's, let's see. say the right testicle.

And you're going to, and you're going to feel this, obviously, through the scrotum. You're going to feel a place at the top, back part of the testicle that kind of feels mushy, but when you squeeze it, it feels like you, that feeling you get when you get kicked in the nuts. That is your epididymus. Now, you can feel above that, and you may feel the epididimus, there are, there are, little appendages above there. Let's just call them that.

And the epididymus is where sperm cells mature before they get injected into the vas deference, which is what they cut. That's the tube that goes up into the body to mix with seminal fluid to make semen that has lots of tasty sperm in it. And the vas deference, that tube that comes up from the epididymis

is the thing that we cut when we do a vasectomy. me. But you're going to right now feel for that epididimus and the little appendages that are around there just feel kind of lumpy and mushy. And that's normal. So get a feel for that. And then just work your hand that C clamp down the back side and feel every inch of that surface of the testicle and make sure it's nice and smooth. If you feel something that feels like there's gravel, like you would see in an aquarium or any other kind of irregularities, go see somebody.

And particularly if it's stuck to the testicle. Now, you may have some things that are inside the scrotum that are not actually part of the testicle. What would one of those be? Well, you could have a clear fluid-filled cyst above the testicle that almost looks like a third nut that if you take a penlight

and put it behind the scrotum, you will see it glow like E.T.'s finger. That was P.A. John's innovation. And if you see that, that is most likely a cystocil, I still want you to get it checked, but those are benign fluid-filled collections. If it is not, if it doesn't light up like E.T.'s finger, then it's opaque, and it could still be benign, but it could be something like a spermatoceal. It's basically filled with sperm cells and other debris and stuff. And those I want you to get checked, too,

and the way they check it is doing ultrasound. They can tell if it's a simple cyst or if it's something that needs to be removed. Then feel, and you're going to do this on both sides, and then you want to feel the front and the sides and the bottom and make sure it's all nice and smooth. If it is, move to the other one, confirm it's the same on that one as well.

And then you're done. You've done your self-testicular exam. Good job. Now, the reason that I go through this in such detail is every woman basically knows they have to check their breasts, but they very rarely seem to inform men that they need to examine their testicles. And testicular cancer is a young man's disease. So people my age don't need, we need to get our prostates checked, but people, the average age of our listeners, need to be checking their testicles.

And testicular cancer, if caught early, is eminently curable. And so don't hesitate if you see something abnormal. They'll just do a testicular ultrasound usually, and they can usually tell if there's a problem. Okay. Okay. All right. Good. Thanks for reminding me of that.

No problem. All right. Hey, man. So you don't get political, and I understand that for good reason. But so Azar asserts authority over the FDA. Does this make it less scientific and more political? Do you still trust the vaccine the same way? Thank you.

Yeah. So the FDA is pledged to not let politics influence them. That's easy to say. But the FDA, for the most part, has been a good track record in this country. I know there are people that hate the FDA. But if you look at thalidomide babies, those didn't happen in the United States. If they did happen in the United States, it wasn't because people took the drug in the United States. And if they did take the drug in the United States, they brought it here from somewhere else.

The FDA blocked the entry of thalidomide to the American market. And for that, I will always be thankful to them because they were slow and deliberate and they did their job. and the vaccines are going to come out when they come out. It's now looking like there's not going to be a vaccine that hits the market before the election. It's not going to influence the election. But it could have. They absolutely could have. I predicted in April that we would have one around mid-October.

Well, we're a week away from mid-October, and I don't see it happening now. And I wasn't even saying that it would happen. It's just that it could happen if all the dominoes fell into place. you know, together. But it'll be really close. And if it, so if it comes out November 7th, does that mean that they were influenced to delay it? I mean, we can't inject politics into everything. It's just going to come out when it comes out, you know.

And if it came out in October, that's when it was supposed to come out because they finished the phase three trials and the science was good. I think they're going to use all due diligence to make sure that this vaccine is safe and effective. We want it to be safe because we don't want to give it to 350 million people and then have a million people have Guillaume Bray and 20% of those die because that would be worse than the number of people who are dying of COVID-19. So we don't want that. You know, Steve, there was a question on my Facebook. today, this lady asking who was getting their flu shot and who

wasn't. I am. And the majority of the people said absolutely not. I don't want to die now that I know who's in charge of vaccines. What does that even mean? I don't even know who's in charge of vaccines but apparently he's a really bad

guy. There's no one person in charge of vaccine. I don't know. You know who's kind of in charge of vaccines? My old professor Greg Poland at Mayo Clinic. He's America's premier vaccinologist. And if I trust anybody in this world, I trust him. And so many people said, I'm telling you, he's the most trustworthy person in the world. I got the flu shot once and I got the flu that year and that's the only year I got it. Well, you were probably licking poles and

shit like that. I don't know. Okay. So here's the bias. It's selection bias. So if you were going to get, let's say you got exposed to influenza on Monday. And then, and let's say it's got a five-day, you know, a five-day incubation period. And on Thursday, you diligently go and get your flu shot. So on Thursday, you get your flu shot. And then Friday, you get influenza. Now, that is almost impossible to convince that person that the flu shot didn't give them influenza, even though it's impossible. Yeah. The influenza vaccine is a, was never a virus.

So they couldn't even have made a mistake and given you, ooh, we made a, we messed up and gave you virus. It was never a virus. They, they forced cells to make these proteins and then they harvest them. So you cannot, it is literally impossible to get influenza from the flu shot. Now, you can get an influenza-like illness. You can get, you know, a low-grade fever and muscle pain and malays, you know, feel crummy. But that's the body's immune response. That's why you get that when you get influenza because you're developing the same immune response.

And the immune response itself causes symptoms. I just don't understand why people would even be questioning it this year in particular. Yeah, this is the year you want to get your flu shot. I mean, my God, can you imagine flu and COVID at the same time? Well, the one thing is I think we're going to see, I predict this, but I could be wrong. This year, what's the one thing we didn't see this summer was a summer seasonal gastroenteritis. We didn't see, you know, an outbreak of a puke bug, which we almost always see every summer. It didn't seem one.

Because people are social distancing, they're washing their hands, they're wearing their masks, all this kind of stuff. They're staying home when they get sick. I wonder if we'll end up with a very mild influenza season for the same reason. But don't you think with people being stuck inside and with the season? It could go that way too. I don't know. Scary. Scary is crap.

It's interesting, isn't it? You know, just get your flu shot. Just do it. I mean Don't be a turd Listen to Richard David Smith The owner of Hyperphysics H-Y-P-E-R-F-I-Z-I-C-S

Which is an energy drink for nerds And he was like Oh no, I'm not going to get a flu shot And then he ended up on the ventilator Thank God his wife Shatai and their kids Weren't left without a father and a husband So he's my you know, one of my biggest go-to people when I say, hey, this person's an anti-influ shot.

Will you have a talk with him, and he will have a talk with them? So influenza is not something to fool around. Let's just get your damn flu shot, please. All right? Because we love you guys, and we don't want anything bad to happen to you. That's the truth. All right, well, we can't forget Rob Sprantz. We can't forget my wife Tacey.

Thank you, Tacey. You're welcome. We can't forget. niece Holly or Bob Kelly or Greg Hughes or that woman Chowdy from Cape Girardo or wherever she's from, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Martha from Arkansas, Travis Teff, Lewis Johnson, Paul Offcharsky, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinship, Klein, that's not right, Klein Schmidt, Dale Dudley, the great Rob Bartlett, Bernie and Sid, Ron Bennington, and Fez-Waulay,

whose support of this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk Channel, SiriusXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern on-demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr.steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, do your breast exam, wash your hands, wear your mask, quit smoking, get off your asses, and get some exercise.

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