Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 431 - Brain Death (and Other Happy Tales)

Episode Date: November 22, 2020

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, and Tacie discuss the difference between CT and MRI, chiropractic, drug recalls, organ donation, and more! Please 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!) wine.drsteve.com (get the best deal on wine…delivered to your home!) simplyherbals.net (for all your StressLess and FatigueReprieve needs!) 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, Opie 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 Tobolovibov.

I'm stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosies. of the heartbell, exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take my brain out and blast it with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. 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 paging Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve! It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical shots. in the history of broadcast radio and now a podcast. Now a podcast, only for the last 10 years. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott,

the traditional Chinese medical practitioner, keeps the weird alternative medicine assholes at bay. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. 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 347-7-66-4-33-23-3. That's 347.

Poo here. Visit us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at D.R. Scott W.M. 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. Just go there if you want to get a Bristol stool scale mug. You know, we make 20 cents, so don't worry about it. But it is hilarious. That's a great gag gift.

You know what else is a great gag gift, Dr. Scott? a fletus flute. You can go to fletus flute.com and order you a whistling butt plug and don't use it. Just put it in people's stockings as a gag gift. You know, at one of those parties,

not at the office. It's not safe for work. 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 it over with your doctor. Nurse practitioner, practical nurse, physician assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor,

acupunctress, yoga, master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory, scientist, registered dietitian, whatever. Yeah, do I have to say that in 2020? Don't take a fletus flute to the office, you know, holiday party because you're going to get your ass fired or have to go to sensitivity training. Flatis flute.

Flatis flute's hilarious, though. That is pretty funny. I still cracks me up thinking of Son of Fritz's artwork on that. He's a hell of an artist. He is really quite talented young man. Have we heard from him? I haven't heard from him in ages. I don't know whatever happened to him.

Yeah. He used to call all the time with him. I know. But he, yeah, his, that style that he did on there is sort of Renan Stimpy style. So just imagine a Renan Stimpy style Dr. Steve with a Renan Stimpy style ass cheeks, close up of ass cheeks. So you're sort of looking past the ass cheeks. to me, with, you know, the spiky hair and all that stuff, farting out musical notes in my face,

and I'm grinning like it's, you know, it smells like flowers or perfume or something. That's the stupidest thing. And they're cheap, too, but fletusflute.com, buy ten of them. All right. Dan, who makes them is hilarious. So, check out stuff.

com for all your Amazon needs. Just go to stuff. dot, dr.steve.com. It's holidays. please the more you use that the easier it is for us to keep doing this stupid show that might not be a good thing but and then if if you need a case of wine for the holidays go to wine dot dr steve.com you'll get a better deal there if they ship to your state I bought 250 bucks worth of wine from there for like 80 bucks the other day

it's all you know small small vintners and and it is it's incredible We have been nothing but happy with that. And I place my order on Monday. We've got it by Wednesday or Thursday. Tweakeda Audio.com, great stocking stuffers, the best earbuds for the price. And if you use offer code fluid, you can buy three and get it for the price of two. Or you can get 33% off one, whatever. And then if you need to lose weight before the holidays, because you know you're going to gain weight.

During the holidays, go to Noom. N-O-O-M dot Dr.steve.com. You get two weeks free, try it out. It's not a diet. It's a psychology program. If you like it, you can continue. It's a three-month program. You pay for it.

You get 20% off. If you use Noom. dot, Dr.steve.com. And then just don't forget to go to Dr. Scott's website at simply herbals.net. Now, if you want one of these masks, do you have one, Scott? I don't think so.

Okay, well, here you go. No, like you. They're weird medicine masks. masks and their work against COVID-19 as well as anything else, any other masks do. And they got the weird medicine logo on them. They're beautiful. We only had 75 of them made, and we're down to our last 20. So if you want one of those, you can get it free with the purchase of the Weird Medicine

Archives. So just go to Dr.steve.com, click on the link that says get all of, you know, of these shows on a thumb drive. You get a 32-gig thumb drive with 430 shows at this point on there. And a little bit of extra stuff, and then you get the face mask. And then Tacey and I autograph some stuff. And now that Scott's back, we'll get him to autograph a thing or two. And we just throw some Chatsky's in there sometimes.

So anyway, go to Dr.Steve.com for that. All right. Well, good to see you, too, again. today. Glad to be here. I'm sort of glad to be here, kind of sort of. Yeah. Well, I'm I was thinking we weren't going to be able to do it today because I was supposed to have

a frigging root canal. And once again, the endodontist begged off saying, look, you're going to lose the tooth anyway. Because apparently I grind my teeth when I'm sleeping. Okay. And I only recently kind of

figured this out and no, none of my dentist or anybody's ever said, hey, you know, maybe the reason that your teeth keep fracturing, you know, it's always the rear molar. And I get that one removed, then this one removed. One time, I, the first time this happened, I had a, they put a temporary

crown on. Then the, I went to the endodontas. They're the ones that do root canals. And she went in and, you know, reamed out the nerve root and all the blood supply and everything, and then they put this got-a-purchase stuff down in there and cram it in. And then I had the crown put on.

So now, okay, so the root canal is, what, 1,200, the crown's 1,200, right? So I'm 2,400 into this. And then after, you know, maybe two weeks later, the pain came back. And I go in to see the end of Donna's thinking, well, you know, maybe she needs to repeat the root canal. She's like, nope, you just have to have a tooth that's distracted. Oh, my gosh. So then it was another $400 for that. So it was a whatever that works out to.

It was about a $3,000 tooth extraction. Jeez. So the last time I had it, they said it was going to be the same thing. You know, I can do a root canal, but you're going to lose the tooth anyway because I keep fracturing the most rearward molars. And when I was a kid, I had these fluoride treatments that kept me from ever having a cavity. right but I think it made my teeth brittle and with all the stress and all this crap and of course and I'm older so you know 65 years of grinding my teeth I guess that I wasn't even aware of now I'm just breaking my teeth so I was supposed to have one today and she said now you're going to lose the tooth anyway and you know it might be six months from now it could be two years from now but you will lose the tooth and so it was like I was like well so what should I do and she's like well it's like well it's like well it's kind of 50-50, and it's like, well, then hell.

But now I've got to have damn implants, because when I lose this tooth, now I don't have any molars on that side. So now I'm just going to have to have implants, which should stop this from happening, right? Because now the implant will take the brunt of the damage that I'm doing when I chew and stuff like that. And I'm wearing mouthguards now, so hopefully that'll be the end of it. How much does an implant hurt? Yeah, don't even.

Oh, how much does it hurt? Now that I don't know the answer You know if anybody's had this done Feel free to call in and scare the crap out of me It's fine But it will hurt less I guess Than having just a chronically You know fractured tooth

And it's not the fracture that causes the pain It's the bacteria that work their way down That fracture line And then cause inflammation that causes the pain Yeah because of the tooth That's spread out a little bit I guess and puts pressure on the nerves. Yeah, well, that too.

But really, where the fracture line is, bacteria are, you know, they're microscopic. The fracture is not. You can see the line. So they get down in there and work their way down into the root area. And then the body comes in to go, what the hell you are doing? And get the hell out of here. And then it causes inflammation. And the inflammation is what causes the pain.

So as long as I stay on the antibiotics right now, I'm okay. But I can't stay on antibiotics for me. No. We need to get you some good edibles for nighttime if we were in a statement, of course, that had edibles. That would be good. You keep you from grinding your teeth. Well, yeah, the mouth guard will keep me from grinding my teeth, too. But, yeah, I'm up for that. Yeah, buddy.

You know, listen. I know people. I know people. I am a libertarian. I think that it should be completely legal. Well, Virginia is talking about legalizing it. They did legalize it for medical use up to 10 milligrams. Talking about now recreational use.

Oh, really? Yes, it was on the news yesterday. Okay, awesome. Because we're right on the line, so I'm assuming you can go up there and just get you some, come back down. But, you know, it should be legal across the country. And it needs to be declassified from a Schedule 1 to a non-scheduled drug and like alcohol and just make it legal. And then tax a shit out of it and put the blood. black market side out of business.

I'm, you know, I'm okay with that. I guess people who make a living in, you know, black market transport of this substance probably wouldn't be happy with me saying that, but they could just turn around and get into the legal business. They'll make more money. Oh, yeah. And it'll be a lot less risky. Yep.

You know, because if you're transporting and you could get busted, you know, you lose the whole shipment. This way, you just pay your taxes and you just go on your way. never have to worry about getting busted. Yeah, it makes a lot more sense. But I can't believe you grind your teeth at darn bad to. I can't believe a dentist hasn't done anything about it. Yeah, I'm surprised that they didn't say something after the third time this happened. You know, I had to figure that out on my own.

But she said, well, have you been under more stress lately? And I'm like, seriously. Did you just look at her and laugh? I did. That's exactly. I went, no, I'm fine. Everything's fine. Just fine.

Just fine. Did you make your own mouth guard, by the way? No, so far I've been using the disposable ones from like Walmart, you know, or Walgreens. You wear them for three days, but it absolutely keeps me from grinding my teeth. Yeah, your neighbor here back when I was in high school, I broke my jaw, and he said, he goes, well, you've got two choices. I can either make you a mouthguard for about $600. You can make your own.

Oh, yeah. How did he say to make your own? And I went and bought a little, the football mouth guard and made it myself. and then just trim the edges off of it. So at nighttime, it's not so bulky. Yeah. Shoot, it's perfect. Well, they have the ones in there that are reusable

and you heat them up in boiling water and then you clamp down on them. I would be interested. Any dentists that are listening, I know we have Dennis that listen because they reach out to me from time to time. Any thoughts you have on this, particularly home remedies like that,

I'd be very interested in. Yeah. Because we don't learn anything about teeth in medical school at all. I know nothing about dentists. I think my mouth guard costs $300 or $400. Yeah, what are they... And it was... What are they charging you for?

To me, it's worth it. Yeah. The molding, the time, I guess. Okay. Or you could make one just like it for $7. Right. Well, that's the thing. I tried that.

It didn't work for me. Is there a demonstrable difference between those? You know, the dentist will have a vested interest, but, you know, I would like to hear what the evidence is on that. Well, non-biased ill-chized. Cheap-O-Me. Yeah. Well, and the CVS disposable ones, you have to throw them away every night, and they're harder than the Walgreens ones.

I like the Walgreens ones better, so there you go. I didn't think there'd be any difference, but there was. We'll have to make you one day on Thanksgiving. That's what we'll do. All right. Okay, doke. We have news. Yeah.

You want to talk about it? Hey, you've got it pulled up. You started. Oh, for God's sake. You know, I just want to be Howard to your Robin. Okay, give up on that, because that's not going to happen. But Tacey can, she, she does it. I didn't do it this week.

No. For 15 years, he's wanted that happened, and he's over 15, so at least you. Yeah, it's not that I want to be Howard Stern. I just want, you know, I bring all these people, and that's not even that. Just to read the news stories and let me comment on them rather than having, but it's okay. It's never going to happen. Hey, there's a new story. What do you got?

There are a couple viruses, I mean, going around, and then, and then, but that's not what I meant to say. I meant to say there's vaccinations. Yes, that is true. There are two. And I think Pfizer, by the time this airs, Pfizer may have requested approval from the FDA. They needed to reach 162 cases and then do the statistics on it. And they just passed like 175 today. So what they did was they had 40,000 people, 20,000 got placebo and 20,000.

got the vaccine, and after they did the final analysis on effectiveness, the vaccine met all of their primary efficacy endpoints. So what you've got to do is you've got to say, look, we've got to get to this

level before we can ever say that it's statistically significant. And the more effective it is, the quicker you can get there. Right. So if it's 55 to 45, you've got I'd do a lot more cases to say, well, this really is effective compared to the other one. And that's crappy, right?

You know, 10% better. But, in fact, they hit 95% efficacy rate. In other words, that it was 95% effective in preventing infection with the P value of being less than 0.001. So it's one in 10,000 chance that this could be, this could be by random chance. And we'll go P less than, you know, 5%, you know, 5%. We consider that statistically. Very good, yeah. So that would be, what, five times in 100.

But anyway, so. Let me see. Let me get the numbers here. So the first primary objective analysis is based on 170 cases of COVID-19, of which 162 cases were observed in the placebo group versus eight cases in the vaccine group. So that's huge. So the efficacy was consistent across age, gender, race, and ethnicity. And the observed efficacy in adults over 65 years of age was 90. There were 10 severe cases.

Severe cases are people who not only are in the hospital but need respiratory support. And during the trial, 10 people got, were that sick. And nine of the cases were in the placebo group, only one in the vaccinated group. So that's awesome. Now, their case rate was pretty low. They had 40,000 people and only, what did I say? 170 cases. So hang on a second.

Echo, what percentage is 170 of 40,000? Let's see if she understands it that way. 170 is 0.425% of 40,000. Yeah, so it's 0.4, you know, like less than half of 1% actually were infected. Now, that's people that they know about. Somebody asked me about it, well, what about asymptomatic cases? Well, I participated in the Pfizer study. Unless you serendipitously got a COVID test that came back positive, they would not be aware of you.

So this is not, doesn't correct for or account for asymptomatic cases, either in the placebo group or in the treatment group. Because the way that the protocol went was if you got symptoms, like if you got a cough or a sore throat, throat or a fever, you would enter it into this app and say, yes, I have that. And then they would immediately ask you to shove the probe up your nose and send it to them. And then if you needed to go on and get treated, then you would do that. And then they would follow up with you. Okay. So they were looking at symptomatic cases.

Do we care about asymptomatic cases? We do in the sense that they're wandering around, maybe infecting. people. But the truth about asymptomatic carriers of this is that the transmissibility without them snotting on you or coughing or, you know, breathing heavily on you or being in the same area as you are within six feet for more than 15 minutes is very low. So people who are symptomatic can infect more people. People who are asymptomatic will infect less readily, but they're in contact with more people. Because if I'm symptomatic, I'm going to isolate myself, right?

Right. So it kind of evens out. So we do care about asymptomatic people, but this really, this vaccine is really just telling us right now about people who, you know, were symptomatic. Now, Pfizer could later on go and call all of us in and draw antibodies and see which people went from antibody negative because they did that in the beginning. They drew antibody titers on all of us.

and now how many people went from no antibodies to having antibodies but never had symptoms so you know that's a confirmed asymptomatic case and then they could look and see if there's a difference between groups there too and I would predict that there would be but it's very interesting what about the people who are not going to get this vaccine because they feel like it's been rushed right or that it's Bill Gates vaccine and it's got a chip in it right okay First off, we don't have the technology to put chips that are that small that could do anything to you and put it in your arm in a muscle. I don't know, Steve. Yeah, I do know. I do know.

So that is, we don't have that technology yet. These machines, you know, these viral machines, the viruses are just little machines. They're sub-microscopic. You cannot see them with a microscope. You need an electron microscope to see them. and the MRNA fragments are even smaller than those, you know, because it's just basically the instructions on how to make the spike protein. So you've got these little MRNA fragments.

So it's even smaller than the genome of the virus itself. Right, because it's part of it. Right. So to somehow put a machine in a syringe, a 30-gauge syringe, and inject it into you and do anything with that. Still, it's not like it can broadcast to a satellite to tell people where you are. Even if it worked, like you could somehow put an RFID chip in somebody, you'd still have to walk by a scanner.

You know, it doesn't take, it doesn't. Like your credit card. Yeah, it doesn't transmit, no. How's it going to transmit anything? Exactly. They have a battery. It doesn't have an antenna. I mean, it's just that's not possible.

Well, I believe my mother is part of that. Your mother is, yeah. I believe she is. I don't know if she still is, but she was at one point. Your mother's not a smart woman. She's challenged. I mean, she thinks you make lasagna with retardo cheese. She thinks the coffee drink at McDonald's is called a floopy.

So I'm going to not worry about what your mom thinks. As a matter of fact, we don't have to worry about whether she takes the vaccine because she's already had the dang. She is not alone. And I did read where in order for a vaccine to be effective, and I can't remember where I read this, or specifically the numbers, so ha-ha. I know the numbers. 80 to 85% need to take it. Not in this case. So let's walk through the math.

For us to achieve the first threshold for herd immunity, right? Because that's what we're going for is herd immunity. We have to do, there's a formula for that, and it's one minus one over the R-sub-0. Okay? So the R sub-zero is the theoretical transmissibility of a virus. And for SARS-Co2, the virus that causes COVID-19, that number is 2.4, which means that if you have a person with this virus and you put them in a population that is vulnerable, right, then they will infect 2.4 people on average. Now, there'll be somebody you'll infect 90 people, and then you get a whole bunch of people who won't infect any, you know, the so-called super spreaders. But they're evened out by the number of people that don't infect any or maybe just infect one person.

So it's 2.4. So the number we're looking for is 1 minus 1 over 2.4. So I can't do that in my. Well, let's just say it's 1 over 2. So it'd be about 0.5. So 2.4 is slightly higher than that. So it'll be slightly higher. It works out to about 56% of the population.

If they are immune, then we will achieve the threshold for herd immunity, which simply means that the threshold would be an R sub T, which is the actual number that people can infect, would be 0.9. So 1,000 people would infect 900 people. Those 900 would infect 810. and then 720 and then 640, et cetera, right? Okay? So that, now, that isn't going to happen. It won't make the pandemic go away overnight because each one of those generations is about 21 days long. But still, it will inevitably go away because it doesn't have anywhere to reproduce.

Right. Okay. So now the R sub T's in most of the, if you can go to R. RT. Live, and you can see the R-Sub-T of your state. So R-T dot-Live. Let's just go there right now. Okay, there's one state that's below one, and that's Mississippi, and their R-Sub-T right now is 0.9, which means that they are, as a group, transmitting the virus at a rate that will eventually end in the virus.

is declined if they keep up like that. So 0.9, again, 1,000 people would infect 910, infect, you know, or whatever, 900, and then 8, 10, and then 720, et cetera. The highest one right now is Vermont at 1.43, but there's still, none of these are close to 2, which is where when you have 2, that means 100 people infect 200, which infect 400, which infect 800, so you see that geometric climb. So we need hurt immunity to be at 55% or greater.

Now, there's already a bunch of people that have been infected, right? So 3% of the population has had it, cases. That means 97% haven't. But there may be as many as 15% of people that have been infected, but it would just asymptomatic. We don't know that number, but let's say it is 15. Then we only have to get 40% of people who haven't already had it. There will be some overlap who already haven't had it to get to 55%. So we don't have to have 80, 90% of people, but I think most people, when they see how effective this thing is and that it could spell the end of this and we can go back to normal people, we'll line up for it.

Now, has it been rushed? The answer is, I would be the first to tell you if I thought this. was rushed, I do not believe that it has been, and I'll tell you why. This happened so fast because the technology is completely different. When you want to make a normal vaccine back in the day, and we will never go back to this again after this, you had to find the protein that you wanted to make antibodies against, a foreign protein that the body would make antibodies against, that would block it. So we have that for coronavirus. It's the spike protein. Right.

So if you block that, it can't infect you. Then you would have to find the DNA or RNA that caused that spike to be built. And then you'd have to insert it into the genome of, say, a bacterium or some other living thing that would then start producing this in quantities. Okay. And you'd have to maybe grow it on cellular. culture on eggs, you know, or some cell culture that had nutrients in it. That's why people who can't, who are allergic to eggs, can't take certain vaccines and stuff like that.

And this, and then, and then you've got to harvest enough of it. Then you've got to purify out all the shit that, you know, the bacterial turns, basically, that these proteins were produced in. And, and then you're, so that introduces. other problems because the way that you clean it can introduce some chemicals that people can be sensitive to, and the little just nano impurities that are in that can also cause people to be sensitive to them. And then you have to get it in quantities enough so that you could make billions of doses

or hundreds of millions of doses, however many. And it's hard to do. They're a living thing. Well, this, they just manufacture it. It's just MRNA, the messenger RNA. is just instructions to the body's cells. Here's how you make the vaccine. So, and you, there are machines that will synthesize

MRI in quantities. And you just, you just scale up and you can make as much as you want. You make gallons of this stuff. And so when you inject it, this messenger RNA, it gets inculcated into the cells of the human body, which then go, oh, It's the MRNA. We're supposed to make proteins with this.

So there are these other cool machines. You want to see something cool. Look at just Google image or go to YouTube and look at Messenger RNA animations and how it works. Because there are these machines called ribosomes, and they have two lobes, and the MRNA goes in. And then you have these transcription RNAs that come in, and they'll attach at the right place. And then the proteins will be attached to those, and then they will unhook themselves from the transcription RNA, and then the proteins will link together. And when you do enough of those, they'll fold up into the protein that you're looking for.

It's incredible. It's just like having a deck of punch cards that you had maybe in computer lab 40 years ago, right? Right. And all of this is going on millions of years before humans, ever learned anything about punch cards, about manufacturing things about what proteins were, all of this stuff was going on. So anyway, and then it advances to the next one and the next one and the next one. It keeps adding more and more proteins.

And that's what MRNA does. And then when the protein is done, there's a stop code on the MRNA and it stops and it releases that protein into the cell, which then expresses itself on the surface of the cell. well guess what that looks like it looks like a damn infection right so you get not only humeral immunity antibodies made against it but you get cellular immunity where cells come in and learn it you get your memory T cells and killer T cells and all these things start activating and so it looks like a real infection so you get better immunity that way in theory so that's why this was able to be done so quickly because the technology it's much cleaner

much easier to manufacture just strands of MRNA and have the body make the vaccine itself. The MRNA isn't the vaccine. Right. Technically, you're injecting the instructions on how to teach the body to make the vaccine and then you mount an immune response against that. So, yeah, and the next virus like this we get,

we can do it even faster this time. Yeah, you know what this reminds me of. I'm having a flashback of, you know, 15 years ago, we were talking about cancer and immunotherapies. Yes. You used to think it'd be 50 years and now with advances in technology, and we can use the foundations from these other viruses that we've had and then they're creating more medications. When we started this show, it's incredible, incredible. In 2004, 2005, I was saying it's going to be 100 years. Oh, yeah.

before we get immunotherapy that's at the technological level that I was looking at, which is taking tumor proteins out, exposing people's white cells or, yeah, their T cells and their different memory cells to that and teaching them to kill the virus and then injecting them back in, having them multiply and divide, and then just killing the cancer perfectly. Yeah. And letting the body do the work for you. Yeah, and I said it was going to be 100 years, and then it was like 50, you're right, just like you said. And then 20, and now we're doing it.

We're doing it now. There's a commercially available version of that for certain cancers right now. And you heard it here first. That is kind of true. And the other thing they heard here first was I, you know, well, I will pat myself on the back. Back in February, I looked at the phases and said, yeah, it's going to be around mid-October when if all the chips fall in the right. place and the dominoes, whatever metaphor you want to use, we should

have, be completed with phase three of some of these trials, either Moderna or Pfizer by mid-October. And I was off by a month, so I don't think that's too bad. And some of it, I swear, you know, it seems a little fishy that they waited until the

week that they did to release this, but okay, I'll give them the benefit of the day out. But any remember politics plus medicine equals politics so any decision that was made that wasn't for the benefit of mankind as a political decision and I mean some political decisions can be made for the benefit of mankind but you know what I mean when it comes to medicine if it's not in the benefit of the patient then it's it's a political decision but we'll never know unless somebody some whistleblower comes up with a memo that says don't release no information until after Tuesday, November, whatever. And I'm sure somebody's working on producing that right now.

Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. Yeah, these days it's hard to believe any evidence because you can fake everything. Did you remember that movie Red Sun? It was a Michael Crichton book, or a Michael Crichton movie. And what it was was they faked evidence. Okay. And what they did was, and this,

This was, gosh, he wrote this maybe 20 years ago. You might look and see when he wrote that. But he always had one idea. Like, for Jurassic Park, the idea was you could take DNA from amber, from mosquitoes that had bitten dinosaurs and then make dinosaurs out of that. And then Congo was about, and they totally missed the boat in the film, but Congo was about sign language or language in apes in higher. apes. And so in that one, you know, they found this group of apes that had been taught sign language 4,000 years before, and they were still teaching it to their young. They, you know, they passed it down. Totally missed the boat in the movie. They were just, you know, giant white

gorilla monsters. But in Red Sun, the idea was that evidence in the future will may not be able to be reliable because they had a guy who murdered somebody and then they swapped faces and, you know, digitally put a different person's face on this guy in this surveillance video. And at the time, that was like, oh, my God, this is revolutionary, you know, this is crazy idea. But now, you know, with what do they call the face, what's it called when you, not a false face, but anyway, when you change somebody's face, they do it with Dave Landau every

day. You know, he's Anthony's partner, and they take music videos, like with. Cardi B and they just put Dave Landau's face on there instead of hers and it looks exactly like him but the first one I saw I was like I thought he did it. I thought he dressed that you know put on a wig and some kind of push-up

bra and stuff. It was running around it's so perfect. So you know yeah so if somebody comes up with a memo a lot of people unless it's corroborated internally a lot of people just say it's fake

we don't believe anything I don't know how we're going to get back to where we do believe stuff I think it's a long time gone as I say well maybe I think one of the things is removing the anonymity on the internet although Facebook it doesn't seem to matter

No You know Careless Yeah people are less anonymous on Facebook I still say goofy stuff So I don't know Anyway All right

So but that's really good news It's really good news, and we only have to get 40, 50 percent of people to do it, and I think we'll get 60, 70 percent of people to do it once it comes out. Thank you, Jim. People were worried about transporting the Pfizer vaccine's got to be kept in. Super cold. It was super cold. I thought it was 40 degrees below zero. It's like negative 100 or something like that.

But they have a technology for shipping it. They can ship it to a doctor's office in this box. and I can't remember what they called the technology. It's like neutral temperature or something like that, but it's just super insulated. And it can sit on your desk for a week and still be good. And as long as you give it quickly, then it'll be fine. So I was trying to imagine these trucks that had refrigerated units

that were negative 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and there's none of that. Yeah, they won't have to do that. That's cool. They came up with something for that, too. That was my biggest concern. But they said, yeah, that won't hinder people getting it at their local health department if they have to do it that way. Wow. Yeah, pretty cool.

That is cool. All right. We're going to take some questions. You guys have anything else? Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Boy, well, that really is true, isn't it? Too late.

All right. Oops. Spike from New York calling me. And what's the deal with all this coronavirus stuff they're selling? It all says antibacterial, anti-bacterial. Right. The coronavirus is a virus. Right.

What's the antibacterial stuff supposed to help with corona? Does it? Or is it just a marketing idea? No, I love this question because it is, it would be confusing, particularly if you think critically about things. obviously anti-microbial medications like antibiotics don't work against viruses right we keep telling people don't take antibiotics for a cold for example because it increases antibiotic resistance but that's a different thing antibiotics tend to work by targeting some mechanism in the bacteria that allows them to reproduce. So we, you know, either target the cell wall to make the cell walls break open or target their ability to reproduce, whatever it is. And obviously, that's not going to work against viruses because they work differently. But antibacterial soap, for example, will kill a virus

just like it will, a bacterium, because, as a matter of fact, it will probably kill the virus easier because viruses are very vulnerable, most of them, to soap and water, because they're just these little naked machines, and they've got protein and lipids on their surface, right? Little clump, you know, molecules of fat. And soap solubilizes fat. So the second you use soap and water, the viruses are inactivated. Bacteria can be a little bit more hearty than that, particularly. ones that sporillate, in other words, make spores like Clostridium difficile.

Clostridium difficile causes C-Difis, or C-Div, causes pseudomembrinous colitis, and causes severe diarrhea, and it can be life-threatening in some people. That one, my understanding, is when it gets threatened, it'll make spores, and those spores are really hardy. I mean, they're hard to kill, and it's really hard to sterilize a room and kill all spores of things. and fungi can make spores, too. So really, the viruses are going to be more vulnerable to an antibacterial soap than maybe even some bacterium are. Good question.

All right. Yeah, it was an excellent question. I liked it. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve, it's Matt and Charleston. How are you? Good, man. How are you?

All right. Hey, so listen, I'm seeing chiropractors. I had some back pain in my lower backs. And I've always been very skeptical of chiropractors because of a lot of the kind of not doctor, doctor, not science stuff that surrounds that. How much of that is true is chiropractic, legitimate medical practice, or which doctory? Yeah. So they call it chiropractic, not chiropractic, but that's all right.

So, yeah, look, we used to have Dr. K on here, she's a chiropractor. And she tragically, you know, lost her life to breast cancer after, you know, a multi-year fight. But we had her in here, and we'd talk about this kind of stuff all the time. There is evidence for chiropractic manipulation, particularly for low back pain. So I have no problem with people, if it helps them, go into a chiropractor, particularly, you know, for the things that they're indicated for. where I get a little bit wonky about this is that it's not just chiropractors by any means, but it's when people are practicing, you know, whatever, you know, treating people, and they're using things like coffee enemas for cancer,

and when they get outside sort of the realm of evidence-based medicine, and that's when I start having problems with it. So if it's not going to do any harm, it's not that big of a deal, but when you're substituting that for other things that really would help, then that's when I have a problem with it. What sayest thou, Scott, because you're classified as an alternative medicine provider, even though we could argue whether that's an appropriate label for you, given that. Anymore, it's not so.

Yeah, I mean, the evidence for what you do, again, as long as you stick with the things that there's evidence for. Well, and it's the same thing. You know, us chiropractors, physicians, it doesn't matter, masseuses. If you have somebody giving you bad advice and practicing another scope, I have a problem with the period. You know, I know some chiropractors and Dr. Kay was one of them that are just brilliant people and do great work. And but knew, know when to share and when to send people out for things that they cannot treat. Yeah. And she was very good about that.

Yeah, most of the times I'm a huge supporter, but shit is like everything else. If somebody's doing something wrong, then they don't need to be practicing. Right. How would someone know that? That's what I was just going to say is the, how would the patient know? Well, so here's what I tell people. If you've got someone telling you that they can take care of everything you have, for instance, I had a guy with Bell's palsy that came in because he had a sinus infection,

this chiropractor said he could cure us. Motion detected at the front door. Sorry. His sinus infection by manipulating his ear, right? Yeah. So he jerks on his guy's ear to treat his sinus infection, gives him bells palsy. We never could fix his face. Oh, yeah.

I tell people they should be skeptical when they come in to see me. Yeah, me too. And anybody else, you need to see all of the documentation, all of the requirements should be not hidden. And there should not be any kind of deceit. Well, and that's hard to determine, too, but anyone that starts trashing everything else that was done before, that is a red flag. Huge red flag, huge red flag. If they start to try to isolate you from other things, that's almost that cultish sort of behavior. Try selling you on stuff.

It's not, you know, if you're in there and they're trying to sell you shoe implants and it's like, wait a minute, what exactly is your job? Yeah, if you're upselling. That's a problem, too. That's a huge, huge. And if they refuse to refer out or call in other dogs, that's a huge red flag for me. And again, it's across the board. It's not just one. No, no, no.

We're not just talking about a chiropractic. It would be physical therapy. Any quack. It doesn't matter. Okay, hang on now. My kid is calling, so I'm going to have to put him on the air real quick. Liam, you're on weird medicine. What's up, buddy?

I got low oil pressure in my car, and one of my tires has low PSA. Okay, so where are you? I'm in the neighborhood, but I got to the lot of home. Okay. I'll do it. Yeah. Just come up and park your car, and mom will take both of you over there, and then we'll get it figured out, okay? Okay.

Okay. Well, you're in the neighborhood, right? So just bring it back to the house. Okay. Can I drive to school tomorrow? Well, we'll see. Let me have to look at it. I'll teach you how to fix it in just a minute.

We've got to look at it, buddy. The low oil pressure is fixable and the low tire pressure is fixable. But we'll look at it here in a minute, okay. All right, I got to hang up. I got to do this. Okay, pal. All right. Well, I've got to hang up, too.

I'm doing a radio show, but thank you. You got any medical questions? Oh, my gosh, that's funny. But you know what Dr. Steve, I tell people, you know, good medicine is medicine that's appropriate for you. And I don't care if it's a hug or a kicking an ass or a brain surgery. If it's what you need, then that's what you need. That's right. Well, they did, here's a systematic review.

They did 23, oh, this is a systematic review of systematic reviews. They found 23 chiropractic systematic reviews. 11 articles met the defined criteria that they were looking for. The result showed the influence of chiropractic on improvement of neck pain, shoulder, neck trigger points, and sports injuries. But then when it came to asthma, infant colic, autism, GI problems, fibromyalgia, back pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome, there was no conclusive scientific evidence. There was heterogeneity, and some of the studies also limited a number of clinical trials. And it's hard to do sham chiropractic treatments, too. So it is hard.

It is hard. But, you know, the thing is that if it helps you, you know, and it's not hurting anything, then it's fine. That's a good thing, yeah. But there are, I have heard of people that get their neck wanked, you know, get the crack in their neck, and they do the forceful cracking of the neck that have had strokes and stuff from that because it'll kick a. And quads? Kick a, what am I? Blood clot.

Yeah, like a plaque off of the inside of the vessel. And so, but a lot of chiropractors that I see are going to the more low impact stuff. They got the thumpers now. They're not cranking around. doing stuff really uh they're using those activators a lot yep and you know i'll see those activators use and i think it's a lot safer yeah um and it seems to be just as helpful so uh you know if you're a chiropractor and you want to talk to us if we said something that's BS that's fine but uh you know we're not crapping on chiropractors at all for what the evidence says they're good

at yeah for certain thing it's wonderful yeah so all right very good Mr. Steve and Jason! Oh, it's tough. Stacey Deloche, everyone. I was getting to do the show with you last week. Yeah, that was fun. We left something hanging in the air that we never did go back to.

Yep. What is the difference in a CAT scan and an MRI? Oh, that's a great question. Close cousins of each other or two? Yeah, he did ask this question and we never got to it. So CT or CAT just stands for computer-assisted tomography. So, in computer-assisted tomography, you take a bunch of pictures in a rotating plane, and then you stitch them together to make pictures of cross-sections that you couldn't have gotten otherwise. Right.

So now you know, if you've ever seen MRI or you've seen a CT scan, they're both computer-aided tomography. So the CT scan was the first type of computer-aided tomography that we used. So it got to keep the name. It's like Frigdair, right? And it got to keep the name. But really, it's really an X-ray computer-aided tomography, whereas an MRI is a microwave-magnetic resonance imaging computer-aided tomography. So the CT scan, you've got this head that spins around, and as you move through this spinning field, it takes a bunch of pictures, and then the computer can stitch them together to make a cross section. So that like you're taking somebody and they're laying on the table and you're just taking slices, and you can slice it all kinds of different ways.

From the side, from, you know, from front to back, head to toe, the whole thing. It's pretty cool. MRI is different. It uses microwaves and a really high. high-powered magnet. And we've discussed how it works before. We've just got a few minutes, so I'll take a second just to discuss how it works. When you go in that high-Tesla magnetic field, it causes all of the hydrogen atoms in

your body to start aligning their spin together, and they will precess like a top. So if you spin a top, and if you look at the stem on the top, it'll start to spin around, just like the earth kind of spins on its axis, right? And at a 20-degree angle, you'll see the top start. to spin like that. Well, these hydrogen atoms will do the same thing, and they'll all spin and process at the same rate. Then you throw in microwaves,

and some of those photons of microwave electromagnetic energy will cause these spinning hydrogen atoms to flip. They'll attain a higher energy state because they'll absorb one of them. And then if you keep applying that frequency, they'll start to release their, photons at a certain energy level and then pick up another one. And so they'll absorb

at one energy level and release at a different energy level. And those released photons are the ones we're looking for. And then you have a detector that detects those. And then you can make pictures out of that too. So the cool thing about MRI is that different chemical bonds will cause these hydrogen atoms to flip at different different frequencies.

So you can kind of look and say, oh, well, now that's water. Right. This over here is spinal fluid, you know, that kind of fat, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's really freaking cool, and it makes a really detailed picture, but it takes longer. It takes like 45 minutes to do one of those. But anyway, so that's, they're both computer-aided tomography, but an MRI uses a different technique using magnets and microwaves, whereas the normal CT scan that you're thinking about

uses x-rays, very low-dose x-rays. Okay. All right. Very good. I think we have time to do this one. Hey, guys. I know. It's weird. I got a question. Oh, my God. It's him again. It's all Facebook where Met Forman has been recalled. I take it twice a day, 500 milligrams. Does the menu...

Yeah, okay. So we're running out of time, so let me just get to this. Thank you, Stacey. Two good questions. The FDA is alerting people to a single laboratory. It's Nostrum laboratories. is they had a voluntary recall of four lots. It doesn't mean all of theirs, just four lots of extended release metformin, not even the normal short-acting metformin. Metformin's a drug that you can use for diabetes.

It decreases. It's kind of like Adkins' diet in a pill. And they're recalling metformin because it may contain this nitroso-diamethyth And that is a chemical that is known to be a contaminant and can cause cancer in animals. So it's, and it's in high doses, it's hepatotoxic. In other words, it causes some problems with liver, right. So NMDA can be produced by water treatment and by chlorination. and the question is just, you know, the level at which it's produced in the United States.

So cured meat will also have these nitrosamines. We've talked about nitrosamines before. This is the – NMDA is the smallest nitrosamine. Okay. So it can be found at low levels in cured meats, fish, beer, uh-oh. Oh, no. Tobacco smoke, very naughty, quit smoking. Yes.

And also there is a rocket fuel that is a – effective precursor to NMDA as well, but that's, you know, the only thing that we're worried about in that regard is groundwater near rocket launch sites can have high levels of NMDA in it. So anyway, so this isn't a reason to get rid of your metformin. Just talk to your primary, to your primary. Or your pharmacist. Pharmacist, that's why I'm met, your primary pharmacist, and see if your metformin falls under that recall.

If it doesn't, you're fine. All right. You want to do another question? Let me see what we've got here. Oh, yeah. Here's one on organ donation. Hello, Dr. Steve. Hey.

I have a stupid question for you. No such thing. If somebody is a organ donor. Right. And they pass away kind of unsus, like, you know, unexpectedly. Yep. And they donate their organs while they're still alive, right? They keep them alive to donate their organs.

And then they send the body over for autopsy. How do they do an autopsy without, you know, the vital organs like the heart, the kidneys, the lungs? Yeah, so if so... Let's say somebody had a massive heart attack and they donated their heart, how do they, you know, autopsy that? Yeah. All right. Well, so a couple of things. The people that can donate live organs are people who are people who are, you know,

brain dead. And so these are people who have deceased. They have no brain function. And we can, believe me, we can determine that pretty easily. There's a nuclear blood flow study to the brain, and it'll show, you know, there's no blood flow to the brain. If there's no blood flow of the brain, you're dead. Back in the day, if people stopped breathing, they were considered dead.

This would have been, you know, in the 1800s or something. If you stopped breathing, oh, they died. And then we invented respirators. So stopping breathing, we could do something about that. So just stopping breathing couldn't be it. So we said, well, okay, if their heart stops, then they're dead. Well, okay. Except now we can do CPR and shock people and use drugs and pacemakers and stuff like that.

Some people we can sort of bring back from the brink. Or ECMOs. Yeah, sure. Like the poor guy that was hiking the other day. Oh, what happened with him? Well, just to kind of go on with what you're saying. The gentleman was an addict formally. He got off drugs, hardcore drugs, and he had gotten into hiking, and he was an avid hiker.

Yeah. And got out and got stuck in a kind of a freak snowstorm. The, they found him, researchers found him, or found him like two days later. Researchers, you mean search and rescue? Search and rescue is, I apologize. But the search and rescue guys found him like two days. later brought him in the hospital and and they did CPR him for 45 minutes oh he was he was cold body temperature was I think they said it was 30 degrees okay lower than what it should

have been right he's 68 yeah roughly he's in suspended animation they put him on ECMO which is kind of what you're describing now which is a whole other thing in ECMO machine which which which helps to balance out his oxygen carbon dioxide and while they were working right it's Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. So this is just basically where you're taking blood out of the body and then oxygenating it somewhere else. So you're not using the lungs to oxygenate the blood, right? And brought him back.

Wow. Sucker was long gone. And his brain function is normal? Perfectly normalizes now. We hear this with kids a lot. You know, kids fall into a lake that's frozen. You know, they fall through the ice. And, you know, you can't just swim back up to the surface again

because you move and you can't find the hole and stuff. No, shoot, no. Some of these, you know, the kids, when they'll find them, it'll be 45 minutes, but you don't give up until you've brought them back to their whole body back to room temperature because many times they will survive that and have no deficits from it. But it has to, they have to be resuscitated properly. Yeah, slowly, yeah. So, so stop, your, your heart stopping by itself can't be the sole, the sole criteria for death, right?

So right now, we say permanent absence of brain function, you're dead. And that's going to carry us for a while until we can somehow scan somebody's brain and get the quantum state of every neuron and then transmit that to a computer where they'll wake up and go, whoa, you know, wait a minute, where's my body? And then we won't be able to say brain death is death either. But until then, we don't have that technology. It's going to be a while. So we're going to say, you know, your brain dying is you're dead.

So people who are brain dead but are on the ventilator, their body is still functioning. Their kidneys may still be perfusing. Their heart is still pumping. They can't breathe because they have no respiratory drive because they're dead. Right. So they have to be on the ventilator. If you take somebody off a ventilator and they start breathing, they're not dead. They're not brain dead.

That's one of the tests for it. As a matter of fact, is a thing called an apnea test. If you think someone's brain dead, you get them highly oxygenated with 100% oxygen. You can get somebody's oxygen up to like 700 doing that. And then you remove the tube and watch them for 10 minutes. It's the longest 10 minutes of your career. watching somebody and you check their vitals every minute and you watch for respiratory attempts, any attempt, any attempt, and they still have some brainstem function, they're not

dead. But if they don't breathe, they don't even try, and then their carbon dioxide goes up by a certain amount at the end, so you have to do a blood gas before and after, then you can declare the patient dead. And people get into trouble declaring people brain dead when they don't follow the protocol. If you follow the protocol, so now you've shown there's an absence of brain stem function, you've got to now show that it's permanent. Because if I just give you enough propofal, I can make it look like your brain dead. Right.

Right? I can make it look like you can't breathe. I mean, you won't be able to breathe on your own. And you won't move, so you'll look like your brain dead. So just that one test isn't enough. You have to now prove that the lack. of brain stem function is permanent. So before you even start, you've got to rule out drugs, hypothermia, like you just said, all those things.

You've got to make sure all those things are controlled for before you even start this process. Well, anyway, so one way to do that is that cerebral blood flow study. And so if you have an apnea test that shows no brain stem function, then by the way, they can't have reflexes either. You do that before you do all of this stuff. Sure. And I'm talking about brain stem reflexes, corneal reflex, like, you know, when something gets in your eye and you blink, yeah, that kind of stuff. So all of that's got to be gone. They can still have spinal reflexes, like people who are brain dead can still get erections and stuff.

So that doesn't mean it. The matter of fact, there have been people who have been hand job to completion while they were brain dead just to get a sperm sample, which just goes to show you. Even a brain dead dude is still, you know, sexist. Still loves it. Right. But anyway, so you have to, you go through all these things and show that it's permanent. Then you can start thinking about harvesting, quote, unquote, organs for organ donation. All right.

Oh, goodness. Oh, you ain't got the covert me. I got the leaf mold is whatever. Well, then now I'm getting paged, and I didn't even work today. So, anyway, I guess we've got to. get out of here but that's that's the deal so you yes you can't really do a complete autopsy and donate your organs at the same time so uh question that one's stupid no it's not stupid it's a great question and there may be uh there may be exceptions to that as well so and if anybody knows of one

i'd be happy to hear it we can't forget rob sprance bob kelly gregg hughes anthony cumia jim norton Travis teft holly from um fort charlotte port charlotte lewis Johnson, Paul Offcharski, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy. Do I say Jim McClure on here anywhere? Have I not said Jim McClure this whole time? Oh, my goodness, okay. Dennis Falcone, Matt Klein Schmidt,

Dale Dudley, the great Rob Bartlett, Bernie and Sid, Ron Bennington, Chowdy from Florida, Fez Watley, Chrissy's sister, and all those people who supported this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our serious X-M 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, oh, at Jim McClure's pleasure. Yeah, so he doesn't get mentioned twice. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website. Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thank you, Scott.

Thank you.