Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 432 - Potato Chip Toenails

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, Lady Diagnosis, and Tacie discuss the Pfizer vaccine FDA application, toenail fungus, benefits to blood donation, a dude who can't burp, and more! Happy Thanksgiving! 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

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 Tobolabov stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbell, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain out I'm clasped with the wave An ultrasonic, agographic, and a pulsating shave I want a magic pill For 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 to requiem for my disease So I'm paging 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, Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medical practitioner who makes all the alternative medicine assholes go away. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. And Lady Diagnosis, she who will do most anything for a bottle of expensive wine. Hello, Lady Diagnosis. Hello, Dr. Steve. And my wife, Tacey.

Okay, who won't do anything for anyone. I don't want to hear it. 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 any well. give us a call at 347-76-6-4-3-2-3. That's 347. Who has?

Listen, no. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine, at Lady Diagnosis, or at D.R. Scott, W.M. And visit our website at Dr. Steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy. Now, you can go to CafePress.com slash Weird Medicine and get a Bristol-stool-scale mug. Or you can go to Flatisflute.com. and get a Dr. Steve endorsed Flatis Flute, which is a whistling butt plug for that...

It's a must have. For that holiday party. 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 about talking over with your doctor. Nurse practitioner, practical nurse, physician, assistant, pharmacist,

chiropractor, acupunctur, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory, scientist, registered dietitian. or whatever. So you say you have several flatus flutes, lady diagnosis. Oh, good for you. That's fun. I'm sure that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a,

hardy time for all my friends. Regular Saturday night for lady diagnosis. I have no idea. Stuff. Dot, Dr.steve.com is where you're going to get all of your Amazon needs. Stuff. Stuff. dot, Dr.steve.com.

Please use that link. It makes a huge difference and keeps this show on the air. And if you're interested in a, wine club. I got 250 bucks worth of wine for 85 bucks the other day. Go to wine W-I-N-E dot Dr. Steve.com.

I don't know if anybody's done it yet, I have to check. I don't know that we're getting credit for it, but do it anyway. It's a great, it's really great. It's lovely. The wine is lovely. The people are lovely. The vintners will communicate with you. When do you get that?

When you go buy some gab, You know, some of that Sutter home or... Those black box people have never communicated with me. No, they've never gone, hey, Tacey, thanks for enjoying my wine, you know. But these people do. So it's really cool. Wine.com. And I just checked, and the tweakeda audio.com offer code still works.

I bought 100 bucks of stuff for 70 bucks. Ooh, presents for me. Yep. Offer code fluid, FLUID at tweakeda audio.com. And then if you want to lose way... with Tacey and me, go to Noom. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. Noom is not a diet.

It's a psychology program, and you can do two weeks free, and then if you decide to do the three-month program, you get 20% off by going to Noom. Dot.com. And, of course, as always, check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net.

He's got some funky mess on that thing. We. Herballs. So, Yeah, so I wonder if anybody else is going to have a show for Thanksgiving weekend, because here we are. Working hard. That's how we roll. No rest for the weir.

That's right. What does that even mean? I don't know, but it sounds. No rest for the weary. Dramatic. I always wondered about that one. It doesn't make sense. It really should be those who are weary are weary because they haven't gotten any rest.

Or no rest for the weary. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. All right. So you guys got anything? Okay, the Pfizer has applied for, at the time we're recording this, has applied for emergency FDA approval of their vaccine. It's 95% effective. We talked about it last time. It's on demand, if you want to listen to us, discuss where they got the 95% from and how that all worked.

And so if they get approval by next Monday, I mean, they could get approval tonight or Friday even. Friday's not a holiday. But if they get approval by next Monday, they'll start shipping immediately. And we should have, we should be giving vaccine the week after. I'm so excited. I am too. Now, Lady Diagnosis and I both participated in the Pfizer. study. We're both pretty sure that we got active vaccine. I did get an antibody test that was

negative, but then I had some people tell me that the antibody that is made against this vaccine is not the same one that they test for for people who have had the disease, which is pretty cool because you'll be able to distinguish between people who are immune because of the vaccine and people who are immune because they had it, if that's true. But I don't know that it's true. Oh, also joined by Ralphie. Ralphie, the dog. Yay, poppy. He got a haircut.

The F2 Labradoodle, who actually kind of is a Labradoodle. And then we have another F2 Labradoodle. That's just a golden retriever with foreshortened limbs. Ralphie looks more like a greyhound a day with his new dude. Yeah, yeah, he does. He's pretty sleek. Very aerodynamic. But anyway, nobody cares.

Oh, no, I forgot. Pretty sure they held. If they met him, they were. If they're a listing. Yeah, check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbils.net and listen to our podcast, River Podcasts or whatever. So anyway, let's see. You guys just want to take some questions and we'll just kind of go from there.

Anybody got any topics? I do have one topic. I just read. Okay. The CDC is about to make surprising change to coronavirus quarantine guidelines. Yeah, I heard about that. So the new recommendations, if you come in contact with infected individuals, individuals will advise a quarantine period of 7 to 10 days instead of 14.

Because we have the situation now where people are isolated who have it, isolated for 10 days. But the people around them have to be quarantined for 14 days from the last time that they had close contact with them. So you've got this situation where the person who actually had COVID can go, I'm going to the grocery store and the people that never got it from them, but were exposed to them have to sit in the house for four more days. So it was kind of ridiculous. It said they'll just require a negative test. Okay.

So. Okay. Well, and we have so much more access to testing right now. And we've come in contact with people who call you a week later and are like, hey, I tested positive. It's like, oh, really? Well, when did you get it? Oh, well, I got it.

Saturday. Well, we hung out Friday. Are you sure? And it's just, like you said, it's a domino effect. Yeah. Yeah. So are they still able to do rapid or is it five days for you to get results? Yeah, there's rapid tests out there. There are some pharmacies that have them, some places do them. And, but it just depends on what you got available in your area. That's all. I know the pediatricians here do them, but I could not find a rapid test when I was first. freaking out a week and a half ago. You can do it at CVS, they say, two to three days. Okay.

But you have to make an appointment, all that stuff. But, yeah, testing really doesn't seem to be an issue anymore. We used to really ration who we were going to test when they came in the hospital. Now, if you come in with a fever or you come in short of breath, you get a COVID test. So sometimes you get surprised. And, you know, our hospital is full right now of coronavirus. COVID-19 patients. You know, the second floor, the third floor, and the fifth floor plus the ICU.

So the next person that tells me that they think that this is all, you know, a government conspiracy or it's a hoax. I'm going to punch them in the nose. I'm really, I've really got fatigue with it. I mean, I know we all do, but I just, I'm over it. Well, you said you were, okay, so talk about your fear because if you feel the way that you expressed to me earlier, I know. other people do too and I might be able to assuage that I mean it really is scary I'm just afraid

to go anywhere I'm afraid to have people over I mean we had talked about having people over this weekend and I would really love to and I still want to but you don't know you don't know what the other person's doing or I mean are they out in the grocery store partying you know with their mask off or you know you just you just don't know you just don't know so one of the things you said is we're all going to get it. Yeah, I just feel like we're all going to get. It's just a matter of time, and I don't want it. So let's just do...

And I am scared. I mean, but I love to have things to worry about. That's my... Yeah, sure. That's my talent. You're not alone in that. No. Anxiety is a survival tool.

Anxiety is what keeps gazelles from getting eaten by lions, because they're always looking around, is our lion, is there a lion, is there a lion? Kept our ancestors from getting eaten by saber-toothed tigers because every time the grass would move, you know, they'd jump up in a tree even though it was most of the time it was the wind. So it is a, you know, that is ingrained in us, and it is a marker for survival. Because, you know, the Giselle that's walking around just going,

yo, everything's cool, that's the one that's going to get eaten by a lion. So there's nothing wrong with that. But let's just, when you have issues like this, anxiety issues, the first thing to do is to do some critical thinking. Go ahead. What are you going to say? We know so many people here recently who have gotten it. Well, sure. Yeah.

When it gets close to you, when you just see it on the news, it's happening to somebody else. But when it happens close to you, then it becomes. an issue that could hit you. And then it's going to be, well, what did I do? What did I do that wasn't safe enough? So let's look at the numbers. So right now, now these are cases. This doesn't include asymptomatic individuals, but who cares?

Because they're asymptomatic. They weren't harmed by this. So these are known cases. They're the scariest kind. Okay, we'll talk about that too. We had 12.5 million. So there's how many people in this country, 350 million? Yeah.

Okay. Echo, what percentage of 350 million is 12.5 million? Let's see if she can understand that. 12,500,000 is 3.571% of 350 million. Okay, 3.6%, something like that. Approximate. So that means 96. what? But, well, anyway. About 96%.

Yeah, about 96, 97% of people have not gotten this. You know, if I, and I use this all the time, if I gave you those odds that you would have a less than 4% chance of losing at roulette, you would take all of your money and put it on black right now. You'd spin the wheel. Oh, that is true. It'd be stupid not to, okay? So the, and I said this in the beginning back in February and January and February, most people will not get this and most of the people who do get it will not die. Well, my problem is when I found out that that person had it who thought that he got it the day after he was in contact with me, you know, I had not been careful. You had been in the room with me.

and I had a COVID test waiting, so I knew I was going to get the results within a couple of hours. But, Scott, I was terrified. I was going to have to call you and say, hey, hold up. You know? Sure, sure, sure. I mean, because I think people are getting it, and then they feel they don't want to be a pariah. So they're not telling other people that they got it. They're quarantining, but they're not going back and saying.

Oh, you think they're not calling their cops? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I'm sure there is some of that. Hey, what's up? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I'm sure there's people who've had it and don't even know they've had it and get in contact with people. So there's those.

Now, the asymptomatic people. And the asymptomatic. Well, that would be an asymptomatic person that didn't know they had it. And they come into contact with more people, but it's much less transmissible. So it kind of evens out. Well, can you just have one symptom? Like just a fever? Have you heard of that?

Yeah, you could have a suspect. I just, you know, had a, you know. Yeah, or fatigue or whatever. Right. Yeah. It's kind of what I meant. Well, then, and then there's... You think it's allergies.

Right. Plus, and then there's these positive rapid tests, and then you go get a real test, and, well, it's negative. Right. So then there's that. That happened to the person that you were with. So what he had originally was a screening test. So we've talked about screening tests.

It's a good time to talk about the philosophy of screening tests. A screening test, you... you want to have it be very sensitive. In other words, you're throwing out a very wide net because you want to catch everybody that has the whatever it is you're testing for. So you don't want to have any false negatives. But because you're casting such a wide net, you're going to catch some people in that net that don't have it.

So when you do a screening test, you're always going to follow that up with a more specific test where you're going to have very few false positives. So that's what happened with your friend. Two negatives. Okay. They got a positive screening test, and then they immediately did a more specific confirmatory test, and two of those were done, and both of them were negative. So that means that the original test was a false positive.

So you'll get this. Let me give you a good example. Lots of people have blood in their stool, right? a screening test for colon cancer is to do a hemacult test. It's not a good screening test, but it'll do for what we're talking about. So the hemacult test tests for blood in the stool. Now, if you get a positive, then you turn around, you do a colonoscopy, because that blood that's in the stool could have been from hemorrhoids. It could have been from diverticuli.

It could have been from local trauma when the doctor stick his or her finger up the person's ass. Or other trauma? Or other trauma. That's right. It doesn't make you a bad person. And, you know, you, but, you know, the vast minority of those people will have colon cancer. So then you do the more specific test, which is the colonoscopy, where you look up there and you look for it. And if you see hemorrhoids, blood coming out, and you see no polyps or cancer, then you have ruled out cancer.

And that was a false positive. test as far as colon cancer was concerned. Really wasn't a false positive, right? It was positive. Blood, it just didn't come from cancer. Okay? Came from something else. So anyway, so that was what happened to your friend, and that was

encouraging because then your follow-up tests were likewise negative. And you did the three-day nasal swab. So her company has her doing nasal swabs every week. Okay. Okay.

Because, yeah, they're trying to protect them, but also protect the people that they come in contact with. So, okay? So 93 something, or what, what did I say, 96, plus some people are not, have not been a case, you know? Now, there are some evidence that maybe the asymptomatic number is much higher than that, which would actually be good for us. That would be great. If we had a large swath of the population that was immune to this, but never had any symptoms. So they never got sick, never went to the hospital. And that will help us when we start immunizing people to make sure that it'll just add to the number of people that are immune.

So I wonder if since everyone's masking and washing hands and all that, the flu numbers are going to be lower this year. I'm going to give you one of these. Give yourself a bill. Because we have brought this up earlier, and I think that's a great point. I haven't seen a single influenza this year. And during the summer, I didn't knock on wood because I hate the puke bug. I didn't see a single viral gastroenteritis either. Not one.

But then again, the symptoms of COVID are, you know, diarrhea and vomiting. So how would you know? Do they test everyone with the flu symptoms? Yeah, yeah. They test both. If you have an influenza like illness, you get a flu test. And right now, you're going to get a COVID test. So they haven't had any flu.

I haven't seen a single one. By now we've seen several. Well, that's good. So we could look at the CDC. Why don't you do that, Scott? Go to CDC. Just Google cdc.gov and then put a space and then put influenza numbers 2020 and see if you'd get anything.

All right, you're ready to take some phone calls? Yes. Hell yeah. I'm done bitching. Let's do it. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some. So on the radio.

For now. Typhoid Tacey. All right. Aphoid Tacey. Where is that one good one that? Oh, oh, here it is. Okay, here we go. That's a good weird medicine question right here.

By God. Hey, Dr. Steve. I'm Jeff from Vegas. So I was studying some EMT materials to get my EMT certification today, and I came across something called a uterine inversion. Yeah. Which is apparently when the uterus prolapses

after childbirth. I decided to Google it. The pictures were pretty horrific. And also, I discovered an illustration of a fifth inside of a uterus. It called a manual reduction of a uterine inversion. Yep. Apparently, that's a treatment that can be done in the hospital. So I have two questions.

Did the Internet troll me, or is an actual, treatment for a perlapsed uterus or prolapsed rectum, fifting it back in. And second, if that is true, have you ever had to visit a butthole for work? Thanks. All right. It's not a butthole. No, it's not a buttonhole. Yeah, I think that was a separate question.

Let's start there. Let's work backwards. There are two holes down there. It's in the neighborhood. It's in the neighborhood. Wow. That's funny. So to his second.

question not for work no i've not had to do that nor for marriage nor for marriage i'm proud to say never been fisted and i mean it and neither have i yes yay well you're both two good girls what you miss i can't believe i just said that on the radio now that's true now scott on the other hand is not saying anything i would check the fist the potential fister like i check my urologist i make sure they have long thin fingers. Yeah, see this? See this? I can do from C, I can go

up to the E above the next octave. So I've got long, thin fingers. I could do it. On the piano, keep me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do too. So you'd be good for fisting somebody. I could be a good fister, I think. I got stubby short fingers. Let's go. No, Tracy. No, prostate exam for me. I'm out.

No, thank you. Well, she wouldn't be able to reach the prostate. You know, if somebody's got a big fat ass, even my fingers can't get up there because you can't get past the fat to get your finger up to their prostate. So those people you need to do ultrasound, you know, stick that, jam that probe up there. But anyway, let's talk about, sorry, uterine inversion. Enough of the porno talk.

That's when the uterus turns inside out, and it usually happens during childbirth. And what happens is they'll, the uterus can get really floppy after childbirth, as you can imagine. And if it doesn't collapse back and get muscular again, it just is real floppy. It can just turn inside out. So would Kegles help that? No, not right when that happens. Not with childbirth, but following? No, because what you want to do is you want to reduce the size of the uterus. So what we'll do is we'll jam it back in because now, you know, when it's inverted like that, its blood supply is compromised. And these people will have bleeding and they'll have pain and then there will be this mass in the vagina that's after the kid comes out.

It's like, what the hell is this? That's not placenta, you know. And often they'll get hypotension as well. So you try to push it back in. Just like he said, the Internet did not troll him. You want to forcefully, well, gently, but, you know, with some confidence, re-revert this thing, you know, re-invert it, un-inverted, whatever. Stick it in.

And so once you do that, though, it's still going to be floppy because it's not, it's stunned. And then you would use antoxytocin, which is also known as pitocin. And what it does is it helps to decrease, you know, it increases the tone of the uterus. It's the drug that we would use for a couple of things. one of them is to induce contractions. So it just causes a massive contraction of the uterus, and then it sort of regains its blood supply and its tone. And then after that, you really should be okay.

If you can't do it by hand, then they have to have emergency surgery. And I'm looking here at this website. It says it happens at about one between one in 2000, and one in 10,000 deliveries. I've only seen two of them in my career. So I have a question. Yep. So if they can't get it back in by fisting it, why would they not be able to do that?

What would cause them to have to have surgery? Well, if it's just so floppy, that would be one. Because it just won't go back in. Or if it's contracted at the neck and then you can't get it back in, that would be one way. So, or the patient is in so much pain that their pelvic floor is just contracted from pain and you just can't do it. So you have to put them under anesthesia to just get everything to relax so that you can get it back in.

Gotcha. So. Oh, goodness. Some of the OBGYNs may be screaming at the radio right now. If that's the case, call in and correct us on this because I haven't done, in my career, I've never done one. I've seen two of them and always the OB did it. So did I ever tell you about the first time I delivered a baby?

You've told me. Scott, you didn't tell us. I could probably tell that because there's no P.H.I. There's no personal health information involved in that, right? Just don't tell them. It was me. Well, if it was, we could get your permission. Oh, okay. My first delivery, I was an intern, and I was in the labor and delivery suite by myself,

just writing notes, and the senior resident came in and said, ah, you don't have to worry about this person. It's their first delivery. They're just one centimeter. When he means one centimeter is you're sticking your fingers in the vagina and then feeling the cervix and seeing how dilated it is. And so you can estimate it pretty accurately after you've done a few of these just with your fingers. But a normal cervix kind of sticks out, and then you feel it, and it feels like

like a donut with no hole in it, you know, like as if, you know, if they just made the donut so tight that it had no hole. And so he said, she's just one centimeter. So it can be as much as 10. That's what you, that's when you start pushing is when you're at 10 centimeters, which 10 centimeters is that much. What is that? 2.5, it's like 5 inches.

Okay? I can't believe we did that. It's like an apple size. Oh, my God. Holy cow. Steve, you have a really great way of explaining things. I do. Thank you. So, you know, he said she's just one centimeter and she's a prime-imp, in other words, first delivery. So it's going to take all night. So you won't have to worry about her. So I just sat there for a while and I was writing a note and I said, I better go check this lady. And so I walk in with the nurse and you put a glove on and then you put this jelly on there and it's sterile just in case. the amniotic fluid or the

in case the cervix is open. No, in case her, God, I'm having a senior moment so bad right now. Thank you. Yeah, if it was open and her water broke, okay? So, you know, the amnion was broken and there's amniotic fluid in there. You don't want to introduce bacteria. So you put this sort of sterile jelly on there, antibacterial jelly, and then I stuck my finger in there.

And I feel that sort of closed up donut, except it's like I felt it around. I said, that's not a cervix. That's an ass. That's an ass. Oh, my God, that's an ass. This woman was breached delivering right in front of me. And this is my first delivery. Not good.

So I got on the page or impaged any OBGYN in the building, you know, come to labor and delivery. And this guy showed up. He was an ex-hip. And I didn't know him at all at that point. He said he just came in and sort of assessed the situation. This woman was getting ready to breach, deliver right then. Because normally, for those who don't know, your head's supposed to come out first, not your ass. And then when the head comes out first, everything else just kind of follows and you just bloop out.

It's no problem. Bloop. When your ass comes out, now it's like you've got to, you know, the legs are curled up around your ears. If you're lucky. That's got to be extra painful. And it's just a lot of, a lot more stuff to go through that small hole, right. So he took one look at the situation. And then there's a thing called a footling breach, which is actually worse where the foot comes first.

And if they've got the cord wrapped around their, you know, under their crotch, then that becomes a real issue. Because they can't come out because the cord didn't long enough. Right. You know. So anyway. So he took one look at the situation, just said, yeah, why don't you let me do this one? I'm like, really?

Are you serious? Thank you. So I just stood there and back then we would move people from where they were laboring into labor and delivery. This was 35 years ago. And so he's just like, okay, everything's okay, okay. And then he got the butt out and then the two legs. And so now the kid has just got his.

His head stuck in the vagina. He's like, whoa, looking like that. And what he looked like was a little tiny person, but for a head, for a head, he had an adult woman's body. Does that make sense? So anyway, so he's pulling, now the head's stuck. Oh, rats. The head stuck. And he's like, okay, everything's fine.

He was so calm. And then finally, you know, I guess he did an episiotomy, got the kid's head out. Kids totally fine. He said, I'll just sew this up. It's going to be a mess. And so he sewed up the tear in her vaginal wall and everything was cool. And I, that guy, that guy was a god to me for the rest of my, the rest of my residency. That's crazy.

Just the coolest guy ever. But anyway, that was terrifying. And I went and believe you, me, I had words with that resident, the senior resident, because he was a jock. He was a sports medicine guy. He didn't give two hoots about delivering babies. So he just stuck his finger and went, whoa, that's one sand meter and this took off. Left me there, son of a bitch. Anyway, all right, why were we talking about that?

Because that guy was talking about... He said a prolapse. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You didn't prolapse. So, but I've done, I've seen to not done any. All right. Questions, comments? I have no further questions. No.

Very good. Good. Moving on. All right. Let us do... From the vagina. Dr. Steve? Yes, sir.

I don't know if I'm listening to the show right now. I don't know if it's live or not. It's not. Just curious about a fungus toenail. Okay. Like, this thing looks like a laced tater chip. Yep. But what's your suggestions on how to cure that?

You know, I took the old medication. It seemed like it got better, but I think it was a joint pain. It was just, it's about kidding if you take it for a whole month. So if there's something. you would suggest I know I've tried wearing my not wearing shoes out in the sunlight and things like that. I don't do anything. Soaking it bleach and.

Nope. Try just about everything I've read up on. But what's your? I hear you, man. So I've had this myself. The older we get, the more prone we're going to be to onico mycosis, which is toenail fungus. And the reason for that is is that the tonal.

toenails are basically in the most rural part of the body. And if you think of the brain and the heart and the lungs and that area as being the big city and then the guts being sort of the suburbs, then the toes are in the most rural part of the body that they could be. And they don't get the services, you know. They're in the panhandle. Right. They don't get the white blood cells. They don't get the blood flow. so it's hard to, the defenses aren't quite what they are.

And the reason why soaking it in bleach doesn't do any good is because it can't penetrate to where the fungus actually is, which is right above the nail bed itself. And so all that junk that it makes is sort of protecting itself from any harm, from outside influences. It's like a turtle shell. Kind of, kind of exactly like that. Not kind of, it is exactly like that. So there are a couple of treatments now. If it's big and thick already, the nail bed is what we call dysmorphic at that point,

and there may not be any going back to normal with that particular nail. But you can try this. So there are a couple of things. There's this stuff called Jublia, and it's a topical medication that you put on the toenail for 48 weeks. Because if you've ever bashed, you've got to do it every night. for 48 weeks. If you've ever bashed your toenail and made a mark in it, it takes about a year for it to grow out.

So 48 weeks, what it takes. Now, there was a study done several years ago where they used VIX VAPO rub and another one where they used tea tree oil. And those also were effective. They were just about as effective as this stuff. Guess how long they had to use it? 48 weeks. So that 48 weeks seems to be the deal.

Now, what he did, I'm guessing, I couldn't quite understand him. There's a pill that you can take a ketoconazole pill, but you take it for 12 weeks, and at six weeks, you've got to check your liver enzymes because it can kill your liver. So that's very rare, but it could happen. And I'm not, you know, for something that's cosmetic, I'm not going to take something, although I did. Did you? It didn't work. Well, it didn't work. And so, but I did do it.

I just thought it'd be expedient. It sounded like he was having side effects from it. Yeah, that's what it sounded like. He was having side effects from something. But you can do all those things. Now, if nothing else works, you do all of that, so you're going to give up a year trying to get this thing better. And if it doesn't get better,

a podiatrist or a good family physician or internist can just remove the toenail. And then you've got a couple options. You can let it grow back and then put antifungal stuff on the nail bed while you're letting it grow back, and sometimes that'll take care of it. Or you can just have them destroy the nail bed like I did. They just destroyed the nail bed. The nail didn't grow back. You think, oh, you must look like Frankenstein.

Most people, if they looked at my toes, wouldn't necessarily notice that. Well, it does look a lot better than it did when it had the fungus on it. I had this nail, and it went up. It kind of bowed up like that bridge in Australia. Sydney, you know, that big giant bridge. It bowed up like that. And I remember I finally did something about it because we were sitting, I was sitting with the boys, and they were going parachuting, you know, parasailing.

Parasailing. And I was sitting with them. I was going to go, too. And I just noticed this, like, 16-year-old girl that was on there, just looking at my feet with just utter disgust. I was like, ooh, he is so gross. And that's when I said, okay, you know, I'm making people sick looking at my toes. So I finally did something about it.

But they look so much better now. I have got a nightmare. I'm not embarrassed for people to look at my feet anymore. I've got the solution. If you take the toenail off and you kill the toenel bed. Yeah. Just have a tattoo of a toenel on there. You could or put a Lee press on nail.

Yeah, it may it just look like it. Just like you would do makeup around the eyes. You do tattoo for. Those nail salons can do anything. Shoot, yeah, but they could bling, bling your toenel bed. You don't believe what they can do to messed up feet. You walk in, messed up, you walk out. Yeah.

Perfect. And those Lee press-on nails are useful therapeutically, too. I had, I repaired a nail bed once where somebody had split their thumb using a circular saw. And so I thought, I said, yeah, I'll be, you know, they didn't touch the, touched the nerves or the blood supply, didn't hit the bone, just got the fleshy part. But it did get the nail bed, and it was going to grow back split, right? Once you split the nail bed, it's just going to grow in like horns.

So what I did was I took an 18-gauge needle. That's a big needle. It's got a real sharp end on it. And I drilled a hole at an angle on both sides of the nail. You know, and then I took 3-0, some vikroll or something, you know, really thick suture material with a real big curved needle. And I ran it in one hole into the nail bed through to the other nail bed and then out the other hole on the other side. And then there's knots that you can do where you can, that are really strong and it won't break the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. suture material, and I just pulled it together and got it the whole thing in line.

Then I put a Lee Press-on nail over it. And that, I'm just telling you, I saw that guy at some point after, and you couldn't tell that anything had ever been done. Yeah. So that was like 35 years ago, too, but anyway, back in my glory days. That was before guerrilla glue, and you could have just glued it together. But anyway, that's a cool trick for the. medical students out there.

All right. Let's do this one. Hey, Dr. Steve, Matt, Charlton, how you doing? Hey, good, man. How are you? Good. Hey, I want to ask about donating blood. I've been trying to donate blood as often as possible, partly because of the pandemic

and mostly because it's a thing that we can do that is a refutable benefit. Yeah. So I'm wondering about some benefits that I heard that were more directly related to the person donating as far as, does it help to reduce your cholesterol levels? Does it actually help you burn calories? Does it have other benefits or side effects? Yeah. And also, why do they not let you donate more often?

What are the negative effects of donating too often for blood donation? Okay. Thanks a lot. Okay, man. Great question. To the second question, you've got to regenerate the blood. That's the main thing. You've got to get your blood volume back up.

If they just keep taking red blood cells out and don't give your bone marrow time to replace those, you're going to end up with anemia, and that you don't want. So that's why. But, yeah, there are some benefits to the donor to giving blood. I think the benefits to society are pretty obvious. But the donor, first thing, they're going to do blood work. They have to make sure you don't have active hepatitis. and HIV and stuff like that.

So they will do some, you know, they'll check your pulse, they'll do your blood pressure, they'll check your body temperature, they'll do some blood work and make it, you know, and those results may be beneficial to you. So that's one thing. You know, one in every couple hundred people in the United States has hemacromatosis, and they don't even know it. That's where they have too much iron in their body.

And donating blood will reduce, your iron stores, which is a good thing because too much iron in your body can be a real problem, particularly to your liver and other places, parts of your body. And then donating blood once a year can reduce your risk of a heart attack by 88%. This was done by the American Journal of Epidemiology. We talked about, we made a commitment that we were going to donate blood and then we didn't do it. No, we need to. We need to.

So is that the same as plasma? I mean, the benefits. I know it's not exactly the same. Well, in plasma, they return the red blood cells. Oh, okay. So you're not losing the iron when you do that. So the benefit to you when you donate plasma is that they pay you. Money.

So will the, what did you say, the heart thing? Yeah, so donating blood once a year reduces your risk of a heart attack by up to 88% depending on what your risk factors are. And it may be high levels of iron that comes. constrict your blood vessels, or, you know, who knows what it is. But they think it's the iron issue. But this was an epidemiologic study. It wasn't a double-blind placebo-controlled study, but still very interesting.

Well, they've shown that it does lower serum cholesterol by donating blood. Well, sure, because you're taking out cholesterol. You're taking out a pint of fluid that has cholesterol in it. So it's going to decrease, you know, if you've got seven pints and you take one out, then you're decreasing everything in your blood by one cell. So giving blood may reduce your risk of developing certain cancers. There is research that supports a slightly reduced risk of cancer for blood donors. And, you know, phlebotomy, again, which is where they, you know, that's the process of removing blood through a needle, is found to be associated with lower cancer risk and lower mortality.

and that was a study published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. So they were looking at people with peripheral artery disease, but people with peripheral artery disease, in other words, these are people that have bad pulses. You know, we would call that bad circulation, but they've got crappy pulses. If they regularly donated blood, they had lower risk of developing cancer than those that didn't.

So who knows. But, you know, there's really no downside to blood donation. Everybody should be doing it. And then another danger of iron overload is the health of your liver, and people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease may get some... What is that? What the hell noise is that? That's one of your mechanical objects making noise. Is that my ham radio doing that?

I think it's... Sounds like a ham. Yeah, it's what it sounds like. I think it's time for the show to be a breaker breaker one-nine. It's the ghost. It's the ghost. We must have spirits in it. It's a height.

And then the last thing, and this is from Rasmussen College, giving blood can help your mental state. Just donating blood makes you feel like you're doing something good, and you are doing something good. So you can immediately feel superior to all the people around you that don't donate blood. And, you know, just regular altruistic interactions have major psychological benefits. So, you know, if you have never donated blood, I used to do it all the time. They used to call me every few months to donate blood than I was in college. You had a crush on the lady who took it. I absolutely did.

On the phlebotomist? Oh, my God, yes. I believe that. Yeah, she was from Sweden, and she was just so amazing. But anyway, that's a whole other thing. All right. So neighbor yard update. Guess who has a blow up now?

Who? Next door? Our neighbors. Oh, really? We have five blow-ups in our front yard. Yep. We have Darth Vader. We are in the closet.

Maybe. Where's our rim shot, Steve? Oh, sorry. We need more information, please. Thank you. Details. Darth Vader, BB8, a minion. What else?

Closet. Well, okay, so what it is is there's, it used to, our other next, or next door neighbors used to have C3PO and R2D2 blowups. So we got a Darth Vader and what we were thinking we would do, and we never did this, but it would have been funny, but we didn't know them well enough, and I wasn't sure they had a sense of humor. We were going to move Darth Vader closer and closer every day

until he was right there. Well, anyway, so our one kid has decided he's the one that puts up the, he's in charge of the outside decoration. So old Beck went and, you know, he picked out a bunch of stuff. So we have three or four Star Wars things. We have a baby Yoda from the Mandalorian. We have BB8 from the sequel trilogy. And then we have Darth Vader, right?

And that's it, of the Star Wars, right? Okay. Then there's just a beaver, just a random beaver, a blow-up beaver that my niece sent to us. And then this year, because Liam wore it. a minion costume for Halloween, which he hadn't worn a costume in ages, but now he has a girlfriend and she wanted to do stuff. So he got this awesome blow-up minion costume. We got a little minion, and my idea was to put him way off in the distance real close to

the bushes or even behind the bushes just having to look over, looking over it. That would be fun. So anyway, so we have all that. Then, because it's 2020, we just decided to go full bullshit tacky. Christmas threw up. Yeah, Christmas had massive diarrhea and just splattered it all over our lawn. So we have these projectors, too. There's like six projectors out there, and one of them's Mickey Mouse,

and it just goes round and round. And another one is a swirly snow thing that says let it snow, let it snow, even though it never snows here anymore. And then sparkly things and all that. It's just bullshit. It's horrible. It's so tacky. Pissed off the whole neighborhood.

Well, you wonder while your neighbor's moving, literally moving. Every house is for sale. Yeah, we don't care, though. It's 2020. We've had a bad year like everybody else. Fuck it. I think it's a great idea. Between a blow-up.

And it was fun, and I laugh every time I look at it. And I even have solar Christmas lights on my mailbox, which I will leave there the rest of the year. That's right. And we put our Christmas tree up November 1st. this year. Was it November 1st? Yes, it was. The day after Halloween.

That is true. It's crazy. And we might not take it down. We might just leave it up. Overteevers? Leave now. Until this pandemic skin is over. We just needed something to feel something different.

Enough is enough. Joy to the world, damn it. That's right. Well, you know, our Christmas card just has a picture of us. Fala la la fucking law. Oh, geez. There we go. Our Christmas card just has a picture of us with masks.

And it just says, we're fine. It's fine. Everything's just fine. I think it's in my mailbox. I get an email. Each number, each line gets bigger and bigger until it just says everything's just fine. So, all right. Next one.

Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Danny from Colorado. I just wanted to tell you real quick about my experience with retrograde cryopharyngeal dysfunction. Okay. Basically

the inability to burp. Yep. I've never been able to burp my whole life, and it's caused me so many problems with gas and bloating and pressure and pain

in my throat and in my chest all the time. Found one doctor in Chicago that does Botox injections really just one? Into the esophageal sphincter. And I can burp now, and it's amazing.

and it's been life-changing, and, yeah, that's my story with that. We don't want to hear your Botox. All the entertainment. Objection. What? Botox is a fabulous. Botox. It's got a heart. It doesn't matter.

It's a long, fucking needle to get to get down there. Botulx. Botulism toxin is natural man. It's natural man. You should know that. Why don't you just gargle it? I would. That way you could.

Yeah, so this is retrograde cryopharyngeal dysfunction, and it occurs when this thing called the upper esophageal sphincter, which is this cryopharyngeous muscle, which is right behind the kind of clavicle sternum. Yeah, behind the, what, taste, the voice box. I don't know. I'm just trying to think. I'm not running at a, I'm not hitting on all cylinders today. When is the song going to come on? It's coming. Just fucking dumb worry about it.

It's almost here. Okay. Where's the wine? I've cursed more doing this show, too. Me too. I apologize. I've had a bad day. I apologize.

I've had a great day. Happy, and I love Botox. Thanksgiving and... BOTX baby. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Okay, all right. So anyway, there's this muscular valve that encircles the upper end of the esophagus.

And if it spasms and won't let go, these people can't burp, and the air will come up, and it'll just sit there. And they're absolutely miserable because it's got nowhere to go. It really has nowhere to go. They could maybe stand on their head and get it to go back into the stomach, and then they'll just have to pass it as flatus. The other way. And they can determine this using fluoroscopy.

And in fluoroscopy, you turn on the x-ray machine, you just leave it on, and you can look at it like it's live and you could see through the person and then they drink some contrast. You could see it kind of get blocked up there. Anyway, but Botox is a great treatment for that. If particularly if you have no other complications. Now, Botox is the, I think, microgram for microgram,

it is the most toxic substance known to man in the fact that, you know, a very small, amount of this stuff can be fatal. So you go, well, why do we stick it in people's faces? Well, because it's awesome. And when you do it in those even smaller amounts in the face, what it does is it paralyzes the muscle for up to four months, which is why it kills people when you get too much of it, because if it paralyzes the respiratory muscles, you can't breathe.

And that's so-called botulism. So if you ever open a can and it goes and it spews upward or if the seal is broken or if it, you know, if it's bulging upward, that can probably has botulism in it and do not eat that. Well, plus you can stop eating things that make you burp. Well, yeah, for this. Yes, that's right. You wouldn't want to drink soda if you have this cryopharyngeal dysfunction. So finishing up talking about botulism toxin, we. When you inject it in the face, to my knowledge, there's never been a single case of botulism

where it's spread from there and end up affecting somebody's ability to breathe. That'll happen every once in a while. It's rare, but it'll happen with those people who have migraines and they're getting huge amounts of botulism toxin or Botox injected into the muscles of their neck. And every once in a while you'll get that. We've used it for people with post-thorosis. economy pain syndrome. So that's where if they're taking out a part of your lung, they'll spread the ribs.

And when they do that, they crush the nerve that's running across the top of the lower rib. And some of those people will have significant pain for months, if not for the rest of their life. And we'll take two units of Botox and inject it every centimeter along that scar. And it lasts about four months. and you do it two or three times and then they don't need it anymore.

It just turns off the pain fibers after a while. Or you send it to me. Yep, or you send them to Scott and then he does, you know, his thing. His who-do that he do. Right. And then he sends them to me to do Botox if it doesn't be able to.

So, all right, very good. Now, Lady Diagnosis, you had a question. I had a question, but it doesn't pertain to Botox. That's fine. I thought of this earlier. Somebody told me that every male, eventually, if you all lived, you know, a certain amount of time, will get prostate cancer. Is that true? It's not exactly true, but it's true enough.

So if you live long enough, if you take an autopsy, every male over 70 who dies and they didn't have prostate cancer, to their knowledge, if you autopsy them, about half of them will have nascent prostate. cancer and most people who get prostate cancer don't die from it it's that's the the majority of people it doesn't spread and it doesn't cause those kinds of problems but yeah it's really common it is a very common disease of older men so you said nascent is that just the onset yeah okay but it's there you know the cells are there there's cancer there yeah they didn't have any symptoms okay yeah they've got so why is that every male will eventually is it just because we We were designed to die when we were 35, you know. That's our ancestors, none of them had to deal with a lot of the problems that we have.

They all had bad teeth, so they had a lot of inflammation, so they might have had heart attacks and stuff, but most of them died from lack of sanitation. And then when you get into the middle ages, people were living a little bit longer, but then plague and stupid stuff, they didn't understand germs and don't, it's not cool. Have rats in your house. the fleas from the rats would jump and bite people and then give them boobonic plague. So, you know, stuff like that. But we were really early on, you know, we didn't live that long.

We procreated, had a couple of kids, and then, you know, we were out of here. So I think that's why it's just there wasn't a mechanism for it not to happen because it's just, you know, you get a lot of testosterone and you got all this going on. It's just constantly bathed in testosterone. Well, and you're sitting on your ass all the time and all these, you know, all the chemicals and stuff and what that you're sitting on you're sitting in chemicals well sitting on your ass and your prostate gets swollen oh yeah it's right up against your colon's always pushing crud into it and then you get to hey it should be separated but yeah but hang on but then you get and as you get older certainly you're not you're not using your prostate and the prosthetic fluid as much so that's true it's a little stagnant yeah the shit the shit builds up man yeah yeah okay the shit I just never heard that, and I just was curious if that was true. It's just prostate tissue is not solely male tissue. Females have an analogous tissue in the skeins glands, but you never hear of women getting prostate cancer.

Now, men will get breast cancer, about one in a hundred cases of breast cancer will be male. But I've never heard of a woman getting cancer of the skeins glands as they got older. And that's probably because you all don't have the testosterone levels that we do. You have some, but not enough to cause that sort of that issue. And it's just one of those things. There's not a fail say for it. And there's no survival benefit to not having it because by the time you get prostate cancer, for the most part, you've already had kids, even if you get it when you're 45, like Frank Zappa did. So anything that happens after you've had kids doesn't contribute to evolution one bit.

because evolution only kicks in to things that increase survival that increases your ability to pass your genes to the next generation. So anything that happens after that is, you know, so we're not, we'll never evolve away from that if that makes sense. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right.

Well, listen, thanks always go to Dr. Scott, Lady Diagnosis. And Tacey. Yay. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes. Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, Lewis Johnson, Holly Gould, Paul Offcharski, Eric Nagel, Chowdy from South Florida, Roland Campo, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Christine Gaelic's sister, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinschmidt, Dale Dudley, the great Rob Bartlett, Bernie and Sid this gets longer and longer, Ron Bennington, Fez Watley, and Martha from Arkansas's daughter, 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,

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, everybody. Goodbye, everybody. Bye-bye. Thank you.