Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 443 - Fun with Explosive Bowel Eruptions

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

Dr Steve, Tacie, and Dr Scott discuss the odds of knowing someone who has died of influenza, the joys of flaxseed oil, a certain fish that causes massive diarrhea, and the Port Charlotte Wh0re calls in to discuss floating stools. PLEASE VISIT: 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!) roadie.doctorsteve.com OMG the coolest stringed instrument accessory EVER MADE) simplyherbals.net (for all your StressLess and FatigueReprieve needs!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why was the car running on fumes? Because it kept passing gas. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Your show was better when he had medical questions.

I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivir, stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbell, exacerbating my inflatable woes. I want to take my brain now, blast 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 to requiem for my heart. 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 Tacey and Dr. Scott will be here in just a minute. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to your medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call.

347-7-66-4-33-23. That's 347. Poohead, visit our website at Dr. Steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy. I can't mention contractually. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything you with here, the grain of salt.

Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your doctor. Nurse practitioner, a physician assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, practical nurse, physician, physical therapist, or whatever, whatever. So anyway, all right Don't forget to check out

Stuff.doctrsteve.com Stuff.com where you will find the Rodey tumor, a tumor, tuner for your stringed instrument, the most incredible thing I've ever seen. And this thing will tune up your guitar or your bass if you get the right one or your mandolin or whatever

and you just have to pluck the string and it does it for you. You don't even have to touch the key. yourself. It is really cool. Go to rodymusic.com or just go to Dr.steve.com and click the

store link or go to stuff.orgive.com and you will find everything that you need to find there about the rody tuner. Also check out Dr. Scott's website at

simplyherbils.net. If you need some earbuds, Go to tweakeda Audio.com. Offer Code Fluid will get you 33% off your order and the best customer service anywhere. And I have one mask left. And it's going out today to somebody, and that's it. But if you want an archive of the show, we will send you some, you know, I don't know, an autographed piece of crap cartoon or something. Just by going to Dr. Steve.com and click on Get Every Show.

on a thumb drive. You get 17, 18 gigs of content and a 32 gig hard, or thumb drive, and it's got every show on it, plus a little bit of bonus material, not a whole lot, but there's some in there. So anyway, check that out. It's 30 bucks, and we don't make any money off of it when you include shipping and buying the thumb drives and stuff, but it's just a good way to get that out there if you want Because if you go to the laugh button, it only goes back to episode 300. So there's 299 episodes you're not hearing if you do that.

So go to Dr.steve.com for that. So last time we had this question, and I kind of s the bed on this one. So I thought we would try it again. Good luck. Yeah, I know. Let's see. Where is he? Hey, Dr. Steve, Tim, in California.

Hey, Tom. I have fairly healthy mouth. I haven't found the Bristol Stool Scale mug to be that helpful for its original purpose, but it has come in handy for helping me to judge the quality of different podcast episodes. Okay, very good. So he's talking about the Bristol Stool Scale mug, which is a Bristol Stool Scale. How would you describe it tastes? Well, it's just a, it's a visual scale, a visual analog scale,

to determine what kind of stools you're having that day. Exactly. And it's really kind of useless, to be honest with you. So it classifies them. But why do we classify things? We usually in medicine classify things, not just because we like things in neat little boxes, because we do things differently.

For example, we have four stages of most cancers except for small cell lung cancer, and small cell lung cancer only has two stages. Why? Because we treat, we have two ways of treatment. treating it. Stage, you know, a limited stage and extensive stage, people who are not metastatic, people are metastatic. Whereas with adenocarcinoma of the lung, which is not small cell lung cancer, there's four stages, stage one, stage two, stage three are all based on

size, and then stage four is if it's distantly metastasized, and we would treat those different. Breast cancer, same way. You've got four stages of breast cancer with sub-stages inside each one. So we would treat all those things differently, or they may have a different problem. prognosis. We may treat them the same, but the prognosis is different. But the Bristol stool scale mug, it's just, you know, are you crapping out pellets or you're crapping out, you know, water and then everything else is in between? Yes, I think, you know, if you go to the doctor and you are complaining of constipation or whatever, you can say, well, look, because these are in the Bristol stool scale is actually in a lot of exam rooms. And they can say, well, look,

this is what it looks like. Okay. I guess. That's what you want when you go into room is a big poster with piles of fecal matter on it that you get to pick from like a menu what a business we're in anyway all right so let's see what anyway I know you're a big advocate of the flu vaccine and I do get it every year I am

I've always heard the figure that there's something like 80,000 people who died here from the flu I guess the part I'm trying to wrap my head around is why don't I know anybody that has died from the flu and why does nobody I ask know anybody that died from the flu? Okay, yeah, so that's a good question. And I tried to calculate it on the fly before, and I just kind of, it was a little,

it's hard to do that and run the board and all that stuff at the same time. It was bad. Yeah, it wasn't good. No, it was bad. So there are, I don't have the best answer, because he wants to know what are the odds. I can calculate how many people,

you would know, on average, that died. We could do that. So let's do that real quick. In a typical year, we'll say 30 million people get the flu out of 330 million. Let's say, so it's about 9% or 0.09. And then of that, it's about 30,000 die. Now, some years way worse than that. You know, in 1918, pandemic, there were 500,000 people died.

But in the typical year, when we had the pandemic, of what, 2009 or something, if I remember correctly, it was only like 13,000 people died. That's why people weren't freaking out about it. It wasn't that deadly. A lot of everybody got it or a lot of people got it, but it wasn't very deadly. But anyway, so let's just pick a number, say 30,000 people out of the 30 million people that got it. So that's 0.1% or 0.001.

So if you know 300 people, the number of them who had flu in any one year would be 300 times 0.09, right? Because the population is 9% gets it. So you multiply the population of people you know times 9% give you a, you know, statistics don't apply to the individual, but, you know, we're trying to do a statistical problem. So 300 times 0.09, it would be 27 people. So if you know 300, because I don't talk to 300 every day. There are people that I know that may get the flu, and I would never know about it because I don't talk to them. I probably talk to 10 people.

I'm sure all of your friends would call you and let you know. Okay. I mean, I'm seriously. I'm sure. I mean, of the 300 people I know, some of them have moved away. I just don't hear from them. But anyway, so the number of them who had the flu would be 27. And of those 27, the number who would die,

would be 27 times 0.00. so the number of people that I would expect to know who died from the flu if I know 300 people and everything else is equal would be 0.027 people okay so 2.7% of one person now over if we just multiply that times 20 years and this is assuming that's the same number of people all the time over 20 years, the number who would die would be a half of a person. So there's a good chance that you don't know anybody that died from the flu. Does that make sense? The numbers are huge, but so is the population.

The population is even more huge. And so, again, the risk to the individual is very low. The risk to, so you'd have to know 600 people to get one person to die from this. if these numbers are reasonably correct. So it makes sense that it wouldn't necessarily know anybody. Yes, yes, it does. Okay. Oh, Dr. Scott's here. Hello, Dr. Scott.

Hey, hey, hey. Oh, try that again. Hey, hey, hey. Oh, there you go. Oh, those dulcet tones. Soto Votchy. Spouse a mokered voice. There's go.

Okay. All right. So that took care of that. Dr. Scott, we just re-answered that question about statistics from last time, why when this person didn't know anybody that died of influenza. And there you go.

It's because it's likely that you won't know somebody. All right. Let's just answer some questions. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Oh, Tacey, you had a couple of news. Yeah, but people probably don't want to hear them. Yeah, they do.

They're good stories. I proved. We've got to kill some effing time. Okay. Okay. Well, I've only got five minutes and then I'm out of here. Okay. So, well, good news.

The World Health Organization said COVID-19 cases declined by 17% worldwide last week. Oh, that's not bad. Let me see. Give yourself a bill. That was the wrong one. Okay. Good. Yeah, I know around here, we peaked out at a.

about 460 in the hospital. I think we dropped down to below 100, so that's good. Yeah, good news. So, also, there's another article. If you go into a restaurant and the windows are all open and everything, it could be because they're using CO2 monitors to assess ventilation quality. Well, okay. Do they think that there's too much CO2 inside these buildings?

No, there are laws that have closed restaurants down, right? but the restaurants say, wait a minute, we have windows. What if we open the windows? So they're using CO2 monitors to make sure that the carbon dioxide, which is the gas we expel when we breathe, is under 450 parts per million,

which is a normal outdoor level. That is hilarious. So this is just really a political thing, if you think about it, because you can be in the state, steamyest, most closed-up nightclub with people all mushed in there during pre-COVID times. And there's not a concern about the carbon dioxide levels being too high. So what they're doing is they're going, look, hey, we're just, you know, we're demonstrating that it's the same.

So this is really a political thing because there's no medical reason to test carbon dioxide levels inside a restaurant. Well, I would prefer that one be in every restaurant because I don't want to breathe other people. breath. That's disgusted. Well, then what you want, though, is adequate ventilation then. You know, in a hood. What's cool about eating it like a Japanese habachi restaurant is that they've got those hoods and it's probably sucking everybody's horrible

respiratory secretions up into the hood, too. So that might be the safest place to eat if you're really worried about this particular thing. Another story that I pulled up is that The COVID vaccine may be the cause of a rare blood disorder in at least 36 people. Okay. That's immune thrombocitopinia. Yeah, ITP, it's called.

And these are people who have low platelet count is basically what it is. Some kids will have it. We know a kid that has this. I'm not going to say his name. And what will happen is every once in a while, they'll start getting a bloody nose or they'll get bruising. and then you check their platelet count and it's low. And you can treat it with steroids a lot of times. Okay.

So now the question is that we see that all the time. Well, not all the time. And it's not that rare. It's uncommon, but not, I wouldn't define it as rare. It depends on how you define rare. But so it can happen sporadically. So did it happen at a higher rate in the COVID vaccine? people than it did in the regular population.

So one way we could find out is to, and this will be loads of fun for everybody, but what is the incidence of ITP in the general population, okay? So let's see what that is, the incidence of how many cases you get. Okay, 3.3 per 100,000 adults per year, okay. And there were 36. So remember that. Just remember 3.3 per 100,000. I'm going to have to open up another window. So how many people have been vaccinated have been vaccinated for COVID-19 in the U.S. And it's in the tens of millions at this point now.

So let me see. Looks like 13 million people. Okay. And then out of 13 million, how many got 36? 36. Okay. So if the number is equal to or smaller than that, number that I just gave you, the incidents, then it's not related to the vaccine.

So what do we say? 36 divided by 13 million? Echo, what percentage of 13 million is 36? 36 is 0.0002769% of 13 million. Echo, what percent of 100,000 is 3.3? 3.3 is 0.0033% of 100,000. So it may not have anything to do with that. Oh, fake news story. It's fake news, man.

Well, I don't know that it's fake. It happened, but what's the import? Is it something we need to worry about? It doesn't sound like it. Yes, and I don't want it to come out as that I'm an anti-vex story. No, no, no, I know. I mean, you're reporting a story, but, you know, I think that's the thing that we have to do is when we look at these, we have to do a little bit of critical thinking. Now, that also happened over a very short period of time because we've just been vaccinating people for a month or two.

So in a month or two, that may be a lot of people given that many. You know what I mean? So there may be something there, but it's not as large of an effect as it looks like it is. Because there are people that would naturally be considered to develop this over any period of time that you can do. judge okay okay last story yeah variant could be up to 50 times more transmissible 50 50% or 50% 50% sorry sorry sorry that's okay I can't read my own writing that's okay that's okay scientists aren't sure if you can catch COVID-19 variant after getting regular COVID-19 that's the question does and that applies the vaccine too is the vaccine for the normal quote unquote

the baseline COVID virus going to protect against these variants. And the same question arises if you had the disease, does it protect you from getting this? Because if it does, it's not that big of a deal. But if it doesn't, then we've got a whole new pandemic to deal with. This says if the virus changes enough. Yeah. You know, that's basically what it's about. So they don't know.

And it says some tests suggest that the South African and Brazilian variants may be less susceptible to antibody drugs or antibody rich blood from COVID-19 survivors. Which makes sense. So right now we are giving monoclonal antibodies to people who are at risk of becoming ill, really ill, of going into the hospital. And it keeps them out of the hospital. You know, if you're over 65 and you get COVID, you're a candidate. If you've got diabetes, you know, an immune disorder, those kinds of things.

And you get diagnosed with it. You can go to an infusion center. They give you the infusion, and more likely than not, you won't end up in the hospital. So it is one of the few things that we have. But it makes sense if it's different enough, that monoclonal antibody is programmed basically for one specific protein on the virus. And if the protein's changed enough, it won't latch on to it. And therefore, it won't block it from implanting itself and causing problems. So then it says that so far.

Does that make sense? Yes. That so far, the research shows they aren't deadlier, just more contagious. Yeah, okay. And which will cause more hospitalations and more deaths, though. More what? Deaths. Okay.

And I'm out. Okay. All right. All right. What? See it tastes. Take that out. Jesus Christ.

Lunatech. And she's taking out the microphone with her and the headset. Yeah. Write down 17 minutes, will you, Scott? Sure. because I need to do a little bit of bleeping. I can do it. That's all good.

That's all right. It was funny, though. Just can't live with it. All right. Let's take a couple of questions here. Dr. Steve. Hey. Greetings from Southern California.

Hey, man. A question for you. Yep. Lately for the last year or so, I've been suffering this weird thing when I sleep. It doesn't matter what, day it is you know but it doesn't happen at night it happens in a day like when I lay down for a nap I'll be sleeping and all of a sudden I'll feel my whole body jerk one way yep like my

entire body just jerks and it pulls me in one direction yeah what is that is that a hypnagogic episode or a hypnotic jerk or a form of seizure or epilepsy let me know thank you very much bye I was trying to give you the bell on the first thing, not the last thing. He should have stopped with his first answer. Hypnagogic episodes are those that occur during the transition between being awake and transitioning into REM sleep. And when you take a nap in the afternoon, a lot of times you have crazy dreams and stuff, there may be some disruption in that transition because it's not a normal type of sleep when you take a nap in the afternoon. Or when I say normal, it's not like you do at night where you have.

have, you know, deep sleep and then light sleep, deep sleep, and then REM sleep, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep. And you don't have that. And so if you are prone to hypnagogic events, you're probably more likely to have it during an afternoon nap than at bedtime. But these are those. Have you ever been one where you're just sort of dozing off, and then all of a sudden you get this image like someone kicked a soccer ball in your face and you jerk or you fell like

three feet. It's never a long distance and you just jerk wide awake and your whole body jerks, that's what that is. Now, when you're going from REM sleep to wakefulness, in other words, you're going from, so this is you're going into sleep, you're inducing sleep. When you're coming out of sleep,

there's a different kind of episode that's called a hypnopompic episode. That's that very typical sleep paralysis where people will wake up and they can't move their body. And then you start hallucinating. And you may hear things in your room, or you may think that you're on a gurney being taken into, you know, by long, tall people with elongated heads and elongated eyes into a spaceship.

And when I read Whitley Streber's accounts of being taken, I recognized a kindred, not necessarily a kindred spirit, but a kindred syndrome that I have. hypnopompic episodes too but I know what they are and so when I wake up and I can't move I'm in a condition of lucid dreaming but I can't move so it's not like I can jump up

and start you know having intercourse with people in my dreams like Anthony does that's what he does when he lucid dreams but I can enjoy it you know because it is an altered state because you're so when you sleep One of the things that has to happen is your body has to turn a switch that says disconnect this guy's brain from his body so that he's not running around acting out his dreams.

Right. Because if that switch doesn't get turned on, then what is that called? Then you get restless legs. Well, or somnambulism, those are sleepwalkers. But those are sleepwalkers, so they're sort of acting out their dreams. And probably the fact that they're actually up and walking around informs what's going on in their dreams. Because, you know, I kind of supports whatever's happening. Yeah, I mean, my stupid dreams, I have people skating on linoleum.

I've had that before and said, oh, I never knew you could do that. Or when I have gone into my backyard and the Eiffel Tower is there. And I'm like, oh, shit. How'd that happen? Paris has always been in my back. backyard. Why did I? And I'm smart enough in my dream to go, why is it that I had to get on a plane to go there when it was in my backyard all the time? So I was smart enough to know that I used to have to get in a plane, but not smart enough to realize this is stupid as hell. The thought patterns don't make sense. I love it. But anyway, so dream state is interesting. But when you have a hypnopompic episode, you're still dreaming, but you are now fully conscious. And your body is still. shut down, that motor part is shut down. That's why you're paralyzed because that all those

switches that have to be flipped for you to go into REM sleep, not all of them unflipped when you came out of it. So the body paralysis is still there. Now, the last time I had an impenopompic episode, I willed myself to sit up. Now, in my dream, I could see the room like you and I are looking at each other. It was bright. I saw all the furniture, all the pictures, everything. And then I wielded myself without using any motor activity at all to sit up, though. But it was just really, I was just in the dream state. I went from looking at the ceiling to looking at the wall across from me, right? So I just kind of levitated up half of my body. And then when I did that, I looked to the left and there was a gurney. Oh, gosh. Well, that was just because

I was expecting it. Yeah, okay, okay. And so I see this hospital gurney, but it surprised me because it was as real as you are to me right now. Right on. And when I saw that, all of a sudden I jerked wide awake, but I was laying down, and it was dark in my room, and I couldn't see anything. So that was the real state.

The altered state was me looking around and being able to see everything in the room. And what that tells you is that you have a pretty effing precise map of your surroundings. And that map is kept in the cerebellum, that's the back part of the brain, that you can rely on. That's actually better than you think it is, you know. And when you are in a really dark room, like in your bedroom and you break your foot on your bed because you didn't exactly know where the bed was, it's because I think the left brain is going, no, no, no, you're too far to the right, too far to the left. If you just let the right brain talk, you could probably, you've got that map in your head.

He let the cerebellum and the nonverbal right brain talk, and you could walk around, do all kinds of stuff. Interesting. So it is fascinating. And by the way, when you break your foot and you're going, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, at two in the morning. And then your wife is like, can you be quiet, please? That's always fun.

And then you find out later you actually fractured your foot. And she still wants you to be quiet. Yeah, true story. But anyway, so. They, so that's a hypnipompic event. But that was really, that was wild. The first time I had one, there was a giant eye floating in the air next to me. And again, I had a perfect image.

I was in my parents' bedroom. My parents were out of town, and I had my girlfriend, and we were sleeping in my parents' bed. And I had this perfect image of their dresser drawers, the window going to the outside. They had a sliding glass door that looked out on a mountain and everything. and I saw all that stuff and I could look around and move my head it's just amazing it's like virtual reality

it sounds like the Oculus thing it is basically virtual reality at that time that's pretty cool it's fascinating now if anybody else has had these kind of episodes feel free to call in

but you can imagine I'm sorry but you can absolutely understand why someone who doesn't know what this is would think they were being abducted by aliens or there were supernatural forces doing things to them because it is very otherworldly.

And you're still dreaming, too. So you can see and hear things that aren't there. So incredible, is it? Yeah. In stereo. Go ahead. I was just going to tell you that my, the thing that always happens to me is the hypnagogic part, but it's always a baseball coming in my head.

Yeah, because you played baseball. I played baseball. Well, I played soccer, and it's always a soccer ball. And I was one of, if that's something that's pretty consistent throughout, because I've had it ever said, I got hit in the hand with a 95 mile our fastball back. from this dude at UAB one time. He liked, it killed me, but still... Did he do it on purpose?

No, no, no, no. Okay. He rung my bell. Yeah, but still... Because I know that happens. Yeah, to this day, to this day. And it's pretty regular. I'll be dozing off and all of a sudden that fastball's come right out of my head.

I jerk. Yeah. Oh, shoot. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Well, that's interesting, because I always just thought it was a coincidence that I always saw a soccer ball. That's why I asked, yeah, because if it's kind of consistent for most folks, it would be kind of cool to know. Yeah.

Or if your, you know, if your parents hit, you all the time. Oh, shoot. You'd see a big old hand coming. Oh, Lord. I've got to fix this microphone. I'm sorry, I have to stand again. You know, my back has been doing so good.

Yeah, I said you hadn't seen anything about it, no one. Nope, it's been doing great. And then, I mean, I really almost had no pain. And I had three different epidural steroid injections. I had physical therapy. And just, you know, just the last couple of days it's kind of coming back. But it's gone away before. I'm really trying to avoid having surgery.

So we're going to try really hard. Yep. So I may have to come see. We have needles. We have needles. All right. So, well, this is hard to do, standing up. You need longer arms.

Yeah. First time caller. Hey, man. I worked at an airport and myself and some of my coworkers recently got the COVID vaccine. Excellent. Which is a big deal for me because I'm usually a big deal. baby when it comes to needles. No, good for you.

So I think I deserve one of those bells. Oh, okay. There you go. Hoping you could settle a little disagreement for us. I always figured that it would be best to get shot in my non-dominant arm. Okay. Since you use it less and it would therefore hurt less. But I've been hearing some people saying it's actually better to get it in your

dominant arm because moving it around helps your arm feel. better faster. Is this true? I guess maybe it might help drain some lymph nodes if you're shaking your arm around, but I'm not actually sure if that's how it works. Yeah. Well, the fact that... Thanks.

Thanks, man. The fact that anybody thinks that there is a right answer to this is what's funny. Yeah, they're wrong. Well, because, right, because there's pros and cons to both, just like everything else. This is like DC versus Marvel or Apple versus Mac or Apple versus Mac or. Android versus, you know, iOS, there's always going to be people saying, well, mine's better and yours sucks, but there's good things for both. You know, I have all of those things, and I like them, I like them all. So, but there are pros and cons.

So if you pick your dominant arm, you are, just like the guy said, I'll give them one of these. Give yourself a bill. You're more likely to move your dominant arm through the day, and the more you move it, the more you work it, into your muscles and the more your the body will kind of take it out of the way because that's how the body does a lot of things in the periphery of the body is it works on us moving it right you know and um that helps probably helps to relieve some discomfort but the cons are it that's the arm that you're going to be using to write and type and do things and so you're going to have more pain oh god that hit the wrong cough button instead blast it you're close right down 29

So now, if you pick your non-dominant arm, since it's the arm you're not using as frequently, you may be able to forget about any potential soreness, although I can say that's not true. I mean, you still use it. It's not like you don't use it at all. But because you're not using it as much the vaccine may linger longer, linger longer, and may cause discomfort in that area longer. So there's no right answer to it. You just pick one and go with it. It's not that bad.

I'll be honest with you, when I had the shingricks, that pain was way worse. And if you've ever had a tetanus shot, that's the worst as far as pain in your deltoid muscle, you know, in the arm muscle. because a tetanus shot sets up a really strong anti-inflammatory response and it feels like somebody gave you what we used to call that a gooch or something where you take your middle a knuckle sandwich a middle knuckle and just jab it into somebody's arm a frog we call a frog frog that's it that's right no this is a gooch

the gooch is when you hold up your fingers and now this is considered a white supremacy symbol but I think that's made up though I don't know any white supremacists but I can't imagine that they use the okay symbol as being serious I think it's like Pepe the Frog was for some of the 4chan guys

they just said that that's what it was and now you see all these people going okay I don't know if it's real but we used to take it and do the inverse okay so the three fingers are down with the circle and you would hold it up to somebody's mouth like a microphone except you would be pantomiming some it was something else yes you know an erect male member

if I have to be you know it's probably didn't need to say that but anyway but that was called the gooch right you know I don't know why and you would do that just to your dumb friends you just and they you'd hold it up there and then they'd turn around look at it and then you everybody would laugh because they would you would do it when their head was turned to the left or something and you'd hold it to the right and then when they turned around then there there's this thing in their face. So anyway. So where the hell that come from?

Well, we were just talking about the gooch versus the frog. So the tennis vaccine feels like you got the frog. Go ahead. And I'll add just a little bit to those vaccines to Dr. Steve. If you get lucky when they insert that needle and they don't hit a little sensory nerve or cutaneous nerve, you're even going to have less pain. So if a sting you're going in, it's probably going to be even sore. Yeah, depending on what part of the muscle they go into.

Yeah. the part of the muscle that the needle goes into if it's near a motor point it's going to be more sore or less sore so well I see a lot of people doing this wrong too now we used to the way I was taught to do it

and I think this is a right answer uh oh no you're standing up you can't find all your show I know I can't find all your show I can't find um is

we used to We were taught to give an injection if you're going to give it in their shoulder to give it to them with their hand on their hip. And what that does is it causes the deltoid muscle to completely relax. If they're holding it down by their side, it's stretched. You don't want it stretched.

You want it contracted but relaxed. So you want it as thick as you can get it. So everybody, if you're sitting there, listening to this, put your hand on your hip and let your arm relax into your hand. and reach over with your other hand and feel that deltoid muscle. That's the outside muscle of shoulder. It's completely just like jelly.

It's what we call slack position. Yeah. It's slack position. You put it in neutral position. Yeah. And when you do that and you give somebody an injection there, it doesn't hurt. Much less painful. Yeah.

Because anytime you have a spasm and a muscle and you put a needle in that spasm, I do spasm even more. I do it every day. You have to walk them through and say, this is going to feel like this. It's going to be uncomfortable, but it's hopefully going to make it not spasm in the future. All right. I've got to answer this call, and then we'll be right back in just a second. To you all listening, it will be as if time never passed. All right, we're back.

See, I told you it would be imperceptible, just like anesthesia for colonoscopy. Hey, when are you going to do the colonoscopy? You've already had it. I've already had it, yeah. No, it's like, when you wake up, when you're going to do it? It's like, sorry, that was stupid of me. Sorry, but that was your hanging curb ball for the day. No, no, no, no.

You were totally appropriate, but, yeah, that's exactly what it's like. The last one I had, it was like, okay, now count back from 10, that old saw, and I said, this isn't doing anything. I said, 10, 9, and I said, I'm not going to count anymore. And then I looked around, and it was over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was literally just like that. It was like, I'm not going to count anymore. Well, that was really, I would fall in asleep and then woke back.

back up and just my brain was rebooting and it just said ah don't you know don't worry with that but there was no no perception of time passing nothing brain eraser counted to eight and it was over

just like that not like you were asleep you know when you're asleep sometimes you can wake up and say yeah I slept a long time that's like they flipped the lights out it's literally like there's a power switch they just go click yeah

but without even see when you flip a switch you get that click it's none of that it's just a perfect seamless from

I didn't have it did have it completely seamless nothing in between yeah nothing in between that's true that is very true and so it's hard to explain

to someone that's never that's never had you you've had your colon how old are you you have had 52 now you're 52 yeah I had one about five years ago you don't you'll remember remember you tell you that story i had i'll make it quick no no that's fine what the hell but my i had to have

i had to have it colanoski but i'm going to sit back down this mike doesn't sound right you're supposed to have do a do you know a pretty significant prep yeah but i had a clinic all day the day before oh and you didn't i started my prep that night at seven p.m. when were you supposed to start it the day the day before well oh god i'm not telling anybody do not do what i do i'm just telling you what i did. Do not do what I do. Do as I say, not as I do. So I started pounding that drink, buddy, and I'm going to tell you. You talk about an explosive situation. Oh, yeah. But, you know, I got her done. You were at 7 a.m. Yeah. Yeah, I think they, you know, they know so many people just won't do it. Well, half-asset that they do extra. I used to like it when they did the Fleet's Phosphosota.

because the fleets phosphos soda, which if you're interested in that, no filter Paul, you just go search for that and see if they have video of it on opium anthony. They had him drink it before they did the walkover, and then they made him stand there with a diaper on, and I guess Club Soda Kenny was blocking his way out,

of course he wasn't really restraining him, and they made him stand there until his bowels evacuated, and that stuff, It was just a little three-ounce bottle, but it would roll through you like a tsunami. And I remember having the diarrhea. That's a terrible idea. The watery diarrhea, the force of it that was just shooting out.

You know, it wasn't just dropping out. It was shooting out under pressure. Oh, yeah. If I had stood up and bent over, I could have hit a wall 20 feet behind me with what was coming out of my ass. Easily. And the weird thing is, is you do that two or three,

three times, then you rest for a little bit, then you'd take another one. And the second time, I remember I just, I filled the pot up. I had to because it was just coming out, coming out, coming out, it wouldn't stop. And when I stood up and looked at it, clear as a mountain stair. Crystal clear. Yep. It's the most bizarre thing. I'd tell you what, I drank so much of that so fast.

It was a, I was kind of levitated. You were drinking a Miralax, right? Off of you, I was drinking the mirrorlix. And it was, I was levitating. off of the toilet. Yeah, that's what it feels like. It's like, what the hell? I was going to do a film for DragonCon one year.

They had an amateur film festival. And it was called Festival of Feces. And the only thing that I actually got done was the theme song. I did do the theme song. But the idea was that this guy was going to have that same sort of thing. And he was going to be sitting on the pot and have voluminous diarrhea. And then at one point it was going to be so bad. He was going to levitate under the, you know, the rocket pressure.

Because remember, Newton, for every action, there's an equal opposite reaction. So he's shooting out of his ass so much. It was actually lifting him off the seat. And then at one point, you know, there was just going to be just a, you know, a turd fest in this bathroom. I had a bathroom that I had mocked up in this shed, you know, up behind my house. It was big enough to put a little film studio in. And we were going to do it in there. It just never happened.

But it would have been funny. And then the very end of the thing, this. The guy was going to fall to the ground and just split open and this giant turd was going to emerge from his body and run off and that was the end of the thing. Sounds lovely. Stupid. Well, I was a little bit...

Younger than? Yeah, a lot younger than. Festival of feces. Oh, my gosh. So anyway. That's great. Yeah, but you just reminded me of that. But you know what stimulated me was the bowel prep that you had to do

with a colonoscopy, I was thinking that exact thing. I had to have it earlier than 50 for a couple of different reasons or have a bowel prep and that's, you know, that's what made me think of that movie. I love

it. Yeah, my friend Shannon Wallen, who is in horror films. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. He was in some trauma films and some other films like that. Oh, cool. And he was going to star in it. So, yeah. My thing was

is that the Dragon Con film festival was all just a nerd fest and you could put anything in there you wanted to so I just wanted to have people puking because they're all in there and they were doing like Star Trek cosplay kind of episodes and stuff and then there'd be a little comedy thing

based on Star Wars with the fake lightsabers and stuff and then I just wanted all this sort of nice stuff and then all of a sudden festival of feces and there's shit everywhere you would have won well I wouldn't have won but I would have it would have been a victory a lasting impression it would have been a victory that I did win a cartooning competition at dragon con one year okay this was weird and I this whole show's gone off the rails sorry I was gone it's gone to shit we weren't even going to do one today so I don't you know what do you want but um

I went with this guy, his name was Steve, and he was at that time, you know Claudia, or anyway, that's an end thing, but they were together. And he was an artist. And Jim Lee, who was an amazing artist at that time, he was doing Superman, I think, was going to judge this competition. So we all went to watch Steve win because he was the best artist we knew. And they just passed out paper. And so I just doodled this thing.

And what it was was these two round, they look like potatoes with arms and legs and faces on them. And they're looking up at the sun. And they go, and the one guy goes, what is it? And the other one goes, I don't know. And then in the next panel, they're bowing down. They said, well, let's worship it then. And that was it. That was the whole thing.

It was just really amateurist pencily cartoon. And so I just turned it in along with everything else. And Jim Lee is going through these. He goes, whoa, you know, what is this? We need to have a content award. And so, you know, should we, he had to take a vote because there was one for art. And then he wanted to do one for content. I didn't know what he was doing that he would come across mine.

I hadn't even thought about it. There were 200 people in there. He'd just throw everything in. So I actually donated, like, $20. or something to be the content award. I just went up there and it was just my opportunity to go up and look at that close to Jim Lee because it was like

a superstar, us comic book nerds. But it was my cartoon. And my friend Steve didn't even get honorable mention and I walked off with this prize. So I got my 20 bucks back. And he signed it.

That was cool. I asked Jim Lee to sign it. But anyway, it was funny. Poor old Steve. He was pissed. Anyway, there you go. There you go. It's not a great story, but it was kind of cool. I thought it was cool. Yeah, it was very cool.

All right. Let me see, we did vaccines. Okay, well, let's do this one then. You can answer this one. California, I'm a big fan of your show. Oh, wait, let's get his name in. Hi, Dr. Steve. This is Barry in Southern California.

Barry, hello, Barry. I'm a big fan of your show. I watch the podcast all the time. And you've probably talked about this before, but I was wondering and kind of arguing with my wife about the benefits of flaxseed oil. Okay. I supplement with about 1,000 milligrams of flaxseed oil each day. Is there really a good health benefit to flaxseed oil, or is it just kind of urban legend?

Yeah, well, I mean, it depends. What I always ask people is, what are you trying to accomplish? If you're trying to prevent cancer, by taking. flaxseed oil. There really isn't any evidence for that. Or if you're trying to take cancer to improve your erections, there's really not any evidence for that. However,

flaxseed oil has omega-3 fatty acids and the one that it has is alpha-linaleic acid in it. And the body uses alpha-linoleic acid and converts it into other fatty acids including

these ones docosa hexanoa acid and icosopentanoic acid. And both of these are used by the body in beneficial ways. So flaxene oil is fine. It doesn't have the same nutrients as the whole seed. It's mostly you're taking it for omega-3s. So it can help reduce some cholesterol levels.

It may play a role in decreasing the, quote-unquote, bad cholesterol or LDL cholesterol. There was a small study. very small, 15 people, and they either got flaxseed oil or corn oil once a day with dinner, and they looked at them at the beginning and then 12 weeks later, and those who got the corn oil had no change in their cholesterol levels, those who had the flaxseed oil had a significant decrease in LDL. So that's how we know things. Now, did that mean anything?

Did they have fewer heart attacks and stroke? Because who cares what cholesterol is if it doesn't reduce heart attack and stroke? And we don't know the answer to that. You think that it might help. But, you know, if you reduce someone's cholesterol with a statin drug and you reduce them the same amount with another drug like Zetia, and I can't even, Zetia, so behind me, I don't even remember its generic name, but you don't get the same reduction in heart attack and stroke.

So it's not just the LDL reduction. You know, statin drugs have some anti-inflammatory, activity they do more things than that so that you know may not have anything to do with anything now what i said before if you're trying to prevent cancer let me qualify that there may be maybe some cancers that um you can reduce your risk by taking um you know omega-3s and there's a lot of research still needs to be done it hasn't been done there was a study and i'm getting this from medical news today, a study on mice with lung tumors, found that those that consumed a 10% flaxse diet, which would be huge for a human, had fewer tumors compared with those in the

control group. And there's a literature review that showed that in animal studies, fatty acid flaxseed oil may suppress breast tumor size and growth as well as promote cancer death. So, you know, look, if you had cancer and you say, I want to take flaxseed oil, I'm not going to stop you because I don't see any downside to it. As long as you're doing the other things, you're not doing that instead of other things. You're doing it to supplement

things. I think you're okay. There's a systematic review. That's where they take a whole bunch of different studies and mush them together. Analyze studies to determine the effect of flaxseed oil and people with diabetes and people who had pre-diabetes

who took in 13 grams. So this guy's taking one gram, 1,000 milligrams. So they took in 13 of those pills a day. Or they took 26 grams of flaxseed. That's quite a bit. Actually, this was flaxseed, not flaxseed oil, so I don't know what the concentration of oil was. But they had decreased blood sugar levels.

And those who ate higher doses of flaxseed didn't experience any changes. So there is a point of diminishing returns. So we don't know. We don't know. Yeah. Well, you know, we use flexiate a lot in Chinese medicine. Sure you do. For bowel movements to soften the stools a little bit. Yeah.

Because it can cause gas bloating and diarrhea. It can certainly help soften the stools a little bit. Anti-inflammatory, certainly great. I will say this personally, if I take it and don't make the right concoction, it's kind of hard on my stomach. I get a little gastritis. Yeah. Just a little bit of information. But I was reading in PubMed where they did show that flaxseed or something.

oil may help. And they're doing more research on it with some of the cancer cells for cervical cancers. Yeah. Yeah, the one study that I looked at did say that it may increase the rate of a thing called apatosis, which is programmed cell death. You mean apoptosis? Yeah. So it's just for people out there, it's spelled AP-O-P-T-O-S-I-S, but it's apoptosis with

the P is silent. No, it's all right. It's one of my pet peeves, but as you well know, that's why you said it. So, yeah, I have no, it's like vitamin D. The evidence for taking vitamin D is getting better. So I'm cool with taking vitamin D as long as you don't take it to the point where you get hypervitaminosis D. I'm fine with it. And the same thing with flaxseed oil.

I would be okay with it. It might help. Might help? It might. Probably won't hurt. Probably won't hurt, yep. So. So we're with you.

Yep, there you go. All right. All right. Let's see. Oh, we have a celebrity calling us. Dr. Steve, this is the Port Charlotte Hoare. Just let you know I'm moving north a little bit. So now I'll be the Sarasota slut.

But anyways. Okay, for people who don't listen to the podcast, this is a recurring thing at the end of the show is the Port Charlotte Hore. This is actually her too? Is your poop supposed to flow? or is it supposed to sink? Yeah. Uh-oh.

She got something. Catch you later. Okay. Hi, Tasty. I can't have my horror talking to my wife. So one of the things that could cause this to happen. We said the mechanism by which stool would float. One is fiber consumption.

If you take certain fibers that have a lot of undigestable sugars in them, those will cause gas. So cillium, which is metamusole, sold as metamusel, causes a lot of gas because it has undigestible sugars in it. And therefore, as a laxative, you know, it's a little more bloaty than, say, citrus cell is. Oh, you know, I haven't used this in quite some. The hell, I don't even know if I still got it up here. I was like, where is it? Oh, there it is. Shit.

Citrus cell. Whoopty-do, anyway. Wouldn't any better noun it was 10 years ago when I did that. But citrus cell is not digestible by the gut bacteria, and therefore causes no gas. So if you're taking a fiber supplement, inulin or chicory root, is another one that causes a lot of gas. Matter of fact, it's so consistent that when they were wanting to do the far, smelling contest at Opium Anthony.

I made for them this device that they could hold up to their ass and then put a gas mask on, and then they could smell nothing but fart. If we were going to have a contest, I was going to have everybody take a couple of doses of inulin, not only the night before, but as soon as they woke up in the morning, and they would have plenty of fletus for the, that would be fodder for the bit. But it never happened. After I sent them the contraption, they just started farting into it. it anyway.

Lovely. All right. So, in other words, the fiber causes gas. Gas causes the density of the stool to decrease. And if it decreases enough, it will float in water. Kind of like a boat. Yep. Yeah, sort of.

That's right. They also say that some infections in the GI tract like E. coli salmonella or Norwalk virus will. cause it to float. But again, it's because those infections also cause gas. And these things are temporary. Some gastroenter intestinal disorders can cause your stool to float. This, again, is from medical news today.

26% of people with functional bowel disorders like irritable bowel syndrome will have floating stools. So in those people, it's almost normal. And so for some people, floating stool may be the first sign of a gastrointestinal or bowel problem. And when it happens with pain, diarrhea, bloating, or constipation, you might want to get checked. And then the thing that I alluded to before is malabsorption. And that's because the stool becomes very fatty. So fat floats, we know that.

Oil floats. That's why you have oil slicks on water. So when you have malabsorption, in other words, your body isn't. able to absorb fat that you eat, it will roll through the bowel and gets mixed up in the stool, and that will cause the density of the stool again to decrease, and it will float. So if you see floating stools with pools of oil, you know, globs of oil floating on the surface, that's a sign of malabsorption. Go get checked out. You could just have a stone in your bile duct because the bile, you know, bile secretions in the bowel

help to solubleize fat and present it to the bowel to be able to be digested and there are other things like that that can cause it. So just get checked out if you see an oil floating unless you ate

a fish called Escalar which I highly recommend you just don't bother with. Escalar is also called Butterfish and it's very tasty fish hence the name Butterfish but if you eat more than about

six ounces you will have violent orange oily stools. Oh, goodness. And that is not something that you need to worry about if you know, oh, God, I ate that butterfish tonight. All right? No. Okay, no. Got anything else? Nope. All right. Well, let's get out of here then. We cannot forget Dr. Scott and Tacey. She's a good. We're going to say hello to the Port Charlotte

Horror again. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Killy, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, That Gould Girl, Lewis Johnson, Paul Ophcharsky, Chowdy, 1008, She Who Owns, Pigs and Snakes, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Sister Chris, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, she that doth not have a Ph.D. Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinshmidt, Dale Dudley, Holly from the Gulf,

the great Rob Bartlett, Bernie and Sid, Martha from Arkansas's daughter, Ron Bennington and Fez Watley, whose support of this show has never gone on. Appreciate it. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel. SiriusXM Channel 103s.

Saturdays at 6 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at I don't know. On demand, and other times at Jim, of course, pleasure. 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 and other crap.

Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoke and get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Do you bring any of that stupid no spray by the way? No. Do you have any of it? Yeah. I got some in the top as I can get it. You do, but you don't have it on your website. No. Because I will tell you the port Charlotte whore. That was one of the reasons she reached out to me. Okay. That's saying that it's not on your website. Honey, my, my, my, um, web guy, Rick, I reached out to him last week. I hadn't heard nothing. I didn't even hit him again.

Okay. You, you ain't heard nothing. That's such a good grammar. Terrible grammar, but I have not heard anything from me. As of, you know what, that's a good idea. I'll do that in animation. Okay. All right. We'll see, everybody. Scott failed again.

Yes. Nosepring. Miserables. Thank you.