Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 445 - Hypnogogic Blues

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

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Did you hear about the ninja dog competing at Westminster? She won best in no show. If you just read the bio to Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM 103, 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.

Hey! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivir, stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my infectable wounds. I want to take my brain out. Plastic with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill.

All my ailments, the health equivalent is citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have. I want to Requiem for my disease. So I'm paging Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast.

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So check it out at Noom. dot, Dr.steve.com, and then check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. Well, you'll notice that Tacey's not here. Dr. Scott's not here. I'm once again doing the show by myself. That's fine. It's fine. Totally fine.

Now, what's going on is I'm, you know, things are calming down some, right? The viral cases are decreasing. Hospitalizations are decreasing. And everybody thinks that it's just over and everything is fine, particularly my staff. And so I have had to cover for how many people did we have out this week with COVID-19? Well, quite a few. So your old pal, Dr. Steve, has been slogging it away. You know, I thought when I took over this larger position that it would be easier for me.

But actually, yeah, responsibility kind of saw. stuff. And I knew that. But anyway, yeah, the work's got to be done. Patients have to be seen. And it doesn't matter if you're the big dog or not. Well, it particularly matters. If you are the big dog, you need to set a good example. So, yeah, I've been working my butt off. So once again, I am doing this show, drinking a little willets, just a little bit, just a tad. And we're going to answer all your medical questions today. So very little BS, very little shit of the bull variety today. So, um...

Can you please stop bullshitting and get to the questions? All right. Okay, I'm getting to it. Uh, there you go. Uh, check out Dr. Scott's website at simply herbals.net. And don't forget about, uh, Dr. Steve.com. All right. I do have one thing that I would like to talk to you about.

coronavirus virus makers are considering recommending booster shots because of these variants. So you hear about the variance, and basically what it is, is just through natural selection, the virus will, when it reproduces, there will be errors sometimes in the transcription of the viral RNA when it's making new copies of itself. Sometimes those errors will cause the virus not to form at all. Other times, it will cause the virus to be the same. It doesn't really make any difference. One amino acid here and there doesn't make any difference,

but every once in a while. One amino acid or one coating for an amino acid can change the virus's ability. to transmit itself. It doesn't really care if it kills you. It doesn't want to kill you. It doesn't want anything. It's just a stupid nanomachine. But what's advantageous for it is to get into more and more hosts.

And one way to do that is to not kill the host. Because if you kill the host, then all the viral particles that are still in the body are just stuck there. If that host is alive, it has the potential to cough it up or puke it up. or spit it up or, you know, defecate it, whatever, and more viral particles can get out and spread. So it's in its, the virus's advantage not to kill people, but it is really in its advantage to make it easier for someone to get it from another person. And that's what these mutations are. and the ones that we care about that are becoming successful are successful because in the environment that we're in right now, they are more readily able to reproduce, and that's probably because they're more transmissible.

Now, sometimes the vaccine we already have will protect against those because the antibody doesn't care about that particular area. Every once in a while, the thing can mutate enough to where the antibodies that you already have will not block it anymore, and therefore you can get infected. We see this with Norwalk virus. Norwalk virus is the virus that is famously known for causing shit cruises on cruise lines. It's very infective. I'm going to what the R sub-zero, and I know all of you know what that is, so I don't have to go in. to it. What is the R. Sub-Zero or the effective reproduction number of Norwalk virus? Because I'm going to predict that it's higher than COVID-19. Because on the Diamond Princess,

if they had had Norwalk virus, about half of the people would have been out, if not more. Whereas it turned out to be about 17% of people were infected with COVID-19. So the basic, here we go, basic reproduction number of norovirus varies widely. So from one to one to seven to two, so that'd be 3.5 to one. COVID-19 is 2.4 to 1. In other words, one person generally will infect 2.4 vulnerable people in an ideal population. And so the Norwalk virus would be 3.5, so it would be more. influenza 1.2.

That's why we're not seeing influenza this year. It's no conspiracy. It's not that we're not testing for it. We test for it and everybody. We're doing this sort of quadravalent lab test now that tests for influenza A, influenza B, coronavirus, this one, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, and respiratory syncytial virus. So we're testing for all of those and we're not seeing

very much influenza at all compared to what we normally do. And the infectious disease people who do nothing but see stupid viruses this time a year are confirming that to me. But anyway, so Norwalk virus,

you get it. Let's say you're unfortunate and you have one of those cruise ships where a lot of people have Norwalk virus and there's puking and diarrhea and all this stuff for days. It's not a 24-hour bug usually. And then you're fine and you get exposed to it again,

you're good, but then the thing mutates just enough to where your immunity doesn't protect you anymore and then you get the puke bug again. So that can happen. We see this with influenza. Influenza mutates these proteins on its surface that it can mutate enough

so that you have to get vaccinated every year. We're working on a universal vaccine for influenza. I would like to see, and, you know, by the way, if we truly have a universal vaccine that blocks infection, we can eradicate influenza. We've already seen that we can knock it down to, you know, a shadow of its former self through social distancing and mask wearing and washing our hands and not sticking our hands in our faces.

I think most of us, except for my partner who constantly has her pinky finger in her mouth. I don't know how she hasn't gotten COVID-19. But anyway, but most of us have learned to wash our hands before we eat, to at least use gel and not stick our fingers in our mouth and in our eyes and in our nose. And I think that has contributed as much, if not more, than mask wearing, to be honest with you. I mean, it's a really good habit, and we all kind of learned it because this coronavirus thing kind of freaked us out a little bit. Influenza, we've lived with that our whole lives, and a lot of people are like, well, that's the devil, I know. This is a brand new devil, and people took it a little more seriously.

But anyway, so, yeah, so if we get a universal influenza vaccine, let's get a universal Norwalk virus vaccine. Who doesn't want to eradicate puke bugs on cruise ships? I've had Norwalk virus. Our kids brought it home one time, and we were all sick for about a week. And Big Joe just came over one time, I think brought us food, which is exactly what you want when you have a puke bug. And she didn't even come in the house, and she got it. I mean, she was just standing in the doorway. So that's a miserable one.

I'd love to see it eradicated. And then, of course, all the coronaviruses, all of the Ebola slash Marburg-type viruses. And, you know, we've already killed smallpox. That's just the beginning. Stupid viruses. Well, anyway, these variant COVID, these COVID viral variants, they're real. Some of them may evade the vaccines. we've already had, or if you have been infected, it may invade that.

So they're just going to make variant-specific booster shots. It's just like how specific vaccines are tailored to fight influenza. They can craft a version of the vaccine to combat individual coronavirus variants. So, you know, suck it, COVID. We've got your number. And I'm reading from, what is this, npr.org. modernis is its new vaccine candidate based on the strain first identified in south africa is now ready for clinical testing look at how fast that happened this happened it's going to happen faster and faster because we're getting better and better at doing this uh paul stoffles the chief scientific officer at johnson and johnson said his company is preparing a special version of its vaccine to target the spike protein found in the b1 351 variant

seen in South Africa. Now, if you can do that, you know there's three or four variants out there. Why not just do a multivalent booster? You know, we do that with influenza where you treat for multiple strains of influenza. You know, the drug companies can blend two or three versions of the vaccines into a single shot. And so you would target the original SARS-COV-2, and then you'd have another one. or two targeting the variance. And now, Moderna is going to look at combining its original vaccine, which is now known as

MRNA 1273 with a newer version. It created to fight the B-1-351 coronavirus variant first identified, as we said, in South Africa. So there you go. So don't worry about it. It's going to be okay. We've got these viruses in our cross, well, in our sights, in the cross hairs, and they can kiss my ass. How about that? I hate them.

I don't hate very many things. I hate effing viruses. They just, they hijack yourselves to do their dirty work. And what is their dirty work? just to reproduce for no reason, to no end whatsoever, just blind reproduction. And as I said last week, we do some blind reproduction of our own. But the difference is that we grow out of this universe, we are part of this universe. Every cell in our body was in the center of a star at one time in millions of years, billions of years in the past.

And so, and well, that's true of viruses too, but hang with me for a second. We grow out of this universe and, you know, the earth is peopling. That's an Alan Watts term. If you ever want to listen to some pretty cool philosophy, Alan Watts, when he says these things, they just make so much sense. and you're like, oh, my God, why didn't I ever think of this before? And as soon as it's over, you go, what the hell did he say? But anyway, yeah, check him out at Alan. I think it's Alan Watts.org.

But myth of myself is a good one. It will blow your mind. Well, anyway, so, yeah, the Earth is peopling. It's just that's what it does is it makes people and other forms of life. But we can look up at the sky and regard the universe. Not only that, we can do quantum physics and we can learn about the, the making of the universe and how quantum fields work and how, you know, when you look at a tree, you break it down into cells and xylem and flow them, and then atoms and then

quarks and electrons, and then you put it all together and you call it tree. We can do that. Viruses can't do that. And viruses are stupid and they're assholes. So enough with them. I would like for us to declare war on all viruses. It's very good. All right, okay, enough of, enough.

You have me here. Okay, I know. All right, all right, all right. The boss, man. What's a boss, man. Okay, so this is what I'm going to do this week is we're going to do some blind voicemails. Because I've been so busy, I have not been able to download your voicemails and listen to them and think about them before I do anything about them. So I just thought we would listen to some of these.

and just answer them on the fly. Okay, here we go. Here's number one. Anna Marie Mule. I'm experiencing white fingernails. It looks like a chalk. White chalk was put under the fingernail. Okay.

That you just came from the beauty pallor. And I have also on my arm and legs sporadic. uh, tags. It's a white hard jutting out of the skin on the arm. It's like a cone shape white hard material. Yes. Several places. I, I, and even my toenails are white underneath the nail itself. You know. Okay. So I think there's three things going on. The cone like hard things on the skin, that's probably the easiest thing that I can talk about. Those sound like carotonic horns. And a carotic horn, if they're large, and there's just a few of them, are usually associated

with sun damage, and they can be associated with a thing called an actinic carotosis. and an actinic carotosis can be a precursor for a type of skin cancer, so get those checked. Now, there are other sort of benign keratoses where you have carotosis of the, and keratosis, the keratin is sort of the plasticy substance that helps create skin and makes it nice and impervious. damage. And there is a, if you feel like sandpaper, there's so many of those little horns sticking up and they're tiny like little pyramids. That could be carotosis polaris, which is also known as follicular carotosis. Now, that's common. It's genetic. The skin hair follicles have these itchy, small goose flesh-like bumps, and some of them are red or inflamed, and sometimes they'll just be hard and feel like sandpaper.

So that could be it. Now, let's go to, so get those looked at. The dark or the white lines running across the nails. Usually white spots or streaks are normal. They're nothing to worry about. I'm looking at a couple right now. Sometimes they're associated with trauma. Now, if you have parallel white lines that go all the way across the nails,

those can be a sign of low levels of protein in the blood. And they're not grooved. They're usually smooth. And you could have, you know, not being not getting enough protein in your diet. The nails are pretty interesting because, you know, they're kind of clear. And what you're looking at is nail bed. A nail bed has blood vessels embedded in capillaries. embedded in it so you can kind of see some things when you look at someone's nails that you

wouldn't be able to see otherwise. Every once in a while, you'll get someone that has a dark streak that runs from the cuticle to the end, and it looks like maybe they spilled ink in there, kind of, and it's just sort of spread. And we are concerned about that because every once in a while, that will be a sign. that the person has a melanoma in the nail bed, and the melanin from the melanoma is actually staining the nail itself, and as it grows out, it makes that streak.

So if you have that, get that checked. The other thing, if she sat under her toenails, it's white and sounded like it was thick. That's almost always a fungus. The toenails particularly are the most rural part of the cosmic, And, you know, with the heart and brain being sort of New York and London, and the toes being, I don't know, lizard lick in North Carolina, very rural area. And so because they don't, they're so rural, they don't get good blood supply, they don't

get good services, right? And the police department would be the white blood cells, and they're pretty much eaten donuts in that part of the body because there's not a lot of crime there. And so a fungus can sort of set up shop, and then it's too late. It kind of overwhelms the immune system, and it can just grow. Nail infections are interesting because you can buy this stuff. It's a medication called Jubilee, I think. And you put it on for 48 weeks, and then your nail beds will clear up as long as they're not already thickened and distrophic, you know, all out of shape and weird looking. You can use Vicks Vaporub, too.

There was a study where they used VIX vapor rub, and this was a PubMed study. And at least it got published somewhere, and they had similar efficacy. if they used it for 48 weeks. Of course, you would stink like Vixfapo rub for 48 weeks, but it works. So it may not be the medication so much is just putting something on your toenails for 48 weeks. Tea tree oil. I've seen people use that.

And the magic number there is about 48 weeks. It takes about a year. And I found that it takes about a year for those nails to actually grow all the way from the cuticle to the end. So that probably has something to do. with it. I remember once I smashed my thumb I was trying to

do something with a Christmas tree. I don't remember. And I wasn't holding the axe just right. It was in a weird angle. And I smashed my thumb between the axe handle and the stump of the tree. Don't ask me how I did it. It was bizarre. The tree was on its side at that point.

So now you kind of get a little bit better idea. And I really missed and it just smashed my nail. And it took almost exactly. It was the Christmas a year later when I finally clipped off the last bit of that damaged nail. That's how long it took to grow out. So anyway, yeah, nails are interesting.

If most of the nail is turned white and it's not because it's become detached from the nail bed because of a nail infection or something like that, It could be decreased blood supply to the nail bed, which we would call Terry's nails. And sometimes they'll be white, and then they'll have a dark tip. And that's a sign of a bunch of different things like diabetes, anemia, chemotherapy, thyroid disease, stuff like that. So if you have weird nails, weird grooves, weird colors, streaks under the nail,

anything like that, just get them checked, okay? All right, good deal. All right. That one went okay. Let's see. Let's try another one. Hey, Dr. Steve. Why is it in my 40s?

My time to recover after dropping a load in my wife is so much longer than it used to be in my 20s. No kidding. Do I have to get checked for low testosterone? on, I don't have a problem getting a ride. It's just if my wife and I have been fucking a couple days in a row, there is no way I'm going to get my nut off on that third

day. Yeah. Understood. What's going on? Well, you know, on that third day, you could be giving her some extra attention. You know, since you're not going to complete the transaction, you can go as long as

she needs you to, as long as you can stay erect. There is refractory time for erection, but there's also a refractory time for ejaculation. One of the things that has to happen for you to be able to ejaculate again is that there needs to be fluid in the seminal vesicles and the prostate needs to be able to sort of inject some fluid as well so that you can literally ejaculate. And if you can't, the body just kind of goes, oh, what's the point? So then it doesn't happen. I really feel like when you're young, that fluid replenishes so quickly. And when those vessels are just bursting, that's when you get your best orgasms because you get that great sort of emptying out feeling.

And the older you get, the longer it takes for those things to fill back up. That's really kind of all it is. Now, there's this thing. I alluded to it already called the refractory period. It's the span of time after having an orgasm during which a person is not sexually responsive. So you are sexually responsive. You're just not able to complete the transaction. And it's just don't worry about it.

Dude, if you're getting it three days in a row at your age, you're doing pretty damn good. Now, can you reduce your refractory period? I don't know. Drinking more fluids, you could try that. Because the more fluid you have in your system, the quicker you can replenish the fluid in your seminal vesicles. And I'm just looking here to see if anybody is saying anything about shortening that refractory period. No, nothing at all.

It does say, though, oh, reducing the refractory period. Let's look at this. This is from medical news today. A person who wants to improve their overall well-being and sexual function can try these things. Cardiovascular exercises, such as walking, running, or aerobics. That makes sense. It boosts your testosterone. It just makes you feel better in general.

The more active you are, the more interested in intercourse your lizard brain will be because it means that you're healthier. Maintaining a healthy body weight for sure, not having sleep apnea, that kind of stuff. Eating a nutrient-dense diet, well, this is all just do this anyway. Treating underlying health conditions such as diabetes will no shit. Okay, some people try pelvic floor exercises

to try and shorten the refractory period. People refer to these exercises as cagels or pelvic floor muscle training. So Google, pelvic floor muscle training. Basically, you're just squeezing your taint and you're holding it for 10 seconds, which just sounds easy, but it's not as easy as you think it as I'm trying to do it right now. Oh, goodness. And it's harder than you think.

And, you know, those muscles are the muscles that you use when you are trying to hold in your urine. So do multiple reps a day. Try to do longer and longer. Do five seconds on five seconds. off, five seconds on, five seconds off, and then work your way up to ten seconds on and three seconds off. And let me know if you do that, if you can see any difference, but you're going to have to do that for weeks, and you've got to do it a lot. And also, erectile dysfunction medication, like Cialis or sildenophil, which is the active ingredient in Viagra, those can

decrease the refractory period and can make your ejaculations more pleasurable as well. Now, here we go. A 2003 placebo-controlled trial, there you go. Give yourself a bill. Those are the best kind of trials for this kind of thing when you're trying to determine whether a medication has an actual effect or not, found that 40% of males reported a significant reduction in the refractory period when they used sildenophil, which is Viagra. 13.3% of the placebo users experienced a similar reduction.

So you see this also illustrates the placebo effect is a very powerful effect. It's so powerful we have to subtract it out of every study that we do. So, you know, the actual effect is going to be 40 minus 13.3, not just 40%. But very interesting. Well, there you go. There's other studies that have shown just the opposite that it didn't improve anything. So it's just when I see that means it probably doesn't have a huge effect, but you could certainly try it and going to hurt anything.

All right. So you lucky bastard. All right. Where are we? Here we go. Okay. Hi, Dr. Steve. It's Tim in New Hampshire.

Hey, Tim. I got a question for you. I've heard you in the past talk about you. using UV light to see various skin funguses and whatnot. Yes. So I was messing around the other day. I decided to shine them on my toes. And in between my toes is glowing great, like salmon pink, like you said.

Uh-huh. And my tone is it kind of glowing green. So is this something that over-the-counter stuff can clear up, or will I need to go see a specialist? Okay. So green under a black light can be a bacterium called pseudomonas. And Salmon Pink is a bacterium called a corine bacterium that causes a skin inflammation called erythrasma. And erythrasma multiple times in the history of mankind has been mistaken for jock itch and treated with antifungals to no effect. So if you have jock itch or something that someone diagnosed as a fungal infection and you've used.

all the antifungals and it hasn't gotten better and you have access to a black light, shine it on there. If it's a beautiful salmon pink, like this guy said, it is erythrasma. An erythrasma that has to be treated with a bacteria, you know, antibacterial, not an antifungal. So very good. Well, he's listening. How about that? I don't think I've mentioned erythrasma a long time.

So that is a long time listening. Give yourself a bill. Give one of those. I'm able to normally fool myself into thinking that no one's actually listening, which is a good thing for me, because if I actually thought people were listening, if I thought about it, I would freeze up even worse than I am normally. Okay, here we go. Hey, Dr. Steve.

It's Paul from New York. Amen. My wife said I sounded like an idiot dance for the first time I called. Oh, okay. Well, we'll have to play that one too. I see it. It's next in the queue. Well, let's see.

This one, he won't sound like an idiot. So I should sound pretty good. So I'm going to re-ask my question. Okay. Hey, Dr. Steve. It's Paul from New York. Hey, man. I was just watching the news tonight, and they said that the COVID vaccine is the best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Okay. However, right before they were talking about that, they had a story. that said that even when you get the vaccine, you can still get the virus and you can still transmit the virus. Sure, sure, right. So which one is it? Are you safe or can you still transmit it? Is it safe?

And if you can still get it and you can still transmit it, what's really the point of getting the vaccine? Yeah, excellent. Been giving a lot of these today. Excellent question. So, yeah, it's tough when you're getting contradictory, what seem like contradictory bits of information, don't wear a mask, wear a mask. There's context to these things. The don't wear a mask, wear a mask thing, in the beginning, when there was 100 cases in Washington State, it was stupid for someone in Tennessee to wear a mask because there weren't any cases.

Now that there's 500,000 people dead, millions and millions of cases that make sense to wear a mask, even if you're only decreasing transmission by 10%. Because, as we've discussed, if you have an effective reproductive number, a real-life reproductive number of 1.1, or let's say 1.05, in other words, one person infects 1.05 people, and then decreasing transmission by 10%. percent by use of a mask actually has a large effect because it will drop that reproductive number below one, and as soon as you get it below one, you start to see declining cases. Number two, what was number, oh, okay, so the vaccine will prevent infection in some folks. I have a hypothesis that because the Johnson Johnson vaccine, I think they said they're 67% or something like that. I don't remember the exact number, but it's less than Pfizer. But the prevention of death is like 100%, just like Pfizer.

So I think the Pfizer vaccine probably has more asymptomatic cases, but they still have cases. I will tell you this, Pfizer had no way to know if when I was in their study, and I still am. I'm in post-marketing surveillance now. But there was no way for them to know whether I had an asymptomatic infection because they weren't testing for that. They were just testing for symptoms. So if you lost your sense of smell, you got a GI bug, fever, cough, those kinds of things. You would notify them through this app and then they would have you do a nasal viral RNA, you know, PCR test.

And otherwise, if you had an asymptomatic infection, how would they ever know? They weren't testing for it. So that's a possibility that people are still getting infected. I could have been infected after getting the virus, had somebody coughed right in my face. I felt the wind on my face because they, at the same time, they pulled, you know, I don't want to go into too many details, but they pulled my visor off as well. maybe they were agitated, who knows. But I coughed right in my face, and maybe I got an asymptomatic infection at that point.

It's impossible to tell. So, yes, people may be still getting infected, but they're asymptomatic, so they're less likely to transmit. It doesn't mean that the transmission is zero. So you have a population of people who are not vaccinated, and maybe 15% of those that get that are asymptomatic, or even 50%, but the other half are very symptomatic, coughing, snodding, ending up in the hospital, infecting people right and left. Then you have another group of people who have been vaccinated, and maybe they're getting the virus.

We don't know it at what rate it would be, but it's going to most likely be less than the general population that's vulnerable to the virus. And when they do get infected, because they're asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic, they're not going to transmit it to as many people. So, yes, it still makes sense. And both of those statements can be true that the vaccine is effective and some people can get infected after the vaccine and even transmit to other people. It doesn't make the vaccine not worth anything. It's just like this mask thing.

I hear people say, well, masks don't work. No, they don't work all the time. Matter of fact, it might not even work most of the time. We don't need them to. We just need them to work some of the time. That doesn't make them worthless because they don't work 100% of the time. What do you know that does work 100% of the time? I mean, we'll do influenza vaccine some years when it only prevents infections 6% of the time.

It still prevents death and hospitalization to a much greater extent. But nothing's perfect. Suiten belts aren't perfect. So, all right. Excellent question, my friend. Let's see. Oh, let's play the one where he sounded like an idiot, where his wife said he sounded like an idiot. Let's see if he really did.

He's got a great boy, by the way. Hey, Dr. Steve. It's Paul from New York. I got a question regarding the COVID vaccine. Okay. I keep seeing reports that the COVID vaccine isn't going to prevent you from getting the virus or prevent you from still being contagious. and yet reporters are saying the vaccine is the best way to prevent the spread of the virus. Is it just hypocrisy or is there actually nothing going on here? Yeah, okay.

It didn't sound like an idiot. I think that your use of the word hypocrisy may be an issue. You know, maybe she's an English teacher or a fan of the English language. The word hypocrisy means the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform, aka pretense. I'm not sure that the example that you gave rose to that definition. So that would be the only thing I could see. Otherwise, you sounded great. All right.

Let's see here Hey Dr. Steve, I'm just listening to the latest podcast about the hypogotic events Yes I have them it seems like all the time Okay so let's just get everybody on the same page because not everybody listened last week hypnagogic episodes are those that occur while your sleep is being induced So you're sitting there and you're dozing and then all of a sudden you jerk away For me, it's always someone kicks a soccer ball in my face. Dr. Scott has them as well, but for him, it's always a baseball being hit from a bat into his face.

And it's interesting because I played soccer, aka football for our British friends, and Dr. Scott played baseball. That's weird. That was 40 years ago. But I still, when I have a hypnagogic episode, starting to sleep, just, oh, this is going to be great. Oh, God, I woke, you know, what the hell was that? Just jerk all over. It's always a soccer ball.

Anyway, all right. Consistently, where I feel like I'm falling, yeah, sometimes, and I will actually feel like I bounce in the bed. It's crazy. Weird stuff. Don't pretty cool to finally hear with sort of the disconnect reason. is, but thanks for the info. Okay, well, thank you. Nobody ever calls and says, thank you.

Let me see if there's anything for people that have a ton of those. Let me see here. If there is anything, anything to be worried about. Oh, here's something. The Tetris effect. People who have spent a long time at some repetitive activity before sleep. Uh-oh, raid shadow legends could fit into that. In particular, one that is new to them may find it dominates their imagery as they grow drowsy,

a tendency dubbed the Tetris effect. This effect has even been observed in amnesiacs, who otherwise have no memory of the original activity. When the activity involves moving objects as in the video game Tetris, the corresponding hypnagogic images tend to be perceived as moving. Isn't that interesting? Now, I'm going to tell you this one, I was just going to say this, and here it is. It says those people who have spent the day skiing continue to feel snow under their feet.

I've had that. I was a skier, particularly in high school, and then I continued through medical school. I think the last time I went skiing. Oh, gosh, I don't remember when it was. And so if I went now, I would definitely be at risk of having a sunny bono-type outcome. So I just haven't been. And I feel like I failed my kids, too, because I didn't teach them how to ski, although I taught them other things.

But, you know, I really was a good teacher and I was a good skier. But anyway, I would ski, and then that night I'd be watching television. And when someone would, like, I would watch Manix because that's how old I am. And when they would turn a corner in a car, my feet would turn like I was skiing. And then I would have these hypnagogic episodes as well where I felt like I could still feel the slope under my boots. Kind of interesting. You know, everything that we have is just perception anyway. You know, that red shirt that you can see in your closet isn't red.

It just reflects a low, you know, a longer wavelength that then. then hits the eye, stimulates certain photosensitive chemicals that then send a signal to the brain saying, hey, these signals are coming in at this wavelength, and we interpret that as red. Now, is my red the same as yours? I don't know. I mean, we'll both look at red and say red, but what you look at may be purple. I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, if I could get inside your head and see how you see things, but, you know, it's all perception, my friend, all perception. And it's not true. People say, well, atoms are mostly empty space. That's if you look at an atom as being a nucleus with an electron in orbit around it, then yes, compared to the size of the orbit, the electron is. extremely small. But that's not really what's going on. There is a cloud. Electrons are basically waves. They are fluctuations of a quantum field, and they act like standing waves inside the confines of the atoms. So the atoms are actually pretty full. And what keeps you, your finger from passing through the table, as I try to do this, is a thing called the Poly Exclusion Principle,

which just basically says that electrons, well, particles of a certain kind cannot be in the same configuration as other ones in the same space. That's basically what it is. And that's what the poly exclusion principle is what keeps you from being able to just phase through walls like vision on Wanda vision. So anyway, all right, very good. Hypnagogic effects. So I don't see anything real pathological about them. Now, listen, if you can't sleep because. of them because all night long you're just constantly waking up because of these hypnagogic

episodes you need a sleep study that's the answer go to your primary care say i need a damn sleep study and they'll say why and you tell them i can't sleep all night because of these damn jerking episodes and then they'll get you on all right okay let's see i kind of enjoy doing these cold ones oh i see one from stacey deloche though let's see what he's got to say And someone's going to stump me here directly. It might be Stacey. Hi, Dr. Steve. Hope you're well. Hello, my.

Hi, KK4WZI. It's a COVID question. Okay. If a mother, if a female, got vaccinated, would her child be born already vaccinated or immune from catching COVID? Is there any data about that yet? Thank you. Bye, K-T. It's a damn good question.

COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant moms may protect newborns. So let's give him one of these. Give yourself a bill. Case study. This is from the scientist. Decent online pseudo-journal. COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant moms may protect newborns. A case study finds SARS, COV-2 antibodies in placental cord blood after maternal vaccination.

So what they've done is they vaccinate these people. And instead of drawn blood from the baby, they're just drawing it from the umbilical cord as it's delivered. Now, the umbilical cord is blood that the, that's being, you know, sent to the baby. You know, the placenta is this organ that dies when the person is born. And there, you know, there are cells that say, okay, I'm going to be placental cells. I'm not going to make it through this thing. I'm going to live for nine months and then I'm going to die. It's sort of like not dissimilar to the crawley face hugger in alien.

You know, it attaches to the person's face and then injects the living alien down into the person's throat. And then it stays there long enough to make sure that the thing is viable. And then it drops off and dies. So the placenta is kind of like that. There are cells in the dividing ovum when the egg is fertilized, it starts to divide, that say, we're going to be placental cells and we're just going to support this thing so that it can live. And so this giant, you know, this organ, it's big. It's like the size of, I don't know, let me say, a 14-ounce porterhouse steak.

and there's exchange of blood in there, although the child's blood is the child's blood. If that were not the case, if they were just exchanging blood, then there would be problems because if you had an RH positive mother and an RH negative, no, I'm sorry, an RH negative mother and an RH positive child, the mother would develop antibodies to the child and kill it. It doesn't do that when it, but we've all heard about those episodes. The reason that that happens is when the baby is born and there is exchange of blood and then the mother develops antibodies that then can kill her next children if they don't administer this blocking antibody called Rogam at birth. That is, by the way, why Anne Boleyn lost her head was because she was RH negative and Henry VIII was RH. positive. They had their first child, Elizabeth, who became Elizabeth the first, and then every

child she had after that died prior to delivery. And it's, the reason for that was RH incompatibility, because back then they didn't know. So the first kid's always okay. Then every subsequent kid after that is, is, is in trouble. And it's because they can exchange antibodies. What they can't exchange are, you know, our blood cells. So if you find antibodies in the cord blood, that means the kid had antibodies in their bloodstream because that blood is the kid's circulation. So that's pretty cool. These guys say it validates what we've always suspected.

Mothers can be vaccinated during pregnancy and can provide some of the level of immunity to their unborn child. interesting well good one Stacey I didn't know the answer to that so now I do okedoke

let's see here okay here we go hey Dr. Steve I was wondering if you can go over the valiant points of the UK Human Challenge study I read about today firstly being

Dude, we are totally running out of time. The challenge study is what I've been advocating for ages is you give people the vaccine, then you give them the virus after a period of time and see if they get sick. You can speed along viral vaccine development by doing challenge trials rather than just waiting for people to get infected in the community. Why they waited so long? I honestly don't know the answer. I advocated this from the beginning and would have volunteered for a challenge trial just to advance the science.

You know, I would take that hit for you guys. And they'd have to pay me, of course. You know, we get paid for the vaccine trial, but for a challenge trial, now they're going to have to come up with some cash for that. And, you know, I'm not that noble. But this is, you know, this we, it would have shortened the time to bring this vaccine to market by, oh gosh, half, maybe even faster than that. Might have been taking a 30-as-long. The problem is now we know it's safe. So it's a reasonable bet at the time they didn't.

So that's why they wanted to make sure there were no impediments to bring. this thing to market. And Pfizer was pretty smart. They said, look, we're going to test this thing at a temperature that we know this thing will be stable so that we can get it to market so that there's no roadblocks. And then once it's on the market, then we can do the follow-up studies and show, well, you know what, we really can just keep this at regular freezer temperature. And then, of course, all those people that bought those super cold freezers are SOL, but

You know, that's just part of it, I guess. All right, very good. Well, we'll see you next week. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teff, that Gould Girl, Louis Johnson, Paul Ophcharsky, Chowdy, 1008, Eric Nagle, the Port Charlotte Hoare, Roland Campos, or Campos, a sister of Chris, Sam Roberts,

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