Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 452 - She Who Owns Pigs and Snakes

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

Dr Steve and Dr Scott Discuss Pfizer hoping to have oral medication to treat covid at home by the end of the year Lack of exercise increases risk for patients infected with covid The increase in young people getting covid and less older people not getting covid, What is pain and how does if affect us? Can you die from pain? Dreams that used to be wild and now with Cpap...nothing Is taking the vaccine 2 days earlier than scheduled a problem Don and Judy Moore Taping your mouth shut at night Is Shingles contagious? 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!) grammarly.com/WEIRD (if you write, you need this) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Can you please stop bullshitting and get to the question? I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivir from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbell, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain out Blast with the wave An ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave

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And check it out at Noom. N-O-M dot Dr.steve.com. All right. So it's 347 Pooh Head. Pooh. If you want to give us a call. Yes, that is a number picked out. by a grown man in the medical profession.

Don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net. Okay. So we've got some stuff in the news. I keep saying we're going to do a COVID-free show, and it's really still hard to do. It's tough to do. Because all of our questions today, with one exception, we're COVID-related. No, maybe two.

Two. Okay, that's something. Yeah. It's a place to start. Yeah. I miss all the penis and poop questions. Yeah, me too. So certainly, you have, well, we have one penis question, but the guy texted it to me instead of calling it in, so I told him to call it in.

It was about erectile dysfunction. There you. That works. And COVID-19 vaccine. And there's a lot of erectile dysfunction going on because of COVID-19. but it's not because of the virus. It's because of the lockdowns and just everything that has been done to us

in this so-called spirit of doing something for us. And it has affected people's psyche. Yes. And when you are not in a position to procreate, this is I'm going back to my evolutionary theory. So when you're a caved person and you're not in a position to procreate or raise that kid or there's a saber-toothed tiger coming after you

and you get the adrenaline going or, you know, if you're ill, it's a lot less likely that you're going to have a roaring libido at that point. Yes, other things take precedence. Yeah, yeah, and fight or flight particularly. Yep. So if you're anxious and you weren't before, you're depressed and you weren't before,

there's some significant potential for you to lose your libido, and hopefully that'll come roaring back as the roaring 20s kick in here in the next year or so. Did you see they were talking about the potential for there to be an explosion in STDs because of a lot of the younger, well, I shouldn't say younger folks. Let's just say a lot of the folks that have been, as you said, kind of locked down once they get out and start mingling around. They think there's going to be a bunch of roaring stuff going on. This had to kill, like, swinger parties and stuff like that, too.

One would assume, yes. Yes. So, anyway, can you move your microphone up so that you're actually talking into it? Why is it like that? It just fell over? I fell over. Okay. It's a better.

Yeah, it's perfect. Perfect. All right. I'll work on that after the shell. It's got a screw loose, I think. Yeah. As do we all, my friend, as do we all. That's the truth.

So you had a story for today. Don't try to fix it now. I'll just fucking. before it starts spilling over to the side. No, you know, some good news. Some good news on the front. It looks like Pfizer is saying that they're going to have a new antiviral medication to treat COVID specifically, hopefully by the end of the year.

I've heard this shit before with Favapiravir. That was my biggest failed prediction in this is that it would have been out last June. Or at least we would have had enough data to go in front of the FDA last June. And then there's Molnupiravir, which was looking pretty promising as well. But it's going to be quite a while before it works its way through all the phases. The nice thing about FABA-Piravir was it's already done safety trials because it's out in Japan for influenza. Okay. So it's already went through phases one, two, and three for that.

All they've got to do is show that it's effective for COVID-19, and that's not something weird about it. that makes it more dangerous. Okay, so the first three phases showed safety and efficacy and... Well, in influenza, so it's already hit the market. They're in phase four for influenza in Japan for Favapiromere. So if it had been effective in humans for COVID-19, then it would have been a pretty good chance that they could have fast-track that. Now they're looking at Molnupiravir, which is a similar drug.

Okay. And now this Pfizer drug, so what's the deal with that? Well, they did not name it exactly, but they're saying it's probably, you know, B396-A. Yes, I'm sure it's something like that for now. But it's the class of medications they call protease inhibitors, so it binds to these viral enzymes. And it works. It's similar to the medications they would use for HIV or for hepatitis. Yeah, which have been both of those insanely effective.

Family effective. And life-saving and not just changing. saving in many, many. Yeah, for so many people, being HIV positive is now it's a chronic, it's just a chronic thing. If you can keep taking your medication, your viral load in many cases goes to zero, and they have normal lifespan, which back when I was training, I was training when HIV first started rearing its ugly head.

And at first, they didn't even know what was causing it. Right. Was it an immune reaction to certain, you know, body fluids? Was it a bacteria? Was it some weird offshoot of syphilis? I mean, nobody knew. And then they found the virus because I remember I was in an, I was working in an immunology lab with my friend Bob Esh. who is now a professor somewhere of immunology.

And this other postdoc came in. We were talking about HIV or we were talking about AIDS at the time. And he was like, oh, you medical people are so stupid. There's no way a virus could cause this. He was just laughing at us. It's like, okay, dude. And then, of course, it wasn't three months later. They discovered human immunodeficiency virus.

At the time, it was H-TLV, human T.L. C-cell lymphocyte virus or something, H-T-LV, and then they change it to HIV. But anyway, these proteases have been outstanding. And same for hepatitis C, where people now are getting full cures of hepatitis C. Yeah, this is wonderful. Amazing. It is incredible. Yeah, and going back to the HIV thing, is one of those things in your life where you remember where you are when you hear something.

You know, I remember where I was the day that I heard, you know, Madgey Johnson had tested positive for HIV-A. And I was like, golly, how does that happen? You know, just not old enough to really understand what was going on, but thinking, well, he's dead. Yeah. You know, he's got to be dead. Well, it was. That's the way it was back then. And he was one of the first that got on these anti-retroviral cocktails.

So. And still looks great. Yeah. Looks great. Yeah. So, protease is, so anytime you see the suffix ASEAs, like lactase, that's going to be an enzyme. Okay. So protease inhibitors, like you said, prevent viral replication by binding to these viral protease, these enzymes.

And what these enzymes do is when the virus is creating these proteins. proteins to recreate itself, some of the times they'll be strung together. And what the virus has to do is throw its enzymes at it. Of course, it's not thinking. I'm putting this very teleologically, but it has to throw these enzymes at these proteins to cleave them right at the right place. And when you do that, then it's making its building blocks for its viral code or the spike protein or whatever.

And when you block that, it just gets gumbed up. It just can't make itself. And there are lots of them on the market right now. There's antiretroviral HIV-1 proteases, and they'll always have N-A-V-I-R-A-R-E-N-Avier. So there's Amprinavir, Atazanavir, Darunavir, etc, et cetera, et cetera. And lopinavir, which we've heard of,

and retanavir, we were talking about those in relation to COVID-19 at one point. All right. Call you back. And then there are hepatitis C proteases that end in P-R-E-V-I-R-Previer. So you've got Boseprovir, Grazopravear, et cetera, et cetera.

So I'm assuming that this one will have the same... Ace on the end, or veer on the end. Well, some other suffix, some other stem that ends in VIR, but it'll have a different, you know, a syllable in front of it, or morphine or whatever the F it is. Well, consider it's made by FISA, it will be probably a P.F. Well, what is the... It could be.

Favir. So anyway, these things are very specific, but that also means that because they're so specific that the virus only has to make a couple of changes and mutate a couple of ways to end up with a drug-resistant virus. Then you've got to start all over again and find another way to block that protease. Anyway, so that's why in HIV they will use a cocktail. Okay. So you're using a couple of different drugs to prevent one clone of getting out that can teach all its descendants how to be resistant. Okay. That's great.

There you go. Anyway, all right. Cool, man. What else you got? Oh, nothing. That's it? That's some show prep there. No, the only other thing I saw that was kind of intriguing was that they have shown some research.

indicating that physical inactivity is tied to higher COVID risk. Well, I'm doomed. Which, you know, it goes back to, you know, you've been saying for 15 years, get off your ass and get some exercise and... Yeah, I don't do as I say, not as I do. Anyway, well, let's look at India for a second. There's a lot going on there. Those poor guys are getting hammered.

Well, they're home to the world's worst ongoing coronavirus outbreak, and they've reported more than 17 million cases since the pandemic began. But people are worried that because of an infrastructure situation and testing in India that their number could be 30 times higher than that. And so it would be like half a billion people, but they don't know. So their daily death toll is projected to continue climbing until mid-May, and they're peaking out at about 13,000 a day.

That's what they think it could hit. But here's the thing. So I went to our friend Stout Labs at Daniel Stout at COVIDstoutlabs.com. And if you go for world data and put, say, the United States, India, Mexico, and Brazil in there, and then you go to new cases, you can see Mexico is very low. low at 3.5,9,000 cases. We're at about 50,000 Brazil at 72,000. Then India is at 360,000 new cases.

Goodness. But when you look at deaths per population, so deaths per 100,000 people, India is down around 14. and the United States at 173, Mexico, 167, Brazil is higher at 185. And then you can look at all the other countries too. So is that a reporting thing or is it that, yeah, they got a lot of cases, but a lot of people aren't dying from it. So I don't know.

We'll know by June what the real story is because it's hard to analyze this data as it's happening because you don't know which way the curve's going to go. But it's rough, and they're vaccinating the crap out of people right and left there, too. Yeah, I think they're down to 45 and up. Right now trying to get as many as they can. Well, they're in the United States. We're at 16 and up. Yep, yeah.

And let me look at our new cases, new cases for, and by the way, I was on Who Are These Podcasts this weekend. and one of the reasons I went on there was because they were talking about people doing research on the air during their show and how awful it is. It's like, well, crap, we do that. We do that all the time. Well, we're different.

I thought it was. We're special. Somewhat interesting. But if you look at the trend line for the United States, it's still going down. Okay. And, yeah, I mean, it's for new cases. They're up and down, up and down because of reporting,

but the overall trend line is pointing in a downward direction. We are seeing very few 65-year-olds at this point, 65-plus, showing up in the emergency room or being admitted because they have almost universally adopted the vaccine. What we're seeing are younger people, and people are like, well, why are you seeing so many younger people? Well, because people are relaxing. and more young people are getting it,

and therefore, if you look at the percentage, it's still going to be very low that young people are going to end up in the hospital. But there are some. And if you have way more people coming down with the virus, then you will see more people ending up in the emergency room and in the hospital. Yep.

The numbers go up together, you know. Yeah, they do. I mean, because it's a percentage. So if the absolute number goes up and the percentage stays the same, then the absolute number of hospitalizations will also go up. So that's my hypothesis anyway. And that's what this person's question is about.

I think I just stole their thumb. Let's just see. Here they are. Hey, Dr. Steve. It is John in Washington State. Hey, John. And hope you and Dr. Scott and the lovely Tacey are doing well. I know you mentioned that you thought that the COVID questions would keep going down, but here's one more for you.

Okay, no problem. Right now, the statistics say that, you know, roughly 25 or 30 percent of the population has gotten one shot, roughly 40 percent of the population has gotten, roughly, or no, I think 40 percent of the population has gotten one shot, 25 to 30 percent has gotten, oh, fuck me. I think that there's a number that. that has both shots, and there's a number that has one shot. Right. One shot is less than two shots. So what I don't understand is why case counts keep rising seemingly dramatically, and they're talking about a fourth wave. I talked to one of my doctors the other day, and he said that in the ICU, the numbers of people that are coming in are people, you know, younger age.

So, you know, they're roughly seeing nobody age 65. or older now, they're just seeing younger population. Instant corroboration. What I don't understand is why that's causing such a dramatic rise. Okay, well, so let's look. I've got here 30, well, this can't be right. Well, maybe it is right for the full population. 33.7% have had at least one dose and 20,000.

23.3 have had, oh, this is Tennessee. Wait a minute. Oh, for God's sake. Okay, there we go. So at least one dose, 141 million people in the United States. That's 43% and fully vaccinated 30%. Now, if you break that down by age, that changes things quite a bit. Because in this population, I think we've got 75, 80% of people over 65 have been vaccinated. And the reason that you are seeing more and more cases, of course, people are relaxing because they figure, well, hell, we got a vaccine, we're getting pretty good at this. The numbers are dropping. Let's just go out and do stuff.

And I'm not opposed to that if the people who are truly vulnerable are vaccinated. But it just shows that when the numbers get, big enough, let's say that the number of people who get sick in the younger population to the point where they need to be in the hospital is like 0.1%. Let's say even 0.01%. And 1% would be 1 in 100,000, so 1 in 10,000. But now if you go from having 30 million people to having, 150 million people

you know divide that by 10,000 you're going to have a whole shit load more cases of people who actually get sick from it. So the risk to the individual is very low. The risk to society increases with the number of

overall cases. All right. Florida looks like it's doing pretty good. They've had 14.7 million doses given and of those 6 million are fully vaccinated

and the percentage of population fully vaccinated in Florida is 27 New York 32 California 29 so they're all right in there together all right all right okay let me try this again

a better question Stacey Deloche everybody How does pain work? If I stab myself with a finger with a staple by mistake versus grabbing a hot, steal it off the stove, how is pain transmitted to my brain? Yeah. And then, can you, can pain be so bad that it kills you?

Mm-hmm. You know, your people say, you know, they don't know, they died from their pain. Well, there you go. Okay. So ask William Warren. Wallace, if you could die from pain because he was pretty much wide awake while they were drawing him and quartering him. And he didn't die until the horses pulled him into pieces.

So when you're drawn and quartered, and this was a, this was a thing. But he was probably pretty close to that all the first. Well, back in the day, this is what they do. They'd hang you a little bit, just a little bit. Just to get your attention, right? Yeah, well, yeah, to knock you out just a little bit. And then they'd pull you down off of the hanging and tie you down. down and then they would open up your abdomen with a knife.

I mean, this is in medieval time, so it wasn't sterile and it wasn't that sharp. And then they would take your entrails out, aka your small intestine and your large intestine, they would flop it out. They would disembowl you. That hurts already. And then they would burn it. They would take a hot poker and burn the intestines. And then if that wasn't enough, then they'd take horses and hook them up to your arms and legs

and just tell them, you know, giddy up in all different directions, yeah. So that's got to be the worst possible pain. And they didn't die from that. They died from the trauma after, you know, during the drawing or the quartering part. And my wife would tell you that when she was having her babies, before she got the epidural,

that it was 10 out of 10 pain. She couldn't imagine anything more. excruciating and you know there's lots of breach deliveries all kinds of stuff happen people don't die from the pain now how could you die from the pain pain is activating so when you have intense pain your adrenaline kicks in adrenaline is a vasoconstrictor if you had which means it constricts blood vessels and if you had a marginal or critical narrowing in your coronary arteries.

Already, yeah. Already, and then all this adrenaline caused the vessels to constrict, there you go. Yeah, you can have a heart attack and kill you. You have a heart attack that could kill you. Mm-hmm. Because you could have a stroke and drive your blood pressure

or up. So the effects, pain can trigger a domino effect that could cause you to die, yes. Right, yes, I agree. But I'm not aware of anyone ever dying from pain by itself. Well, you know, I keep thinking of people in crush injuries where they break all the ribs that wind up dying. You know, but the pain is so intense that I think you're right.

But they can't breathe. Right. But it's not necessarily from the immense pain. Right. Pain is just a way for the central nervous system to tell the brain that there's something going wrong. We have an issue, right. And I wish that there was just a way it could flash up a. a message in our vision saying,

hey, there's a problem instead of making it hurt. Yeah, get your finger out of the light socket, genius. Right, because it's all about our perception. The perception of it, yeah. You know, when I look at that digital clock up there, I see red, but what red I see may not be the same as yours, and it's not actually red. It's just at a certain wavelength of light.

That's what we call it red. And our brains interpret it, and we see it differently than blue light. you know all the different wavelengths of the visible spectrum that we can see but then there are like bees can see ultraviolet and there are other things can see in the near infrared all kinds of crazy stuff so they're see differently than we do and this is another thing it's perception so there are a couple of different kinds of fibers in the body that can transmit pain and if they have myelin sheaths if a fiber has a myelin sheath that's kind of a fatty

tissue or substance that acts as an insulator around nerve fibers. The transmission of signals along those fibers will be very quick. And if you have a naked fiber that doesn't

have a myelin sheath, then there's a lot of interference in the transmission of signals along those fibers, and so it'll take longer. So the A-Delta fibers are large, and have myelin and pain signals travel very quickly, and that's your first pain.

Right, the initial prick. So, right. And so you'll get that first pain, and then you will get the pain that comes later. And that's carried by sea fibers. They're small and unmyelinated, and they carry pain signals slowly, giving you that dull aching sensation, or the second pain that follows. The linger is much more. You have the first pain that goes, oh, like that.

And then, you know, if you burn yourself, the aching sensation, the aching sensation, or the second pain, Delta fibers will send that going, get your hand off of there. But then the C fibers will send that long lasting pain that'll kick in later. We've all noticed this phenomenon that says that, hey, you burned yourself dummy. Yep. Okay. Yeah. And can I expand on what you're just saying, interestingly, just a minute ago?

Because, I mean, pain is all I do every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it. But, you know, as you were saying, different perceptions. And, of course, I mean, I've seen 20,000 different people. Oh, there's so many different variations of people's perceptions of stimulation. Oh, yeah, of course. And that's really compelling, and being able to differentiate that when you're working with somebody to figure out how they are going to react to A-s sensations.

Because sometimes, you know, I've got people that you can barely touch them in there, and they are coming off the table, miserable. And then I've got others. You can dig in there, and, you know, I've got three-and-four-inch needles cramming in their paraphrances. You see the muscle spasms and the leg jerking and they're like, oh, that feels pretty good. good you know and it's really intriguing it's really and there's a number of things that affected i think you know your um heritage genetics you know they say that red-headed people have a little bit less of a pain threshold have you heard that i have heard that which is kind of mean i have witnessed that and um which is kind of interesting about is i mean it's

very interesting if we could ever come up with a with an objective objective in other words truly everybody would get the same answer, measure of what someone's pain is, it would be fascinating. Yeah, because he just doesn't. If you could just merge your consciousness with the other person, then it would become your pain, and then you could grade it. And you could tell which people are just faking and which ones are just, you know, scimps. Yeah, and some that are just absolutely miserable. Because I'm absolutely miserable, but I don't take anything for pain. Yeah, but you know what you...

And I'm not saying, ooh, look at me, but I'm just saying it is weird that I have people that I know have less pathology in their back and in their nervous system than I do that are taking all kinds of opioid medications and stuff. It can't function in a day, it cannot function from minute to minute, much less day and with no more pathology, because, you know, we see it all the time. We'll have someone come in with an image of a lower back that they've got terrible back pain but really the images really don't look bad and you go but but but you know and then they'll focus on the degenerative joint thing and it's like oh dude you know everybody else that and

then at the same time at the same time i'll get i had a guy not too long ago his MRI was so horrible i just looked at him i said hell i don't know how he could be miserable and he just looks at me goes well it kind of hurts i was like oh my gosh so you know just and i think stacy's question is a lot deeper and a lot more complex than probably, you know, what most people understand. Well, there's philosophy associated. Well, and then the emotional component of pain. Yes. It goes along with, you know, like with you and your back, sometimes you feel more miserable

because it's stress as you out. You can't do all the chores that you normally do. Yeah. And that's an emotional strain, you know, and that may affect your blood pressure or it makes you angry. Or it makes you angry. Or people who hurt will cry sometimes. and that so they're yes there's a physical aspect and an emotional aspect to it because both all those things are passing through those signals are passing through different places in

the brain yeah they all are connected yeah yes to say the least yeah that sucks now stacey that's a pretty good good good in stey's he's pretty fart smeller i mean fart smell a smart failer all right anyway and what's going on dr steve tacy Hello Doing pretty good Thank you Appreciate you Okay sorry

Sorry sorry Wait a minute We got to play along So I'll be Tacey And you can be me Okay Hey what's going on Dr. Steve Casey

Hey man What's up Hi How are you Good Thank you I appreciate you I got the timing wrong

One more time One more time Okay Oh Ah you bastard Okay here we go Hey what's going on Dr. Steve Casey

Hey man what's up How are you Doing pretty good Thank you. Appreciate you asking. Question I just came out with is I used to dream like crazy. I'm listening to your last podcast about lucid dreams. I'm thinking I used to dream like crazy.

But then once I picked up a C-PAP, I've noticed not as much as I used to. I know exactly why. Is that because like the airways and I'm more conscious or the fact that I just... Nope. Maybe I'm not getting such deep sleep. played I used to. Oh. No, and either one of those are true.

What do you think it is, Scott? I know the answer to this. I'm tapping my note. Okay. He's not paying attention. I'm not paying attention. You know the show comes before your notes, right? You can do this and do those.

Well, hell, you're the CPAP expert. I'm letting you. Okay, true, true. Okay, you were taking this opportunity because you knew I would talk for 20 minutes on this. So when we used to do, well, and they probably still do, studies on dreaming. What you do is you watch for the person to go into rapid eye movement sleep. And you can put sensors on their eyelids.

There's a bunch of different ways that you can do that. You can do it by just the way that they're breathing. And when you see that they are fully into rapid eye movement sleep, you wake them up. When you wake them up, they will remember the dreams that they have. Because we dream every night. We just don't remember it. It's just, it goes into a register that is then cleared at the end of the night. And sometimes you remember your dream, sometimes you don't, and there's certain reasons why.

But in general, it's a rewritable RAM. And so all those experiences go into that, that rewritable RAM, and then when you, you know, by the time you wake up, it's already been cleared out. Okay. Now, but if you wake somebody up during REM, they'll remember that. the dreams that they just had and they can write it down or whatever well guess when you have the worst episodes of sleep apnea is during REM sleep I think yeah and so when you particularly if you have central sleep apnea so if you go into REM sleep and then you stop breathing well your body's going to wake up up just enough so that just enough so

you start breathing again and then you sleep and then you wake back up again but you're never fully awake but you're coming up from REM sleep to light sleep some people will wake themselves up my dad would snore so loud he would wake himself up oh gosh and he'd be like and you go what what what like somebody was talking to it's hilarious so so I'm this is my hypothesis I say I know what it is is what I'm guessing is he's no longer we're doing that. Okay. He's actually getting real REM sleep.

Interesting. And he's not waking up a bunch of times so he doesn't remember his dreams. He still has him. He's just not remembering him. So. That's a great hypothesis. I like it. Well, I'll give myself one of these.

Yeah, I like that. Might not be right, but it sounds right. No, it does. It actually does something. It sounds pretty good. Yeah, I like it. All right. Cool, man.

I'm glad it didn't sleep through that. There you go. Hey, Dr. Steve. It's your old pal Keith from Los Angeles. Hey, Keith. How's it going on? I got a quick question about a big surprise, COVID vaccine. I have an appointment already made for March 6th.

I'm sorry, May 6th. And for my second dose, and my work is offering it now earlier. The only appointment I can get is two days before the appointment I was supposed to have, but it will save me a 45-minute drive and a two-hour wait while I'm there. So I'm curious if taking the vaccine, two days prior to what I should have as scheduled if that's going to be a problem or not.

Thanks, Dr. Steve. Appreciate your show. Say out of Tacey. Hey, thanks, man. Later, brother. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, it's a great question. So, the timing between your first and second shots

absolutely depends on which vaccine you receive. There are some of them out there. You don't need the second one. But if you've got the Pfizer-Bio-N-Tech COVID-19 vaccine, you should get your second shot three weeks after your first. Why? Because that's how they studied it. So, a research, they're right. If you've got the Moderna vaccine,

you get your second shot four weeks or 28 days after your first. So the CDC recommends that you get your second shot as close to the recommended three or four week interval as possible, but it can be given up to six weeks after the first dose if necessary. They do recommend that you not get the second dose early. And there's just limited information on the effectiveness of getting your second shot earlier than recommended or later than six weeks. They didn't study it, so we don't know. Kind of, you know, two days, what differences may.

I mean, 21 days is an artificial number, but they haven't studied it. So the CDC is not recommending that you get it early. Now, if you do get it earlier or later than recommended, you don't have to restart the vaccine series. And then the CDC will update us as they get data on this. So there you go. Would it be possible? I mean, if he could maybe with his work schedule, push it out a week or two to save him. And then he wouldn't have to go away.

I don't know, Dr. Steve, but, I mean, that seems like maybe a possible solution. Yeah. But make sure you get it. If you're going to a different place than you started, make sure they're giving you the same vaccine, too. Because, like, if your work's giving you Moderna and you already got the full. Pfizer, they don't have any data on how to mix those. Probably okay, but they don't have any data on it, so they can't recommend it. Did you see in Louisiana down in New Orleans where they were giving, where they haven't

had great turnouts for vaccines, they're actually doing, in bars, they're doing them, they're giving shots for shots. That's genius. Isn't that genius? Yeah, so it was really. What do you mean, they're giving you alcohol? They're giving you a shot. A shot for a shot.

It was cool. The bartender. there was like, you know, it's hard for me to get out when they're giving a shot. So they brought him in here. He goes, heck, I'm five feet away, so I got my shot immediately. So he got his vaccine and has given shots to these people. Is that right?

That is true. True story, yep. Because I know, listen, back in the 80s when I was training, we would see a lot of people come in with thiamen deficiency that were alcoholics. And I'd say, why don't we just put thiamen in wine?

Right, sure, sure. And they said they couldn't, they tried that and they couldn't do it because then they could advertise, they were afraid that they would advertise that this brand was, quote, unquote, good for you because it had thiamine in it. They didn't, so they'd rather people not have it at all and come in with all these neurological problems than to just put some thiaman in there and worry later if people were marketing it as if it was somehow beneficial. A much more healthy alcoholic drink.

And that's some bullshit. That is bullshit there. Man, oh man. it's like let's do something that makes some sense people yeah we could um needle exchange programs have been shown to be effective in preventing bloodborne illnesses including HIV yes but there are some places where they won't do it because well then you're encouraging people to do it and it's like no you're accepting the reality that people are doing it and you're and you're reacting to that by allowing them to have a clean needle so that they're not sharing needles.

And maybe keeping them out of the hospital. Yes. Keeping them from having to have these, you know, any myriad of other. And then you can work on the demand side of it. Right. And then you might, since you're working with them, you might be able to work with giving them less and less each time, titrating down a little bit, some kind of recovery program.

Oh, you're talking about actually giving them the drug itself. Well, no, no, no. That's another issue. I don't have a problem with that. Yes, sir. Yeah, Dr. but not actually, whether you're doing it or not, but at least that way you've got them in front of you,

you can talk to them saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's at least talk about how much you're doing. Sure. Yeah, maybe intervention. Yes, they're actually, if they come to a needle exchange and it's in a medical setting, then you have people that can talk to them. That's right.

I got you on that. So at least you can get the thing started, so if they do decide to get off of it, they've got somebody that goes to. An integrated program like that. Like, you know, in my practice, I guess this show might be. be boring to everybody, and I apologize.

But in my practice, we have some people that are, say, terminally ill who have substance abuse problems. And if they have a difficult, and they have horrible, horrible, intractable cancer pain. Yes. And they have a hard time following the rules on making their prescriptions last and that kind of stuff. And we don't have a program that helps people with substance abuse. use problems who are terminally ill who need their medication, because you can just discharge

them, you can dismiss them from your practice, but then they're going to be out there suffering. Yeah, that's terrible. And I don't want anybody to suffer when they're leaving this world. So there was no program, so we're creating one. Oh, that's great. You know, we're going to be working with an addictionology fellowship and figuring out a pipeline that we can work with these folks so that we don't have to dismiss them from our practice. Right.

And you, you as a physician, don't have issues with prescribing. maybe a little bit higher dose for someone that needs more. Well, no, because I'm work with at the cancer center, I'm used to writing prescriptions that other physicians might consider prodigious in their amount, but they're really just what the patient needs. Right. And we don't, you know, obviously, let me just put the disclaimer out there. We don't push them.

No. But, you know, we will make sure that our patients have relief of their symptoms to the extent that we can. Yes. But anyway. Thank goodness. All right. Well, here's a pimple question.

Oh, cool. Oh, I think we did this one. I don't know. Let's do it again. Nah, we did it already. It was how to pimples. Go back, two, three shows back. I had a friend of mine from high school, no, from college.

I met him in the dorm at Mangum dorm at the University of North Carolina in 1970-something or other. and this guy could play things from, like, yes, on his acoustic guitar. And I would get him to teach me this stuff because he could figure it out. He could listen to it. He could figure it out. I could play it if he showed me how to do it, but I couldn't figure it out. Guy was a genius.

His name is Don Moore. He's not going to be upset today. Well, now, you know, I guess he's maybe a little older than I am. because I think he was a year or two ahead of me. So we're just old farts now. And he and his wife do this music. And it's sort of very, you know, with a lot of positivity and stuff. But I listened to one of the songs that they did, and it's very well produced because he's a smart guy and he's got a nice recording set up at his house.

But his wife sounded to me just like Joan Baez. And I said, dude, you have to record diamonds and rust. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to play just a little snippet of it, but maybe I'll stick it up on the website at Dr.Steve.com. When you listen to this, tell me it's not Joan Baez singing this. If you remember, and I guess that I'm really dating myself, the young people, listen to this won't know what the hell I'm talking about.

But that album was fantastic album. And so anyway, here's Don. more and his wife Judy is doing diamonds and rust by Joan Baez Well, I'll be damned. Here comes your ghost again. But that's not unusual. It's just that the moon is full, and you happen to call. That's that not amazing.

That's great. I thought that was Joe. Hand on the telephone. Hearing a voice I'd known. a couple of light years ago heading straight for a fall Okay, I'm assuming we have to worry about fair use and all that kind of stuff.

I don't know how that works with a cover, but that's amazing. That was super great. So I'll post a link to their sound cloud at Dr. Steve.com or I'll at least put the file on there. And if somebody DCM, CMAs or whatever, where they do digital something, something, something on my website.

I'll just take it down, but that song's so old. I wonder if it even applied. I don't know. I don't know how this works. But I want people to be able to hear that. Incredible. Don Moore. Don and Judy Moore.

Anyway, what else we got to do? We've got a few minutes left. Let's do something else. Well, that was impressive. It was impressive. It was very impressive. From Chicago. listen to the podcast recently you answer a question around drooling while sleeping my fiance uses somnifix tape to tape her mouth closed when she sleeps it helps her with dry mouth and also has stopped her drilling so just another option it's a over-the-counter type tape that you just put on your mouth when you go to sleep and it keeps your mouth closed I sleep with a CPAP and when I use my nose mask I use this instead of

a chin strap to keep my mouth closed. Isn't that interesting? I've been doing this for how many years, 35, 37 years, I've never heard of this. So their website says, don't be a mouth breather. So I'm going to fix strips or gentle mouth tape clinically proven to promote nose breathing.

Well, the problem is the reason that I breathe through my mouth with my CPAP is because my stupid nose gets clogged up. And if I block my mouth, if I tape my mouth shut, then I'm not going to be able to breathe at all. Yeah, so you may not wake up in the morning. Well, I don't think it would be that bad.

But that's interesting. You know what? I will order some of this, and I'll try it, and I'll report back. I don't think for people that have sleep apnea that snore that this is a great idea, just because their tongue is already blocking their airway, I don't know. I could be convinced otherwise on that that anything that promotes nose breathing is better but I'm going to look into this thing

and like I said I'll order someone I'll let you know cool because it sucks that's one of the reasons why I don't wear my CPAP I have a bipap all night long is because I'll drool into it and then I just can't stand the wetness in there I mean as you can imagine gross it's gross

Make stuff to sleep too. It's your own saliva as you grow. Okay, if you feel that way that I'm being stupid, then this is what, do this experiment. Take a spoon, hold it in front of your mouth. Now, just let saliva just drain into the spoon, okay, until the spoon is full. So that would be 5 ml of saliva.

Or you can spit it in there if you want to, but just letting it kind of drain in there, you're not doing the act of spitting it It doesn't seem as gross. And then hold it away from your body, regard it with your eyes, look at it. And now just put it back in your mouth. That's gross. Try it.

No, thanks. But it just came out of your mouth just a second ago. Yeah, no, it just sounds... That's, see, so... It sounds wrong. Exactly. It is wrong. It's disgusting.

All right. Hello, Dr. Steve. Hello. Brian from New Hampshire. Hey, Brian. My wife got the shingles the other day. I feel like. Should I go get the vaccination? Ooh.

How catchy is the shingles. Excellent question. If you have not had chicken pox, you could get chicken pox from the shingles. You cannot get shingles from the shingles. And that sounds crazy, but it's true. Shingles is nothing more than the chicken pox virus that you had when you were a kid. that has ensconced itself inside a bundle of nerves near your spinal cord, and it comes out one time in your life, just for...

Or two or three. But normally, in periods of stress or whatever, or whatever, change in your immune system for whatever reason. And then the virus will come out, and it will be attached to, or it will come out where that nerve that it ensconced itself in and that nerve bundle called a ganglion, where that goes. So if it's on the right side

and it's a nerve that passes over the eighth rib, then it'll be centered on the right side over that eighth rib. And sometimes it'll come out of a nerve that's in your stupid face, and that sucks, particularly if it gets in your eye. So we highly recommend the shingles vaccine but I and people who qualify for it should get it and the shingricks vaccine I'm going to tell you it kicked me on my butt for about four days way worse than the COVID vaccine did but I'll take that rather than getting shingle in my eye yes because that pain can last for years afterward it's not necessarily short-lived when the shingles goes away the pain can stay with you so so yes I would get the shingles vaccine but I

I would not do it because your wife got shingles unless that just stimulated you to go get it because you forgot you needed to get it and you're of age. Talk to your vaccine provider on that regard. All right. Don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net and check out Dr. Steve.com. Thanks. Go to always. Dr. Scott, who's unfailing support of this show, has never gone on appreciated. He shows up. Can't forget, Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft,

that Gould Girl, Louis Johnson, who should be back from maternity leave soon. Paul Offcharsky, Chowdy 1008, Eric Nagel, the Port Charlotte Hoare, the Sarasota Skank, Roland Campos, is it Sarasoga, or Saratoga, Saratoga, Sarasota, right? Sister of Chris, Sam, Sam, Ron. Robert, she who owns Pigs and Snakes, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinschmidt from the laugh button, Dale Dudley, Holly from the Gulf, the great Rob Bartlett, Casey's wet t-shirt, Vicks, Emissions, Carl's deviated septum, 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 serious XM show on the Faction Talk. channel. Serious XM Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern on demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine.

Thank you, Dr. Scott. Thank you. Thank you.