Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 472 - Painful Pen15 Parables

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Dr Steve and Dr Scott discuss: alcohol consumption during the pandemic -> cancer risk? a bad fistula story painful pen15 story #1: electrical cord painful pen15 story #2: lightning cable (STOP IT) What is the function of the appendix? A genius idea no one will go for colorectal screening guidelines 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 ($30 gets them all!) simplyherbals.net (for all your StressLess and FatigueReprieve needs!) BACKPAIN.DOCTORSTEVE.COM – (Back Pain? Check it out! Talk to your provider about it!) Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now while he’s still cheap!) feals.com/fluid (try the new FEALS MINTS!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

ECHO asked Dr. Steve for a fun fact. The average 190-pound human produces 360 pounds of stool every year. That's a lot of crap. For another fact, please say, tell me another fact. To quit say, stop. Tell me another fact. Have you ever had a corn on your foot? It's called a Helomodorum by your podiatrist.

For another fact, please say, tell me another fact. To quit say, stop. I think she pronounced that wrong. Tell me another fact. Hiccups are called sing-gult-tuss by doctors. Transient hiccups can be treated by swallowing a teaspoon of sugar dry if you're not diabetic. Chronic hiccups need to be evaluated by a health care provider. For another fact, please say, tell me another fact.

To quit say, stop. Stop. Goodbye. 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. Hey!

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 infectable woes. I want to take my brain out and blasts with the wave and all. Ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet,

I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want a requiem for my disease. So I'm aging Dr. Steve. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott, Chinese medical practitioner who keeps the weird alternative medicine people at bay. Thank you, Dr. Scott.

My pleasure, Dr. Steve. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the Internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. Or if you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 347-76-4-33. That's 347. Pooh-Hull. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at D.R. Scott, W.M. visit our website at dr steve.com for podcast medical news and stuff you can buy most importantly

we are not your medical providers take everything here with a grain of salt don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking over with your doctor nurse practitioner practical nurse physician assistant pharmacist chiropractor acupuncturist yoga master physical therapist clinical laboratory scientist registered dietitian bogan bell end or whatever we'll explain all that a little bit don't forget stuff.doctrsteve.com stuff dot dr.steve.com

for all of your shopping needs it'll take you straight to Amazon if you want to click through or you can scroll down and look at all the different cool things we talk about on this show some of them were cool than others but check out stuff. com

This is the last month we're going to be promoting this. So check out Noom. Dot Dr. Steve.com, N-O-O-O-M dot Dr.steve.com. Noom is a weight loss program. It's not a diet. It's a psychology program that will help you in other places in your life, too. Well, it did for me anyway. Everyone else's results will vary.

But if you decide to do it, you can do two weeks for free and then get 20% off if you decide to do the three-month program. It's only a three-month program. It's not like some of these other programs you have to do for the rest of your life. And then check out backpane. Dot.com. And then Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbils.net. You got anything on there now?

Nothing new. Nothing new, but there's still stuff there. There's still stuff there, yes. Come visit. How much crap do you have on there left that you need to get rid of? Not that much. Really? No, we still have some good stuff on there.

So, GVAC's favorite thing was stress less, right? Or fatigue reprieve? He loved a fatigue reprieve. I think it was from driving back and forth, and Knoxville all those times. He said it's the one thing that made him feel better. And we were driving back and forth all those. Because he drove, it's like hundreds of miles a day.

Yeah, he did. Yeah, the complete obstruction of his left anterior descending coronary artery probably didn't help things either. But at least you made him feel better. That's right. And he made us feel better. He certainly did. God, I still miss that fucking guy.

And look, there he is up there, playing his guitar with a big old grin on his face. Laughing at us. That's crazy fools. Yeah. I mean, he had a huge impact on this show. That's for sure. And I really miss it.

And on us, you know. Well, yeah, that's what I meant. I mean, personally, I was here. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Man, I mean, great addition to the show. I mean, he was the sanity. Well, and I have this friend, and I know I've told this story on this show before, but they kind of saw each other at one of our comedy events, and they were both interested. They were both single, and she's very attractive, and GVAC was, you know, GVAC, and she was interested, he was interested, and they were supposed to get together at this gig that we had set up that you and I,

and he were going to play at. It was going to be our first gig playing out in real life, and then he passed away the week before. So she has really shitty luck with men in general, and that just confirmed it for her. Yeah, that was a done deal. Yeah. It's so bad.

Anyway. Well, anyway, yeah, okay, so we miss him. We miss Fizz Watley. You know, the older you get, that's you just end up talking about all your friends that he used to have that you don't have anymore. So getting old can kiss my ass, but what are you going to do about it? It's a terrible deal. Yep.

It is. It is. But, you know, it's the price of it. It's the price of admission. The price of admission of being here is that eventually we have to leave. And, you know, in that regard, it's like everything else. vacations, the price of admission while you got to pay for it, but you know, you get to stay whatever time you had and then you got to leave.

And then you look at the universe. The universe got a beginning, a middle, and it's going to have an end. Yes. So we are, even if you don't believe in, you know, in whatever, a higher power, you live in the universe. you are created in the image of the universe in the sense that you have a beginning, a middle, and an end, just like the universe does. Yep. Ooh.

Pretty deep stuff. I didn't even do an edible today, Dr. Scott. Yet. It sure sounds like it. It sounds like you've been hanging around. Anyway. All right. So you have some news stories that you brought.

Why don't you whip those at me? You can be Robin Quivers today and I'll be a couple interesting ones. They don't even do the news anymore, so we can just take that from it. them. Oh, cool. Well, yeah, we'll see if we can, we can cover the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, uh, the vacuum day created. Yeah. No, my damn. All right. No, I apologize. My sinuses are. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. The, um, it is the season. All right. Americans. Okay, you're all right. Oh, yeah, shit, yeah. Because I don't care if you have COVID, because I have already had it. So you can be up here and COVID it up, my friend. Norton all over you. Now, I'm pretty sure that if,

I've probably had a couple times, just like everybody else. Thanks to my vaccination, my real shot, I'm doing pretty well. Okay. Sounds good. All right, Americans are using alcohol to cope with pandemic stress. Nearly one in five report heavy drinking. Heavy. How are they defining heavy?

Well, that's what I was looking at. So heavy drinking was described as having had two heavy drinking days in a single week. Well, how are they defining heavy? Well, and that's what I'm getting to. And now they define the heavy drinking day. is four drinks for women containing alcohol and five drinks containing alcohol for men. Oh, okay.

So shit. This is pretty heavy. Yeah, well, but you know, the funny thing is, and the reason I brought this up is I read... Tacey would laugh at that. Oh, yeah, she'd be like, oh, shit, that's like I'm close. It's an amateurs. But to them, that's a lot of rookies.

But I was thinking, I read an article, it's been a little while ago, but in Britain, they did a study talking about heavy drinking. But to them, it was eight, millions of beer a day. Nice. Right. So I'm thinking maybe we should move to England. I am such an anglophile.

I am a huge anglophile. I know the Sirius XM show doesn't get there, but the podcast does. And we, I took my kids, the first time I ever took them out of the country was to jolly old, you know, the homeland. And we went to Westminster. and we walked and we got there two days after the terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge.

Was it the stabbing thing? That was the car one. The car one, okay. Yeah, I remember when you were over there. Yeah, and, you know, Parliament was shut down and stuff. But, you know, the kids were young and I guess Liam was maybe 12 or 13 and Beck would have been 11.

But what they got to see was everybody just walking around and there were flowers, where the people were getting, and I said, listen, what you learn from this is you don't let them change your behavior. You know, yeah, there was a terrorist attack here, a block from our hotel, but we, you know, here we are anyway. And they got to see an anti-Brexit march, which in England or, you know, in Britain, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.

are a little different than here. They were holding up signs saying, you know, EU, we love you, and stuff like that. And it was very quiet and calm and quite delightful. And the kids got to, so they got to see political action. But at the same time, we could walk from our hotel to Buckingham Palace and they could climb on the statue of Queen Victoria. And, you know, we went to Westminster Abbey and saw Henry V sarcophagus and Isaac Newton. and all this stuff.

And then at the same time, Tacey's job was doing layoffs. So she were, her phone was going off constantly while we were there. And she was terrified. She was going to get laid off. And then when she didn't get laid off, she was upset about the friends of hers that did.

So it kind of ruined her vacation. Yeah. The boys and I still say best vacation ever. And Tacey's like, that sucked. But anyway, it was, yeah. So anyway, I am quite the anglophile, and I like their very civilized attitude toward drinking and eating and stuff. And if you want to watch a great show and learn some U.K. accents, watch Love Island, UK, maybe the greatest show ever on television.

And except for maybe the great British baking show. Those two are my favorites. Well, so great about it. Love Island, UK. Well, first off, they have a very different attitude toward cursory. in that country. And you can say, you know, fuck and shit and, you know, on television and nobody seems to bat an eye.

Okay. And there was this one woman named Faye, and she is, was very outspoken, and when she thought her boyfriend was lying to her, she just laid into him and just, you know, F words and, you know, all these curse words and stuff. And apparently they got more complaints to their version of the FCC than any other, you know, any other time that television in the history of television was over phase outburst toward Teddy. And even then, their version of the FCC said, no, there were no violations. It's awesome. It's the greatest thing in the world.

I don't know why we have to bleep everything out. were so prudish and puritanical about language in this country. And they're just so free with it. They're calling people the C word. I can't even say it on this show. And then there's some other cool words that I learned. I learned Belland. Bill and.

Okay. So Fais, when the boys got, you know, they were over in this place called Casa Amor and they were all making out with these new girls and stuff. And the women had all been. faithful to them and so of course the producers had to stir things up so they send this postcard with the guys all making it out with these girls and she called him a bunch of bloody bell ends and a bell end i found i had to look it up because it was just such a great word is the end of your penis okay you know it's like the end you know the glands the roman war helmet is like the end of a bell oh my gosh so bloody bloody belly Oh, my God. And knob, it just, you know, and being mugged off. And it's just so many great, just terms that I will use in my regular, you know, in my regular speech now from now on.

But anyway. Your vernacular has a span. But anyway, so, yes, get back to where we were. So the Brits definition of heavy drinking was much more civilized. It's eight pines. Yep. Okay. I'm much more along the lines of that.

The thing about these kinds of studies. These kinds of studies, though, is that correlation and causation aren't the same thing. So did they show causation with this? Or is it just purely correlation that since COVID people have increased? And what's the actual increase? Because a lot of times they'll say it's statistically significant, but it's still a very small effect. It's not covered on here. But I did see before what they talked about, the reason they did this was because the alcohol cells have increased in the United States.

Yes. And that's the one thing. But I did read that there's been an increase in stomach cancer during COVID. What? Did they feel as secondary to alcohol consumption? Oh, shit. That's what I read a couple weeks ago, Dr. Teave. And I'll look it up while we're discussing it.

Well, that's a big deal. Okay. It is a big deal. This is npr.org, you know, that great medical journal. Alcohol use linked to over 740,000 cancer cases last. What? See, that's what I saw. The link between smoking cancer is well documented, widely known, but alcohol fewer in one and three Americans recognize alcohol as a cause of cancer.

Similar in other high-income countries, probably lower in other parts of the world, new study shows how much of a risk drinking can be. At least 4% of the world's newly diagnosed cases of esophageal, mouth, larynx, colon, rectum, liver, and breast cancers can be attributed to drinking alcohol. according to a study in the July 13th edition of Lancet Oncology. Okay, so I'm not trusting NPR on this one. I'm going straight to Lancet. Lancet. So let's see here. So this is Lancet Oncology.

I have to accept all cookies before to let me read this damn thing. It says alcohol use is causally linked to multiple cancers. We present global regional and national estimates of alcohol attributable cancer burden in 2020 to inform alcohol policy and cancer control across different settings globally. Blah. I don't like this. No, it's terrible. No.

And I, you know, the thing is, so I would just go, okay, I'll just do cannabis, but I can't do that either. Because will they check you? No, I don't care about that. The last time I did cannabis, I got so frigging paranoid. I took it at, and this could have been 20 years ago, so everybody just calmed the up down. But I took it at 2 in the morning, and I woke up at 6 in the morning,

and the paranoia was just crushing. And I couldn't get these thoughts out of my head. And then I kept hearing music down, you know, like a, I'm sure it was just something. something knocking in the air conditioning, but my brain was interpreting it as like disco music. And it was like, this is awful. So, you know, so I can't, what, I can't drink, I can't do cannabis. What the hell am I going to do?

I guess I'm going to do the Trip app, T-R-I-P, check that out. If you have an Oculus, it's the most fantastic natural high you'll ever do. Let's see here. I just wonder how they are putting these things together. You know, previous estimates of the contribution of alcohol to the burden of cancer have been published, but patterns of alcohol consumption continue to change over time across world regions. Yeah, I wonder what the hell is the mechanism? Hmm.

And they don't give that, you know. It's still... The mechanism of... I mean, are these people smoking, too? Are they controlling for smoking and other things like fat intake and stuff like that? Well, you know, the only... Well, I mean, the first thing comes to my mind is maybe just inflammatory response, possibly in the stomach, but I don't know about why it would be affecting...

That's what makes you feel good, though. Yeah, but why the cancers and all some things, yeah. I don't know. Maybe we can do some homework for next week and find something out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It says, you know, we include cancers of the stomach and pancreas and sensitivity analysis due to evidence suggesting a causal association with alcohol consumption in the World Cancer Research Fund classifications, but an absence of sufficient evidence in the IARC monograph classification. So some of this stuff is still controversial. But, again, what they do is they'll take populations and they will try to control for all these variables.

and then they'll look at relative risk, and that's really what they're doing. And so relative risk just means that, you know, compared to the other population, if the only variable that's different, and that's almost never the case, is alcohol drinking, and then there's, you know, 20% increase in hepaticellular cancer, you know, liver cancer in that group, then they'll say that there's a causal relationship. They may not know what it is. But the question is, are there hidden variables? Sure.

Are they taking pills that are increasing the problem? Well, who knows? You don't know. You have to tease all this about it. Really, really be careful teasing those things out if you're going to do science with this. But, you know, there certainly is not a whole lot of controversy about it. Now, okay, so, yeah, so here we go. We calculated the effect of alcohol consumption.

on the incidence of cancer worldwide in 2020 using an 11-based population attributable fraction method. So we talked about population attributable fraction last time, and that's just, you know, the fraction in the population that's attributable to whatever the variable is that you're looking at. And they did, you know, so they said globally an estimated 741,000 of all new cases of cancer, so we're attributable to alcohol consumption. Damn it. Okay. So, yeah, we need to do some more research on this

to find out how much is too much and make sure that we get right under that line. Yes, yes. And if we go over, we need to just figure out a way to kind of... Yeah, is there a way to balance out the... Ameliorate the... Is there a way to ameliorate this, too, you know, with something? God, you can't do it.

anything. No, no, it's terrible. This shit pisses me off. You know, I quit smoking. You know, and I started eating better. Right.

And exercising and... Well, no, I wouldn't say I'm doing a lot of that, but I'm pretty active. Yeah. But I do like my willets from time to time. Mm-hmm. And

by from time to time, I mean, you know, every night. I don't get wasted. No, shoot, no. Well, you know, but, you know, if you, on the converse of that is, is there, there are some studies. I'm sure that it would say small amounts of alcohol are good for calming the stress and helping, you know, thinning the blood just a teeny bit and maybe renal functions just kind of keeping everything fluid. Here we go. Drinking up to 10 grams per day contributed 41,000 alcohol attributable cancer case.

What's 10 grams of alcohol? Are they talking about the alcohol itself? Because, you know, drinking 10 grams of beer is different than drinking 10 grams of... Yeah, ever-clare. Right. Corn squazins. God, dang it. Yeah, I know.

We were changes of... The highest frequencies of alcohol attributable cancers were in males drinking from 30 to less than 40 grams per day. I've got to figure out how they're, what they're, what they mean by drinking a certain number of grams per day. I'm assuming that's the alcohol content. So we've got to figure out how many grams of alcohol is in one beer. Let me see if Echo knows that. Hmm. Echo.

How many grams of alcohol is in one beer? One can of beer has 14 grams of alcohol. What in the hell? Hell no. Well, I'm screwed. Screw this. Okay, next topic. Next topic.

This sucks. All right, here, number two. I've got a new time. We will come back to us. We will come back to us. So it looks like recently a 33-year-old man noticed over the course of two years, an increase in some very strange and peculiar medical issues, including fecal matter in his urine. What? Which is.

Well, I already know. know what he has. Fecular. Oh, I do, too. As soon as I was all this, I knew what it was. Feclurea and passing a substantial amount of urine and semen from his anus. How did he know that? How would you know that you were passing semen from your anus?

I'm sure he didn't know that, but it's probably when he was having certain, you know, like if he's having sex and things weren't coming out the penis the way they normally were. And they were just shooting out his ass? I wouldn't think shooting, but I think of dribbling probably. Yeah. Kind of leaking, I would assume. But it looks like after experience, but it took him having experienced pain in his testicles for a week to go to the doctor. So he had this, he had this shit for two years.

What? God bless him, yeah. Wait a matter. Okay. He said, I wrote a corset two years. Obviously, this guy has a fistula. Correct. Between some part of his genitone urinary tract and his rectum.

Yep, bladder and rectum. Yeah, bladder and rectum, sure. And it, well, if it was just the bladder, then. he shouldn't have semen coming out of his ass unless he had retrograde ejaculation from some other thing. Right. Now, the question is, what caused the fistula? Did he have cancer or what was the deal? I do have the answer to that.

Okay, but I can't believe that he had fecal matter in his urine, and he didn't have an overwhelming infection of the urinary tract. Right. Go ahead. It's very strange. Yeah, and certainly over the cases. This is a very odd case. Yeah, over two years you would have thought it would have been substantial enough for him to say, hey, man, I really probably need to have this out.

But anyway, what it looks like the poor guy had a, it looks like he overdosed on cocaine and PCP. Okay. And while he was in the hospital, he had a folly cath. And tell people what that is. They don't know what that is. It's just a cath that they run from the outside through your penis and up into your bladder to help drain the urine from your blood. There you go. Give yourself a bill.

Okay. And those, of course, can be kind of uncomfortable, especially if they're in there for a while. Yeah. And they hypothesized that it was just below his bladder where there was either an abrasion or a hole occurred or an ulcer or whatever, which caused the fistula to go back towards the rectum. Oh, my God. And that wild. That's awful.

So thankfully, they were able to treat it. Yeah, so what they do, just close the thing. closed official, yeah. Yeah, surgery, but it was a combination of, I guess, a urologist and probably GI doc went and closed it up. Well, I got one for you. Boy 13 has two-foot-long electrical cable stuck in his bladder for three months after sticking it into his penis to, quote, find out where urine comes from. Oh. It comes from the end of your penis.

You don't need any more information than that. No, no. So he inserted the cable cord into his penis out of curiosity. And then he was rushed to the hospital after he started peeing blood three months later. So he must have lost track of the end of it. And it just retracted into his bladder. And he went, well, I guess that's the end of that. I'm not telling mom and dad about this.

I'm pretty sure I'll be in trouble if they find out. Good Lord. Oh, my gosh. Now, um. Oh, no. Yeah, so this cord is in his bladder. And it starts irritating the wall of his bladder. He starts peeing blood.

Oh, gosh. And they did a successful operation to remove the metal wire. And he's okay. Wow. Poor little failure. Poor failure. Listen, kids, don't do that stupid shit. No.

Don't stick stuff in your penis. Don't stick stuff up your ass. And here's the thing. If you stick something, and this is for the adults out there. If you stick something, let's just. say, I'd like a zucchini, and you stick that up your ass. There are, there's two rings of muscle, and one of them is the external ring, and then there's a smaller, or, you know, a less forceful internal ring.

And what happens is, is when those things close, the tendency is for the zucchini to shoot up into your rectum where you can no longer reach it anymore. And then when you, you can stick your finger in there and you can touch the end of it, but you can't grip it and pull it back out again. So now you have to go to the emergency room and go, oh, I sat on it. And everybody goes, oh, yeah, this guy sat on it because that's the fiction that we allow each other to say to each other to save face. Light bulbs, no.

They will, when you try to get it out, it will bring. break, and now you've got a lacerated rectum. Do not do that. Don't do that, no. Don't put anything up your ass that isn't made to go up your ass. Now, you know, a whistling butt plug, okay, maybe. Sure. And I think we have a phone call about whistling butt plugs.

Hang on a second. Hey, Dr. Steve, how's things going? Good, man. How are you? It's Danny up here at the Flatus Flute Factory. Hello. Just want to let you know we're still pumping out flutes. Okay.

So you can tell, number one, that Danny, the creator of the flattest flute, is from Canada because he calls them flattest flutes and he says, Aboot. But anyway, let's run that back. You can hear him say A boot. A boot. Just want to let you know we're still pumping out flutes. Out. We've got different colors now.

We've got a new add-on. It's called black, and the new scent is you can either get it non-sentence or something. send it, and it's called Supermassive. We got pink, we got purple, we got blues. Okay. Can you name some other colors? Yeah, I really appreciate it. We also have a

$2 off offer if someone types in the code fluid. For fluid. Weird medicine. Okay. There you go. Very good. Well, thank you. So we have absolutely nothing to do with this.

But I find it to be hilarious. I'm not endorsing it. Don't actually shove it up your ass. No. It's a gag gift, so you don't actually want to actually do it. But I did allow them to put my likeness on it. And it's got me grinning. And son of Fritz is really an incredible artist.

And I've described this before, but it's just hilarious. It's a big hairy ass. It's kind of in the style of Renan Stimpy kind of thing. And then there's me as the doctor with a big grin on my face because the ass is farting musical notes into my face. And I'm grinning like it's the greatest thing in the world. It is the greatest thing. It's so stupid.

It is pretty stupid. And he got a plug on Anthony's show, and that's on his front page. So just go to fletusflute.com. And if you want to use the offer code, fluid. Again, I have nothing to do with this. I get nothing from it. I don't want anything from it. These are for putting in stockings at, you know, at your office, well, probably not the office, but with your close friends if you're doing, because this would create a hostile work environment if you gave this as a secret Santa gift in the office. But to your close

friends. Now, I did that with Tacey's friends. She has a bunch of octogenarian friends, and they had a, um, have a Christmas party every year. And I put a bunch of flutes in their, in their secret Santa presents. And it was just funny when they opened it up and said, what the hell is this? So anyway. That's great. We don't hang out with them anymore. I'm so effing mad at them.

And what's the date on Bobby Kelly? Okay. So it was five years ago. I'm still mad about April 23rd, 2016. They all said they wanted free tickets. And because they're Tacey's friends, I carved out the middle two rows. Right. You know how many of them showed up?

Zip. Zippo. Oh, you know, Janelle will decide, shame on the have a party, so we're going to over it. And it's like, you sons of bitches. So I learned my lesson from that. If you want free tickets from me for an event, come see me. at the event and I'll find you a seat. Yes. But I had two

whole rows that were empty and I had people come in I moved them up, you know, from the balcony and stuff. So, because, you know, that was just embarrassing. It was terrible. But anyway, but it worked out okay and that was a great show. Bobby,

Bobby, he did the bluest set I've ever seen anybody do in the middle of, you know, kind of rural Tennessee. in a theater that used to be, I guess, a classroom or something. I don't know in this place, in this Renaissance-type center. And it was packed, but he was so, such a lovable guy that nobody got mad.

They all loved it. They were horrified by the things he was saying, and they loved him anyway. Now, that is a damn, you know, that's a real performer right there. It is. To say what he said to have people. People still like him. You were there, right? Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

Oh, my God. It was so vile. It was horrible. But he did it in such a way that people loved it. And he was just shitting on people in the audience, and they loved that. I mean, his crowdwork was amazing. Yeah, he's very good. You know, Voss is great at crowdwork, and Florentine did an amazing job with crowdwork, but, I mean, Bobby was just destroying them.

Yep. It was something else. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Boss was the last one we've had. That was pre-COVID. And then the next year we were going to do it, they canceled it because of COVID. Was Voss the last one we had?

Yeah, that was 2019. No, it was August 2019. And then August 2020, that one got canceled because COVID was just getting cranked up around here. And people were freaking out. So anyway. Yep. Gee, Lise. Yep.

Oh, well. Boss was brilliant. though. And I remember Hashem told him it was time to quit because it got a big huge lightning bolt behind him. I said, okay, that's it.

I don't remember that. That's right. That was a very good show. Yeah, it was. All right. Let's, do you have anything else? No, no. There was one story about a kid that put a charging cable up his penis. See if you can find that one.

You just talk to them. No, it's not. No, it's not the same one. No, this is that one. Oh, dear one? Yeah, this is a different one. That guy put a two-foot-long electrical cable. This kid, I heard about it on the creep-off, which, by the way, I want everyone to go over and listen to the creep-off. It's too late to vote for me, but I think I got 67% of the vote anyway, and thank you to the weird medicine listeners that went over there and voted for me.

But Vinny and Carl, Carl, it's Vinnie Palino and Carl Hamburger, and they do a show. called The Creep Off. And what it is, it's a true crime show, but it's a comedy show. And you get to vote on who you thought brought the creepiest villain to the show. And then whoever loses five times first has to spin the wheel of consequences. And that's always something horrible. So it's really fun. There's a lot of audience participation in it. But it's also a great show in your old pal was on there my episode was called concrete enema and um on the most recent show which was about the creepiest person from france they had this story about the kid putting a charging cable up his penis did you find it and it was nodded i did so okay tell us this one he's a u k teen

oh he's from uk yeah he had to have undergo emergency surgery after an attempt to measure his manhood um resulted in him getting you a u sb cable lodged in his u.s. cable lodged in his urethra. So I guess what he was going to do was take this USB cable shove it into his penis until it wouldn't go any further into his bladder and then pull it back out and measure it.

And that's called insane? Well, it's insane. It's called urethral sounding. But what you're really measuring is the distance from the tip of your penis to the back of your bladder. You're not really measuring your manhood.

If you want to measure your manhood, get fully erect and measure it from the base to the tip. That's it. You don't, and don't do what Carl says is wrap it around your testicles twice and then go just beyond the tip and then that's it. And then everybody's got a 10-inch or 12-inch hog at that point. Yes. That's not how you do it.

No. It's from the base to the tip. And use a tape measure on the outside. Yes, of course. You don't have to stick anything inside. No, no, no. Don't stick anything in it. That's crazy.

I can't believe we had two of those stories. The only thing that's supposed to happen with the urethra, unless a urologist is, you know, doing sounding themselves, they do have sounds. That's what they're called. And it comes from nautical term when they would use sounding to determine how deep the water was. But they do have these metal sounds that they can put in there. But the only thing that should happen with the tip of your penis is urine or semen should come out. Yes. Nothing goes in.

Okay? Terrible. Now, there are some people that like to do urethral sounding for sexual pleasure. I'm not a namby-pamby, just say no person to that kind of stuff, but you have to be very careful. And you need to know what you're doing. and you need to be very gentle. And I just can't recommend it to the lay person. I really can't.

No, hell no. Because there's just a lot that can go wrong with that. It looks like when he shoved it up there, I guess he kept shoving and shoving and went up nodding. It went from the x-ray. It looked like it nodded up inside him. Inside him. Yeah.

So when he, okay, so the end gets, so it got curled around. The end goes in one of the loops, and then when he pulls it out, it pulls it tight. And now he's got a knot, and he can't get it back. out. Now he really has a problem. So now he's got... He had a problem to begin with. Right. So he has the USB thing. So it's probably a lightning cable. And then, so that's very narrow on one end.

But the other end is got this rectangular metal thing. And there's nothing he can do now. He's got that hanging out of his penis. If he cuts it off, he's in worse shape. Yep. So now he just has to fess up. So what happened? And there isn't bloody...

There was a bloody image of that USB cable on the surgical. Yeah. You can tell them. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Oh, and that is a lightning cable. You are correct, Dr. Steve.

Yeah. Give yourself a bill. Okay, I will. I give myself a bill. Cool, man. Yeah, don't do that. Yeah. Just don't do it.

So he didn't wait three months like that other kid. No. He couldn't. Because he would have died. He couldn't pretend it wasn't there. That other kid could just go, well, It just disappeared. I guess it's gone.

Yep. Oh, God. Yeah, Lord. Did it say how long it took him to report to his parents what he had done? No, I guess it wasn't long. I think he crammed it up there and it got nodded up and he's like, oh, I got it. I was studying alternative methods of computer control. Yep.

All right. Okay. All right, you're ready to answer some questions. Let's do it. Number one thing, don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right. Here we go. Thank you, Ronnie B.

Hey, Dr. Steve and Dr. Scott. I hope you guys are well. Hey, thanks, man. David. From Oki City. Just have a question about the appendix. What is it? I mean, the only function is to just get inflamed and kill you.

Or have we learned in the past few decades that it actually does something else? I mean, I know that, you know, like... No, it's a great question. Well, wait, he was going to add something. The tonsils used to get inflamed all the time, and they would just pull them. Yep. Spleen. And then they found out that it actually, they actually helped the immune system a little bit.

So does the appendix actually do anything for you helpful, or is it... Well, you know, people are still arguing about this. It's this sort of thin tube that looks, you know, like a warm. So they call it vermaform. And it's in the lower right hand part of the abdomen. So when you get appendicitis, you'll usually have referred pain to the middle of the abdomen. And then it will start to migrate down to the lower right side. And usually is accompanied by you can't drop a deuce.

In other words, by constipation. Right. And then you start getting the insane pain and it's got to be removed. So, you know, for the longest time, people thought that there was no purpose to it. But it may be, particularly in our ancestors, when they ate some crappy food, which they did a lot. Sure. And then puked and got diarrheal illness. And, you know, then, you know, they got cholera or whatever parasites in the water that they were just drinking out of the.

You know, you've got a dead mammoth a couple of miles upstream and you're just drinking out of the water because you're too stupid to know anything about any of this stuff. And then, you know, you sort of kill some of your good bacteria. The appendix may have been a repository for beneficial bacteria, so it was almost acted like a probiotic storage unit. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. and may have replenished the gut with good bacteria. What about in traditional Chinese medicine? Is there anything interesting about the appendix? No, I was thinking the same thing.

Nothing at all in Chinese medicine concerning the appendix at all. Yeah, it's very strange. Okay, and that's interesting. So there was a study that showed that people who had their appendix removed were more likely to get claustridium difficulty colitis, or some people will call it C. diff or Clostridium difficile. And that's a colitis, what we callous, colitis caused by a crappy bacterium that takes over from the good bacteria in your gut

and causes these pseudomembranes and then causes diarrhea that can be sometimes life-threatening. And it's interesting. So people who had their appendix removed had an increased risk, didn't doom them to having claustridium, but they had an increased risk of having this claustridium difficile infection. Was it right after surgery?

I wonder if it's down the road. And the reason I asked. No, no, no, no, it's down the road. Okay, yeah, okay. It's down the road. Isn't that interesting? That is kind of strange. So, anyway.

Hmm. Yeah. So, yeah, so it may help to increase beneficial bacteria. and there are immune system functions in there as well. It's not known for that, but like the tonsils, the person mentioned, and like the spleen, which you can kind of do without. These are three structures.

The tonsils when you're an adult, the spleen when you're an adult, and the appendix you can do without may also have some immune function. And so it would be interesting to know whether children, because they're the ones that really are affected by, like if you take the spleen out too early, those kids are really more susceptible to infections by encapsulated bacteria and stuff. And, you know, when you get older, you can take it out and you do okay. But when you're young, it's a problem. So, you know, it would be interesting to know that little kids who have their appendix removed, do they have more? problem with infections. I can't find study on that.

But anyway, yeah, and that interesting? I guess I said that on too many things. The appendix is involved in maturation of a certain kind of white blood cell called the B lymphocyte, and these are small lymphocyte

subtypes, and they make antibodies. And so it may be that the appendix has some role in maturing these things so that they do their function a little bit more efficiently. Anyway, so it's, yeah, it's, you can do without it. It doesn't seem to be a whole lot of effects when you remove it.

And the effects that there are seem to be subtle, but there may be real. Sure. So, kind of cool. Cool. All right. I labeled this next phone call as WTF, no clue. So let's see what this is about. Hello to the Motley crew and to Dr. Steve.

Hey, man. Hey. Why don't they take the viruses back into the lab and then create a messenger RNA or strand of amino acids and create and make it so when these things engage and lay on top of the amino acids that their DNA is changed and then they become sterile. And then they get grow a bunch of that stuff, then they could release it and it would, you know, oh God, I'm sorry. Well, okay I think okay Then this guy may have called back Let's see

Hey guys Yeah, it's him Good, good good Thanks for taking my call What if we could create A sterile Variation of the virus And release them

And then they would Entangle themselves With the bad viruses And make them sterile Okay, I know where he's going with us We don't have a ton of time left So they do this with mosquitoes sometimes, and I don't know how effective it is,

but they'll take certain mosquito species, and when they mate with the regular mosquitoes, apparently their offspring are sterile or they can't. They mate, but they don't produce anything, and it decreases the population. So I found this idea, actually, although I think this guy was impaired the first time he called But the second time it made total sense, was that if you could engineer a version of this virus that was more transmissible but had no adverse effects on people, then in theory, you could release it into the wild and it would take over and it would push out the delta variant and the mu and the Lambda variant and it would be the new variant.

would be totally benign. Here's the problem with doing that is we think we're smarter than we are when it comes to this stuff. And there's no way to know that we could create this, you know, benign version of the virus that's more transmissible. First off, how do you do that if you're not making people cough? But let's just say that you've figured it out. This benign version that's more transmissible, what if it mutates?

and becomes lethal. Yeah. And then can you imagine, I mean, we have enough conspiracy stuff going on now that if they said, but we're going to release this virus into the community, what the hell people would be saying if we did that? So let's not do that. It's actually, the guys had a great idea. But it's a great damn idea.

I mean, no, it's, it's, the idea itself is pretty darn smart. We just aren't smart enough to do it. Right. Yeah. And I think that we have got to, yes, use vaccines to the extent that they are worth something, but also we have to have a therapeutic. And Molinupyere is looking decent. I'm hearing good things about it.

And if it's released and it prevents the vast majority of people who have early disease from going to the hospital, hospital. And if you don't go to the hospital, you don't end up on the vent. You don't end up on the vent. You don't die. And if there are no adverse effects from this thing, I mean, this is a big laundry list of boxes that's got to tick off. But if it does that, this thing's over. We're done. It's done. We can move on to the next thing, you know, because therapeutics are where it's at. And the, I just read an article. somebody sent me where Tennessee is talking about reserving monoclonal antibodies for people who haven't had the vaccine.

And I was like, hmm, well, I wouldn't have gotten it in that case. And I'm telling you, I think I was going to die. That's how I felt. I mean, my oxygen saturation was dropping, and my fever, you know, when you're 66 and you've got a fever of 103, it sucks. I mean, I really, I wouldn't have minded if I died. That's how bad I felt. And so in that situation, I would have had to just work it out and take my chances. Now, I had the vaccine.

I probably would have been okay. But I certainly was more productive because I had the monoclonal antibody. Does that count for something? I never took a single sick day. I worked throughout the whole thing. I just did telemedicine. You know, I was able to do that. people who can work from home

who have that and they feel fine they just have to be in isolation they can continue to be productive so I don't know I mean yes we have to save lives and but I know and I know there are people out there will you're just rewarding you know

it's okay you know if someone is that sick and they haven't had the vaccine now is not the time to say I told you so no but anyway so it's tough Jesus you know everybody's just mad

about everything yep so all right okay doke let's see okay this is interesting now I don't think

we have time for this no we don't this is 12 minutes long we're going to have to do this next time one of my buddies sent in a

12 minute story but I do want to do it next time so let's do this one I can do this one really quick Hey Dr. Steve California. After skipping my annual checkup last year, I went back to my doctor this year.

I turned 45 this year. And she said, hey, you're due for your colonoscopy, which I thought I wasn't due till 50. She mentioned that they changed the guidance on that. Indeed, they did. Give yourself a bill. And what evidence is behind changing that guidance. Thanks very much. Yeah.

So American Cancer Society. Research have been observing that the risk for colorectal cancer has been increasing in people born more recently. And it's called a birth cohort effect, and people born in 1990 are over four times the risk of developing rectal cancer and double the risk for colon cancer compared with people born in 1950. So it may have something to do with our diet, but it may also have something to do with HPV. There's all kinds of stuff like that.

that's, you know, running around that can cause an increase in this. But right now it's just a statistical thing. So if you're 45, you need to get your first colonoscopy. Or if someone in your family had colon cancer at 45, you need to get your first colonoscopy 10 years before that. So that would be at 35, right. Okay? So, yeah, that has changed. And, you know, it's just part of being in the modern world.

science evolves and the statistics are showing us that if we want to prevent people from dying from colon cancer early early detection is the key correct and early detection means getting your colonoscopy earlier get it all right thanks always go to dr scott we can't forget rob sprance bob kelly greg hughes anthony cumia jim norton travis teft that gould girl lewis johnson paul of charsky chowdy 108 Eric Nagel, the Port Charlotte Horror in the Saratoga Skank Roland Campo, sister of

Chris, Sam Robert, she who owns Pigs and Snakes, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinschmidt, Dale Dudley, Holly from the Gulf, Steve Tucci times three, the great Rob Bartlett, Vicks, Nether Fluids, Carl's deviated septum, Casey's wet t-shirt, Bernie

and Sid, Martha from Arkansas's daughter, Ron Bennington, and Fez Watley, the great Fez Watley, who will be missed from now until the end of time, and our friend GVAC, and I guess they're hanging out together, whatever, doing whatever they do after you leave this mortal plane. All of those who supported this show never gone unappreciated. Listen to our Sirius XM show on the Faction Talk Channel, Sirius XM Channel 103, Saturdays

at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern, but on demand, because I don't even think those times are right anymore, but other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thanks, Dr. Scott.

Thank you. Thank you.