Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 487 - Ten Days to Decimate the Curve

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Dr Steve and Dr Scott discuss: Pat Duffy and the first Weird Medicine Dementia risk improved with...what surgery? An insane way to end the pandemic Ambiguous Grief and the Empty Nest A guy whose depression goes away when he's sick Stacy asks: What's a Lymph Node anyway? Secondary Polycythemia Metal Allergies (Killswitch Engage-induced hives?) Check out these important links! stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) simplyherbals.net (for all your StressLess and FatigueReprieve needs!) Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now while he’s still cheap!) CHECK US OUT ON PATREON!  ALL NEW CONTENT! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What song always gets chickens dancing at a wedding? The Y. HENCA. 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. Why can't you give me the respect that I'm entitled to? I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus.

I've got subalibes stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbells, exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take my brain out and blast it with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic mill. All my ailments, the health equivalent, citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet,

I think I'm doing, then I'll have to go insane. I want a requiem for my disease. So I'm paging Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve. From the world famous Carnif Electric Network Studios, it's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, no, a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott,

the traditional Chinese medical practitioner, gives me streetcred, the weird old. alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, 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.

If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 347-76-4-3-23. That's 347. Poo-Hig. Visit us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at DR. Scott W.M. Visit our website at Dr. Steve.com for podcasts, medical news and stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take anything you hear with a grain of salt. And don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking to it over with your doctor, nurse practitioner, practical nurse, physician assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory scientist, registered dietitian.

Did I say respiratory therapist or whatever? I don't think I did. I don't think so. I don't think so. I have to add that. respiratory this is very professional therapist

all right okay that's long overdue anyway check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net simplyherbils.net and don't forget to check out stuff.doctrsteve.com that's stu-ff

dot dr. steve.com just go there and click through to Amazon and it helps us stay on the air That really makes a huge difference. And don't forget to check out patreon.com. At the first of the month, you get the biggest bang for your buck. I hate using that phrase, but it's, I don't know, a better way to put it.

If you have a Patreon account, what happens is they bill you at the first of the month. So if you sign up on September 30th and pay five bucks a month, they will now also bill you on October 1st. So the best time to do it is at the beginning of the month. So this is the time to do it. Check us out at patreon.com slash weird medicine. I've got some classic old shows that you cannot find anywhere else anymore. And I'm going to be putting some things up from clips from Sirius XM and some other crap like that on there that I have the rights to use. And then we're going to be doing some live streaming when we get a few more Patreon subscribers.

And it's mostly Tacey and me. And she likes to give me a hard time. And every third show is a drunk show because Tacey likes to start doing it. We do three shows at once, and by the third one, she's pretty well-faced and giving me a hard time, so it's fun. And we're going to be wrapping up our video. I've got my green screen here that I've got to install. We've got our new cameras and lights, and so it's going to be fun. So check us out, patreon.com slash weird medicine.

All right, Dr. Scott. So Jim and Sam, James and Samuel, as I like to refer to them, have re-signed a contract for three years. Oh, wow. So I figure we'll stay around for another three years as well. Hopefully, if they hadn't resigned, we probably would have resigned, but we'll always have the podcast to do. Because really, that's what brought me originally to the channel. Was helping them with crazy stunts and then ultimately doing prostate exam on Pat Duffy, who, by the way, I'm going to give a huge shout out to. He sent me something through Twitter, and I wanted to read this to you. And for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I'll explain it. It says, good doctor. This is the great Pat Duffy. I just wanted to tell you, I just left the doctor after having some weird urinary issues. The doctor opted for a prostate exam and asked if I ever had one before. I awkwardly explained our lovely interaction and informed him that it was normal at that time.

That was 2007. My doc didn't find it nearly as amusing as I did, especially after informing him he could watch it on YouTube. Anyway, it turns out I have a normal prostate and blah, blah, blah. I thought you'd appreciate the update. Feel free to share with your listeners. Love you, love the show. So I've told this story before, but there are probably a number. enough new listeners that don't know the history.

So I had been the medical advisor behind the scenes for the Opie and Anthony show for about a year and a half, maybe almost going on two years. And Opie had this idea where he said, listen, we've got these golden tickets for Saturday night. If you've got an idea for a show, send us an email. So I immediately emailed Steve Carleese. He was the executive producer of the show. and sadly is no longer with us. But a very, very nice guy.

And the cool thing about Steve was, if I emailed him, he would email me right back. I guess he sat in front of his computer and, Bing, you know, something would come up. He'd always email me right back. Whereas if I emailed O.P. Jim or anybody else on the show, even E. Rock at the time, you know, I might hear back from them. But Steve, I always heard back from. And I just immediately sent him this idea. I've got an idea of doing an uncensored version. of the Dean Adele show.

We'll call it Weird Medicine and I'll tell crazy medical stories, which I've later realized HIPAA is an issue. But we'll answer questions from your legion of unhealthy fans. And he immediately sent back, I think it's a great idea. Let me take it to them.

So there's a lot of stuff that went on in between there, including us forging this relationship with Sherwin's sleeves. where he made this incredible, still the best theme song of any show that's ever been on the radio, in my opinion. I agree. And I can say that because I didn't have anything to do with that. It was 100% sure when Slaves is a frigging genius. But anyway, so P.A. John and I went up there, and on October 12th, which was a Friday, they used to be on five days a week.

I showed up with P.A. John in the studio. and we sat in the bleachers and just watched them do the show. And I thought they would let us come in because they'd already greenlit the show. We were going to do 45 minutes, I think. No, it was 90 minutes. We were going to do 90 minutes of a three-hour block. Dang. So, well, they wanted us to do three hours.

I think I have that right. So Big Kev did the first 90 minutes and then we did the second 90 minutes. Okay. And so, but getting to the Pat Duffy thing, and I'll can all the stuff about the first show, we, so we're just sitting there in the bleachers with a bunch of other people, because on Fridays you could go sit in the bleachers. And all of a sudden, Opie goes, yep, and next up, we're going to have Dr. Steve in the studio, and he's going to answer medical questions. And I'm like, what? No, I had no idea. That was just, you know, took me completely by surprise.

I thought we would get to go in, and I had sort of a promo prepared, hey, we're going to do this show called Weird Medicine on Saturday night. Wow. And so I looked at P.A. John, because they didn't invite him in there. They knew me. They didn't know him. Okay. So they opened the door, and I sit down, and there they are.

I mean, these people were heroes of mine. Right on. And O.B. at that time, particularly, was very intimidating. and Jim and Anthony were doing their thing so they didn't really we didn't interact a whole lot but they were like hey how's it going that kind of stuff

and then the interview starts and at some point I'll either play it here or I'll put it over on Patreon I believe I have this audio somewhere and we were just talking about medicine and Anthony asked me a question that I

or somebody called in and had a question where they were ejaculating when they moved their bowels. Okay. And they weren't really ejaculating. What was happening was semen or some sort of white milky fluid, which really probably wasn't even semen. It was prostatic fluid, was emanating from the end of this person's penis whenever they had a hard bowel movement. And Anthony raised his hand and said, you know, oh, Dr. Steve, can I answer this?

I think it has something to do with this prostate. And we got talking about fluid dynamics and stuff. And then Opie said, oh, you know, you sound sort of like, who was it? Oh, shit. Who was the guy that played Batman in Adam West? Adam West. You sort of sound like Adam West. And I just thought for a second, I just went, Catwoman, like that.

And then I got to laugh. And it wasn't that telling it, it's not funny. But at the moment, it was kind of funny because they weren't expecting it out of me. And then Jimmy did his whole, oh, you would think. I think that it was the real person, you know, that whole thing. And anyway, so I got kind of comfortable, and that was a mistake because then the question comes that I wasn't expecting me. They didn't tell me anything.

Opie just says, are you one of those doctors that sticks your finger up people's asses? And I'm like, yeah, I do it all the time. Yeah, sure. Big mistake. And they said, well, can you do one here? And I start hemming and hauling, and I'm like, oh, shit. I am they're taking me down a rabbit hole and I said oh no I don't have a license in New York I couldn't do a prostate exam up here and they're like oh no we're just you know we're just friends just you know being silly I'm like well okay well I would need I would need rubber gloves and then they had a guy on the show named Than Brian and he was up paired up with than or with Sam Roberts at one point they had this show called Than and Sam and Than is standing behind me and just to my right he clonk he plops down a box of rubber gloves

oh my god and their actual clinical rubber gloves like you could actually get i didn't have an excuse to say these aren't the right kind of gloves these aren't exam gloves and i said yeah okay that's fine but you can't just rough you can't just do this dry you got to have lube and then don't on the other side on my left he plops down a thing of lube now you were set up dude I don't know if I was set up or if they were just that ready for anything up there. I don't know. I don't know the answer to this day. Someday I'll have to ask Thane about that.

And, you know, Steve's no longer with us. And so an opium anthra, they wouldn't remember because they, you know, once they did a show, they just put it out of their heads. Right on. So, but anyway, I had no way to get out of it. So they said after the break, Dr. Steve's going to check Pat Duffy's prostate. Oh, wow. Pat was their sort of stunt boy at the time. He was an intern.

I believe he was an intern at the time, but he would do anything. And so I just, during the break, I sort of prepped him, and I went behind a couch because I was going to have him bend over a couch. And I just told Sam, who was an intern at the time, who was videotaping this, just please don't get my phone. face. My voice is fine. Just don't get my face. Because at this time, I was still just doing my regular job.

And I wasn't 100% sure what was going to happen to me after being on the Opion Anthony show. Turns out nobody cared. But I didn't know that at the time. So I did this prostate exam. Pat was great. You know, he made horrible noises, and his prostate was normal.

And I did what I should do for a man his age. because he had no reason to get a prostate exam. But I did do a testicular exam on him. And it was normal. But because just to demonstrate, hey, this is what you really should be doing on a young man, is self-testicular exam. So I got something out of it, some real information out of it.

And then that became my bit. So then I went back the next time I had to do Roland Campos. And then the time after that, I did Tippy Tom. and that was my idea because I figured if I did a prostate exam on Tippy Tom, the homeless guy, then I could say, listen, the bits over. There's no way we can go beyond that. And that's actually what happened. But anyway, so that, yeah, that was Pat Duffy.

And I got a great picture of him afterward with us, you know, with our arms around each other. And I've got my fingers sticking up in his face. I'll post that somewhere. But anyway, yeah, that's Pat. So Pat finally gets a real prostate exam. And he tells the guy, hey, you can watch my first one on YouTube. Oh, my God, it's funny. Yeah, it was crazy.

I will have to tell you that it kind of ruined the rest of my day because I went out of there thinking, well, the AMA is going to come after me. Oh, wow. I'm going to be in all this trouble with the American Medical Association. You know what? The AMA can go kiss my left testicle at this point. They don't have any power. And we can claim at your age you have the board of medical examiners in New York. Yeah, I wasn't really practical.

medicine, I was doing a demonstration. So what'd you say? I said, at your age, we could claim a little bit early onset dementia to just. Yeah, there you go. We have to. Sure, why not? I'll cop to that. Well, I was so terrified, though, dude.

You clearly said that it was not a medical exam. It was just a couple of friends, you know? Well, yeah, Jim said that. Checking prostates. Yeah, just a couple of guys being silly. A couple guys being silly. I love it. I love it.

So I'm going to find that stuff. What year was it? That was 2007. That was October 12th, 2007, because our first show was October 13th on the Saturday night virus. Gotcha. And I, oh, that night, I've told you that story, right? About when we went to eat at Nobu, and I couldn't enjoy it because I was so nervous. And I had 20 different topics in this folder we were going to talk about.

And we go up there and there is fucking Anthony. Yep. Anthony Coomia, I was sitting in his chair when I was doing, because I was running the, I wasn't running the board. Danny Ross was doing that, but I was running the call screener software. And so they just showed me, you hear two seconds, here's how you click, click, click, click. Thank God I'm reasonably technically savvy. And that I have a degree in radio, television and motion pictures from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So all of this wasn't that unfamiliar to me. and you learn pretty quickly too well yeah but you know they just kind of threw us in there it's like here you go there you go but anthony's like no we're going to watch the show and i said no you can't you can't watch the show you can't be sitting there while i'm doing this and he's no no no no we're going to watch it'll be fine and his girlfriend melinda was she was very gleeful that i was nervous that anthony was there and but then once we got going um it was all below the belt stuff that was easy for us to answer, but it was interesting for the people

listening. The phone bank had 12 lines. They were all completely full. Wow. And they at one point said, listen, you guys got to stop doing topics and start taking more phone calls because the phone banks are just absolutely, you know, destroyed. So we did that and we just started taking phone calls one after another after another. And that was actually double vasectomy Todd's first appearance on the show was he was a caller to the show. Oh, wow.

And I didn't recognize his voice. I knew him, but I didn't recognize his voice, nor the question that he asked. So we just kept barreling through. And we had a guest, which was Eric Nagel, aka E. Rock, and we just bumped him. And so it kind of was funny

because the story that went around was Dr. Steve had such a good show that his first episode, or no, first show that he ever did. he bumped E. Rock. Poor E. Rock. Oh, man. I love it.

Yeah, it was fun. And Anthony came up to us afterward. And this was when I felt really good about it. He said that was the best first show that I've ever heard anybody ever do. That's pretty cool. And that made me feel really good. And I was on Cloud 9. I walk out of the studio.

And there is Melinda, Anthony's girlfriend, screaming at this friend of mine from the chat room who had come up there that apparently he and Anthony had a feud together and I knew nothing about it. And, you know, I invited him up there. Sure, you know, come out. Well, I guess he asked if he could come up. I said, sure. And so he's sitting in the bleachers.

When she figured out who he was at the end of the show, she's just screaming at him, you motherfucker and all this kind of stuff and just with her finger in his face. And I'm going from Cloud 9 to, I mean. hell. Because I brought this guy up here and now Anthony's girlfriend is screaming at him. I know she's going to be mad at me. And then, you know, and poor guy, his name's Jeremy. And they chased him out of the, through the elevator. I said, Jeremy, I'll just see you

later. I just waved at it. I said, I had no idea what's going on. I don't know what their history was. Apparently, he had a website that used their name like opiumanthony.net, I think, was what it was. And there were aspects of that. You know,

those websites, they always turn negative. The Howard Stern Fan Network is just all Howard sucks, Howard sucks, Howard sucks, Howard sucks, Howard sucks. And if I remember correctly, opiumanthony.net kind of turned negative. And he was the guy that owned the thing. So, you know, of course, he got painted with that same brush.

And I think that's what it was. Because I do remember maybe six months before that, Anthony talking about, hey, I'm going to sue this guy because he's using my name on his website, and they're just doing nothing but talking trash about us. And I guess I probably should have put two and two together, but I kind of had other things on my mind. A little nervous, yeah? Yeah, nerves. I didn't eat before we went, even though we went to Nobu, which is right. down the street from the studio at the time. Because I knew I was just going to puke.

That's how nervous I was. I was petrified. That's cool. But anyway. That's cool. That's a good story. And there we are. It's a good story.

Long many years later. That's right. And then we went to Smith Bar that night and watched Eastside Dave singing, um, uh, what's Rosalita with four other people where they turned a chair upside down And each one of them was grabbing a leg and singing into it like it was a microphone. Lovely. The old Bruce Springsteen. Yeah, the Bruce Springsteen.

And then I think, well, there was a John Stewart impersonator there that night, too. But anyway. And Tacey and I saw Smith Bar and some TV show recently. But anyway, all right. There you go. That's all I've got. So thank you, Pat Duffy, for bringing back that memory. Good stuff.

Do we want to talk about Amicron? I don't really want to talk about it. But it's just, it's going ham. But here's the thing. We're seeing the death rate continue to decline while cases are going ham, as I said earlier. And we are not seeing that an uptick in hospitalizations commensurate with the uptick in cases. So I've said for some time, we need to stop talking about frigging cases and only look at hospitalizations and deaths. Yes.

Cases don't matter. do not track cases of the common cold. We don't track cases of seasonal gastroenteritis viruses, so we should no longer be tracking cases of this virus. I agree, because you know all that tracking does. It scares the shit out of people, and it drives policy. Right on. I agree. And now kids can't go to school again and all this stuff, and it's just, it's horse shit. But stop looking at cases just by themselves. You want to look at the percentage of cases that end up in hospitalizations and then the absolute numbers because the absolute numbers matter in the sense that if you have a hospital that's got 300 beds and they've got 400 attempted hospitalizations, that's a problem. So those are the absolute numbers.

But the relative numbers matter too. So if you have a thousand cases of something and 10% of those end up in the hospital, you'll have 100 hospitalization. But if you have 100,000 with 1%, you're still going to have 100 cases. But now if you have 200,000, you're going to have 200 cases. So the cases are going up, but that's because you've got so many more – I'm sorry, the hospitalizations are going up. But that's because you have so many more cases. More infections, right. But with a smaller percentage of people ending up in the hospital, 1% versus 10%.

So we, and I'm just making those numbers up. That's not have anything to do with this, with the numbers of Omicron. So hospitalizations and deaths, that's what we need to be looking at. Go to COVID. com and you can see it. You can do it for your own state. You can do it for your own country if you're not from the United States. And there you go.

State specific. Yeah. Yeah. We have a person from Norway that's listening to our Patreon feed. Wow, cool. That's kind of cool. That is cool. And we do have people from just about every country that listens to the podcast, including one or two that have been flagged as being from North Korea, which is cool.

Welcome to our North Korean friends. I guess. I wasn't aware that that was even a possibility. I bet over the, we're underground. I just wait. Well, maybe. I don't know. Anyway.

All right. Did you have any things to say about anything? I hadn't, well, I had one interesting topic with two interesting articles. Okay, we got a lot of phone calls. I'll make it quick. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not, you know. Yeah, it was just a, I.

for whatever reason, dementia was the thing. And two things real quick. This common surgery lowers dementia risks substantially. What? A surgery? A surgery. Yeah, Northwestern University found this. What surgery is it?

New University of Washington found this. So that was it. I was intrigued. I thought, what kind of surgery could lower your risk of dementia? But it's cataract surgery, interestingly. So it has to do with visual stimuli? Evidently, yeah. That's interesting.

But that just kind of goes to show you that. that it is vital with dimension to keep your mind. Well, you can't separate. No. The mind from the body in any way. No. I just sent a guy a thing about narrow band UV light for depression. That there's some efficacy with that.

Wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And the only other part of that. So what was the correlation? It's probably a correlation. There's no causation yet. No causation.

All they showed was. Or the percentages, though, I mean. The, let's say, the findings were people who had the cataract surgery had lowered their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. By how much? I'm looking for numbers. God damn. Hey, now, I'm easy now. I am too smart.

I am to smart. Go ahead. Hey, it's my first one of the year. I'm trying to shake the cobwebs off. Okay. We missed a week. Let's see. 65 years base, 3,038 adults over 65 with cataracts or glaucomas,

853 developed dementia. Okay, so you're going to make me do the math? Well, 300. Come on, there's got to be a risk ratio or something. I hadn't got that far down. Oh, fine. Hey, let me give you my other one. Hang on down.

Did it say it was statistically significant? Statistically significant, yes. That's all you need to know. Good God. I'll find a number. If this were the podcast proper, I would say that we could. do the calculation on the fly. Yeah.

Oh, here we go. You found it? It's getting close. 30% still a 30% less risk of having dementia. So there was a 30% decline in dementia risk and people that had cataract surgery. That's very interesting. Yeah, I'm sorry, Dr. Steve. Yeah.

Okay. And they're saying that is significant. Now the absolute numbers would be interesting to know because then we could calculate the number needed to treat. So if you'll forward me that study, maybe we'll do it next week. It will walk people through the math. It sounds like it would be dry, but it won't be because we can calculate how many cataracts you have to remove to prevent one case of dementia using their numbers, which would be kind of a – I think that would be very interesting. So if you'll forward that to me, we'll do it next time. Yeah, and the way they do the surgeries now, it's just so incredible.

The way they used to do cataract surgeries versus – My dad had cataract surgery when he was 80-something. He said it was the best thing he ever did. Yeah, yeah, my grandfather had it. It was old school. I mean, this was back, you know, 25, 30 years ago where they actually cut with a knife. Oh, yeah. You know, it was pretty cool.

But the only other thing I found was just this one risk. In fact, it also increases dementia is blood pressure in your middle age. So making sure that you keep your blood pressure under risk. I thought, you know, starting off the New Year's. So if you treat it, that's good? That's good. That's good. Well, that makes sense.

Yeah. So keeping your blood pressure down, takes the stress off your body. you know, off your vascular system and helps you brain health, so. Okay. So there you go. All right. I've done my work. All right.

They call hypertension the silent killer for a reason. Yeah. You never feel like you have symptoms unless it's so high that you're really in trouble. But people with moderately elevated hypertension or moderately elevated blood pressure or mild to moderate hypertension never have a clue that they have it, but it still increases their risk. of heart attack stroke. And apparently, according to that study, dementia as well, which makes sense. All right?

Yep. Sounds good. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right. Let's take some phone calls here. I was just thinking if the incubation period for COVID is 10 days. Okay.

Let's say it is. If the whole world isolated one person from another for 10 days, would it kill this virus and just be done? Yes. We've talked about this, but it's not really 10 days. But the concept is correct. So if we did it today, there are people that are just developing COVID-19, and they will start getting, you know, if they just got exposed today, they'll start to get sick within

five to 11 days, and then they might be sick for another 10 days. So let's say Omicron, no one goes to the hospital, because that's the problem in this, is you get the people that are in the hospital for 60 days. But let's just say it's, what would we come up to? Five to, let's say they go 11 days. So it would be 21 days. If you put everyone in a bubble, like a plastic bubble, so that there was no way that they could come in contact with any other person on Earth. Now, you'd have to do it with every single person on Earth.

Absolutely, this thing could have been over 21 days into it, but we can't do that. That's the problem. But yes, absolutely, that would work. That presumes that there are no asymptomatic carriers that carry it beyond the period where we're released from the bubbles. It just takes one. Right, it just takes one and get it started all up again because it just took one person to start this thing in the first place, assuming, you know. It was done naturally. All right.

Great question, though, and that's brilliant, and yes, that would work. It is impractical to the point of being impossible. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve, it's your friendly respiratory therapist from Boston. Hello, friendly respiratory therapist. I'm listening to a show now about the caterpillar becoming the butterfly. Oh, okay. This was Tacey.

This was last week. Tacey and I were both. last week so we kicked Dr. Scott and everybody else out and we did one together and we were talking about how bummed we are that our kid is about to fly the coop

well he has flown the coop now he comes back but he isn't ours anymore you know and we were bummed about it but you don't want a 22 year old kid sleeping in your bed between the two of you going mommy mommy either you know you don't want that

So you have to, this is what you have to do, but at some point you have, they have to leave and then cleave to somebody else, you know. And, uh, anyway, so yeah, that's what we were talking. And spreading their wings and float. Uh-oh. Oh, we lost her there. This year with my son whom I'm very, very close with going off to college two states away. Oh. I related to a word, word, set of words.

I can't even think of it, but it's called ambiguous grief. A woman named Paula Boss, or Pamela Boss, wrote a book about it, ambiguous grief. That's the phrase that I used to describe what I went through when my son left for college. Love listening to your show. Have a great day. Okay, hey, thanks. Thank you so much. And I heard her driving and trying to fiddle with her phone, so please just pull over and stop. It's okay. Nothing we're doing is that important. But thanks for calling that.

I called an anticipatory grief in the sense that we were anticipating him leaving for good. But I'm looking at ambiguous loss. It's a loss that occurs without a significant likelihood of reaching emotional closure or a clear understanding. This kind of loss leaves a person searching for answers and this complicates and delays the process of grieving. I don't know. I mean, I guess, yeah, I mean, we'll never get emotional closure in the sense that he'll always. be around. Both of our kids will always be around. And so there will never be any closure to the fact that they're leaving. But yeah, that's okay. And then ambiguous grief is grieving someone

who is still alive. Okay, let me see. This is a different approach to it. So let's see. Yeah, this is fascinating. I'm pulling a Dr. Scott here. Ambiguous grief feelings may be sadness and yearning, anger and guilt. or a range of other emotions can become more complicated than the grief that comes after a death when the behaviors and words of the new person causes us to question our old memories. Or worse, they can start to consume our brains as those old memories begin to fade. Okay, another complication of ambiguous grief, as many people don't recognize it as grief. Yeah, it's, so there are some tips.

I remember when I left my ex-wife's house. Which one? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Sorry. No, no, no. I've told Tacey I've been married to her longer and I've ever been married to anybody. But, yeah, I cried when I left even though I couldn't stand her. I mean, she had put me through so much shit and stolen so much money for me and got me in so much trouble from the IRS while she was funding her.

her boyfriend's trip from California to here and all this kind of stuff, that I should have been just matter in hell, but I was grieving the relationship that should have been. I'm sure that's what that was. But I did cry when I left, although I didn't last very long. I got to my new house, I was like, hell yeah. Oh, hell yeah. You'll be strutting my stuff.

I didn't get to strut my stuff, though, because then Tacey came along pretty quickly, and that was the end of that. Yep. I figured I'd be dating, running around. and acting crazy and nope she hooked you pretty quickly very quickly now i i got hooked i was gladly hooked uh old tacy was something she was she was like somebody i'd never been with before but anyway uh so if you have ambiguous grief here are some tips remember that the present doesn't override the past this could be easier said than done but uh the person your

loved one is now doesn't change the way they were. So when it's with kids, you know, they're babies and they were dependent on you and now they aren't anymore. But that's a good thing. And understand that the change isn't the person. So, you know, they're just changing. And acknowledge the grief and the pain of the loss and be open to a new type of relationship with that person. And then connect with others who can relate. And that's our respiratory therapist from Boston. She's my new anticipatory and ambiguous grief partner. So there you go. All right.

So listen, if you have kids that are fleeing the coop and you're facing an empty nest, it's a good thing. Okay? So I tell, well, I can't tell that story about Tacey, but we have more time together, just the two of us now. Yes. Are we taking advantage of that? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. could be the thought that's why you and i are going to Vegas and just you know on a business trip

if you know what i mean thoughts can't because we're going to be doing some business business all right all right here we go hi dr steve this is dane uh buddy on the podcast hey thanks man so here's something i've been wondering about for a long time okay my depression goes away while i'm sick yep even though i'm coughing and haven't already knows i feel great and things are fun it's like my Anne Hedonia goes away. Well, that's a great word. Okay, An Hedonia, meaning lack of taking pleasure in things. So, you know what hedonism is?

And then you take the Greek A or Anne and put it in front of that. It's the opposite of that. Yep. So Anhedonia is the opposite of happiness or the opposite of taking pleasure in things. I've been diagnosed with depression. I've taken this to summarize in the past, but they haven't improved my mood. like this does I am not taking any medications okay no depression and pills or anything like that anything else okay so what's going on there and based on what it could be could tell me

something about how I could improve my mood aside from getting sick again yeah that's a good one I'm sure you could imagine the kind of nightmare you live where it's like oh I feel right now but oh no when it's over yeah yeah so I did some research on this one because that one kind of blew my mind. And I wondered if he was an outlier. And all of the studies that you see on, because when he's sick, what do you have? You have cytokines are released. Interlucin 6, other interleukins, other interferons and stuff like that.

So I figured that had to be the common denominator. And everything that you find shows that those things increase depression and that people who get sick, particularly those with HIV or with COVID exhibit symptoms of depression, not getting better or not improvement in mood. But I had a revelation because I found a study in biological psychiatry called induction of. cytokine synthesis and fever suppresses REM sleep and improves mood in patients with major depression. Give yourself a bill. So if you already have major depression, then getting sick and having this cytokine synthesis that's accompanied by fever actually improves their mood. So this guy is not full of beans, nor is he an outlier. This is a known effect, but you already have to be majorly depressed to get this event.

If you're not, if your mood is otherwise normal, then those things will tend to cause symptoms of depression. In both cases, it's transitory. So it says here during the night following endotoxin. So what they did was they took people and just gave them these endotoxins, right? then generated a cytokine, a mini-cytokine storm. And they said rapid eye movement sleep was significantly suppressed, which you would think would be bad.

But changes in slow-wave sleep were not significant. During the next day, all patients were in a significantly improved mood. And a rebound REM sleep was observed on the second night after this administration, and the mood worsened again during the next day is indicating a transient beneficial effect of the treatment. Now, could they use this in the future and try to come up with a treatment for depression that would be rapid of onset? I mean, if you take an SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor like fluvoxamine or fluoxetine or fluoxetine or some of the other ones, you will have to wait eight to 12 weeks. Right.

This works overnight. Right. That's awesome. You know what else works overnight for depression? Ketamine. Ah. Give yourself a bill. I was trying to say it was a trick question.

Nope. No, ketamine. Yeah. Ketamine. And I just put a study on my Twitter feed that it was the largest study of psilocybin that showed improvement in depression. And I have friends. I have a friend, particularly. particularly, who microdoses herself for, and she's self-treating, she's self-medicating

for depression. I can't recommend that, but she sees a huge effect, and it's being borne out in the science. So I think going forward, low-dose psychedelics, at doses that probably won't cause you to see weird shapes in the trees, not that I'm speaking from any personal experience Or maybe see rockets shooting out of people's eyes at you and stuff like that. Oh, really? Is that a personal experience as well? Colors.

Colors. Colors everywhere. Yeah, yeah. You probably won't see those things. But geometric shapes in the trees where the trees become perfect geometric platonic shapes. Yeah, that probably won't see that. Not that I'm speaking from personal. experience. But you won't have that, but you will have the beneficial effect because you don't have to trip balls to get the beneficial effects from things like psilocybin. Now, absolutely,

we're not recommending that people take street psilocybin for this because, again, I have issues with the street drug supply, high levels of reservation about the street drug supply. And I haven't used this analogy in a long time, so I think it's worth using it again. I can't 100% trust my own pharmacist to give me the drug. Now, look, for the pharmacists out there, God bless you, you guys, men and women do an amazing job at keeping our drug supply safe. But it goes from the manufacturer, through a distributor, and all the way through there's a chain of ownership. and you have to sign for all this stuff, and then you've got to count it out. And even then every pharmacist will tell you every once in a while, someone gets the wrong thing.

It's rare, but it happens. And I'll guarantee you every pharmacist has done that at some point, where they've given somebody back in the day there was Losec. That was Omeprosol. It was its original name was Losec, and they got LASICs instead. They'll blame it on the doctor's shitty handwriting. And the fact that LASICs comes in 20 milligrams. and so did Losec come in 20 milligram, you know, capsules. So that was a rough one.

That's why it's now called Prylasek. They had to change the name because of that. Okay. That's interesting. So, but every pharmacist has made mistake. Every doctor's made mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. Of course.

If I can't 100% trust my own pharmacist, even though it's 99.99% by it's not 100%. Why would I trust somebody that's just handing me something in a little baggy that the god knows where it came from how it was harvested i'm even nervous about mushrooms because there are mushrooms out there if you don't know how to pick the right kind of mushrooms you can pick mushrooms that will kill you so i'm nervous about that how why am i trusting these people yeah so i'm not a fan of street drugs in that in that regard um because i'm not a hundred percent fan of pharmaceuticals. Yeah, yeah.

And they're a shitload safer. Oh, heck you. So I think that going forward, I want to see, I believe we are going to see pharmaceutical-grade psilocybin or what will really happen is, is some manufacturer will take psilocybin molecule and change. It put a methyl group here and get a little bit of extra potency out of it, and then they can patent it and sell it for billions of dollars. That's what's really going to

happen. We won't be getting extracted psilocybin. Do you think it'll have the same issues with some of the prescribers that maranol has? In what regard, I don't know anybody that has problems prescribing marinole. Marinole, by the way,

for people who don't know, is synthesized THC. So it's not marijuana, but it is tetrahydricanabinol, and it's delta nine, and it is synthesized in a laboratory, which allows the FDA to then approve it as a drug. But go ahead. What issues are you saying?

I'm not seeing any. And it's not recent, but years past, you know, a lot of, not a lot. I know of some folks that had trouble prescribing it. They just weren't comfortable prescribing because it's a THC. Oh, for God. Exactly. Kiss my ass. And that's even with me suggesting to certain people.

that they go ask for that. It has to be prescribed for the right indication. No, I know. I agree. Yeah, yeah. But, um, no, that's ridiculous. So I just wonder if it'll happen if some. Yeah, sure.

Well, and it'll probably, you know, but my guess is it would be the private psychiatrist do it. Well, it's right now to do ketamine, you have to go through a risk evaluation and management system. Uh, they're called Rams and you've got to take a class. I believe this is correct. And the pharmacy that dispenses it has to do the same. same. And so it's a lot of, it's a lot of rigmarole. And the ketamine is like $1,400 a dose or something

like that. Now, here's the dirty little secret. I can prescribe a ketamine suppository for somebody with rectal cancer, and it's five bucks. So the ketamine ain't the thing. It's the research that they went into getting the FDA approval that costs all the money. Plus, hey, you know, there may be some profiteering there going on there now. I don't know. I don't know anything about the company that's producing it, nor do I know anything about their workflow or anything. But that is a lot of money for something that we've been using in compounding pharmacies for things for years,

and it's very inexpensive. Yeah. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I mean, we want to support medical research. I don't want the government to take it over because there will be no innovation. Exactly. There will be no innovation.

And Dr. Scott's a damn old hippie. Oh, yeah. And even he agrees that innovation is a good thing. Has to. Even though he practices a form of medicines, 4,000 years old. But even in there, there's been innovations as time has gone by. Yeah, of course. A little bit.

Yeah, which you have to be, or it's not going to succeed. Right. If you want a business that's going to fail miserably get one that does not, is not flexible. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. Well, that's cool. Or one that, I don't know, doesn't buy beer for a beer store.

Cool. Oh, you strike two for the old buddy Dr. Scott. That's all right. Oh, Lord. All right. But that's very interesting. Depression resolves. This guy's.

Depression resolves with colds, and it is well described in the medical literature. So that was from 1995. I would like to see them explore that a little bit more. I think, you know, we said the cancer is going to be immunological. I mean, it's going to be all immunology in the future because it is a problem of immunological screening. The immune system recognizing the cancer is foreign. And maybe depression will become immunological in the future, too. at least the treatment for it.

I think, and it's getting close, too. I think, you know. Interesting. Yeah. Because we don't know, hell, we don't know anything about the brain. We know, oh, there's serotonin in there. And when we sample brains in people who are depressed, there's decreased serotonin. So let's just give them a drug that just puts buckets of serotonin in there.

And it does work. But we want something more precise. Right. Yes. It is just, I can't think of a good analogy, but it's just. basically you are putting out a little, little fire with, you know, with a fire hose. You're putting out a match with a fire hose. It's imprecise.

That's the best way. Not that depression is metaphorically a little match. I mean, it's a huge, of course. A huge problem. And I remember getting in an argument with one of Tacey's friends who doesn't like me anymore because of this argument. And they were just saying, well, Tacey's on, you know, on antidepressant. She should just get off of them.

It's like, why are you saying this to her? You know, where's, what, did the medical school you went to? And I wasn't prescribing them for, you know, but it was like, and they're like, well, it's not like depression is terminal or anything. It's like, oh, you never heard of suicidal depression. You know, you've never heard of people. It's like, you guys need to stop practicing medicine without a license. And one of her friends just never spoke a civil word to me again after that.

I mean, there was like three of them saying this all. at the same time. I don't know how it came up. I just came up in the middle of this thing, and poor Tacey was just sitting there trying to defend herself. Yeah, getting beat up. Yep. Tread and water.

Yep. But anyway. She's a good. Yeah, she's a good, and I'll tell you that. All right. Let's see. How about this one? Oh, no, wait a minute.

I'll come back to this one. Let's do this one from your old buddy Tracy, Tracy. Hi, Dr. Steve. I hope you and Scott are doing well. Okay, we can say his name at this point. He's done his penance. Hey, Tracy. We're doing a great man.

It's Stacey Deloche. And he went so far as to bring Tacey a bunch of chocolate and stuff and some habanero peanut brittle. I didn't get any of that. Well, no, there's some down there for you. I was going to say, wait a minute. If you'll quit being mad at him. Miss you, Tacey.

It's got a simple question for you. Sometimes the simple ones are the hardest ones. What is a lymph node? Because I keep getting told by my internist, everyone's a lot of the lymph nodes in my neck are swollen. What is that? Okay. So persistent, dude, call me. We need to look at.

That's not good. So lymph nodes are these small sort of bean-shaped things that are part of your body's immune system. and they filter substances that travel through the lymphatic fluid. And they contain white blood cells that help the body and fight infection disease. And actually, your spleen is basically a giant lymph node. But there are these chains of limp notes, and they're most commonly noticed ones by people are the chain in the front of their neck on either side of their, oh, God, did you hear that? Did you hear that crack?

Oh, that's my high. Yeah, so you break your highway bone. It definitely moved around. Adjusted. God, that was stupid snap. Anyway, I'm moving my trachea around, but it's on either side of the voice box. And that's your anterior cervical chain. And that'll drain things like dental abscesses.

And if you get strep throat, it'll drain that way because everything kind of drains to the center. Yes. So the upper stuff will drain down, lower stuff will drain up. And so these lymph nodes. are found in the neck, under your arms, in the chest, in the abdomen, and in the grinds, grindal area, the junkal area. And there's about 20 to 40 lymph nodes in the armpit, actually. And they can get swollen from shaving or, you know, and those are the things. Deodorants can clog them up sometimes.

Okay. Scientifically proven. Okay, anyway. And these things can also be called lymphic. glands and so when your glands are swollen and not to be confused with the glands penis then and that's what lymph nodes are and when they get infected they get swollen uh your uh tonsils are sort of like lymph tissue as well and uh there you go they're like little trash cans yeah like little trash cans okay yeah so anyway there you go um do you want to we've got one from the chat room

why don't we answer that one sounds good So it's talking about if you have a nickel allergy and you have a surgery that they put something inside you that has a nickel in it, can it cause problems? And that's the... Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk about nickel or metal allergy, for sure. Yeah, metal particular. The first time we answered this question about nickel allergy was on October 13, 2007.

It was our very first show. and Daniel J. Ross was our executive producer of the Saturday Night virus at the time. And he said, I've got a question for you. And he showed me this patch of skin that was red and raised and itchy and what we call squamous, meaning it's just flaky. And he said, what the hell is this? I can't get rid of it. And I said, let me see your jeans. And in fact, he had a jeans with a stud on it that held them together.

And that was right where that was. And so he had a nickel allergy. And those studs, that's classic. Yeah, makes sense. And so I said, just put adhesive tape or a Band-Aid or use nail polish and paint over that stud, and it'll go away. And indeed, that's exactly what happened. So he had contact dermatitis. He had contact nickel allergy dermatitis.

And it tends to be an allergic contact dermatitis. And it's often nickel and jewelry, but doesn't have to be. and it's a common problem. It's almost always due to the nickel component in jewelry. Some people will have this problem because they'll get their ears pierced. And then if they're using a composite stud rather than a pure gold stud, then they'll have this problem. So I highly recommend that people have issues with metal allergies. If you're going to wear earrings, make sure they are pure silver or pure gold.

They've got to be the real deal. Sterling is okay, but it's got to be pure gold. And the nickel is used in costume jewelry, makes a shiny finish, a real smooth surface, but zippers, snap, eyelash curlers, belt buckles, belt buckles are a big one, will contain nickel. Because they have, well, and that's part of the reason why they use them in a lot of orthopedic surgeries is because of the strength of that metal because the nickel's pretty strong. Well, do they use nickel in, I don't think they do.

They use titanium. They do, they do. Not all of them. There's a lot of those where they have, if you have a nickel allergy now, they can use a pure titanium. Okay. But they do have, and some of the surgeons still do use some that have nickel in them. Really? Yeah, I've seen them in, well, a couple different joints.

Well, then that would answer this person's question. Yeah. Is there nickel? in surgical implants. Let me see. I believe you, but... Yeah, I believe. Okay, orthopedic implants are composed of nickel,

cobalt, chromium, molybdenum, zirconium, and or titanium alloys. There you go. Oops. Oh, I was trying to give you a bell, Dr. Scott. Hang on, I'll give you one. Give yourself a bill. I was not aware of that.

So let's talk about, here's an article, metal hypersensitivity reactions to orthopedic implants. Because this person was asking what happens if they have a metal allergy and you implant, something well here you go yeah so it says here let me let me look at the symptom skin reactions include dermatitis adjacent to and regionally adjacent to the implant site generalized dermatitis in the words it's everywhere as well as redness and generalized urticar okay so I'm gonna read the medical word and

then I'll translate in English says as well as erythema that's redness generalized urticaria that's hives but cutaneous vaticaria Vasculitis. That's a big deal. So that is inflammation of the blood vessels of the skin. And vasculitis is not a thing to be effed around with because it can cause blood clots or if you have vasculitis in the brain. It can cause what we call encephalopathy or cerebral vasculitis. And encephalopathy basically just altered consciousness all the way to coma. So, reactions occur following implantation of static implants as well as dynamic prostheses. So static implant would be something that's just there all the time. A dynamic prosthetic would be something that moves, basically, like a hip.

Other adverse reactions including device failure, chronic inflammation pain, loosening in the joint prostheticies, or re-stinosis of cardiac stent. So if they use a cardiac stent that has this stuff in there, all the inflammation, will just build up around there. And then, yeah, and then you'll have fibrous tissue and scarring and that kind of stuff that builds up around that. Wow. Yeah, that's crazy. And so, but pure titanium isn't, doesn't protect you from it necessarily.

It says cases of allergy to large surgical implants have been reported. However, a few studies have reported allergy to small titanium complaining implants, containing implants. And they, this is a single case, report the case of 51-year-old male who underwent anterior cervical discectomy. Oh, that's what they want to. ACDF. Oh, so this is, okay. So what they're doing is they're, they go in through the neck from the front and they move your windpipe out of the way and all this stuff. And then they go in so that they can get access to your spinal column without having to go through all that knobby shit in the back.

And then, so they go in and they take out the disc. and then they fuse it using this thing called a zero-p device. This person exhibited allergic symptoms one month after the surgery, and they included intermittent tingling and itching in the throat induced by speaking, and then they got systemic rashes. Okay, so that's all over everywhere, all over the skin surface and congestion of the eyeball, and then they had difficulty swallowing. It says dysphasia here, but that's what that means.

Anti-allergic treatment did not resolve the symptoms. Those patch tests revealed negative reactions to the arrested agents, including titanium, but radiographic results showed solid bone fusion, no signs of chronic inflammation. But on the patient's request, we removed the titanium screws and plate, and no allergic reactions were observed after the surgery at six-month follow-up. So the patient was right. All of their stupid tests were wrong. And I'm just...

Isn't that something? Let's just say that I may or may not have witnessed that. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I know a little bit about it. So we'll give Dr. Scott another one of these. Give yourself a bill.

We'll give one to the person that asked the question. Give yourself a bill. And another one of these for Dr. Scott. There you go. At least I didn't have to pronounce anything. No, you did good. That was a good one. I learned something from that.

And I like to learn stuff. You know, my wife's like, you always want to be right. And it's like, no, I want to be proved wrong. because any time that you prove me wrong on something, I'm learning something, and I love learning stuff. So I'm not like that. I don't like people being stupid. That's not the same thing. It's not the same thing.

It's not. It's not. Well, we can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Griggs, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teff, that ghoul, Louis Johnson, Paul Ophcharsky, Chowdy, 1008, Eric Nagel, the Port Charlotte Horror, the Saratoga Skank, Florida, Flusi, and Roland Campos, sister of Chris, Sam Roberts, she who owns pigs and snakes, Pat Duffy, Dennis Valcone, Matt Kleinshmidt,

Dale Dudley, Holly from the Gulf, Christopher Walkins, double Steve Tucci, the great Rob Bartlett, Vicks, nether fluids, Cardiff Electric. Casey's Wet T-shirt. Oh, by the way, Cardiff Electric was on Kermit and Friends recently and said that his studio got

destroyed with a hammer and fortunately did not affect our studios so that's good. So we have to pray for the piece of podcasting with our friend Cardiff Electric and hope that he's okay and then he gets his studio going back again. Casey's wet t-shirt Carl's deviated septum. The inimitable

Vincent Paolino everybody. Eric Zane, Bernie and Sid, Martha from Arkansas his daughter, Ron Bennington, of course, our dear departed friend, Fez Watley and our other dear departed friend, Cheevac, and Barry the Blade, all of whose support of this show never went unappreciated. Listen to our Sirius 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, but the best way to do it is listen on demand.

Please listen on demand. And other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. If you think about it, you'll know why I say that. 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, podcasts, and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses, get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thank you, Dr. Scott.

Thanks, guys. He surely are again.