Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 499 - Eat Your Dang Vegetables

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Dr Steve discusses a possible rare complication of covid-19 and tilts at the windmills of modern eating habits vis a vis nutritional supplements. Please visit: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) simplyherbals.net (now with CBD nasal spray!) Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now while he’s still cheap!) noom.doctorsteve.com (the link still works! Lose weight now before swimsuit season!) chef.doctorsteve.com (green chef, the best of all the meal kits we've tried!) CHECK US OUT ON PATREON!  ALL NEW CONTENT! Robert Kelly, Mark Normand, mystery guests! Stuff you will never hear on the main show ;-) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And so I wanted to just do a real quick. special episode. I kind of touched on some of this stuff, and I couldn't find the commercial I was looking for with the old lady saying, oh, how difficult it is to eat fruits and vegetables. And so, but I found this. I'm going to bleep out their name because I don't want any lawsuits or anything. But I'm going to talk about this because this bugs me. And so this is the commercial that I'm talking about. The daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables fit into just six capsules? No.

Wait, let me start over. Can the daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables fit into just six capsules? Um, so I have some, some issues with this claim. I mean, yeah, you can freeze dry stuff and make it into a powder and cram it into capsules. But I'm going to, I think I can demonstrate that, um, Well, you can make up your own mind because I'm just going to say they're assholes. I can't say they're, you know, if you say that someone's a quack or something like that, they can, you know, sue you for slander or whatever.

I don't want to hurt their business, I guess. I just want people to use a critical mind when they're thinking about this stuff. But this ad is on YouTube, so I'm assuming it's okay. It's fair use to discuss what they're talking about. Yes, we start by sourcing the best vine-ripened fruits and vegetables. I'm okay with that. We make sure they are picked at peak ripeness. Excellent.

All of our produce is third-party tested for pesticides, heavy metals, bad bacteria, and nutrients. Yeah, the last thing you want to do is concentrate heavy metals and bad bacteria. So, you know, as Uncle Roger would say, foe, oh, so far. Okay. They are then washed, cut, and put through an advanced vacuum cold process, which removes the water using pressure. Okay. Advanced cold process, this is a.k.a. freeze drying. This is, I mean, who wasn't as a kid have had freeze-dried, you know, astronaut ice cream?

Basically the same thing. Or we used to get frosted flake. with freeze-dried strawberries in them. So basically what you do, this is a process. We did it in the lab called liophilization is another where you can put things in solution. And then you put them in a beaker and hook it up to a vacuum pump while you are freezing it. And what that does is, you know, if you did it well, it was still liquid, it would just boil up and then it would clog up the vacuum pump.

But if you freeze it, what it will do is it will sublimate. In other words, the gas will come off. The water vapor will be drawn away from it without it boiling up and making a big giant mess. If you've ever seen dry ice, dry ice is sublimating. It goes from solid to gas. gaseous without going through a liquid phase. And you can make water do that if you use the right temperatures and the right pressure. So they say, well, using pressure, yeah, it's just a vacuum pump.

This maximizes the nutritional value while preserving the color, smell, and taste of the fruit or vegetable. Okay. So they say they're going to preserve the taste, but then they're going to put it in a capsule, which you're just going to swallow. So I don't understand that point. Laaphylization does, for the most part, preserve nutrients in the sense that it's not denaturing the protein, most of the proteins and the molecules and stuff that are in this. So that I agree with. And the other issue is that the color, it doesn't exactly preserve the color, but it will retain.

most of its color. It will become lighter, but that's just a function of having less water, more air mixed in with these little particles. The freeze-dried food is then ground into a fine powder without adding any additives, fillers, or

extracts. Okay, you got to see this picture. It looks like an industrial chemical, and I know it isn't. This is basically freeze-dried powdered fruit, and this is the issue I have with what we do with our diet in this country. I've talked about this on the show multiple times.

They find out that people in Norway who eat a lot of fish have less heart attack and stroke. So our solution to that is, well, let's just take a bunch of fish and throw them in a vat and render them down to fish oil. and then we'll take a capsule. And then it turns out that doesn't really work. And the reason that people in Norway who eat a lot of fish, we're having less heart attacks, because they're eating less other stuff.

And at least that's one hypothesis. So, you know, now we're doing the same thing with fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables are good to eat. And why not just put them through this process and take them in a capsule because, God forbid, we just eat fruits and have some vegetables with our dinner. You know, they're talking about five servings of fruits and vegetables. That's not that hard to do. The day is, I mean, you're awake 16 hours a day.

You can fit in five servings of fruits and vegetables. Eat one salad, and you could get three or four servings of fruits and vegetables right there. So anyway. These powdered foods are then mixed in our proprietary blends and encapsulated, locking out air and moisture. The capsules are then bottled and shipped directly to our customers. Yeah. Okay. So they put them in capsules.

Again, the taste, preserving the taste through this process doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything. And then you just put it in capsules that you take the capsules. And if you watch the commercials for this stuff, and it's not just this brand, it's all the brands. oh it's so difficult to eat fruits and vegetables no you're an adult you're an adult yeah it might be tough for kids i would be fine given this to my kid to figuring that at least a little bit in a capsule if they'll take it is better maybe better than uh not eating any fruits and vegetables at all so if you if there's a reason why you can't actually chew and sweet wallow fruits and vegetables. I'm okay with this. I went on PubMed looking for any evidence

that taking fruits and vegetables this way does anything. I couldn't find anything. If it's out there, I invite these companies to send me some info, and I will be more than happy to change my mind about it, because I did change my mind about multivitamins this week if you listen to last show and you know at least there is a reason to take multivitamins now it's never the thing that they originally said but the data with the multivitamin slash cocoa study was actually pretty compelling but anyway let's see what they have what else they have to say see how being full of fruits and veggies will help you live life to the fullest okay see now hiya there's no what What's the evidence?

Just show me the evidence that you're, how, how are you measuring living life to your fullest, taking capsules? So, listen, here's the thing. Let's, let's just look at some, let's just do some quick math. Apples, like many other fruits, have high water content. So if you take the water out, the water, hell, you can drink water, right? So I'm, I'm okay with the basic concept of this. You take the water out. What's left is the good stuff.

I've always had issues with juicers, and then you look in the mesh, and all the good stuff is on the other side of the juicer. You're just getting the water that's got, you know, the water-soluble molecules in it. You know, all the fiber and basically, in my opinion, most of the nutrition is left behind, and that's the good stuff. But anyway, it says apples, like many other fruits, have high water content, 85% on a wet basis. So it's rich in vitamins, minerals, and other fiber, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if you take out the water of a 100 gram apple, you will have 15 grams left. So let's just do some math here.

Let me get my calculator out. I looked at one of these companies. I'm not going to say which one. Again, don't want to have any issues. But they have a blend, one of their proprietary blends of fruits and stuff, and 731 milligrams. Now, let's just say it's just on average. It's apples. Now, apples have a high water content.

But most of the fruits in this blend, particularly tomatoes, have a really high water content. So we'll be a little conservative. So to figure out what the reconstituted amount of vegetables would be by just adding the water back, we were going to divide by 0.15 for 85% water content. And we end up with 4.8 grams. So let's just ask, Echo, how much that is. ECHO, what is 4.87 grams in pounds? 4.87 grams is about 0.0107 pounds.

So 0.107 pounds. Let's do that in ounces. Echo, what is 0.170 pounds in ounces? So it's a 2.17 pounds is 2.7 2 ounces. So it's a 2 ounce apple. That's the smallest apple ever made. Okay, so you're getting the equivalent of about two ounces of fruits and vegetables. That's not taking the place of fruits and vegetables.

Now, maybe I'm not thinking about this right, but I'm irritated by the fact that adults are saying how hard it is. to eat fruits and vegetables. Now, if you don't have any teeth, I get it. Yeah, so I would be okay. This would be better than nothing. But if you're a grown adult with normal teeth and normal GI tract and normal mastication abilities, just to eat the fruits and vegetables.

Just like eat the fish, if you want to mimic the Norwegians. If you really want to do something, you know, there are studies that show that a vegan lifestyle actually does provide some benefit when it comes to all-cause mortality. So do that. But this is kind of typical of our 22 lifestyle that instead of just taking the time to eat an apple, we're taking a pill. in my opinion anyway all right I didn't say their name right

okay it doesn't really matter they're not the only ones you can go on Amazon and you can find a bunch of different products like this and to play the other side a little bit I have a one of my

sons has a really monotonous diet so I you know I I bought him some of this stuff the vegetable version just to give him something so because he's in college and I can't he'll take whatever pills I give him he if I bought him a bushel of vegetables they would just rot so I figure it's got to be better than nothing so but do you really want to just be better than nothing

if you're an adult with agency and you can control what you do now I I figure my kid, when he gets a little bit older and isn't concentrating on studies alone and starts paying attention to his health, I think he will come around and start balancing out his diet some. But when he was little, he loved vegetables until he went to school. And then all the other kids in school were like, ooh, spinach. You like spinach? It's gross. And then the next thing I knew, he was saying, you know, spinach is gross, and we would go to the Indian place.

And, oh, Saug panir, I don't want that. I just want the chicken, you know. So I think there was some pure pressure in there. And so I did the Jessica Seinfeld thing where I was taking spinach puree and putting in everything. I was putting it in their smoothies. I was putting it in their pasta sauce, everything I could get. but now he's out of my control. He's just eating what he wants and he just eats chick-fil-A, which is awesome,

but he has a very monotonous diet. So for someone like that, I think this is probably okay. But I just am irritated by the marketing in the same way that I'm irritated with the marketing for adult gummies. And people who have listened to this show for long enough know that I am very, irritated by the way they market adult gummy vitamins. I don't

tell me a gummy is better absorbed. That I get. In this gel matrix my vitamins are better absorbed and I get more effects from it, whatever. But to tell me how delicious

it is, I mean, I'm not four. I don't need to be convinced to take a delicious vitamin if I know it's Good for me. I'll just take the vitamin. I don't know. All right. Fet up with everything. Let's see if we've got any voicemails. I'll take a couple of calls and we'll get out of here. All right. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right. I wanted to play the Joe DeRosa promo for our Patreon. We had Joe on. Joe's one of my

favorite people. No jokes. But he said all the things. he needed to say. Here we go. Hey, it's Joe DeRosa here, and you're listening to Weird Medicine. Thank you. It's shortened to the point, just like Joe. Check out his sandwich shop in New York. I think he sells alcohol in there, too. And it is Sammy Roses.

Sammy Roses something.com. Just Google Sammy Roses, NYC. You'll find it. All right. Then we got the Mark Norman promo. Hey, hey, folks. Mark Norman here from Netflix, Tuesdays of Stories, Squeech, Anal, you never know. You're listening to Weird Medicine with Dr. Steve and Tasty.

Give it a world. Thank you, Mark. All right. Let's see. Let's do this one. Hey, Dr. Steve, a question for you. I got diagnosed with COVID back in January. During my virtual exam, the doctor that I was speaking with said it could be HPV, I believe.

She said that was going around as well prescribed a COVID test and also had me pick up a... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Maybe RSV. I'm thinking that you're thinking RSV. RSV is respiratory syncytial virus. HPV is human papillomavirus. It causes genital warts, so I don't think that's what they meant.

Prednisone, the steroid, was five days worse twice a day or once a day. I can't remember, but it was five days work regardless. In the beginning, particularly, one of the few off-the-shelf things that we had for COVID was using steroids. So dexamethosone, intravenous dexamethon, dexamethon, dexamethon, dexam shi, It's intravenous dexamethosone was used in the hospital, and it did save a lot of lives, because basically the thing that gets you with COVID seems to be the body's response to the virus rather than the virus itself, although the virus itself can suck, too. And I'm okay with oral prednisone if they're more used to writing that than oral dexamethosone. I started on the prednisone. Of course, we have other things now.

If you're at risk for progression, we have Molinupyere, which is not as great as the Paxlevid is, but it has fewer adverse effects so far. And I've had good luck with it. You know, people have gotten better more rapidly and are not in the hospital. The Paxlovitz great IV remdesivir, and we still have so trivimab, which is the monoclonal antibodies. Right now in our health system, we were, I think we peaked out at 450 people in the hospital across the health system, and we now have 80, and I think only nine on the ventilator that have COVID. So looking good right now, we're hoping it stays that way. COVID will never be completely gone because we'll keep testing for it.

And all the other coronaviruses, they've always been here. We just never tested for them, but you better believe we will be now. But so things are looking pretty good right now. But anyway, and I got my COVID test back and finished it off because it had been four days or so before I gotten it. During the time that I was taking the steroid and the week following, I had an incredible, insatiable thirst. Speaking with my primary care, I guess that is a side effect of being on steroids,

but I can't overstate how insatiable it was. I mean, I was chugging glasses and glasses and glasses of water. Okay. And the reason for my call is because of that, it has been a few months now, and that lingers. And I don't know if that's a long-haul COVID system or symptom or if that is a long-haul steroid symptom. No, it's neither one. But so I talked to this person afterward.

I said the first question I would ask you if you have insatiable thirst is do you also have the need to void your bladder frequently? And he said, oh, God, yeah, it's just constant. So we'll talk about that. While it has lessened, I find myself drinking just a crazy more amount of water than I ever have. But I guess it's not a bad thing because I'm drinking water. But, I mean, I'm going through tons of LeCroix. I'm going through glasses of water. And, of course, my taste has changed as well.

I no longer enjoy the taste of beer. Garlic tastes weird. Oh, that's awful. Oh, beer and garlic taste bad? That's like you're living in hell, bro. It tastes a little weird now. Things are just a little different. I know some of those can be COVID symptoms.

So I don't know if you've heard about that. Yeah. So what I'm concerned about. is there is a thing called post-COVID diabetes insipidus. And I remember if you go way back to Opie and Anthony days when we were on the show and we had double vasectomy turd drinking urine on the air to determine who had diabetes mellitus. So diabetes mellitus is diabetes just means it's like means siphon.

So pissing like crazy, but mellitus means it tastes like honey. And that tells you that back in the day, the reason that they named it that, it's because these doctors were tasting the urine. People came in, they were just pissing like crazy. They didn't know what to do about it, but they knew that their urine tasted so. sweet, which is why I'm convinced some doctor was the one that invented the dipstick

because, just so they didn't have to drink people's urine anymore. They didn't drink it, but they tasted it. That's not bad enough. Well, diabetes insipidus is still diabetes. People are pissing like crazy, but their urine tasted insipid.

In other words, it had no taste. And they were pissing out free water. So there have been cases of people with COVID-19 who have mild to moderate cases of diabetes insipitous where they will drink like crazy because they're pissing like crazy. So they're not drinking. The drinking isn't causing the pissing. The pissing is causing the drinking. In other words, they're pissing out so much free water that they've got to replace it and they have insatiable thirst. So the first

thing I would do with this person would be to check their urine. for the urine osmality, or just specific gravity. If their specific gravity is zero, then, you know, there are some other tests that we can do. But it's very easy to treat with a nasal spray called desmopressin, and that will put a stop to it. So, and that'll stop the thirst. It'll stop the pissing. And you may have to continue that for a long time, if not forever. But this is not typical long COVID.

so get that checked out and let me know if i'm right and if i am i'll give myself one of these give yourself a bill and if it's something else that's fine because um you always are learning stuff if you're wrong you're learning stuff if you're right all the time you're not learning anything you already know it so i like being shown to be wrong because uh many times when i'm baffled or I've been demonstrated to be wrong about something. I learned something profound. So there's nothing wrong with that as long as you learn from your mistakes or learn from being wrong. Anyway, thank you all.

We are enjoying ourselves in St. Petersburg right now. So if you're around, shoot a note to me on Twitter. Maybe I'll buy you a beer if I can convince my wife that it's okay to hang out with some people from the radio show. But anyway, take care, thank you. Thanks, always go to my normal on-air partners, Dr. Scott, Tacey, the big trio of DJ Mel B, P.A. Lydia, and D.N.P. Carissa. We can't forget, Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Tepp, that Gould Girl, Lewis Johnson, Paul Ophcharsky, Chowdy, 1008. Howdy Guplunk? Eric Nagel, the Port Charlotte Hoare, the Saratoga Skank, the Florida Flusi, the St. Pete Barkie Blower, Percy Dum, Paki, ooh.

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