Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 509 - Ahmed Conquers the World

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Our friend Dr Ahmed visits us from Saudi Arabia. He first heard Weird Medicine in 2007 or so, called in in 2009 and decided to go to medical school based on how much fun it sounded. Man, is he in for a shock. Now a first year resident in the US, we hope he'll become a regular (and we'll try not to corrupt him). Topics: Native English speakers can't even pronounce "Ahmed" Where does snot come from? Transient fluctuations in PSA Mustard and Heartburn AGAIN Esophageal spasm, stricture, obstruction Slow gastric emptying Cupping for musculoskeletal pain ...and more! Guests: Dr Scott Tacie Lady Diagnosis Dr Ahmed (heretofore to be referred to as "Dr A") Please visit: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) simplyherbals.net  (now with NO !vermect!n!) (JUST KIDDING, Podcast app overlords! Sheesh!) Also don't forget: Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now while he’s still cheap! "FLUID!") noom.doctorsteve.com (the link still works! Lose weight now before swimsuit season!) 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

Why do owls turn off their cell phones at night? So they don't get a hooty call. Where do leprechauns live? In leprecondos. Why did King Kong climb the Empire State Building? Because he couldn't fit in the elevator. 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 Tobolivir stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbell, exacerbating my infertable woes.

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So I'm Beijing, Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve. It's weird medicine broadcasting from the world famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios, right next door to hell, right, Tase? Right. It's weird medicine that's a thousand degrees in here. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast.

I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott. I just want to say it's a thousand degrees in here because this is a closet that should be used to keep my Christmas tree. That's why it's so hot. You're me. It's the truth. Okay, we got Dr. Scott. Hello, Dr. Scott.

That's the lady diagnosis. Tacey. Hi, honey. And our newest friend, who is actually one of our oldest friends. He's just never been in the studio before because he lived in Saudi Arabia until now. Dr. Ahmed. Hello, Dr. Steve. Hello, my friend.

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that's we wanted to make it comfortable for Dr. Ahmed to make it feel more like home feels like home yes there you go check don't forget stuff dot dr steve.com stuff dot doctor steve.com for all your amazon needs check out dr scott's website simply herbals.net and check out our patreon at patreon.com slash weird medicine and also if you just want me to say fluid to your mama or secretions or tell her that you know i hope that she doesn't get chlamydia then and i know mother's

days long gone but doesn't matter you can not those. Those kinds of jokes to your mother, always funny. Check me out on cameo at Weird Medicine. And just search for Dr. Steve Weird Medicine. It'll come up. And it's very cheap. I just do it for fun. I have fun doing it.

And sometimes I'm driving down the road to rural Southwest Virginia, and I do cameos from there. And even Cletus or Myrtle will do it if you want. Hey, we're talking. Okay, anyway. So you get the idea. I'll hug you. Okay, thank you. So for people who don't know who Dr. Ahmed is,

he is our friend from Saudi Arabia. That is correct. And who, so, massage my ego for a second. Tell us how you found this show. And somehow we were weirdly instrumental in you being, well, being here today, obviously. But had you had you had thought? Are you going to medical school before you found this? Or were you going to medical school and then you started listening to our podcast?

Because I remember you emailed me like eight years ago, right? It was in 2013, so nine years ago. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, so nine years ago, what prompted you to, I mean, how does this happen? You're this kid. I mean, you're a kid now, but you're this kid in Saudi Arabia. And they're these lunatics.

talking about medical stuff on the radio. Yeah, well, at the time, I was an Opie and Anthony fan, and then I got introduced, yeah, to weird medicine. Is that right? Yeah. That's how I first learned about it? Okay, so now how does that happen? How do you, I mean, how are you an Opian Anthony fan and you're living in Saudi Arabia?

It's a long story. Okay, give me the Reader's Digest first. Yeah, so I was an MMA fan, and then I remember at the time Joe Rogan had a podcast on the, Opian Anthony channel. Yeah. And I was listening to his podcast, and then I learned that he had the podcast episodes on the Opian Anthony channel on Sirius.

I vaguely remember that. Yeah. And so I started listening to Opie and Anthony, and then I can't remember which appearance, but I learned about you. Probably. And then I learned that you had a podcast. Okay. So I started listening to the podcast. It was during the PA John days.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. And then at the time, I would not have thought to be a physician. It didn't even occur to me, but, you know, slowly. I mean, I can't pinpoint a specific moment. It was like an epiphany. Yeah.

But looking back, I didn't know when, but I said, oh, I want to be like Dr. Steed. Oh, that's so weird. Poor kid. What's really weird is he's listened to every one of these shows at least once, except for the one that you were on. Because you called in like 2008 or something, right? Yes, in one of the early shows. Yeah.

And so he's listened to every show. So I was telling him, yeah, my youngest is 17. He's going to be a senior this year. And he's like, oh, was that Beck? And then he's like, what was the other thing that you said? It was like, remember that Andy of Mayberry episode where the guy came to town and he knew everybody's secrets, but it turned out he had been getting a subscription to the newspaper.

This is like back in the black and white. No, no, I do not. Okay, well, anyway, Andy Griffith Show Day. Somebody out there knows what I'm talking. I think I do. So, Ahmed said, oh, God, there was something that you said. It was like, do you remember what it was? You said something to me that was really kind of obscure,

but it was something that only, I don't know, anyway. We were talking all the way because I made it. him come to my office and then we had an hour drive to go to hear me give a talk on hospice stuff to a medical staff and then we drove back up but it was funny

I can't think of an example so it was a terrible thing why didn't even bring it up but it was funny that he knew so much about us because Tacey there isn't a single thing that you and I that's ever happened to us that we haven't eventually talked about on this show there are a few

Okay, so let's ask him The night Tacey got the maddest she's ever been to me What part of the house did she lock me? That's an easy question. Is it? Was it the bathroom? No, no, no. Boo.

Okay, never mind. Stupid bit. So moving on. I locked him in the basement. She locked me in the basement. And that's where he deserved. He knew so many weird things about us. And it was all stuff from the show, of course, you know.

Yeah, it's cool. But anyway, dude, it's whatever happened. We're glad to have you here. So we've been corresponding. He got in medical school. And then I actually wrote a letter of recommendation for him to get into, you know, for residency. And then I got an email. Hey, I matched.

And you're in, you know, the southeastern part of the United States. States, and here you are. It's crazy. Here I am. I can't believe it, actually. I know. It's crazy. So, very good. Well, we're very happy to have you here, and what if we played any positive role? We're all very excited about that, so. And we hope you can be close to Dr. Steve, but no one is Dr. Steve. Okay, whatever. Thank you. I'm just giving you. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Okay.

Yeah, so let's all practice saying Ahmed's name. So the name Ahmed. There used to be a show. What was that show called Tyrant? And there was a woman on there, and her husband's name was Ahmed. And she kept calling him Ahmed. And it's like, I know she is not. You know, she doesn't speak Arabic.

And then I found out later that she was like from India or something like that. But I could tell because she didn't pronounce the middle age. And that is, we don't, English doesn't have a word like that. That's why so many people call you Ahmed or Ahmed, right? Yeah, because the sound itself is not found in English. Right, in the middle of a sentence. Yeah. We can say hotel, we can say the H sound.

But in the middle of a word, it never appears in English, so it's difficult. But the proper sound itself in Arabic, it's different. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Okay, let's hear it. In Arabic, my name would be Ahmed. Ahmed. How close is that?

So that Ha, Ahmed. Ahmed. Yeah, which is difficult to. Okay. Tacey. it sounded like you said ha ha mad but you did say it again ahmet i can't that's closer than ahmet that's closer but you don't want it to sound like that you want it to sound natural right right so ahmet i mean it's it is very hard for us it's going to type me some practice i had a guy the first time i ran

into that middle h sound i had a guy on my services name was ad hum and i had the hardest time it was like what and he'd say ad hum and i go i'm still not hearing it you know my ear couldn't hear it right and he said look it's like adam with an h in the middle and then i got it so ad hum so i have a question i have a friend who is who was actually ahmed is that actually a name or where we just really fucking it up back then he was saudi arabian well because in arabic the name name Ahmed. When you speak it in English, you can go Ahmed, Ahmed, Ahmed, Ahmed. So it's not wrong. It's not wrong. Some people prefer a specific pronunciation. Personally, I don't. I mean, as long as I know that you're referring to me. If you're going to be in the South, you're going to hear all

kind, you just get used to it. Ahmed, that Dr. Ahmed said, you know, he's pretty good failure like, Dr. I'm yeah, if you have an odd name like I do you simply just can't care what people call you. She gets Stacy, Tracy Was it Rich Voss who said

there was a birthday message they were doing for you, I think. And Rich Voss called you Stacy. Oh, I mean, I don't even notice that anymore. I didn't notice that either. I never noticed that. And when I go through drive-thrus, like at Chick-fil-A and they ask me,

you know, what name I say Tracy or Stacey because to say Tacey is just, then you have to spell it and then you have to, you know, and so it's just much easier to lie and give them a different name. So that's what I, that's how I get out of it. So maybe that'll, you know, help you here. You could change it to just med, like doctor, Dr. Med. Like that could be your nickname. Okay Scott, your turn I like that It's hard It's hard, yeah It's a very similar name

And it's a same way And more like for the drive-thru In Saudi Arabia, it's not a weird name You know, it's every other kid is Ahmed Ahmed Ahmed Actually in Saudi Arabia Most people call me by my last name

Because yeah my first name is so common so right there's they yelled ah man it's like 20 kids have raised their hand yeah okay all right hey check out dr scott's website it's simply herbals dot net this bit went nowhere I thought it'd be fun if we all tried to mispronounce

we were good at mispronancing we all did a good job of it well let's see here we had some questions oh you you had a really interesting question lady diagnosis I did and this is one that our guest is he and

we're talking about this exact thing on the way up here. So my question is, where does snot come from and how do you have tons of it? It never, I mean, it just doesn't go away. Do we just make it constantly? Go ahead, take it?

Sure, well, your mucosal lining inside your respiratory tract secretes this fluid, this mucus actually. One question. You say respiratory tract. Yeah, so Is that my nose? So the inner lining from your nose to your pharynx, which is, yeah, and then all the way down.

But it secretes this mucosa because it helps, it has an immune function and it helps to change the temperature of the air as it goes in. And for some people, an increase in this mucose and the production of this mucosa causes this snot. And so some people will have this feeling that there's something in the back of their throat. throat dripping and then they would clear the throat all the time and then yeah and so that would be that would be an example of post nasal drip yeah so you never run out of it though well here's the thing a couple of things um so there are cells in the nasal mucus and actually around all mucus membranes but they're specifically designed to produce fluid in the nose because when you get an antigen in there that the body doesn't like their you know histamine is released and there are these

cells that do this thing called degranulation and what that is is so they just release massive amounts for the cell i mean cells are microscoping of basically hormones that cause the uh the capillaries to dilate and when they dilate they open up and they're what kind of junctions taste open up you know yeah i wasn't paying attention okay loose junctions open up and then hyper-filtrated fluid in the form of mucus and just, you know, drippy snot. You know, it's just clear. It's perfectly clear. And it's hyper or ultra-filtrated, and it's designed to wash that stuff out of your nose. And that's one of its, I mean, it's not designed to do anything, but through evolution, we made this process and it's functional.

So it increases our ability to fight off disease and stuff like that. Now, one thing I find is really interesting is we are, yes, producing saliva, which is also hyper-filtrated serum, and it's more watery. And you're constantly swallowing it. And so it ends up in your stomach and you reprocess it and then you make more. And if it makes it to your colon, of course, the colon will resorb the water. So there's this big cycle of fluid in our bodies. And but the fun thing is, and Ahmed, you probably heard us talking about this before,

but this is a fun experiment. Take a spoon and hold it in front of your mouth and then just let saliva drip into it until the spoon is full, right? And then, you know, regard it, see what you accomplished, and now put it back in your mouth. I know, I know that's everybody's, ooh, you know, it's gross. And most people can't do it. It's disgusting, except that just came out of your mouth just a couple of seconds ago.

That's true. And you swallow it constantly. If you snort back and you get a big wad of mucus from inside your nose, it goes down your throat. It's kind of maybe even uncomfortable, but you can do it. But snod it out the other way into a spoon and then drink it, you know, put it in your mouth. no people won't do that but it's exactly the same stuff that came from the same place that was just there just a couple of seconds ago I find that interesting it is but it just amazes me that it never stops running right I've heard

one of the first questions I answered on opium Anthony where I got a positive response was they were asking me about how is it that if you eat something all of a sudden you have you might have diarrhea and it'll become voluminous and it happens so fast how can that happen and it's because it's not a lead pipe it's active the mucus membrane is active and it can either absorb fluid or it can secrete fluid back into the lumen and so you can secrete tons of fluid into there there are drugs that do that tacy's aware of those if you have a chloride channel activator like Luby Prostone. It's sold as amatiza.

It opens up chloride channels in the colon, and those channels open up chloride ions flood in. Those are negatively charged chlorine atoms. And what follows them is sodium. And what follows sodium, Ahmed? Water. Water, exactly

right. There you go. Give yourself a bill. Your first one of those. It will not be your last. So water floods in, and then now you've got this watery solution in there that now has to go somewhere and it just floats through your bowel and clears it out and that's how amatiza works as a as a latin it's not a laxative but it's an anti-constipation medication there are other drugs like linnaclitide linnaclitide works sort of like a thing called vasointestinal peptide what

vasointestinal peptide does is turn on other channels that now flood the bowel with fluid. And so when you get a certain types of precancerous lesions, they can be associated with voluminous diarrhea. That's almost always a, do you know what kind of adenoma that is? A VIPoma. Ooh. Give yourself a bill.

Okay, yeah, that's right. So, you know, villus adenoma, those are the villains. That's how I remembered that in medical school. They're the bad ones. So, yeah, so if they secrete vasointestinal peptide, then you get that. And then there are certain bacteria can do that. So you get cholera or chigella or salmonella, and some of those can secrete toxins that then cause the bowel to rather than absorb fluid secreted into the lumen.

So it's really interesting. There's this whole fluid balance. You know, there's a hypothesis that we emerged from the sea, and what cells are there to do is to enclose the ocean and carry it around with us, because, you know, it's salty in those cells. There's sodium and potassium and magnesium and stuff like that. So our bodies just basically are sacks that enclose the ocean so we can carry it with us. There's some philosophers that said life was just invented by water to move it around, you know, from place to place.

I would argue that's what hurricanes were for, but anyway. All right. Excellent. Thank you. Excellent question. Good question. All right. We did the smoking thing last time.

Let's see. Oh, this is a very insightful question, I think. Hang on a second. Sorry, wrong number. Okay, fair enough. Thank you. Let's try this one. Hey, Dr. Steve.

It's Mike in New York. Hey, man. Hey, man. I have consistently, for the past several years, had a PSA of 0.5. Okay. And... So he has a prostate-specific answer. of 0.5, just an indicator of what's going on in your prostate.

When it gets elevated, we start worrying about just benign enlarged prostates or prostate cancer. And what's normal? In January, it jumped up. 0.5 would be normal. No, okay. 2.99. Okay.

My doctor said, based on my age, it's not a concern, but the factor of 6 increase makes it a bit of a concern. he said we could, out of abundance of caution, do an MRI now, where we could wait a few months and retest. We retest it, and it's down to 0.7. There you go. So, thankfully, there's nothing to be concerned about. But what could cause a PSA to jump to that level?

Excellent question. Is there something, you know, that happens, or is it probably a lab error or something along those lines? Just curious. Yeah. Scott, you want to take part of this? Could be infection. Yep.

Could be dehydration. Could be trauma. There you go. Yeah, I mean, he could be right as possible. Too much. Yep. So the PSA can be stimulated in the short term by just as Scott said trauma. Like when we had our scope of the cystoscopy.

No, no, next subject. Let's talk about that. I bet I checked our PSA after that. that just from clenching our ass cheeks together, it would have been elevated. So, but prostateic infection, a.k.a. prostateitis could have caused that. Every once in a while, something like just passing a massive American giant hard stool can do things to the prostate because the front part of the rectum is the back part of the prostate. So they're right there together.

You've got a big giant, American rocky turd that passes past there. It can do a couple of things. You could get a tear in the mucous membrane. You could get a few bacteria that work their way through, and you get a prostititis. It could be self-limited. Or you could have a big boggy prostate because you haven't been emptying it properly. And so you have prostate congestion, and then that stool just really presses on. It's like giving yourself a prostate exam.

Any of those, any things that sort of just get the prostate stirred up could do that. So I'm glad it went back to normal. Yes. They, for a while, taught us this thing, PSA velocity, where they talked to you about this at all. That's good that they haven't. Okay, he's got a quizzical look on his face. At one time, we used to look at the rate of change of the PSA, and that would trigger a biopsy. And this guy back then, oh, it went from 0.5 to 2.0.0.0.

That's a huge rate of change. you know, the DX, DT is elevated, we would have maybe sent that guy for a biopsy. They're saying now, don't do that. So this stuff with the PSA keeps changing for a while. They were saying, don't do PSAs. And then now they're saying, again, okay, well, you can do PSAs for screening. The digital rectal exam, which, by the way, for the techies out there, isn't, you know, something you do with your iPad. it's actually using a digit of your first finger

and sticking it up somebody's ass and feeling around and you can feel for. We used to have a prostate simulator. Did you ever see the opion antin? Yes, I did, yeah. See, he's seen everything. So, yeah. Look at your smiling face.

I sold that thing on eBay at some point. I had it here for a while. Bobo stole it. He didn't really steal it. EROC gave it to him, and then I demanded it back. And then we had it. added here for a while and it was like why am I keeping this stupid thing it was just an an ass with an anus yeah we have questions and then these things you could insert to make the

prostate feel different ways and then you know it had some nice sense and why did you keep that i don't know i was i felt like it was a piece of history it's like what history is this a part of so i ended up selling it at some point or i gave it to some i can't remember what happened to Is that the same anatomical model that you had when we were at Anthony's house? No, that was different. And Liam and Beck were throwing penises around in Anthony's house. That was a different one. That was a infant's torso and it was a circumcision training.

Yes, okay, okay. I didn't think, I was wondering. Yeah, it was just the torso and, you know, no legs, no, nothing above the mid chest. And I remember Jimmy doing Uncle Paul going, hey, no. No head for tatlin. It was like, oh, God, dude. It was so bad. And our kids were so little, too.

Yeah, so we had our kids at Anthony's house that we were doing at that point. It wasn't even, it was the Anthony Coomia show. And Jennifer Hutt was there, remember? You got to hang out with her. She's lovely. Her husband, best-looking man that is walking the earth to this day. Now, I do want to say before we get further. Yes.

Our boys had no idea. No, no, no. What was happening on the show. They were sitting there. I did a circumcision, and I completely ripped the poor kid's penis off. I remember because of the circumcision, it had different penises that you could put in the torso, and I didn't have it in there very soundly. And so when I put the GOMCO clamp on it, the whole penis ripped off.

See, I didn't even know that. I didn't even see that because I was outside watching the boys. Yeah, you were focused on the boys. But they got into the bag. They got into the bag of dicks. It was literally a bag of dicks. And they were throwing it around at Anthony and Aunt Jennifer. Yeah.

Good kids. It was funny. They've had an interesting set of experiences in their life. Okay. That was quite funny. And, yeah, so Jennifer Hutt, she was hanging out. And I was playing poker with Anthony. I don't know where you went.

Maybe this was a different time. I'm not sure, but her husband came to pick her up, and he came in. His name's Keith Hut. Just Google image him, and they're not good pictures. There's no picture that captures this guy. And he picked her up, and he hung out for a little bit, you know, shook hands and said hello to everybody. And then they left, and Anthony and I looked at each other, and we said, almost at the same time, that's the best-looking man I've ever seen in my life. And we were like, yeah, I know, he's amazingly hot.

This guy is like some Greek god. And we, you know, and then, of course, you know, I said this is the, one of the guys. And you're playing with penises. Right, playing with penises. And then one guy got up to do karaoke. And it's just guys there. He's doing karaoke. I said, this is the gayest party I've ever been to.

And that's not bad. And, I mean, it doesn't make you a bad person. I've kind of enjoyed it, but it was pretty much the gay. as party I've ever been to. But, yeah, Keith Hutt, amazing-looking dude. So when I would go on her show, I would always, she had a guest. I can't remember her name, or her producer's name was Sally or something. And when it, after Jennifer would be done with me, I'd say, hey, Sally or whatever name was,

do you know Jennifer's husband? And she'd go, yes, why, yes, I do. And I'd say, isn't he the hottest guy you've ever seen in your life? It would just embarrass the shit out of Jennifer. It was so much fun. But anyway, all right. Okay, so that's that. Let's see here.

You know, we have about 2,000 questions that we never got to. Scott, now that I finally made the video feed public, are there any questions in the waiting room? We'll do one of these. Not yet. Okay. All right. I've got Joe DeRosa.

Okay, here's one. Oh, wait, wait, no, this is one. Let me do this one. This is one for Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Adam in Nebraska. How are you doing? Good, man.

How are you? Good to hear. Yeah, excellent. Dr. Scott. Hey, hey, hey. Great. Glad to hear it. Okay.

I was just calling to say thanks. I was listening to your show a couple of shows ago, and you guys talked about mustard for heartburn or acid reflux. I don't get heartburn all that often, but when I'm, I do. I've tried a bunch of the over-the-counter medication, and it doesn't really seem to do a lot after a day or so. It just goes away. But I was at the store and remembered your show, so I picked up some mustard, had it, and got some heartburn a couple days later. And so I got a big teaspoon, like Dr. Scott said, and took it, and it was gone instantly. Yeah. Heartburn and, you know,

the burbing and that kind of thing. It was just gone. It blows my mind. And it was great. So I just wanted to say thanks. It really helped me out. And now I have a bottle of mustard. Okay. You're not the only one, buddy.

One thing, if you have that repeatedly, you've got to see somebody. This is for intermen. Dr. Scott will be the first to tell you. I still don't understand how this works. I was trying to get off my PPI's in this show one time. And I had horrible, horrible, just unbelievably bad rebrand. bound high pyrosis or heartburn. And I said, let's just, by God, try it.

And I was all ready to just shit on it. And I got a teaspoon of yellow, just yellow French's mustard, downed it. And really literally, in 30 seconds, it was gone. Now, it came back, obviously. But it was an amazing thing. I still don't understand it because mustard's got vinegar in it. And it's got turmeric, at least some of it does. Yeah, I think that's how it works.

I still, it's amazing to me. But we've had so many people call in and say that. Obviously, anecdotal evidence. You know, 40 people call in and say it work. That's 40 different pieces of anecdotal evidence. But I would love, is anybody ever done like an actual randomized trial on mustard? Why, hell no. There's no money in it, Dr. Stee.

But French is, French is might have it. That's right. There's no money in it. Ain't no money in it. If they could patent it and put... There's no money in this. We've been doing it for 17 years. Yeah, but we get to hang out with Tase and, you know, lady diagnosed and Dr. Steve.

And repirocese, let me look it up. Okay. It's worth all of the pain and suffering. The only thing I find here is reflux esophagitis in war-related sulfur mustard lung disease from like 1940. So, yeah, I see nothing. Yeah. That would be something for... If Wrenches wants to fund a study, we'll by God do it.

Yeah, yeah, we can do it. Again, it's not curative. You'd have to put it in capsules. Sure, it's not curative, but it certainly does help to calm the storm when you're having something acute, you know. What about, like, a mustard kind of, what it, what it, herb? Oh, herb. Yeah, well, that's, like, in there's such a thing. I'm sure, there is mustard seed.

Well, there's mustard plants. Yeah, mustard plants. Does that help or no? I don't know. You don't know. No, I don't know. That would be an interesting. way to dope out what was really helping people that's a good you know I could actually do that

because we could have some um mustard seed but I have actually taken mustard seed in a restaurant and crushed it up and dissolved in water and that does help a little bit well there you go so so it's a great thing to talk about I think I mean it's interesting to me how would we determine let's just say Frances gives us a million bucks first off okay we're going to buy a hundred dollars worth the mustard. We still have 999,000. I'm not working. We're not wasting a hundred dollars. There we go. We'll get one bottle. One bottle.

Okay, so that's a buck 25. But then we've got to figure out a way to do this as a double blinded placebo controlled study. So you can't just give people teaspoons of mustard. So you'd have to put it in a capsule and then have a placebo that looks the same and feels the same and smells the same so we could do that the question is if you did it in a capsule and it dissolved in the stomach would it work just as well and then you'd have to

have them take a bunch of it to get a teaspoon i mean i guess we could do two large capsules sure so that might be interesting to do actually now that i think about yeah we could yeah we could actually you can make a lot stronger by um we could boil it down as they reduce it down if you reduce You're going to be taking off some of the acetic acid, which may be part of what works, and that would be interesting as well. At least that way you know, yeah. Yeah, because, you know, you've, and I've heard people talk about taking apple cider vinegar for reflux. To me, that's not. Which makes no sense.

To me, adding more. The whole damn way down. More acid to get rid of acid. People take apple cider vinegar to lose weight. Yeah. There's a company that's selling apple cider vinegar vinegar. vinegar gummies as a weight loss thing. It's kind of a cure-all.

Yeah. So at this point. Again, I just got to see the data. I'm all in favor. But you can say anything on social media now and everyone will try it. These are commercials on cable television, too. You can say buy anything on there as long as you have the disclaimer at the end that you're not treating or diagnosing any disease, which is crazy because they just said this is for

hair loss or this is for impotence or whatever. I don't know how. But we're not diagnosing or treating anything. No, we're not treating anything. As long as you say that, you're pretty much golden. So you could say this stuff will, you know, make your life perfect and you will have giant meaty erections and all that. Oh, but by the way, we're just kidding at the end.

And then I guess you're okay. Yeah. It's crazy. No harm, no foul. Yeah, and I always tell people too, Dr. Steve, number one, check it out if it's new. Yeah. And number two, warm foods. Warm drinks will calm the stomach and yellow mustard will help.

Tell everybody, and I find this to be very interesting, why what your hypothesis is why warm drinks work better than cold drinks when you've got something like gastric refl, or, you know, gastroposophageal reflase. Especially with guard. Because your explanation actually made sense to me. I had to go, oh, God, damn. Yeah, man, I'll give me a, I'm going for my first bill a day.

Oh, come on, please, please. So it says the stomach being a muscle, muscles like to be warm and active. And remember, your body has, your stomach has two defense mechanisms when there's food in it. One's acid, one's motility. Right. And if it's cold and it shrinks, you decrease motility and increases acid. Give yourself a bill. Yes.

That's exactly right. That's a very compelling argument, actually. I don't know that it's ever been studied, but it makes good sense, you know, kind of physiologically. Yeah. Yeah, at least it's not, you know, well, anyway, you're not just making up bioenergy fields. Like some people do, you don't do that, but there are people who. Only when I need to. But not all the time.

That's correct. Yes, sir. Hey, we do have a question for Sean, though. Okay. Yep, whenever you're ready. Yeah, let's hear it. All right, here we go. From our buddy, Sean, my doctor prescribed me a calcium channel blocker, amloadapine.

Since he started taking it, he's having flushing in his face and ears. Is that from amelotapine? and what exactly is causing the flushing. Okay, I know the answer to that. Dr. Ahmed, do you know? M. Lodapine is a calcium channel blocker. Yeah, it's a calcium channel blocker, so it helps with the dilation of the blood vessels.

Give yourself a bill. So it can commonly cause things like peripheral edema in some patients. Okay, so he's just got out of medical school. So, yeah, he means swelling in the legs. Okay, go on. It's okay. I'll translate for you. Yeah, and so.

it would make sense for me that you would have flushing because the blood vessels would be dilating, which leads more blood to reach capillaries. So I think that would be the cause. Mumtaz. Thank you. Exactly right. Very good.

Yeah, very good. So, and these things usually will go away. Usually the body becomes tolerant to that effect, but not so much to the anti-hypertensive effect. Now, the swelling and stuff, if you start getting ankle swelling, that tends not to go away. then they can put you on something else.

I'd be interested why they put them on a calcium channel block. Right now, one of the protocols is to put people on angiotensin-type drugs like Lossartin and drugs like that have very few adverse effects for the most part. Maybe you can get a cough from those. And a diuretic, like chlorthalodone. or something like that. And then beta blockers help to reduce

heart attack and stroke or mortality from heart attack and stroke. What's funny, when I trained, if you put someone with congestive heart failure and that's pump failure, you know, their heart isn't pumping enough blood, so it's basically like a pump

that's overprimed. It's backing up into the lungs, and they get fluid in the lungs that can't breathe and stuff. If you put one of those people on a beta blocker back then, it was malpractice in the 80s because the theory was that you were making the heart less able to pump so you're making it worse now if you don't put somebody on one it's malpractice it just shows how how medical science changes over time and the the good thing about people so say whoa oh oh see you guys say one thing and then you say a different no it's the the knowledge changes we learn more and we are willing to change based on better data and I think that is good science so but it's you would hope you would hope that you would change and evolve when you learn and that happened

with covid and sure but we saw it in front of our very eyes and that's what the public isn't used to seeing we're used to seeing things change based on a study and then you know medical science they have these meetings and they all get together and they talk about what's the standard of care and then it sort of changes and it's it's really that process is opaque to the page You just come in one day and now they're giving you a different medicine, whereas with COVID, what we saw, oh, hell, we're going to get a, and the guy said the C word, we're going to get a content strike again on YouTube. You don't use that word anymore. Is that we saw it happening before our very eyes, and we're not used to that. And I think that's what freaked people out because people's opinions changed very frequently because of new data that was constantly rolling in, you know.

So anyway, all right. What else we got? That was a good one, Dr. Scott. Very good. Thanks, John. Oh, here's a, okay, let's stay on the same, on the same topic. Hi, Dr. Steve, I just had a question about my girlfriend. She has a valve on her stomach isn't working correctly, and she had to have her stomach

inflated. I was wondering if you knew anything about that. Thanks. Mike. Okay, it could be a couple of things. Now, he said it wasn't working. Yeah, and then she had to have her stomach inflated. So I'm assuming that she may have had a couple of things.

She could have had a stricture in her esophagus. That's what I'm going to assume this was. So people with strictures in their esophagus, they'll eat stuff, and the food, they'll complain food is sticking. Yes. And they'll eat and it gets stuck. And in those people, what they'll do is they'll go down. They will kind of inflate it with gas when they take the endoscope,

and they give you some goofy juice, they put you out, and they'll pass this fiber optic scope into your stomach. And then sometimes they'll dilate that stricter. It could be scar tissue from reflux. Or it could be other things, you know. Yeah, I was just wondering if he's, I'm sorry, I was just wondering if he was talking about her stomach not working like a gastroporesis. Yeah, so a gastroporesis is.

when people's stomach doesn't contract enough and stomach contents get caught in the stomach and it is hard for it to get out and they'll get nausey and vomiting and just feel bloated after eating. How do they treat that? Gastroporesis, that's a tough one. You can use motility agents. Diabetics will get it and it's really hard to treat because the nerves that cause peristolsus actually have died. So in some of those people, you have to put in a gastric pacemaker. What about a spinkter?

Would he be talking about a sphincter? Yeah, well, her lower... Do those ever stop working, like an L-E-S? Yeah, so the lower esophageal sphincter, thank you, Tacey. Well, you get one of these. Give yourself a bill! Is the valve at the bottom of the esophagus on top of the stomach, and so it's not a very good valve. It's just a little ring of muscle, and it's...

It's a ring of fire. Yeah, it's often a ring of fire. Yes, it is. That's a good one. And is it, though? Yeah, it is. It was a good one. It was a good one.

It was. I'll give him. I don't know what to give him. I'll give him. You've given out too many. I know, I know. No, but if he gives me a bill that we have to be late. You didn't know.

You lose. Dang it. Good day, sir. Good job, Steve. But those can get too tight. They can either spasm and that's very painful or it can get scarred down like we were talking about and cause a stricter there. So, yeah, if you had a stricter there, I had a, Let me rephrase that.

I heard of a lady once who broke her hip because she had an asophageal stricter. Ahmed, you're nodding wisely because you already know what I'm going to say. Yeah, I remember this story. I've told this story probably too many times. But she had a lower esophageal stricter, and when she would eat, food would get stuck, and she would jump up and down. And that was great until it wasn't until it didn't work because the stricture was getting tighter. so now she now by the way she's 80 and she would jump off the first step in her she had steps going up to the second floor and she would jump off that first step and then it got a little tighter and then it was the second step by the time she got to the fourth step she fell and broke her hip oh boogers so that was a true story and it just shows when you get something like that don't try to fix it on your own go see your primary care provider they can fix it go ahead i've heard more than one gia talk

about how people get food stuck in their esophagus over and over and over again and do little tricks like that to fix it until one day usually on a Friday night or Saturday night when nobody's working they have to go to the ER and they can't get it fixed and then you have to count on somebody who's off wanting to come in and take care of that and that's not really something you want to do so if you're dealing with that it shouldn't be done emergently is what Yeah, please, if you're dealing with that right now, or you have your little tricks, you know, just go, just go. Yeah.

So you're not bothering somebody on a Saturday. Well, yeah, and she's right. Well, it's not an emergent. Well, they get paid pretty well for being fine. Yes, they do, but they don't like it. We're not empathizing with the GI. You want your doctor happy. We're not empathizing with the GI that charges you five grand to come in

to get a bolus of chicken out of your esophagus. but but you wouldn't believe at i mean they don't like it no no but at least they are compensating but you know she's right the the process at least the procedure if it's done in an anonymous situation is is pretty well tolerated yeah that's right yeah it's pretty straightforward but i will tell you this do we we use needles needles in stem for a gastroporesis pretty effective really sure is there data on that what i would love to see i'm not i'm not I'm not challenging it, but I can only tell you. I'm just asking.

Yeah, there may be, but I did it. All I can tell you is that I know for a fact that it does work pretty well. Well, I'm going to buy God look it up because it's coming up. Well, you know, there can't be any day. No, there's tons of it. Is it really? Why do you not know this? Well, by God, look at you.

Well, I don't have to look it up. I know it. Okay, true. Well, thank you. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. Here's 32 studies that involved a total of 2,601.

patients. Acupuncture was manually stimulated or electrically stimulated. The etiology of gastroporesis, the cause was diabetes or surgery. And let's just see what the answer was. Low certainty evidence for short-term benefit with acupuncture alone or acupuncture. Well, that's okay. Better zero. There is evidence of publication bias, oops, and positive bias of small study effects. That's always going to be true when you've got like eight patients. And you're an acupuncturist and you go, hey, I did eight of these people. So that can't be helped. But just says no conclusion can be made, that doesn't mean it doesn't work.

It just they don't have, they had a lot of studies, but none of them were high quality. Sure, sure. And that's reasonable. And that's pretty standard in my world. It is. Unfortunately, they don't have data that says it doesn't work. Now, wait a minute here. Oh.

Clinical randomized controlled trial of acupuncture. uh for treatment of gastroporesis here we go now this study was very well designed and it showed a positive effect that was statistically significant so so we'll uh we'll tell you know i'm going to be the first to shit on dr scott if he's but these kinds of things there are some real data on this yeah well cool thank you yeah and it's look what harms are going to do exactly somebody uh sent in a question the other day we never got to we'll just do a dr scott show No. Let's don't do a Dr. Scott show. Someone was talking about what are these rings that people see, and we did this before, but

you know, we just had some Olympics, and now we're going to have some more Olympics. What are these rings we see on the swimmer's backs? Oh, yeah. That's made me a ton of money. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, see. That's why we don't.

That's why he didn't want to shit on the other guys. But I don't work on Friday nights or Saturday nights unless it's a tasty call. I'm going to need some cupping on. This is Stacey Colin. Yeah, so talk a little bit about that. We've got it just a couple of minutes. We want to make sure Ahmed gets to say something. Yeah, real quickly, yeah.

The cupping is an old Chinese thing. We actually pull the skin, the fash, up off of the bone, off of the connective tissue, and it increases blood flow. And we can't leave those round marks if you want to. If you have tissues adhering to each other. This is the other thing when Dr. Scott told me about this. It, like, clicked in my head because I said, how could this do anything? Yeah, you're bringing blood up to the surface, but you're just making a blood. Bruce. But what he said was, you know, they grease them up pretty good. Then they get the vacuum in there and then they can lift it up and move it around. You cannot massage somebody that way. You can't get your hand up under their skin and lift it up and get rid of those adhesions that are between the skin and the subcutaneous tissue and the muscle. You can't do that. But with this you can. Yeah, and post-surgical scars, it works extremely well.

It's kind of like those automobile dent kits where you put the suction cup on there and then you can yank on it and you can pull it back out again. Think of it that way, and then that makes sense to me. I think that would really help. It works pretty well. I don't know a lot of things. For certain things. Not everything yet. Not going to help for my stupid back, for example.

So what exactly would that help? We can't suck 60 years of wear it there out of me of maimness out there. That's right. yeah lady diagnosis had a good question so what does it help if you do the cupping does it help like tight muscles usually tight muscles strains ligament of strains tennis strains um post-surgical scars boils i've you know blast boils and suck them out of people's head oh really oh you got to throw those cups away though oh yeah you throw them away every time it's still fun it's still yeah that's very satisfying and stuff oh yeah but typically 99 times of a hundred say somebody

has a big a big scar on her back they've got you know rods and a few years and they've got the scarring I'll put the cup right on top of that scar gently up and down it just pulls it just lifts it up yeah what about lower back pain you ever use it for that every single day he uses everything for everything that's the problem give yourself a bill you got money give bill yeah we need to have a thing give tacy a bill instead of giving yourself a bell so yeah that's interesting though I can uh that I can see why that would work for certain things. Something.

Not about you. Cool. Any other questions from in there because I've got a couple of here? Nope, nope. That's it.

Okay. Let's try this one. Hey, Dr. Steve. How are you doing? Good, man. How are you? Oh, I'm doing just fine as well.

Good. Quick question for you. This is Rob from Frederick, Virginia. Hey, Rob. Cool. And I'm a long-time alcoholic and I'm about to start

a rehab program and just kind of curious what you know about the withdrawal symptoms that I'm going to be going through pretty soon. Yeah. I'm already aware of the shakes and the sweats

and just irritability and everything else. Just want to hear your thoughts. Okay. Love the show, dude. Bye. Thanks, man. And I hope this wasn't an emergency because he sent that call in about eight and a half months ago.

I'm so sorry, dude. I had no idea what he was calling about. That's my bad. So hopefully he's fully detoxed at this point and everything is totally fine. But yeah, we've only got a couple of minutes, but this is what I want to say, yes, he enumerated a lot of the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. The thing about alcohol withdrawal is please don't do this on your own. Go to a meeting, but if you are a heavy drinker and you're at risk for seizures or for DTs and how do you know you don't so that's why you need to do this under a physicians or you know a health care provider that's well versed in this do this under their um

supervision and you can safely detox you can do it this can be done I've there are friends of mine I never thought would ever quit drinking that now are completely sober if they can do it you can do it same thing for Xanax and yes yes benzodiazepine same way do that under the supervision of a health care provider because if you don't, bad things can happen. But just I hope he's well. And if you're not, call us back and we'll try to get your call on a little bit sooner this time. I'm so sorry. Anyway, thanks for being here. It was a little bit of a cluster F of a show. I have been running my ass off all day. It's no real excuse. I mean, I've been broadcasting forever and I still can't put together a decent show when I've had a

stressful day. But anyway, I appreciate you all hanging in there. I hope you had fun. Dr. Scott, thank you, sir. Lady Diagnosis, great to see you. Thank you. Tacey, you are lovely as always. Oh, I know, thanks. Thank you. And Ahmed, Shokran Siddiqui. Afun. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for having me. Hey, thanks for being here, man. No, for real. It's amazing to finally have you in here after all these years. It's crazy when you think about it. It is fun. You know, I remember when he called in a year ago, yeah.

Oh, I made a big deal. He's going to go to medical school because of this dumbass show. He went as cool as the gal from England with a pretty accent. He was still pretty cool. Right, right. But you're okay, though. I agree with you. Well, we can't forget Rob, Sprantz, Bob, Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coombeah, Jim Norton, Travis Teff, that Gould Girl.

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They're very greatly missed. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk Channel, SiriusXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sundays at 6 p.m. Eastern on demand, and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners, whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy.

Go to our website at Dr.steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses, get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. And Ahmed, this is for your mom. El Ered Fienaimo Gazal. She would agree. All right, take care of everybody. Thanks. Goodbye.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.