Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 511 - Oh, I Can't Be Arsed

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

Dr Steve. Dr Scott and Tacie discuss: Drugs for weight loss Never lose your wallet again New treatments for traumatic brain injury "Vag and Ass Spray" (that's what Dr Scott wrote down) Does antiperspirant cause cancer? Deviated septum (pay attention, Karl) 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 is over!) 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

Excuse me waiter, this coffee tastes like mud. Yes, sir, it's fresh ground. What do you call a skid mark that won't come out? Undeterred. Did you hear about the dirty Easter egg hunt? It was hosted by the Dust Bunny. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103,

and made popular by two really comedy shows, Ope 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 Subola vibes stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound,

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

I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want to requite. I am for my disease. So I'm paging Dr. Steve. From the world famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios. 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.

My little pal, Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medical practitioner who gives me street crad with the wackle alternative medicine ass hats. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. And Tacey, my partner in all things. Hello, Tacey. Hello. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you have 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 347-7-664323. That's 347. Pooh-Hid. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at DR Scott WM. Visit our website at Dr.steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with the grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking.

with your doctor, nurse practitioner, practical nurse, physician assistant, pharmacist, respiratory therapist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, physical therapist, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And Tacey, I understand you're going to be leaving and then coming back later in the show, and that's fine. And we'll see you then. And Dr. Scott, everything going well on simply herbal. Thank you. Tacey's looking at me confused, but I'll explain in a minute. Praise. Lots of nasal spray.

Okay, yeah, check him out at simplyerbils.net. And check out stuff.com, stuff.com. Stuff.com for all of your Amazonly needs. And patreon.com slash weird medicine, where we do our, Tacey and I do our Patreon over there, including the exam room where we have celebrities call in and ask us questions. And then I'm doing cameo. Still, cameo.com slash weird medicine for. eight seven eight bucks something like that i'll say fluid to your mama so there you go all right a uh thank

you don't forget to check out dr scott's website at simply herbals dot net that's simply herbals dot net and check out our website as i said at dr steve.com so all right how's it going awesome yeah you had a good week pretty good week i know give it shit i know so it was nice if you Did it say semi-sincere? I'm just burning up like everybody else in the whole, this part of the United States. Yeah, that kind of sucks a little bit, but I hear it's going to get better. But no one tunes in to us to listen to us talk about the weather. Prognosticating the.

So what kind of medical news do you have for us this week, Dr. Scott? Anything weird and wonderful and odd? Well, one thing that's really pretty wonderful is the fact that there is, a new diabetes drug out that's helping patients lose weight like they've never seen before. Oh, really? What is the drug? So the drug is called TIRZepetide.

Okay. That's pretty damn good. You know, I've been practicing. I actually read this 30 seconds before we came on, so I figured it's that notorious Dr. Scott show prep. Yes, so the drug works on two naturally occurring hormones that help control blood sugar and are involved in sending fullness signal

front of the gut to the brain. So that whole feedback mechanism, which is really important to keeping us from feeling hungry all the time. What they notice is that the folks who have diabetes were losing weight and lost up to 21% of their body weight. In some cases, that's 50 to 60 pounds, Dr. Steve. Yeah, that's a big deal.

That's a big deal. And the great news is it helped with a lot of people. Just a couple people dropped out of the study. because of some GI upset. And that's real classic with these drugs. Pretty common. That's one of the ways they help you lose weight is by, you're sick to your stomach. You poop yourself to death.

No, it's so nauseated. Yeah, just make you nauseated. You can't eat. I'm looking at this article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is a pretty highfalutin medical journal. Right. And this is where they were looking at it just for obesity alone. Okay.

And that was a phase three, double-blind, randomized control trial. Oh, very good. Those are the ones we like. And they assign 2,539 adults with the body mass index greater than 30. So obesity is characterized as 25 or more, overweight is 25 or more. And so these people were obese. or if they were 27 or more and had at least one weight-related complication. And that had to exclude diabetes in this case.

Okay. So it could be osteoarthritis to the knees, I'm assuming, something like that, some of those kinds of things. And then they were to receive once-weekly subcutaneous terseptide 5 milligram, 10 milligram, or 15 milligram, or placebo for 72 weeks. So I'll give them credit for this one, too. They took their time. And they weren't in a rush to get this thing to market, which is nice. You know, they watched people for a year and a half. And then they had a 20-week dose escalation period on top of that.

So it was really 92 weeks. Okay. So it was almost, yeah, it was right at like two years, right? Yeah. Well, just under two years. And their co-primary endpoints. Remember, you have to decide what your endpoint's going to be. What are we really looking for?

And it was percentage change in weight from baseline and a weight reduction of 5% or more. So at baseline, the mean body weight was 104.8 kilograms. So let's ask, Echo, what that is? Echo, what's 108 kilograms in pounds? 108 kilograms is about 238 pounds. By the way. No, I don't. care about the bio-waste.

Echo stop that. And so the mean BMI was 38. It was actually a mean body weight was 104.8, but you get it. These were, you know, people who were overweight. And 95% of the participants had a BMI of 30 or higher. And so the mean percentage change in weight at week 72 was minus 15%. So we can figure this out. Echo, what is 85% of 104.8?

85% of 104.8 is 89.08. 89.08. Echo, what's 89 kilograms in pounds? 89 kilograms is about 196 pounds. So they went from 230 to 40 down to 190 something, on average, right? And so, yeah, so that's, they have estimated that if you can lose 5% to 10% of your body weight, you can reduce your risk of sudden death and other complications significantly. So, yeah, that's a big deal.

So this stuff, of course, will be insanely expensive in the beginning until they lose their patent. But I got to tell you, I don't know how much it costs to do. one person for two months and have all the different centers. I mean, this isn't just done in one office. This is done in offices all over the place. They've got to pay everybody. Got to pay the nursing staff, the laboratories that would do the blood work, everybody. I mean, these things cost a lot of money to run.

About $100 million, I think, is what it is to get a new drug to market. Just this one? Going through all the, all the, all the, appropriate trials. Well, I thought some of them were like a billion dollars. Well, I'm sure. I'm sure it could go a whole of more. than 100 million. I have a friend who's been on this show.

He might not want me identifying him that way. But I have a friend who is on a drug for an unnamed malady, but it's a rare. It's an orphan drug. And he had to do six shots, and each one of them were something like $800,000 a shot. Insurance paid for it. And I'm sure they discounted the shit out of them. But if he were paying cash, that's how much it would be. Yeah, well, they were saying these drugs,

They're kind of ballparking early estimates $1,000 a month for these. Yeah, so that's a lot for 12 months, if you're going to do it for these people did it for 18 months. So you're talking $18,000 to lose enough weight to really improve your outcomes. And if your insurance pays for it particularly, that's probably a pretty good deal if you've tried everything else. Yes. you know so and uh our goal is to save lives but also quality of life does improve your quality of life and um you know i've seen people who talk about well you know doctors are fed the same bullshit that we are about weight and weight isn't unhealthy and you know being overweight isn't

unhealthy and it's not look the problem in what we're fed if you know what i mean so i'm sorry But it's indisputable that if you are overweight and you get a wasting illness like cancer that your odds of living longer are higher. There's no question about that. But overweight also contributes to disease states significantly, including malignancies, including diabetes, which then leads to heart attack and stroke and all of those things. So the risk-benefit analysis is still better to manage your weight and get it down before you get ill rather than going well. You know, once I'm overweight, I might as well stay this way because I'm because I have

less likelihood or, you know, I have a improved survival if I get cancer. that isn't really to me that's not a compelling argument it is to some people there are some people they get mad at me for even saying that there's any health benefit to losing weight but it is if you look at that if you care about the data the data is absolutely there yep and you know I think the other interesting thing about this drug is just think about a lot of the people that we have to have joint replacements yeah early and then they get start adding weight because they can't get up and move and then it gets worse and worse and sometimes dropping that weight will allow them to get up and be more active and to heal quicker.

So I think there's a lot of great benefits to it. Well, and then there's just the lifestyle stuff. I mean, are you not sick of having to buy, I mean, I agree, it sucks. You have to buy two seats for an airplane or you can't ride rides. I mean, I broke my heart. There were two people in front of me at Tennessee Tornady at Dollywood, and they couldn't get the lap thing. I know. It was awful.

And they had to get up, and they were, you know what, it would have been not so bad if they'd been in the back. They were in the very front two seats. So every single person in line and everybody sitting in the ride, you know, saw this. And I felt horrible for them. But I'm no, I'm sure they felt worse about it. Yeah. And then there's the whole Dollywood thing that I love to tell that I've told a couple of times on this show that there is a sign at Dolly's. splash country that's the double and I shouldn't laugh that the double tubes are for an adult and a small child not to exceed 500 pounds total now if if you have to make a sign for that an adult and a small child and combined weight is more than 500 pounds you have they had a problem yeah something happened on that ride for them to make that sign yeah and uh you know

No, so anyway, if you get kicked out, you know, is it, that's something. Yeah, that's good. That's a lifestyle issue. It is. Anyway, all right, so, uh, terhubidant, tersepa, tersepidae. Tersepa. God, now you got me doing that. I said it pretty.

Terzepatide. Oh, look who's here. Hey, the boss. Here's, here's the boss of all bosses. Hello. How are you? I'll turn your mic on as soon as you flipped that switch. So Tacey's here, everybody.

And she has been, and nobody cares about our kid or anything. I think it's on. Yeah, it's on. Nobody cares about our kids' excellent grades or any of that stuff, but he is now searching for an apartment because he's not getting along with his roommates. And that is, can you help her? I think that's, she's plugging. I'm sorry.

She's plugging in. Is that working? Yes. Okay. Those things weren't working for me the other day. Yeah, yeah. Are you sure this not just him wanting to have his own place so that his girlfriend can spend more time over there? Yeah, no.

She can spend time over there now. But they're just, you know, they were best friends in high school and now not so much. And that kind of sucks. I hate that. But you never know until you live with somebody what they're really going to be like. Did you play that funny phone call that we got? About Liam. Oh, no.

No, I don't know where that is, but somebody, you know, I may have cut it off, but it was somebody called and just asked if Liam found his wallet. And because we, Tacey and I, I think that was a Patreon show. And Liam called and said he couldn't find his wallet. So Tacey went left to go find it. Was that, were you here? Yeah. Okay, no, it wasn't a Patreon.

Anyway, so somebody called, left a question at the end. And they said, you know, did Liam ever find his wallet? The answer is yes. He found it. And it was right in front of his nose the whole time. It was on, it's a black wallet. And he had left it on a book called Berserk, berser, which is a manga. And it's got a black cover.

And so it was a black wallet on a black book. And he just couldn't see it. So I bought him. one of those Apple discs so I can track him wherever he goes, but also ostensibly so we can find his wallet if you're losing it. And it's like, dude, so let's talk a little bit about absent-mindedness. There are people listening to us that lose shit all the time. I'm one of those people. I have figured out a way to compensate for that. And that is by developing strict habits about certain things. So one thing, and Tacey, and I'm going to tell the story about what happened this weekend,

that shows why this is an imperfect system. But I'm always, I know my wallet is in my right front pocket, and my watch is on my arm, obviously. My phone is in my pocket and also my key. So those are my three things. And the only two places that my wallet ever is is in my pocket or on my nightstand. the only place okay same for my phone it's either in my pocket or on my nightstand that way if it's not in my pocket i know it's effing on my nightstand okay and i've been telling leum wallet nightstand wallet nightstand and then oh i left it in my car that's some by the way some 19-year-old dumb-ass shit where they've never been exposed to anything bad in this world well i'll just leave my wallet in the front seat of my car and then all you know it's like dude come on They still do that.

So anyway. It's an invitation for trouble. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, don't give somebody a reason to break into your car. But so, and so I've developed this. So this is the key is you have to develop these habits because you're always, for abs and people, you're going, well, I'm going to put my keys right here and I'll remember where I put them, and then you don't.

And then they're in some God-forsaken place that you don't remember. Well, okay, so this weekend couldn't find my fucking glasses. Couldn't find my glasses. My glasses are either on my face or on my nightstand. But I've kind of gotten in the habit of taking them off in the bathroom when I'm getting ready for bed and sometimes leaving them there saying I'll come get them in the morning. Not there either. Not there.

Not anywhere in the bathroom. Not in the tub, not in the drawers. Not under the bed. Not looked under the bed. Oh, I did find a pair of glasses there. were Tacey's glasses. Tacey's glass. No, not too bad.

She has OCD worse than I do, so it was driving her crazy. But I did find glasses under the bed, and they were Tacy's that she had lost a million years ago. So that was something. And I found two of the dog balls that, you know, Ralphie lost when they did his spaying. And we found a beeper. I'm just kidding. And, yeah, I found a beeper that I lost about a year ago. How many years ago?

So anyway. but couldn't find my fucking glasses. Couldn't find them. I just said, you know, whatever. They'll turn up. I know they have to be here. They were in my pants pocket with my keys. Which I never go into my pants pocket for my keys

because my car is one of those proximity locks. Why the hell? You should cram your glasses in your phone box. I cram. Scratch them up. I was getting ready. I put my wallet and my front thing, my front pants pocket.

I put my phone in my back pants pocket. I put my keys and my glasses in my left pants pocket, like a dumbass. And we looked everywhere, and then it was like a stupid asshole. So I came downstairs. Of course, I had to cop to it because it was funny because it's so dumb. So these things don't always work, but they work better than not doing that. So if you're absent-minded, you've got to develop those sort of proximity things. And then be checking all the time.

I'm always telling the boys, when you go. go from the car to the restaurant, do your inventory. Wallet, keys, phone. When you go in and then you sit down and then when you get up, wallet keys phone. And then when you get back to the house, wallet keys phone, you know, until you go to bed that night. And if you'll develop that habit, you'll lose these things a lot less than you normally do. That's a real common thing is for people to be. Particularly in this day and age, the things that, and you think, oh gosh, I've got demand.

No, that's not a sign of a dementia, exactly. It is a sign of anxiety, stress, a lot of stuff on your plate. Yeah. And those things, those intrusive thoughts will bust in and destroy your short-term memory, the scratch-pad memory, and then you just have completely forgotten where you put something. All right. Just remember, the opposite of forgetfulness is what? Presence. So being present, you forget less.

Oh, I know another one. The opposite of forgetfulness is? I forget. I forgot. Okay. That's hilarious. All right. I'm going to say Scott ruined that one.

All right. I can take it. All right. We had a question in the waiting room. So when we are referring to the waiting room, what we're talking about is a small group of people. uh who because we're on at the same time when anthony has gabin on there a lot of people who watch that instead i don't blame them uh because they know they can hear this later but uh if you want to hang out with us we're at you know on youtube just go to our youtube channel

follow us on um on twitter or our subreddit or youtube i said youtube or facebook and i'll put out a a note notification and then you can come in and check it out and so we have people in the waiting room so i see amanda swan and darren parker and someone and sean pedrick and other people like that they're just hanging out and i'm not going to do like stuttering john and sit here for 20 minutes and list everybody that's in the chat room so but you can hang out and then you can ask questions and scott usually picks them up and one of the people was it sean that was asking about viral meningitis. Oh, didn't see that.

Okay, well, anyway, one of the people in the chat room had a child or, you know, a family member who was a child who had viral meningitis. Now, viral meningitis obviously is meningitis. That's inflammation of the lining of the central nervous system. Those things are called meninges. And that's a very common form of meningitis. if I had to choose between viral and bacterial, I'll take viral because in adults, for the most part, it causes a chronic headache. And most people get better on their own without treatment.

Now, non-polio enteroviruses are the most common causes of viral meningitis in the United States. So a lot of people get these enteroviruses, and very few of them will develop meningitis. but mumps can do it, herpes can do it, herpes encephalitis is a rough one, and that one usually requires IV medication. Influenza can cause meningitis, but these, I've been doing this 35 years, and all of the viral meningitis that I've seen have all been non-polioenteroviruses. And so anyway, these people will get fever, irritability, poor eating, particularly. particularly in kids, you know, they'll just go off their feed.

They might be lethargic, hard to wake them up from sleep. And, you know, common symptoms can also include fever, headache, stiff neck, that kind of stuff. And so they'll diagnose this by doing lab tests, and sometimes they'll get a stool sample. Other times they have to do a lumbar puncture, which is where they stick a needle in your back and get some cerebral spinal fluid and look fluid and look at it under the microscope. So in most cases, there isn't any specific treatment for the viral meningitis, and most people who get it if it's mild get better in 7 to 10 days. Good.

And antibiotics don't help. No. So there you go. So that's that. And hopefully the kid follows the normal course has a real mild syndrome and just gets better quickly. All right. Good. All right.

You got anything else over there? Yeah, well, Darren Parker was asking last week and tied it into this week, I guess he started having maybe some cardiac concerns. Okay. He started taking Crestor, he was prescribed. Crestor started to have some sores on his scalp. Well, Crestor is Rosuva Staten, that is a statin, Dr. Scott's favorite. Yes. All right.

Anyway, we'll skip past that part. But he was asking, really a two-part question. He was asking if we've ever heard of anyone that has scalp ulcerations or sores. Absolutely. Statens are known. Because a bunch of terrible stuff. Oh, man, whatever. Statins are known to cause.

Keeps my triglycerides under control. Exema. Well, that is, that's by God, that's an anecdote living in Saratist. That's right. Eczema, it can cause a cutaneous version or form of lupus, even. Yeah, which is not good. Porphyria cutania tarta, which we've talked about on this show before. It's often associated with liver disease.

Bullis dermatosis. Bullis dermatoses are dermatoses, you know, pathology of the skin that cause blistering. So you can get big sort of fluid-filled blisters. They can also cause phototoxicity. In other words, people, all of a sudden, they're on

a statin. They're really sensitive to sunlight. You know, Lifeline has got to stop calling me. Hang on a second. Let's just take this call. Oh. Hello. Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, okay, so

POTISensitive. So those people, People will go out and all of a sudden, God, I'd just go outside, and now I get sunburned all the time. Well, there's a second part of this story. Yeah. So, yes, that is a possibility, and it is unusual. A lot of providers will miss that for a day or two. They're used to hearing about muscle aches and pains.

Heropies. And that kind of stuff, yeah. He was talking about, so I guess he took, maybe he's not on right now. He's, I guess, traveling, but he said that he decided, I guess, to go get a calcium score of his heart. Okay, excellent. The number of scores were elevated, and he went because, and we're going to give him credit for this,

in memory of GVAC, he went to have his calpium. So thank you very much for doing that. And let's talk about the calcium score just for a second. Yeah, sure, sure. It's just a test that they do with a CT scanner that is done between cycles. It literally takes 30 seconds to do. When I did my last one, they said,

hold your breath, and then by the time I let my breath, breath out there like okay you're done that's like really and what it does is it looks at some imaging of the heart and the blood vessels in and around the heart and then it calculates this thing called a calcium score and it gives you sort of an idea it's not a perfect test but it's a good screening test to see if you need something further done yeah so I guess because of his calcium score they sent him straight over for a stress test oh so what was his score well he didn't say and And like I said, he's on the road, so.

Okay. But he must have called in and said to ask you about high altitudes and suicide rates. Did you get an email? I don't know. Let's do one thing at a time, though. Let's talk about the calcium score. So they sent him straight over and then what? Well, and then he dropped off.

He's going on a road trip, so we'll have to find out. So he never had, wait. Oh, he's gone? Yeah, yeah, he's gone there. Okay, okay, I'm with you. I'm just the messenger. So a score of zero means that they don't see any calcium in the heart. And then a score of 100 to 300 means moderate plaque is there.

Plaques are just places where calcium and other, you know, fibrous tissue of building up in the heart are the coronary arteries. And that is associated with relatively high risk over the next three to five years. and then a score of greater than 300 is a sign of very high to severe disease, and that they would send somebody over. So that probably is what happened, and I would love to know what, if he's driving around, I'm assuming that his stress test was okay. Yes, one would assume so.

Because they, I had a nuclear stress test once, and what they're doing with that is basically, they stress you and then they give you an injection of a substance that will bind to areas that are currently metabolizing oxygen and then they can and it's also radioactive so they'll put you in front of a scanner so if you have a blocked coronary artery obviously that part of the of the heart muscle is not using oxygen and it won't bind to that it'll show up as a whole or a dark spot so anyway well cool there is a so on to his second part of his question that he's not able to listen to uh there is a one study that shows a positive relationship between

average state altitude and suicide rate but but um correlation is not causation right so Utah the average geographic altitude is 6,000 feet rate of suicide is 70% higher than average But remember, those are relative numbers, the absolute risk we could calculate that. Matter of fact, put that down for next time, Scott. Gotcha. We will calculate the absolute risk of suicide when you're moving from, say, what's the lowest altitude? Be a lot about, Arizona, maybe, from there to Utah. Yeah, South Florida.

And then you're going to see, well, true. Okay, right, right. It's at sea level. So, but I think there's some part. It's like Death Valley is below sea level, right? Yeah, yeah. So we'll look at that, and then we'll calculate the absolute risk, and you're going to see that that absolute risk is pretty small.

All right? Yep. Maybe we'll do it on the podcast this week. We'll see. All right, what else you got? Is that it? That'll be about all. From there.

Now, you had some other articles that you wanted to talk about. Yeah, another article, and you've actually, I'm not sure where you've got this. but it's about the changes to the brain following an injury. Okay, what kind of injury? So a head injury. Okay. So what they're saying is every year in the United States, nearly two million Americans sustain traumatic brain injuries or TBI,

and survivors can live with lifelong, physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities. And currently there are no great treatments. Yeah. Right. And we've all treated those and done our best to work with those. but they've known for many, many years that the brain tries to recruit and make new connections. And what they've found now is they may have a way to actually using some, it's a weird process called I-disco. Excuse me, I don't know, just that's whatever the anagram is.

Donna Summer. It's what it sounds like. But actually, being able to maybe transplant. How do you spell it? It's small I disco, capital D-I-S-C-O. Okay. I-D-D-D-Sco. Yeah.

Of course, you're probably going to pronounce it like... No, it looks like I-D-S-E-D-Sco. For T-B-A? Yeah. But that's the imaging that they're using. Oh, oh, oh, okay, okay. As far as being labeled. That's for creating maps.

Right. And that's how they determine where these brain cells are communicating. Yeah. So they're hoping that they can. can use this mapping to either put in some new, some gene therapy. Yeah. Like, you know, like they're doing with, say, the CRISPR, where they're modifying the genes, but they're hoping that they can actually create new pathways to reverse some of these TBI injuries.

Wow. Okay, well, that would be interesting. This is one of the immune system, which we're getting a handle on, and the neurologic system is a frontier of science that's still yet to be fully explored. We have no idea of what makes consciousness. No. Do you know, Tase?

Retirement. Retirement makes consciousness. You think so? Pretty sure they have something to do with it. Yeah, so they use this process called IDisco, which uses solvents to make biological samples transparent. This process leaves behind a fully intact brain that could be illuminated with lasers,

and imaged in 3D with specialized microscopes. So I'm assuming they're doing this on people who are no longer with us. Okay, probably. I remember when I was in medical school, we were in some lecture, and there was the professor was showing slides of brains, right? And they were saying, well, this patient was in a motor vehicle accident and suffered blood clot to this particular. artery and he showed us a section of the brain that had just a big giant blood clot in it and some knucklehead in my class raised their hand in all seriousness and said so what

happened to the patient because we're taught to you know you have to be empathetic and you which that's not a wrong thing I mean it's the right thing and but this was this person was trying to like show oh I who cares about all this what happened to the patient that the professor just I said, well, usually when you see sections of brains, you can assume that the patient didn't make it. Anyway, so I'm assuming in this case they're putting solvents in these brains and making them completely transparent and then probing them with lasers that these people have deceased. Yeah, but you know what really interesting thing I was reading about this, Dr. C., was that in a lot of these TBIs, the problem is inhibition is lower. And certainly you'll see that after, even after.

TBI is after someone's had maybe a surgery to their brain for a tumor. Yeah. And it changes their personality and they lose some of these inhibitions. So what part of their research is actually to neutralize. Have you ever heard of Phineas Gage? I have, but I can't tell you why. Okay, go ahead, finish it. And I'll tell you his story in a second.

It's really incredible. So what they're actually trying to do with some of the cell therapy is to disinhibit these inhibitory neurons. Interesting. So they're not allowed. Interesting. It's really, it was kind of cool. I didn't get all the way down through there, but I thought that's really incredible. That is interesting because you think someone's lost their inhibition, but to disinhibit neurons would make them worse,

but no, you're disinhibiting neurons that normally would inhibit the brain. It's a double negative, and it makes everybody very confused. Yeah. Isn't it crazy? Yeah, Phineas Gage was this railroad construction guy, and what happened was this iron rod was driven completely through his head. And it destroyed his left frontal lobe. So that would be, you know, obviously the left side of his brain in the front. And it caused all kinds of weird behavioral problems.

And he's been a fixture in neurological research and just sort of the history of neurology forever. But he survived. Wow. It's so crazy that this guy survived. this injury and um i'm just looking here let me see if i can see the kinds of things that happened to him um well i said a tamping iron landed oh the okay so the it landed point first 80 feet away if that tells you how how powerful this this injury was it bounced yeah well i mean no it went through his head and it landed 80 feet away

So I guess they were blasting or something and they had this tamping rod in the, or maybe they were tamping this, the charge down into the ground. And then it exploded and went just right through his brain. And, yeah. That just, yeah, he had all kinds of strange behaviors after that. One thing that if you're interested, a really good book on this, these kinds of things is the man who mistook his wife for a hat.

That's a great book about weird neurologic injuries and stuff. And another one, I think written by the same guy, was one called Mind of a nemonist, and it's M-N-E, a neemonist. And it was this

guy that had this crazy malady that he could not forget anything. It was incapable of forgetting anything. And they would give him lists of a hundred things and then years later they would come back and ask him what was on that list and he could name them one time he made a mistake and uh the mistake was that he forgot candy cane on this list and when they said why did you miss that one he said well and he thought

about it for a second and he said okay i see why i missed that i had laid the candy cane against a brick wall. And when I walked by it, I just missed it. Because it blended into the brick wall. Oh, what? Yes. Wow. And his brain was just cataloging things. Constantly, he was

walking around in this world. That's insane. And that's something. So there's all kinds of cool stuff. If you separate the right brain from the left, because there's this neurologic tissue going between the two called the corpus callosum, and when you severed that, you can do some really interesting

experiments with those people. They'll do that sometimes for people with refractory seizures, particularly back in the old days. And in those cases, you could show something to the right side of the brain. Let's say you show a bunch of pictures. And one of them is a horse. And there's a way that you can just show it to the right side of the brain. You can do that through the eyes. Partition.

And the person would be able to pick it out of a lineup but would not be able to say what there was that they saw. But they can point to the word of horse. Or they could point to the picture. Yeah. Yeah, I saw a similar thing. It's nuts. Yeah, I think we may have discussed this years ago, but it's very similar. A corpus colossum had been severed on this one gallon, and she was showing how when she'd go into her closet, and she knew that she wanted to wear a red dress. Yeah.

But if she went up with her, like, her left hand, it wouldn't pick her red dress, no matter how she tried. Because it didn't want to. It didn't want to. It'd pick like that orange dress or yellow dress would pull out, but her right hand or whatever. but actually be able to go and pick out the address. Because that's wild. Isn't that crazy? They're fighting.

Yeah, they're fighting. There's two distinct things in there. And they cooperate. But the left brain is where speech and all the, and most people, 99% of people, the left brain will be where speech and sort of that sort of executive processing is. But the right brain has very important functions, but it's mute. and if you in the words you can't you can't say things

well the right brain can't speak but it has very important function so if you try to draw a face and you're not an artist and you haven't learned to look with the right side of the brain the left side of your brain will go well I know what a nose looks like it's a circle

with two little holes in it that's not what a nose looks like the left brain is all about symbols and stuff the right brain is about the shapes, but you have to shut up the left brain because it always thinks it knows better. So a really cool trick is to take a photograph of somebody and set it in front of you and draw from it what the picture right side up. And just draw and do the best you can. Try to draw what they, and then take that drawing and set it aside, turn it over so you can't look at it after you're done.

Now flip the picture of the person upside down. So now it is upside down to you and now draw it again, drawing it from that upside down perspective. And when you're done, look at both of the pictures. And the one that you did with the left side of your brain, which is when it was right side up, is going to look like a two-year-old did it, unless you're an artist. If you're an artist, this doesn't work. But if you're a normal person that's a non-artist type person, that second picture will look much more realistic.

And it's astounding the difference, just with that one little test. So you can see the difference between right and left brain. And the right brain tends to be able to see the shapes, but you have to shut the left brain up. And the left brain can't understand an upside-down picture very well. Isn't that cool? That's pretty awesome. Fucking brains.

Yeah, that's cool. Brains are awesome. All right. That's why zombies like to eat them. That's right. Hey, we've got one from Talk Live. Trying to get knowledge. If you want it.

Yeah, what is it? So talk like Hick, to you. She has the female question of the week. Okay. Drum roll, please. Oh, sorry. Anti-perspirants and deodorants for the vagina. Okay, Tase, you better take this one.

Yeah, so what is up with that? Do you think they're good or they're bad? Well, I don't know. I mean, the science behind it, but I've used loom-me. Oh, Loomie? What is that? It's a... See, now you're talking some...

This is Tacey's got a chick IQ of 120. And we're like, huh? Is this like a refresher or... No, it's not an antiperspirant. Okay. Oh. It's a deodorant. Smells weird when you put it on, but it does work.

Shut up. It does work. When you say work, it makes you not... Stink. Smell? Yeah, I mean, it's... I want something that's not going to... make me sweat all of a sudden i've started sweat i've got flop sweat like crazy i've never had this

problem before and i thought i was incontinent it's like am i pissing in my pants i would only tell this story because i've discovered that i am not incontinent right i did a test where i took i took gauze and toilet paper wotted it up and put it on the end of my you know male membership and then came back after I felt like I had pissed my pants and there was no urine there. It's just sweat. Well, but see, women are different. No, I know.

Oh, my God. Oh, you're in trouble now, buddy. Sorry, sorry. You better tighten up. She'll keep your ass. And I like how it's a question for a woman, but then you go ahead and turn it around. No, no, no, no.

I was just talking about me. Yes, uh-huh. That's all, how does it affect him? Oh, for fuck's sake. No, I'm empathizing with Wemma. Go ahead. So I think the loamy is good. I really do like it.

Yeah. But it's not, it doesn't have an antiperspirant in it. Yeah. So, but, you know, if you spend all day out and you've had a couple of kids, I mean, by the end of the day, it can get kind of stinky down there. I've never noticed taste. That's what I'm going to say. Okay. Thank you.

Bet of roses, buddy. That's what I would assume One time on Facebook They were talking about this very subject And one person wrote It's a vagina It's not supposed to smell like flowers Right right right

And I'm fine with that Yeah It shouldn't smell like You know 10 day old rotten fish Either I mean well there's a spectrum there Yeah there's a spectrum Right

Somewhere in between the two Somewhere in the middle And I don't know if I've said that's or not, but it does smell a little weird when you put it on, but that smell goes away. So I would recommend that product. And it says it's baking soda free and aluminum free. We are not, you know, they're not a sponsor of the show. No. And so also, Steve, there are a lot of women that believe, and I don't know where I'm at on this in the natural deodorants because that aluminum can cause cancer.

in the breast. I have heard that, but I've never, I don't know. They don't want to use the, in a purse. They're concerned about it. Yes. So that's where a lot of this natural deodorant stuff's coming from. Totally understand. I'm looking at a use of underarm cosmetic products in relation to risk of breast cancer case

control study. And what this found was use of underarm. They're saying UCP, let me see, let me see how they're, what the, okay, underarm cosmetic products, yeah, was significantly associated with risk of breast cancer, but the P was 0.036. So it wasn't, you know, 0.05 is where we say, well, 1 in 20, so it was less than 0.05, but it's not strongly associated. And so I understand where people, you know, if they are concerned about this and that they look at these kinds of studies that they made, that was from 2017, that people would be, hey, no, I don't want to do aluminum. Now, let me tell you what the American Cancer Society says about it, that cancer causing substances and antiperspirants are absorbed through razor nicks from underarm shaving. They're said to be deposited in the lymph nodes under the arm. not able to clear them by sweating because the antiperspirant keeps you from perspiring.

Well, that makes sense. Now, most breast cancers develop in the upper outer quadrant of the breast because that area is closest to the lymph nodes exposed to antiperspirants. This is the claim, okay? And then now the American Cancer Society, which really, I can't think of a reason why they would have a dog in this hunt other than the truth. It's no strong epidemiologic studies in the medical literature that link breast. breast cancer risk and antiperspirant use.

And there's very little scientific evidence to support this claim. That one study was one of those things, but that was pretty dark. It was pretty weak. Right. And it was not a perfect study. It says here, a carefully designed epidemiologic study of this issue published in 2002 compared 813 women with breast cancer and 793 women without the disease. They found no link between breast cancer risk and antiperspirant use.

shit and i just lost um lost my place well way to go sorry so but that's a big um yep a big thought amongst a lot of my friends you know i have friends who don't wear deodorant i have friends who wear natural deodorant well and then the thing is what's in the natural deodorants are there any carcinogens in those too and i would want to know about that they just i mean what they would say about natural deodorant is they just don't have the aluminum stuff in it. Here's one study

looked at the absorption of aluminum from antiperspirants containing aluminum chloride applied to underarms found that less than 0.012% was actually absorbed and the amount of aluminum absorbed would be much less than what would be expected to be absorbed from foods

a person eats during the same amount of time because there is aluminum in our food. and then it also doesn't seem breast cancer tissue contains more aluminum than normal breast tissue study that looked at women with breast cancer found no real difference in the concentration of aluminum between cancer and the surrounding normal tissue so if you want to cherry pick studies then yeah okay there there was that one study that showed some risk but if you look at the totality of all the studies there's no evidence that this is a real thing okay now so

would I argue with someone for using a natural antiperspirant? No, unless there are people at work saying, I can't work next to you because you stink. You sweat like a hog. And it sweats one thing, but smelling's another. And so if someone sweats a lot and they don't care if they have sweat pit stains, I'm fine with that. If they smell bad and people are complaining about them,

those are the people that maybe I would say, you know what, maybe the risk of is worth the benefit, you know. We've got to find a better solution. Because I've known people. I mean, that's real stuff where I've had people come in and say, hey, I smell so bad. People are complaining at work, and it's what are you using? Well, I use deodorant every day. I use deodorant soap.

But that's not enough for some people. Well, you know, Kim Chickens is saying, well, don't shave. Because you mentioned the nicking of the. Well, that was the supposition that the reason. But, yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just one in lieu of shaving. Can you do, could you do an air or? waxing or

I don't know waxing or you could just shave close with the shaper that's got with a trimmer that's got a guard on it and then you won't nick yourself

I think that'd be a good idea I'm not grossed out by by hair and a woman and you know if it's hanging out down to their you know their abdomen that's kind of gross that's a little different but that's gross in a dude

it kind of makes things stinky yeah it does understood Yep. So there you go. Well, thanks. Well, how's it good?

What else you got? That's about all I've got for now. Well, those are good. Thanks to our wonderful. Let's do this one about a deviated septum. How about that? Oh, cool, yeah. Oh, here we go.

Hey, Doc. It's Zach from Oklahoma. I hope you and Dr. Scott are doing well. Thanks, man. And I wasn't oh my godding about you. I was because I was afraid that the player wasn't going to play. I've got a question for the both of you. Maybe one of you can help me out.

All my life, I've had horrible sinuses. I have a bad problem with allergies. I have a deviated septum, which doesn't help. I get bad sinus infections. Ever since I was in high school, I've always used splonase. Okay, we're running out of time. That won't help a deviated septum. A deviated septum is a medical problem.

Tacey had it. Yes. so bad she had a thing called a concha belosa had to have it removed and did you notice any difference i can drive i feel like i can drive a mack truck up into my nostril it well if you get a good you know e and t surgeon they know what they're doing and you've had these problems your whole life getting it fixed will change your life all the difference and i mean i didn't know that i wasn't breathing right right you don't know how bad it is until you get it fixed and i got a i got a free nose job Yeah, and yeah, if you've got a goofy-looking nose,

sometimes they can fix it while they're there and just call it medically necessary. So talk to your primary care or your ear, nose and throat provider about that. You may be able to get that fixed. Anyway, what other questions you got there, Dr. Scott? Yes, we got Bob. Oh, Bobbo.

He was asking about Bobbo. Actually, technically it's Bob M, but, you know, he was saying that last week we were talking about scoliosis. Okay. And he says he's 38 years old. He's got some scoliosis One of his legs is about an inch shorter than the other. Okay.

It doesn't bother me now, but I want to make sure it's not going to get worse. Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't know why you made that noise. Well, is everybody like that? No, not to where it's clinically relevant.

Bob, do you know the degree of scoliosis that you have because there are different degrees? Mine got worse. But what do you think, Dr. Scott? What are you going to say? The number one thing I would say is a lot of stretching, a lot of back stretches, hamstring stretches, core strengthening, et cetera, et cetera, or trying to keep the pelvis as balanced as you can, try to keep that leg length discrepancy from getting too much worse. Yeah.

Because that does, it just goes right up the chain from your ankle to your knee hip. And what about shoe inserts if they're one leg is shorter than the other? And certainly shoe inserts. You know, we like to start small an eighth of an inch first. Really? Because you don't want to go up too quickly because I can really throw off the hip in the back. And so I think shoe inserts are certainly good. But the key is going to be just a really great stretching exercise plan to try to slow the progression.

Yeah. Yeah. Tacey is right, though, about, and let me give you one of these, Tase. Give yourself a bill. More than 50% of people do have subtle difference in their leg lengths. That's what I was asking about. Yeah, okay. I didn't hear the scoliosis part.

So that is absolutely true. And most of the time it doesn't cause problems. But if it's more than a couple of centimeters, so 2.5 centimeters is one inch, then it can affect your quality of life for sure. And these things can be caused by a lot of things, bone infections, bone disease, but in Bob, of course, it's caused. we think, by his scoliosis, and they should do x-rays and all those things to look at these things and line everything up, make sure that there's not something that they can fix. And wearing a shoe lift is one thing, like Scott said, you probably start small and work up. But then surgery is a possibility, but that's usually done in people who have this when they're a child

so that they can either stretch one of the limbs or cause one of the other ones not to grow as fast. And, you know, so in children who are still growing, there's a thing called epiphasioidosis. And what that is is just basically you're trying to slow down the growth plate in the longer leg.

And then you can do lower limb shortening. You can do lower limb lengthening with a thing that looks like an external fixator, and then they just keep screwing that... Separated, yeah. What's it called when you turn a turn buckle? So they've got like a turn buckle on it, and they'll keep screwing it to try to straighten that limb.

But honestly, the best place to go is either... It was to an orthopedic office, preferably one that's got a spine surgeon in the center. If you do ortho, and if it's neurosurgeon, Yeah, what I'm just saying to, so that they can both look at it and say, yes, you don't need to do anything. That's what we're hoping is they'll say you don't need to do anything. And they'll send you to an orthotic shop and they'll get you a lift in the short legs shoe. Yeah, I guess it's Cobb Engel.

He says it's 49, which is. What's 49? 49 is pretty significant. Yeah. Okay. And talk like you could, what amount would make it clinically relevant? What's that? Scoliosis?

I guess in scoliosis, yeah. Well, like we said, more than a one-inch difference in leg length can affect your quality of life. And then, you know, it's, I don't know, it's anything greater than 10 degrees is going to start to be a mild scoliosis. Yeah, let's look up. Let's grade scoliosis here. Yeah, it's the cobb scale, cobb angle measurement. Or did you look that up? So you have the answer in front of you?

So why am I struggling? here. So what is it? So you said 10 is mild. Yeah. So 1 to 9 is normal. Normal. You know, normal scoliosis are very mild. 10 to 24 degree curve is considered mild

scoliosis needs to be monitored. 25 to 39 degree curve. It's considered moderate. You get up to 40 to 49 degree curve generally is considered a brace to avoid surgery

and then getting up past that you start looking at 50 to 7 he was in that grade three yeah yeah so so yeah they're you know they're suggesting bracing and certainly bracing and get this looked at oh yeah and i'm sure he has he said they found it when he's in ninth grade so okay so he's been he's been oh sorry he's just why he's been living with it all this time and he just wonders what's going to happen later well i can tell you this by god that mine got worse yeah as i got older i'm about an inch shorter than I was when I was in college. And, yeah, it has caused me to have some difficulty.

So you want to have someone that's monitoring this over time. Of course, you're twice as old as Bob. Oh, how old is he? He's 38. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Bob. Quite twice as old. All right.

You got anything else? No, that's a bit. Hey, thanks, Bob. Just keep doing those. Yeah, Bob, keep us in the loop on that. I would like to know how that turns out and what they say if you do some further monitoring. All right. Well, let's get out of here, Dr. Scott.

Thanks. Always go to Dr. Scott. Thanks, Tacey. We can't forget. Rob, Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg, Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teff, that Gould Girl, Lewis Johnson, Paul Fcharski, Chowdy, 1008, Howdy Guplunk, Eric Nagel, the Port Charlotte Hoar, the Saratoga Skank, the Florida Flusie, the St. Pete Barkkeep Blower. The Dolly Museum Diddler, the Ballet Bimbo, the girl with the genetic half-sister, no one knows about.

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