Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 512 - "I GOT A TEXT!"

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, and Tacie discuss: Bringing an alt medication to market Monkeypox and statistical analysis Immune mediated hair loss Pulmonary fibrosis Ketogenic diet benefits Hiatal hernia surgery Alopecia again the return of LOVE ISLAND UK 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

I decided to sell my vacuum cleaner. It was just gathering dust. What do you call an ostrich in a cornfield? A crop duster. How many ninjas does it take to change a light bulb? Whoa, it's already been. changed. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular

by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Your show was better when he had medical questions. Hey! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Zabalibon. I'm stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound

exacerbating my incredible woes I want to take my brain out and blast with the wave an ultrasonic ecographic and a pulsating shave I want to magic pills 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 requiem for my disease So I'm paging Dr. Steve From the world famous Carnif Electric Network Studios. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. Dr. Stephen, my little pal, Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medical practitioner, gives me street cred. Wackle alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott.

Hey, Dr. Steve. And my partner in all things, Tacey. Hello, Tacey. Hello. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio of the internet. You have a question. You're embarrassed to take to a regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us call 3-47766. 4323. That's 347. Poohead. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at D.R. Scott W.M. Visit our website

at Dr. Steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff to goodbye. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking over with your doctor. Nurse practitioner, practical nurse physician, assistant, pharmacist, respiratory therapist, chiropractor,

acupunctureist, whatever. So, thank you. Hello, Dr. Scott, hello, Casey. Check out stuff. dot, Dr. Steve.com, stuff, stu-f, dottersteve.com for all your Amazon shopping needs. And check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. Simplyherbils.net.

And check out our cameo. Camio.com slash weird medicine. It's cheap. I'm cheaper than Shully. And I'll say fluid to your mama or secretions to your daddy or whatever you want me to do. And I'll even do Cletus or Myrtle if you so ask. So check that out. I just do it for fun.

We're going to be on vacation, so I'll be doing it from the beach some, and that might be somewhat interesting. I don't know. Probably not. Probably still suck. And then patreon.com slash weird medicine. Tacey and I do a show there that's a little different. Well, it's a lot different.

And over the next couple of weeks on there, I'm going to be posting the first appearance of, myself on the Opion Anthony show and a couple other things other old gems like that I had no idea I was even going to be on that show

and they just sort of sprung it on me so that was kind of fun and then we're still doing the exam room we haven't had any celebrities in a while but I've just been giving them a break well they're just hard to pin down I mean you know you say they say they're going to do it and then you can't

yeah we've had a couple of them just wake up in time or yeah at one in the afternoon we're unimportant and we get that but it is fun we've got a bunch of friends that owe us a favor or two and can give us 15 30 minutes and ask us medical questions what they're going to do anyway so it's kind of a fun thing Scott you should come in on one of those I like to yeah they're fun all right um okay so I did one throws it. Somebody on Reddit had a funny

thing that, you know, Cardiff Electric, nobody knows who he is. And so recently they've been Cardiff has been taking my voice and putting it on these different game shows that he does

and he modulates my voice the same as his. So people are thinking, well, maybe Dr. Steve is Cardiff Electric. But our voices are different and this guy on, it's hilarious, on the subreddit said, no, it's not Dr. Steve, it's Dr. Scott. They get all hepped up on Dr. Scott's CBD nose spray, and then Steve's paying Scott to do it. And actually, your voice sounds more like cartyphalectrics than mine does.

So that one's kind of plausible. All will be revealed September 17th in Rochester. when I will be there and Cardiff Electric will be there. And if we're in the same room at the same time, well, it's probably unlikely that it's me. So that's all I'm saying. And if you don't know what we're talking about, that's fine, too.

It was literally less than one minute of the show. But it was funny because he said, well, I was in his chat room and there's only eight people in there and they're probably all boomers. That's true. There are quite a few boomers in there. I know Richard Kish is a boomer. I don't know about any of the other folks.

I know that Amanda Swan is not a boomer. Kim Chickens is not a boomer. I'm assuming Patty is not. But we have our share of boomers. But this is not a video show. We do an audio podcast, but we have this video element for the handful of people that want to hang out with us. And Scott and I have both said it's changed the dynamic of the show that we have more energy. If we know we're actually talking to somebody.

Yes, with great questions. Yeah, no, it's great, and they have fun in there. Way more fun. And, yeah, if somebody gets laid from meeting somebody in our chat room, I want to know about it. There you go. I want to know about it. Who's first? Yeah, that's right.

All right. Very good. Thank you. And, well, let's move on to the show. All right, very good. Check out Dr. Scott's website. It's simply herbals.net. That's simply herbals.

com. Anything going on there? A lot of sinuspring. Yeah. Lots of it, yeah. Pretty hot stuff right now. Have you talked to anybody about maybe changing the delivery, the bottle in the future? Not yet.

I love the old bottle that you have. I don't hate this one, but I love the other one better. Interesting. Yeah, not a big difference. There's two different suppliers. So when, let me ask you something. So when you have something like this, because, you know, I'm always thinking about things I'd like to maybe doing. Yeah.

No, I'm interested. in how you bring something like this to market, do they send you a bottle and you get to put your stuff in it and sample it to see how it works, or does it just show up one day and you go, oh, fuck, this wasn't, you know, the same as the last one.

So it's, you know, they're all a little bit different, but what do we try to do is have consistency. So you buy one and you pick the one you like and then you buy a whole bunch of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you try to get to... They'll sell you as many as you want. Yeah, they'll sell you as many.

But, you know, the problem is, Dr. Steve, is, you know, quite often they'll run out and then you have to come to something similar. And then you get, you know, that's kind of what happened with this. Well, no, it's not bad. I figured that you did it on purpose because you wanted to decrease

maybe the delivery because now you've got more than just peppermint oil and buffered saline in there, there's CBD in there and it'll last locker. It's spatial. So you get more for your money this way. I'd like to take credit for being that forward thinking, but no. All right, all right. Well, anyway,

we're having too much fun here. you had some questions or no way you had some articles couple articles yeah taste what did you bring I brought nothing fair enough she brought myself I brought myself which I haven't even been doing lately so I am here that's true even when you were here you weren't bringing yourself but today you were here well there was a reason for that wasn't there someone was here I don't know I'm sure I was busy it's so busy I think she was busy being retired yeah running down to the swimming I feel so sorry for her just so busy It's such a challenge.

So she sounds like Louis C.K.'s daughter in the first season when she's just going, I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm not bored. Yeah, that's good. If I were retired, I would never be bored. No. All right. You would be insane.

You would have 70,000 different projects going. Yeah, but I would actually get some of them done. I'm not doing anything, but I'm not bored. Yeah, right. That's very good. That sounds great. That sounds like a problem I'd like that. Re-watching Friends is, listen, if you haven't done it in a while, it's really pretty good.

The Golden Girls, I forgot all about, the Golden Girls. Oh, my God. Listen, Cicely, you know, 19, whatever. The thing I like about it is that since she's doing this when I'm at work, I don't have to watch any of this stuff. I can just watch Better Call Saul. And you can always watch Friends. It's on basically every channel. All day long.

All day long. It's amazing. All right. Anyway, thank you, Dr. Scott. That's awesome. Well, apparently the guest camera's not working. Oh, good. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, so let's get into this monkeypox thing. So I was reading, the monkeypox is found to be evolving at a faster rate than expected. Yeah, okay. So, yeah, let's talk about this for a minute. Go ahead. Well, it was just saying, they read your thing, and I have got some shit to say about this. Yeah, so they found important.

Portugal, that they think the monkey of pox virus is evolving at an even faster rate than expected, and they published it, you know, and I don't know how. So what do they mean by evolving? It means that the DNA has changed. Yeah, it's a double-stranded DNA virus. Yeah. So I guess so what? So what are they saying?

That they keep testing it and they're finding mutations. They're mutated. But is that changed turned into anything? What are they saying? No, they're not saying it changes anything at all. All they're saying that it's changing more rapidly than they thought, but it's not increasing, you know, hospitalizations or increasing. Nothing.

Nothing, no. So there are currently 306 cases in the United States. Now, when I did this last week, there were 200. So it's increased by a third since then. But you have these outliers. And so what I did, if you're interested at all in learning about how. how numbers can be used. Go to our Patreon, and I did an analysis using arithmetic means and then geometric means,

because there are some outliers. There are 63 cases in New York as of the time that we are recording this. There are 66 cases in California. And then, like Arizona 1, Colorado 7, Georgia 7, there's 27 in Florida. and North Carolina, two. Oregon's got one whole case. So when you look at the total number of patients in the United States that have this right now is 306.

Now, I don't know if when they resolve, if they're falling off, this is CDC monkeypox. I don't know if this is cumulative or these are current active cases. So let me see, total confirmed. total confirmed so this is cumulative so this isn't even how many people actually have it right because some of the people that had it in the beginning it's just gone away so uh yeah 306 divided by 350 million yeah not a lot yeah your chances are what one in a million is that right yeah yeah one and a million so those are still pretty good odds if i gave you those odds you'd go to

Vegas and bet the whole house. Bet the farm. So the fact that it's these are these clickbait titles. Maybe it means something. If it's mutating in a way that makes it more transmissible or more deadly, that's a problem.

If the DNA is just changing, it's just basically fucking around trying to see what combinations work for it. Yeah. And I say clearly says here pass through close bodily contact. Open. and lesions and through our favorite fluids.

Yes. Yes. Excellent. All right. Everyone take a drink. Keep your fluids to yourself. Weird medicine. Toast.

No, the weird medicine bingo game is every time we say fluids. And that counts too. You have to take a drink. All right. Cool. Yeah. And the thing is, and I don't have my spreadsheet in front of me, but if you take a geometric mean, it will be lower than the arithmetic mean.

So what is the geometric mean? I went into this in-depth in the Patreon, which I'm sure people are like, who, I can't wait to sign up for your Patreon to hear, you know, have a math lesson. But it is still kind of interesting in that, let's say you're doing a survey of hospitals and you want to look at their length of stay. and you're going to reimburse them based on how low their length of stay is. So the lower, the better. And you have this hospital that has this one dude in there that's been there for 600 days,

and then you have 20 people who have been there for 11 days. If you do the arithmetic mean for that, that person that's been there 600 days going to really skew that arithmetic mean higher. And arithmetic means where you just add up all those numbers and divide it by the number of patients that you had. And it's called, you know, skewing the curve or, you know, you always had somebody in your class that had, you know, everybody got a 20 on the test. And get old Steve. And then somebody would get 110. And then if they were grading on a curve, it would F everybody up because the curve was now busted by this outlier.

So if you do a geometric length of stay, what you've got. would do is you would take that 600 and multiply it times the next one, you know, 11 times 10, you know, all the different days. And then you would take the root of that. So if you had 10 patients, you would take the 10th root of that. And when you do that, it corrects for these outliers. And you get a number. Oh, for you. Okay. Well, that's how you do it with this monkey pox thing is if you do the arithmetic mean, it's going to be higher. It's going to look scarier than And if you do the proper test, which is the geometric mean, all right, move on. So monkey pox, not a big deal right now.

Not a big, we'll keep an eye on it. Keep your fluids to yourself. And don't click bait these. You know, medical journalism is just, and scientific journalism is really, really bad. And they'll, monkey pox is mutating it in an alarming rate. And it's like, okay, so they check it in the DNA on these different loci are just different. and that that's okay yeah does that translate into anything that's what we want to know I don't give two shits if some drug lowers my cholesterol if it doesn't in turn decrease

my risk of heart attack and stroke and there are drugs like that there's one out there and I'm not going to say it because I don't want them sending me a cease and desist but there's one drug out there that will decrease your cholesterol pretty significant but it doesn't translate into decreased heart attacks and stroke. So who cares? Nobody writes it anymore because of that. So, you know, I always used to tell the reps that would come to see me and they loved me because of these kinds of statements that, you know, I don't care. If somebody came in here with a drug that would triple my cholesterol but would decrease my risk of heart attack and stroke, I'll write the hell out of it.

Because cholesterol is an intermediate end point. The true endpoint is, does it improve this patient's quality of life, or does it improve their survival? Yep. You know, that's the thing. Exactly. All right. There's Tracy, okay. Okay.

Okay. Tacey, this was specifically for you. I should check that before. Let me turn this. No, no, no, no. No, no. So, hair-raising research. Are you ready for this?

Uh-huh. Hair-raising research. SALC scientists find surprising link between immune system and hair growth. So scientists have uncovered an unexpected molecular target common treatment for alopecia. Yes, alopecia, aka hair loss. Hair loss, yeah. And conditions when, but this specific alopecia is when your immune system attacks the hair follicles and causes them to fall out. Well, that sounds like alopecia ariata, which is different, right.

Oh, that's different? No, that's an immune system. No, that's what it is. Yeah, but they didn't put that on here. They just said plain alopecia. But they're talking about the immune system attacking. Okay, so they're not saying that in male pattern baldness, the immune system, they're talking about immune-mediated alopecia.

So you have alopecia Ariata, which is where you get these punched out. Matter of fact, we have a question about this coming up, where you have punched out lesions. They're described as coin-like. They're almost perfectly circular sometimes. and it'll just be, there's no hair there. And then you'll have alopecia totalis, and that's when your whole head loses its hair because of the immune system

attacking the follicles. And then you'll have alopecia universalis, which I understand that the guy that played Victor Zaz on that show Gotham, but also played no co-hank on Barry. I understand he has that. That's a good look on him. You can also get, what do you call those things that I had hair extensions and pull them out, and that can cause big circular.

Yeah, and that's just because you're yacking your hair out. That's just because I did that, yeah. What is it? Tick, Ticilaroo. Ticketylomania. Oh, Tricotillomania. Trichotillamia. Yeah, right, right, right, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I only have that when I have fake hair and pull their hair out. Do you think of Tricotillomania where they will eat it to? I don't know. Let me double check that. I didn't eat it. Let's make that clear. Well, while I'm looking this up, go ahead and go on. You just saved it in your back pocket there for later used.

I did try to save it so they could put it back in and I'd pull it out again. Okay, no, okay, so trichotillomania is just a compulsive desire to pull out one's hair. Eating. I'm going to put in eating, and that's, oh, okay, that's Trichotillomania with trichoride. phagia so trichoragia phagia or trichorizapha that's where you pull out your hair and then you eat it okay yeah that's crazy then you get a hairball which is called a bzor oh and then then you may get a bowel obstruction from that because you can't that you can't digest it but anyway go ahead because then there's no so you're talking about immune-mediated alopecia

uh yeah because what right now if you have just in a couple of places we'll do topical anti-immune stuff. It could be topical steroids or other medications that we can use. Especially if it's on the head or something. Yeah, go ahead. So these scientists did not begin by studying hair loss. They were interested in researching the roles of regulatory T cells and glucocorticochord hormones in autoimmune disorders.

Okay. They first investigated how these immune components functioned in multiple sclerosis, crones, and asthma. God damn. This is not as boring as sex with my walk. I'll show. Go ahead. We'll pick things up in a minute, Daisy, I promise.

Will we? No, I'm interested in this. But what they found was that these people that had issues with their immune systems, they were attacking the... Yes. We established that. So now what are they going to do about it? Well, I'm reading to the bottom of it.

Let's get to the bottom. Do you have to tell me to get to the conclusion part? The best show prep in the first. It's the best show prep in the... Well, they read the first paragraph. Well, at least everybody knows when Trichotillomania. That's right. The study revealed regulatory T cells and glucocortico-hormones are not just immunosuppressants, but also have a regenerative function.

Oh, so what are they going to do about it? They can turn it around, in other words. What they're trying to do is isolate those regulatory T cells and flip them in that way it doesn't attack the air quality. Now you found some, so they found a target to reverse things like alopecia ariata, or maybe in these cases, alopecia universalis or totalis, because those, you can't just inject your whole body. No, or rub that. Steroids. And so if you can turn the T cells that are killing the follicles and go, hey, stop doing that and maybe promote hair growth, that would be awesome.

You know, I've, it's been many, many years since seeing that, but the, I think the two cases I've ever seen that were profoundly stressed out people. Yep. And I think the stress levels increase their autoimmune disorder. Oh, I'm sure that's true. Stress is bad for you. And all man, air or less top to bottom. Stress sucks. Stress sucks.

Yeah. Speaking of stress, I have to go get a fucking CT scan on my chest tomorrow. I had, during COVID, you know, I had that horrible cough that lasted six weeks. And so my primary care, real nice guy, got a chest x-ray on me. And back then, it showed this sort of hazy place. Well, now he calls me, so, oh, yeah, the good news is, don't, listen, physicians don't ever say good news, bad news. No one wants to hear that shit. He said, you know, the hazy place is completely resolved, but now they're seeing some sort of scarring in there.

And so now I've got to get a CT scan tomorrow, two days before I go on vacation, to determine whether it's just scarring from the COVID-19, which is 99%. I'm sure that's what it is. Or is it pulmonary fibrosis from my stupid ozone generator or some genetic thing? So, you know, I could either have a really good vacation or a really shitty one. Oh, I just dread. I'm going to have that tomorrow. So anyway, yeah, it's stressing everybody out. It's stressing me.

It's stressing Tacey out more than me because without me, Tacey has difficulty, you know, working the Alexa or the, you know, you've got the TV worked out. Yeah, that's the only reason is Alexa. And she'll starve to death because I do all the car. And I would starve to death. So anyway. Well, I think it'll be hilarious if it was my ozone generator that did it because it's, I'll be laughing about that, but anyway. No, I won't be. But just hoping for, you know, post-COVID scarring, that's all it is.

Yeah, I think it is. Anyway, I had a rough, I mean, I had a bad case. If it weren't for the monoclonal antibodies, it would have been a thousand times worse. And, you know, we've had P.A. or N.P. Melby in here. She had it and has an autoimmune problem. She's talked about it. Didn't get the monoclonal antibodies. They didn't even send her to get them until it was too late. When she went in, her oxygen was like 88%. So she ended up, here I am, 65, and, you know, at risk because of my age and my, you know, my mild to moderate blood pressure. And got it on day two, and I was fine.

And she actually had an autoimmune disorder, never got the monoclonal antibodies, and ended up on oxygen for six to eight weeks at work. I mean, she was working with oxygen. Wow. Yeah. So that pissed me off. Yeah, I didn't see it in there. That pissed me off to the point that we, she and I made a video about monoclonal antibodies that we were going to, you know, put out. there region wide just to educate people on hey you need to be ordering this stuff because it's

available and then of course omicron happened and it was resistant to all of the old monoclonals that we had been talking about and then that's so truvomab it could hardly ever get it so we just said eff it and that video never came out pain in the ass no way no stupid virus that sucks all right what else you got anything else well i've got I've got one more on a keto diet, and I've also got a couple good questions in the chat room as well. Okay, yeah. You mean in the waiting room? Oh, my.

I'm not booing the waiting room. I'm booing the idea that we have a name for it, and it's the waiting room. I said, I get one boo, but I don't get any bills. That wasn't for you. I'm going back. That's for me naming the YouTube chat room, the waiting room. Oh, my word. Okay.

Wait, one more quick story? Sure. Yeah, so scientists at Stanford University found that the ketogenic diet may help us live longer, and here's how. The diet. I'm a fan of the ketogenic diet. I'm three sentences in, so where? Oh, my God. Could you just read one of these things before you come in?

No chance, no chance. If you send them to me, I could maybe read them. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Maybe I'll alternate. No, I'm not coming up with the articles, but I can read them. Casey can do it. So really quickly. Stacey's sending us a bunch of them, and I'll send you some of them.

Good. I'll alternate. Yeah, he always has some good ones. So what it does is this keto diet makes muscle stem cells better able to handle stress. Similar effects have been found with a fasting diet. So what they're saying is the use of a ketogenic diet or intermittent fasting. Why do both? Yeah, have been shown. I'd never eat all day long and then I eat ketogenic. Maybe that's why you've been so much nicer and more patient recently. Who? What? Yes. Maybe this.

Steve? All right. So anyway, it all boils down to diet, and I don't mean diet isn't weight loss, I mean diet isn't paying attention to watch eating, yeah. Well, we truly are what we eat. Shit out. That's true. You know, good stuff in, good stuff out.

For the most important. I get, it's just, it's no question that we are what we eat in the sense that if, you know, our nutrients that we bring in. I mean, you know, I'll get these naturopaths. And you, you allopaths never talk about diet. And we talk about it all the time that eating a proper diet that's got variety in it and has good nutrients. And, yeah, you can blow it out your ass every once in a while and eat a whole cheesecake. I don't have a problem with that.

I've always said everything in moderation, including everything in moderation. In other words, you've got to just blow it out your ass sometimes. And I think that that is, it's ridiculous to think otherwise. Now, if there were one diet, sorry, if there were one diet that we demonstrated works better than any other, we would all be on it. Now, we maybe have shown that with the vegan diet, but people don't, they just don't want to do that. So there is some really good data on vegan diet and health. But I've also known a bunch of fat vegans, too, who ate a bunch of pasta and stuff all the time. Go ahead, Tase.

My provider says, if Jesus couldn't eat it, you shouldn't eat it. Okay, meaning that he couldn't eat cheeseburgers. Yeah, if it wasn't around when he was around. Yeah. And if you don't want to throw the religious bent, if Fred Flintstone couldn't eat it, you can't eat it. So that's sort of the paleo idea that our ancestors. did not have processed carbohydrates, highly concentrated carbohydrates, are really remote ancestors.

We're hunter-gatherers, so their diet was high and lean protein, and they'd have some carbs every once in a while, if there were berries or if they'd eat the seeds off of grass or something, which was the precursor to flour. It really wasn't until agriculture happened that we started really eating things that had concentrated carbohydrates on them. And even then, we didn't eat that much. If you look back, and we used to talk about this all the time on the show,

if you look back at images from crowds from the 20s, 30s, 40s, even through the 50s, you don't see nearly as much obesity as if you look at a crowd now. And we've always said correlation is not the same thing as causation. But one of the things that did happen was we radically changed our diet when the USDA decided we need to make this pyramid and the bottom needs to be whole, you know, grains because they wanted to sell more grains. Right. So they started encouraging people to eat more bread and more grains and, you know, rice and flour products. And then we started eating crackers and cakes and cooking. And now sugar comes into the mix.

And then the next thing you know, we're a nation of fatso's. And I include myself in that so I can say that. Me, three. All right. Good stuff. Anyway, yeah, so I'm cool with ketogenic diet if it's done right. Yeah, if it's done. That's not just the steak and bacon and mayonnaise and vodka diet.

And that's what your uncle Joe told you. And he heard that from his buddy, you know, Cletus from the hauler or something. The true ketogenic diet, at least the way Adkins promoted it, was green, leafy vegetables with lean animal protein. Right. And there's no way that you can't tell me having a grilled chicken salad for lunch

with some red, you know, some vinaigret on it is in any way unhealthy. Right. Unless they're putting sodium metabisulfide on the greens to keep them green. That pisses me. Then you'll shit your pants. Just go or you'll have abdominal pain. Yeah. Restaurants

just go to the market every morning and buy fresh greens and make your salads out of that. Good and gracious. I hear you. All right. Good. All right, cool. That's it. That's it. All right. Tacey, you got anything? Nope. One thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. So you got some questions from the waiting room? Yeah, a couple good questions. Okay. Well, I'll be the judge of that. And a judge of a good question is whether I can answer it without having to look something up. Hey, so Kim Chickens wants to know about stem cell injections for knees and delaying total knee replacement surgery what do doctors think well what do you think about it i think i did it's about like everything

else for a lot of people it's very beneficial and i can tell you that the um the what the guys that i work with that do these every single day it all depends on if there's some some some structural integrity inside the need that they can work with yeah the younger the person yes that's right the younger the person the better number one the older the person doesn't mean you won't do as well But what they'll do a lot of times is not use that person's stem cells. They'll actually get stem cells from a donor because the older you are, the less viable your stem cells are. And then finally, less viable everything is. Yeah, that's true.

And then finally, what they have shown, acupuncture on the joint, specifically the knee, greatly increases the efficacy of stem cell. What? It does. Yeah, bring that study up. I want to see it. That's a true. I actually don't doubt it. I just want to make sure that we're talking about it.

You think I would lie to all of the people? No, no, no, no, no. Listen, when I write stuff in the chart, I always put citations by it so that I bring my receipts. We just need to bring our receipts because that is an interesting finding. And if I can see that study. But, okay, so to Kim's question, I found this is from the British Journal of Sports Medicine. It's one of the British Medical Journal. It's a BMJ journal.

so it's not some shitty fly-by-night journal that you, well, anyway, let me leave it at that. It's called autologous stem cell therapy. So this will be autologous stem cells are those that are derived from the patient's own body. In knee osteoarthritis, this is a systematic review of randomized control trials. So I'm going to give them one of these on that because this is a, this is the kind of study where you can get some. real information where they take a bunch of smaller studies and do a very systematic

review of all the data, mush it together, and then get you know, make a conclusion from it. And so they said stem cell therapy is increasingly used for knee osteoarthritis. We aim to review the evidence of autologous mesencomal stem cell therapy on pain

function and severity. And so let me tell you about the mesenchimal cells. So what they got therapy derived from bone marrow, fat tissue, or peripheral blood. And after one year, clinical outcome measures improved compared with the controls. And in the stem cell group, patients improved by 1.8 to 4.4 points on the visual analog scale. So that's where you just say, where's your pain on a scale of 1 to 10?

And with 10 being, I am literally sawing your leg off with a rusty saw. in the, you know, on the battlefield and, you know, during the war against the, you know, war between the states. And I can't imagine what that pain is to be like. So that's, but that's a 10. And one is I'm tickling your foot with a feather. So where is it?

So they improved by anywhere from two to four points, which is a big deal. That's like from going from a four, a seven to a three. So seven starting to get into severe pain. Three being mild pain. And 18 to 32 points on this knee osteoarthritis outcome score, and that goes from 0 to 100. So on a scale of 1 to 10, that'd be 2 to 3 points. Four studies showed better disease severity on imaging after this, after control at one year.

And 10 of the randomized controlled trials out of the 14 were at high risk for bias on all outcomes. So they have to correct for that. But they found a positive effect of autologous mesenchymal stem cell therapy compared with controlled treatments on patient reported outcome measures and disease severity. But the certainty of this evidence is low to very low. So they have a positive outcome across the board, but none of these studies were good enough to say, yes, we can say this is with high confidence. But still, probably worth doing because all of the studies had a positive outcome. And we need better studies than this. But I love how they put this together.

This is exactly the right way to do a study where you're compiling data from multiple studies. And they came up with a conclusion that's supported by the evidence. So there you go. So the answer I would give after just reading that one article. is that, yeah, I think that there's something there and the data is generally positive, but we don't have that stunning, perfect, double-blind, placebo-controlled study that says this is what the outcome is.

Okay? Sure. All right. Good one. Good one. What else you got? Thank you. Colin Carnes.

Hey, Dr. Steve, do you all have any suggestions for conventional and holistic treatments, including lifestyle changes for lupus? For lupus. Okay, go ahead. That's a good question. Yeah. So, you know, we see a lot of folks with lupus and certainly the side effects of lupus. And one of the things we work with, the very first thing we do is go through stress stressors,

and that can be exogenous stressors, lifestyle stressors, and certainly food stressors. Stress is a real stressor when it comes to lupus for sure. And typically we'll work with whomever the folks. primary providers are in case they do need medications when they have flares, like if they need a steroid or something like that, just to help kind of suppress the immune response. So the first thing I say any time we see anybody with lupus is we've got to get the stress under control. And one thing I'll say about Dr. Scott and what they do in his acupuncture suite, I'm sure

this is true about everywhere. Tacey, have you ever had treatments from Scott? Yes, yes. So talk a little bit about how. that went down it was amazing um well i mean you did a tense unit right but talk about the environment and all that stuff oh it was very peaceful you turned the lights down and um i didn't want it to end lofting some music through the air yeah it was it was really really nice a certain kind of aromatherapy that might have been enhanced yeah so it smells good in there it sounds good in there it's

dark. You just get this intense feeling of relaxation when you're in there. And that even if, let's just say that the pudding of the needles was completely bogus, which we have demonstrated on this show, if people go back or we can talk about it again, that for the right condition, it's not bogus. Right. And I am an empiricist, so I'm talking about data that's in the medical literature that even if that were bogus there's real benefit from that intense relaxation that you get even if it's just for 30 minutes agreed in the environment yeah yeah and the placebo effect is a huge huge part of what we all do you know and I make it that environment for a reason I want I tell you know don't rush to get to me don't get a speeding ticket right

right right because they're all wild yeah it's like come on man and Dr. Steve you know me I I keep that environment, as much for my sanity as for my patient's safety. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I keep it very calm. Well, you don't want your provider to be stressed out either, and that is a problem in modern medicine. Terrible. It's a huge, you know, a lot of the people with it, you and I both work. I'm good at hiding it with my patients, but it is.

When it comes to your buddies, we all know we kind of help each other out, and that's, I have a lot of us that we work with every day. So that's a big one. Now, back in the day, we used to use hydroxychloroquine. Ooh, we're going to get our channel taken down again. Don't use any other words while you're talking about the H word. Don't use anything else. Yeah. So they use hydroxychloroquine, systemic glucocorticoids, and some conventional immunosuppressive drugs.

But now we've sort of moved to biologic agents, and there's this balloon. Oh, God, I hate these. monoclonal antibody names as bilimumab. Say that five times real fast. No, thanks. Belimumab. Your mouth doesn't want to move that way. But anyway, and there are some new therapies targeting interferon, cytokines, which are the

chemicals that are released by white blood cells when they want to kill something. And when they go after your own body, that's a problem. So we can target those things. We can target the receptors for the cytokines. There's all kinds of intracellular signaling where we can tell them to shut up and leave these cells alone. There's, you know, shutting down the cells that make certain antibodies or certain types of T cells that target only the cells that we don't want them to target. So there's a lot of activity in rheumatology these days. and your job, if you have lupus, is just to kick the can as far down the road as you can

because they are literally coming out with new stuff every day. And I say that to cancer patients, too. I'd say I use those exact words. Just kick the can as far down the road as you can't. Go to a rheumatologist to get this treated. And if you have to go to a university center, that's fine. If you're interested in doing a clinical trial, go to clinical trials.gov. And just look, there's a million studies.

for lupus right now and not just lupus other ruminologic diseases as well so we're going to solve it we will hit star trek level medicine at some point that may still be a hundred years away i always said that about lord i don't know what the way things are going now didn't i say but you remember uh when um when i first talked on this show about the lady that had um served stage four cervical cancer, and they took her T cells out, and they exposed it to the tumor in a test tube, and then treated the tumor with chemicals to open up the proteins, and then sent those T cells back into her body just to see what would happen, and she is walking around this world cancer-free right now, right? That was how many years ago, three, four years ago we talked about

that, and we're like, this is going to be something. Well, I have several patients that are now getting exactly that. It has now been branded and patented. It's called CAR T-cell therapy, and it's chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, and what they do is they get your own T-cells to fight your cancer, and it's not indicated for every cancer yet, but that's coming. And there are people, you can get this now. It's not even a clinical trial anymore.

It's on the market. So that's incredible. If you're interested in those kinds of things, there are still studies going on. So you go to clinical trials.gov, and there are B-cell targeted therapies. There's all kinds of stuff going on. This has triggered a real excitement in people who treat and do research on cancer therapies. and this is coming to pass 100 and

God, it's coming to pass 95 years quicker than I thought it would. Right on them. You know, so bravo to those guys. That's wonderful. All right. Anything else? Yeah, from there.

Got one for Diesel Child. Great question from Diesel Child. Dr. Steve, I'm about to have surgery on my hiatal hernia at the end of July. What can I expect for recovery times? I'm a skateboarder, surfer, you know, walk, I sprinting hills every day. You know, he's obviously a pretty healthy dude, but talking about a hyal hernia surgery, a fundalplication.

I'm assuming you're having a fundiplication. Now, they do just do a hyal hernia surgery where they tacked down. So, well, let's talk about what a hiatal hernia is first. So the esophagus passes from the upper, you know, the upper pharynx, oropharynx, where you swallow. down to the stomach, right? And then, but the diaphragm is in there. The diaphragm's got to be there to provide downward pressure to expand the lung cavity so you breathe in. Well, how in the hill does the esophagus hook up to the stomach when you got the diaphragm in the way?

Well, obviously, there's a hole in the diaphragm, and we call that the hiatus. And it's not a great design. It'll be one of the things when we're sitting in front of our creator, and if there's a Q&A, you know, I'll ask, you know, why did you design that that way? Because it really caused lots of people, a lot of problems. But it is a place where that area can become loose, and now the esophagus can pull up and actually pull part of the stomach up above the diaphragm. And that's called a hiatal hernia.

So a hernia is any time a structure passes through a hole that it's not supposed to pass through. So inguinal hernia goes through. the groin and passes through those rings if you have a indirect hernia, you know, where the Vazdephyrins supposed to go through. So the intestines aren't supposed to go through there, but when they do, we call it a hernia. And this is also a hernia because now the stomach is blooping up above the hiatus. Therefore, it's a Heidel hernia. So this is a major surgery for, well, it depends on how they're doing it.

So if they're going to do a fundop placation, they can do that with a laparoscope now. But if they're going to do the open hiatal hernia hernia repair, that can take 10 to 12 weeks. Normally, you can resume your normal activities before then, and as soon as you're off the opioids, you can drive and do things like that. They just mean, don't be doing contact sports. Right. And it really takes about 12 weeks for a scar to fully heal and be done, and then that's what you've got. So it takes some time. But, yeah, anywhere.

And really, again, it depends on the method that they're going to use. All right. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. But I've thought about getting that Nissen fundoplication. And basically what they do is they just wrap the stomach around the esophagus and tack it down. And then it can't move anymore, and it helps to tighten that lower esophageal sphincter to keep acid and stomach contents from moving way back up into the esophagus again.

Tacey had that the other night. It helps with the burning, right? We had mechanical. Yeah, that's terrible. But it doesn't, but it doesn't, but people still have to take PPI's if they have a fund of location. I'm thinking, I don't know about that, but what was wrong with you? You got me on that now. sometimes if you have a nest and you may you may have to take a liquid diet for three weeks

after one because it can get tight yeah right structures yeah and then no carbonated beverages for three weeks because you won't be able to belch and you'll just be farting like an average huge abdominal pain but talk about when when you had mechanical reflux so I mean that happened to me when I was at the beach too you just wake up and the acid is literally in your mouth yeah it's pooling and And it's so disgusting and so awful, and you just want to throw it up, but that doesn't help because it's just the ass. When it gets in your lungs, too, because it's hanging around where your trachea is. Yes, it's awful.

Oh, it's terrible. But why do they call that mechanical gurd instead of just regular gurd? Well, you're having mechanical reflux in the sense that it is a mechanical problem. When you lay down, now your stomach and your esophagus are flat. And if that mechanical barrier, which is the lower esophageal stricter, it's just a ring of muscle at the bottom of the esophagus, if it just opens up because you've been drinking or whatever, I'm just saying, if not you, of course. Hypothetically. Right. Anybody else.

You know, not you. Stop bullshitting. Oh, yeah. Okay. So she's talking to you, Tice. but for whatever reason it opens up that's a mechanical problem and all that because you're supine now in other words you're laying down flat you're horizontal the there's no impediment gravity isn't holding the fluid in your stomach anymore it just flows right up along the path of least resistance I was going through my friend's cabinets just looking for pipsid just because I had nothing with me I had a PPI with me but that wasn't going to do anything I just remember first looking at a refrigerator for some mustard. Well, if I could have called you, but it was like four in the morning.

She doesn't listen. I wasn't even thought. Yeah. A little bit. A shot of mustard would have been okay. Yeah. You know, because I'm sure that would have been easier to find. Or in the herb cabinet, a little bit of powdered ginger.

You can put a little powdered ginger. Really? Yeah, it'll calm it down some. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, thank you. The mustard would have taken the taste away too. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, it just tastes like a hot dog. Oh, that's just awful. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Those are awful good. All right. You ready for some questions? Sure. Yeah. Let's see. We got this one. I think this one.

Good day, Mr. Steve. Good day. And friends. Oh, I got a question for you. Okay. I lost it there at the end. Anyway, my old lady. Oh, he fooled me. Okay. I thought, oh, gosh, we've got a listener.

It's having a problem, an ongoing problem for the last year plus, I'd say, with her hair, her scalp. I took a, she let me take a quick video that shows her patchy hair. She's losing a lot of her hair. It was worse. It was, it's kind of going, ebbs and flows. There's no real redness, irritation, no dandruff, no dandruff, no. bugs, like that. There are some

couple... I want everybody in the waiting room to tell us what this is, because you know the airs. Perimeter in diameter lesions, sores of pustules. It looked like she got shot with a BB gun right in her head. I promise

I didn't do it. But shit, we can't figure it out. First thought it was maybe a yeast thing, candidate. Nope. Whatever broke, she complained about maybe on oil secretion, like an overactive oil, she says her hair feels oily a lot

in the glands or her head her crown chakra all things that she said it's like clumping under her skin could it be her crown chakra her crown chakra if it were that clogged up she would be having some other issue

hair can't burst out it's odd that's what I thought too I don't know she had once said that there were a feeling as if there was was some sort of subcutaneous worm. Oh, no, that's a different

situation. So it's pooling under her hair, under her skin? Well, she's feeling that. I think it's the inflammation from the... Did anybody get the answer right? Let me see. Well, okay, we're so delayed that they're probably just now answering it. But this is most likely alopecia Ariata. She's got small areas Apache. Circular, it looks like a BB gun hitter. Those patches are very small now, but they could get bigger.

They could become confluent. She needs to see a dermatologist right now and get that looked at. Now, that wormy feeling, that could be another thing. But if you just feel it and you don't see them, that's probably a sign of inflammation under the skin that may be causing this. I've never heard people complaining about feeling the inflammation when they have elevated. Palapisha Ariata, but I wonder if it happens beforehand, and then it goes away, and then the hair follicles die, and then the hair falls out, so they may not associate the two things. So she may just be catching this really early, which means that they can treat it pretty quickly.

I would be interested in whatever a dermatologist said. There are other things that it could be, obviously. Now, if you have someone that says, I have little filaments of stuff that I pick out of my skin, and they've got these lesions, and they're all over. the place anywhere that they can reach, but nowhere where they can't. That is a thing called Morgillan's disease, and it is considered a psychiatric disorder. But you can treat it with typical things that would decrease itching, and one of those is a thing called doxapin, and doxapin is also an antidepressant.

So it's hard to know whether it's decreasing the itching or if it is taking care of an anxiety-type syndrome or a depressing depression type syndrome you can't tease the two things apart i really wish they could fix the losing hair thing i hope that what we talked about earlier because it just is devastating to women and i mean i know it's hard on men too but man for that to happen to a woman i mean yeah and you know if you have regular female pattern baldness in a you know male pattern baldness and a woman, you know, hair loss at the top or it's thinning, you can use rogain. Women can use rogain. You can buy a six-month supply from Amazon at stuff.com for like $39 bucks and try it,

and it never hurts to try it. Yeah. A third of people have an outstanding result. A third of people have a satisfactory result. And then the other third really just don't get much benefit from it at all. But, of course, check with your health care professional. Okay, well, before we go, I know Tacey wanted to make an announcement. I am now announcing that Love Island, UK, is now available for everyone to view on Hulu.

I go to text. And it's going to be just as good this year as it has been in the last year. It is the greatest. And it's not much of a commitment. I mean, there's only like 57, 58 episodes per season. In the UK, they will play these shows. every single night for what eight weeks something like that yeah it's it's amazing I learned oh I learned so many things I can recognize an Essex accent now which you know

everyone just thinks that all the you know a British accent is just what who is that guy that not Michael well like Michael Kane who's the guy that was in Notting Hill that guy. Come on, Hugh Grant. Everyone thinks that the British accent is Hugh Grant. There's a million different accents. And we can kind of pick out the Welsh accent now, too. Certainly if they say kuch, we know that they're Welsh. Yeah. Because they spell it CWTCH, which I love that. So I think that it is a great show. It's way more fun than the American one. They cuss like sailors. They call people the C word. They use the F word liberally. It is so much fun. The guys are hot and the girls are unbelievably hot. They're all tens. And it's fun. I'm funny. Yeah. I've never seen it. You have

not ever seen it. Well, you don't watch that kind of TV. Well, you are missing out, my friend. As soon as I retire, that's the top of my living. It sounds like you retired from the show. Could you talk Yeah, I'm sorry. I was taking a nap. Hey, I, um. Well, it's very hot in here and it's. Oh, God, it's stifling. It's four fucking thousand degrees in there.

Feels good. Feels good. If you have pulmonary fibrosis, it feels good. If you're old and you have thin blood. Yeah, that's what it is. Zan scan. All right, did we have anything else from there from the chat room? No, we did more of those.

And our next show is going to be a vacation show, and I have like a blue million voicemails. That's why I want to do these. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, we won't be live. Real quick, let's see. Someone was asking about taking turmeric, and they're on warfarin. Now, I will tell you, turmeric is also a bit of a blood thinner.

Yeah. Yeah, so I'd be really cautious. Okay, well, we can look that up. And turmeric. And because he can't take insides. And which blood thinner, though, is it, you know, Robon? Oh, geez. Or is it Zarelto or one of those?

No, I think it's warfarin. I think it's warfarin, yep. Well, okay, so concurrent use of turmeric containing natural health products with blood thinners may result in prolonged bleeding times and really should be avoided. So I would not take it with that. No. At least without talking it over with your prescriber because different blood thinners have different targets and there may be somewhere you could take it, but I'm not going to say that there are any. I would avoid it. Agreed.

All right. Particularly with Warfron. Oh, it is so effing hot in here. It's worse. Then in Nashville this last weekend, I waited 45 minutes in line for hot chicken. For hot chicken. In 100 degree weather. In a hundred-degree weather, to eat it in an un-air-conditioned environment.

Oh, no. Now, honey-bees is air-conditioned. For like 20 seats? And the outside porch is not. Oh, you were outside? Oh, Lord. Listen, I'm telling you. Not too much.

God, it's so good, though. It was worth it to me. I ate there with Carl, Vinny, and the cow photographer. Did you have to wait? No. Well, whatever. Because they already waited, and I just came in. And they had a seat for me.

But that's where I brought Vinny that t-shirt, and he left it there. And then the next day, you know, Vinny was on stage. He said, yeah, I left my t-shirt at the restaurant. And Shulie said, I bet he didn't leave his leftovers there because, you know, Vinny's a big fat feller. But anyway, that was, yeah, it was fun place, but that was in the evening, too, so it wasn't nearly as hot. No, hot. Could you not? Yeah, and you've got to eat it there because you could grubbub it, but it won't be the same.

Nashville hot chicken needs to be eaten in the Nashville hot chicken restaurant. Yeah. And so everybody can laugh at you when your face is melting off. Yes. Because I take one bite. I can eat that stuff, but the first bite I'll get larynge spasm. I'll start talking like this. And then the tears start flowing.

Oh, and the sweat. Like my ponytail was just dripping. And then I'm fine. Like, I'm all chafed on my thighs from walking around. From the hot chicken. And let me check. Broadway and National is a nightmare. Have you been there?

Oh, yeah. We were there not long ago. I mean, it is insane. Yeah, you weren't here when we were talking about going to Kid Rock's place. And we went up to the fifth floor where they were playing alt music. And it was so loud. No, I'm too old. One person in that place had some virus.

We were all going to get it, but nobody did, so it was fine. But it was wild. Well, there was a karaoke bar in our hotel that was excellent. I would go there everywhere. Didn't they have Chucky Cheese like? It was at the graduate hotel. And there were Chucky Cheese like. The Graduate Hotel.

Yes. It's based on Dolly Farms. Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me? No, it's based on, I don't understand it. but it's based on Dolly Parton. We had a big picture of Dolly over our bed. Cool. It was awesome.

Anyway, yeah, it was great, but it's the hottest place in the whole effing world except for this room right here. I know, but this feels good, though. Well, let's get you out of here. Okay. Hey, thanks always go to Dr. Scott and Tacey. Appreciate you guys being here, even though it's so uncomfortable in here. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob. Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft,

that Gould Girl, Kim Chickens, Lewis Johnson, Patty Blue, Paul Off Charsky, Sean Pedrick, Chowdy 1008, Howdy Gooplunk, Eric Nagel, the Port Charlotte Hoare, the Saratoga Skank, the Florida Flusi, the St. Pete Barkkeeper blower, the Dolly Museum Didler, the ballet Vimbo, the girl with the genetic half-sister, no one knows about.

Percy Dumb, Roland Campos, sister of Chris, Sam Roberts, she who owns pigs and snakes, Pat Duffy, Bill the Cop, Keith the Cop, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinschmidt, Dale Dudley, Holly from the Gulf, Christopher Watkins, voice double, guitarist Steve Tucci, the great Rob Bartlett, Adam Goldstein, Cowgirl, Vic. Thank you for your service. Cardiff Electric, Casey the Soil Scientist, Carl, of the Tilippes Equinoveris Carls, producer Chris I thought we weren't going to add to it aka Paducah Chris

the subreddit news chick aka that broad Crows and the Bukaki Queen Jenny Jingles The Inimitable Vincent Paulino everybody Eric Zane Trucker Andy

Tucker and Anita Dixon Bernie and Sid Martha from Arkansas's daughter Ron Bennington and of course our dear departed friends GVAC Barry the Blade and Todd Hillier

whose support of this show was always gracious and always appreciate it. Listen to our Serious XM show on Faction Talk Channel. Serious XM Channel 103's Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern on-demand.

Other times at Jim McClure's pleasure, many thanks to our listeners who's voicemail and topic ideas. Okay, if I have pulmonary fibrosis, I'll only be able to do three lines, so then you'll be happy. Go to our website at Dr.steve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap.

Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of weird medicine. Thanks everybody. See, I can't stop when I get started today. All right, all right. See you. Thank you.