Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 513 - Crack On, Mate

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Dr Steve, Dr Scott and Tacie discuss: Nicotinamide to prevent skin cancer Testosterone and quality of life How "terlits" flush Important cholesterol parameters Adult chickenpox Juul vapes banned ... why? Myasthenia gravis The results of Steve's CT scan 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

Why did the barf and the booger fall in love? It's what's on the inside, that counts. Did you hear about the contest to win a ton of cow manure? To the victor, go the soils. What's the difference between a well-dressed cyclist and a scruffy guy on a tricycle? A tire. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve,

host of Weird Medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Why can't you give me the respect that I'm entitled to? I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivir stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbell,

exacerbating my infertable woes. I want to take my brain out and blasts with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsitating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent is 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 a requiem for my disease, So I'm Beijing, Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve. From the world famous Goldstein 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 with my little pal, Dr. Scott. Traditional Chinese medical practitioner gives me street cred with the wacko alternative medicine ass hats.

Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. And my partner in all things, Tacey. Hello, Tacey. Hello. You're looking lovely today. No, I'm not. This is a show for people who would miss you.

I'm a liar who would never listen to a medical show on the radio. 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 of 347-7-66-4-33. That's 347. Poo-Head. 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 here with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking over with your doctor, nurse, practitioner, practical news, practical nurse, physician, assistant, pharmacist, respiratory therapist, chiropractor, acupuncture, et cetera, et cetera, all right. Don't forget to check out stuff.com. That's stuff.doctorsteve.com for all your Amazon needs where you can scroll down and see all the things that we talk about on this show. And definitely check out Dr. Scott's website at simply herbals.net. for his CBD peppermint nasal spray, which is quite outstanding. And it's, yeah, it's the stuff. It's the real stuff. Go to cameo.com slash weird medicine or go to cameo app

and this look for Dr. Steve Weird Medicine. Look, it's five, seven bucks. I'm going to be at the, well, we're at the beach right now. We'll do one by God at the beach. Three sheets to the wind, telling you a mama that she's got, you know, some nasty fluids or something. Do what? It's so cheap.

Oh, one of those? Yeah, it's so cheap. It's fun. We'll do them. Tacey and I'll even do it if you want. Just tell me what you want. I love doing those, and I do them for nothing because I like doing lots of them. So check that out.

And then Patreon.com slash weird medicine. Great place to go if you want to do a deep dive. Tacey and I do things that are not done on this show. And we have celebrities come in and ask. us questions. We just do Patreon exclusive questions. And I did a couple of more in-depth analyses of some of the recent news, sort of clickbait stuff in medical journalism. Check that out. Patreon.com slash weird medicine. The tiers start at five bucks. I know you're paying five bucks here, five bucks there. Check it out. If you do the $20 tier, you can

can get every single show that we've ever done, plus some that were never broadcast. And you can give you a link to our Dropbox, and you just download it all. And the more people that do that when I inevitably croak, because, I mean, we all do at some point, there's more chances that there will be some stuff out there that will, you know, live on in posterity. Let's say my kids, 10 years from now, go, oh, we're finally interested in what dad was doing. and maybe one of you guys would have it. So anyway, check it out. Patreon.com slash weird medicine.

I'm trying to archive it, but you know how kids are. All right. Well, Dr. Scott and Tacey, very good to see you. Check out Dr. Scott's website at Simplyerbils.net. Simplyerbils.net. And happy birthday to our friend, Cardiff Electric. So it's his birthday today. Happy birthday.

And one thing I wanted to. to talk about last week I left you guys on a cliffhanger because my doctor had gotten an x-ray and during COVID I had this cough. I wouldn't go away so they x-rayed me. I had this sort of hazy place in the left lower lobe of my lung and they wanted to repeat it, which is good because you never want to just pretend that a left lower lobe or any lobe haziness is just pneumonia until you see it go away. So, of course, it was almost a year ago, and my primary care provider said, let's get another x-ray. He calls me, now, their radiologist most really suck because he calls me. He says, oh, no, that hazy place is gone, but you've got pulmonary fibrosis, right?

And I was kind of freaking out because it's like, okay, well, I got two years or a heart lung transplant in my future. And I'm really too old for that. So now, not all pulmonary fibrosis, you know, I'm a catastrophist, so not all pulmonary fibrosis behaves that way. But anyway, I went to get a CT scan today. Oh, okay. And it takes, you know, back in the day, they used to take 45 minutes to do. Yes. Now it's literally like a minute.

There's way more time getting your insurance, doing all that stuff, getting you back there. Then they bring you in. You put your hands over your head and you breathe three times. They run you through three times, 15 seconds each. And that's it. Wow. So I got the woman to show me the films. And so you start at the top of the lung in these slices, right?

Like you're slicing parallel to the ground. and they kept slicing and slicing. I said, there's no pulmonary fibrosis in there. It's like, hell, I'm good. And then we get down to the last, like, 10 slices, and I'm like, what in the fuck is that? The bottom of your lung. Oh, damn.

So I'm going to show everybody here. I don't know if they can see that. See, well, there's such a delay. But, yeah, there it is. And I was like, oh, my God. So I said, let's get a coronal view. So the coronal view is when you take it as if you're cutting from shoulder to shoulder. And so you're on a plane like that where you're taking slices.

And you can really see it on this one. And it's kind of a wedge and it looks like shit. It's got all kinds of septations and stuff in it. And I'm like, holy crap. I'm not going on vacation. I'm getting chemo next week. Well, okay, all right. Well, Tacey knows the answer.

I don't care. It's still not a very good, fun story. Yes, it's a great story because I sent it to a pulmonology friend of mine, and he called the radiologist, and they said it doesn't look anything like cancer, so that's good. What it is is scar tissue from when I had COVID-19. Wow. And listen, I've had badass MF influenza with a fever of 105 and out of work for a week.

and then, you know, I've had a bunch of different weird viruses and things that have happened to me. Never had anything cause a permanent change in my anatomy. You know, this thing was a son of a bitch. Even though I got over it quickly with the monoclonal antibodies, I still had that cough for six weeks. And that's what that was. And now it's showing just this huge chunk of scar tissue. my pulmonologist thinks that maybe I even may have had a small pulmonary embolism. A pee, yeah.

Yeah, because that's COVID-19 is known and older people to cause clotting inside the arteries and veins. And I may have just had a little blood clot go there because it's in a wedge shape, you know, at the bottom of my lung. Yeah, it was a strange looking. Yeah, I've never actually in 35 years not quite seen anything like it. But they say they're seeing this all the time. people who had COVID-19. So I got to trust them because I had told Tacey, this is what's going to happen. We're going on vacation on Saturday, and on Monday I'm driving back up here for a bronchoscopy on

Tuesday. But after they looked at it and conferred, they said, you don't need a bronchoscopy. Just take some antibiotics and we'll check it again in eight weeks. So there you go. Happy ending to that. Cool, man. That's good thing. And I was amazing, I will have to say, when I didn't know what it was, but I was pretty sure I did know what it was, and it wasn't this good thing that they ended up telling me, I was pretty sanguine about it.

So hopefully if something like that, when something like that ever happens, I'll handle it well. But anyway, yes, that was a son of a bitch. A little waker up or a little bit. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Anyway, so I really enjoy vacation. Yeah, and I hate to interrupt, but are they having luck with antibiotic treatment on some of the scarring or some inflammation a little bit? They think there may be some residual bacteria in there. Okay.

Because sometimes you could get a post-viral pneumonia. Right. And often it's staff. Okay. And why mine is so closed off, that's a great question. And usually people get sick as shit. Now, I haven't been 100%. I'll tell you that.

But I've been pretty damn good. Yeah, you've been pretty good shape. Yeah, for the most part. I mean, I threw my cane away, and I got rid of my... Did you throw it away or did you lose it? Well, I lost it, and that was when I realized I didn't need it anymore. But then I found it, and I haven't used it since. And I even...

I still have the handicapped sticker. You know, in case I go to a concert and I can't get a... No, I'm just kidding. Oh, my Lord. I got the eye roll from Tacey. So, no, but I, you know, I still have it, and I'll hang on to it because I can't imagine this won't, this shit in my back won't come back. But anyway, yeah, so I'm kind of 100% even though if you look at my x-rays, I look like, you know, got one foot in the grave. Look at my back and my lungs.

This guy is doomed. And it's like, I feel 100%. He's screwed. Doing good. Tacey and I are going to get it on tonight. There you go. pre-peach trip No, just

thank God you're not dying intercourse. I guess. It's our once in a year you know, anyway, it's fine. Cililatory. Yes, that's right.

I'll leave you on that cliphanger. I'll let you know. I thought we said tomorrow night. Oh, okay. There you go. That's my solution to everything. All right. So, yes, so there that is.

And we're just going to do a whole bunch of questions today. And if you get any from the waiting room, let us know. Of course. Okay, all right, here we go. I guess I better do this first. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Yeah, boy, that is really true.

Don't do that. All right. Here we go. Okay. Okay, okay, thank you. Dr. Steve, I have a question. Okay. I'm listening to a podcast, not one of your podcast, but Dr. Kemberry.

Anyway, they're talking about cholesterol. Who? And I was just wondering, in your opinion, what do you think is the most important to overall health cholesterol number? Like, it is the LDL, the HDL, or triglycerase? So which one is the most important number? Thank you. Yeah. So the reason we check cholesterol is we want to predict heart disease.

So the most important number is going to be the number that is the most accurate at predicting heart disease. And a lot of people now think that determining your non-HDL cholesterol level may be the most. most important or the most accurate. Okay. And this option is probably, is a better risk predictor than your total cholesterol and even your LDL cholesterol. So what they do is they subtract the high density lipoprotein, which is the good cholesterol from your total cholesterol number.

So it contains all the bad types of cholesterol. And so, you know, a non-HDL cholesterol, less than 130, and that's in milligrams per decilator, is optimal. And now the other thing, though, is this cholesterol ratio. We've used this for decades, and that's where you take your total cholesterol and divide it by the HDL. So you have good cholesterol, and then your total cholesterol. And if it's three to one or less, that's actually advantageous. So if you had a cholesterol of 120, total cholesterol, and a cholesterol, HDL of 40, that would be 3 to 1, and that would be advantageous. Okay.

So both of those are very important. Neither one of those are single numbers. You have to calculate them, given your lipid panel. So people ask about, well, what's the difference between good cholesterol and bad cholesterol? We can talk about that for a second. The way I always explain it is you have people building bricks during the day, and then you have people stealing bricks at night. And so if you have enough brick stealers who steal enough bricks during the night,

the brick layer can never finish the wall. So if you think of the brick layer as being your bad cholesterol building plaque in your arteries and the brick stealer as the good cholesterol or HDL cholesterol, cholesterol, you know, ameliorating that, that's kind of a reasonable analogy if you just want to think about it that way to remember it. So if the brick layer is able to complete the wall, in other words, if your HDL is lower, you know, too low to give you an advantageous total cholesterol HDL ratio, then the brick layer will be able to finish the wall and then maybe you'll be at higher risk for cholesterol, I mean, for, for, yeah for heart disease right okay so uh one thing that you can still do though is uh calculate your framing ham risk and just go framing ham risk calculator you'll need your most recent blood pressure and your most recent uh cholesterol do you know your numbers scott i know we've done this

recently yeah the last time i had my my labs recently my cholesterol was i mean it was great is like 180 total. I don't remember the breakdown. But I had no concerns for my primary doc Gip, which is a good thing of considering my lifestyle. So I try to keep perfectly pickled. What do you mean your lifestyle? I try to keep pickled, perfectly pickled.

You're at your, you're, when your lifestyle's good, you're thin, you, I'm active. You're active, you don't smoke. What are you talking about? No meditations. You're talking about. The only thing I do is testosterone, that's it. So you're a male.

Yep. Well, how old are you? you? 54. Look at damn. Yeah, baby. I'm old. Okay.

And your total cholesterol was what, 180? 180. Do you know what your HDL was? Hmm. No. I'd just make up a number. I'd say it's 50. Yeah, it was 50.

Your blood pressure? I think 360 over 290. What? Well, that's only when I'm doing weird medicine. Okay. Usually it's about 130 over 180. Okay. And you're not on any medication for high blood pressure?

Nope. Okay, and you don't smoke. Nope. And you're not diabetic. No, but I like edibles. No known vascular disease. No vascular disease, that's right. Yeah, so you're low risk.

Your estimated 10-year global cardiovascular risk is 7.9%. What that means is you've got, you know, eight out of 100 chance of actually having a heart attack in the next 10 years. Mine was about 13. I was a little pissed about that. I'd take that number. I'll even take the 13, but it's a little bit of that number. But still, that's kind of shitty because I thought I was doing better than that. Because my blood pressure is nothing over nothing now, but I'm on blood pressure.

But the problem is, when you're my age, your risk never gets below a certain level. You know, it just doesn't. So let me do mine real quick. So my blood pressure on, yeah, oh, shit. No, I got to go back. Go back. Ah, you son of a bitch. Yes, I am on medications for high blood pressure.

I am not a smoker. I'm not a diabetic. And I don't have known vascular. disease, but it's still 15%. Of course, that's your age. Now, my vascular age is 64 years, so I'm two years younger than my estimated actual age. So there you go. All right.

Really, I think my doctor should be a little bit more aggressive with my cholesterol, but he knows that I have neuropathy, and so he's just trying to be cool with it. All right. Does that answer that guy's question? Yep. Okay, here we go. Please so. Hi, Dr. I'm going to be 47 years old here this summer.

I am, despite the fact that, I am almost a few times away from losing 300 pounds. Okay, awesome. It's still more than it will be from about 335 to 240 pounds home. So he started at 545. His audio is not very good, but he lost 300 pounds, but he's still around 245. Congratulations, by the way. I'm working every single day. I'm working hard and changing my diet.

exercise, controlling the blood sugar. So he's changing his diet, doing exercise, controlling his blood sugar. I don't know if you guys can hear him. You know, I'm not pressure and everything else. I'm working really hard. I'm making a lot of the changes. Good. But I also check my stupid nuts for lumps every day.

Excellent. You don't have to do it every day, but you're welcome. He said he checks his stupid nuts for lumps every day. I highly encourage that. You know, once a month. It's probably enough unless you just enjoy it. I'm calling about testosterone. Okay.

How important is it to your overall health? Okay. His audio is so bad. What his question is, is how important is testosterone to your overall health? In other words, if it's low and you don't replace it, what's that going to do to you? And really, low test, high testosterone can cause some problems. Low testosterone causes fatigue and erectile dysfunction. It's mostly lifestyle stuff.

And it's the biggest parameter that we follow with people who have low testosterone is a parameter called health-related quality of life. And people with low testosterone have a lower health-related quality of life than people with normal testosterone, period. And I know that I could tell a difference when I went forward. from two pumps to three. Oh, heck, yeah, me too. Big time.

So that's the real thing. You know, elevated testosterone, people who juice are people who are producing testosterone that they shouldn't be because they have a testosterone producing tumor. They're at higher risk of heart disease and mental anguish and, you know, impulse disorders and things like that. Not so much with low testosterone, but I do recommend that if it is low, just see a urologist and get it replaced properly because you will feel better. And it'll also help you get the rest of that weight off and will probably help if you have sleep apnea.

That is a big one. Huge. You know, I think I told you before when they first checked my testosterone was 45, so I can tell you what it feels like when you have low tea. Were you juicing at any point? You never did. Never, not a single time. The only person I've ever seen that was that was that was using it, you know, in the gym.

Yeah, we talked about that, too. And I played it. His was zero. Yeah, I played up at Western Kentucky. And we had a couple guys that took steroids there. But I never, never even saw any, much less took any. What? The hell was you so low?

I don't know. It's bizarre. That's bizarre. Did they do all the sex hormone binding globulins and pituitary axis tests and everything? Everything else is normal? They did. Yeah, so, I mean, as long as I'm doing the shock. It's good.

Nut failure. Yeah. Primary testicular insufficiencies. That sounds much more prevent. Lazyness in the... Hey, lazy nuts. Oh, lazy nuts. In the jungle region.

That may be our new band name, lazy nuts. I don't like that one. Well, I've got fatty liver now. Steve's been calling me fatty liver. No. Because I used to call fess fatty pneumonia, so she's fatty liver now. So you can be lazy nuts. Oh, I can be lazy nuts.

The old lazy nuts. Fatty liver and lazy nuts. That does sound like a band name. That does sound like a great band name. Fatty liver and lazy nuts. When I was doing music back in the 80s, one of my alter egos was less miserable. Of course, when you read it, it was Le Miserables.

But he called himself less miserable. It's old less miserable. I fancied myself as Tom Waits. As a matter of fact, I put some of that stuff up on Patreon while we're gone like every three or four days there's going to be some other blast from the past and some of it is some of my old music and you can just skip over it well all right if you want to be a completist then you have to have some of that stuff but i i can't know you like tom waits oh god dude i i tried to be tom waits as a matter of fact i wrote this song that was the closest that i ever came and i performed it in greensboro north carolina and got a standing ovation so i was like oh hell hell I'm on to something. But part of it was I did a different solo on a different instrument, you know, between, you know, between verses and stuff. And I can't find it.

I can't find a recording of it anywhere. And I couldn't redo it because I just did it off the top of my head. You know, I was just, you know, I was rapping, man. You're improvising, baby. Yeah, yeah. Like the beatnik type rapping, not hip-hop rapping. Good. We'll have to.

Talking about the state of the state of the world. that's great anyway yeah we'll do it we'll have to do it yes sean loves tom weeks too I've got to find that I gotta go through my tape collection

if I find it I'll put it up here we can do a couple Tomweight songs okay yeah for sure yeah that'd be cool yeah I'd be totally into it I don't know you're that your music knowledge

was that robust fuck yourself Jesus I thought you just like like what's the name of that band Purple Velvet or something Purple Velvet

okay so you're the one with the deep oh yeah I'm sorry You're the one with the deep knowledge. I'm sorry. It was it King Crimson? How can I forget that band? Oh, my God.

Shit. We're going to play a King Crimson song, and it's in like. And I'm going to like it, damn it. It's in like 13-4 rhythm. Oh, God. Yeah, I will really screw that. He's warped my kid. He has a King Crimson T-shirt.

Well, and not only that, I piled him and a bunch of his friends in the car one night, and I was taking them somewhere, and they were like, Beck, are you going to make us listen to King Crimson again tonight? And I was like, hey, yeah, it's my boy. The little apple didn't fall too far. Well done, my friend. No. All right, we'll take another question.

I'm good. This is Jason from Louisiana. Hey, Jason. I used to live in Louisiana. When it's time to drop off the kids at the pool, I proceed to do so. Okay. After the kids finish swimming.

Okay. vacated the pool. The hose that fills the pool continues to fill it. Yeah. Long after the kids have left. Oh, yeah. Is this normal? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. So this is a euphemism for taking a dump and flushing the toilet. And this is really a question for a plumber, not so much for us. But we can still answer that. When you take a dump or drop the kids off at the pool, as he so. eloquently stated, and then you flush it, you know, the turds go down and everything else that you throw in there. And by the way, get a tushy bidet. If you're, if you, if you're someone who takes dumps, oh, that would be everyone in the audience. You need a tushy bidet. It's the greatest

70, 80 bucks you'll ever spend. You attach it under your seat. And then when you're done, doing, you know, strutting your stuff. You turn this dial and this stream of water just, and I've got it so that I move around now so I can get the stream to go side to side and just, you know, sluice the whole crackle area. And it's the greatest thing in the world. And we're going on vacation for two weeks. We're not going to have a damn bidet. And I'm going to be very pissed.

We can get some wipes. It'll help. No. It will. It'll help. Wipes are like, I used to tell this story, way, way, way back. Tacey, you were there, I think the first time I ever told this that using paper to get stool off of a hairy ass crack is like trying to get Vaseline off a bear rug with a newspaper. It just can't be done.

You're just smearing it around. You'll get some of it up, but you're just smearing it around. This thing, you're just, you don't even have to use toilet paper. If you sit there long enough and you're like read the. newspaper or go through Reddit or something. You can just stand up, put your drawers on, and just move on. It's amazing. Now, they make those toto toilets.

It's 10 grand. They're expensive. Just get a tushy. Go to stuff. Dottersteve.com and scroll down there right there. Bobby Kelly turned us on to that. And whatever Bobby says, hey, I got something you got to buy, you got to buy it. Oh, wait a minute.

Talk like Hick to you who's got a solution. I guess they've got a portable bidet wand. Really? Well, you have to shove it between your legs. I don't know, but it sounds lovely. I don't know. It's better than carrying out a hot chicken sandwich, I guess, between your legs. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's another euphemism for having a swamp ass. That sounds like that. Yeah, that's a good one. A hot chicken sandwich. I had that this weekend. Exactly, exactly. Oh, that's disgusting. Exactly.

So, yeah, so anyway. Portable bidet wand. they want. And while you're looking that up, I'll talk about why the water continues to flow. So the stool and all the contents of the toilet get flushed down into that trap and then they start to work their way into the sewer system. But you've got to fill that tank back up. And so there's always a little bit of, you know, outflow from the tank into the tank. into the bowl, and if you open, take the top off to a normal, you know, flow master, you'll see that little hook tube that's putting just a little bit of water down back into the bowl.

And that just keeps things agitated while the bowl is filling up. And then when the bowl, I'm sorry, the tank fills up, the water level sensor clicks, and then it stops the water from going into the tank any further. and then you're ready for the next plush. What did you find, Tase? Okay, so Tushie makes one. Oh, really? $29.

You fill it up with water, and then you squirt it. Is it? Does it use a battery, or do you have to just? No, it looks like it's just one of those, like you just squeeze it and the water comes out. Oh. It says, can you do it with one hand? Take a carefree, clean dump wherever, whenever. Do you put it between your knees and squeeze your knees?

What is this is like a bellows? Because that's a crazy image. Celebrate your butt and clean it right with the perfect stream of cleansing water to wash your travel turds away. Oh, my word. I see it. Okay, I'm ordering one. It comes in different colors. Well, I want one where I can't see if I've made a mess on the damn thing.

Okay, I don't, we don't have to go. I don't think that it's like, Steve. okay uh yeah okay it looks kind of like one of those water bottles that you squeeze yes that that collapsed bowl water bottle okay i'm going to have one sent to us because i got to have it oh now here's a tushy travel portable bidet tutorial let's see um and this is from tushy so i'm sure we got a go number two on the go the tushy travels got you covered okay let me just see And if you are worried about what people are going to think, they have no idea. You're filling up a portable butt shower.

Yeah, and it looks like a water. Did she just call it a portable butt shower? Yeah, and it looks like a water bottle. So be very careful with this. Can you imagine somebody, oh, I need a water bottle. grabs this thing, you know, goes running and they're drinking out of your portable bidet. Yeah, because it comes in hot pink or teal. Yeah, okay, she's filling it up.

I'm trying to see if she's going to use it. and the answer is no. So, okay, I'll order one, and I'll have it shipped to us where we're going. And we'll try it. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Amy.

Yeah, you just may have saved my vacation. Not that the pulmonologist is really the one that saved my vacation because I wasn't getting ready to have a shitty vacation. Okay, interesting. All right, thank you. Cool. Okay, here we go. Hey, Dr. Steve and Dr. Scott.

That doesn't sound like a right. I saw that Jewel vape just got banned by the FDA thought this would be a perfect opportunity to discuss a little bit about vaping on the show. My question

is is popcorn lung, have they found that to be real or a myth or we still don't know yet? And are we discovering other dangers with it? Thanks for the answer. Well, I'm going to tell

you why they banned the jewel do you want to take a guess they're marketing to kids I would assume nope I'm going to give you a no on that that's what I would have said because I think that that was I don't have a buzzer on this one

okay no this is what I think it's because R.J. Reynolds just got one approved oh remember We talked about a long time ago. R.J. Reynolds tried to come out with an electronic cigarette.

They were calling it an electronic cigarette at the time. And the FDA said... That was a long time ago, wasn't it? Yeah, this was like in the 70s, 80s. Right on. Right on. And the FDA said, hell no, we're not going to let you market a quote-unquote safer cigarette. And now they finally, you know, they played the long game. So they hung in there and they got one approved by the FDA.

And now all of a sudden, Jewel is a... off the market. So can you imagine, though, if you had invested your, you know, the corporation was somebody's dream at some point. Yep. And, you know, and now they're gone.

So anyway, the giant corporations win again. Good Lord. Now, the popcorn lung thing looked like it was a specific additive from knockoff vape pens. And they specific additive was vitamin E, if I remember correctly, and they were, for whatever reason, the oil was contaminated, either contaminated with that, or they were doping it with vitamin

E. Maybe they thought it would be good for you or something. But if I remember correctly, you might look up popcorn lung vaping, Dr. Scott, and see if they have anything new on that. Sure. That was the last time I remember seeing anything. And we have not heard anything about it since that first bunch of cases happened, mostly because I believe that the those offending vape pens were taken off the market at the time. And, you know, the vape pen industry would be self-policing because they don't want, you know, shit to happen, and then what's just happened to Jewel happened to them.

Now, can Jewel retool some things and get FDA approval? Absolutely they can, so we'll see what happens. I'm sure that's what they're doing. He's saying right now that the FDA did not look at all of their evidence. Yeah, so they can reapply, and the FDA can. We'll do whatever they want. We'll do whatever the hell they want to do. Which is why I'm retired.

Exactly. That is true. The FDA didn't approve your drug. I have to always give props to the FDA, though. They are the reason that thalidomide was never marketed in the United States. Oh, no, they do wonderful things. Yeah. So they are slow and deliberative, and they, you know, they, yes, they rushed some shit to market during COVID, but that was under these emergency use authorizations.

And, you know, they felt that that was for the greater good, but in general, they're very deliberative. And if Jewel can show them data that their manufacturing process and that their product is reasonably safe, then they will approve them as well. Well, it turns out the drug I was going to have didn't work anyway, so whatever. Oh, is that right? Yeah, that's what everybody thinks. Okay. Okay, so I came across something from U.K. cancer research. Okay.

Does vaping cause popcorn lung? And it says e-cigarettes don't cause the lung condition known as popcorn lungs. Okay. There have been no confirmed cases of popcorn lung reported in people who use e-cigarettes. Even better. E-cigarettes are one of the tools that can help people who smoke to stop. However, this is from a website. Yeah, now that was in the UK.

Cancer Research, UK. Because I remember when this first went down that I believe, and some of our UK friends who also watched 90-day fiancé with us. By the way, the last two podcasts I named one was I got a text and the other one was I can't be arst. And so I'm just putting on things that from 90, or not 90-day fiancé, what I say? Love Island, UK. Yeah, Love Island, UK. But maybe someone in the UK can tell us, but I believe they were ahead of the curve when it came to electronic cigarettes. And it was legal er there than it was here at the time.

That's very interesting. Well, this website just sounds like you ought to just go out and get one right now. Yeah, sounds good to me. I love seeing those big giant clouds of stuff. you get behind somebody. That's so obnoxious. Giant cloud. And then I remember Liam and Beck and I, you may have been there as well, but we were in Asheville.

And we walked by this guy, and he was a hipster. And he was like, well, I'm going to take a toot off of my vape pin man. And he had this thing. It looked like a fucking clarinet. It was this big black and chrome thing with all these little levers and stuff. And he took a toot off of this thing. and this, I mean, monstrous cloud of smoke or vape, you know, emanated from his lungs. It must feel great.

I remember what it was like to smoke, and you always liked having that sort of full feeling and then expelling it again. It was sort of like a mini weird lung orgasm, and I'm sure it feels that way. So people are probably getting more and more vape because they want to recreate that feeling. But nothing better than clean, fresh air. friends. That's right. All right. Let's see here. I just wanted to find out some information about Mycenae Gravus. I got diagnosed with it, and if you could do something on the radio, it would be great.

Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I hope she's listening. Myasthenia Gravis is this, again, an autoimmune disorder where the body attacks a part of your body, and it attacks the part of the body where signals from the nerves go to muscles to tell the muscles to twitch and that's pretty effed up because if you can't send that signal

then or if it's not received then you're just going to have weakness you can't overpower that just by thinking about it because of course thinking about it is nerves right so these are muscles that are responsible for breathing and moving parts of the body, including the arms and legs. So it won't do anything to the muscles in your gut so much. It's mostly voluntary muscles.

And it's, you know, you can get these crises when the muscles that control breathing weaken to the point where you need a ventilator, and that can happen. It can be triggered by infections. stress, surgery, all the things that trigger ketoacidosis, by the way, in diabetics and it trigger heart attacks and other people. So stress is a son of a bitch. And really, though, if you have myasthenia gravis, you have an 80 to 85 percent chance of never having that happen to you.

But that means 15 to 20 percent people do have it. So what's the treatment? Well, okay. So there are several treatments. Let me talk about what causes it, and then you'll kind of figure out what the treatments are before I even get there. So there's this error in transmission of nerve impulses to muscles when that normal communication is blocked, and the myasthenia antibodies block and destroy the receptors for this neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. And it's actually at that neuromuscular junction. In other words, where the nerve and the muscle meet. And, you know, the thymus gland is probably also associated with myasthenia gravis. You know, it usually grows until puberty and then gets smaller and is replaced by fat.

And as a matter of fact, if you've ever had sweetbreads, those are goat thymus glands. They're very tasty. And but in people with myasthenia gravis, their thymus gland. doesn't turn into fat it's still active so there's something going on there so they treat it by removing your thymus gland that's one of the things if you have an active thymus gland they will do what's called a thymectomy and then there are also antibodies and these monoclonal antibodies will target this process by which you are making these acetylcholine antibodies and there's a drug called

ecu oh geez you know I hate these monoclonal antibody names Echolizumab

E-C-U-L-I-Z-U-M-A-B and if you have that anti-acetylcholene receptor antibody you are a candidate for this medication and it is very effective

does it have adverse effects yes but you know most people will trade that to be able to use their muscles again yes there are

anti-colonesterase medication there are other immunosuppressive drugs that just suppress the immune system altogether if it were me i'd probably go for the antibody because it's more specific one of the other things they can do is clean your blood out of these um antibodies they do that through this process called plasma phreases okay and you can just sweep the antibodies out of your bloodstream now that's temporary because you'll keep making them make more okay but But, you know, if you do that periodically, you could keep it in check. How often, just had to curious, how often would they do it? It sounds like kind of if you had to do dialysis on someone you have to go.

Yeah, you know, I don't know the answer to that. I think it depends on the patient. Oh, how bad? Okay. Yeah. All right. So, you know, they've gotten way better at treating this. When I was first a medical student, this was basically, you know, considered a very difficult disease to manage.

now it's a lot easier. These monoclonal antibodies have really revolutionized some of this stuff. Yeah, shoot you. I mean, look at Tacey's mom. She's talked about on the show, so it's not, I'm not saying, you know, this isn't a HIPAA issue. She's got rheumatoid arthritis. She takes a monoclonal antibody for it, and it just, she just keeps on keeping on. Yeah.

And she didn't get the, what we call the ulnar deviation of the stigmata of rheumatoid arthritis, where you'll see the fingers and knuckles start to bend toward the ulna, which is the outer bone of the arm when your hands are, the palms are facing the ground, palms down, yeah. And you'll see that, you know, those big beefy knuckles, and then they're just bent away from the midline of the body. So, you know, you just don't see that as much anymore, which is good. We just have to treat people with gold and all kinds of old-school stuff.

They treated people with, what was it, tuberculosis with gold. The other thing that they would do with tuberculosis back in the day was they would collapse your lung. And they did this on peeky blinders and they were right on the money. They had, you know, no big spoilers. They had a kid in there that got tuberculosis and they stuck a scalpel between her ribs and let her ribs collapse or her lung collapse. And when the lung collapses, the theory is that if the organisms can't get oxygen, then they can't live and it'll just die. And then later on will re-expand your lung. I don't know what the efficacy of what that was, but I know they did it.

And you could only obviously do one at a time. It's kind of the first ones that did it. Yeah, what's not both of them? Oops. I'm an overachiever. Let's do both of them at the same time. Yep. All right.

Wow. So that's myasthenia Gravis. Good luck with that. Let us know how you do. Oh, my God. We are interested. Hey, Dr. Steve, Dr. Scott. This is Mike from Maryland.

Hey, Mike. I'm listening to the episode. You're talking about Valparles, Ramsey, Ramsey Hunt, shingles. Yeah, we were talking about Justin Bieber had a Ramsey Hunt syndrome, which is when you get, basically, you get shingles in your ear, and it affects the nerves that go. to the face and you get facial weakness and some other things. And a 35-year-old male, I have never had chicken pox.

Scott, while he's talking, or one of you look up, when did the chicken pox vaccine come out? And how many years ago was it? My daughter is school age, and she's at that age where she's probably going to get home soon. So my question is... Well, okay, maybe she will.

If she's been vaccinated for chicken pox, She may not bring it home. But anyway. Am I supposed to avoid her at all costs? All the time? No. Chickenpox as an adult is bad for an adult, worse than shingles, maybe as bad as shingles. No, it's bad.

If you get chicken pox as an adult, it's bad. Did you get an answer on that? 1995. How long ago was that? 95. Oh, now I've got to do Howard Stern math. 27? Each year, more than 3.5 million cases of chickenpox, 9,000 hospitalizations, and 100 deaths are prevented by the vaccine in the U.S.

Okay, good. Yeah, chickenpox is not a completely benign disease. Most kids who get it are fine, but it does cause a few deaths in kids from time to time. Not anything like measles did. But, yeah, you never heard back when I was a kid of having measles parties, but you always had chickenpox parties. So I'm in doubt that you didn't have chicken pox. It's so communicable, so common. The number of people that are adults that truly haven't either had the vaccine or had chicken pox are very low.

Now that we have an immune population, that's going to change. Right. Because if you don't vaccinate your kids for Veracella, And they're in a population where most of the people around them have been vaccinated, then they can get to adulthood and never get it. And then now when somebody gets shingles, they can get chicken pox. So those are the people I'd be more afraid of. But what you could do is just go to your primary care, say, I don't know if I've ever had chicken pox. Can you check to see if I have antibodies?

If you have the varicilla antibodies, then you've either had the vaccine or you had chicken pox. Now, he was right on the cusp of being at the age where he could have had chicken pox vaccine. This says more than 95% of Americans have had chicken pox by adulthood. Yeah, but again, going to change now that we have this generation that is moving forward in time. And the people that got chicken pox are dying off. And now you've got a population of people that never had chicken pox. I do feel better about the chicken pox vaccine. I used to say I wasn't a fan.

Well, because. I've seen adult chicken pox, and it sucks, and they never could tell me is this lifelong immunity. Okay. And but then when I realized it's a live, attenuated virus, those tend to give you lifelong immunity, so I feel a little better about it. We'll know soon enough if we get a whole bunch of adults starting to get chicken pox, and the FDA comes out and says, or the CDC comes out and says, well, now you've got to get a booster for that because you got varicella vaccine when you were a kid. But we'll see. So far have not seen this raging epidemic that I was concerned about. I never said it would happen.

I was just concerned that it might happen. Right on. And I do feel better about it now. Good. I mean, we gave Liam and Beck got it. Yeah. You know. The vaccine.

The vaccine. Yeah, yeah. All right. Interesting. So go get a tighter and then see. But if you have not had it, if you are vulnerable, Look up chicken pox vaccine in adults. And I think that you can get it.

Should adults get the, yeah, you can get it any time. So if you're tighter is zero, just get the vaccine. And it's two doses, 28 days apart. And then you don't have to worry about it anymore. Okay? Yep. All right. See, we can find out stuff, even though if we don't know the answer.

Hey, Dr. Steve. Amen. Hello, everybody. I hope you are well. Yeah, thank you. You too. Thank you. I am great.

Thank you very much. Let's see. This is Ed from Yallsbury in North Carolina. I am white, 61, and fair-skinned. I grew up on boats and on the beach down in Florida and have a history of melanoma and squamous cells. Okay. And the accompanying surgeries that go with that. Yeah.

I even had Mose surgery, which you do not want to Google. My, a wise guy. Let's see. Moe's surgery. Why, you, I ought to. I've had a couple of bad sunburns. Let's talk about what Moe's surgery is since I'm being an asshole. That's terrible.

Moe's surgery is when you take, you cut out melanoma or some other suspicious lesion that you're really worried about. And you look at it, you freeze dry it, or freeze it, and you freeze it, and you fix, do a quick fixation, and you look at it under the microscope, and you keep taking slices after slice after slice deeper and deeper until you don't see any cancer cells anymore. So it's a way to just sort of increase your odds of getting it on. Pretty dark brown during high school. So I don't even know how many procedures I've had to remove squamous or carcinoma of various skin cancers. And so my dermatologist has put me on a thousand millicotinamide i'm going to grams of niacinamide twice a day as a way to suppress

frequency of skin cancer yes and i you know hey tacey yes sir you need to send a text to p a jill since she had melanoma twice and see if she's taking nicotinamide uh there was a really good study that showed that nicotinamide. How you spell it? Like nicotine amide. So, N-I-C-O-T-I-N-A-M-I-D. It's 500 milligrams twice a day. And this study showed a 23% reduction in new non-melanoma skin cancers.

And the melanoma data, I've got data from 2017. And it's still iffy, but it says because nicotine, Nicotinamide reduces the incidence of certain precancerous lesions in high-risk individuals and enhances repair of DNA damage in melanocytes, you know, melanin, those, the pigmented cells. It's a promising agent for chemo-prevention of melanoma and high-risk populations. I will keep looking to see if I can find data that demonstrates a statistically significant improvement in people that take nicotinamide. But I would, there's absolutely no downside to it. Right on.

There's no downside to it. Hell, take it. And the thing is, if you were exposed to that much sunlight, you're probably not just at risk for melanoma. But melanoma is the one that you really want to prevent if you can. That dude's describing me, I'm afraid. Well, maybe you should be taking some nicotine. I'm got to take it today. You should put some in your stragglers stuff.

Ooh. And they're like double dose. Another thing for... You don't give me a bunch of shit about it. For what ails you? No. My horse liniment. Yeah.

Horse paste. Horse paste. Good Lord. Oh, oh, oh. Remember we talked about, speaking of horse paste, that we had a YouTube video deleted and we got a content strike, which is a big deal against our channel. They reversed it. Oh, good. Somebody actually went and listened to what we were saying, finally, after tweeting and tweeting and tweeting them,

and thanks to the people in our audience that also tweeted to them to say this is bullshit. Yeah, awesome. Thank you guys. They did pay attention, and I got a tweet. You know, it's funny, there's no email, there's no phone calls you could do, but you can tweet to them, and then stuff gets done. So anyway, so I'm going to quit saying salty things about YouTube, and I do it. I appreciate them taking a look at it. So before we go, Scott, you had a question from the waiting room.

Yeah, great question from Colin. What could possibly cause? Colin Quinn? Colin? No, not that Colin, thankfully, because he's the one that straightened you. Thankfully. We want him to call in. What are you talking about?

That is true. Dr. Steve, I hope you better at prostate screenings than you are at radio screenings, the son of a bitch. It's one of my favorite things I own. That is awesome. I love Colin. It is funny. But our column says, what would cause palpations after eating, question mark?

It started happening after he had his gobladder removed. Wait, palpitations, or was it atrial fibrillation, though? Tacey. Crack on. Crack on. Okay, yeah, we'll call crack on. He said palpitations. I said atrial fibrillation.

I know it's not the same thing. No, that was my fault. It's not even close to the same thing. No, I know. That's my fault. I'm misread. Sorry, Colin. We'll get it straight.

At least you're paying attention. Yeah, so palpitations after eating. So, palpitations after eating. So, when you first told me about this, I wanted to look up atrial fibrillation after you eat. And that is a known thing. It's unusual. And it's called post-pranial paroxysmal. atrial fibrillation, and they feel that elevated blood sugar is a contributing factor to that.

Okay. Makes sense. So they did a case of 73-year-old woman had post-prandial hyperglycemia. So post-pranial means after you eat, hyperglycemia, elevated blood sugar, suffered from drug refractory paroxysmal paroxysmal means comes and goes, come, you know, paroxysms. and she put they put her on a 1600 calorie a day diet and had her walk three times a day for more than 30 minutes never happened again after six months it was done never happened again that's incredible that was pretty interesting so uh these authors based on one you know an n

of one said diet and exercise should be considered initial therapy in patients with paroxysmal myotrophibulation, who also have post-pranthial hyperglycemia. But if we're talking palpitations, that's a different thing. Now, that can be something like this. Palpitation is just where you feel skip or, you know, skip heartbeats

or heavy heartbeats that are also paroxysmal. Right. So normally you don't feel your heart beating in your chest. You can feel it if you feel your pulse, either in your neck or in your wrist, but you normally don't feel it in your chest. And when you do, we'll call that a palpitation.

So they're very common. I used to have them all the time. Younger people tend to have more of them. And actually more healthy, well-toned people will have more palpitations than sedentary fatsos like me. So that's probably why I don't have them anymore. But if they're recurrent, particularly if they are associated with symptoms, Okay. Oh, good, no.

Am I 16 again? It's okay. Symptoms. Hello, Mr. Haney. If you, oh, he was Mr. Haney. He would say, hello, Mr. Douglas. Anyway. If you are having them accompanied by symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain, left arm weakness, or pain radiating down the left arm, sweating or anything like that, you would want to get that checked out.

ASAP but otherwise if you just have them and they're just sort of hey I just notice this periodically if you can find a pattern to it that'll help them figure it out but what they'll do is they'll put an event monitor on you sometimes a Holter monitor so if a Holter monitor an event monitor two different things holter monitor will measure every single heartbeat for 24 to 48 hours and then an event monitor you can wear for a month and you just push the button when you have an event right that you feel that's right and it'll be monitoring your heart rate the whole time and then when you push the button it'll go back 10 seconds or 15 seconds capture those capture this thing and then the next 15 seconds and then they upload it and they can look at it say oh yeah

you're just having regular PVCs which are premature ventricular contractions those happen every once in a while and the heart will just skip a beat and when it or it beats or it beats too early, really, is what it is. So you'll get beat, beat, beat, and then beat, beat, and then it just sits there. It doesn't know what to do. It can't quite repolarize yet. But while it's sitting there doing nothing because it did two beats in a row too fast, it's still filling up with blood coming from the venous side of the circulatory system.

It's not pumping out any arterial blood right now. But venous blood is still pouring in, and the heart's getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it gets so big. It has to beat several times to get back to equilibrium. Kind of catch up. Yeah, to get caught up. And those you will feel. Yep. Come on, come on.

Yep. And, but, you know, you can get this from a shitty diet, too, so people are in really good shape or people who are in really, really bad shape can get palpitations. They can be accompanied by myocardial infarction. In other words, if you're happy, well, they will accompany a myocardial infarction. If you're having a heart attack, your heart becomes sort of irritable electrically, and then it'll just start beating like crazy. Sometimes you'll get palpitations with that. So whenever somebody comes in with chest pain, we're always asking them, are you having any palpitations?

Are you sweating? Are you nauseated? You have pain going down your left arm. Those are all signs that contribute to the clinical diagnosis of heart attack. Right. All right. Okay. Anything else?

I believe we have to got it. All right. Well, that sounds good to me. Tacey, you got anything? Nope. Scott, you want to plug anything? Simply herbals. Yeah, simply herbals.

Nasal sprays. That net. CBD. Similar to your... What? Her nuts. Simply her balls. Oh, my God.

I think he's getting to me. It's hot again. It's kind of like her nuts. Kind of like her nuts. Her balls. Oh, my God. That's sort of like Myrtle. Always gets it.

You know, the joke, what's the best time to go to the dentist? Tooth hurdy. And then Myrtle always gets the punchlines wrong. And she'll say, well, her best time I reckon is right a foreclosing time. He's, ain't nobody there in there. You know, it's just so stupid. She gets all the jokes wrong. And then, yes, then Cletus will just explain them all.

Yeah. But I know my, I'm such a dentist, but the CBD nasal spray is. Well, you're not pretty. Known as Scott the joke, man. No, I'm not. No. So that's okay. You can, you can not tell.

The nut, what is it? The, uh. Simply her balls. The soft, the soft nuts or whatever. I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about now. I don't want to know how soft your nuts are. I don't want to know any of them. You're fatty liver and I'm.

Oh, he's a. No, lazy nuts. Lazy nuts. Okay. Oh, lazy nuts. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, Lazy nuts and, oh, shit, who are you again?

Faddy liver. I'll try again. Let's try again. Wait a minute. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for fatty liver and lazy nuts. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Oh, the room turned so quickly.

So dumb. All right. Well, listen, thanks always. Go to Dr. Scott, Tacey. Thank you for being here. We can't forget. Rob Sprantz, Bob, Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, that Gould Girl, Lewis Johnson, Paul Ophcharsky, Chowdy, 1008,

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Sean Pedrick and the rest of the waiting room Check out You know, the shout-outs to Paul Off Charsky And Eric Nagel, the Port Charlotte Hoar The Saratua Skank, the Florida Flusi, the St. Pete Barkheat blower,

the Dolly Museum Diddler, the ballet Bimbo, the girl with a genetic half-sister No one, no. about. Except we do. Percy Dumb. Roland Campo, sister of Chris, Sam Robert, she who owns pigs and snakes, Pat Duffy, Bill the cop, Keith the cop, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinsmith, Dale Dudley, Holly from the Gulf, Christopher Watkins, voice double, guitarist Steve Tucci, the great Rob Bartlett, Adam Goldstein, already said hello to him. Cowgirl, Vic, thank you for your service.

Cardiff Electric, Casey, the soil scientist, Carl of the Tilippes, Aquinoveris Carls. They're a very exclusive family. Producer Chris, aka Paducah, Chris, the subreddit news chick, aka that broad. Crows and the Bukaki Queen, Jenny Jingles, The Inhumitable, Vincent Paulino, everybody. Eric Zane, Trucker Andy, Tucker and Anita Dixon,

Bernie and Sid, Martha from Arkansas's daughter, Ron Bennington, of course, our dear departed friends, GVAC, Barry the Blade, and Todd Hillier, who's support of this show, has always been. been gracious and always was appreciated. Listen to our Sirius XM show on the Faction Chalk Channel. Serious XM Channel 103,

Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern, on demand. And other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners, whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules, podcasts, other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses, get some exercise.

We'll see in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Bye.