Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 525 - Pineal Before Me

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

Dr Steve, Dr Scott and Dave from Rhode Island discuss: stenosing tenosynovitis high throughput drug discovery innovation vs profits vs price control Traumatic brain injury in football fluoride in the water and pineal calcification? Decorticate posturing Measles vaccine for multiple myeloma and more! Please visit: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) simplyherbals.net  (now with LESS !vermect!n!) (JUST KIDDING, Podcast app overlords! Sheesh!) noom.doctorsteve.com (the link still works! Lose weight now before swimsuit season is over!) roadie.doctorsteve.com (the greatest gift for a guitarist or bassist! The robotic tuner!) Please don't forget: Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now while he’s still cheap! "FLUID!") Most importantly! 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

What did Hans Solo say to Luke Skywalker on Thanksgiving? May the Forks be with you. Why did the cow cross the road? To get to the other silo. Why did the barf and the booger fall in love? It's what's on the inside. That counts. Can you like, shut up?

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 the period crushing my mind. I've got Tobolovir, 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, plastic with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane.

I want a requiem for my disease, so I'm paging Dr. Steve. from the world famous carniv 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 steve with my little pal dr scott the traditional chinese medicine practitioner gives me street cred with the wackle alternative medicine ass hats hello dr scott and we have uh dave from rhoda island hello dave we'll be introducing dave in a little bit yes he's very happy to be here This is a show Not for long, maybe This is a show for people

Who would never listen To a medical show On the radio, the internet If you have a question You're embarrassed To take your regular medical provider If you can't find an answer Anywhere else, give us a call

347-7-66-4-323 That's 347 Take it away, day Poo-Head Oh, excellent Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine Or at DR Scott WM And visit our website

At Dr. Steve.com For podcast, medical news And stuff to come by Most importantly, we're not your medical providers Take everything here. Grain of Salt, don't act on anything you hear on this show talking over with your primary care provider, your acupunctrist, whatever. Tasey isn't here, so I couldn't do the list.

Let's talk to somebody about it. Don't listen to us. We're stupid. Don't forget stuff. com, stuff for dot, dot, dr.steve.com for all your Amazon needs and all your online shopping needs. It really makes huge difference. So if you're going to shop online, please use stuff. stuff.

Dottersteve.com. And then check out Dr. Scott's website. It's simply herbals.net. That's simply herbals.net. He gets most of his business from weird medicine people. Plus, gave him some of these... Super cool. Super cool.

Weird medicine poker chips. They are cool. So if you buy something, the next... How many you've got there? The next ten orders. The next ten orders. Really, the next... Probably 100 orders.

I'll give him some poker chips. He's got a lot of poker chips. And check us out at patreon.com slash weird medicine. We do the, oh, what's going to be there? If you have not heard the full audio from the roast of Carl and Vinny, my set will be on Patreon by the time you hear this. So patreon.com slash weird medicine. That's mostly Tacey and me, and then we'll sometimes have celebrities. Call in and ask us questions.

It's kind of fun. It's called the exam room. It's a stupid name, but we got to have a name for it. And it's loads of fun, and check it out. Patreon.com slash weird medicine. And then just today, I did a cameo for a guy, Pope John Paul, I think. The guy's name was John Paul. It's only can be one of those, right?

It's got to be. And I'm like, hey, how are you doing? So, that was stupid. From the love of his life, so I don't know. Oh, my God. But, yeah, they were listeners to the show, and we really appreciate them. So check that out, cameo.com slash weird medicine. Well, with that rough start, good Lord.

Well, I only got four hours of sleep last night, Dr. Scott. Not that anybody gives a shit. No. Nope. All right, fair enough. Dave. Hello. So Dave, we've been talking about Dave for some time.

He has a trigger finger, and we were going to get PA shit, a.k.a. B.M. John. A. P.A. L. P.A. F.A. F.A. F.A. John. Yes, that's right. Thank you. Very good. We're going to get P.A. John in here to inject your trigger finger. And then he gets here. And he's like, well, I've been wearing a splint for the last couple of weeks. And it's totally fine. I mean, it's not triggering anymore.

So we wouldn't have injected it anyway, so it worked out okay. We probably should talk about what a trigger finger really is. What did you first notice? It was several years ago, probably five years ago. It just started clicking a little bit. When you say clicking, what do you mean? If this is your middle finger on your dominant hand? Correct, yes.

If I were in the fist position and tried to straighten it out, it would hold up basically. Momentarily, and then it would sort of pop out. Okay. Yeah. So you would have to put some tension on it. Right. The other fingers would be straight up and down, so it looked like you were doing some sort of gang sign.

Yep, exactly. And then all of a sudden you would have to put enough tension, then it would pop up, and then it would be straight again. Correct. Okay. Yep. Yep. And then what happened?

It just progressed over the course of a few years, and I got to the point where when I woke up in the morning, it wouldn't straighten out. A short period of time, but it's, you know, it's disconcertive. There was no pain involved. But, you know, it's not, you know, it bugged the shit out of me. Sure. If you were a guitar player, a piano player, it would really suck.

That's right, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, and your wife would always know when you were, you know, pleasuring yourself because you'd come out of the bathroom with your finger. Oh, Lord. No, that's you, Dr. Steve. Oh, yeah. Your silence and then. Son of a bitch.

Yeah. So, did you ever seek medical attention for this? So after communicating with you a couple of months ago. So this went on for how long before you communicated with me? Just, you know, four or five years. This is a typical dude. This is a typical dude. Nothing wrong with that.

Give yourself a bill. So after communicating with you, I coincidentally had my yearly checkup with my PCP. Okay. And I asked him about it. I asked him about a cortisone injection. And he was aware of that but had never done it and

was unwilling to... Had never done it. Right. Experiment on me. Is he family medicine or internal medicine? Internal medicine. Oh, that's why. They don't do a lot of procedures like that. Okay. Yeah. He's... I love my PCP. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fantastic. Nothing wrong with an internist. Well, it depends. Some of them. Some of the family medicine people suck, too. I mean, there's shitty hospice doctors out there's shitty of everything yeah right yeah they're shitty of everything that's very profound that's exactly right

yeah god damn it we're making a shirt yes they're shitty of everything that's very profound yes it is but anyway it's but it's very true yes so your internist didn't do it

because they've never done it never done a pap smear never done you know there's a lot of things that internists haven't done I need to tell you a story when your story is done about, and don't let me forget about an internist. Well, I've got two or three stories like that. And the internists out there will understand this, is it working in the emergency room where they could see women and children, which they've really, most of them have never seen before. But anyway, go ahead.

And so, you know, you mentioning the cortisone injection. Yes. Peaked my interest. And at that point, it was getting worse anyway. So the point where, you know, wouldn't straighten out, primarily in the morning. Is that right? Yeah. So I guess I clinch my fists when I sleep.

Yeah, sure. So I, and this is just going back maybe three or four weeks. I just did a search and did a search for a splint figuring I should splint it. Damn it. Yeah, exactly. So I started wearing a splint. Again, maybe, you know, three or four weeks ago. Yeah.

Well, tell us how the, what the splint did to your, how did it hold your hand and what position it hold it? So it keeps the, keep the finger in the, yeah. Yeah, the old trigger finger. It keeps the finger erect. Yes. And it, yeah, it's got a little, and I realize people can't see this. No, they can actually. The ones that are watching.

Yeah, yeah. So it's got a little flap that comes down here. So prevents the finger from me. When he says here, he's talking about the base of his finger. Right. Into the palm. Yeah. So that it won't straighten.

Yeah. And I felt an improvement immediately. I mean, the first night. Yeah. And I meant to bring it with me, actually. Oh, it's okay. I know what it is. I was.

I was really just trying to get you in here to do a quarter zone injection before we messed with any of that stuff. But, yeah, there are exercises you could do. But the key is to decrease the amount of friction on that tendon. So what's going on is you've got a little, you know, if the tendon going to the end of your finger didn't have some sort of, what's the, like a band at the bottom of your finger, to apply some... Tension point. Well, yeah, it's a tension point, but it's kind of a fulcrum too.

Yeah. So it's like a pulley, and it pulls through this band at the bottom of your finger because if it didn't do that, it would just bow out. Right. And you would end up with this,

you know, you'd have this weird sort of web-like thing where now you have an actual finger. And what happens is is that the tendon above that little band that goes circumferentially around the base of your finger gets inflamed.

And when it gets inflamed, it gets enlarged. And now it can't fit. And it's also tapered, too. So when you flex your finger, in other words, bringing the tip of your finger toward the palm, it will slide below that band. But then it can't get back up again because it's too large to do that.

It's like it's not too dissimilar to those penis fish that swim up your urethra and they can only go in but you can't pull it back out because it's got fins on it and barbs and barbs and stuff so this thing doesn't really have barbs but it's shaped that way that's easier for it to slip down one way than the other and so you can just immobilize it and what that'll do is it'll just decrease the the amount of wear and tear which decreases the inflammation and then it'll shrink and a lot of times that's all you need But for the reason I didn't even bother you with that was because when you first contacted us, and by the way, he came down here from Rhode Island to get this thing done on the air.

When you first contacted us, it had been four or five years, so I figured that would be just nuts to even try it. So in this case, I'm glad I was wrong because P.A. John was supposed to inject your finger today, and he didn't show up. Well, if he sticks around long enough. Man, you are one pathetic loser. If Dave sticks around long enough, I'll stick some needles in his finger. Because we didn't treat it.

When I talked to Scott, so talk about doing this from an acupuncture standpoint, because you and I have talked about this. One of the things I think that acupuncture does is change some of the inflammatory pathways. That's exactly right. I literally would just take where his finger hurts and put little needles around where the tendon is in that Oh, fuck would that do anything Oh, it increases blood flow

Okay Decreases inflammation All right Yeah, just exactly what you were just saying I know, what's that a mechanism That that would decrease inflammation Well, the needles are noxious stimulants Yeah

The needles are noxia stimulants Could just be the needle And not the cortisone Exactly And there's a lot of research That's a lot of supported But, you know, trigger point injections a lot of times are just as effective, if not more effective, when you don't use steroids. Isn't that interesting?

Especially over time, because of the steroid will break down the muscle and the needles are so large, it actually causes a scarring in the tissue. Well, here you go. Effects of dry needling on tendon pulley architecture. That's what we're talking about. Pain and hand function in patients with trigger figure, a randomized control trial. Oh, here we go. Now, it's hard to do a placebo when you're sticking needles in somebody's hand, but anyway, that's okay. So let's see what they came up with.

What's their conclusion? The results suggest that single session of dry needling was effective in decreasing pain. And then the dash score. Dash score is like it's a score that we use in impairment ratings to determine function of the upper extremity. And the lower, the better pulley tendon thickness. and improving pinch grip power in patients with trigger fingers. And that's something. So it may be that all this time I've been sticking people with needles with cortisone in them.

And then going, Ouch, Dr. Steve, out. Oh, yeah. And you go, oh, it made them better. Might have done just the same if I just stuck the damn needle in there. You can do these little teeny needles like diabetic needles. Well, there you go. Instead of these gigantic needles. Give yourself a bill.

I'll give you one of those, Dr. Scott. Hey, thank you. Sean. That's number one. Counting. What? No, Sean, I'm having Sean count my bills today. Oh, okay. Yeah. And he doesn't even understand. He thinks it's bills. It's a bell. Give yourself a bell. Ding. It's an opiast. For the longest time, I thought it was Bill. I know. All right. It's an opiism. He used to do that all the time. And so when I'm on Anthony's show, I like to give him lots of, lots of give yourself a bell. If you go to our Patreon, patreon.com slash weird medicine, I had Anthony on there. And that show is a little difference called The Exam Room where they get to ask us questions. And anyway, I gave him one of those.

And his reaction was priceless. So anyway, I love both of my erstwhile colleagues. Yes. All right. Well, that's very interesting. So you did the dry needling thing. also sell dry needle. You did the trigger finger splint. They sell trigger finger tape. I think

any of those things are fine. Anything short of sticking a needle in it with cortisone, I think that should be the last reason. Agreed. Yeah. And you know, stretches, Dr. Steve, like those, you know, we call them the prayer stretches where you put your hands in front and just gentle pressure where you have your hands pulled together down in front of your chest can help to stretch those tins up. Yeah, there's a lot of things.

much less invasive and much less painful than the cortisone shots. Yeah, yeah. I'm all for less pain. Heck yeah, yeah, me too, man. So I have a thing that's not dissimilar from this, and it's called Dupatron

contracture. When I was in medical school, they called it De Poitran, but I have actually, here, this is the proper way to pronounce it. Here we go. We are looking at how to pronounce this name, French origin as well as how to pronounce more famous French names. So make sure to stay tuned and consider subscribing.

He was a French anatomist and military surgeon. So how do you go about pronouncing it? In French, in France it is said as du petron. So anyway, so this is an enlargement of the tendons of the hand and if you you let it go far enough, it'll actually cause a contracture of the hand that's not completely dissimilar, but the whole hand? The whole hand, yeah. And these are in the palm of the hand. I've got nodules in the palm of my hand. That's just from being old. And I saw my friend who's a hand surgeon. As soon as he heard, I had nodules in the palm of my hand. He said, let's see your

Dupotron's contracture. And it's like, well, but I'm not contracted. And this is from all the years of training I had. He said a huge percentage of people that have this never get the contracture. Now I've got some people that have fingers that are contracted up and they you can see the tendon is contracted under the skin and those require surgery if you're going to fix them. But doing that same what do you call this prayer? I just call it a prayer stretch. Yeah, prayer stretch. So you got to put your palms together right in front of your face. There you go so that way when you go down toward your chest, keep your palms. palms together.

Yeah, except for the Dupitron, I would think that's separating it and doing like that. Well, if you try to keep them further down you go, the better. Yeah, okay. Because that way you get the whole flexor 10. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, you, I don't know. You're the damn genius, I guess.

All right. So anyway, so, yeah. So Dave gets here and I'm like, let me see it. And he's like, you know, just moving his hand around. It's like, well, shit, I wouldn't have injected that anyway. So I'm glad it's better, though. Yes. And we're glad you hear.

Yeah, me too. You have other things of interest to talk about. You have an interesting job where you're doing, well, tell us, tell us without naming names. So tell us what your job is, because it's fascinating. Well, I work for a small Dutch company, actually. We have our U.S. site in Western Maryland, so which is actually where I spend. That narrows it down pretty well. Most of my time.

But we're a chemistry services company. We store research chemicals for the pharmaceuticals. pharmaceutical industry. Primarily, the pharmaceutical industry. Okay. These are chemicals that are used to basically help them discover new drugs. This is the interesting part. So people are saying, oh, God, he stores chemicals, who gives his shit.

I hear people snoring already. Talk a little bit about the high, what, the high volume discovery or whatever the, F it is. Right. Because I have a reason why I'm asking you about this. So we are, we're the chemistry end of drug discovery where, chemistry and biology meet. It's called high-throughput screening. High-throughput screening, that's it.

So biological screening is where you take a, in this case, a small molecule and put it against a biological target, a cell or a protein or a... Something that you're trying to find a receptor for something, what drugs will affect that receptor. Exactly, yeah. It's done in parallel. So, and they'll do, you know, it's called high throughput for a reason. and they may do 100,000 at a time.

So they'll take the same biological assay and throw 100,000 different small molecules at it at the same time. Now, the vast majority of the drugs on the market are small molecules. I mean, picture a caffeine molecule. Right, right, right. You know, one or two. Yeah, they're not giant protein molecules. Right, right. They also exist, but I mean, majority are small molecules.

certainly orally viable drugs. So we basically pharmaceutical companies amass millions of these over the course of years. Now, something that's made for a target now may not, well, likely won't work for that target but they don't throw that away if it doesn't. They keep it and they try it against the next one and the next one. So something a chemist synthesized 30 years ago, or 50 years ago, could be the next multi-billion-dollar-year drug. Sure.

It's just that the chemistry and the biology didn't. So why I bring this up, you could have, let's just say, an ACE-2 receptor in the lung, that you happen to know that a certain virus is spike protein will attack that thing. So you could run a bunch of drugs past that and see which ones might be worth looking at. Exactly. So you could pull something off the shelf. So they did this at UCSF, and they used some artificial intelligence thing. Do you know what I'm talking about?

I don't, but I'm... But you have an idea anyway. And guess what popped out? Two of the drugs that popped out of that screen for off-the-shelf drugs for COVID-19 were... Watch it now. Are you going to get the sky off of you two? Hydrochlorithyzide and azithromycin. So there was a reason why...

people were fixating on those drugs because they were easily obtained and they were inexpensive and they popped up on these high-throughput assays. Now, they didn't turn out to be very effective, at least not in the general population. But the people who were pushing those things, they, you know, I'd be the first to say because I was not on board with this because, you know, I'm an empiricist. I've got to see the data. But I understand why people jumped on the bandwagon quickly because they were desperate for something

we could just yank off the shelf. And that's why I found what you're doing interesting because that's where that came from is that same sort of thing where you're just screening drugs and molecules and things that just what might work with this. And then if you find something that's very specific for that receptor or that moiety on a protein

or whatever it is that you're changing the way it folds or whatever that you're doing, then you can zero in on it and maybe see, well, okay, if we put a methyl group here or a chloride ion here, maybe this thing will work a little bit better. Absolutely. It gives them somewhere a starting point. Yeah, absolutely. And point of note, that's the beginning of a very long process, a multi-year, potentially even a decade or more long process from, you know, initial discovery to anything that gets on

the market. And billions of dollars to... Billions of dollars, yeah. So I'm in favor of getting a grip on drug prices, but the other thing is I don't want to stifle innovation either. And how do you balance that? That's the thing. I mean, I fancy myself as a libertarian. I don't know if I'm really a libertarian or if I'm a Jimmy Dorr, you know, progressive because I've got some things that I really agree with him on.

And he's a free speech guy. It's like, oh, I didn't know you could be that far left to be that. free speech, but I'm not 100% sure what I am, but I do know that. I know. That's hilarious. Somebody isolate that. You're unidentified. But, you know, I want peace on earth and I want, you know, goodwill toward all men and all that stuff. But I wouldn't mind having a southern border that at least we had some control over. But, you know, because I do see the after effects of smuggling fentanyl into to the country and that kind of stuff. I see that every day.

But I don't know the answer to this because I don't want the government to just control it. I want people to make money, but I don't want Martin Screlli just, you know, gouging the shit out of people with the EpiPen either. Right. I mean, allegedly, you know, I don't know Martin. So, but, you know. Yeah, no, totally. And I think, you know, some of the people who are crying for controls.

you know, don't realize that. Skull! School! You know, so it costs, say, a billion dollars to get a drug to market on average. You know, there are plenty that fail in phase three. Yeah, right. So that's a billion dollars that they're never going to get back. Oh, yeah.

And also, this is an old stat, so, you know, take it with a grain of salt. But something like only two out of five, two or three out of five, drugs on the market will actually provide a full return on investment. Those are ones that actually make it to market. Now, I'm not going to boo-ho and feel too sorry for the

pharmaceutical industry, but there are a lot of people that lose their jobs when this shit happens. My wife was one of them. She was not a multi-billionaire, but she got murdered metaphorically, in other words, she got retired against her will because, you know, a billion, multi-billion dollar drug

didn't make it to market. Yeah. So, you know, when we're off, please tell me who it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will. But there's, you know, there's, there are real life consequences to real people for these things. And it's not just, you know, the fat cats at the top, although they do really, really well.

But, you know, there's the pharmaceutical industry. Well, shit. I'm just going to, I'll catch hell no matter what I say about this. But there are millions of people that are employed by the pharmaceutical industry. Absolutely, yeah. And I've made my living off the pharmaceutical industry for 37 years. Yeah, there you go. So, you know, I'm under no illusion that they, that they're always on the up and up with their business practices.

Sure. Certainly, I know, I mean, I know hundreds or whatever researchers that are. on the front lines trying to discover new drugs. And they're genuinely, you know, in it for the good. I mean, they are trying to cure diseases. Yeah. Well, and we're so much closer. We've been talking about carty therapy, car T cell therapy on the show.

And really, five years ago, we were talking about, like, oh, this is something that we're going to see, you know, 100 years from now. I remember you're talking about it. They're selling it now. And making more and more progress in that. Yes, all the time. And I know that my brothers and sisters in naturopathy will talk about preventing disease, but they aren't anywhere close to doing things like heart T cell therapy. So, yeah, it'd be better if we can prevent it all of it.

It'd be great. I'd love to be out of our job. Everybody live fucking forever would never have pain. That's a world I would love to live and I'd be happy to give up my job. for that. There's just no money in that the, that research part for not getting sick. You know what I mean? Yeah.

All of it's in, all of it's in treatment, which at least we have some, something, you know, treatment, thank God, versus nothing. Yeah. You know, could you? I guess you can't make billions preventing cancer, can you? No. No. That's a good point. No.

Unfortunately, so. Oh, well. We'll do our best to keep people semi-healthy. Hey, Logan, Phil was asking, are you involved with H-P-L-C? Oh, because Loganville used to, I used to do HPLC. Wait a minute. Is that someone who knows me? No, no, no.

It's just high performance liquid chromatography. So, yeah, I guess Loganville used to be in that business, yep. I was involved with HPLC for many years, actually. Me too. When I was in immunology. I dealt with discovery labs that were using HPLC for the purification of, of, you know, of their candidates. Yeah.

So that's what we would do. Yeah. Is we would have monoclonal antibodies generated by these, you know, mutant cells or these, what's the merged cells? And you would have this Eliza test that would tell you which ones of these pots is making the protein that you want. And then you'd have to run these things through the HPLC. Separate them. To separate all, you know, basically you take the liquid in one end and it just stretches it out. So things of different molecular weights would come out at different times.

Gotcha. And then you would get, you would see these peaks and you would grab that tube and you get the next peak and grab that tube. And then you would test those and you would find which one was actually causing the effect that you wanted. Now you've got it. You can do all kinds of stuff with it. Right. That's neat. I love to doing just sort of basic science stuff.

But Logan Field actually had a question for us, and here it is, and let's just go ahead and play it while we're at it. And the first thing, I guess we need to do is... Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. A quick question for you. I've been seeing a lot of things on the Internet recently regarding calcification of the pine yield gland. A lot of people out there believe that... fluoride in the water that's being added to it is causing the problem of the calcification

of the pineal gland and there's a lot of people out there that feel like it's a way to suppress the masses to suppress creativity to control population a lot of weird stuff going on out there i was Dude, where, okay, so John, a.k.a. Loganfield, where do we get the idea that the pineal gland is responsible for creativity? That's the first question. So that, but let's let's let him finish. What's the deal with them adding fluoride to the water? Yeah. It's 2022 right now. You think that people. People still have fucked up teeth, though, bro. These days would know enough about good dental habits. I think so. I mean, I do wonder if we need to continue to do community water fluoridation. But lots of studies over 75 years have shown that it's safe at the levels that they put in the water.

Now, I remember when Jesse Ventura was on Opin Anthony, and he was talking about, you know, fluoride is one of the ingredients in, I can't do it, Jesse Ventura impression. It's not too bad. That wasn't bad, actually. Is one of the ingredients in Brozac. And it's like, shut the fuck up. The one time, you know, when he talked about harp, I don't know what he's talking about,

when he talked about all these other mind control things, I didn't know it. The one time he talked about something I know something about, which is organic chemistry. he completely shit the bed because it's not like Prozac. And so his thing was, since there's three fluoride ions in Prozac that putting fluoride in the water is a way to pacify the masses. Now, number one, does anybody here feel like the masses are pacified in this country right now? That's number one. But number two, Prozac isn't a case.

It is a molecule. And so there's a huge difference in the chemical activity of a fluoride ion put in the water, which is a naked fluorine atom, versus fluoride ions in a molecule. Because in the molecules place, what those fluoride ions are there to do is to drag electrons away from the rest of the molecule. and because they're very, they love electrons. And so they'll drag them away for the rest of the molecule to make it more active. That's all it is. You could have three hydrogen atoms on there, but it wouldn't be as active a molecule in the body.

So they do that so you don't have to take two grams of Prozac. You just have to take, you know, 40 milligrams or whatever. So that was bullshit. So that's, then I started realizing a lot of the things that people were saying about fluoride in the water was bullshit. It fluoridated water is known to improve dental strength. It also reduces cavities by about 25%. So he go, well, should we do it for 25%. 25% across 350 million people is a big deal.

And it saves money for people, you know, for families, not going to the dentist as much, and the U.S. health care system. So now, he's right. oral health is better than it was years ago, but cavities are still a thing. If everyone would get fluoride treatments from their dentist as

children after they get their permanent teeth in, you might be able to prevent some of this stuff, and we might be able to stop putting fluoride in the water. But if you don't want fluoride in your water, then drink distilled water or move out in the country where you have a

spring and a well, and then deal with what friends of mine in Vermont did when I lived in Vermont our water tastes kind of funny it's tasting a bit off and then they go up to the well house the spring house and there's a dead deer in there

and it had been there for probably about three months had died in their spring house and they were drinking they were drinking dead deer tea basically. Lovely. So you can do that or you can just deal with the fluoride

but anyway so now when it comes to the pineal gland. He brings up an interesting point. The pineal gland does concentrate, you know, dietary fluoride. And, you know, there are older folks who have pineal gland dysfunction. And basically it's in, you know, people with Alzheimer's disease and they'll get calcification of the pineal gland. And it messes with their sleep.

and it messes with their ability of their nervous system to fix itself and immune, this sort of immune slash pineal axis and things like that. The pineal gland is a little gland in the back part of the brain where there is fluid. Fluid. Thank you. And it basically has to do with day, night cycles and things like that. Now, I'm going to, this is sort of interesting. So I found an article, and melatonin is produced in the, in the pineal gland, fluoride exposure and sleep patterns among older adolescents in the United States.

So I'll just read you the results. The average age of the adolescence was 17, and the median water and plasma fluoride concentrations were 0.27 and 0.29 respectively. and an increase in water fluoride was associated with a two times higher odds of reporting symptoms suggestive of sleep apnea and 24 minute later bedtime and a 26 minute later wake time and among males a 38% reduction in the odds of reporting snoring. So it was good when it came to snoring but bad when it came to symptoms like fatigue

even after they got a decent sleep and they were going to bed later and getting up later. So is any of this clinically irrelevant? We don't know. That's the answer. That is the absolute answer. Does this concentration of fluoride

in the pineal gland lead to calcifications? I don't think we can draw the line between those two points yet. But it's interesting. And, you know, the thing is, though, if we don't put the fluoride in the water, which I'm okay with

If everybody will go get their teeth worked on and brush their damn teeth and all that stuff and floss and do all the things and get fluoride treatments, would there be any difference in getting a fluoride treatment? You get a huge concentrated amount of fluoride all at once versus getting a little bit. I mean, we're talking about nanogram amounts. You know, let's see. Maybe echo knows. Echo, what's the concentration of fluoride in fluoridated water? Does she know? From Dunedendgov.com

Fluoride levels naturally occurring in water pump from the Florid and Aquifer to the city of Dunedin's RO water treatment plant is 0.2 parts per million. Okay, so that's in one place. So yeah, and there is, let's not forget there is natural fluoride in

some water and some aquifers have much higher levels than others. Some of them have higher fluoride levels than is what the municipalities will put in the water. So that's kind of interesting. Anyway, yeah, good question. See if he has anything else to say here. Just trying to figure out why they still have an add fluoride to the water in 2022.

I don't know. They could be adding a lot better stuff to it than fluoride. Like what? Okay, like microdose. He would be in favor of just putting psilocybin in the water. I do understand that. All right. Who's the football expert here?

No one. Okay. That would be me. That would be you? Okay, well, let's do this one. Of course. Hey, Dr. Steve, this is Phil from Tampa. I'm calling me because I have a slightly longer question, but I will do my best to be brief.

Okay. I don't know if you or anyone there follows football, but this most recent week, the Miami Dolphins quarterback to a ton of Iowa, he had a concussion, and it was pretty serious. And last week, he was injured with a fight concussion, but the team claimed was a back injury. And a lot of people thought he shouldn't have played this past Thursday, but he did. And in this game, he absolutely receives a concussion, and it was terrifying. And as a football fan, it's the worst part of the game. Yeah. And I had two quick questions based off of it.

First, when the replay showed him, you know, on the ground after the concussion, his arms were up, kind of a kimbo, and his fingers were bent out of shape. Like, not like they were broken, but they were like even a claw hand. It was awful. It was terrifying to see. And I'm just curious what caused that, and why did that happen? And why would his arms and hands do that? And my second question is, you know, after the game, the coach said that he spoke to Tua

and said that he was normal Tula and everything seemed fine. But if you truly are concussed, and regardless of how you're talking, that seems like a false positive or rather a false sense of security, like, oh, he's talking fine, so he must be fine. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, when you get a concussion, are you really that comes in so quickly, but cannot wall you into a false sense of security? Yep. Yeah, just head injury in general. Just scary, man. Yeah, no shit. That's all. I just want to call it. No, it's great. It's a great question, man. Go ahead and take it. Multiple, multiple questions. I'll take the first half of this. Okay. So what happened was he was first thrown down and hit his head.

And when he stood up, he staggered and was listing, listing, and fell down. And the idiot, the idiot, I'll say idiot. No, they didn't pick him on. The idiot that was calling the game and says, well, it looks like maybe he hurt his ankle or his knee. What? Yes. No, no. He had decorticoat.

But that was the second one. Let's talk about that. But that was the second one. Okay, okay. So that's what I'm saying. I'll take the first. Okay. No, yeah, yeah, go, go, go, go.

So anyway, so being a. Being a former coach, I can tell you, when kids have head injuries like this, and this was the first one, and they come off with a, even if it's a mild concussion, they come across normal for the most part, for the most part. And then they'll say, hey, coach, I'm fine. Yeah, right. You as a coach, have to say no, period. Take them off the field.

Get over here. They have a very specific protocol allegedly that they support. supposedly followed, and it fell miserably. Now, I don't know where it fell. I wasn't in, I wasn't part of it, but we don't know. We don't know, but I can tell you right now, they fell miserably. The second time this kid

is literally, when he's tackled, because he's not a gigantic guy, he's bare hugged, flipped over, and flipped back, and flip back in his head, wax on it. Did you see it? Yeah, he flipped. I saw the replay, yeah. So it hits this, post-year-head, his oxford. And that's

when he had the posture. I know when he talked about it. So you have decorticate posturing is when you, there's decerebrate and decorticate posturing. And this is, the cortex is the part of the brain where, you know, you'll see it in strokes and stuff. It's part of the brain where a lot of processing is done. And when you, the way for the medical students out there, the way to remember it is, if it's decerebrate they will extend as far as they can

and we would say oh look I'm cerebrating okay like we're having a party they're really stressed out like they're getting going to give somebody a hug and then the other one then would be decorticate so that's when you're like these you make claws they draw all they draw everything draw up

that's usually when you have massive damage to the cortex of the brain and it's a very primitive movement that's controlled by the brainstem because the cortex is no longer controlling your movement and

when the brain stem takes over it doesn't it can't do all the subtle movements and stuff and so that's one of the movements that it does and apparently he wobbled as he stood back up and then you know it was just a disaster so

that is a sign of a massive hit and so on the second one how long was he out for that after that one, they at least recognize it. Yeah, they at least, yeah, he was, they took him to the hospital. But, you know, the first one... I don't watch American football mad. Well, I watch a little bit, but I saw this on the highlights,

and you may have seen it on the highlights as well, Dave. It was just, it was appalling to me. Yeah. As first to coach and second, as a player, I would hope that had I... Well, the coaches, listen, they're not medical people. They're not met, but they need to be trained. No, I'm not saying they are. But what I am saying is the head coach is, he failed, period.

That head coach has got to say. Yeah, they've got to be trained to say no. But Dr. Steve, that's not the problem. I don't think. The problem is money. Do you think that was the coach's thing or with somebody up above him saying, get his ass back on the field? I don't know. We don't know.

We weren't there. But what I can say is. This is Dr. Scott. Yeah, this is, well, I can say the head coach is getting paid by the guys in the right yeah yeah and those guys want their

quarterback's playing yeah he may not even is he does he come back he may not come back this season and he may have something

long term with this he's the same kid when he was at Alabama you remember this when he broke his ankle

okay so he had like recurrent ankle injuries rolling his injuries so they actually when he was in college fused his ankles they literally

fused his tibia because he kept breaking his fibular his letter Fibulele head there. Okay, nobody knows what you're talking about. It's lateral malillo, so we're... Nobody knows that doesn't make it better.

But I'm going to get... Ankle. So the bottom of your large, lower bone, your leg, your tibia, and a small bone on the outside is the fibula. And a lot of times when you roll your ankle, you break that little bone on the outside. There you go. And it's really awful. It's a broken ankle. They went up above that a couple inches and drilled through the two bones in there and then screw them together.

Oh, so they made a synosmosis or synosmosis or... Dismosis, whatever, yeah. And then did it to the other side so we wouldn't have the same ankle break on that side. That's insane. Well, that was preventative. You're always talking about preventative medicine. That's a little bit. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

That's a little bit, that I just, I just hate that, I hate it for everybody about, I feel bad for the coach. Cynastosis. What is wrong with me today? Good Lord. But, you know, at some point in time, and you would have helped eat one of the physicians after the first one who would have said, hey, coach. Yeah. You know, he made the kid They look good

Because the coach made the call But where was the team doctor on that? And it's an independent, it's an independent neurologist Yeah That's supposed to be and say, hey, listen And running through the protocol, but I still say, I know there's a lot of pressure There's a lot of pressure

But when the kid stands up Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I get it. You don't have to convince me Yeah, I'm with you. But it's like I do, when you have Michael Jackson saying Give me some of that magic milk again tonight, and it's Michael Jackson

and sometimes it's hard to just say no. I agree. And that's what I'm saying. I'm not blaming the coach or anybody. I'm just saying it's a tough for everybody. I need my magic meal. I had a mild concussion about four or five years ago. Oh, who cares?

Dave. Next question. Go ahead, Dave. Can we get some music for a day while he's doing this? Poor day. Do we have some like music? Oh, yeah, I'll give him some music. Here you go.

Let's hear about to. I wasn't gone in the bathroom that long. He slipped in the bathroom and he just hadn't had a small concussion. I was in a bike race allegedly and crashed. Oh, no. Oh, now did you have a concussion or did you have transient global amnesia? It was a mild concussion. Yeah.

So, but I mean, I felt fine. It wasn't until, you know, I had a CAT scan immediately. And I felt okay. It was the next day when, you know, I was told to, you know, stay home, keep the lights down, to watch television or your screens and uh oh fuck that after a while i thought fuck that so i uh i don't know if i was on my phone or had the tv on or something and sure enough it only took a few minutes i i started feeling really nauseous and but up until then i felt fine so yeah i would have been all right let's go yeah yeah yeah so i mean i can well it's like after you

spending the protocol. No, yeah. It's like when you have propapol, too, after a procedure, you feel fine, and you're not fine, but you think you are. That's why we are not good judges of that stuff. Coaches are not good judges of it. If they're not trained to go, hey, cut the, you know, no, yeah, you seem fine, and you're telling me you're fine, because that was this guy's second question, you know, is it possible

that he wasn't fine, but he was interacting with him? Yeah, absolutely. Totally. Absolutely. Absolutely. Anyway. All right. I have no idea how many potholes I stepped in talking about this.

So, you know, if y'all are, somebody is pissed because of something that I said, I haven't, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I mean, I know about concussion. I don't know anything about, you know, I don't know anything about sports. I know something about magic the gathering. Yes, you do. And if you want to talk about people. getting mad and flipping tables in Magic the Gathering and throwing all the cards and the dice and the tokens all over.

What about your headache again? Let's do this. Okay. Fuck both of you. Okay, here we know. Hey, Dr. Steve. Hey, Jay.

Jimmy from Charlotte. Hey, Jimmy. Doing great. Thanks for asking. Oh, I didn't ask. I was calling to check out what you thought of the product of Lumen or products like it, where you breathe into it. check your metabolism.

Yeah. But all the diet fads out there, it's just, this just one more? Yeah. Okay. So I don't, I don't want to speak specifically about a, you know, a brand, but there are devices out there that you can blow into, and it will tell you your metabolic rate, supposedly. And in the laboratory, we would have people isolated in a, almost an airtight room with a mask on and have them breathe into this thing.

and then we would have to do a bunch of complicated, you know, calorometric calculations and stuff to figure out what their basal metabolic rate was. In other words, how many calories are they burning every hour? So then you could calculate things like when they're doing exercise. You do it when they're doing exercise. You see the difference. You know, how efficient are they in being an elite athlete or long-distance athlete? You can do research like that.

Well, now they've got this little thing that you can buy that you just blow in. and it's, I looked at it, it's $250 for six months, and then they bill you $25 bucks a month. You don't need to do this multiple times, at least, you know, not in the science that we did with this. Plus, I don't know what this thing is. I don't know what the mechanism is. It's a little, looks like a fletus flute.

It's not that much bigger than a fletus flute, and you blow in it, it gives you a number. So we don't, I didn't have a lot of time to look it up as far as the science, if they had published anything. But I did find, and this is always entertaining, the Amazon reviews. So let's check out a few Amazon reviews. This person says, don't, just don't. And you can guess if it's a one-star or a five-star review, okay? One of the other reviews called this an expensive random number generator, and that's 100% accurate.

Even after using this thing for three months and allowing it time to, quote, calibrate to my individual metabolism, unquote, I was still pulling totally random numbers that don't make sense from one day to the next. You also need the diaphragm and breath skills of an opera singer to get acceptable readings. If you have asthma, you'll likely die trying to get this to work. So, it's that a one star or a five-star review? Scott. One. Give yourself a bill. All right.

Let's see here. How about this one? Total scam. This is a very expensive device that is interesting at first, but when you realize it doesn't even measure your insulin spikes, which is what contributes to weight gain, it's pure garbage. Don't waste your money on this useless device. One star or five star? I'm going to, may I jump in? Of course.

I'm going to go with a one. Give yourself a B.L. They're not following the Carl W-A-T-P method where you give somebody a five-star review and shit all over them in the rankings. Okay, here's one. It doesn't work and they disappear when you need a refund. I'm saying one. Give yourself a B-L. We're on a roll.

Inaccurate and unreliable gives random results. This thing has the worst reviews of anything I've ever seen on Amazon, 83% one star, 17% five star, and nothing in between, which makes me wonder about those five stars. Yeah, the mom or their aunt and uncle, girl. It's just one after another after another. And, oh, here's one. I bought one for my dad at Christmas, figuring we could get healthier in the new year. Always a good idea. The marketing sounds great, but it's a bit of a scam.

This is their words. They don't tell you what your metabolism is, which is how they advertise it in the first place. They give you a score from one to five about what you're burning, and you don't even get any results for like a month. That doesn't help me. I want to know what my metabolism is, which is what I thought I was buying. So if you really want to do it, you still have to go into the lab and do a true basal metabolic rate and eat fewer calories than you to burn and you'll lose weight. Good Lord.

And you can do that lots of different ways. You can do it with a vegan diet. You can do it with a low carb diet if it's done properly. Hell, you could do it with just portion control. You do whatever you want to do. If there was just one way to do it, then we wouldn't have to be having this discussion because we would be doing it. So anyway.

Dr. Scott, you were looking in the waiting room and Mike was in there talking about multiple Miloma. He has multiple Miloma, he says. He does. So multiple myeloma is a disease where you have cells that are immune cells called plasma cells that

reproduce in the bones and they go all over the place and lots of different bones, aka multiple and then myeloma. These are blood slash immune-derived cells.

And there was a really interesting study. You know, we were talking about car T-cell therapy. And I think we have talked about this before. And if you're interested in reading about it, go to Dr. Steve.com and click on non-sudoscience cancer cures. There's an article about a patient that they studied using measles vaccine for multiple myeloma. So you're nodding your head. So I've talked about this before. Well, you have talked about it.

But you knew about it, too. Yeah, I always read whatever I can about multiple myeloma. Oh, really? Yeah, my mother had multiple myeloma a long time ago. Oh, okay, before they. She's been gone for a long time. That's a rough one. Yeah.

And it can cause a lot of pain and there's just, you know, it's just tumors in the bones and it's not a fun cancer if there is such a thing. Terrible to watch. Yeah. Yeah. And so what they did, what they found out was, and this is one of those serendipitous things, they just had the idea that measles vaccine, which is a live attenuated virus, loves myeloma cells. And so they gave this person genetically modified measles vaccine, but the only modification they did was they inserted code for a receptor that would accept. a radioactive iodine molecule or atom, you know. Okay. And that was it. And that wasn't there to treat anything.

You think a radioactive iodine while you're going to try to kill something with that. No. In this case, they just wanted it as a marker because it's really easy to detect radioactive iodine in the body using scanners that we already have. So they injected six million doses. Yeah, I knew it was really high.

Of measles vaccine. Now, it's still not that much. I mean, it sounded like there was gallons. No, it was probably just in one syringe, maybe a couple of syringes. Oh, wow. Because the measles vaccine is highly diluted. You're not giving that many viral particles, and six million of them still fits on the head of a pin, basically. So they gave this person six million measles vaccine doses, and they got kind of sick.

fever, chills, muscle aches, and pains, and stuff like that. And when that pro drum, or that, you know, I guess prodrome went away, they, you know, collection of symptoms before the study was done, they put this person in front of a scanner that could detect radioactive iodine, and all of their myeloma tumors lit up. And about a month later, the person was cancer-free, and what happened was when, those live attenuated viruses

went into the cell what does the body do with that? Well it goes, you're not supposed to be here. So the white blood cells attacked those cells and just fucking killed every one of them. Just fucking killed them all.

And that was that. And this person is walking around cancer free. So that is a potential. They are coming up with so many cool ideas. And now, one Once you do it once, you can reproduce it, if you can reproduce it, if the person didn't just falsify their data. But if you can reproduce it, then you can start to hone in and find the most efficient way and the least, with the least amount of morbidity and mortality that you can be the safest way to do it.

That'll be the most effective. And so that's coming. You know, multiple of myeloma, your days are numbered. you know, smallpox, dead. Influenza, you know, gee, I can't remember, Yamato, dead.

So we're making some progress on some of this shit. Sick of it. Stupid cancer. Stupid viruses. Reproducing to no end just because they want to. Because they can.

Because they can. Yeah. They're just little nanomachines that all. All they do is reproduce and make people fucking sick and kill them. Assholes. Fuck them. I hate them.

Yes, fuck them. That's right. That's right. And when they're dead, you know what I'll say? Ha ha! All right. Well, let's do this one real quick because this one Darren has some interest in. And then we'll get out of here.

Hey, Doc. This is anonymous in Texas. I was just calling to ask you about. What's a weird night. C. Vapes. I know vaping can cause popcorn lung and is obviously not good for you. Well, can it, though? I mean, certain vapes were doing that. So is THC slash marijuana vapes same or worse? Yeah, okay, good question. So he was worried about in the early days of the vape explosion,

we saw these people that had this inflammatory illness of the lung that was deemed popcorn lung because when you did an x-ray, it looked like they were, you know, you had popcorn in there. There was lots of little sort of semi-circular and circular lesions all over the place. And I think that they determined that some of the fly-by-night vape manufacturers were using vitamin E oil as their oil. And that was, they think that's what was causing that.

I haven't heard about popcorn lung in years. And people are vaping more now than they ever were. You go behind these people in these cars. and you see, they got their window open. You see the giant, like, cloud of smoke. It's amazing. It can't be healthy. It can't be healthy.

I bet it's awesome, though. I used to love that feeling when I smoked. You'll be up your huff. No, no, I won't either. I'm over that. But when I used to smoke, I love that feeling of, I don't know what it is. It's sort of a fullness going into your lung. And there was something about that.

I'm sure they get the same feeling. except more intense. I remember my boys were laughing. We were in Asheville, and, you know, there's lots of hipsters around Asheville, North Carolina. There was this guy sitting out there. He's like, and he had his tunes, man.

Yeah. Big beard. Yes, yeah. And, uh. And, uh, you're describing me in another one white glove and a monocle and, you know, all this stuff. And the guy's sitting out there. It's like, I think I'll take a toot off of my,

off of my vapid man. And it was this giant contraption Looked like a clarinet. It was huge black and silver. It was cool look. I can't say that it wasn't, but he was definitely trying to draw attention to himself. And he took a toad off of this thing

and blew out the biggest, most giant, opaque cloud of white vapor than I've ever seen. And the boys were just laughing their asses off. They were like seven and nine. They just thought that was the funniest thing because the guy was so extreme. extremely ridiculous, you know, but anyway.

But I bet that feels great if you're a vape person. I'm just, I'm okay with if you're a smoker going to an FDA approved vapor or nicotine inhaler. They sell, there's a pharmaceutical nicotine inhaler and doing that as a bridge to getting off of doing everything, a total sobriety. Rich Voss quit smoking. and he's still chewing fucking nicotine gum you know 20 years later or longer than that and it just shows how addictive nicotine is

it's amazing now I'll have people who have stage 4 cancer and they'll say well why it's by the way there's no stage 5 and they'll say well why bother quitting now and what I'll tell them is the tar stuff in the tar causes the cancer

but the nicotine can make it grow faster Nicotine activates a protein called protein kinasee, which actually can be a tumor promoter. So there is still reason to quit even if you have stage 4 cancer. And on top of that, you'll feel better, you know, even if you have a limited amount of time, you'll feel better if you're not smoking. All right. Well, listen, thanks go to Dr. Scott.

Thanks to Dave from Rhode Island. Thanks, man. It was enjoyable having you here. Thanks for making the trip. Fantastic. Really appreciate it. great to always make a new friend so and we've got some prizes here for you and yeah and the home game the weird medicine home game which only somebody our age will even get that reference but anyway

listen to our serious xm show on the faction talk channel series xm channel 103 um not sure when saturday's at 10 or so no saturdays at 7 Sunday at 10 and on On-demand. Just listen to it on-demand. And other times at Jim McClure's pleasure, I still, it's Wednesday. Jim's back from vacation. I haven't heard anything about whether we've been renewed for another year, so we'll see. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. If they don't renew us, I would like to have a final show, if we could, have some warning to do some stuff.

And then we'll just have to accept the fact that we're just a couple of slunks with a podcast. Go next. The one thing is that that's nice having a Sirius XM show, even if it's at 10 p.m. on Sunday, is you're not just some schnook with a podcast. You know, you have some cachet from that. So maybe I will demand emeritus status. That's reasonable. If you don't know what that is, look it up. But, yeah, I'm going to demand Sirius XM emeritus status.

Go to our website. Thank you. at dr steve.com for scheduled podcasts and other crap until next time check your stupid nuts for lumps quit smoking get off your asses get some exercise we'll see you in one week for the next edition of weird medicine thanks everyone Thank you.